This dragon turns out, however, in accordance with Crichton's rationalist approach, which seeks always to "explain" the marvellous in logical terms, not to be a dragon at all.Įaters of the Dead is what blurb-writers would call a rattling good yarn. At least, people in the novel believe in the existence of a fire-dragon. The novel is a retelling of Beowulf which focuses on the Grendel and Grendel's mother part of the poem, the part dealing with the hero's exploits in Denmark, but it also incorporates into this narrative, in a reconstructed manner, key elements of the second part of the story-the death and funeral of the hero, and the dragon. In the two recent films the relationship to Beowulf is more direct, though John McTiernan's The 13th Warrior is based not on Beowulf itself but on the 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead by best-selling author Michael Crichton ( The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, etc., etc.). Campbell does not specifically refer to Beowulf in that influential book, but some features of his "path of mythological adventure" of the hero are identifiable enough in the Anglo-Saxon poem, and certainly in Star Wars the Beowulfian themes of terrifying external threat to community, the heroic moment-of-truth battle and the dark and evil enemy were vividly brought to the screen. Lucas has been keen to pay homage in particular to the writings on myth of Joseph Campbell, especially Campbell's 1949 volume The Hero With a Thousand Faces. More self-consciously, the director George Lucas has stressed that in the Star Wars films he was applying ideas from heroic myth. And heroic themes are particularly evident, of course, in the classic Western. Thus, in The Silence of the Lambs the hero, here a female, ventures alone into the underground lair of a beast which possesses superhuman powers (night vision), and overcomes it in mortal combat in Alien the hero, also female, enters a place of danger and single-handedly destroys a monster of unspeakable evil. The details of some scenes in Beowulf are strikingly paralleled in Hollywood productions, the result, presumably, not of borrowing but of shared underlying patterns ( Predator, however, is an example that appears to have some specifically Beowulfian moments). The story of Beowulf dramatizes in stark form the archetypal themes of the testing of the hero and the struggle of the hero against a monster, themes that have provided and continue to provide staple elements of popular cinema. Īs it relates to myth and heroism, in one sense Beowulf has always been at the movies. There has also been an animated version for television, and Beowulf has even been appropriated in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, in which the Grendel story forms the basis of an unlikely but amusing "holodeck" adventure and Beowulf recently popped up as a character in several episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess (along with Brunnhilda, Wiglaf, the monster Grindl and assorted others). It has now, however, for recently two Beowulf feature films came along at once, The 13th Warrior, directed by John McTiernan (Touchstone Pictures, 1999), with Antonio Banderas (98 mins), and Beowulf, directed by Graham Baker (Capitol Films, 1999), with Christopher Lambert (89 mins). Hugh Magennis, Queen's University, Belfastĭown the years, there have been countless films of ancient and medieval legends, featuring famous heroes and marvellous happenings, but until recently Beowulf had not made it to the screen. Michael Crichton, Ibn Fadlan, Fantasy Cinema: Beowulf at the Movies
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