Beowulf and Grendel

In the 2005 film Beowulf and Grendel, the story of Beowulf undergoes another poor Hollywood interpretation with few redeeming points. While somewhat better than the more recent Beowulf of 2007, the 2005’s fatal flaws are still that of twisting what should be sacred and bastardizing socially and culturally redeeming literature with movie flash. The inclusion of new characters, new, modernized dialog, and a cut and paste plot damage what could’ve been a decent interpretation. All in all, the film came across as many of the modernized teen flick Shakespeare adaptations such as O and Ten Things I Hate About You do in that viewers got the gist of the classical literature, but suffered through plenty of bullshit to get there.

The problems with this film start with the additional new characters. One of these is Selma, a witch with an ability to see how people die. Not only is she added, but she is given far too much prominence in the movie for a character that never even existed. Her addition was pointless. Symbolically, her son by Grendel could be viewed as continuation, but even here, no son of any witch ever existed in the legend of Beowulf. Another major problem with the inclusion of Selma is the overwhelming feeling that she was simply tossed in for the sake of sex, because as we should all remember, the film industry seems to think that sex sells to everyone. What the makers of this film forgot to take into account was that those who actually care enough about Beowulf to bother viewing this film would probably have wanted it as true to the story as possible. Implied sexually would have perhaps been easier to tolerate, but the confrontational sex scenes tacked onto this film are easily uncovered as nothing more than ploys to sell and keep interest under the assumption that everyone watching this film is as easily persuaded. It must also be made clear that as pointless as her addition is, it completely mars the plot, mostly because her existence causes the existence of another new character, her aforementioned son by Grendel.

Another interesting discrepancy is the sudden end of the story. While not nearly as problematic as the film’s new characters, it leaves the mouth dry. Those expecting a more complete account of the story will be left disheartened. Also, the slight plot modifications en lieu of character development could be viewed as troublesome. This film attempts to flesh out Grendel’s character and adds to him