I liked it quite a bit. I thought a lot of it was very tongue-in-cheek, and I think a lot of that was missed by the audience we saw it with. For example:
When he tells the story of the swimming race, he’s all, “Uh, and then… and then there were sea monsters! Yeah! Sea monsters!” And that “Wilson from Home Improvement” stuff with the nude Beowulf was clearly supposed to be funny.
I think too many people took the whole thing too seriously. However, I still think the CGI movement is just too smooth. The rest of it looked good, but people never quite move right in this stuff.
Hands were my issue with the animation. They never quite seem to move properly, or grasp things appropriately. The two instances I remember are when Hrothgar suddenly embraces Beowulf, and when GMILF is dissolving the sword. In the former, Beowfulf’s hand just doesn’t move properly on Hrothgar’s back. In the latter, she didn’t grasp as though she were dissolving the sword, but I can’t quite explain why.
1.) The whole “Christianity vs. Paganism” thing is inevitable, since it’s clearly present in the original poem, which was written in a Christian era, but concerns much older story matter. But I couldn’t help flashing back to the 1982 film Dragonslayer, which had handled the same issue, including the spectacular final battle with a fire-breathing, town-destroying, flying dragon much earlier.
2.) Another earlier film this brought to mind was John Boorman’s **Excalibur[/B. In that film, Boorman rather heavy-handedly indicated the presence of Magic by illuminating the persons or object concerned with green lighting. I couldn’t help imagining some stagehand crawling around just out-of-shot with a green lamp when you had something like Excalibut being pulled from the throne, or Merlin doing some feat of magic. This film does the same thing, only with Gold instead of Green. Since it’s animated , the Gold could be sprinkled throughout the scene, so I didn’t get the sense of that offscreen gaffer. But the bright Gold still stands out like a sore thumb against the drab browns and greys of the scene, calling excess attention to itself, and showing up whe n you wouldn’t think it necessary. So Angelina Jolie’s naked GMILF literally drips with gold, and the Dragon is gold, and the beach Beowulf falls on at the end is sprinkled with gold, and the drinking horn is gold squared, so golden that it goddam glows in the dark. Even Grendel has gold tinges o n his scales.
He could shapechange a little bit: he shrinks when Beowulf start beating him, and shrivels up to child-sized after he dies.
WhyNot: Cool insight into the mythical functions of the cup. It ties neatly into Beowulf and Hrothgar not having any (human) children, too.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. I’d read a lot (mostly here) about how the animation didn’t work, but there were only a few scenes that struck me as particularly mechanical. The uncanny valley thing I didn’t notice at all. That is to say, the characters were often not as expressive as a human would have been, but I never found it creepy or off-putting. Must be a legacy of a childhood spent watching videogame cutscenes.
I was really surprised by John Malkovich’s character. They seemed to be setting him up as a villain for the first half of the movie: he beats his servant, he tries to undermine the hero, and he’s a (Boo! Hiss!) Christian. I was pleasantly surprised that he turned out not be a villain at all, just kind of a jerk, and never because of his beliefs. He even turned out to be the voice of conscience by the end. A very neat subversion of what I thought at first would be a stock “evil vizier” cliche.
Did it take anyone else the longest time to realize that Wealthow was, in a “past life”, Buttercup?
So, my friends and I were waiting for the credits, talking about how we thought the movie was interesting but had “problems”, etc etc (including our English major who complained about who actually kills the dragon and me, who was complaining about how the Anglo-Saxon poetry being chanted in the meadhall should have alliterated and not rhymed).
Movie Screen: Executive Producers: … (and) Neil Gaiman
Us: …OOOOHHHHHH.
Uh…I plead not having paid attention to the opening credits. I was distracted by the two eight-year-old children sitting in front of us. I was definitely cringing on their behalf by the time Grendel showed up. Definitely not the sort of thing I would take my kids to, if I had any.
What was the deal with the Balefire, anyway? Did he draw power from it? That’s certainly what it seemed like, but I don’t remember it from the poem (though, admittedly, there’s a whole lot I don’t remember there) or any similar lore. Thanks.
