Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Ok, now I'm pissed

Someone is making a live-action Beowulf movie. They're shooting it in Iceland. Sounds cool, right? It certainly sounded cool to me. I checked out the trailer on their website. The 13th Warrior is a more faithful retelling. Not to sound like I'm knocking The 13th Warrior, that movie was fun and based on a cool idea, but it was made by people who didn't feel that historical research was of any merit. If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe The Viking Answer Lady (she rocks).

So what is the great sin of this new movie? They take one of the coolest mother characters in all fictiondom and turned her into a son. The Dark Mother smiting the men who killed her boy is now a son avenging his father (because there was such a dearth of movies about that). By crikey, I'm pissed.

On the upside, the performance capture/computer animated version Bob Zemickis is making from the Neil Gaiman/Roger Avary script has Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother, and nothing says Dark Mother like Angelina Jolie. It's practically type-casting.

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