About four weeks ago, my friend Michelle started asking me if I wanted to go see Beowulf on November 16th. While unusual for her (Michelle, much as I love her, is no great fan of the classics. Moreover, she asked me three times about going. After the second time, I was going to call her husband and warn him about her having a pod with his name on it waiting at home.), being a Brit Lit geek and Neil Gaiman fan, I was hardly going to say no.

Yeah. Then I started to see the trailers.

And not the trailers I had been seeing. Beowulf was sold high and low at Comic-Con this past July, much like Stardust was in 2006. And let’s talk about that particular piece of effluvia for a moment. I loved the Stardust comic books (if they can be called that). Together, they were a beautiful piece of work that was not embarrassed to reveal the cruel nature of fairy tales perfectly exemplified when the incarnate star evaluates her Earth-bound situation in a single word: “fuck.” Gorgeous drawings. Lyrical prose. Well-rounded characters. And a pat, but satisfying, ending.

Throw all that away and you have the movie Stardust; truly, no relation to the book. Complaint #1: Claire Danes as Yvaine?!? This is the girl who smiled her way through Brokedown Palace and Princess Mononoke. All the appeal and interest of white rice. Take this as you will, but in the IMBD entry for Stardust, she’s listed below Ditchwater Sal (then again, Robert Deniro is listed below Claire Danes for his… let’s call it a “role”, just for the sake of argument. The only thing I liked about that was the role-reversal of his faux gay pirate being beaten up by real-life poofter Rupert Everett). Complaint #2: the Hollywood ending. There just had to be a fight, didn’t there? And not jut swords clashing but headless capering corpses, witch guts, a tearless reunion and a “let me shimmer” moment the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Mac and Me. Gag.

But back to the Beowulf trailers.

Different trailers. Newer trailers. Trailers that made me think, “I can’t believe XBox has jumped on Beowulf for video game fodder. I wonder if this will make kids read the poem. Nah.” but then turned out to be actual trailers. This trend in using digitally enhanced live action hopefully will not last long.. well, let me qualify that. If this is a related process to what was done in Sin City and A Scanner Darkly, why did Beowulf have to look like Final Fantasy XII? Real people are made to look like video games? Why not just use real people? Does wiping out texture and color tones equal artistic film-making? Did that work out well for Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings (a movie I love, actually).

The long and the short – Neil Gaiman needs to get out of Hollywood, just like Stephen King does. They may be great in their writings, but so far, no one has gotten a handle on how to make them into decent cinema.