Beowulf Appearances
While the Epic of Beowulf certainly qualifies as a massive influence of the entire english-speaking cannon, there aren't as many direct adaptations as you might think. Part of that might in fact be because the original text is in Old English, which is a fancy way of saying it's unreadable to modern-day english speakers. Still, you see it's influence cropping up all the time, and these are a few examples I could find.
in 1967, Toei animation in Japan released a movie called Jack and the Witch, an adventure story that adapted both Beowulf and the stories of Jack from english folklore. The character of Jack was voiced by Meiko Nakamura, although in 1969 Stephen Garlick did the english dubbing for Titra Studios, who also did Speed Racer & Ultraman.
In 1981, Alexander Stitt wrote, directed and produced an Australian animated movie called 'Grendel Grendel Grendel', an adaptation of John Gardner's 1971 novel that retold the story of Beowulf from Grendel's perspective, making him the antihero. This all sounds like a good idea, but I've seen it, and it is weird as hell. Here, see for yourself. Beowulf is voiced in this by Arthur Dignam.
If you're including movies that are influenced by Beowulf, you have to mention John McTiernan's absolutely fantastic 1999 movie The 13th Warrior, which is based the book Eaters of the Dead by Jurrasic Park author Michael Crichton, which was a combination of both Beowulf and Ahmad ibn Fadlan's historics acount of the Volga Vikings. Czechoslovakian-born Canadian actor Vladimir Kulich plays the character Buliwyf, whose arc in this movie just has to be seen to be believed. This movie is amazing.
Also in 1999, the producers of the Mortal Kombat movie franchise produced an adaptation of Beowulf starring the Highlander himself, Christopher Lambert. the movie, to quote critic Daniel Griffin "takes place in a post-apocalyptic, techno-feudal future". The movie wasn't great, but it is really hard not to love a movie with a premise like that.
This one only very loosely counts as being influenced by Beowulf inasmuch as the character of the monster is an obvious send up of Grendel, but it deserves to be included if only because it would fit into the world of GND so well. the 2001 film No Such Thing features a young television intern named Beatrice (played by Sarah Polley) who is sacrificed to an immortal, suicidal monster who killed her fiance, and winds up befriending him and helping him hunt down a way to end his own life.
The version of Beowulf that appears in GND is very obviously based on what is probably his highest-profile adaptation: the 2007 animated action film Beowulf by Robert Zemeckis. The movie is mostly remembered as a huge experiment in using motion-capture to drive the performances of animated characters, a technique that is actually incredibly common today. Ray Winstone performed Beowulf in a deliberate attempt to use a performance with massive presence but give him completely different physicality.
The main appeal of the 2005 Canadian-Icelandic movie Beowulf & Grendel is that it was filmed in Iceland and takes every opportunity to include Iceland's landscape. Gerard Butler plays Beowulf here a year BEFORE 300.
in 2007, at the absolute height of the Syfy channel's penchant for making incredibly low-budget, horrible original tv movies, they produced one called Grendel, featuring a dude named Chris Bruno as Beowulf. I'm including it entirely so I can share this picture.
Oh man... this movie is so good. 2008's Outlander is an independent movie by director/writer Howard McCain. it's a retelling of Beowulf with Sci-Fi backstory. It stars Jim Caviezel as an alien tracker who crashed in the middle of Iron Age Norway while tracking a terrifying alien monster. He has to take up with the local warriors to defent their home. The movie lost money, but I've never met anyone who didn't think it was awesome.