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

[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.