"Beowulf" isn't really "Beowulf"

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2010)

As other people have noted, the story in "Beowulf" is quite far from the content of the original poem - so far, in fact, that I feel it was misleading to call this film "Beowulf" at all. Whereas, say, Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" is essentially faithful to its source material, this film twists the source material so far that it becomes substantially a different story.
In fairness to the film, it does explore some interesting themes. One theme is how legends tend to grow and become distorted in the re-telling, as the legend of Beowulf is shown becoming distorted in the re-telling even during his own lifetime. And corollary to that is the idea that people tend to believe what they want to believe; although Beowulf offers no direct proof of the witch being dead, for example, they want to believe it and so it becomes accepted as part of the story. Also noteworthy is the theme of a hero sowing the seeds of his own downfall.
That being said, I feel this film reflects too much the skeptical point-of-view of modern times, where we tend to receive heroic tales with skepticism and doubt about the real motives and motivations of those involved. Compared to the original character, this Beowulf seems not only flawed but downright devious, and I think that treatment doesn't do justice to the character. Also, the cartoonified style of the film didn't appeal to me personally; since the point of the film seems to be to treat Beowulf as a flawed human being with conflicted motivations (more like one of us ordinary people than a legendary noble hero), wouldn't a realistic film style be more appropriate? That style might work for a film like "300", but here it was distracting at best and jarring at worst, reminding me too much of a video game.
And what to say about the witch depicted by Angelina Jolie - so different from the witch of the poem that she's almost an entirely different character? The titillating semi-nudity is so gratuitous that it's almost comical, right down to the strange detail of modern-looking high heels (in the 6th century A.D.?) That sort of thing makes me wonder if this is the sort of film that's trying to do too much at once - pandering to the lowest common denominators of taste with crude violence and sex while simultaneously trying to deconstruct an epic poem; maybe that's just too tall an order.