Betrayal!

[john_adams_1775]

I have been betrayed. Horribly, horrifically betrayed. I've just watched the trailers for Beowulf and The Seeker and it is clear to me that Hollywood is intent on taking my beloved childhood tales and reducing them to mindless drivel.

Beowulf has been rewritten by Neil Gaimon, who apparently thinks that because he's Neil Gaimon, he can create a

Comments

[amelia_abroad]

The problem with blaming the screenwriter for the changes made to Beowulf, or even whoever is doing this other one that I'm not familiar with, is that most likely they did not implement that change. Producers have this nasty habit of trying to 'sex up' a story to make it have more appeal to a larger, non John-Adamsian audience. Not saying that you are the only who would see this, but for example you probably wouldn't get the girls' rugby team into it, or people who are primarily driven by sex. (Please no rugby attacks - just the first thing that popped into my head. I was a jock, no problems with jocks, or those who like sex).

So as much as you want to find that one person to maim for this, I'm betting Gaiman had very little to do with it, and perhaps even fought it. He's a smart guy, had written some great stuff, and doesn't seem the type. But he is working with the system, and that system ultimately corrupts the story, no matter how prestigious or revered, in the name of profit *ahem Arwen in LotR ahem* But that system is what you have to deal with in order to get results.

It perplexes me that movies based on books get so much more street cred than others, especially the classics. I'm not saying you two are guilty of it, but the snobbery of the literati definitely seems to come through in the way that the 'worthy' movies are discussed, as opposed to the rest. Course, some don't consider them worthy at all (Richardson, for example), so much for that point.

If it makes you feel any better, this could have been done by Bollywood. Then everyone would have an annoying voice in the dub and the fighting scenes would be taken over by dance numbers. I'm all for it, but that's cause I'm weird (and like Bollywood).

Screenwriters many a time do get the point of a novel, but that is not always translateable or profitable for a movie version. Nothing is sacred, and frankly, unless it's a major plot change like grendel's mother and beowulf hooking up, it shouldn't have to be. It's a version of a story, which, considering the different versions of the publication of Beowulf, has already been tweaked to the writers' will.

[john_adams_1775]

If he really has little to do with it, why is Gaimon still on the project? His name is a bloody commodity, people expect great things of him and you can't tell me that he's dependent on this project to keep himself fed and clothed. If you've attained a certain level of artistic success, you have a duty (not to mention an inclination, probably) to avoid associating yourself with garbage.

I personally don't care if a movie is based off a book or not. The movies I got excited about recently had nothing whatsoever to do with books - Mr. Brooks, Stranger Than Fiction, etc. Film is its own medium and one that invariably seems to fall flat on its face when it tries to adapt books. As you yourself pointed out, even LotR wasn't free of that taint. If they intend to adapt an Anglo-Saxon classic, then they better jolly well stick to the story and not flagrantly violate it. Grendel's mother is a hag, not a sex symbol, and even if she was, Beowulf is not the sort of chap likely to have sex with a monster. The idea that Indian film makers might be trampling on the book's integrity rather than American ones doesn't make me feel happier in the slightest. If it was a movie that had had references to Beowulf and set up parallels between Grendel's mother and a jilted lover, well, that's fine by me, but then it better not call itself Beowulf.

Suffice it to say that I'm not watching this movie unless Robin Bates, Alf Siewers and Jeff Hammond all swear to me that it's a gem. Given the way the trailer looks, I expect to see pigs fly first.