Beowulf and The 13th Warrior Essay

Beowulf and the 13th Warrior, twain be very good stories, one legibly and the other visually (unless you go to the roots of the 13th Warrior and order Eaters of the Dead). Although it is pretty axiomatic to anyone who has read Beowulf that the 13th Warrior was based on this great epic, there are hush up several differences that make for an interesting twist or dickens.While the two stories are very much alike in several ways, they are also very different. One of the key differences that the reader/viewer nonices practiced transfer is that the twaddle of Beowulf is organism told exclusively ab divulgeBeowulf and his antics almost in a third person view. The 13th warrior, on the other hand, is being told by aparticipant (Antonio Banderas who plays Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan) in the action about the emblematic Beowulf character.Antonio Banderas or Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, is an Arabian ambassador from Baghdad whose whole purpose in going is tointeract with and learn as much as he can about the odd and uncultured ways of the Vikings. Although he starts out pretty upset, almost horrified, about how the North men carry on with their barbaric custom and almost complete lack of hygiene of almost any sort. The mind that Antonio Banderass character is even part of the story is that the Vikings leader, Buliwyf, needs a 13th man that cannot be a northman to be included in his posse of adventurers.The goal of the adventurers is to report to an aging King Hrothgar and help him to entertain his people from a tribe of savages (you almost think that they as closely are supernatural because there are never any of their slain left after battle and they are continually riding or so inbear skins that give them a positively frightening style in the mist andat night) that are causing anincredible mensuration of terror (Id be pretty scared too if I walked into a fri annuls cabin and him and his family were let down up into pieces) and altogether destroying the population Grendel is the embodiment of all of the savages, while his whole having himself, he so terribly lessened the population and established such a reputation, that he successfully sicke king Hrothgar move out of his prized mead hall.While there are several similarities in the stories, one very grave tip to notice is the parallel between Mr. Buliwyf and Beowulf (both of them are leaders of soldiers and they both wad to the aid of a troubled king whose kingdom is in danger). On top of, both of these leaders of men make it their mission to go and kill the mother (mother of the savages and Grendels mother).In Beowulf, the hero actually fought and killed Grendel (eaters of the all of a sudden leader and savages combined) first and then when his mother (mother of the eaters of the idle) came and took away his body to her home in the lake, Beowulf followed and then killed her as substantially but I suppose the order doesnt in reality matter. some other issue to notice is the parallel in sup ernatural happenings and traits in the two stories.In Beowulf, he had supernatural strength, there was no one and naught in the world that was strong than he was (he tore Grendel apart literally, and Grendel was a demon which I imagine is no easy feat). The parallel to that in The 13th Warrior was how even after Buliwyf was poisoned salutary before he cut impinge on the mothers head, he still was able to iron out through the poisonous haze and muster the strength (even though everyone estimation he was pretty muchdead in the town hall) when the date came, and fight off the vengeance being sought by the eaters of the dead for killing their mother.After he dispatched with a couple of savages, he swings his marque at the leader and doesnt just hit him and knock him off (hes wearing chest armor so the sword doesnt cut him in half), he has enough strength not all to try and knock the leader off his horse, but makes him fly off about 10 feet in the opposite direction that he was before trying to go to get to Buliwyf.The comparison of the way that the fighting men in each of the stories look at fighting is also interesting. In both stories, pride and boasting and manliness plays a very important role in the way things are through with(p). Whetheryou fight or not seems to directly impact whether you are a man or not. The warrior reckon is an imperative part of any good epic, or war story in general there has to be a good hombre that, no matter how bad what he does is, follows some sort of admire code, that is an integral part of a good story.Another very limpid difference is that in the 13th Warrior, Mr. Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan is not the primary(prenominal) character ofthe story, whereas in Beowulf, Beowulf is obviously the one the story is about. As the viewer watches the 13th Warrior, they get out notice that Antonio Banderas serves as the focal point/narrator of the film, even though the story isnot about him. This fact becomes painfully obvious towards the end of the movie, just before the climactic battle, where the main character (the one that is emblematic of Beowulf), Buliwyf, indirectly asks Antonio to write down the story (Mr. Banderas actually seems to offer to duplicate it down so that their story is not forgotten) and Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan says it will be done (you get the feeling its almost a get healthful gift because Buliwyf is going to die from poison). So, despite not being the main character, he plays a very important role not only in the copying down of the story but also because he is the reason they were able to put down the savages.One very obvious difference (not sure what the directors were thinking) was that there was sort of aminiature dearest story sort of randomly thrown into The 13th Warrior. There really seems to be no point to it, it really has nothing to do at all with the main point of the movie possibly it was a loose attempt to attract a femalecrowd (despite the gore) by claiming that it was, in pa rt, a love story. Overall, it causes one to get distractedfrom the point and it just creates more questions then it answers.While one story is obviously a remake of the other, they still have their own, very acute, differences. And while the 13th Warrior doesnt nearly come close to being as good of a story as it could have, and there are still several parallels with Beowulf that mad it enjoyable (obviously aside from the action which would make it enjoyable anyway).