Beowulf (2007)

 

There have been a number of film adaptations of the story of Beowulf, and it’s not hard to see why.  It’s not only the first written English story, it’s a compelling story about heroism, sacrifice, and the battle against evil.  It also gives a film great excuses to put all kinds of cool monsters on the screen.  So I thought I would spend some time this year reviewing all the versions I can get my hands on.  I already did The 13th Warrior some time ago, so I will kick off here with what I think is the very worst version ever done: the 2007 disaster directed by Robert Zemeckis.

The first thing to really deal with is how much talent there is involved in this movie, and how it was all so deliberately and criminally wasted.  Ray Winstone is not exactly A-List, but at the time he was on a high, having starred in movies like King Arthur and Cold Mountain.  There was a feeling that he was on his way up, rather than what ended up happening, which was his sidestep into character acting, where he has remained.  You also have Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Brendan Gleeson, and Robin Wright among others.  Many of these actors (like Jolie and Malkovich) were such hot properties at the time they bordered on radioactive, so it remains even more mystifying how they ended up in this turd.

The biggest misstep is Zemeckis’s decision to render this all in CG, using the motion-capture technology he’d pioneered in Polar Express a few years earlier, which I think we can all agree looks like ass.  There were people impressed by it then, but oh boy it has not aged well, and it makes this movie look like a video game cutscene on a PS2.  Zemeckis is an odd filmmaker, with genuinely good work in his resume, like the Back to the Future trilogy and Romancing the Stone.  But he is too-often seduced by the lure of fancy technology, producing showy but empty crap like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and Contact.

The other mistakes made here are legion, and more than a little ridiculous.  The look of Beowulf himself is supposed to be based on Jesus – no I am not kidding about that.  Why Jesus would look like a towering Viking warrior is not explained, but I would guess the reason rhymes with “shmacism”.  The characters all look like they have been glazed over with some kind of putty, and the artifacts of the 3-D technology means everything looks smeary and dark, with as much stuff as possible poking out at you.

The art design is a criminal mess, as Grendel – the coolest monster in fiction – resembles a massive, parboiled fetus that just isn’t interesting or pleasant to look at.  The dragon at the end is a depressingly boring design that looks like one rejected from a Harry Potter movie.  Angeline Jolie plays Grendel’s mother, and rather than the ogress we would expect, she is basically a sweaty, naked Angelina Jolie covered in golden slime, wielding a 14-foot prehensile braid and equipped with built-in stiletto heels.  I only wish I was kidding.

This brings us to the weirdly sexual themes worked into the story where they did not exist before.  We first have Beowulf depicted as battling Grendel in the nude – only this is a PG-13 movie, so we can’t be allowed to see Beowulf’s dong flapping around, so they make sure there is always something in the way in the foreground so we don’t.  This just reminds one of the same gag in Austin Powers, and renders one of the most iconic confrontations in fiction unintentionally comical.

There is lots of commentary on Beowulf having a huge cock, lest we forget that he is supposed to be the “physical ideal” – you know, like Jesus.  He goes to confront Grendel’s Mother, and rather than fight, she seduces him.  See, Grendel is supposedly Hrothgar’s son, and he is all grody and fucked-up looking because Hrothgar gave her weak, sad, old-man sperm.  She wants Beowulf’s super-manchowder, and she gets it in a scene where she literally strokes and caresses his sword until it melts into silvery goo that gushes over her thigh and drips down to her stiletto-heeled feet.  No, I am not making that up.  This plot idea makes the dragon Beowulf’s son, thus not only obliterating the Platonic ideas that fueled the original, but making this just another stupid Hollywood movie about Daddy Issues.

So Beowulf kills Grendel in the nude in a scene that makes it really seem like he is just murdering a handicapped person, and then he doesn’t kill Grendel’s Mother but fucks her and they have a dragon-baby, who looks boring and comes to kill him for some reason and then he kills it but he dies – at least they got that right.  But then that leaves Mama Jolie unharmed and ready to pump out another monster baby for the next hero who comes along.  It all makes complete hash of the story’s themes and ideas without replacing them with anything compelling.

It’s just a mess.  So much talent wasted among the cast, so much money spent on technology that just makes it look worse than if they had filmed it practically with the money they had available.  This movie cost $150 million and it looks like some mockbuster from the Ukraine, the quality of the CG is so terrible.  The script is bad, (and let’s not forget that Neil Gaiman worked on this) the performances are bad, and the characterization is almost nonexistent.  Then you have the bizarre sexual focus of the story just adding a degree of sleaziness that brings the whole thing down, and it all adds up to a movie that I bet a lot of the participants wish had never been made.  I know I do.