Beowulf (2007 Film) - Differences From The Poem

Differences From The Poem

One objective of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary was to offer their own interpretation for motivations behind Grendel's behavior as well as for what happened when Beowulf was in the cave of Grendel's mother. They justified these choices by arguing that Beowulf acts as an unreliable narrator in the portion of the poem in which he describes his battle with Grendel's mother. These choices also helped them to better connect the third act to the second of their screenplay, which is divided in the poem by a 50-year gap.

Some of the changes made by the film as noted by scholars include:

• the portrayal of Beowulf as a flawed man
• the portrayal of Hrothgar as a womanizing alcoholic
• the portrayal of Unferth as a Christian
• the portrayal of Grendel as a fragile child-like creature rather than savage demon monster
• Beowulf's funeral
• the portrayal of Grendel's mother as a beautiful seductress, more of a succubus rather, who bears Grendel as Hrothgar's child and the dragon as Beowulf's child
• the fact that Beowulf becomes ruler of Denmark instead of his native Geatland

Scholars and authors have also commented on these changes. Southern Methodist University's Director of Medieval Studies Bonnie Wheeler is "convinced that the new Robert Zemeckis movie treatment sacrifices the power of the original for a plot line that propels Beowulf into seduction by Angelina Jolie—the mother of the monster he has just slain. What man doesn’t get involved with Angelina Jolie?' Wheeler asks. 'It’s a great cop-out on a great poem.' ... 'For me, the sad thing is the movie returns to…a view of the horror of woman, the monstrous female who will kill off the male,' Wheeler says. 'It seems to me you could do so much better now. And the story of Beowulf is so much more powerful.'" Other commentators pointed to the theories elucidated in John Grigsby's work Beowulf and Grendel, where Grendel's mother was linked with the ancient Germanic fertility goddess Nerthus.

This is not the first time that the theme of a relationship between Beowulf and Grendel's mother was explored. In Gaiman's collection of short stories, Smoke and Mirrors, the poem Bay Wolf is a retelling of Beowulf in a modern day setting. In this story, Beowulf as the narrator is ambiguous about what happened between Grendel's mother and himself.

In addition, philosophy professor Stephen T. Asma argues that "Zemeckis's more tender-minded film version suggests that the people who cast out Grendel are the real monsters. The monster, according to this charity paradigm, is just misunderstood rather than evil (similar to the version presented in John Gardner's novel Grendel). The blame for Grendel's violence is shifted to the humans, who sinned against him earlier and brought the vengeance upon themselves. The only real monsters, in this tradition, are pride and prejudice. In the film, Grendel is even visually altered after his injury to look like an innocent, albeit scaly, little child. In the original Beowulf, the monsters are outcasts because they're bad (just as Cain, their progenitor, was outcast because he killed his brother), but in the film Beowulf the monsters are bad because they're outcasts Contrary to the original Beowulf, the new film wants us to understand and humanize our monsters."