Beowulf

anyone going to see it tonight? i won't be going until next week, but it'd be nice to have some feedback

Good god no, saw the Ad and i nearly pissed myself laughing at how bad it was.

Has anybody ever seen a 3-D IMAX film? I haven't, which is the only reason I'd consider going.

I'll be seeing it today, I expect. I'll post a review later.

Those trailers look pretty fucking bad. This might be a rental, some day when I'm too bored to masturbate.

Really doubt you will be that bored that you are forced to what that PoS.

I'm thinking dragging my nuts over 4,000 miles of broken glass and then rubbing salt in to them before i get to the point of watching it.

Oh and this is the fella who plays Beowulf

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0935653/

A fat Cockney...playing a Danish warrior from 700AD.

Yeah, they can do wonders with animation, eh?

I've seen one. They are rarely entirely in 3D. There is an icon on the bottom of the screen that asks you to put on your 3D glasses during the parts that are in 3D.

I'm torn. I like Beowulf, so I want to see it. But it looks horrible. I should probably NOT see it BECAUSE I like Beowulf.

Dunno. Angelie Jolie looks nice in it.

I dunno what everyone is talking about. It looks like fun to me And it's gotten mostly positive reviews to boot. Even Roger Ebert was a fan.

I was kinda wondering about that. Has her life really been so hard that she's gotta go CGI?

Nevertheless, English teachers worldwide will rejoice.

My first intro to Beowulf was 11th grade English, and even as a Tolkeinite I didn't properly appreciate it. Now, however, I do. The Seamus Heaney translation rests proudly upon my bookshelf, along with all other things Norse and Viking.

In fact, I am going now to see the movie. I'll report back in a while.

I enjoyed Beowulf's guesting on a Xena episode.

Okay, I'm back.

I'm not really sure how to tackle this one, so I'll go with my old 'good, bad, and ugly' review format.

The Good:

The fight with the dragon was frakkin' incredible. Also, the animated form of Angelina Jolie as a God Damned Succubus was enough to make you spring wood right through the bottom of your popcorn container. I also found that I enjoyed the story, even with the most decidedly Neil Gaiman twist on the true tale. A lot of people will pan this movie because it doesn't follow the poem near enough, but to be fair, almost no modern retelling of Beowulf follows the poem nearly enough. I enjoyed Beowulf and Grendel with Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgaard, and that had a few real twists on the story as well. In fact, I enjoyed that movie a lot more than this one. Same with the 13th Warrior- it was waaaay better even though even less a telling of the classic poem.

The Bad:

That being said, I didn't like the way they went with some of the story elements. Hrothgar's character was badly misrepresented, as was the relationship between Beowulf and Wealthow. Also, in the poem, Beowulf didn't inherit Hrothgar's kingdom, but here that is due to story tweaking. The animation didn't thrill me much, except in a couple spots. The characters only looked slightly better than the human characters in Shrek, I thought. Definitely not the quality of animation seen in Final Fantasy. Between the warping of the story and the quality of the animation, this movie is lacking.

The Ugly:

I had vaguely heard about the 3D elements of this movie, but I had no idea is was a goddamn 3D movie that I went to see in 2D. Have you ever watched Jaws 3D on a flat screen? Remember how hokey some of the shots look? Well, same problem here. In fact, if you are going to go see this I highly recommend you see it in 3D, so at least the 3D stuff isn't as jarring as when you are subjected to the 2D camera angles. Don't get me started on Grendel, who looked like a poorly rendered drawing of a flesh golem out of the D&D monster manual. Of all the ways they could have done Grendel, this was just....not up to snuff. Sad, really.

Summary:

With my love of the epic poem and all things Norse, I would like to give this movie a ringing endorsement- but I can't. I won't say that it sucked, but it doesn't deliver as promised on any level, as far as I'm concerned. I'll hoist my drinking horn and give it a solid 'meh'. Five stars out of ten. I may try it again in 3D just to see if it makes a big difference, but I fear that it won't. At least, not enough to matter. If you aren't a fan of the viking age, etc, you may very well end up hating this movie. Or maybe it'd help if you've never read the original. Who knows. But if you have any doubts at all about this, be like Techman and wait for the DVD.

Can't argue that Beowulf looks more like Sean Bean than Ray Winstone...
And Ray Winstone is a great actor. But he's about as suited to this as he was to Henry VIII...

But I loved him as Will Scarlett in the TV Robin of Sherwood.

I like Beowulf too much to go see this.

Hell, I still haven't watched the HHGTTG movie. And I'm GLAD.

I saw it with my friends tonight, and really enjoyed it.

It's a new version of the old story, and it was fun. But then, Neil Gaiman is one of the best writers working today, so I may be biased.

All in all, quite entertaining I thought, and I really don't have any complaints.

Wait. Neil Gaiman was involved in this!?

[edit]Checks IMDB. Ooh... Lotsa credible people were involved in this. I think I'll have to see it after all.

And someone needs to publish a Gaiman filmology. Ya got yer Stardust and Mirrormask. What else?

O-o

Neil Gaiman? Bring forth my spear and horse, we go to the movies!

Saw this with fiance. He really wanted to see it because he loves Beowulf. I agreed to see it because I think 3D animated movies are an underrated genre with great potential. Plus it was free.

In the end he and his brother weren't very impressed. I think I liked it more than they did. In my usual fashion I was climbing on my seat and burying my face in fiance's arm while Wiglaf was riding his horse over the bridge. I'm not good with suspense.

I didn't really get the whole animated people thing. If you want your Angelina character to look like Angelina, why make her animated? I thought the point of animation was it gave you the freedom to mimic the real world but tweak it to how you want it? It really creeped me out how each actor and actress got their own animated self. Were they really too uncreative to give the character's their own looks?

Posting as someone who first came to H2G2 through the original Radio 4 series, I have to say that the film wasn't as bad as I was expecting.
In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the H2G2 film for what it was. It wasn't the book, but then again neither was the radio show or the television version.

Saw it. Story kind of sucked but I was expecting that going in.

This was my first 3D IMAX movie and that is mostly why I went. I have to say, it was pretty damn cool.

I was actually flinching at times because it really looked the spears and arrows were coming at you.

The fight with the dragon was really amazing, probably one of the best CG dragons I've seen.

The rest of the movie was kinda meh. Jolie was nice but her breasts didn't pop out in 3D... a missed opportunity there.

How can you say the story sucked? It's...it's BEOWULF for Christ's sake! They didn't take THAT many liberties with the myth.

I've seen The Polar Express in 3-D a couple of times at an IMAX theater.

It looked amazing.