THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: Boro_Bandito on 28 Oct 2007, 20:53
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Has anyone else seen trailers for this? I've been seeing them pop up from time to time for the past month and largely discounted them for being another bad translation of a classic story into a live action movie until I realized upon closer observation that it's not live action. From the commercials it looked like it to me but today while watching a marathon of Heroes on G4 the commercial popped up and I saw something strange in the facial expressions, took a closer look and it just has to be 3D animation. I'm gonna go find the site but that is some pretty damn good animating skillz.
Edit: according to the official website, its digitally enhanced live action, where I think basically the entire movie is motion capture animation.
website it www.beowulfmovie.com , has got some trailers for you to see.
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You know, I don't really want to see it for any reason other that Neil Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. I've had to read Beowulf waaaaay too many times.
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I for one did not know that it would be animated
looks cool
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I've read Beowulf so many times its not even funny, every English class from 9th to 12th grade for some reason or another required reading it, because when I switched from 9th to 10th the High school system was different, then they changed policies the next year, then when I was in 12th grade I graduated from a high school in Maryland in which the senior English class required it. I have a sneaking suspicion that had I not taken the AP exam and got college credit for English 102: Basic Composition I would have been forced to read it again.
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I've never actually read it before. It was one of the required materials at my high school, but we had such a shuffle of teachers going on when I was there that the syllabus for each class changed each year. I've always wanted to read it, though, so maybe I'll go for that this year...
Also the movie does look interesting. I was kinda hoping it would be live-action, but oh well.
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I had to read it three (THREE!) times during college. FUCK GRENDEL AND HIS STUPID ARM.
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I have not taken English in college yet, nor do I plan on it. Hooray for reading what you want!
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I haven't read it but I know my mythology well enough to have a basic idea of what the story will be. Having seen posters for this movie put up at my local cinema over the last few weeks and also having watched the trailers I can safely say that I am going to see this film. I just wish they had someone that wasn't Angelina Jolie in it. I can't fucking stand that woman.
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Did y'all read the Seamus Heaney translation? Am I the only one who thought it was cool?
Personally, I thought the whole animation thing looked like crap from the trailer - too plastic. I might see it, though, because of Neil Gaiman. It looks more like a reinterpretation than a faithful retelling.
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That translation is sitting in my back pack right now. We just finished it. Now my class is reading a book from Grendel's point of view. It's very existential, apparently.
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Blargh. Grendel. By what'shisface.
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As far as I know, it's live-action with digital enhancement added in post-production, a la 300.
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But if you look at it its so much more animated than 300 was, that was mostly live action for the Spartan soldiers, with a fuckload of greenscreen, this is even more heaped on top.
Hey, John Gardner is one of my favorite authors, and yeah, I have the Seamus Heaney translation as well as the previous one from like the 70s.
I really don't mind her all that much, and being as this is like a R-rated flick, you get to see Angelina Jolie naked. I won't have felt this creepy and wrong since the movie Hackers!
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I'm not so sure I want to see it... all that CGI makes my stomach queasy.
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Yeah, the first few times I saw it, I thought it was going to be a live action movie with some CGI, but the last preview I saw looks all CGI. All of the actors had a slightly odd computerized look about them, so I don't think it is CGI ala 300, but more like A Scanner Darkly (different style though), where they shot it live and then put stuff over the live action. I'm not sure if I like that or not.
I am excited for it though, because I like the story of Beowulf (both the epic poem and the graphic novel of it I read) and Neil Gaiman, who is awesome, is involved.
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Looks decent, I'll probably watch it at some point.
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Looks like shit. I will probably see it, but I expect it to thoroughly destroy and rape the legend of Beowulf.
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While I'll see it regardless of plot, I think I'm among the folks that think this falls into Uncanny Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley).
Just looks sorta strange to me.
EDIT: grammar mistake.
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I haven't read Beowulf. Is it any good? Would you recommend it?
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I do. Classics are good for the brain. (And I liked it, personally.)
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it looks like a highly graphical computer game.
I might still see it though, I read it once, a long time ago.
"TONIGHT WILL BE DIFFERENT!"
"I AM BEOWULF!"
vs.
"TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!"
"THIS IS SPARTA!"
That could be the same movie.
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So i've watched the trailer now. It looks like a fucking video game, but not in a good way. What is the point of this?
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You know, I don't really want to see it for any reason other that Neil Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay.
2nd
there was also a comic released based on the script as a precursor...it looks ok
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When I first saw the preview a while ago, I did some research on it and came to the conclusion it was going to suck (for reasons other than the graphics). I don't remember specifics of what bothered me, but basically it looked like it was going to be a really crappy "interpretation" of Beowulf and that just didn't appeal to me. I just did a couple quick searches though and can't figure out where I got that opinion from.
As for the justification for the CG, the IMDB FAQ includes this:
"Why is the entire movie CG, not live-action or live action+CG?:
Computer-generated images allowed the director, Robert Zemeckis, far more freedom than live-action filming would permit. Zemeckis has already made an all-CG movie, The Polar Express (2004), and knows its benefits. For this film, they include:
- camera moves that would not otherwise be possible;
- greater control over the art direction;
- greater ability to convincingly age the main character, who must grow fifty years over the course of the story;
- keeping costs down;
- images that look especially good in 3-D processes, such as IMAX or Real D."
Form your own opinions.
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I remember that movie, it tried to go for photo realistic CG as well.
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Beowulf is pretty bad ass. I actually really enjoyed the book which, in turn, makes me look forward to the movie less. I doubt I'll see it since I highly doubt anyones ability to turn that piece of literature into a good movie. It's going to be a schlocky CG action fest and you know it. This isn't 300 here. That was based on a graphic novel and a rather over the top one at that. Crazy CG worked there. It won't work in the conversion of a timeless classic.
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Eh, the idea of Beowulf is timeless, not the actual story in my opinion, because that thing is boring as hell. Maybe it'd be a little easier on me if I could understand the Old English portion of it and get the rhymes and the rhythm of it, but as it stands I had to fight to read it each time.
But just in general the true classic hero that defeats monsters of all kinds and becomes a king then slays a dragon as his last dying act is awesome, which is why I'm going to see the movie and enjoy it, because its not so much the butchering of a classic, but making it easier on the eyes and brain for my visceral gut enjoyment.
I could still be angry at all of my english teachers though.
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I saw a preview for it last night, and the animation looks pretty decent for the action, but the mouth movements are jerky and limited and the character faces are total statues. It looks like PSX cutscene animation. Also, the story is probably going to suck balls. Although, it's kind of hard to screw up a story like that...
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Angelina Jolie is playing Grendel's mom?
I'm pretty sure I feel two ways about this...actually, no - just one now. Fuck the story. And plus, have we forgotten that Neil Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay?
Maybe the animation will be watchable.
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Oh my god, it's like everyone's been dipped in plastic.
STOP SHITTING ON MY VISUAL CORTEX!!
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BEOWULF STARRING ANGELINA JOLIE REALDOLLS
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This is going to be so horrible. They made Grendel a fucking zombie. Grendel is not a goddamn zombie.
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Eh, so be it.
I generally take movies and books as separate entities, though this technically isn't a book to screen translation, Beowulf was originally an oral tradition epic poem, that was sing with the aid of instruments in Mead Halls.
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Wow, I just watched the trailer and I gotta say my initial, intensely negative impressions....have been bolstered ten fold. This looks absolutely dreadful, from the way Grendel and his mother are depicted to Beowulf's little screaming soliloquy at the trailer's end. Acting, animation, script...all of it seems even worse than I feared. This is going to be a laughably atrocious film from start to finish.
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Wow, I just watched the trailer and I gotta say my initial, intensely negative impressions....have been bolstered ten fold. This looks absolutely dreadful, from the way Grendel and his mother are depicted to Beowulf's little screaming soliloquy at the trailer's end. Acting, animation, script...all of it seems even worse than I feared. This is going to be a laughably atrocious film from start to finish.
My sentiments exactly. I saw this zombie-thing on screen and I thought: "Is that Grendel? I think it is. Man, I just died a little inside."
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you don't need to quote the person above you
anyone else feel, "This is Sparta" with the ending of the trailer?
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I thought he was going to break out in '300' lines. At at least a couple points, the way the line was spoken and the general idea of it was the exact same.
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So, my friends dragged me out to see it (I hadn't seen any of them in several weeks), and they charged an extra 3$ for the 3D glasses. The 3D part was cool and all, but I felt like it could've been expanded on. The rest of the movie save Sir Tony Hopkins was pretty much a pile of shit. I really tried to like it, and I just could not get into it.
And despite Grendel being a zombie, I think they did a decent job with it.
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I saw a take on it in The Globe & Mail which suggests it's actually a satirical work, and given that it's penned by Neil Gaiman that wouldn't surprise me. Hence Beowulf's screaming and the odd behaviours and depictions.
Not as good a satire as Beowulf & Grendel, I take it.
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Hee, King Leonidas was played by Gerard Butler, who played Beowulf in Grendel and Beowulf in 2005, and the 2007 Beowulf movie seems to be heavily influenced by 300. This makes me chuckle.
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I could see where Neil Gaiman's writing was in there, but the other screenwrite (avery or something like that) was comparatively awful. There was a ten-minute running gag with Beowulf being naked and being conveniently "covered" by swords, friends, dead people, candles, etc. There was a whole lot of bad jokes about having sex with women and things of a medieval nature. I'm pretty sure I would've been much happier if Neil Gaiman was the sole screenwriter.
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Why god, why?? The more I see/hear of this movie the more I have to restrain myself from tearing the hair out of my head in frustration. The movie looks like someone took a bunch of action figures and then decided to fuck with an essential piece of mythology until it came out looking like laughable tech demo. Bastards.
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"Let's take a gorgeous piece of 1000 year-old literature, defecate on it, put it on film, and call it a movie! Oh wait, it has to star Angelina Jolie."
EDIT - (My bad.)
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Beowulf is 1000 years old.
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im not expecting to enjoy it, but my best friend obsesses over the book so will probably drag me to see it. i hate to dissapoint her so yeah.
theres a site somewhere, called sacred texts, that has the (a version?) book on it. i keep meaning to read it but i doubt id like it
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The rest of the movie save Sir Tony Hopkins was pretty much a pile of shit.
You certainly don't hear that statement very often.
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That translation is sitting in my back pack right now. We just finished it. Now my class is reading a book from Grendel's point of view. It's very existential, apparently.
Well, Simone de Beauvoir was the ugliest philosopher to ever live...
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I just saw it today. I was disappointed. It was really shallow and cheesy, but I expected that, and went into it thinking that this one would just all be about visual flair, so I was looking forward to that. I saw it in 3D, so that was pretty cool. But they spent to long trying to make it a good deep movie! There was so much that was so cheesy about it. Not even fun action movie cheesy, just embarassing. I already knew that it would turn the classic story into a big messy action movie with lots of visual effects, so I wish that they had accepted that fate and put their all into making it as visually exciting as they could. The moments that WERE like that were really cool, but there were too many scenes that made me bored and annoyed. If you're going to ruin a good story, ruin it with something that's at least exciting. I'd rather watch a bad action movie than a cheesy soap opera-ish movie.
Cool part though was how at some points, Grendel was speaking middle English.
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Was he? That's wierd, because Beowulf isn't in Middle English.
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Old English!
Is the correct one. I'm pretty sure.
Did I make another mistake?
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That's the one. Middle english looks like this:
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
Whilst Old English looks like this:
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme,
þæt hine on yld eft gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten; lofdædum sceal
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon.
Him ða Scyld gewat to gescæphwile
felahror feran on frean wære.
Hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe,
swæse gesiþas, swa he selfa bæd.
Basically, any fairly well educated person can read Middle English (especially if you have some French or German). Old English, on the other hand, is pretty much an ancient German dialect.
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Yeah. I knew the difference, but I've never actually read Beowulf and don't know too much about it. So I got a little confused...
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I think it was sort of a blend of old and middle English, actually...there were a few words he spoke which were definitely not in anyway Germanic. But yeah, I guess it gets some points for that. All my dumb friends were like "why is he talking funny" and "he must be some kind of retarded inbred or something".
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I wouldn't be surprised if Crispin Glover demanded that he be able to speak in Old English. That is, if he wasn't chosen for Grendel after the script was written.
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Canterbury Tales verse.
Middle English is fun to speak. Especially Chaucer.
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I don't know why so many of you hated it so much.
In the time the story was written/ transcribed there really was very little character development used in stories. And if you think about it, Beowulf was probably one of the first "action heroes", so it makes sense that it was an action film. And the cheesey dialogue about violating virgins and all that... that was par for the course back then.
They HAD to change things from the original. If they did a 100% faithful adaptation, it would be a VERY boring film.
Grendel a zombie? I don't know where you're getting that. For me, he was nigh on terrifying. That scream... and the pulsating eardrum... drool... and all the carnage at the begining. From what I remember, there never really was a good description of what Grendel looked like, so they just took liberties.
I love how you saw Grendel's mother as a monster only in reflections... it gave her a lot more mystery and made her creepier.
*spoiler*
I also love how they linked the parts with grendel and his mother to the dragon. And the whole thing where Hrothgar was Grendel's father and Beowulf was the dragon's... a brilliant choice (I would like to think Neil thought that up, but probably not).
*end spoiler*
the 3D was cool at first, but I sort of forgot it was there after a while. Oh, and the Coraline teaser trailer? It teased me TOO much... if you don't know what it is, you really don't get any idea from the trailer. But I can't wait to see it.
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I also love how they linked the parts with grendel and his mother to the dragon. And the whole thing where Hrothgar was Grendel's father and Beowulf was the dragon's... a brilliant choice (I would like to think Neil thought that up, but probably not).
What? That's completely absurd.
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I would like to see (and ridicule) how they pulled that plot twist off.
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Grendel is supposed to be the spawn of Cain and the dragon protects a treasure from a civilization that preceded Beowulf's Geats.
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i'm aware of that. all i'm saying is, having two completely detached plots like that would seem out of place in the movie. so, i like how they conected the two.
you guys are acting like the book was a seamlessly crafted masterpiece to begin with... it was transcribed from pre-christian oral tradition... which probably had counless different versions, then the transcriber(s) added christian bits... then all but one copy of it was lost, and even then, it was partially burned... so what if they took liberties? it's an entertaining movie. if you want the exact story as we have it, read the book.
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i'm aware of that. all i'm saying is, having two completely detached plots like that would seem out of place in the movie. so, i like how they conected the two.
you guys are acting like the book was a seamlessly crafted masterpiece to begin with... it was transcribed from pre-christian oral tradition... which probably had counless different versions, then the transcriber(s) added christian bits... then all but one copy of it was lost, and even then, it was partially burned... so what if they took liberties? it's an entertaining movie. if you want the exact story as we have it, read the book.
Oh....I thought you were being sarcastic when you said you loved that part. Trying to make the plot coherent is fine but taking such absurd liberties as Grendel being the father of the dragon (that seems to be what your post said and I still hope I'm reading it wrong) is fairly insane and, to be kinda blunt, stupid.
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I read Beowulf for fun nearly a decade ago. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie.
I like Zemekis, I think he's a pretty good director, I just hope he stays away from Quantum Mechanics and time paradoxes.
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I'm not entirely sure how you got that, but if that is in fact what he's saying Grendel was definitely not the father of the dragon.
What do you mean Hrothgar was Grendel's father? or that Beowulf was the dragon's father? What? Grendel is descended from Cain, and the way it goes in the 1960's book Grendel, the dragon is as old as time, knows all time, including his own death, and gave Grendel his power of not being able to be hurt by any sword. If they wanted coherence and connectivity, they should have gone with that.
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I mis-typed. I meant to type "Beowulf was the father of the dragon" in disbelief because that is indeed what the post says: "the whole thing where Hrothgar was Grendel's father and Beowulf was the dragon's." Correct me if I'm wrong but...this is ridiculous.
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I'm disappointed in Neil Gaiman. I liked Stardust a lot and this sounds like a step back from the potential shown in Stardust.
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Gaiman wasn't the only screenwriter, and it kinda shows. I wouldn't mind it's negligence to the original story (which I believe was Gaiman's intention), if it weren't for all the crap that was thrown in there quite clearly by the other guy. Gaiman wouldn't write in a ten-minute running gag about Beowulf being naked and conveniently 'covered' by candles, swords, food, furniture, people, etc.
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That scene kinda makes you wonder how many times the writers watched The Simpson's Movie.
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Honestly I thought this film's 'unique' production style was utterly pointless. 'We motion captured these actors performing these entire scenes and then computer animated them.'
...WHY?
Quite apart from which, I don't actually think the animation looks very good. It's not human enough to look realistic, and it's not computery enough to just look computery.
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Wait wait wait, guys I cleared up the whole "how is Beowulf the dragon's father?" thing. Really it's quite simple. So, you see, instead of killing Grendel's mother, Beowulf just has lots and lots of sex with her. She makes him, you see. Plus she can shape shift. Obviously the kid of a He-man-esque Norse warrior and a really horny shape shifting monster/woman thing would be a dragon. I'm glad it makes sense after all.
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I just figured that since the mom is a demon, most demons can shape-shift anyway, and we were specifically shown that she can shape-shift, that it would follow that her offspring could shape-shift as well. We don't exactly know that Beowulf's child was a dragon; what we know is that the creature was in the form of a dragon. If you're planning on doing some serious damage, you take the form of something huge that can fly and breathe fire, right?
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Only if you had some industrial-strength throat lozenges back home.
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I really enjoyed what they did with the plot. Here's why:
1. Beowulf was a believable character. I mean, obviously he was just a big dumb action hero, but in this movie (unlike in the poem) he actually acted like a human being to a certain extent. His flaws made him real.
2. The symbolic link between Hrothgar's (lack of) majesty and Grendel's appearance, and between Beowulf's renown and the dragon's power, was really cool. I quite like the way they tied those two formerly unrelated plot points together and completely reinvented the nature of the myth.
3. The climactic battle was freaking cool.
4. The way they presented Wiglaf was perfect.
It basically was just a moving version of a really fucking awesome graphic novel revision of the Beowulf story. I mean, it's just a comic book in movie form. But it was a comic book I'd definitely read.
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I thought the visuals were gorgeous, actually.
On the other hand, I ended up seeing it with my mom because all my friends live in different parts of the state, and it's kind of hard to enjoy any movie when she keeps poking me and asking me to explain the plot. Especially since I've never read Beowulf, and I only know enough of the story to tell that they were making half of it up.
Also? That visual gag where they kept blocking his junk?
My mom was sitting next to me and rooting for them to show something already. Listening to your mom talk abut a CGI figure like he's a male stripper is seriously uncanny.