Viewed: Beowulf

Well, that certainly was a movie with Beowulf in it.

Mr. Bile has already commented on it, but I think he's viewing the film through 3-D colored glasses. I'm all for taking liberties with the source material--Grendel really impressed me in high school--and it's great that we finally got to see Angelina Jolie in her true form. Also, I think it's pretty cool that the dragon really fights like a dragon, and not like a gang of 50 disposable bad guys in an old-school Jackie Chan movie who attack him one at a time.

But, man, those boss battles were long. And the cut-scenes in-between? Can we all just agree that Neil Gaiman should never be allowed near movies? I've read Smoke and Mirrors. That man holds a serious grudge.

The plot of the original, as I understand it:

1. There's a grendel.
2. A beowulf rips off its arm.
3. A beowulf kills its mom.
4. Then there's a dragon.

Here's what, when pressed by my wife who was never forced to read Beowulf in high school, I got out of the movie:

1. Grendel's mother is a symbol not necessarily of temptation (though base heterosexual urges and the desire to produce progeny is the ultimate weakness of all men who like to be naked in front of other men), but of the mistakes fathers commit as seen through the eyes of their own sons.
2. Alternatively, the film is really about women discovering what they really want in a man. Grendel's mother and Hrothgar's wife slowly upgrade their relationships throughout the movie, as they learn that the longer a man hesitates to have sex with you, the more noble he is, and the more kick-ass your kids might be.
   
3. Something about Christianity. There's a lot of crosses on evil people and dead people on crosses and burning crosses that fall on dead people. Apparently, Robert Zemeckis is an alternate universe Tim Burton with a cross fetish.

Yes, it certainly was a movie I paid money to see. And, occasionally, stuff pretended to fly out of the screen at me. More often them not, I had to redirect my eyes so I wasn't seeing two things at once.

That's Beowulf, I guess.