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For a movie where blonde heroes go slashing at bloodthirsty giant monsters, a lizard-like temptress and a fire-breathing dragon, it seems fitting that Beowulf was written by a two-headed monster.
At least that's what fantasy writer Neil Gaiman calls himself and fellow scriptwriter Roger Avary.
The creator of the cult comic book series The Sandman and the co-writer of the Quentin Tarantino gangster flick Pulp Fiction have magically transformed 3,000 plodding lines of Old English poetry into a two-hour action-filled fantasy flick with lots of blood and gore.
Adapted from the epic poem of the same name, the movie follows the story of a Viking hero named Beowulf who lands in Denmark to battle a monster, Grendel. He later battles Grendel's mother and a dragon.
Robert Zemeckis, the Oscar-winning director of Forrest Gump, helms this "motion capture" animation film in the vein of his previous 2004 movie The Polar Express. The all-star cast includes Ray Winstone as the titular lead, along with Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Robin Penn Wright and Angelina Jolie, who plays Grendel's lizard-like hottie of a mother.
As the two writers recently told Today in a phone interview from London, the making of Beowulf was no less epic than the finished product. The two met in 1997 when Avary was planning to direct a movie based on Gaiman's The Sandman.
"The producers' original idea was getting lots of people hitting lots of people, and having a giant mechanical spider," Gaiman said dismissively.
"And I would not be the guy to ruin Sandman for the fans, so I walked off the movie," said Avary. With that collaboration junked, the two eventually discovered another common ground: Their interest in Beowulf.
"I was in high school when I was given the book to read. And it was tough. I thought, 'Why was there no movie to help me understand it like in The Lord Of The Flies?" Avary, 42, said with a laugh.
On the other hand, Gaiman, 47, discovered it through - no surprise here - comic books. "I was 10 and I read the DC comic adaptation where Beowulf was a dragon slayer who had enormous horns on his helmet. I didn't care much for the story until I read the Penguin book translation."
In May that year, the two headed for sunny Mexico to write the story, which, Gaiman quipped, was the perfect place to write about something that was set in "the frozen North".
"Yeah," Avary chirped, "they don't have warm beer in the frozen North."
This particular two-headed monster, it seems, has an ironic sense of humour.
Was there any friction in styles between the two? After all, Gaiman is an Englishman who likes his, er, fantasies like Mirrormask and the recent film adaptation of his book Stardust. As for the Canadian Avary, he likes scenes with lots of action.
"If Pulp Fiction took place in the fifth century, it would look a lot like Beowulf," Avary simply said.
"It is a story about the ultraviolent reactions of people who are pushed to the limits - which fits Roger well," said Gaiman. "But it's also a story about myths, which is my area. You could look at it as a Gaiman or Avary story. But it's actually a Bob Zemeckis story," Avary deadpanned.
The script gestated for a couple of years as the both went on to do respective projects.
Avary, who was originally slated to direct Beowulf, went on instead to do Rules Of Attraction, the 2002 adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel. Gaiman, meanwhile, went back to writing novels. It was Zemeckis who called them up in 2005 looking for his next motion capture movie to direct.
Did the box-office success of The Lord Of The Rings (LOTR) movies pave the way for the greenlighting of Beowulf? After all, LOTR author JRR Tolkien had revived interest in the epic poem with his 1936 research Beowulf: The Monsters And The Critics and some critics have pointed out the epic poem's influence on LOTR itself. Incidentally, in the Beowulf flick, the monster Grendel seems like a jumbo version of Gollum.
"Tolkien's work opened Beowulf to the world. Without that, Beowulf would still be regarded as a tiny manuscript," said Gaiman.
As for The Sandman, Avary and Gaiman said they have no plans on reviving their work on it. Avary is now in talks to do the film version of the computer game Return To Castle Wolfenstein, while Gaiman is working on The Graveyard Book, a novel about an orphaned boy who is adopted by ghosts. One of Gaiman's books, Coraline, is also reported to hit the big screens next year.
"I don't know that a Sandman movie should be made," said Avary. "It requires somebody willing to throw themselves in front of a train. To compress such a vast material into 120 minutes is a Herculean task."
After doing an epic poem, this could be yet another challenge for the two-headed monster.
Beowulf opens in cinemas island-wide Thursday. - TODAY/ym
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