Consider one aspect of the story from the 2007 film Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis or consider a character’s development in the film and compare your choice to the same story aspect or character development in the poem.

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Beowulf has inspired countless works of art from films to board games to cartoons to novels to prequels and sequels.  Consider one aspect of the story from the 2007 film Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis or consider a character’s development in the film and compare your choice to the same story aspect or character development in the poem.  Take specific examples from each work that explains how the poem or film treats the story aspect or character’s development.  Rather than simply explaining how the poem and the film differ, your thesis should present and prove how the differences enlighten the reader about Anglo-Saxon values, both pagan and Christian.

 

Here’s an example:  “The character of Unferth in Robert Zemeckis’ 2007 Beowulf film concretely (meaning we can see it and hear it) explores the mixture of Christian and pagan values found in both the poem and the film, and helps the reader visualize the complications in the text of the poem.” 

This thesis would likely talk about Unferth’s curiosity about Christianity in his remarks in the film, the use of Christian symbols in the film in relation to Unferth, and his reference to “the sins of the father,” but also would detail the similarities between the poem and the film from Unferth’s questioning of Beowulf’s heroism to his gift of the family blade Hrunting to help Beowulf in his quest to kill a demon.  The paper would come to some conclusions about what Unferth’s character means in both the poem and the film and how those meanings deviate from, or remain consistent with, one another. 

It is possible to do this kind of exploration with any number of the major characters or events.  One could, for example, explore the film’s creation of an alternate myth of multiple characters having a relationship with Grendel’s mother.  A good question to explore in relation to these relationships is the presence of the supernatural and how human characters interact with supernatural forces.  Another great topic would have to do with Hrothgar as the “good king” of the poem and the flawed king of the film.  Beowulf as a character would benefit from a similar treatment.