How Has Hollywood Changed Beowulf

Ever since human beings were able to communicate, they have been telling stories. Whether it be about heroic deeds or romantic relationships, stories are what keep traditions alive and how morals of a society are kept. Sometimes stories are so good that they receive a visual aid to enhance it. The visual aids are helpful to all. However, the visual aides, or movies, can be made and somehow they end up having different storylines or characters than what the author intended. One example of how Hollywood changed a beautiful story is with the movie version of Beowulf. This epic poem was changed by Hollywood and thus made the way society looks at the story completely changed. Hollywood kept parts of Beowulf the same while they also sexualized characters and modernized it in order to fit today’s society interests. Even though things were …show more content…
They did this to add interest and secret motives to the storyline. In order to get an audience interested in today’s age, sex is usually added. Examples of how this include making Grendel’s mother into a hot shapeshifter who lives on to tempt other men. Also when Beowulf fights everyone naked, which was probably added to add some sort of sexual interest. They also did not have Beowulf kill Grendel’s mother. Instead they kept her alive so she could seduce other men and have children with them. Grendel’s mother's cave was easy to get to unlike in the poem when it was hard to get to. This was probably because Grendel’s mother needed a reason that she was so accessible. They also made Hrothgar into a man who cheats on his wife. In the poem Hrothgar was represented as a strong, wise, and good leader. The intent of making Hrothgar that way was probably to make him less likeable so that it would make Beowulf liked by the audience more. All these changes added sexual undertones to the story and it ended up changing lots of things about the story in order to be drawn in