[singlepic=526,150,350] Beowulf is the newest adap­ta­tion do the epic poem of yore. It’s rather lib­eral with its inter­pre­ta­tion, and as near as I can tell, also adds new and unre­lated sec­tions to the plot.

I tried to watch this movie, and take it seri­ously. Hon­estly I did, and I am sorry to every­one who was around me who was also trying to watch the movie seri­ously. I didn’t mean to laugh at it so much, I really didn’t! But when a man is naked for over half of the film, has ques­tion­able (at best) dialog, and so much over the top fight­ing that a Die Hard fan would squeel with joy… well it’s just too much for me to try and take seri­ously. For Christ’s sake, he was naked for an entire por­tion of the movie! He is some how imper­vi­ous to cliff walls, has the most un-​interesting voice actor I’ve heard in a long time. The start of the movie hon­estly had me think­ing that Shrek was going to burst through the door at any moment and let one rip.

The big prob­lem with this movie is that it was made up to be epic. I’m talk­ing 300-esque epic. I was expect­ing 2 hours of retarded amounts of fight­ing, scream­ing, and sword-​swinging. What I got were two sub-​par fight scenes, a wretched sto­ry­line to tie them together, and some of the most 1-dimensional char­ac­ters I have ever wit­nessed. Beowulf could have been cut down to about 15 min­utes. 10 if you took out all the story and talk­ing, and just went straight to the fight­ing. It would have basi­cally been the following:

• Mon­ster busts in and throws down. People run away.
• Beowulf enters from the other side of the room. Epic choir music with a solid fight­ing drum beat
  
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Some­thing explodes, pos­si­bly the mead caul­dron.
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Slow motion of a single drop of water falling from the roof and hit­ting the ground between the two
• 6 min­utes of fight­ing ensues here, com­plete with back-​flips, wall runs, 4 story-​tall leaps, and enough sound effects to make an audio­phile cream.
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Beowulf: “I am Ripper… Tearer… Slasher… Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Dark­ness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength… and Lust… and Power! I AM BEOWULF!”
• Mon­ster: *SCREAM*
• Beowulf chops off the arm of the mon­ster
• More explo­sions as the music cli­maxes.
• Beowulf: *SCREAM*
• Fade to black and end with a lone violin.

Now repeat that with a dragon, and you’re done. Simple. No use­less junk to screw it up.

To the movies credit, the ani­ma­tion was fairly impres­sive and from what I’m told the 3D ver­sion of it is amaz­ingly well done. I think they spent a little too much time making the water look real, and not enough on the people in it, but that’s my per­sonal opin­ion. It was also neat to see that they mapped all of the voice-​actors faces and grafted them into their CG coun­ter­parts. It was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment that I think they pulled off rather well. I can see this becom­ing more and more common in the coming years.

Watch it in 3D for the value added, or watch it with a lot of alco­hol in your system. Avoid it otherwise.

3/10