Monday, January 11, 2010

1999 Beowulf Still Bad

The 1999 futuristic film version of Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert was on TV the other day, so I decided to record it to see if maybe it had become fun in an ironic sort of way now that some time has passed. I wanted to write something about how medievalism is adapted to science fiction in the film.

I regret to report that it remains unwatchable. It took me three tries to get 20 minutes into it, and I can go no further. It still holds a 0% rating at Rotten Tomatoes which is, in a perverse way, impressive.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:38 AM

    And yet Highlander is still good!

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  2. 0% rating is very impressive. That's hard to do. Did you ever see the most recent Beowulf movie (2007) starring Anthony Hopkins? What did you think? I didn't realize until I looked it up that Neil Gaiman was one of the writers.

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  3. My review of the 2007 film can be found here:

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  4. http://unlocked-wordhoard.blogspot.com/2007/11/beowulf-movie-review.html

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  5. But the music is SSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD! ;)

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  6. I'm surprised they can't make a decent, beyond "mediocre" as you say, Beowulf film. There is a lot of good material there that should make for a great film adaptation. Do you count the 13th warrior as a Beowulf film? Since Eaters of the Dead by Crichton was based on the poem, I was wondering if the 13th Warrior would count. That's probably considered a mediocre to bad film as well.

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