I find that animated features are so closely linked with children’s narratives that when a mature animation comes along, complete with gore and sexual allusions, it takes me a while to adjust (this is a cartoon, they shouldn’t be doing that!). Aside from the more blatant story deviations in Robert Zemeckis CG epic Beowulf, there is one that sticks out the most.

The filmmakers felt the need to exaggerate the terror that Grendel’s mother possesses and the danger that she threatens. There are only a few key steps that are required to really make this happen and in the process ensure that this becomes the blockbuster ode to the Anglo-Saxon heroic oral tradition that it really should be.

First off, let’s cast Angelina as the great object of all male lust – a pretty scary thought, either because of her market value to all the gamers who are dying to see this film or because of the nature of the motivation behind this deviation.

Next, let’s make her more powerful than Grendel. She kills only one man in the epic poem, but our unfortunate CG Beowulf wakes after the victory-over-Grendel-celebration to find all the men in the mead hall dead and hanging from the rafters. Suddenly she is much more monstrous.

Lastly and best of all, the one thing that will make her stature more terrifying than any foe that Beowulf has ever faced, the one thing that will solidify her both in the hearts of all those gamers and in the halls of fear and wonder as stunningly powerful, stunningly beautiful and glowing in all her twenty-first century adaptation glory, is her shoes. Let’s clad her only in dripping gold leaf and heels. Man, if she has time to braid 12 feet of hair, can rip !@#$ up, walk on water and do it all in heels as if it were a regular day at the water cave she must truly be the anti-Christ.

Tags: film, humour, review