Beowulf

Review by Jason Gaston

It’s been leaps and bounds since I first talked about CGI completely replacing real actors. It was during my review of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that I mentioned the movie’s importance and predicted that one day, the line between CGI and real life would be forever blurred.

My friends that day… eh, it’s still not here but it’s getting closer and closer as evidenced by Beowulf, the modern day interpretation of the unbelievably old heroic epic. The animation and CGI isn’t dead-on quite yet, but I kid you not there were moments I forgot I was watching a glorified cartoon and thought I was watching a live-action epic.

Now, I’m one of a very rare breed in that not only have I read Beowulf, but I’m also very much in love with it. For one thing, it’s easy to see how Beowulf was the original superhero… the speed of The Flash, the strength of Superman, the swimming ability of Aquaman… but I’m also an English teacher and it kind of comes with the territory. It’s fun to read the story about the “perfect” Geat and how he slaughters two related monsters and one unrelated one.

Of course, you would think that this would color my judgment about this movie that does, admittedly, play with the story making all three chapters related. You would be wrong, though. You’re wrong and you’re a terrible person who makes baby puppies cry! Personally, I was pretty taken in by the reinterpretation of the legend. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that making Grendel’s mother a seductress was a work of genius.

I’ve no problem with playing with a story as long as the ideas you insert are good ones. Let’s face it, students, bringing Beowulf to the big screen as a faithful unwavering interpretation would be next to impossible. We don’t like perfect characters unless he’s nailed to a tree and wearing a crown of thorns. We don’t like the randomness of a dragon suddenly showing up, we like things to be related.

And finally, one fact we often overlook… large portions of Beowulf are gone. Lost. Vamoose. The entire book is so old that it's probably dog-eared with coffee stains. We don’t even know how he defeated the dragon, for Odin’s sake!

The new movie is just fine. I loved the animation even if they haven’t gotten photorealism quite right… the skin looks too much like rubber and the eyes just seem dead. Still, it is a sight. In long shots, it looks real. I’m not going to throw in cheap and egotistical jabs about how my keen eyes caught flaws or any of that bull, it looked real from a distance. The close-ups killed it, but the long shots were quite stunning.

Something else that killed the realism of the movie were all of the crazy camera tricks that the CGI environment afforded the filmmakers. Yeah, it’s cool for a camera to track a spear and get within an inch of it and follow it to Beowulf’s neck, but in doing so all you’re reminded of is the fact that you’re watching a cartoon.

Still, I can’t knock it. Despite the animation and directorial mulligan, it’s an outstanding achievement by itself. I’m not saying that it’s perfect by any means… the writing is pretty atrocious in places and I do mean atrocious. I know that the writers were trying to capture Beowulf’s headstrong and cocksure nature, but when spoken it sounds very ridiculous.

It looks ridiculous in places as well. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Beowulf chooses to fight Grendel in the nude. I understand his reasoning for it (he wants to fight Grendel on Grendel’s terms – no sword, no shield, no pants) but the fight ends up being a thing of comedy. I’m not sure if this was intentional comedy or not, but the Austin Powers style of hiding Beowulf’s little Viking behind smoke and carefully placed props while he fights a monster – or rapes a monster, I’m not sure – is the funniest thing I’ve seen all year.

Other times, the writing is pretty strong and the action is pretty strong. I’ve been saying for seven years that the CGI and live action barrier was going to come down and today I’ve witnessed another kink in the wall. Beowulf may not be great cinema, but it’s beautiful and technologically impressive and that’s got to count for something.