Slashdot Mirror
Robert Zemeckis to Direct Beowulf Movie
jangobongo writes "Robert Zemeckis, who directed the Polar Express and Back To The Future among many others, will helm a new remake of the epic tale of Beowulf. Sony Pictures is in discussions to distribute the picture. (This version is unrelated to another remake scheduled to be released in 2005 titled Beowulf & Grendel, which is currently in post-production.)" I have no idea which version will make for a better film, but this one has Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary writing the script for it as well.
So now theres two Beowulf movies coming soon and two War of the Worlds. I think its interesting to watch interpretations of the same source material by very different teams of filmakers. But I think this is the first time airs of movies have opened so near each other in time.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Hollywood is a ridiculous echo chamber. After a millenium and a half, they finally make a Beowulf in 1998, after a century of movies, so they make another in 1999. Then they make another two in 2005. They're more "me, too" than Usenet. Ever since the biz stopped being run by gamblers, it's gone straight down the tubes.
--
make install -not war
So what happens once Hollywood has remade every story familiar to Americans and first published on or before December 1922? Will Hollywood finally get the guts to demand a repeal of the unwritten policy of perpetual copyright on the installment plan? Or will the entertainment industry all have merged into one conglomerate that incidentally doesn't have to worry about infringing its own copyrights?
staring Christopher Lambert with short blonde hair, set in a post-apocalypitic world. Now that was a bad movie, and the overly used sex scenes didn't add to the movie, though were enjoyable for there moments of interlude.
Not so! Crichton based his Ibn Fadlan character on a real man, and on a brief passage written by that man, which detailed his experience with Nordic people he called the Rus.
There are plenty of resources, but go here for a quick discussion of how much fiction Crichton built on top of that scrap of old writing (a lot, obviously).
Main point is, his notion for the tale was launched by that very real, cool piece of first-person history. Needless to say, that man from the Middle East was repulsed, initially, by the corse Norsemen. Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead story is one of some cross-cultural discovery, as much as the adventure/mystery of it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney. (If anyone is interested in re-reading it, this translation is stunningly good.)
The problem with making a major film version of the poem is that Beowulf is the most anti-Hollywood tale ever told. When most people summarize the story they reduce the lengthy plot down to something like this: a foreign hero comes to a land plagued by a horrible demon, slays the demon (and the demon's mother) and lives happily ever after.
Unfortunately for Hollywood screenwriters, that's not the whole story. Beowulf is a far more modern tale about a rarely discussed subject: Life in the aftermath of fame. Its an almost depressing story about a hero whose greatest achievement occurs early-on in his career. Beowulf slays his adversaries surprisingly soon in the text -- and then must live on in an exhausted world (filled with far less glamour) for the rest of his long days.
The story ends -- without another climax, without another conflict. At times the reader has to wonder, "where's this story going?", and the truth is: It isn't going anywhere, and neither is Beowulf. And that's the painful part of the story -- that Beowulf's finest years and greatest deeds are already done.
Its hardly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, and the chances are good that the story will be Hollywood-ized with an abbreviated ending. A far more interesting (and accurate film) would include the bulky second part of the poem where the conflict shifts from man vs. monster to man vs. himself.
-Popo
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I read part of Beowulf in high school (of course) but didn't read it all the way through, and enjoy it, until I read Seamus Heaney's translation a couple of years ago. One thing I found striking while I was reading the later portion of the book, which wasn't required reading in high school, was how much Tolkien borrowed from Beowulf.
:)
He borrows from Arthurian myth among other things, but the whole bit about the thief sneaking in and stealing a goblet from the dragon, and the dragon razing the countryside, was obviously taken from Beowulf.
In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded,
in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it,
unknown to mortals. Some man, however,
came by chance that cave within
to the heathen hoard. In hand he took
a golden goblet, nor gave he it back,
stole with it away, while the watcher slept,
by thievish wiles: for the warden's wrath
prince and people must pay betimes!
Yadda yadda yadda... this etext translation isn't as good as Heaney's.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga