This is a lame attempt to bring the legend of Beowulf to the big screen, this flick is a bad television show at its best.My advice is don't buy it!Go and buy the 1999 version with Christopher Lambert in the leading role! He really does honor to the name of Beowulf and the adaptation of the poem is inovative and apealing!
shareLMAO!! Sure Lambert did a better job.
shareThe Lambert version was a failure, but it actually had some interesting ideas (Grendel as Hrothgar's son, the seige line, Beowulf as a human/demon hybrid) that worked well. Lambert wasn't bad; the rest of the cast was awful, and the direction was very poor. I think this version will certainly be several steps up on every level.
shareYeah I kinda liked that strange take on it. But that was just downright silly. But like Battlefield Earth, it was bad enough to make it fun. The acting is better here. Still prefer the newer CGI Beowulf. It's sorta done in a mythic fairytale poetic sense. This movie is not.
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Books are meant to be read, if not, they'll die and so will we!
Yeah I kinda liked that strange take on it. But that was just downright silly. But like Battlefield Earth, it was bad enough to make it fun. The acting is better here. Still prefer the newer CGI Beowulf. It's sorta done in a mythic fairytale poetic sense. This movie is not.
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Books are meant to be read, if not, they'll die and so will we!
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How!?!? Is a Sci Fi crap interpritation better than THIS?
shareI've seen a few Christopher Lambert films, and I think I'll stick with Gerard Butler as the lead.
sharehah, a better version?
sure beowulf with Lambert was a good movie
but they were wearing glasses and had technology that was like impossible to be present in that time. This one is much more realistic.
Still they're both good
read my x-men 4 script:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0376994/board/thread/46795579?d=46795579#46795579
What the H(oly) E(lements) of L(ala)L(and) are you talking about. When it comes to Beowulf movies, you don't HAVE to pick one of them as good when they both blow donkey. Christopher Lambert can't act, and his Beowulf movie is no good at all!! Beowulf and Grendel likewise. Give me one reason to like any of them, and I'll watch it 10 times in a row if I can't contradict you on it.
Ole Kristian Sletner
Norway(hence the poor English)
Your kind never surprises me at the stupidity you bring. And what I mean as in "your kind" is the fact there is ALWAYS somebody on these boards going to say "this movie sucks, this ones better, go watch, lol" like a blabbering moron with too much food in his/her mouth.
Now, the Beowulf movie that was produced by the same people who did Mortal Kombat (it couldn't be more obvious) and since that movie was definitely not "the best" (I actually liked MK), turning it into some cheap movie from an epic poem was just stupid. I mean it wasn't entirely bad either, but there was nothing else in the movie than crap and crappy special effects. Interesting, yes, poorly executed however.
Anyway, have you ever actually read the Beowulf poems or are you just some beowulf 1999 fanboy who actually knows nothing about the myth and history? This movie is more of a remake that is closer to the actual feeling and story itself. It was a more realistic version of it while still including fantasy. A bit boring at times, but you wish for too much of something you know nothing about.
Easy boy.... I am Norwegian and I know alot about this kind history and myth... So just come down from your high and mighty donky or *beep* off.
First of all, you needn't always apologize for your English, as it is far better than most of the 5th grade-educated simpletons who post here.
Also, though Beowulf contains elements of Norse Myths and is set in Denmark, it is important to recall that is highly anglicized in its composition and is, after all, the first piece of English literature. So, it cannot really be looked at in the same light as "Saga of the Volsungs," for example, which is entirely Scandinavian. I do like the allusion to it, however, within Beowulf.
A bit boring? Come on. Mind-numbingly dreadful. And yes I did read the poem. This film is just an excuse for fighting. But watchable? Never.
shareRead the bloody Poem, you morons. No film treatment actually does justice to Beowulf but this one comes a heck of a lot closer than the other ones.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/bwulf11h.htm
that's a link to the poem, if you haven't read it yet.
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God I hope he doesn't mess it up
shareTo be honest I liked both movies a great deal, for obciously differing reasons. For starters Christopher Lambert is one of my favorite actors and that version while a complete mockery of the poem. (well not complete but more so than the newer version) The idea is interseting and the whole near post-apocolyptic thing is note worthy and some people may enjoy it more b/c there was more action than in this one.
On the other hand this one actualy fleshes out the character of Grendel alot more, he is not just some heartless killing beast impervious to weapons (grendel is cursed and is unable to be harmed by weapons, at least thats how I remember the poem but its been a few years.) In this adaptation we see a more vengeful creature who has reason for what he is doing, its not out of blind rage its for vengance and I like this story better than Lamberts.
I know this would not fly with most people but I would love to see a version done in old english with subtitles.
"Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum..."
That would be very cool. It really makes sense... if they got a good language coach on set and people who could act worth beans (i.e. NOT Christopher Lambert... sorry fanboys, but he sucks, plain and simple) it would hit much closer to the original feeling the poem was meant to inspire.
On another note, how can anyone proclaim Lambert as anything other than a guy who uses swords in movies? He is not an actor by any other than the most base of definitions. For one thing, it irks me that no one has ever bothered to try to take care of the great question, "what the heck kind of dialect does he speak in?" You can't understand what he's saying... bottom line, Lambert may have had demonic aid in 1999, but Gerard Butler still kicks his butt. I bet he could even outswim Lambert while fighting off sea creatures. ;)
I know this would not fly with most people but I would love to see a version done in old english with subtitles.
"Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum..."
The Lambert movie has a bad script, director and actors, and it bears little relation to the Beowulf epic. It is generic, unoriginal fantasy.
The Butler movie has a fairly good script, director and actors, but it has far too little in common with the original epic. Judged as a new story, it is reasonably successful, but it is only slightly more faithful to its source than is the most recent Scarlet Letter!
I cannot for the life of me understand why Beowulf has a scottish accent.The longest piece of Anglo-Saxon literature to survive and the hero speaks with a scottish accent? I wonder if they would have dared to give the role of Braveheart Wallace to a "southern pansy with a plum in his mouth" to use a Scot's response when I recently posed this question? It spoilt the whole movie for me. One for the trash bin. Bring on something authentic, maybe with a Frisian accent or Dutch at any rate.
shareWell, better a Scots accent than the Canadian one of Selma - it grated every time she opened her mouth.
shareyeah, what the heck was that all about? The accents in all these kind ov movies get pretty confused, especially when the language is in effect dead. You wouldn't want any of them to speak Olde English, nobody alive would be able to understand it. So I usually just roll with weird accents as much as I can, figuring nobody really knows what they sounded like anyway.
But when *one* person in the movie sounds like she came straight from North America ca 2000, that's just ridivulous. Her attempt at any kind of accent must have been so bad the director just gave up and figured it would be more "intereting" to have her speak in her home accent.
Really, I was waiting for her to ask where a McDonald's was so she could get poor Grendel a nice Big Mac.
Even more "authentic" would be a geatic accent since Beowulf is a geat, right? (Geatic accent = someone speaking English with an accent from southern Sweden, especially the area east of Gothenburg).
Stellan Skarsgård actually is a geat, but he doesn't even have a geatic accent when speaking Swedish. :P
Here you can listen to how Geatic sounds today:
http://swedia.ling.umu.se/Gotaland/Vastergotland/index.html
Neither of the movies have anything to do with the book, and that upsets me. Grendel isnt a retarded ogre in the book, Beowulf isnt some human/demon halfbreed, and they definately dont drop the f-bomb anywhere in the book. Someone needs to make a Beowulf movie that actually follows the book, I'd for sure buy that.
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