The motion-captured adaptation of an Anglo-Saxon epic poem by the man behind cuddly caper The Polar Express? On paper, 2007’s Beowulf didn’t seem like the type of film to spark a multiplex stampede of hormonal teenage boys. Yet while the original text’s 3,182 alliterative lines were unlikely to have been appreciated by such a demographic in an English Lit class, they were made far more palatable while interpreted alongside the sight of a near-naked Angelina Jolie.
