Any thoughts on Beowulf?

[Marcus Dublin]

I went to see Beowulf on Friday with some coworkers and I have to say that I was pretty dam impressed. Like most people I went out of pure curiosity to see how good or bad the Cg would be and I have to say that the CG looked great for about 80% of the film. Admittedly there were some moments where things were bordering on Shrek quality and didn't feel very convincing, this was especially the case where things were over lit. This was also the case when the characters were carrying a conversation for more than 5 minutes at a time without the camera cutting away from there faces. The human movement while not perfect was a huge step up from the Polar Express and even the Animatrix! From a technical point of view I thought everything was rendered incredibly well, and at times it felt eerie watching the characters on screen. I have to say for all of the technology displayed it was nice to have a solid story to go with it, I actually cared for a few of the characters which is more than I can say for movies with real actors in them! I guess the bottom line is that while the technology isn't quite there just yet it was great to see the team behind it making great strides in crossing the uncanny valley. I'll tell you this, I absolutely can't wait for the DVD with some making of featurettes!:D

[xvampire]

beside the awesome 3d technical,

I think I like this movie
I put it the best fantasy movie after LOTR ...

the storyline and character is what I want looking for ...
imperfection. for me its even create more depth on the character.
he is not a perfect hero, he is not anti-hero ...

[Marco Mazzoni]

I completely agree, but I will add that if you have the opportunity to see this movie in IMAX 3D, DO IT!! It was an amazing experience. There were a hand full of scenes that seemed a bit disorienting, but overall it truly felt like this was how it was meant to be seen. I left the theater spewing out expletives of delight and praise, which is pretty rare nowadays :thumb:

[KamuiTenshi]

I went to see the movie just this past week. I liked it, solid retelling of the story. The only thing that i noticed is Marcus pointed out was that at times the characters moved in some unconvincing ways. In some scenes they seems rather stilted, especially when like Marcus said they talked. But I loved the aerial views and the backgrounds looked awesome. Over all 4/5 for me

[brian_h]

"I think I like this movie
I put it the best fantasy movie after LOTR ..."

Wha...?

I would like to praise the movie...I would really like to...but I found that the technical achievement of the CG actually got in the way sometimes. Not little things like horses don't run like that are hobbie horse or on a carousel...but in the larger sense. Effects and CG in LOTR actually enhanced the story, here they simply seemed a gimick. Grendel I thought was cool and reminded me alot of Golem from LOTR.

The real problem for me remains that Final Fantasy had...emotion and chemistry. Actors exist for a reason and part of that is the nuiance and inflection that only a person face to face can have.

Give you and example...you write and e-mail and send it...how many times have you had someone read it incorrectly for intent...technically they read it word for word but somehow what attempt to convey doesn't come across.

This seems to be a problem I find with these things when I see intense or subtle interaction like a kiss or deep conversation...the action sequences...awesome, but until the emotional chemistry is able to be dealt with you end up with something pretty to look at but missing some emotion. There are sequences in the LOTR series that evoke real emotion but I didn't feel that here...especially in the late scene with Beowulf and son face to face finally...like looking at a manequin.

Oh well, thats my 2 cents.

B

[elbaz]

i thought the story was very disjointed, and the was no impact in grendal or his son.

Like he said, the emotion was there, but it felt unatural and the expressions were wrong for the moment.

for me it was like two stories crammed into one, losing the impact of each and rushing the plotline.

el.

[Tully]

I completely agree, but I will add that if you have the opportunity to see this movie in IMAX 3D, DO IT!!

I'm going to on sunday! :D I was thinking before I was reading reviews that I probably wouldn't, just because making this sort of movie 100% CG always seemed a tad pointless to me. Live-action works best for this kind of movie and I don't see that changing. Unless -- and this is the big qualification -- it's made particularly with the intention of making it 3D, which seems to be what Zemeckis had in mind for this (given that he did Polar Express, which was only worth seeing if you could drag yourself to an IMAX). 3D works 100% better when it's a CG movie.. something about the translation of live action to 3D (especially when it's done after the fact, like in the newest Superman) just doesn't work as well as something done entirely in the computer.

So I'm quite looking forward to it :)

[cookepuss]

Went to see it this past weekend, along with "Enchanted". Saw it in 3D.

The polarized 3D effect was pretty much wasted on me due to the astigmatism in each of my eyes. The movie wasn't half bad though.

I enjoyed the action scenes, as a well as some of the subtle irony in the characterizations. The basic CG was pretty cool, but definitely flawed.

1) The facial animation/capture was abysmal. The lips were pretty stiff. Not enough z-axis, imho.
2) Some of the mocap was great. Other aspects of it was pretty pretty jumpy and jittery, especially in the Beowulf/Grendel fight scene.
3) Good skin work, but it could have used some well placed specularity in some spots.

As a work of film...
1) Very uneven handling of violence VS nudity in the determination of MPAA rating. On the one hand, it was okay to show dismemberment & evisceration. On the other hand, it seemingly not okay to show CG Angelina Jolie's nipples. I can guarantee you that the MPAA has some twisted ideas regarding animation, especially since live action versions of equivalent violence would have garnered a R rating for sure. Oddly enough, the international "Beowulf" trailer was a red band R rated trailer - for a PG 13 movie.
2) Don't look for this movie to be a shortcut out of reading the poem. IIRC, it is not faithfully adapted.
3) The "creative" ways that they hid Beowulf's full frontal nudity were not only glaringly obvious, but shamelessly uncreative. Every time it got close, I kept on thinking, "Okay, somebody's going to move in camera or drop a sword into view.......HERE!" Sure enough. Not very creative with the camera work; almost like a sitcom where the character is naked and you tease the audience at every opportunity. Not that that's what I wanted, but the cinematography was lacking in that regard. Some creative, artistic posing could have made the extensive use of props unnecessary.
4) The plot itself was pretty thin and not really worthy of nearly 2 hours. Granted, the film passed quickly, but it all played out fairly obviously and in a quite prolonged manner.

Anthony Hopkins & John Malkovich's performances were extraordinary. Hopkins, as the slightly mad drunkard of a king was brilliantly inspired. Malkovich as the morally gray and quite hypocritical Unferth was a true highlight. Crispin Glover certainly deserved so much more screen time, as his Grendel was sad, misunderstood, and maniacally tragic. I could have certainly done without Robin Wright Penn though. She was gravely miscast. I loved her in "The Princess Bride" as well as "Unbreakable", but she probably came off as being much more stiff and wooden than some of the CG. There were times when Brendan Gleeson's Wiglaf character was a likable compatriot, realized quite well in CG. There were other times, where he was immensely forgettable.

Overall, I'd give the movie a solid B. Good, but not perfect.

Part of me marveled at the potential for performance capture. Another part of me screamed at how it was a wasted and utterly flawed opportunity at true greatness. Performance capture, in the future, will have a time and place. In "Beowulf", I feel that it was wasted. For one thing, the tech is still very flawed. For another, the purpose of animation is to do stuff that is entirely impossible or at least very difficult in live action. There was absolutely nothing I saw in "Beowulf" that couldn't have been done with CG enhanced live action.