When Beowulf begins, King Hrothgar’s wild party is disrupted by Grendel, the ultimate party pooper. Grendel wastes no time in mopping the floor with the merry-makers, who are no match for his sheer brute strength. Yet, for all his strength Grendel suffers from a case of overly sensitive hearing, thus making the raucous party noise unbearable to his poor ears (and inadvertently making the monster sympathetic to anybody who’s had to put up with an obnoxious, noisy neighbor). With so many of his people killed, King Hrothgar orders the great hall to be permanently closed, at least until a hero can answer his summons to kill Grendel once and for all.
That hero is Beowulf--which stands to reason, since the movie is named after him; if it turned out to be a guy named Bob, then it would have really been a surprise. Beowulf arrives with a boatload of big, tough men who’re all hankering for a fight. And they get it in a knock-down, dragged out brawl with Grendel one night in the great hall. But since Grendel is portrayed as being such a pitiful poor soul, you actually can’t help but feel sorry for the guy…uh, monster--whatever he’s supposed to be. Another problem is the way Grendel is designed, which isn’t very well. In short, Grendel looks like a bad video game reject. Overall, Grendel just isn’t as menacing and scary as he should have been.
And this video game look is a major problem that all the characters in Beowulf
have. Their lifeless countenance and blank, vacant stares make it hard to relate
to them. While the dragon battle that occurs later in the film is spectacular,
the camera moves are so often over the top--constantly swirling over and around
everything at a dizzying pace--that it made me wish the filmmakers had actually
dialed back on some of this stuff. An adaptation of the legendary Beowulf tale
was a great idea, especially with the special effects technology that’s
available today, but this might have been much better had it been done with live
actors against a blue screen (such as 300), instead of depending completely on
CGI to tell the entire story. The day will come when Computer Generated Imagery
will be able to handle telling a story on its own. But, judging from Beowulf,
CGI still has a few bugs to work out, first.
--SF
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