I got so pissed off after watching that movie. Read Beowulf in sixth grade and had a hard time with the prose. Came back to it and felt an inner viking rising.
I'm glad I was never tempted by curiosity into watching such ressentimental dreck. As John Dolan said of Peter Jackson's LOTR, films have a way of overriding and desecrating your imaginative picture of a story. Perhaps that effect is lessened here, by the fact that Gaiman and Avery's bugman vomit is so utterly different from the epic poem onto which they projected it.
We were assigned the poem in 7th or 8th grade (yeah, I’m old). We were all too young to understand it. When I read it years later, I started to understand it. Like most great works, it rewards multiple readings.
That Roger Avery quote just blew my mind. I’ve never thought of that or seen anyone talk about it that way. He has an excellent point….like now I can’t unsee it.
If I remember rightly, some scholars have speculated (based on a notoriously ambiguous line in the 2nd chapter of the original text) that Grendel was unable to attack Hrothgar because of the sacrality of his kingship. Might have been the sort of thing that the Christian poet would have wanted to smooth over in the transition from traditional tale to literary work.
I got so pissed off after watching that movie. Read Beowulf in sixth grade and had a hard time with the prose. Came back to it and felt an inner viking rising.
Have you read Tolkien’s essay on it?
On my list now.
Is very good, as one would expect
I'm glad I was never tempted by curiosity into watching such ressentimental dreck. As John Dolan said of Peter Jackson's LOTR, films have a way of overriding and desecrating your imaginative picture of a story. Perhaps that effect is lessened here, by the fact that Gaiman and Avery's bugman vomit is so utterly different from the epic poem onto which they projected it.
We were assigned the poem in 7th or 8th grade (yeah, I’m old). We were all too young to understand it. When I read it years later, I started to understand it. Like most great works, it rewards multiple readings.
I’m glad I didn’t see this movie.
That Roger Avery quote just blew my mind. I’ve never thought of that or seen anyone talk about it that way. He has an excellent point….like now I can’t unsee it.
This is actually worth reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_(2007_film)
If I remember rightly, some scholars have speculated (based on a notoriously ambiguous line in the 2nd chapter of the original text) that Grendel was unable to attack Hrothgar because of the sacrality of his kingship. Might have been the sort of thing that the Christian poet would have wanted to smooth over in the transition from traditional tale to literary work.