Plot
The setting is a post-industrial castle that defends the border of an unnamed kingdom. It is terrorized by a demon named Grendel, who kills the castle's defenders, one by one. After fighting his way past several soldiers trying to keep anyone from entering or leaving, the warrior Beowulf offers his help to the castle's king, Hrothgar, who welcomes his help.
Hrothgar has a daughter named Kyra, who is loved by Roland, the castle's strongest soldier, but she does not return his affections. It is revealed that Hrothgar's wife and Kyra's mother, committed suicide when she found out Hrothgar had an affair. The woman he had an affair with was actually an ancient being who had originally lived on the castle's lands. The affair resulted in an offspring, Grendel.
Beowulf and Grendel fight, wounding each other. Later, after recovering, they fight again and this time Beowulf rips Grendel's arm off with a retracting cestus. That night the castle celebrates as they believe Grendel is dead. Kyra declares her love for Beowulf and he returns her affection. Kyra tells him that she killed her previous husband after he abused her. Beowulf tells her that his mother is human and his father is Baal, "God of darkness, Lord of lies". This explains his tremendous fighting prowess.
While Kyra is with Beowulf, everyone else in the castle is killed by Grendel's mother. Beowulf attacks and kills Grendel and his mother by stabbing them. He then burns her body, while the flames also consume the castle. Beowulf barely escapes with Kyra. The castle is destroyed, with Beowulf and Kyra the only survivors.
Read more about this topic: Beowulf (1999 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)