Angelina Jolie Was TOO HOT to be Grendel’s Mother in ‘Beowulf’

The 2007 uncanny valley version of Beowulf hit Hulu this month, forcing us to ponder the legacy of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the politics of the medieval mead hall, and most importantly, should Grendel’s mother be that hot?

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: who even wonders if Angelina Jolie‘s siren-like CGI interpretation of one of literature’s most celebrated monsters is too darn hot? Well, I do. In fact, it’s a question that has haunted me for over a decade. Back then I was hanging out with my friends in a Boston comic book store when one of the customers got into a fight with us about the recent motion picture Beowulf. My friends and I insisted it sucked. This guy said, “Yeah, but I think Grendel’s mom is kind of hot.” At the time, we laughed and laughed at him. But since then, I’ve been haunted by his statement.

Was Grendel’s mom hot? And should Grendel’s mom even be hot? And was Grendel’s mom — as portrayed by Angelina Jolie — too hot?

To answer this, I went straight to the source material. There are countless modern translations of the text, but for ease, I’m going with Project Gutenberg’s version which is available for free online. The poem Beowulf describes Grendel’s mother in a variety of ways. First, she is called a “Devil-shaped woman,” and later King Hrothgar says that of the two monsters his “land-people” saw in the “moorlands,”  one of them took on the “image of woman.” So, she’s a woman, but she kind of looks like a devil. Okay. So far, the Angelina Jolie version of the character is kind of…on point.

Later, as Beowulf faces her in the watery depths of her kingdom, she is described as a “sea-wolf” and a “mighty mere-woman.” The two engage in a ferocious battle underwater, where Beowulf is aided to victory with the help of his powerful armor. And so, Beowulf succeeds in slaying Grendel’s mother on her home turf, even though she is full of fury and helped by a bevy of underwater sea monsters.

And here is the problem with Robert Zemekis’s version of Beowulf. It’s not that Angelina Jolie is too hot, but that the film becomes about her sex appeal. We learn that Grendel is not, as the original text posits, the son of the Biblical figure Cain, but Hrothgar himself. Furthermore, Beowulf succumbs to Grendel’s mother’s seductions and fathers the dragon he faces in the end. Indeed the final moments of the film force the new king to confront the temptation of sleeping with Grendel’s mother… And that’s not what Beowulf is about.

If this was supposed to be a revisionist take all about Grendel’s mother, cool. Make it that. Instead, it’s a muddied and unsettling revamp of a classic text that doesn’t seem to know for sure what the original story was supposed to be about in the first place. (Which is fine, because lord knows I spent a few days in college arguing about it with fellow students and professors.)

In the end, it’s not that Grendel’s mom is too hot; it’s that her hotness is all this film is about.

Where to stream Beowulf (2007)