adgasdfadsf The Beowulf poem does not find its way to screen unmolested. Several alterations have been made. Numerous characters and events have been deleted. But, what is, perhaps, most shocking is not what has been excluded, but what has been added. Screenwriters Roger Avery (Pulp Fiction) and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman (Stardust) examined the legend on a cellular level and decided to address the glaring inconsistencies, disjoined plot points and unreliable narration that have always plagued the work and earned the ire of certain academics. They have created a "unified field theory" that not only draws disparate stories together and elucidates plot holes, but actually contributes to the existing scholarship.
Scholars agree that when Beowulf was originally written, it was a distinctly pagan document later embroidered with Christian symbolism by the monks responsible for its duplication. Screenwriters Gaiman and Avery have actually taken the spiritual imagery even further, heightening Christianity's clash with the pagan Norse religions and orienting a plot that is shot through with biblical imagery.
At the very heart of this new Beowulf is the theme of sin and consequence. The film reveals that the temptations we give into, however small, harmless or pleasurable they may seem, often return when we least expect them, rabid and famished for blood. In Beowulf, one character's sin, which appears as little more than a miniscule indiscretion, quite literally grows into a destructive force beyond human comprehension. The sins of the father are not just visited on the son, but on all those unlucky enough to be near the transgressor. "We men are the monsters now," Beowulf tells his best friend and comrade in arms, Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson).