Sunday, March 2, 2008

Beowolf: the new movie...

I just watched the new movie that tries to put Beowolf to a Hollywood script. It was crazy, first off the movie is done as a cartoon/ lifelike movie. The plot is totally different that what we read, Beowolf (plot alert) does not kill Grendel's mom, instead he has sex with her to give her a new son. The new son later becomes the dragon that kills Beowolf. Crazy stuff, did anyone else see this new movie, and if so did they like it better than the REAL story line?

10 comments:

Jenni Davis said...

I just watched the movie this weekend with my husband. We both were disappointed with the storyline. The live action animation was neat, but again nothing like the story we read.

Megan Becker said...

What you said they did in the movie doesn't even make any sense! Why base a movie off of a book, name it the same thing, and then not even follow the original story line? In Lord of the Rings, nothing major was changed and the storyline was still the same throughout, with little tweaks here and there. That's why it is a good film version of the book and why it makes sense for the movie to use the books name. But to change a major part of the story out of the original book is just stupid because it detracts from what the story is actually about.

mmannin said...

I watched the movie this past weekend and was so dissapointed. It seemed to follow the story line pretty well for the first 30- 45 minutes, then it just became completely insane. Some things, especially literature such as Beowulf should be left as they are. I agree with Megan that the movie took away from the story. It actually somewhat confused things for me and I now have to be careful to realize that what happened in the movie did not actually happen in the poem.

Mike Pilato said...

Are you talking about BEOWULF instead of BEOWOLF? I am sorry, but incorrect spelling of a word repeatedly after seeing it displayed countless times on the cover of a main assigned book for the class and the web blogs/blackboard seems odd to me. Another person incorrectly spelled Rivendell as "Rivendale," after the word is given several times in the Fellowship of the Ring.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Palito, this is an informal blog where spelling is not the prime concern or at least shouldn't be. It is one's thoughts that count. I am sure that you understood the writer's point.

David Le said...

wow you totally just spoiled the whole movie for people who haven't seen it. Ya i would agree its not like what the book was supposed to be, but at least it exposes that there is a book named beowulf and people might be interested in reading the book after the movie. the only reason grendel's mother wasn't killed was because it was freaking angelina jolie, she was hot as hell though. The movie went from good to bad in the middle of the movie. In many ways they tried to make it into a hollywood film, but failed horribly because the hollywood heads couldn't wrap around their minds that beowulf doesn't have a damsel in distress or a female figure in his life at all so they had to figure something out.

Anonymous said...

The movie fails as an authentic representation of the epic poem, but as a hollywood film, it does its job. Beowulf has relations with women, which every hollywood film requires, and although I was sadly disappointed with the it, I think if the film was detached from the title of "Beowulf," it would have been a good movie.

Editwright said...

I finally watched the movie over break, and it seemed to me like it wasn't so much an interpretation of Beowulf as it was an explanation of interpretations of Beowulf. You may be realizing now that I'm finding it hard to put my thoughts into words. I apologize. What I'm trying to say, however, is that the movie seemed almost like a Beowulf course. Where it certainly did a poor job of projecting the literal text onto the screen, it did an excellent job of illustrating the role of the book's narrator, the speaking characters in the book, and the overwhelming amount of potential exaggeration in the story.

For example, when Unferth challenges Beowulf in Hrothgar's hall (the swimming match episode), the movie directly questions Beowulf's over-the-top storytelling, even with the words of Wiglaf: "It was three last time."

The movie also shows that, by leaving the story to be told by one source, the story is susceptible to manipulation. Beowulf told everyone that he killed Grendel's mother, like in the book, but he didn't actually do it. How is the reader to know the events in the movie aren't the events that actually occurred in the book and that the narrator was either mistaken or was lying about the incident?

The movie version of Beowulf does a fantastic job of pointing out the importance of the point of view in narration, something that often goes completely unconsidered by readers.

Mariela Alejandra Pizarro Pérez said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mariela Alejandra Pizarro Pérez said...

the only thing that I just can say is, I din't like this type of movie but I have to recognize that the effects and the character of the film are really amazing!