November 17, 2007
Critic At Large: Beowulf
The sight of Angelina Jolie's curvaceous and digitized naked form emerging from a murky pool will probably never rival other touchstones of geek iconography like, say, Princess Leia in her golden bikini. But you can bet your entire collection of action figures that that particular scene from Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis' retelling of the the old-school epic poem, will be replayed frame-by-frame on the DVD players of adolescent boys (and probably a substantial number of girls) for years to come.
As a story, the film works just fine. Screenwriter Neil Gaiman has taken a few liberties with the original, but it's still a satisfying tale of a flawed hero batting demons both literal and metaphorical. As an example of motion-capture technology's ability to mimic real-life actors, the film is less successful. The uncanny valley effect here is perhaps less noticeable than in previous films of this type, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a very long cutscene from a video game. I have no doubt that digitally-rendered human actors (a different breed than the Gollums and anthropomorphized bees of the cinematic world) will eventually achieve the realism filmmakers are seeking, but Beowulf reminds us that we're not quite there yet.
However, the technology is quite capable of giving realism to Angelina Jolie's ass. My goodness.
Posted by wintermute2_0 at November 17, 2007 09:20 PM
Comments
I'm not sure, Mark. After I saw a commercial for it where you have Beowulf screaming into the camera "I.... AM..... BEOWULF!" in such an obvious ripoff of 300, I suddenly found myself losing interest.
Posted by: Charles at November 18, 2007 01:16 PM
All that Beowulf stuff made me yawn at school and caused some desperately longing for the school bell that announced the end of the afternoon. So now, as an adult, I would have to be paid a lot if s.b. would want me to watch this film.
Mieke.
Posted by: Mieke Verstraete at November 18, 2007 04:08 PM
I enjoyed the movie and thought the 3D was extremely well done. It was good fun and was a great excuse for me to eat too much popcorn and drink a bucket of pop.
Posted by: Jacqueline at November 23, 2007 05:59 PM