The film shows you how the story has been in circulation for 2000 years...
Except the story in the movie has little to do with the actual story of Beowulf. Even their "clever" use of Anglo-Saxon for Grendel's speech was flawed (grammatically incorrect in several places). Granted, I'm probably a purist, whereas the average viewer might not watch with as careful an eye. Still, the movie absolutely raped the plot and ignored some of the best themes of the original text. As a movie, it was blah, too...