When Robert Zemeckis, whose directing credits include The Polar Express and Back to the Future, decided to bring Beowulf to the big screen, the prospect intrigued me; maybe a big budget film version would give me some love for the story. Zemeckis certainly surrounded himself with an all star cast for this adventure into the world of ancient England. Sir Anthony Hopkins plays King Hrothgar, he is joined by John Malkovich as Unferth, Ray Winstone as Beowulf, Robin Wright Penn as Queen Wealthow, Crispin Glover as Grendel, Brendan Gleeson as Wiglaf, and Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s nasty mother.
The basic story presented in the film is this: King Hrothgar who is drunk all the time, builds a merry hall to revel in his ‘greatness’ with a big party. His advisor Unferth (John Malkovich) and his Queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn) are with him when Grendel (Crispin Glover) gets very angry about all the noise and starts slashing people to death in order to stop the merriment. Because of the carnage, King Hrothgar is forced to close the hall. He sends word that great riches will be bestowed on the individual who can bring an end to Grendel’s acts of terror.
After a heated argument with Unferth, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is able to convince King Hrothgar that he is the man to get rid of the demon Grendel. The King promises Beowulf a gold chalice shaped like a dragon if he can successfully slay Grendel. Beowulf and his men successfully lure Grendel to the hall by engaging in loud singing and cheering. Beowulf rids himself of all his clothing (Beowulf’s “private parts” are not evident. I guess Zemeckis really wanted that PG-13 rating) and defeats Grendel after a lengthy battle. Beowulf is now a hero in the kingdom, but he has rankled Grendel’s demon mother (Angelina Jolie). Grendel’s mother convinces him to make a pact with her to produce a replacement for Grendel in exchange for which she will make Beowulf king. Years later, the offspring takes the form of a dragon and attacks Heorot.
I guess with Angelina Jolie around we shouldn’t be surprised that the sexuality was ratcheted up for the film version of Beowulf. Purists for the original poem may be disappointed, because in the film no man seems to go through Heorot without making a stop in Jolie’s Boudoir. Every king has slept with Jolie. While there are a few notable battles featuring swordplay, Zemeckis seemed more concerned with making the audience think about Jolie’s sexuality, by having her character appear half naked throughout most of her scenes.
Beowulf: Director’s Cut strays from the book quite liberally. Instead of having Beowulf slay Grendel’s mother, he instead produces the heir that eventually kills him. The changes in the story also make Hrothgar the father of Grendel. I would have liked to see what the filmmakers could have done within the confines of the original poem, but the film as a whole still wasn’t bad.
I was impressed by motion capture animation technique used by Zemeckis. By having actors wear motion capture suits while moving around and feeding the information from the suits into a motion capture program, the director has created very realistic looking animation. The facial expressions as well as the rest of the movements have a realism I haven’t seen before. The look of the film is very sharp.
Since I reviewed the standard edition DVD just a few months ago, the only new information in this review is how Beowulf looks on Blu-ray. Paramount’s MPEG4/AVC, BD50, 1080p, Blu-ray reproduction (in the movie’s original 2.35:1 aspect ratio) comes across with all the exacting detail and astonishing colors one might expect. The colors are deep and lush and the film is one of the finest examples of CGI animation to date. Beowulf comes with lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio. The sound is pleasant enough, but nothing spectacular.
The extras are essentially the same as those provided on the standard DVD two disc edition. The first item, “Beowulf in the Volume,” is a picture-in-picture affair that offers behind-the-scenes information via small screen inserts while the regular movie is playing. The inserts contain mainly shots of the actors and storyboards before the studio artists applied the CGI and motion-capture animation.
Next up is a series of extra material, all of it in high definition. First, is a documentary, “A Hero’s Journey: The Making of Beowulf,” twenty-four minutes, with an optional interactive feature that allows for additional trivia captions and short featurettes. Next up is “The Journey Continues,” twenty-one minutes of the behind-the-scenes featurettes included as an option on the previous documentary, with technical sounding titles: “The Volume,” “T Pose,” “What is the E.O.G.?,” “Lay of the Land,” “Givin’ Props,” “Scanners,” “Stunts and Rigs,” “Plan of Attack,” “Fight Me,” and “Baby It’s Cold Inside.” Next up are featurettes with more descriptive and self-explanatory titles: “Beasts of Burden: Designing the Creatures of Beowulf,” seven minutes; “The Origins of Beowulf,” five minutes; “Creating the Ultimate Beowulf,” two minutes; and “The Art of Beowulf,” five minutes. Then, there’s “A Conversation with Robert Zemeckis,” about ten minutes with the director taking questions from USC students; eleven deleted scenes in rough, unfinished form; and a theatrical trailer.
