Graham Baker’s adaptation of Beowulf: the unheroic hero.
The epic poem, Beowulf, has been the source of inspiration to an incredible amount of artistic pieces: films, novels, songs, comic books, video games and operas. Due to the nature of the poem, every adaptation that has ever been made is different from the other, but most of them respect the epic hero prototype. Even though Baker fills the gaps of indeterminacy in a weird and twisted way, what the film brings up as interesting is that his version of Beowulf does not follow such prototype: Beowulf's personality and motivations are essentially different from those of the poem's hero. Albeit the story line of the hero that arrives to a place haunted by a monster in order to free them from …show more content…
Also, the characters have a darker personality and they all have something to hide: Hrothgar has had an affair with Grendel’s mother with whom he conceived the monster, Kyra (Hrothgar’s ‘new’ daughter) has killed her husband and Roland (the 1999’s version of Unferth) is actually in love with Kyra; but the darkest character of all is actually Beowulf. The Beowulf we know from the poem is a human hero, although tremendously strong, that looks for glory and fame and is characterised by his pride and loyalty to the king; in order to prove himself, Beowulf confronts Grendel with no weapons but with his own hands and he does it with the company of the thanes. Beowulf is described as a great and beloved …show more content…
In this sense, we could think of Baker’s Beowulf as fitting the second category, but Campbell also says that the hero needs to undergo a transformation of consciousness that does not truly happen unless we “quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation” (The Power of Myth, 1991). Does Baker’s Beowulf undergo this transformation? One could think that the fact that he ends up riding into the sunset with Kyra means that he changed his ways, but the simple fact that he is fighting evil because he is forced to shows that he is still thinking selfishly in his own preservation. Therefore, he could not be called a true hero. Beowulf just saves Heorot while saving
The epic poem, Beowulf, has been the source of inspiration to an incredible amount of artistic pieces: films, novels, songs, comic books, video games and operas. Due to the nature of the poem, every adaptation that has ever been made is different from the other, but most of them respect the epic hero prototype. Even though Baker fills the gaps of indeterminacy in a weird and twisted way, what the film brings up as interesting is that his version of Beowulf does not follow such prototype: Beowulf's personality and motivations are essentially different from those of the poem's hero. Albeit the story line of the hero that arrives to a place haunted by a monster in order to free them from …show more content…
Also, the characters have a darker personality and they all have something to hide: Hrothgar has had an affair with Grendel’s mother with whom he conceived the monster, Kyra (Hrothgar’s ‘new’ daughter) has killed her husband and Roland (the 1999’s version of Unferth) is actually in love with Kyra; but the darkest character of all is actually Beowulf. The Beowulf we know from the poem is a human hero, although tremendously strong, that looks for glory and fame and is characterised by his pride and loyalty to the king; in order to prove himself, Beowulf confronts Grendel with no weapons but with his own hands and he does it with the company of the thanes. Beowulf is described as a great and beloved …show more content…
In this sense, we could think of Baker’s Beowulf as fitting the second category, but Campbell also says that the hero needs to undergo a transformation of consciousness that does not truly happen unless we “quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation” (The Power of Myth, 1991). Does Baker’s Beowulf undergo this transformation? One could think that the fact that he ends up riding into the sunset with Kyra means that he changed his ways, but the simple fact that he is fighting evil because he is forced to shows that he is still thinking selfishly in his own preservation. Therefore, he could not be called a true hero. Beowulf just saves Heorot while saving