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Originally Posted by mrklixx
I'm sorry, but the plot to the original story sounds pretty damn boring. I'm not talking about the prose or the imagery, I'm talking about the basic storyline. It's about as one-dimensional as it gets. How could anyone, except maybe Jesus Christ, actually "identify" with a perfect superhuman who buys it in the third act? I mean do the nay sayers really think that "Beowulf kills Grendel, Beowulf kills Mrs. Grendel, Beowulf gets killed in an unrelated Dragon incident" would have made a good film?
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I haven't seen the film (
yet!), but this is a gross oversimplification of the function of plot. There is a reason why literature-to-film translations tend to fail in general, and we can look to Aristotle for answers in his
Poetics. In it, he lists a hierarchy of elements that can make or break a dramatic work. In order of significance, they are:
- Mythos (Plot or Fable)
- Ethos (Character)
- Dianoia (Thought or Themes)
- Lexis (Diction)
- Opsis (Spectacle)
- Melos (Melody)
Mythos is in bold because Aristotle places this as the first importance by far. Everything else is subordinate. Where films tend to fail literary source material is when they prioritize spectacle (e.g. CG 3-D special effects) and drop the ball on any combination of plot, character, themes, and/or diction. This happens a lot, especially in an age of supercomputers and computer-generated visuals, not to mention a public that values eye-candy over much else. (A perfect example of this is Cameron's
Titanic.)
To reduce "Beowulf"'s plot to ultimate ends such as "this dies, that dies, he dies" overlooks other plot elements that are essentially tied to character and themes. If the movie fails, it isn't because of the original material's plot; it is because of the filmmakers' tolerances for artistic compromise.