A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

Let me get this out of the way: I have never seen Robert Zemeckis’ other mo-cap movie Polar Express. That said, I didn’t get the “dead eyes” feeling from watching Beowulf. The novelty of watching this in 3-D made it a positive experience for us. The story is a well-known one - writers Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary taking a few liberties here & there to make a tidy, tight movie. As an action movie, it’s better than average. As an all CG movie, as mentioned, the 3-D aspect made it an interesting experience. Spoilers after the jump.

It takes awhile getting used to queasiness of watching a CG-movie. At the back of my mind, I keep saying I’ve seen action sequences like these on games before. The 3-D component, where things seemingly leap out of the screen, were seamlessly worked into the sequences. Unlike the 3-D version of the last Superman, the 3-D sections didn’t seem like afterthoughts. The spear coming at you on the screen actually heightened the sense of peril and so forth.

As for the computer generated actors themselves, well that’s still a bit iffy. Some of the characters look like the actors (Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie, Brendan Gleeson) while others inexplicably do not (Robin Wright-Penn, Ray Winstone, Crispin Glover). Aside from Beowulf, a mythical pre-Roman character, who takes on a mythical persona & Grendel who is a monster anyway, the other characters need not have looked like the actors that voiced them. That was distracting. And what the hell was with the high-heeled spike on Angelina Jolie/Grendel mom’s feet? Sure she’s a demon but couldn’t they just made it a hoof or didn’t include it altogether? It pulls you out of the story.

Another distracting sequence is the Austin Powers-type obsfucation of Beowulf’s private parts as he battles Grendel naked. It became inadvertently funny because Senor Powers did it for full comedic effect. They’ve already taken liberties tweaking the story, why couldn’t they just abandon that particular detail?

Overall, Beowulf is a different kind of movie-going experience. I suspect a non-3-D viewing would have a different, altogether non-positive effect on me. It does show however, 3-D movies might have a niche in this increasingly digital movie-making age.