Beowulf Poem Vs. Film Adaptation

Beowulf Film vs. Poem

Callie Lamb

 The tale of Beowulf is an epic poem that has been passed down for thousands of years. I preferred the movie adaptation over the poem because of all the new plot lines and layers that were added in by the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis. Although I enjoyed both the movie and the poem, I far favored the movie out of the two.

            A new aspect of the plot that was added into the film was the curse of Grendell’s mother. In the movie, Grendell’s mother only comes to fight Beowulf to avenge the murder of her son. In the movie she has quite a bit more significant of a role. In the movie Grendell’s mother uses her body and promise of power and riches to seduce men into sleeping with her. The birth of both Grendell and the dragon are results of the witch’s seduction of human men. I believe that the addition of that storyline made the movie far more interesting and personal. It also gave the characters more emotional and social depth because you saw that they had humanoid weaknesses and were capable of making mistakes. This breaks down the impression of this larger than life

            I also appreciated that the movie ended in a more unorthodox manner than the poem. The poem ended with the standard “good beats evil”, “hero saves the day” ending, but the movie trailed off with a cliffhanger that alluded to the idea that Grendell’s mom had already seduced the new king. Most stories about heroes and monsters end with a black and white ending where the good guy beats the bad guy, but I appreciated that the movie ended in an original and interesting manner. The imagery in the movie also left a more lasting effect, although the book did a good job with image description, “Suddenly then the God-cursed brute was creating havoc:
greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses…”, the movie was more shocking and visually stimulating.