Let's kill a classic!

Rating: 1/10 (27 November 2007)

Admittedly, I only saw this movie in the 2D version, but my dislike is not based on the visual "effects" as much as it is on the content of the film. Also admittedly, I love Beowulf, the epic poem. It is one of the great works of Western literature. If one is to make a film of a great work of art, it seems to me one is bound to treat it with respect (note: I do not say "awe." Respect leaves the film maker open to creative interpretations, whereas awe prevents him from being daring and creative). Robert Zemeckis admits in his comments in the film's production notes that he doesn't even LIKE Beowulf. He claims to have been forced to read it in Old English when he was in junior high school: This comment, suggesting a highly unlikely reality, reveals much about his inability to understand or respect the subject in the first place.
Zemeckis has not simply failed to translate the story and characters of Beowulf into cinematic terms, he has damaged them. The King Hrothgar in this Beowulf is not the noble, sad Danish king of the original epic, a king who, like the king in Wagner's Parsifal, suffers from the symbolic "wound that never heals" and requires a heroic act to save him, but is instead a lustful, besotted, self-gratifying ruler of a band of thugs; in the end, he abrogates the responsibility as the original Hrothgar could never do. Queen Wealtheow, who is perhaps the most noble character in the epic (Wiglaf excepted), becomes a love object for Beowulf (whose character is here limited to the arrogant boaster that the original Beowulf only sometimes is), an absolutely absurd idea -- the sexual tension between them is a clearly modern idea that may make sense to young audiences but is completely absurd in the context of the story's culture. This Hrothgar and Wealtheow are childless, removing an important secondary plot from the original epic, because of Hrothgar's weird (and should be grotesque) philandering; this 21st century twist may ring true to some, but it destroys the characters of not only Hrothgar and Wealtheow, but also of Grendel and his mother! The whole notion of Angelina Jolie as Grendel's beastly mother puzzled me before I saw the film; of course, after seeing the ridiculously rewritten story, I understand why the ugly sea witch is now transformed into a seducer of kings. Unfortunately, this aspect so alters the thrust of the story that we no longer have Beowulf, but some other, mundane soap opera that uses the names and some elements of the Beowulf story as a weak foundation. Zemeckis excuses this major alteration of the plot by saying that we only have Beowulf's word that he killed Grendel's mother, but this comment again reveals the filmmaker's inability to read the original accurately.
There is so much more that is wrong with this film that I don't know where to continue. I hate the digital imaging that actually hides the acting (good or bad as it may have been). This is not like the incredible collaboration of actor and technician that we saw with Andy Sirkis's Golem in the Lord of the Rings films, but an elaborately slick animated Marvel comic book reduction. Where are the strong talents of such solid actors as Anthony Hopkins, Crispin Glover, Angelina Jolie, and Robin Wright Penn? They're buried behind the comic book. Beowulf himself is an empty, one-dimensional character and no longer the romantic hero of the original epic, who must discover the truth of his inner self over several decades and through many challenges (he's supposed to be much older when he engages in the fatal battle with the dragon at the end than he appears in the film).
Even the film's attempts to sound scholarly fail when Hrothgar mispronounces "scop," one of the many Old English words that pepper the script, and poor Unferth mispronounces his own father's name (the Old English 'sc' should sound like the modern English 'sh'). There is just no end to the problems with this movie. At best it's mere eye candy, and not much of that, since the candy is all artificially flavored.