Beowulf is probably the best cartoon to come out since Finding Nemo, this was one heck of an exciting movie.

The story is pretty simple.  Anthony Hopkins plays Hrothgar, the king of a small Danish Kingdom that is under attack by his mutated son Grendel, who is also the son of Angelina Jolie.  Hrothgar offers riches to anyone who can kill Grendel, and along comes Beowulf.

Beowulf kills Grendel and his mother seeks out revenge by killing all of his men other than his sidekick Wiglaf played by Brendan Gleeson.  Beowulf goes to kill Grendel's mother but instead sleeps with her so that she can have another son.  He gives her this golden cup, and as long as she has the cup she will not reek havoc on the Kingdom.

There are a lot of spectacular action scenes, I wish i saw this in 3D cause that's the way I'm sure it is supposed to be seen.  

I was also surprised that this got a PG-13 rating, there is full frontal female nudity and some male nudity, and also very gory action scenes.  I guess cause it's a cartoon they got away with a bit more.

What I thought was funny was that I was the youngest person in the cinema, other than me there was no one under the age of 40, there were even people in their 70' and 80's there, Kinda funny to see a bunch of adults at cartoon.

Anyways this was a fun movie, I wish Angie was in it more, she is really only in one scene, other than that you just hear her voice or see things from her point of view, but other than that problem I liked it a lot.

I just saw it in 3D and it was AMAZING!!!  You forget your watching animation.  The action scenes are great and I thought the characters and actors were perfect.

I liked the fact that this was a more adult oriented movie than some G rated Pixar movie.
Great animation, and really good directing.  Zemeckis has redeemed himself from Polar Express.

You got to see it in 3D!  Wow!  

I saw this movie the night it came out and holy cow. Visually, this movie was amazingly awesome. Some people say, "well, it's just CGI and lacks story in favor of doing cool visuals." Well, it's a novelty film that you go to see for the insane visuals rather than the story. Do you think people walked out of the theater in 1933 after seeing King Kong saying "Wow, that was the best dialogue I've ever heard, and that was the greatest and most original story ever told!" Nah. They were talking about how amazing Kong was. They watched it because it was a novelty to see something like that.

This film takes CGI to a place it has never gone before. Motion capture proves to be much more cost-effective and realistic than hand-animated characters. This kind of film is going to make epic filmmaking much more cost effective once this technology moves out of the experimental stage it's in and becomes more common. If they embrace it and use it wisely, this type of filmmaking will definitely help sustain the industry.

And sure, there was full frontal female nudity and everything. But the "details" of that nudity were that of a Barbie doll. Seriously, the mother looked like a monster Barbie doll without clothes on.

This movie was amazing. And despite what some may say, it tells a simple and entertaining story that is meant to show off the crazy mess they can do with this new form of filmmaking. My only complaint was that it seemed a bit too long. Other than that, amazing job!!

****/*****

-Chris

I just saw it and I enjoyed my self. Straight to the point, it's just fun to watch. The introduction of Beowulf and his men looked real! I wish Grendal didn't die so fast, ... but oh well. Great movie! Better than 300

~Zack~

Quoted from Elmer Some people say, "well, it's just CGI and lacks story in favor of doing cool visuals." Well, it's a novelty film that you go to see for the insane visuals rather than the story. Do you think people walked out of the theater in 1933 after seeing King Kong saying "Wow, that was the best dialogue I've ever heard, and that was the greatest and most original story ever told!" Nah. They were talking about how amazing Kong was. They watched it because it was a novelty to see something like that.

Beowulf was fluff.  Excellently done fluff, and great fun to watch, but fluff.  No offense to the Beowulf poet -- the film's fluff, not the poem.

Merian Cooper's King Kong was NOT fluff lacking story.  It IS one of the greatest stories ever told, and every scene is laden with emotion and meaning.  It is one of the all-time classics of cinema and people did NOT watch it just for the novelty of Kong.

Sorry.  But yeah, go see Beowulf.  It's good fun.

I don't know. I guess I'm just not a fan of so-called "Classics". I don't enjoy old films except for maybe something like Star Wars. I understand the limitations they had back then and maybe if I had been alive then to see it when it first came out, I would've liked the original King Kong. But based on what I enjoy in a film, it completely lacks anything for me.

There. I said it. I'm not a very sophisticated film person. I don't bash CGI just to bash it and I don't praise low-budget indie arthouse films just because they're arthouse films. If a film is enjoyable I like it. If a film is boring, I don't. I'm not disciplined enough to force my mind into such a suspense of disbelief to like ancient films. Just like I don't like reading Beowulf the poem or The Pilgrims Progress.

That's not to say I need something exploding every five seconds. It just means I'd rather sit through Transformers than The Godfather simply because it's visually more exciting to me.

-Chris

Beowulf, is the newest epic film to grace theaters. Is it special effects worth it? Hell yes it is!

Let me start off with, Anthony Hopkins is a great actor, and always will be. He's the main reason I went to see this, and I am GLAD I did. Angelina Jolie surprisingly blew me away, but I guess anybody can place some hot monster. Ray Whinstone and Robin Wright Penn both shine together -- playing their roles pleasantly. And of course, who could forget the awesome Wiglaf, played by Brendan Gleeson. Sure, his character isn't major, but he steals the scene whenever he's in one!

Special effects is the amazing treat about this film, its really great. The fight scene between Beowulf and The Dragon was awesome, but a little disappointing if you ask me. I mean, he really just hanged onto the dragon while it flew around. Heh. I really don't think this should of been 3-D, when your in a 3-D film, your suppose to feel like your there. Witnessing whats going on. Of course, there are moments in the film where you actually feel that your there, but like I said... there's only a few moments.

The story of Beowulf & Grendel is told brilliantly, but lacks something. The last third of the film (the part where he's old) just seems REALLY forced. As if they were trying to finished it up early, so that they didn't make it to long.

***/*****

B+

I didn't go see this in cinemas so I probably didn't get all the visual oomph out of it, like so many of you.

I thought it was very average. Naturally the story and characters are rather uninteresting and you can tell Zemeckis has accompanied every emotional scene with a orchestra of violins to solicit some kind of response from the audience. It doesn't work though.

Never mind, this is a story about its visuals, right? Well, like I said, I didn't get the IMAX experience, but I wasn't very impressed at all. Granted, there were three characters who were animated to almost photo-realistic detail, but most of the supporting characters looks like something out of a very beautiful video game cut-scene. But video-game cut-scene nonetheless. Angelina Jolies face is really the only thing that blew me away. She was the only face in the movie that actually looked, moved and acted completely like a human face would.

But I kept thinking, "Why didn't they just film this live action?". There's nothing in the story that really warrants animation. The goal of the film seemed to be to make animation look exactly like it was a real film. To me a far less costly approach would be to actually film this live action.

For an excercise in visual bravado, I think they could've chosen a better subject matter, where the prowess of CG could've been put to better use.

Decent film, though.


Oh and because I'm Danish I noticed two minor historical and geographical descrepancies. First of all, there are absolutely no mountains whatsoever in Denmark and there were absolutely no Christians in Denmark in 507 AD. Not even as a scattered minority. Yes, I'm a nitpick.

Hey,

Quoted from Death Monkey But I kept thinking, "Why didn't they just film this live action?". There's nothing in the story that really warrants animation. The goal of the film seemed to be to make animation look exactly like it was a real film. To me a far less costly approach would be to actually film this live action.

I enjoyed the movie and it's visuals a lot but I came out of the theater thinking the same thing. I heard later that it's difficult to keep all of the different planes of action in focus when doing live action in 3D because they have to film everything from 3 angles or something (to get an effect of depth). Well anyway, I imagine you could pretty much bypass that problem with computer animation, it'd be easier and perhaps less costly to just program some sort of three camera system within the virtual world.

This is based on hearsay and my own speculation though, so I may be wrong.

sheepwalker      

Quoted from Death Monkey But I kept thinking, "Why didn't they just film this live action?". There's nothing in the story that really warrants animation. The goal of the film seemed to be to make animation look exactly like it was a real film. To me a far less costly approach would be to actually film this live action.

This was the perfect story to advance the technology that made this film. Not to mention that they wouldn't have been able to afford to film this in live-action. This film was done with motion capture, which means actors put on a suit with dots on it and the computer tracks their motion. The motion is applied to the CG character, and the character is placed in a CG environment.

With all of the sets and action scenes, so many effects would be needed. And it's more costly to film a shot that requires a visual effect than to just do an entirely animated shot. This is because visual effects shots require blue screen, special camera equipment for motion tracking, they take much longer to film, more crew needs to be there to help which means an even more costly payroll, etc. etc.

Basically, the reason they did it the way they did it was to 1) advance the medium of motion-capture CG films, and 2) It would've have been financially impossible to film in live action and most likely technically. A lot of shot compromises would've had to been made.

Quoted from Elmer This was the perfect story to advance the technology that made this film. Not to mention that they wouldn't have been able to afford to film this in live-action. This film was done with motion capture, which means actors put on a suit with dots on it and the computer tracks their motion. The motion is applied to the CG character, and the character is placed in a CG environment. With all of the sets and action scenes, so many effects would be needed. And it's more costly to film a shot that requires a visual effect than to just do an entirely animated shot. This is because visual effects shots require blue screen, special camera equipment for motion tracking, they take much longer to film, more crew needs to be there to help which means an even more costly payroll, etc. etc. Basically, the reason they did it the way they did it was to 1) advance the medium of motion-capture CG films, and 2) It would've have been financially impossible to film in live action and most likely technically. A lot of shot compromises would've had to been made.

Care to elaborate on why this was the perfect story to advance the technology?

And I know what motion capture technology is and how it works. I also know it costs about 1 million dollars per animated minute to make so the idea that making it live action would've been more expensive is highly contestable at best. Beowulf's budet was 150 million. Are you really saying that filming the script in live action would cost more?

Let's look at comparable movies. The 13th Warrior comes close in terms of sets, costumes and fight-scenes. What it didn't have was a huge monster which naturally would be CG, but it did have more action. 13th cost 85 million. Another film with a big fire spewing dragon and extensive sets was Reign of Fire. That one cost 95 million. Another swords and sandals type movie that combined action scenes, lavish sets and CGI was Gladiator which created ancient rome in CGI. That one rang in at just over 100 million.

The one possible scene in Beowulf that justifies animation was him fighting the sea-monsters. Other than that everything would've been easily translated to live action.

Now with that out of the way, here's what I'm saying: The technology is either not good enough yet, or they didn't have the money to pull off consistency in quality. For instance, the fire animation was horrible, whereas certain faces were beautiful.

Instead of making a live-action movie in CG, I wish they would utilize the 'unrealism' the medium allows. they can, for all intents and purposes, create their own world. they don't have to adhere to laws of physics and motion, proportion and dynamism of the real world. That's what's so great about animation. They have the perfect opportunity to stylize.

300 had way more style than this. Look at how it used shadows, color, and proportions against realism. This was just "hey look! we can animate stuff so it looks just like real life! Except we don't have the money to do more than people's hair and a few celebrity faces..."

An average movie. The CGI , to me, was horribly distracting, with the bland, almost plastic faces. Some worked better than others, but overall I think this motion capture process is a bad idea, they're nowhere near replicating human actors, and some of the animations on the lead characters were....creepy.  And let's not even mention the absurdity of the DDcup CGI breasts bobbing and bouncing.

I had never read Beowulf, but I do like the notion in this screenplay that he's not the hero fabled in story and song, he's a fraud and his lies end up coming back in a big way. That and the final fade out was nice.

But I'm done with the CGI sword & sandal stuff. After the nightmarishly bad "300" and this one being hit and miss, I'll pass on the next big CGI epic.