I was not really aware of The 13th Warrior when it came out in 1999, as I was only 11, and I do not think the movie really appealed to my demographic. About six years later, I finally got to watch it in my English class because my teacher probably enjoyed the movie, and it was related to the story of Beowulf, which is one of the earliest surviving stories written in Old English. Old English is actually so different from Modern English that it is practically a foreign language to us now.

The movie actually starts out in Arabia, which is kind of odd, especially since we were told this was connected to Beowulf and set in Europe. It stars Antonio Banderas, who is obviously not Middle Eastern. This is very much like how they cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan. At the time, it was probably difficult to find an actor with enough star power who could also portray the character accurately, but in retrospect, the casting feels pretty ridiculous.

Anyway, his character is apparently a big deal back home, but he makes a move on a woman he was not supposed to and gets exiled. This eventually lands him in what is now Bulgaria in Eastern Europe.

There, he crosses paths with a group of Viking warriors who would technically be from what is now Sweden.

Then finally comes the epic hero Beowulf, whom the movie spells as Buliwyf. It has been a long time since I have seen the movie, but he looked and felt like the archetypal hero he was supposed to be.

The movie is a very loose adaptation of the Beowulf story, with a lot of creative liberties taken. For example, Grendel’s mother appears as an early antagonist, while Grendel serves as the main villain, which is the reverse of how they are traditionally portrayed. I am also pretty sure they did not have time to include the dragon, and the movie never got a sequel anyway because it became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. It had a massive budget, yet only a fraction of the audience the studio hoped for actually showed up to theaters.