Big Steaming Pile of Troll Dung

I've been teaching Beowulf to grade 10 students as part of my practicum placement. As such, I was interested, nay excited to hear about the new Beowulf movie in theaters now.

And wow, should I have seen V for Vendetta instead.

I was prepared for them to bastardise the story of Beowulf. Prepared even for them to miss the point entirely, as Peter Jackson missed the point of The Lord of the Rings. I went in ready to judge the film on its merits as an original piece of work.

It was just plain bad.

Let's leave aside for the moment all my disagreements about the interpretation of the story of Beowulf *and comment solely on the movie as a stand-alone work. The acting was bad. The characters all had different accents, even though they were supposed to be from the same place. The special effects made Monty Python look cutting edge. You could tell that young Grendel was a troll because he was a six year old with a beard glued to his face. The dialogue was stilted and strange, as if the writers could not decide if their characters were supposed to talk in archaic or modern English.

Gah.

Oh well. Now my hope lies only in Neil. I have faith in you, Neil. Don't let me down.

*Grendel was just a big guy, whereas he should be an achetypical monster who comes out of the darkness to attack the safe place, and as such should be filmed as little as possible, a la Steven Spielburg's Jaws. Sarah Polly's witch character was a bizarre addition. Making the audience empathise more with Grendel than with Hrothgar entirely misses the point of what a monster is. The postmodern theological assumptions of Beowulf, who sneered as the foolish were converted to Christianity, were out of place and inappropriate. The attempt to demystify the story by removing supernatural explanations just ended up making the story flat, uninspiring and bizarre (just what the heck IS Grendel's mother?) . Stopping before Beowulf fought the dragon means that story ended without being resolved. I could probably go on, but I won't.