Regarding the Movie's Relationship to the Original

Rating: 4/10 (27 November 2007)

I love the Beowulf in its original form (by which i mean the original plot-line since all I can read are translations); however, I understand why the writer changed it. In the original, Beowulf has no inner-conflict. He is supremely confident, goes into battle ready to die, and so on. He makes no moral choice except to choose glory and honor. Thus, he only faces external foes which don't make for high drama, so they had Beowulf choose the demon and glory over the queen and domesticity to have the hero make a moral choice that he'd later reap a terrible consequence. The message of the real Beowulf is the pagan emptiness, the pathos of lost glory and old age compared with the Christian hope of eternal life, of which Beowulf has no inkling.
Interestingly, in the story the conflict is in the narrator who is clearly a Christian of some kind whose relating this very pagan tale. His conflict between Beowulf's world and the Christian perspective in which he writes is incorporated in the story though I thought unnecessarily.
All in all, I thought the movie failed to create a compelling drama. It ended up being mostly smoke and noise.