Beowulf
Written by Mark Osborne
Published on 12/11/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

There's a great, depressing scene in Trainspotting (okay so the whole movie is made up of great, depressing scenes) where Sick Boy is talking about the inevitable decay that old age brings, using Sean Connery's career as his thesis. It's one of those scenes that just goes on to haunt you because you want to prove the sickly little heroin addicted fucker wrong, but there's just too much evidence to the contrary popping up all over the place to get that smug satisfaction.

Like Neil Gaiman. The man was a genius. He helped blow the entire comic book industry open in that golden age of the late eighties to early nineties with the seminal, affecting, goth girl baiting Sandman. He then went on to become a New York Times Bestselling Author three times over or something like that, and even turned in a stellar collaboration with the venerable Terry Pratchett.

I used to look to him as a kind of guardian of storytelling and folklore, because until recently that's really what he was. He brought it to all his projects from the Vertigo Tarot deck he helped design to his most recent (and fairly decent if a bit tattered around the edges) novel Anansi Boys.

I say used to because he co-wrote the script to Beowulf, which is the biggest atrocity committed against literature since the burning of the library at Alexandria.

If you want a picture of exactly what was done to the Beowulf epic, imagine if the Lord of the Rings trilogy was compressed into a single movie and sloppily animated. Oh right, that's been done too.

Look, I could write a lot of fiery invective about how disappointing and overall shitty the movie was. I've done it before and I could do it again. But I won't. I can't bring myself to waste the words to chastise someone who knows better. Angelina Jolie's tits look great rendered in 3d using current technology, but I'm pretty sure that you see her real breasts in that movie where she played the model. I know she at least kisses a couple girls. So you can be the judge of what's more worth your time; Angelina Jolie's tits animated and gold, or real while she's kissing another girl. I'm not being shallow here, I'm being realistic about what this movie has to offer, and that's just about it.

I guess it takes some kind of skill to turn Beowulf's fight with Grendel into an extended sight gag eerily reminiscent of the naked wrestling scene in Borat, but that's a very twisted, blackened, hollowed out kind of skill. Fuck it, I give up. If you actually watch the movie, you get what you deserve. Nothing, asshole.