I know it’s not cool to bump your own thread, but I thought the folks who were interested in this film might enjoy this article, “Beowulf vs. the Lord of the Rings”.
To me the story sort of lost interest after he aged.
I had trouble understanding some of the old English; I don’t know if I was supposed to or not. Also I didn’t catch on to the thing about Grendel being sensitive to noise until around his last fight, but again I don’t know if that was intended.
Does anyone know how much of Angelina’s Jolie’s nudity was real?
Whoa. Wait. What? Dammit.
I thought he did accept it from her. I thought that when Beowulf was fighting the dragon, at the very beginning of the fight with his son, at the mouth of the cave… I thought that during that action, Wiglaf had been seduced by Grendal’s mother. I know they didn’t show it, but I thought it had been implied. I thought that was how Wiglaf truly ended up with the crown on his head. Usually, I get kind of lost at these kinds of movies, but this time my husband actually seemed proud of me because I didn’t ask him to explain anything afterward. Now it turns out I should have asked for some explanation.
WAG, but there was no need for her to be nude at all, since usually all they would do is scan the head only and then put the actors or stunt people in motion capture suits. All of her appearances were completely CGI. That said, was her character even ever nude? It seemed to me that her nipples and nether regions were always covered by a bit of that liquidy gold stuff… What I’m wondering is, even though Beowulf’s private parts were always blocked from view by convenient foreground objects, did they bother to actually make him anatomically correct for the rendering process?
I’m not talking about technical movie-nudity in terms of nipples, I’m talking about the naked form and giant, free-moving 3-D breasts. The whole overall body seemed very real to me.
I’m not clear on how everything was done, but I think some of it was stuff they actually acted out which was motion-captured, or possibly “traced” into the picture and just animated over. I’m wondering if the footage was actually derived from her body, and to what extent. I mean, it could be all animated, or they could have had her more or less nude, acting the entire scene and then sort of digitizing that, or something in between. She did apparently say she felt “exposed” by that scene. They apparantly did a body scan at one point, but it may have been a rough thing.
Beowulf says directly to him that if he doesn’t live through this last adventure, he had told the elders that Wiglaf should be named king. GM had nothing to do with it.
I know he told him that. I still thought that some witchery was involved. I am a moron.
The graphics were brilliant, stunning. They still have some problems with getting humans but the rest of the world was amazing. They did best, IMO with Angelina Jolie. They nearly captured her.
Having said that, I thought the movie itself was rather dull. I nearly fell asleep. All in all, I didn’t hate it, but I would have rather have rented it.
No, you’re not a moron at all. You have an interesting interpretation - actually more interesting than what I think the writer intended. While we can have a debate about whether art and the meanings thereof begin and end with the creator, or whether the viewer participates in the process as well, I think I’ll just agree that your version is superior to Gaiman/Zemeckis’, or that it’s what they intended all along and purposely left it ambiguous. Certainly there’s nothing in the text which contradicts your version - after all, Hopkins’ character crowned Beowolf, so having the previous king crown you is not antithetical to winning the crown through bedding the monster.
Either way, thanks for fascinating fodder for the debate my husband and I are bound to have over dinner tonight!
Yeah it was unfortunate that the problems with the humans and some of the dialogue syncing and what I can only call “Shrekification” of the plot was so distracting for me, because there certainly were brilliant advances in the graphics - the dragon fight was amazing, and little things like water drops slowly dripping characters’ bodies. And having read up on the original Beowulf, I think the changes they made to the plot to tie everything together better worked very well. And there were some truly poignant moments. But the dumb stuff was just too distracting for me to enjoy all that.
I think those were her real feet.
Since we’d seen it once in a regular cinema, we braved the talkers and phone users to sit in the back of an Imax and watch the 3D version on Friday. The audience was not too bad, and we enjoyed the effects.
great cartoon! feels more real than the spirits within, and the best dragon fight in memory, without the pesky cgi humans in a RL movie that takes you out of a scene.
would they have been able to achieve the same effect with real humans for the action sequences?
Interesting film. Saw it last night, alone, in 3D. What’s particularly interesting is the script, with its re-interpretation of the story. I assume that’s Gaiman’s doing, since he’s the myth expert. It helps if you’ve read the poem beforehand, because I got the same senxse of "How are they going to handle THIS that I got when watching Steve Martin’s Roxanne and comparing it to Cyrano de Bergerac.
Some comments, spoilered:
1.) That damned dragon cup at the start – I had no idea it was eventually going to be the “great cup stolen from the dragon’s hoard by a thief” that brings all the trouble at the end. Tolkien had pretty obviously lifted that bit from the poem Beowulf to use in The Hobbit. Here, that damned cup becomes practically the center of the film, being in the posession of Hrothgar, then passed on to Beowulf after killing Grendel, then acting like a light in the cave, given to Grendel’s Mom as part of the pledge, then being taken by Uthalf’s perpetually-beaten servant, which gives the theft an entirely different meaning, then returned to Grendel’s Mom, then showing up in the sand for Witalf just in time for Grendel’s Mom to appear again. By the end of the film it seems as if GM has been its possessor all along, and she keeps using it to lure in up-and-coming kings. It’s not exactly a McGuffin, but it does keep the people of the drama moving around it, like the gun in Lawrence of Arabia (If you fon’t know what I’m talking about, go watch that film again, and notice what happens to that gun that Lawrence’s guide on the way to Faisal’s camp covets, and how often it shows up in the narrative)
2.) Any self-respecting Monster ought to stay away from human hanitation, as a general rule. Look at Nessie. Look at any large creature in the real world. Unfortunately, Monster Flicks are only intreresting when a large beast is wreaking havoc on a large populated area, so for years responsible filmakers have been trying to provide rationale for such a beast to come into human habitation – it gets caufght and dragged there (The Lost World – the original one, King Kong, Gorgo), or it’s driven there by reproductive memory, like an eel or salmon (The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the 1998 Godzilla). Why the hell would Grendel go to a place fill of warriors and fight? This film;'s answer might have audiences giggling, but it’s comprehensible. And unique, as far as I know – Turn Down That Damned Noise!
3.) Making Grendel’s Mom (Grendel’s Mom is a MILF, without a doubt) an immortal water-demon who seduces kings and later, wittingly or unwittingly unleashing them on their fathers is an interesting take on the legend, and gives a narrative thread that neatly binds together the disparate story elements into a cohesive whole. It’s overall a cute idea, solving the dramatic problem, while simultaneously doing something interesting with Grendel’s Mom. She’s always bothered me. What kind of monster goes running to his Mommy for support after he gets his arm torn off? Previously when I’d seen her depicted, she was shown as a deformed and not-so-big Swamp Hag. Here she’s clearly something else, and far more dangerous than Grendel himself. By the way, it seemed clear to me that she was actively trying to seeduce Witalf at the end, and the movie is somewhat ambiguous about exactly what happens, although it seems likely to me that he took her up on the offer.
4.) Grendel’s Mom’s high-heel feet seem a ludicrous touch, especially in the Northern World of the nominal 5th century. But it’s not the first time suvch a figure has “natural” high heels. It wasn’t clear to me from the film (although, having gone back and looked, I see it’s there), but the Alien Queen in Cameron’s film Aliens has such “high heels” as well. I saw them on the costume on display at the Boston Museum of Science many years afgo. If you look closely at the film you can get glimpses of them.
5.) The animation didn’t bother me at all – dead eyes or uncanny valley theories notwithstanding. From the reaction of the audience around me, it didn’t bother them, either.
6.) That said, the film’s Graphic Novel roots are pretty evident. When I saw Darkman years ago, my thought was “This is why Graphic Novels don’t translate well directly into film”. Despite the fact that GNs use cinematic techniques, they’re used in different ways , and have a different impact on the printed page than on the screen. A lot of the things in that film would’ve looked great in a comic book, but looked silly and forced on the screen. Then several years of Graphic novel and comics-based filming convinced me that my initial impression was wrong, that tthese things COULD work. Now I’m leaning the other way again. No matter how realistic you can make it look, there’s something not-quite-adult about having your warrior come up and challenge Beowulf by sticking his spear within millimreters of the bridge of his nose. And i;m convinced they would’ve done it that way even without the 3-D. It’s a quintissential Comic Book shot.
The “high heels” only bothered me to the extent that the animators missed a chance at a pretty cool visual. If the “heel” had been made to look like a dragon claw it would have been organically logical and a sign of her true nature.
I’m a bit confused about Grendel and his brother. Why were they so completely different? Grendel was a monstrous mess; Beowulf’s son was a dragon.
1.) They looked impressive, and pretty much fit the bill for the limited descriptions given in the poem – Grendel was a humanoid monster-thing, and the Dragon was a Dragon (they weren’t brothers in the poem)
2.) They were making an effort to come up with something different for Grendel. They succeeded – I’ve never seen anything like the “Chewed-Over-Visible-Man-NOW-With Extra Mucus!” look of this film’s Grendel.
3.) Presumably the difference is due to different fathers, somehow, in the logic of the film.
I don’t think Beowulf’s son was a dragon per se - we see him in human guise later. I think he just inherited his mother’s shapechanging abilities. I’m guessing Grendel couldn’t shapechange because he was deformed. Might have someonething to do with the different fathers, Beowulf was a mighty hero with many exploits and had superior DNA.
Maybe with practice, Grendel’s Mom got better at the interspecies hybridization attempts…
Re: Cal Meacham’s Point 1 (reprinted here for ease of reading):
I thought this was brilliant, mythologically speaking. It was a fine example of the use of archetype to serve a story, not just to be cool.
[spoiler]The cup is, traditionally and in this story, the symbol of the feminine, the feminine Divine and the right to rule. When the king talks about it’s virtues, we’re all staring at the Queen, interpreting his words as applying to her. When the king says that Beowolf can have the cup (and we all understand he’s also giving him his wife), it’s handed to him by the Queen; later he gives the Queen’s favor, quite literally and emotionally, to the womanbeast who controls the cup and gives him her “cup” (that is, her vagina and procreation) in its stead. The dragon cup is a mythic twat. As a pagan symbol, it’s used in The Great Rite, symbolic of physical sex and of a king’s pseudo-sexual relationship with his kingdom, and enacted in Grendel’s Mother’s lair.
As this movie is obviously (although nicely subtly) concerned with the transition from paganism to Christianity, it can be considered a nice bit of Grail imagery as well.[/spoiler]
Atypical of animated movies, this one actually had a decent storyline. Rather then the usual Boy Meets Monster, Boy kills Monster, Boy Saves the Day plotline, this one turned it into a neverending cycle where the hero is cursed to destroy a monster of his own making.
That being said, I don’t think animation will ever totally replace live action. There’s subtle human elements that not even the most textured detail will capture. In one scene, the Queen plays a harp and sings a sweet melody, but there’s nothing “alive” about it. You don’t see the bones of her fingers shifting under her skin as she plucks the strings of her harp. You don’t see the wrinkles of her skin move around her lips and eyes. You don’t see the emotion of her performace. You just see a mannikin on a Disney ride.
In addition, the fight scenes looked like Gumby dolls being thrown around. You don’t see the “give” as a body hits the ground or gets hit with a pummeling fist, so you don’t wince in sympathetic pain. The movie uses motion capture for the everyday scenes, but it can’t be done for those type of action sequences, so the fights lose credibility.
I have conflicting feelings about the Grendel concept. On the one hand, I like that they portrayed him as a deformed, tortured child who can never find acceptance from the world around him, so he attacks out of futile rage. On the other hand, he’s not scary enough. He’s a big squeezy gut head, the type you find in toy stores on Halloween.