Beowulf vs. The Lord of the Rings

[serai]

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I seem to have a lot to say today.


From Salon.com:


"Beowulf" vs. "The Lord of the Rings"

One is a living universe, the other a 3-D voyage to schlockville. A great essay by Tolkien helps us understand why.

by Gary Kamiya


Having seen the ads and the trailer, nothing in this article surprises me, frankly. It's the typical Hollywood fervor to dig up every ancient story and shit on it so thoroughly it'll take decades to undo the damage. Par for the course. I just wish the Professor's favorite text could have escaped unscathed. I'm sure he's spinning in his grave even as we speak.

Comments

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no intention of going to see it -- but I really enjoyed reading the link. (And I have to make more of an effort to see Beowulf and Grendel... I meant to, and then it didn't happen.)

[belleferret.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. I like what he says about Tolkien, a philologist who as a child was as preternaturally sensitive to the sound of language as the young Mozart was to music and his work, the most powerful mythical universe of our time.

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

This will have to be a case of the movie really not doing *anything* to the original text, since it misses its aim so completely. Beowulf is still right there on the bookshelf. Since the essential story is less than trilogy-length, I'm confident that another adaptation will pick it up sooner or later, and at least make different mistakes. Putting LotR on screen depended on recreating a fantastically detailed text in cinematic terms -- an undertaking doomed to failure without years of love in the making. Beowulf undoubtedly needs to be well-realized, but less specific adaptation would satisfy the spirit of the story.

(I think. I frankly skipped a lot of the interpolated tales when I was reading the poem. Maybe these add enough background history that the surface story means Something Else Entirely -- something more than the fates of nations and the nature of heroism and feudal oaths coming back to bite you in the ass.)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've used that argument too, to people who complained about the LOTR movies. The thing is, the book is there for people who read. But the film is going to be seen by people who don't necessarily read, and the image of Beowulf as some half-dressed Hollywood muscleman fighting Grendel's mother who looks like a siliconed stripper will be wedded into people's brains for a long time, thanks to shit like this.

But then, I wanted to commit an atrocity when I saw Disney's Hercules. This stuff tends to get to me.

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, images speak louder than words. 'Waaay too many people think Frodo has to look like Elijah Wood, now, and wouldn't see him with light brown hair and a paunch. There's nothing wrong with EW's looks (oh, my, not really a question), but the movie has frozen Frodo into those particular looks for a generation.

The Iliad survived Hollywood. Beowulf will too. If anything does, that is.