Beowulf: The Raw, Hard Truth of the Matter

I was told by my brother we were going to see Beowulf - I had personally had no plans whatsoever to watch it until it came out on DVD. But amidst his excitement to see the film, augmented by the fact that he was studying the poem in English IV at the moment, I decided that maybe seeing a digitally nakie Angelina Jolie might do him well, so we went to go see the 10 o'clock showing. As usual for any movie of this type, I went in with my standards low, expecting basically 300 with a dragon. What I got was a very well done first half, and a mediocre second half.

For the first part of my review, allow me to explain that I did not have any trouble with the movie from an entirely story/movie perspective, at least nothing major. It had a relatively quality depiction of Nordic people doing what they do best, drinking, dancing, singing, brawling, and fornicating. They wore big skins, they had ugly teeth, and they all looked like they could eat a man's guts and ask for seconds. Up until Grendal's death, the entire movie appears to be more or less spot on with the poem, with a few liberties taken here and there.

The movie begins with a deal of singing and dancing, where we're introduced to King Hrothgar of the Danes. His wife is dubious about something, and at first we assume maybe she's just too enlightened, wizened, and noble to be around a fat version of Anthony Hopkins with skin and buttocks hanging from a small toga, but we realize as the movie goes on that she's just perpetually apprehensive about any man she's with. Her part is really served as more of a feminine suspicion of anything that the male character is doing for the time, occasionally interjecting something that falls short of profound.

In the midst of singing to Hrothgar, an unnecessarily wide sweeping shot pulls back across the plains until it comes across Grendal, who is outraged by the singing. With a blusterous yell and a focus on his external ear drums that flap with every reverberating note, he then dashes into the Mead Hall where he replaces an orgy of alcohol and singing with an orgy of death and violence.

Naturally, King Hrothgar needs some sort of answer to this whole Grendal killing his people problem, and thus enters Beowulf, the Geat. Sailing in triumphantly and daring the tempest he sailed through for his chance at glory, he then makes a grand entrance onto a stage set for what appeared to be a generic "sniveling adviser" angst that promptly ceased after the first verbal bout.

Without ruining too much more of the movie, a naked Beowulf then goes on to kill Grendal (with truly unnecessary exaggerations taken to hide his manhood) which dissolves into a subplot around Grendal's mother.

Immediately following the monster's death, however, things started to take a rapid turn for the imagination of the writers. In many ways, it felt like the creators of the film had stopped paying attention to the poem after Grendal's arm got ripped off, like someone had told them of the brawl in the Mead Hall, and they got so excited they started scribbling notes to their new motion picture. Not really listening, they only off handedly heard later parts of the story, and integrated it with their work already.

Moral questions are asked that I don't want to bother answering in a movie about a man whose job it is to kill demons and dragons. Leonidas, I mean Beowulf, stands over a cliff and watches a group of raiders get slaughtered by his armies, and laments at how easily it is done, then goes on to explain how the advent of Christianity is taking the quality out of fighters lately.

In truth, the second half of the movie, following Grendal's death, simply felt like a mess. The plot tried to chug along as best it could, but found itself faltering. This, I feel, was because of the high priced acquisition of Angelina Jolie. Because a talent like hers could not be as easily thrown aside, perhaps for contractual reasons, as any other character, they had to stick Grendal's mother around long after she outstayed her welcome. I wasn't particularly interested in the Greek style love affair where all of Sparta, I mean Herod, was protected by her watchful eye as long as whatever parameters of the curse were upheld.

The dragon transformed from a moment of realization for Beowulf, where he realized that for all of his grand stories, no one really gave a damn about him and he died pretty much alone into a semi-epic conflict between him and his, I loathe to say this, son. Only after severing his own arm and tearing the beast's heart out with his own hands is he able to save his kingdom. Unfortunately, this really isn't all that inspiring.

Ultimately, I wasn't dissatisfied with the movie's story, just felt that it wasn't anything to get entirely excited over once Grendal's arm came off.

As for the technical aspect of the movie, it was not the cinematic achievement that people have been calling it. It simply does nothing to advance the way we treat or look at films or CGI. I would argue even that computer animation has not matured enough to justify any further movies of this type, I'd give it another 3-6 years at the very least. Fundamentally, it felt more like I was watching Oblivion cinematic cutscenes than watching a movie. The chief design flaws with computer animated sequences were all present with no end in sight - there were no hard joints, for example, on any of the characters. Their elbows, their knees, their knuckles, looked less like hinges of bone and more like pieces of rubber that bent at an apex, very slightly.

Movements were too fluid with none of the jerky, graininess that comes with humanity. Because every aspect of the movie's design had to be fundamentally hand drawn, even those that involves character acting, much of the physical reactions were unaccounted for by the human mind.

That's without considering that typical CPU processing tricks were used for who knows what reason. A zoom in of Beowulf's face showed a brilliant emphasis on the many fibers and hairs of his face, the pores, the complexion, all of these simple things were covered when a close camera angle came in. However, as soon as the camera panned back, it was like Level of Detail (LOD) bias kicked in. The specific details were "unrendered" as it were, as though they were trying to conserve processing power for everything else that had to be taken in by the computer.

The landscapes, which indeed looked pretty good, were still not much more of an achievement than is seen in most video games lately.

Perhaps the greatest criticism can be sent towards the director's own satisfaction with his achievements. The cinematography, by and large, was hurt by the fact that he was so amused by how well done a lot of the landscaping looked, he would create unnecessarily long shots that dragged on and on, or overlooked certain pieces of CGI that really weren't necessarily worth looking at for long periods of time.

If one is making a CGI film, they need to treat it as maturely as though they're treating a regular live action film. Therefore, the cameraman, in essence the ultimate narrator, needs to not be inspired by these landscapes, because they're introducing us to a world they're familiar with, and that familiarity has disintegrated any excitement they may feel for the graphics of their own world.

On the whole, I'd give Beowulf a 6.5 out of 10 - it is worth watching, even while it's in theaters, but it was certainly no achievement in film making. In terms of technical advancement, it stood idle. It simply used tools that were already there, without pushing them to any new limits.