Have you ever thought that it would be cool if they did a Beowulf Sci-Fi version? Well here ya go. It's called Outlander. An alien crashes to earth in his spaceship, losing all of his crew along with a rare and dangerous beast picked up on a planet far away. The beast takes the place of Grendel and the alien that of Beowulf. He rallies the natives to assist in dealing with the monster that he brought upon them. All and all an intriguing take on the Beowulf mythos.
Of the many, many Beowulf movies out there, Beowulf & Grendel is one of the not so bad versions. It portrays Grendel as a victim of the Danish hatred toward trolls and tries to make the viewer sympathize with him. It twists the original tale to lessen the prowess of Beowulf by having Grendel dig his arm out with a broken spear instead of Beowulf ripping it off. It takes a few jabs at Christianity and briefly touches on why the original text might be so heavily laden with Christian references. Gerard Butler does a fairly decent job of portraying Beowulf and it is somewhat amusing that the Geats all have thick Scottish accents. An interesting fact about production is that the movie contains no computer graphics which is a rare thing these days. Overall, a pretty fun movie.
If you like post apocalyptic remakes this might be for you, for the rest of us not so much. Beowulf (1999) with Christopher Lambert is a retelling of the classic poem set in the Sci-Fi setting of a post-apocalyptic but magic-laden world. There are plenty of classic Christopher Lambert (better known for his role in Highlander) fight scenes as well as plenty of futuristic weapons that still have a kind of a steam punk feel while retaining their sword and sorcery style. The story varies from the original in several other key places including the origin of Grendel as well as how Beowulf is portrayed.
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