Beowulf and Hrothgar failed to kill Grendel's Mother; clearly neither tried very hard. However, it is not at all obvious that she CAN be killed -- metal weapons do not harm her. Is there an implication that Beowulf could have killed her with his bare hands?

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

In the original, Beowulf was only able to kill Grendel's mom with an ancient sword, forged by giants, after the failure of Hrunting. I expect that he could have done her without a weapon, were he not weary, as she was less than Grendel, and Beowulf ripped Grendel's arm off. Did they not kill her in the movie?

I for one am staying away from this movie in droves.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

From what I've seen and heard of it so far, ditto. It looks eminently stay-away-worthy.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Personally, I thought it was well worth watching -- in 3D Imax theater. And I hardly ever go to movie theaters.

And no, in the movie Grendel's Mother does not die.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Good grief, they fail to be faithful to a story element as fundamental as that? Why bother even calling it Beowulf?

I'm joining Nowhere Man and Noclevername in the queue to not see it.

I saw it today--Neil Gaiman is listed as a screenwriter. However, I cannot discern his writing in the movie, so that's not actually, it turns out, a reason to watch it. I will say that I'm pleased at what seemed to be Old English appearing in a few places. However, I really wish they'd stop calling movies Beowulf if they're not actually interested in following the plot of Beowulf. (Not that I'd watch it if they did; Beowulf does not much interest me. But it's a general complaint I have with adaptations.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Faithful to which version?

From a Houston Chronicle article:

"It is a sensible adaptation," says Lorraine Stock, who teaches medieval literature at the University of Houston. Stock, who has a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Cornell, specializes in films that adapt ancient texts and legends.

"A lot of hard-core medievalists will say, 'Oh my God, what have they done to Beowulf?' " says Stock, doing a humorous imitation of an outraged academic, "but in some ways it's exactly what the Beowulf poet did to that Scandinavian story for that Christian audience."

(Nope, haven't seen it and will probaly wait for it to come to cable.)

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

In the movie, Hrunting failed to affect her, but Beowulf came back claiming to have killed her. The way the movie's plot works out is sort of like a "truth behind the legend" version, showing what "really" happened that resulted in the legend being the way it was.

She was a demon who occasionally seduced a human man and gave birth to a child that was half magical, half real (but not always in the same physical form). The father would be rewarded with a successful kingship of power and wealth. Hrothgar was Grendel's father, so he was the only person who figured out that Beowulf hadn't really killed her either, but he couldn't tell anyone without revealing how he knew, and he was relieved that she was not his curse anymore. The dragon Beowulf has to kill years later is his own son.

I think the movie's version of the story not only is truer to the given culture, but also is more interesting than just "Guy goes around killing things".

Marillion do an Epic song about Beowulf, from Grendels viewpoint. It's called, erm, well... Grendel.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

There is also a novel, called Grendel as well, that's the same idea. Actually, I couldn't finish that, either. For all my whining, it turns out I really don't care much about the Beowulf saga.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

perhaps they were just leaving room for a sequel, and then a third installment so you can buy the trilogy on HD DVD or Blue ray or whatever the "gotta have" format is for the 2010 holiday season.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

How did you like Bay Wolf?

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

No opinion.

Another thing that bothered me at the time, and which I promptly forgot, was that Hrothgar said he'd slain Fafnir. That's wrong, isn't it?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Fafnir was slain by Sigurd, who ate his heart to gain the power to speak with birds.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

That's what I thought. And Hrothgar is different.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

What bothers me even more than which character may or may not have killed which other character, is where did all those big mountains come from?

It was supposed to be in Denmark!

It happened before the Ice Age. The glaciers wore all the mountians down.


Apparently the fight scene between Beowulf and Grendel takes place with Beowulf sans culottes. A friend of my son said that to keep the PG-13 rating that the fight choreography always managed to have something covering the naughty bits. Sounds very funny. They also, I was told, didn't give the unclad Ms. Jolie nipples for the same reason which, as my son also noted, rather defeats the purpose of the, um, nipple supporting structures.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

I thought they said two thumbs up...

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yeah, the rather overblown need to cover Beowulf up was a bit distracting during the fight with Grendel. There are times when nudity taboos are really annoying.

On the other hand, when you arent the slightest bit human, leaving little things out like nipples may just be a bit of oversight. Now why they werent on Grendel's mother.....

I assume that's a joke (or an attempt). The very beginning says Denmark 507 AD.


Yep, it was probably supposed to be a serious fight scene, but I was laughing too hard. Reminded me too much of the end of the first Austin Powers.

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