Beowulf

I gotta say, Robert Zemeckis has a very strange slate of movies he's done. He's done great movies like Forrest Gump and Back to the Future. He also did Flight, a very different movie from both of those... and then he got into motion capture and CGI. One of the stranger results of that was a movie called Beowulf.

I don't know the story of Beowulf. I honestly don't know how closely Zemeckis was trying to get the story to the original poem. I have a lot of Classics and English Professors that would probably say this movie is the bastardization of the Old English Poem.

Beowulf takes place in Denmark, in 507 AD. Beowulf (played by Ray Winston) and his band of merry men arrive because they've heard of the monster Grendel (voiced by Crispin Glover) who has been terrorizing the lands of King Hrothgar (played by Anthony Hopkins). He comes, as most old legend heroes do, to slay the monster and seek glory and fortune.

 The really brief summary of this film is, Beowulf comes, fights Grendel. Everyone is happy... until Grendel's mother kills a lot of people. Beowulf goes to kill Grendel's mother but instead has sex with her. A curse passes to Beowulf, he becomes king. Years pass, his and Grendel's mother's spawn comes back as a dragon, Beowulf kills the dragon, but dies in the process. Its a really straight forward story with a lot of kick ass action and testosterone, chest beating manliness to go around. I do have to admit, it is pretty cool when he goes off and yells, "I AM BEOWULF!" right after a rouse with Grendel where he's stark naked.

But I know what they're doing.

This movie came out in 2007. And what might you ask came out barely a year prior? A little manly film with a little bit better of a catchphrase...

Yeah... suddenly this movie makes a lot of sense.

Beowulf was a strange spawn, trying to make money off of the phenomena that my buddy Zack Snyder had created with 300.

But hey, what's wrong with another hardcore action flick like 300? Men need their testosterone filled nights. Even if the film isn't that great, it could be another movie you put in with the guys and bask in the manliness right?

Well... that would be if the film was at least a little bit good.

Let's be clear, the movie isn't awful. I've seen worse films. But its just a confusing mess that its a little hard to put this on the level of 300. 300 was at least straight forward. Persians are coming, 300 Spartans kick some ass. Spartans die in a fiend of glory.

Beowulf has strange written all over it and its just kind of confusing. In many ways, the movie does play out like a Greek Tragedy. Beowulf is played like a tragic hero who gets everything he wants, but because of his tragic flaw, everything comes crashing down. I'm sure the poem has some kind of theme to it, a theme that could be really interesting if put to film... if it was developed at all.

Beowulf's tragic flaw is his weakness for women. Its the flaw that gives him the curse set on by Grendel's mother, and its the flaw that eventually leads to his downfall. I realized that upon a more scrutinized watch of it. There is a hint of it... but then there's more blood, guts, and implied sex scenes. The reason 300 was so popular was because it was a movie you didn't have to think about. You just had to watch as scantily clad men pierced their long spears into other men... okay maybe there's some gay undertones to it but it doesn't matter

I AM MAN HEAR ME ROAR!

The weird part about Beowulf is that it doesn't quite know if it wants to be 300 or Shakespeare. The fact of the matter is, you can't do both. This is the movie that proves that.

What hurts this movie and its attempt to be 300 is the fact that the movie is rated PG-13. Granted its an R-ish PG-13 but PG-13 nonetheless. Therefore despite all the blood and gore, you can still tell the movie can't go all the way. 

Furthermore, I was halfway convinced that Shrek was going to pop out at some point in the movie the way the motion capture animation looked. 

Its not totally that the motion capture was horrible, it just didn't really make sense if the movie was marketed as the new 300. Its kind of like my Atlantis: The Lost Empire review, who was this movie actually for? Kids? No its too gory and has a lot of adult themes even though they can't show everything.

Teenagers? Maybe, but there's a good possibility that teenagers want to get away from animation at this point in their lives. 

Adults? Then why make it animated? Why not just do a live action version of this story with motion capture put in it like they did with Gollum in Lord of the Rings. 

The other thing about the animation is that its not exactly state of the art anymore. I could be wrong but I for some reason remember Beowulf being praised for its animation, that it was something totally new and apparently looked really good in 3D. (I saw it in 3D, I wasn't incredibly impressed) Well now the movie just looks strangely filmed, especially if you're not watching it in 3D, and I can't say that the film has aged very well as far as the motion capture goes. Again, its not horrible, its just not very memorable. 

So Beowulf basically suffers from the same problem I can see Avatar suffering from in years to come. Everyone went to see the visuals and were deprived of a comprehensive, good story. Therefore, when the visuals don't hold up, what do you have left?

There weren't a lot of saving graces of this movie. One of them I think was some of the performances. While the characters weren't great, some of the actors did a good job, these include Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright, and of course

Angelina Jolie... hot damn

Frankly I think for many people, the highlight of this movie was motion capture Angelina Jolie, pretty much in her prime, seducing Beowulf with only a little bit of gold stuff hiding her assets. But really take that out of the movie, what do you have with this film?

You have a bruting traditional hero figure whose archetype of being heroic and not necessarily a good person as long as he can fight and kill monsters has been outdated for a long time now. You have a cast that avoided the source material like the plague, and the main fight of the movie, between Beowulf and Grendel is actually kind of uncomfortable when you think about it.

I have to give Crispin Glover credit, he does actually learn some kind of ancient text for this film, so much that you can't really understand what he's saying. Grendel turns out to be a little bit of a tragic figure, especially when you figure out his backstory and how he's the spawn of Grendel's mother and King Hrothgar. 

But when you look beyond the massacre he does in the beginning, you have to ask, why does he do it? Well the noise hurts him. Yeah murder probably isn't the acceptable way of doing things but you can obviously tell that Grendel doesn't have the cognitive abilities of normal people, who can blame him when he had the genes of human and whatever the hell kind of demon Angelina Jolie is suppose to be. In essence, Beowulf is beating up a mentally disabled kid and we're suppose to beat our chests and cheer when he yells "I AM BEOWULF!". I'm sorry I can't do it. 

300 has its parts where it doesn't exactly show the disabled in the best light but its not like they beat the shit out of those people. Beowulf just does it in a manner that doesn't have the best taste to it. I didn't feel good after watching Beowulf kill Grendel. 

Again, there was a chance to really say a lot of things in this film. It could have been a retelling of the Old English poem but really showing the brutality of "heroes" back in the day. It could have been a retelling of a tragedy and how Beowulf's ego and pride brings about his downfall. There's a lot of shit that could have happened in this movie but instead it went the easy route and tried to rip off a movie that was just clearly superior to it and did the mindless violence better. I'm sorry Zemeckis, Snyder does it better. (That's a weird sentence I wasn't planning on writing...)

Overall, Beowulf could have been a lot more if somebody had put at least a little bit more time into it and developed something out of the mess of gore and blood. Instead what we got was a 300 rip off with a lot of unnecessary jump scares (I didn't really mention that did I, yeah lots of random parts where things jump out at you, I don't need to see that in an action flick), and just a down right not good movie. It wasn't the worst thing I've seen all week but it definitely wasn't very good. 

But what do you think? Do you think making Beowulf into a CGI action horror movie was a good idea... no that's a horrible idea, nobody should ever think that's a good idea. Comment and Discuss below! Also shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 on Twitter and Follow me to get updates on the blog with new movies and movie news as often as I can get it up there. 

I'll leave you with this. I'm playing a lot of Skyrim lately, Skyrim is kind of like Beowulf... here's an honest trailer of Skyrim. CONNECTIONS! Enjoy!