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Jan. 19th, 2006 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mirrorshardNeil Gaiman says: There's a trailer for the other Beowulf movie -- Beowulf and Grendel -- up at http://www.beowulfandgrendel.com/, which rather lowered my expectations for the movie as I realised that they've made Grendel just a Big Hairy Guy whose father was killed by Hrothgar and now seeks revenge.
This seems to be pretty fashionable at the moment - look what they did to Troy. Stripped out all the mythological elements entirely. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not - I generally approve of deglamourizing legends in favour of gritty realism, getting back in the mud and the rain and the field, where the hero doesn't always have time to shave or keep his platemail shiny. Probably a reaction to a lot of low-end and RPG-derived fantasy when I was young.
It could be that anything with gods and monsters in is viewed as kid's stuff these days, but it also seems rather a shame to reduce all the the odd, mysterious elements (and that's what the RPG influence did, more than anything - it took the mystery away) to just-this-guy-and-the-weather.
This seems to be pretty fashionable at the moment - look what they did to Troy. Stripped out all the mythological elements entirely. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not - I generally approve of deglamourizing legends in favour of gritty realism, getting back in the mud and the rain and the field, where the hero doesn't always have time to shave or keep his platemail shiny. Probably a reaction to a lot of low-end and RPG-derived fantasy when I was young.
It could be that anything with gods and monsters in is viewed as kid's stuff these days, but it also seems rather a shame to reduce all the the odd, mysterious elements (and that's what the RPG influence did, more than anything - it took the mystery away) to just-this-guy-and-the-weather.
