Of course I am, right? As noted elsewhere, I’m a terrible sucker for a Gaiman yarn. I also read the Heaney translation last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So, that’s what I’m pushing for when we make our annual post-Thanksgiving trip to see a big blockbuster. Ruth, however, does not have my implicit faith in Neil’s good sense, and so is skeptical of the whole “Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s hot mom” bit.
Luckily, the internets are full of thoughtful people to whom the whole thing made perfect sense, such as Nature editor Henry Gee:
What the film does is very clever: it assumes that the poem that has come down to us is a bowdlerized propaganda version (which it assuredly is, having been through several scribal hands since its original composition) – and proceeds to tell us what really happened. In so doing the script exploits all sorts of odd foibles in the text, showing that Gaiman and Avary well those passions read, stamped on those lifeless things.
[... T]he film establishes its integrity by following the story almost line for line (allowing for the usual compressions of adaptation) right up until the point at which Beowulf has to go looking for Grendel’s mother.
[...] She proves indestructible, and Beowulf can only escape by making a faustian pact in which she will grant him, in effect, eternal life.
When I saw the trailer I was inclined to dismiss this as bunk. But a closer reading of the poem revealed two crucial things.
You’ll have to visit Gee’s blog to find out what those two things are. But the upshot is that, beyond there being a good reason for the decisions made with the script, there is actually something interesting going on there.
(PS, I got both of those links from Neil’s blog, where he said they were the two reviews he’s seen which got the closest to representing what he and Roger Avary where trying to go with the script. Oh, and he also likes the Kindle, and dismisses the DRM issues out of hand, which frankly is just silly.)