By Kofi Outlaw
If you’ve ever been in a high school English class, chances are you’ve read the English epic poem “Beowulf” before. However, that sprawling text with the funny words in it probably failed to give you the jolt you get from watching BEOWULF, the CGI animated, 3-D epic from director Robert Zemmicks.
For those who never made it to high school English class, “Beowulf” the poem described the heroic exploits of Geat warrior Beowulf, who answered Danish king Hrðgar’s call for a hero to rid his great mead (beer) hall Heorot of the monster, Grendel. In the poem Beowulf won three battles: first against Grendel, then against Grendel’s mother, a water demon, finally a third battle against the Wyrm, a serpentine dragon that mortally wounded Beowulf, and set his great legacy in stone.
The movie script, by famed comic book auteur and novelist Neil Gaiman (SANDMAN) and former Tarantino-collaborator Roger Avery, took a bit of liberty with its source material. The film manipulated the basic structure of the poem to craft a deeper story where Beowulf (Ray Winstone) kills Grendel, only to be seduced by the monster’s demon mother (she is Angelina Jolie after all,) who placed a curse upon Beowulf, one that ultimately led him into the fatal battle against the dragon. None of the key elements or themes of the poem were really lost in this Hollywood “remix”—in fact, some of the more insightful points about Beowulf the man, which the poem could only hint at, were given room to breathe on the screen. And while the film did slow down in the middle, it eventually picked up steam again to deliver a pretty spectacular climax.
Speaking of spectacular, the visual effects were definitely that. CGI animation has gotten a fairly bad wrap every time it’s been applied to any genre other than cartoons. FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRIT WITHIN still gives me nightmares. To Robert Zemmicks’ credit, watching those CGI characters was most often like watching real actors playing their roles. After about ten minutes, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and John Malkovich truly were up on that screen, acting, as far as I was concerned. This will be either very good, or very bad for actors down the line.
More breathtaking than the character designs was the scenery and set pieces. The world of the film felt real and textured; it carried you across the gap between real and imaginary as well as any actual landscape or set piece ever filmed. In short, if George Lucas wanted those STAR WARS prequels to be more CGI, he should’ve committed himself the way Zemmicks did. And he should’ve shot it in 3-D.
As to the sometimes hokey, sometimes awesome (MONSTER HOUSE) gimmick of digital 3-D, let’s just say that BEOWULF falls into both categories, though more often the latter. There were 3-D shots and sequences that were obviously there just for “oooo’s” and “aaaahhh’s,” like a sequence where the camera followed a rat through the ceiling of a hut, trailed it as it was snatched by a hawk, which then flew off the screen and into your face, only to disappear into the distance. Sure it was contrived, extraneous and unnecessary, but it was still pretty freaking sweet. And that is both the strength and weakness of the 3-D gimmick: it makes for some great moments, but without it does the film—the way its shot, the arrangement of the scenes—hold up to conventional critique? In BEOWULF I would say no. One thing that is certain though: the 3-D effect definitely made me appreciate the intricacy and beauty of the set pieces that much more. Drafty castles, dark caves, turbulent seas and monsters chilling enough to give a child nightmares—the medieval age definitely came alive in a way the poem failed to inspire.
BEOWULF is far from perfect. What this film really represents is a new benchmark for what CGI can do with more dramatic, adult material. As I said before, this will either be very good, or very bad for Hollywood in the future. While I like the idea of unrestrained storytelling, the idea of actors who never seem to age, and whose bodies are always flawless, seems rather creepy to me. On the other hand, after watching the sequence of Beowulf battling a dragon as flames burst off the screen and licked at my face, the words “pretty freaking sweet,” have resonated in my brain since. It should be interesting to see how high James Cameron next sets the bar, when his “photorealistic” CGI and live action 3-D sci-fi epic AVATAR drops in summer 2009.