Images

Here are descriptions of what I thought the characters from the poem Beowulf looked like compared with the movie Beowulf from 2007.


Beowulf
First off, I should probably tell how I pictured Beowulf----I pictured him as a really tall (6' 4"), really muscular man (not quite body-builder, but getting there), at first with short, curly blonde hair. As the story went on, his hair got steadily longer and straighter, so that when he fights the dragon, he has a shoulder length mane of straight, silvery hair. Throughout the poem I gave him a sort of "half-way" beard (more than a goatee but not a full on beard.) In my mind, he was usually dressed in black and brown clothes, with dirty, unpolished silver armor. The only piece of armor he ever wore that was shiny was his gold helmet before he fought Grendel's mother.

http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Ray-Winstone-in-Beowulf.jpg

Above is the CGI version of Beowulf from the 2007 movie, staring Ray Winstone as Beowulf and Crispin Glover as Grendel. This image is closest to how I pictured Beowulf, but not quite exactly what I had in mind.

Grendel
For Grendel, I imagined a really large, rather slimy, possibly green/gray, sharp tooted, clever, but clumsy person. This description didn't work well throughout the poem, especially the bits where Grendel was eating the stolen Danes (cannibalism?), but I stayed away from imagining those parts, so it worked out.

In the 2007 movie previously mentioned, Grendel is depicted as shown below:

http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/images/articles/BeowulfGrendel.jpg

Not very pretty at all.......to be honest, to me he looks like a zombified version of Groot, from Guardians of the Galaxy (shown below):

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11/113509/3922448-4094809249-Guard.jpg

Just add teeth, blood, a nose, a little hair, and a whole lot of resentment and they're practically the same!

Hrothgar
Hrothgar was fat in my mind....a great king, who feasted whenever given the chance, with a full head of hair and a full beard. He also wore a lot of brown leather, for whatever reason. As he wasn't a hugely important character in my mind, I never fully developed his character's image....Below is the 2007 movie rendering, which is not at all what I imagined:

http://filmykino.pl/uploaded/photos/8894/1366371530_10_full.jpg

Here he's old, balding, and wears a lot of red. The exact opposite of what I thought he would be.

Wiglaf
I imagined Wiglaf as a skinny little blonde kid with hair cut dangerously close to a bowl-cut, who's arms can barely hold the sword entrusted to them. When he fights the dragon, he shakily stands up to defend his king, and calls out in a squeaking voice for the other thanes to help him. He attacks the dragon with his eyes shut, and cries not only out of sorrow when Beowulf dies, but also because he's afraid--he did something everyone thought he couldn't do and is now coming to terms with it.

From the 2007 movie:

http://superiorpics.com/movie_pictures/mp/2007_Beowulf/2007_beowulf_019.jpg

Definitely not what I had in mind. A much stronger build, red hair, and a lot older than I imagined.

Unferth
In my mind, Unferth was fairly skinny, had long, straight brown hair, but a fierce personality that was really his saving grace when it came to fighting in battle. Oddly enough, the 2007 Beowulf directors had a similar idea:

http://1.fwcdn.pl/ph/34/60/193460/108054.1.jpg