Letters to the Editor
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"Thornwolf" (??!)
You call Beowulf "one of the oldest and most incomprehensible literary works of all time."
Have you tried reading it? Not in Old English, but in a good modern translation. If so, what was so hard about it?
One of the oldest? No.
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irnoyjones
Where did you get your information about the "real" story? or is one of your paragraphs beyond this dumb mortal/
What about texts that do not live comfortably with their progenitors but rather replace them? Joyce did not supercede Homer, but Shakespeare has effectively taken the place of Saxo Grammaticus. I.e., parasitism, not mutualism.
History professors have this problem all the time: "No, Gladiator is wrong!," and still they get "Marcus Aurelius, assassinated by his son" on the mid-terms. In the short term, Zemeckis's Beowulf will not so much lead readers, especially kids, back to the text as hip-check it aside.
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A Serious Sequel
Perhaps the one thing the movie Beowulf and the original have in common is an open door for a sequel. Beowulf ends with a woman crying, "What will become of us now that Beowulf is dead?" The movie ends with Jolie as Beowulf's mother about to do her seduction thing on Wiglaf. Hollywood can deal with the latter; the former has been dealt with in "Beyond Beowulf" - a sequel that takes the story and its poetry seriously.
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3-D Beowulf is a modren tale... about the failures of modren leadership
Retelling an epic story, the storyteller must adjust to his audience and their experiences. As I'm sure the 8th century scops and skalds did in the mead halls of their time.
I saw Zemeckis' adaptation in light of today's events; Modern leaders seduced by power and the short-cuts available to achieve it....
I came out seeing the hated Grendel as a mumbling misunderstood son of the admired King Hrothgar... an heir though illegitimate, but never seen/thought worthy of the throne.
In our present experience, Grendel is the presidency of George W. Bush; the prodigal slacker given most things but shirked the test of combat, he nonetheless wanted his hieratical right to the throne...
The old king can never admit his past errors that brought such a creature to the world. Nor can a father readily admit his son is not presidential material. The problem is allowed to fester. In the hall of government, neither Grendel nor Bush Jr. is comfortable and both nations lose.
The old king hopes for a worthy champion to rid kingdom of his error. Beowulf answers that call and alas is seduced by power....
In the present day, our Grendel had enough “Unferth” allies wanting to return to power that none of the battle–tested heroes would be elected.
The present day Grendel has kept our hall in shambles.
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Am I the only one to have noticed...
that Peter Jackson's LOTR was a travesty, completely missing the major theme of the books? J.R.R. Tolkein wrote a story about how intelligence, honor, and perseverance can win out over overwhelming might and tyranny by exploiting that tyranny's pride and blindness to self. It was filled with complex characters either having or developing great wisdom by not being led astray by pride.
Peter Jackson's film was filled with whining, shallow, and idiotic characters whose only strategy was apparently depending on dumb luck. Not to mention all the cheesy excesses of the films (I mean, someone immolating himself wasn't enough for Mr. Jackson, he had to somehow run a several hundred yard dash while on fire then jump off a cliff!)
Can I be the only one who was sickened by Peter Jackson turning J.R.R. Tolkein's incredibly complex work into a glorification of the stupidity of simpletons? Or was everybody too distracted by the expensive sets, special effects and prettiness of Orlando Bloom to miss the pathetic portrayal of the characters in the films?
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Just Admit You Didn't Like The Movie
(This hasn't hurt "Beowulf" at the box office: It was the highest-grossing movie in the country after its first weekend.)
And let those of us who DID like it return home to find and dust off and re-read (or really read for the first time) our college copies of the story with some really vivid images in mind.
An admission like this would not take two pages to make and would take less time to read than Beowulf itself!
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A question of commitment
Beautiful essay, which I've quoted liberally in my own blog. The difference between Jackson's Lord of the Rings and this shallow version of Beowulf is one of commitment to the material, I think. When a creator looks at details and images instead of delving into their meaning, the result is thin and unconvincing. Peter Jackson and ALL of his writers spoke so knowledgeably about their source material, and had such a deep respect for it, that the end product could hardly help but succeed on all levels. Every character had an inner as well as an outer conflict; every scene was integral to the plot; and although there were plenty of pretty actors, Jackson didn't allow any of them to dominate, but encouraged them to support the story. Tolkien's story, not his own!
Thank you for this thoughtful piece.
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not the only one who noticed
Am I the only one who noticed that Peter Jackson's LOTR was a travesty, completely missing the major theme of the books?
Nope. You're not the only one who noticed. Not only did they miss the major theme, they savagely mistreated the minor themes. I watched most of the "making of" materials, and by the time I was done, I wanted to strangle "Fran" and that other scriptwriter, whatever her name was. Talk about a failure to understand archetypes.
It wasn't enough to put poor Arwen in bad hair that makes the usually lovely Liv Tyler look horse-faced, they had to add all sorts of garbage to her character. The only things she actually does in the book - creating a banner which inspires the army and giving the hero some reason to want to stay alive - are removed. Only action heroes allowed here! Which of course devalues the entire existence of, well, everyone who isn't an action hero.
Eowyn is maybe even worse, because I've always adored her so much. The cool, strong-willed maiden is gone, replaced by many takes of her pop-eyed with terror at crucial moments. Some of the best lines in the book were Eowyn's originally; they're gone now, replaced with modern psychological mishmash. Eowyn's consolation prize, Faramir, is no longer the one virtuous soul who refused to be tempted by the ring. We end up wondering why he was in the movie at all.
People commonly diss Tolkien for not having enough female characters and not giving them enough to do. Yet his characters are lastingly potent in the imagination, because they're archetypal. Replacing the archetypal with the specific is the modern trend; it does make the characters more accessible, but that's not always what's called for. The ancient daughter of an ancient race, the matchless sword maiden, these shouldn't be accessible characters.