I watched the movie earlier tonight and I’m feeling a tad disturbed. And it’s not because I watched the 1999 version. I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I purchased that on DVD and it seems like the movie was created solely for Christopher Lambert to kill monsters and do his little chuckle at the end. It didn’t follow the original storyline very well, though honestly, I don’t think the 2007 version did such a great job, either.
I guess it strikes me a little closer to home because I took English classes in college where we read epic poetry like the Iliad, the Odyssey and Beowulf. Moreover, I enjoyed them. And yet I write drivel like this blog entry. There’s just no accounting for taste…
Anyway, I’m willing to give the producers a bit of leeway because it’s Hollywood as opposed to a story written over a millennium ago. At least they were good enough to preserve the three separate parts of the story: Grendel, Grendel’s mother and a dragon. (And if you think that’s a spoiler, you should never read the inside of a book cover ever, ever again.)
The 1999 version? No dragon. Just Grendel and Mommy Dearest. There was a scene where they showed Mommy Dearest’s naked boobies, but that doesn’t give the movie enough bonus points to make up for the fact that it was still just her and Grendel. Maybe it seems like the dragon got thrown into the end of the epic poem for no reason, but there’s this thing called the “rule of three.” It’s one of the biggest reasons you see trilogies in the theaters, trilogies in books, trilogies in… um… other forms of media? Blog entries, perhaps? (Go ahead, read through some of the archives—you’ll see what I’m talking about.) Looking at it that way, how could you possibly call a two-part story an “epic”?
So the more recent version was more of an epic, but it was a Hollywood production. The way they ended the movie, I’m almost expecting to see “BEOWULF 2: Coming Spring 2011!” And if they go with the “rule of three” and make it a trilogy, I might have to hunt the producers down with a sword and go Beowulf on their asses. Now I just need to practice my Christopher Lambert chuckle…
