Trivia / Beowulf (2007)

• Acting for Two: Both Beowulf and the Dragon are voiced and motion-captured by Ray Winstone.
• Creator's Apathy: A variation. Robert Zemeckis has openly expressed his hatred for the poem on which it was based, so he was naturally delighted when he found Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman's script and saw that it radically changed the story away from the nuance and meaning of the poem. He became the project's main driving force due to it.
• Flip-Flop of God: Avary speculated that Grendel's mother tried to mate with humans in order to rebuild her demonkind. However the novelization, which is based on his original script, states she had sons with Beowulf and Horthgar only in order to use them in revenge for the previous' death, not out of any reproductive motivation (it's even repeatedly said she avoids contact with humans instead of seeking it).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The movie was originally conceived as a live action film, specifically a gritty, small-scale one directed by Avary. It turned to CGI when Zemeckis convinced him that the product would be better that way.
  • Avary and Gaiman had written a talky, slow confrontation between Beowulf and the Dragon in order to avoid a dynamic battle that could result too expensive to portray in live action. This changed when the project was turned into a CGI production, as the lack of practical effects and shooting locations meant Avary and Gaiman could write whatever they wanted without adding one dollar up to the budget. The scene was changed to the long battle-chase shown in the final product, although part of its original dialogue was still used by Caitlin Kiernan for the film's novelization.
  • Grendel's design was going to be much more humanlike, but they changed it in order to make him more monstrous.
  • While brainstorming casting ideas with Neil Gaiman, Zemeckis immediately rejected the latter's suggestion of Crispin Glover due to still remembering how hard he was to work with while shooting Back to the Future. He quickly changed his mind after realizing that most of the problems he had with Glover back then (namely him being unable to hit his mark or understand how scenes flowed together) would be rendered irrelevant by the motion capture.