Beowulf in 3D: Impressive, But Disappointing

[tmeacham]

Review written by Travis Meacham.

Director Robert Zemeckis, author Neil Gaiman and screenwriter Roger Avary tackle an adaptation of the oldest known epic narrative in the English language using revolutionary CGI and 3D technology. But without the dazzling 3D special effects, is the movie worth seeing?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2007/11/21/beowulf_3d/

 

[Niva]

Hi there, I agree with parts of your review, I wish they had not gone for the PG13 rating throughout. Not so much because I want to see Angelina's breasts but because I also drew parallels to Austin Powers during the Grendel pre/fight scenes especially. They apparently shaved off a really graphic scene where Grendel was tearing a character apart to get the rating too.

Yes, the movie had it's failings, but I would not call it disappointing. I wish the movie had not been so rushed, some of the dragon scenes at the end were not well done imo. IMO this is the biggest thing since Star Wars - absolutely must see in 3D. Since a lot of people are not familiar with 3d it absolutely needed to have some of the in your face effects.

 

[crimsonfilms]

I disagree on your criticism generally because I think the movie was not meant to be taken as serious as the epic poem. From the get go, there is little joking around - from Hopkin's beyond drunk persona, to the silly lyre song, to ego maniac personality of Beowulf.

Final Fantasy for example took itself too seriously. It tried to deliver Japanese myticism, philosophy, Green Earth direness, epic sci-fi, etc. So when the images where quite not so realistic, it broke suspension of disbelief. It became another overwritten video game.

Beowulf works because it never attempts to be what it is not - Hollywoodian fluff. Yes the source material is epic but the film did not need to be. Not a great movie, but it extends the medium, CG, to another unexpected direction for the mainstream crowd.


.02

 

[Not a mod thank god]

I think that some movies become mediocre by trying too hard to encompass all audiences. Why does it have to be suitable for everyone 13 and up? It's not as if 13 year olds don't watch their fill of 'R'-rated movies anyway. Kids grow up you know, and if you create a GREAT movie, you can do even better sequels years from now. It's like inventing your own sustainability. A great movie is a great movie, please make this your primary goal when creating movies. With CG, movies have gotten a lot cheaper to produce too and it is now finally to a point where it's astonishing and believable. So to you movie studios I say; quit giving us movies tempered for a broad audience, cater to the comedy fans in a comedy, and keep the action/drama movies action/drama. If I want to see a stupid comedy, I'll pop Tommy Boy into my DVD player. When I want to watch action/drama, I want to action/drama and not have it ruined by silly jokes that rob me of the seriousness of the plot.

 

[itotallybelieveyou]

Ehhh no game movie has ever been well rated. Beowulf = 300 with less impressive graphics (seriously... 300 is basically graphics)

 

[stemnin]

I saw your title before watching the movie, thinking it can't be that bad, then I just saw it, and read your review, I did find there were too many crotch jokes. It seriously ruined the movie for Willy, I mean me, Stemnin (yes, I AM in the third person..).

 

[Probot]

Hmnn,
well i usually hate most movies, and don't go to the theatre often, but i went to see this on a whim, not ever seeing a commercial about it (don't watch tv) i just saw a flash ad on the net, didn't even know it was CGI, but from the add i thought it was in 3D or maybe just in IMAX 3D, wasn't sure.
Went to see it, no 3D glasses, no one in the theatre had them on either, but all in all i had a great movie going experience with this film.

There were some parts that were kinda cheeze, as with most Hollywood
dribble, and i almost kinda wished they used the real actors for the film,
woulda made it more epic, imo, but they did a fantastic job with it.

I didn't notice any blatant ( look it's 3D !) shots til towards the end with the arrows flying at the screen when he was hanging from the dragon.

Great fantasy movie, will go see again in 3D next time

 

[bobby-h]

Travis Meacham wrote:

I think in order for 3D to be taken seriously the movies need to stop winking at the audience. Just tell your story and process the film into 3D afterward.

3D movies absolutely must be produced with two native left eye/right eye camera views during production.

The faux-3D post processing techniques used on 2D movies like Superman Returns and The Nightmare Before Christmas are expensive and labor intensive. The end results are not very good.

The process looked sort of OK on The Nightmare Before Christmas since depth of field was tightly focused throughout the frame, making all the edge detail on objects sharp and easier to artificially "lift" into 3D space. The results looked terrible on Superman Returns. The 3D effect was fleeting at best. Many shots in the few IMAX-3D sequences had low depth of field with lots of objects out of focus. That appearance is routine for any live action movie. That aspect of image quality makes it very difficult, if not outright impossible to post-process an existing 2D live action movie into convincing looking 3D. George Lucas has apparently abandoned efforts to create a digital 3D version of the original Star Wars movie.

I've seen Beowulf twice in the digital Real D format. Aside from the obvious 3D sight gags of arrows, spears, dripping blood and spewing sea monster guts all shooting at the viewer, the 3D in this movie was far far better than anything I've seen in any faux-3D post processed kind of flick.

Ahead of the movie, 3D trailers were shown for U23D, Coraline and Journey to the Center of the Earth. I can't wait to see U23D. That looks really cool. If the show is good enough I may watch it first in Real D at the regular theater and then check it out in IMAX-3D in Tulsa.

Regarding the animation in Beowulf, I disagree with Robert Zemeckis' efforts of trying to create photo-realistic CGI humans in movies. I don't see much point in going to all that trouble from an artistic point of view. Just shoot live action 3D. It's more interesting when virtual CGI characters are modeled in more abstract and even cartoonish form. It's one of the things that make the movies from Pixar more interesting. Also, there is so many subtle things going on in the human face that it is exceedingly difficult to maintain the actor's likeness much less make his CGI character look alive and as if it has some personality. I will give Zemeckis points for improving the technique on this movie. This time the results were hit and miss. In The Polar Express the CGI people looked like dead mannequins all throughout the movie.

As for the movie itself, I thought it was pretty decent. A few departures were made from the original 3000 line epic Old English poem. But this movie is certainly better than a lot of the junk Hollywood usually sticks into movie theaters.

 

[Not a mod thank god]

Regarding the animation in Beowulf, I disagree with Robert Zemeckis' efforts of trying to create photo-realistic CGI humans in movies. I don't see much point in going to all that trouble from an artistic point of view. Just shoot live action 3D. It's more interesting when virtual CGI characters are modeled in more abstract and even cartoonish form. It's one of the things that make the movies from Pixar more interesting. Also, there is so many subtle things going on in the human face that it is exceedingly difficult to maintain the actor's likeness much less make his CGI character look alive and as if it has some personality. I will give Zemeckis points for improving the technique on this movie. This time the results were hit and miss. In The Polar Express the CGI people looked like dead mannequins all throughout the movie.

It's interesting that you mention how you don't like the way that Robert did the animation. I think this relates to how people are comfortable with human-like robots as long as they're not TOO human. The same may be with characters on the screen. We want them to be life-like, but characters that look too life-like without looking REAL bother us like it's a freakish birth defect. We need to see rendered characters as either REAL, or "fake enough" but just a tiny bit fake and we're irked by it.

 

[bobby-h]

The factor of robots looking too human could have something to do with it, but honestly the problem lies more in human nature and our natural frame of reference.

Our own brains are enormous supercomputing marvels that far exceed the capabilities of any machine on the planet. Their processes are so complex that they even override what seems simple, such as computing long division math in one's own head. As a trade off, we enjoy the far superior traits of emotion, creativity and fundamental consciousness. Just what we process from our own five basic senses would bring the most advanced computers to their knees. Many of us really do not appreciate the enormous computational power we have right in our own heads.

With that in mind, us humans have a primal imprint of sorts on how human faces are supposed to look. Some of this is based on instinct -even instinct for survival. We understand the subtle emotions that are conveyed. One of my friends is a speech pathologist and I helped her with some of her studies while she was earning her masters degree. I never knew there were so many muscles and other physical processes involved just within the mouth and throat. There are so many complex anatomical movements that happen in a human face that I wonder if CGI artists can really dial into how all of it works at once to properly communicate just one emotion much less compute a believable acting performance for an entire movie. And as a work of "art" I don't see much point in going to all that trouble. Really. What is the point of doing all of that? Sure, CGI technology can do lots of photo-realistic stuff. With all that power, why not try to do more with it than just being "realistic?"

The Pixar and PDI/Dreamworks animation studios seem to have a better bead on things by staying away from being completely photo-realistic. The humans in their movies, such as Ratatouille or Over the Hedge work more as abstract caricatures. In being abstract, the viewer doesn't judge the details in the character -such as its ability to yell out (the Beowulf character in that movie looked funny when trying to yell). Being abstract also means being more simplified and to the point. We get the emotion from that character in a more raw, direct form. The impact is more immediate. And in comedy (like that in Pixar's movies) the immediacy is crucial for comedic timing. We get the jokes faster and the movie moves along faster. It's just more fun.

In the end, I'm not sure if I could endorse Robert Zemeckis taking a 3rd stab in a row at doing realistic CGI human characters in a movie. But I do hope he'll keep doing work in 3D. I think that approach is a winner.

 

[tmeacham]

You know that occurred to me as well. Why spend all the time and money to make CGI renditions of Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie if you want the characters to look exactly like the actors? It's strange to put so much painstaking effort into something that already exists - and it isn't as if they needed to age them up or down.

However shooting the movie live action would not have changed the things I didn't like about it. I found the CGI work to be quite beautiful.

 

[BigMac]

Why spend all the time and money to make CGI renditions of Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie if you want the characters to look exactly like the actors? It's strange to put so much painstaking effort into something that already exists - and it isn't as if they needed to age them up or down.

For exactly the same reason why they start out with making photographs of real (fashion) models and then brush them up in photoshop (sometimes its more like a major refit than a simple brush up).

 

[NightbladeXX]

i agree i just saw it last night

it was typical over the top hollywood fluff

yeah the 3d was cool but i grew bored about 45 minutes into and was praying it ended early

the animation was just too detailed, when beowulf gets old i dont need to see his nose and ear hair which prolly added ungodly amounts to the processing of the film

I would rather Blizzard would make some movies then this crap coming out, i loved the movies in Diablo 2 and WoW not that CGI work, and if Blizzard would do it in 3D im sure it would rock

anyone else find the camera point of view 1 inch off of the ground ground extremely annoying too?

this film seemed like it was more of lets see waht we can do with 3D instead of telling a story and working the 3D into it

 

[Guest]

I watched this recently and lost interest long before the end. I thought that, by comparison ith the excellent 'Beowulf and Grendel' by Icelandic Director Sturla Gunnarsson, 'Beowulf' is a stinker. Watch the Icelanders' version and without any CGi at all you will be hooked on the story and the historical accuracy.