Producer and director Robert Zemeckis applies his experience with advanced motion-capture animation in THE POLAR EXPRESS with a visually appealing and gutsy big-screen rendition of the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem “Beowulf.” It features A-list talents like Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich yet the real star is production designer Doug Chiang and his incredible visualizations.
An action-packed script by sci-fi author Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary (SILENT HILL) comes closer to matching the original poem than previous feature-film adaptations including the B-grade BEOWULF (1999) starring Christopher Lambert and Iceland’s BEOWULF & GRENDEL (2005), an unsuccessful attempt at a more realistic interpretation.
Beowulf (voiced by Ray Winstone) is a heroic warrior of antiquity who arrives in what is now Denmark to slay the monster Grendel, responsible for crashing a party in the meeting hall of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and brutally killing many of his warriors. After Beowulf succeeds in mortally wounded the beast by tearing its arm off, its mother (Angelina Jolie) retaliates, forcing Beowulf to confront her in her watery lair. This is the point where this version wanders away from the original story. Instead of killing Grendel’s mother and returning to his homeland to be crowned king and fight a random dragon, Beowulf is seduced by her, handed Hrothgar’s crown and eventually battles his bastard son, now a rampaging dragon, in order to protect his people.
The film was originally designed for viewing in 3-D on an IMAX screen. No doubt, it would have been quite the spectacle. Even on a home screen in regular 2-D, BEOWULF is extremely eye-catching. CGI characters and environments are photo-realistic and occasionally indistinguishable from reality. Advanced motion capture technology reveals every facial tick and body movement. The main limitations appear when characters perform exaggerated movements such as flips where less than ideal CG animation is applied in place of straight motion capture. As good as the renders are, the film still suffers from the same soulless qualities that has made other photo-realistic CG animation films like Square’s FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (2001) difficult to get into. That said, fantastic art direction, competent voice acting and appropriately grim action goes a long way in keeping the film entertaining on a surface level at least.
It’s unbelievable that the film managed to only get a PG-13 rating. It may not prominently feature the F-word as BEOWULF & GRENDEL does but it contains extremely graphic violence where bodies are ripped to pieces with blood and guts flying everywhere. In addition, there is a lot of partial nudity and sexually suggestive content. Much like HEAVY METAL, this is mature-themed animation for adults.
Action sequences are plentiful and very well arranged. Because the film is animated and intentionally has a stylized look not unlike 300, Zemeckis has full license to vividly produce anything suggested in the original poem and even take things a bit further without alienating the viewer. The plot may have been altered but the spirit of the poem definitely lives on in striking scenes of brutality and epic-scale battles. Looking at it, I’m uncertain if a live-action version could have ever been equal to the task even with unlimited funds. Then again, this basically is THE VIKINGS, 300 and REIGN OF FIRE rolled into one. One thing is for sure, the line between animation and live-action just got a lot thinner. This brand of motion capture is taking the old rotoscope idea as seen in Ralph Bakshi’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) to a whole new level.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Beowulf (2007) • Denmark • dragon • revenge
