Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Beowulf

Demons have heels?
 This entire movie could have been reedited in my opinion.  It was the first movie that I have seen strive for realism in their animation.  This film honestly looks like all of the budget went into the CGI and they had to rush to finish it, so they twisted the story, skipped a few years and made the dragon his son in order to create adequate enough ending to distract the viewer from the fact that they are watching another Hollywood botch of a literal "epic" tale, not just a classic.  However, the fact that this story was written so long ago allows the producers and directors to play with it and, to my dismay, add their own creative minds into the mix.  In my eyes, this was simply an attempt to make money by taking a timeless Old English epic, bastardize it, and lure in the viewers by tossing a few star names into the digital mix; lets not fail to mention the full digital frontal by the computerized Jolie... that will bring in a crowd of thousands on its own.


All of these were mashed into one movie to produce some form of "finished" product to be presented to the capricious audience that the majority of America is.  If I were forced to pick out one scene in this movie to completely reedit, it would be any scene that they deviated from the original tale, which occurs throughout the film.  However, a good scene to reedit would be the scene when Beowulf goes to kill the demon in the cave.  In the film, and in the book, he takes along his glowing dragon horn that he received from King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and the sword Hrunting from Unferth (John Malkovich).  However, when he enters the cave is where the story completely changes.  In the film, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) succumbs to the seduction of the demon (Angelina Jolie) and bears her a child, resulting in the birth of the golden child/dragon and his ultimate demise. Instead of this happening, they could have stuck to the original tale where he slays the demon of the water with a giant sword forged by titans and returns to the mead hall with Grendel's (Crispin Glover) head.  Then, Beowulf later meets his fate after slaying a dragon that has no relation to him.  Instead, they introduced Beowulf to his "femme fatal" so to speak in the embodiment of a naked, golden Angleina Jolie-demon with some crazy rattail.

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