Nov 19 2007
Beowulf!
The Lord of the Rings owes an awful lot to the epic poem Beowulf. Strange, then, that this retelling should opt for something closer to 300: warrior action over saga and heroism. It didn’t feel very epic, you know?
I appreciated the Neil Gaiman touch. It helps if you’ve read the novella at the end of his book Fragile Things, to see his own use of the characters of Grendel and his mother. They were different characters here than in the novella, but cut from the same cloth.
I also appreciated the attempt to join the stories together. If there was one point that the poem lacks (and this is where The Silmarillion really breaks down too) is that it’s a collection of heroic tales and histories, with no purpose or connecting, overarching plot. So this may not be pure Beowulf, it’s at least consistent.
Seeing it in 3D was a good laugh, though little more than a gimmick. Yeah, okay, so the spears don’t just point at the camera, they point at your nose. But once you’ve seen that, what then? I was less impressed with Bob Zemeckis’ darling motion capture. It’s just not ready yet. They weren’t quite as stiff and funny-looking as The Polar Express though, so it is getting there.
Probably worth seeing in 3D at the cinema to get an idea of the state of commercial CGI. And you might enjoy the story. But I wouldn’t hold out for being enveloped in the story.