A Review of the Other Beowulf Movie - Jack Budofsky

     My original plan for this blog post was to watch every movie I could find that tells the story of Beowulf and then rank them based on how worth it it is to watch them. I figured that I would have more than enough choices to work with, after all the poem has existed as long as film has ten times over, giving filmmakers plenty of time to make interpretations of the story. But surpisingly, I could only find two movies across multiple platforms excluding the movie adaptation of the novel Grendel. My two choices were the 2007 moive titled Beowulf, which we all watched scennes from as a class, and the lesser known 1999 movie by the same name with Christpher Lambert. Here's my review of the latter.

   
     This version of the movie caught my attention because its description, whih stated the movie is set in a dystopian future. I was interested in how the story would adapt to this setting.

     The story is similar to the original poem, but makes many changes. Beowulf is called by a feeling to come to the meade hall, which is not really a meade hall but more a stronghold. Hrothgar, who is the leader of the stronghold, din't call him to deal with Grendel. A few important characters were added in the movie, including Kyra, Hrothgar's widowed daughter who believes Grendel's attacks are somehow her fault, and Ronan, who is Hrothgar's right-hand-man. Similar to in the poem, Beoulf fights Grendel and cuts off his arm and kills him, although it takes him multiple attempts. At the same time these events happen, Grendel's mother, who is a human, periodically shows up in Hrothgar's dreams and seduces him. There is also a love triangle between Beowulf, Kyra, and Ronan. After Grendel is killed, Grendel's mother appears and gives a monologue revealing that Grendel is Hrothgar's son, and that Grendel is still alive. Then, Grendel's mother transforms transforms into a monster like The Rock in the imfamous film The Mummy, exept the CGI is even worse (although this is reasonable because it was a low budget movie). Beowulf then kills Gendel for real and collapses the stronghold on Grendel's mother. Hrothgar dies in the process, but Beowulf and Kyra escape. Beowulf never fights a dragon like he did in the poem, instead the movie ends there.
     About the setting, it turns out the movie didn't take advantage of its futuristic setting at all. In fact, if I hadden't read the description, I would have never known that the story was set in the future. The movie takes placeentirely at the meade hall from the classic poem, only it is more of a stronghold than it is a meade hall. The building is a medival fortress with no electricity. The only nods to current technology were the speakers that were used at one point during the movie to call soldiers and the aluminum takeout boxes that the characters ate out of. This seemed like more of an oversight by the director than an intentional desision to establish the setting.
     The movie not using its setting to its advantage was not the worst thing the movie did. In fact, the disconnect from the setting was not that noticable and didn't really affect my enjoyment of the movie. The real problems come in a lot of the writing. There are many lines that fall flat, especially from Grendel's mother. Many of the choices about Grendel's mother were a little confusing, having here try and seduce almost every major character including Beowulf. Much of Beowulf's exposition was ominous terminator-esque one-liners. Really the only good writing was given to the character Kyra.

Grendel's mother post-transformation

     This movie wasn't particularly good. You don't need to see the rotten tomatoes score of 0% to know that. It also isn't the kind of bad like The Room or more recently Cats, its the kind of bad that makes you wish you were watching something else. Although it's interesrting to see the modern interporetations of a classic poem written one thousand years ago, this version isn't worth it to watch.