Kill James Bond! - S3E18.5: Beowulf (2007) [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

This is a preview of a bonus episode- find the whole thing here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/103479113 Beowulf is a 2007 American adult animated fantasy action film produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and featuring the voices of Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, and Angelina Jolie. The film depicts the rise and fall of the monsterfucker Beowulf after he travels to Denmark to fuck a monster.  ------ FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. Give money to people crowdfunding for passage out of Rafah first and foremost, then purchase ESIMs, then donate to this link if you feel you need a big name attached to the fund to trust it. Please don't only donate money. You have to do other things now. https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- A New place to listen! Our entire backlog has been ported over to youtube, and can be found here! ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ WEB DESIGN ALERT  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

AIM! Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly and I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail, Thorne, and Devon. G'day. By my strong friends, by my brave Thanes. Abigail, Thorne, and Devon. I pledge you my sword, November. Until Ragnarok.

Doing a lot of rowing! Neat! And we have seen 2007, chiefly notable for CGI Angelina Jolie titties, Beowulf. This is a feminist podcast. Yeah, we think it's good. I don't think this is good. This is Abbey's pick, and, Abbey, my loyal thang, justify yourself, why did you make me watch 2007's Beowulf? I think this movie is, A, quite funny, without meaning to be. I think it's also quite unique, it's strange, it kind of reaches for something and grasps

something weird, but like, it's kind of a unique and strange beast. I have some feelings about Beowulf specifically, right? Because I read a translation that was very, very popular in like 2020 by a woman called Maria Devana Headley, and everyone was like, oh this is so timely, right? Because it started with, it translated hwet, the first word of it, as bro, right? And everyone was like, damn, that's crazy, this is so modern. I read through it and I got to a bit where she describes the Queen as being hashtag blessed and I just kind of put it down on the far side of the room and that book hasn't moved since then, in the course of about four years.

And I think the problem with it was that it was too timely, right? And on that basis, having seen the 2020 version of a too timely adaptation of Beowulf, I think now we have to deal with the 2007 version of it, which is this movie. Yeah, I mean, I certainly think visually, we'll talk a little bit about the visuals, well let's just do it now. It's all in CGI, it's all in Shrek-o-vision, it's all Polar Express moded. It looks like Shrek, it looks like a Total War event cutscene. Sometimes that works really really well, and sometimes it does not.

There's some parts of the visuals of this, like, the hair, the facial hair on the men looks really good, but then when they have to do faces that aren't men, that don't have facial hair, it does not look good. Angelina Jolie's face in this looks like a PS1 cutscene, it looks real bad. Like... She looks like a demake of Lea Sado in Death Stranding? Yeah. Well, the problem is, cause they stylize all the men really like, gruffly, and really textured

faces and like, this sort of rendering can do that pretty convincingly, cause you've got a lot of vertices, it's fine. But all the women, they wanna make them as smooth as physically possible, and this, it cannot render that at all, they look awful. It's like the first thing we see, as well. They look like seal skin, it's like, it's not good. Terrific. I had a foundation that made me look like Wealth Alchemist once. I find the whole 90's CGI very alienating to watch.

Really worrying. I'm not against outdated technology in this respect, like I like a Harryhausen movie. I like, actually some early CGI, like Shrek, for instance, really good, right? But you have the essential question of does it have source or not? Does it have the degree of intentionality, and in this case there's nothing particularly compelling about it to me, it just looks like bad video game graphics. You know?

Yeah, I'm also not convinced it needed to be CGI, what is this adding? Could this not have been a live action film? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why, there's not a ton that it does with the CGI. No, not really. I mean, apart from the fact that you can make Ray Winston look jacked. I mean, yeah, Ray Winston couldn't have done some of the stuff.

Perhaps. Maybe they should have made it a fucking live action, just to see him try. Yeah. I will say, between this and Skyrim, the late 2000s, early 2010s, great time to be in a Nordic chanting ensemble, because any time you do anything in this movie, including the credits, there's a bunch of guys doing the kind of Dragonborn, Fus Roda thing. Yeah, yeah. You're getting work if you're doing that.

Exactly. Imagine being like... You'll never go hungry. ...Nordic chant equivalent of a podcaster, and being like, you get lost in the saucer bit and you're like, this is gonna keep being this successful forever, you know? It's gonna like, I'm gonna quit my real job, I'm just gonna do Nordic Chance full time. Yeah, I imagine doing Nordic Chance is gonna be a growth industry for a couple of decades, probably.

That must be Nordic Chance TikTok. What, Skald Talk? I guess so. I guess Skalding is the closest to being a podcaster that you could get here. It would be a Skalding, yeah. In any ways we are the modern Skops as well as like Siskel and Evert, you know? Yes. We sing of your shame from Iceland to the southern fields, Lester.

You suck! RILEY We open up on a group of people engaging in what we're doing when we describe someone as a guy we like to see, which is that they're all in a big room chanting this fella's name. RILEY Hrothgar! ALICE Hrothgar, yeah. RILEY They're all going, Hrothgar! Hrothgar! Hrothgar!

ALICE You might have had to read a translation of it in school, maybe Seamus Heenies, which is very good. You possibly know the plot of Beowulf, right? This isn't it. They make some adaptations. Yeah, they kind of stick to it for about half of it, and then... They narrow it down into a cohesive movie where Beowulf is, instead a kind of epic poem about a guy who's very good at killing monsters, and also, like,

swiving. You swive as a, like, a sendin' him for fuck here, which is not funny, it's never been funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so we open up on King Hrothgar, played by Anthony Hopkins. He's feasting in his new mead hall. Yes. Parrots.

And everyone's having a very rowdy party, like everyone's fuckin' and drinking and like YAAA! Like mead shit, it's great! And also his queen is here and she's sick of this shit. She hates this, can't. I wrote down, in the viking hall, shaking my head so people know I don't agree with the raping and pillaging. And that's basically what she's doing.

Oh, I wish we were woke with the raping and pillaging. And that's basically what she's doing. Oh, I wish we were woke instead of raping and pillaging. Yeah, I wish we could skip to the point of Swedish history where it's like social democracy instead of this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cause we're Denmark in the year 507. It's a long time before woke. Way before woke. These days you can't even land a series of long ships next to a monastery, pillage, rape,

enslave, and slaughter, and then take the survivors' thralls back to Sweden. That's not allowed now because of woke. You can't do that anymore. They literally won't let you, they made laws. These days if you try to go viking, as like an activity, that's like several crimes. Which is bullshit. Hmm. Viking. I think it was crimes then.

That's actually true, like, a guy who vikes a vikingr is like, yeah, the activity is viking. What, for real? Yeah, for real, for real. Holy shit. Now that's, this is an educational podcast, chat. To viking, it's an act, it's a guy who vikings. Fixin' to go out viking this evening? Wow, that's fantastic!

Out for a vik, are you bud? You could translate the whole thing as, like, raiders, if you like. Mm. Hell yeah. There's another guy as well. A fella called Unferth, played by John Malkovich. He's all about this hot new god coming out of the Middle East, out of the Roman Empire, this fella by the name of Christ Jesus.

Have you heard of him? New God just dropped. Big fan. Every time he's on screen for the first half of a movie he is like whispering to someone, hey man, you heard about God? This is your classic like, evil vizier situation. He's looking sinister as hell, he like, real greasy hair. He's pissing. Yeah. Whispering a greasy hair. Mm, he's pissing.

Yeah. Whispering a lot, y'know, plotting, scheming. He's explaining Christianity to somebody while they piss. Krofgar, meanwhile, Krofgar's fuckin'. Krofgar, yeah. Krofgar is a guy who fucks, yes. He fucks not his wife. He's drunk.

Mmhm. He's naked, he's wrapped in a bedsheet. He comes to the front of the hall and he's like, yarrrrgh, what's up, everybody! And everyone's like, woo, what's up, everybody, and everyone's like, woo, Arty Havka! Let's go! Let's go! It's like, I'll set a live show. Yeah, basically.

Like, before the Swedes found moderate social democracy to channel this stuff into, they had to be like this. Danes are still like this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he's like, let's give us a fuckin' treasure! High fryer. The audience is going nuts, they love it, they chant, they sing, and he's like, let's give out some fuckin' treasure! The audience are going nuts, like, they love it, they chant, they sing.

And he's like, look, this is my brand new meat hall, I've gotten all my boys together, everyone in chat, special thanks so much, I'm calling it Herot. Yes. It means stag. Like, heart. Cool. Oh, nice. Yeah, stag weekend with the boys!

It's literally a stag party hall! Yeah, it is. Theatomology of fascinating. And his wife is just like, oh, it's so sick. And as he's saying this, his bedsheet falls down and everyone, like, his dick is out and it was like, waaaaaah! Everyone's going nuts, right? And so all the men are like, they chant, they sing, and then we just have this amazing,

like, really good pullback. Really long. Long pullback over the dark hills, through the kind of like, the wintery forests, like all the way over the mountains. You hear it echoing, like, the celebration getting quieter and quieter as we pull back. Into a cave, where it reaches the very sensitive ears of... Grendel! Micephonia is such a struggle.

Yeah. If I speak. Mm. We reach the ears of a neurodivergent king, Grendel, who is played by Crispin Glover, guy we love to CGI. Hell, fucking yeah. Guy we love to CGI. Very good.

They've really CGI'd Crispin Glover, they CGI'd the shit out of him. He's like a creepy, hairy, fish abomination slash attack on titan titan? He's like a fucked guy. He's not good. This repulsive monster is like, you're actually impinging on me by making any kind of noise whatsoever. He's me in the like, quiet car, right? For real. Yeah, this is you hearing like a pack of crisps open and just be like, AHHHHH! Exactly, so like scream, stalk immediately towards the source of the sound to begin to

like rip and tear, yes. Yeah yeah yeah. Walk in, rip bodily apart. You, standing up in a quiet car, you are getting dismembered. I am coming to dismember you, stay where you are. I'm screaming the whole time, also. Of course. We get this quite sort of fucking horrific sequence where everyone's partying.

It has some like, real EDM strobe lights on, first of all. He's about to go Grendel mode. He activates Grendel mode. Because like, when he kicks open the door of the hall, the fire goes out and it's like, huh, that's tense, and then the fire glows blue, cause Grendel's also kinda magic, right? He fucks them up, like he pulls off limbs, he throws dudes into spikes, it's like, it's fucking brutal, like, there's a lot of blood. This is not Shrek-o-vision anymore, well, it's all in Shrek-o-vision, but it's like,

it's like super fucked up. ALICE It's like a kid, like, microwaving their toys to see something done like this in Shrek-o-vision. SONIA Yeah, it's like Attack on Titan, it's like that kind of, he's eating people. RILEY Yeah, this is a rip and tear shit. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Should be playing BFG division over the background of this, whereas instead the soundtrack is simply just a guy screaming really really loud, which is so fun to watch on TV. It's a real loud movie, and they really do substitute screaming for pathos, I guess. Yeah. They're like, well this guy's clearly upset, you can tell on account, he's screaming louder than anything you've ever heard. Mm, yeah. But he won't touch Anthony Hopkins.

Mm, interesting. Even though Anthony Hopkins is like, come on! He's trying to jebait him in, even, like, he's going like, fight me! He's like holding a sword. But he won't do it. He won't do it! He's woke! He's woke!

Woke Grendel! Grendel rips throughhe. Hehehehe. Grendel rips through all of these guys and at the end is just like, this is nothing, you should see what's happening on American university campuses. Because of DEI. Not because of the other thing. If when Rothgar had built Herod, he had done a land acknowledgement, maybe this whole thing could have been avoided.

We're on stolen Grendel land, stolen Monster land. Yeah, mhm. I don't think so. I think Grendel should have moved away. Quite frankly it's his problem, alright? This is very much an I consent, I consent, I don't. Like, who asked you, dog? This is a real kind of like, local planning law dispute, you know? You've built the Captain Tom Onsen on Grendel's land.

Exactly. I'm the king of this fucking place on Grendel's land. Exactly! I'm the king of this fucking place. I've been raiding, I've got my boys, my skalds, my heralds, my raiders, my vikings, we've done some viking, we're back to in the post-vike period to like, you know, settle down. Post-vike clarity. Yeah, I was swiving, yeah. We're sort of in that refractory period post-viking before you vike again. You wake up post-vike, you find you've got a bunch of Christian thralls, you don't even

know what to do with, and you're like a bit repulsed by yourself. We're all having a great time, we're celebrating, and then some guy no one's even met before kicks the door down and says, this is a certified Grendel Beowulf 2007 moment. And fucking Grendel over my boys. And that's my fault. Like I'm supposed to change my behavior. I have to say, like, I take the opposite view. As somebody who is having construction work done directly underneath her office, and that's been going on for the last month and a half, I have been down there to that building site

a couple of times and Grendel'd them. I've Grended these guys a couple of times and been like, shut the fuck up. How many construction workers have you killed? Not enough apparently, because they're still at it. But like, no, I have sympathy. You can't just come rock it up under. Grendel works there. Grendel records audio and video.

Do you understand? Grendel is a podcaster. Grendel has shit to do. You can't just be rocking up underneath Grendel's office making this kind of fucking noise, especially not on a Sunday morning at 8 o'clock, shut up! So, Rothgar is like, right, Grendel flees into the night. Who goes there? It's me, Guy Ritchie's Beowulf.

And I'm here to say, you have to subscribe to Kill James Bond on Patreon if you wanna hear the rest of this one. real wolf.