I also noticed minor historical accuracy in one of the Xena episodes but these things happen. You can't make everything up!

I wasnt criticizing the practice of making changes per se, just saying that if Hollywood is willing to play loose with historical accuracy then they are going to do at least as much with works steeped in legend. Sometimes its understandable. Sometimes it isnt--and with historical content/figures it seems to encourage ignorance. Making Henry the 8th thin for example.

That's like making Abraham Lincoln a midget.
It also is lazy writing/storytelling.

BTW I Claudius was very faithful to the books(mostly abridged them) and the books were as accurate as they could be to the historical record. Boring they werent.

Anyway I havent seen Beowulf yet. I will--just dont know when.

That's funny about Xena--I assume the minor accuracy you are talking about is the episode where there is a poet competition and a young seeing poet named Homer gets up and says: "I sing of arms and a great warrior called...Spartacus!"

Then they proceed to show 5 minutes of Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier footage.

I am sure Classical studies teachers around the globe cheered!
;)

I saw it in 3d and i was blown away, the 3d in its self was worth it. Why is everyone so bothered about historical accuracy, Generally the real events are boring thats why they change them.....who wants to know that william wallace was most likely a bad b#####d, braveheart was a great movie......i know im scottish, You want accuracy watch the descovery channel.

the way i see it i'd rather of see this than not.

Andy.

Discovery or History Channel?

Screw that--just give me a midget Lincoln!

K...????, this world is truely a diverse place full of strange people

Sorry to confuse you--it helps to read previous posts carefully--but I guess that's the same as striving for accuracy, which some people detest.
But it happens to me too. I was confused after learning that the real Elliot Ness didnt have a family(just a cat) after watching the Untouchables, given how central the fake family was to the story.
But that's Hollywood.

In 500 years I guess we can expect a Korean War movie with Hitler as a good guy who beats Napoelon in a jet fighter duel.

lol touche

Andy.

Sorry I didnt want to sound snippy.

I was going to add a ;) in there somewhere to lighten it up but in the heat of the moment I neglected to.


To actually get back to topic for a moment, Beowulf vs Grendel is on a local channel this week so i will catch that before I see this one!

Thats cool Kelly i didn't mean your being touchy , i meant touche (too-shay) as in you have me there, good point.

Andy.

Yeah I figured that was what you meant I just thought maybe I sounded a bit harsh. :) This thread is becoming all about accuracy! lol

are you guys for real? the poem of beowulf is FICTION! what historical inaccuracies are you talking about? lol.

even history back then were iffy. there's imply not a lot of evidence one way or another of who's who just like 300. we dunno how many they were against. just rough estimates.

even real "history" itself is mythical, lol.

I think Woody Allen said it best in Annie Hall: "Just don't take any class where you have to read 'Beowulf'."

heath

Were talking more in general terms of stories, historcal events being altered for amusement. But i supose thats a whole other thread.

Andy.

Yes it was two separate lines of thought.
One was on changes to legendary stories(I hate saying Beowulf is entirely fiction because there may well have been a real Beowulf king) and the other was on movies that are based on history.

And this whole digression started because I just said(in response to someone else who was talking about them changing the story) that I didnt expect them to be any more faithful with Beowulf when they havent been with any other similar works (Troy, etc) and when they dont feel compelled to be with entirely historical works (i.e Gladiator). They always change things. Which isnt a criticism in itself(though i really dont get the family element in Untouchables because it seemed so tacked on..).

I hope that clears things up.

Anyway--I havent read Beowulf in years.

You, Heath, and the other 3 million movie reviewers who have been quoting the line ad nauseum!

Hey, tell you what, don't go to any film school where they make you watch "Interiors!"

Or any film school, like my old one, where they say The English Patient really DID deserve the Oscar.

Anyway, it's a shame Beowulf tanked (not in 3D--the opening weekend in 3D accounted for 40% of the total gross).

heath

Hahahahaha.... I really would not be surprised! Well, I suppose it's pretty hard to be surprised after dying 400 years earlier. :)

Carl

According to Boxofficeguru it was more like 29%, but that was from 20% of the screens, so the premium on 3D was only like 30% over normal screenings. Considering the difference in ticket prices it wasn't that big a deal.

I don't see that it's a "shame" that Beowulf flopped. The Golden Compass was also a disappointment, so we might be coming to the end the CGI heavy Fantasy adventure much as the triple whammy of Alexander, Kingdom of Heaven and troy finished of the Neo Epic's. Sure we'll get the a couple more Narnias, and finish of the rest of the Potter films, but after that, who knowsm, we'll be up for the next cycle.

Iv been waiting for arthur c clarke's "Rendezvous with rama" series to be made for a while now, its a four book scifi monster. Word is that Morgan Freeman owns the rights and intends to play one of the lead roles, that would be an epic scifi quadrilogy if they get made, watch this space it may be the next big thing.....i just hope they do the books justice.

Andy.

Four books? I've read Rendezvous with Rama but never realised there were three more books?! Why did no one tell me?!

LOL Dave, the story is only beginning in the first book and its only about an inch thick...the other three are about 4 inches thick. You still have to read "rama 2", "the garden of rama" and "rama revealed". Man i envy you, i love scifi books and that series was the best.

You better get to it :)

Andy.

Nah... Space Travel's a big washout. I mean what was the last space travel movie that was a hit? Morgan Freeman has been trying to get RWR made for about ten yearsnow, at one point he and finvcher were going to make it as their follow up to "Seven". So don't hold your breath.

TV sci fi is far better than almost anything in that genre at the cinemas these days anyways.

If I have a prediction, I think World War II movies are going to mke a come back, but stupid gung-ho "Where Eagles Dare" type movies rather than "The Thin Red Line"/"Saving Private Ryan" variety.

Yeah iv been waiting for about 5 years since i heard about rama, thing is though if they approached it from a story based point of view rather than the space scifi one it could do really well like Aliens for example, its in space but they don't make a big deal out of it. The concept would be a great story, they may not have had the technology to make a film like rama untill now. I aint holdin my breath but im hopefull.

As for your prediction there is the remake of the Dam Busters that Peter Jackson is making, im not too sure its gonna go down well though, there are a lot of fans of the origional.

Andy.

I was just talking about Rama yesterday with my friends. Morgan Freeman wanted Fincher to direct, with mo-cap used (before mo-cap was taken seriously).

Old news from 2002:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/12826

and

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12829

Heath

Well your lol's got to me, in what I see as a great disrespect to everything pre Nintendo, and of a certain uneducated arrogance. What you are saying is true in most respects. But historical accuracy isn't the major factor of why altering writings from the past is wrong. Most ancient writings that still survive today do so because they contain esoteric knowledge within those writings, that knowledge doubles as entertainment. That means they were not constructed and designed to be mindless garbage to be quickly consumed and discarded, like much (all)of todays media. No more would it be acceptable to change a biblical story or a work of Shakespeare and expect its meaning and relevance or historical impact to be intact. So the Beowulf story maybe isn't historical, but the story is now of historical importance. There is a reason it is told the way it was. If you believe that the greatest works of mankind (of which there are pitifully few modern day examples) should be surrounded by "LOL"'s, then it is you that is you that doesn't understand what is of historical context, and what is fiction.

A basic college-level Literature class would show you how the story of Beowulf, despite being a fictional work, is actually set in a very real historical past, around Sixth Century A.D., with the narrative referring often to many real people, places and events that actually lived, existed and happened. So yes, historical accuracy plays a factor here. As I pointed out earlier, the economy of film (that is, the economy of visual story-telling) tends to compress the narrative compared to literal story-telling, and it's worth examining how faithful the modern visual adaptation remains to the ancient written one. That's also a matter of "historical accuracy" in a different sense.

So yes, we are for real, lol.

So, is this fiction along the same lines as the Da Vinci code? I loved how the Catholic church felt the need to denounce it as being 'full of lies'. Some of us thought that's what 'fiction' meant. :)

I have to say that I've seen many an excellent book told truly, and been completely bored by the movie. I think that far more important is capturing the audience's attention, telling a story to capture the hearts and minds. I think part of that comes down to it being a story that captures the audio/visual artists retelling the story. And I really just wanted to bring up that fact about the Da Vinci Code. I was amused endlessly by that. :D

Carl

No, it's fiction along the same lines as Cold Mountain.

and yet if zemeckis was so faithful to the source material in all its 'historical' context, the immediacy of the story would have been deflated. some parts historic, but i believe it is mostly entertainment =).