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esrblog and I decided it might be fun to check out the new CGI movie "Beowulf" tonight. Since his vision lacks stereopsis and he, therefore, cannot see 3D effects, we decided to see the regular, non-3D version.

It was an ill omen that the theater was empty except for ourselves and three adolescents, but I figured that was accounted for by the 10:30 p.m. showing time and the fact that the picture is, after all, based on an ancient Anglo-Saxon narrative poem. However, that wasn't the reason for the lack of interest. The reason was that it was bloody awful. So awful that we walked out about halfway through the movie--something I haven't done in more than a decade.

The only good news about this picture is that some of the CGI effects were spectacular. A lot of the skin textures looked right, even in closeups (of which there were many). Most of the humans, though not all, avoided the "uncanny valley" effect a lot of the time.

The bad news...requires more detail, and for that I will employ an LJ cut, just in case any of you still want to see the movie after reading this far.

The bad news is that except for the unusually good CGI texture effects with skin, leather, and a few other substances, there is no good news. The movie lacked any redeeming entertainment value in almost every other respect. Allow me to itemize:

1. Supposedly, the CGI was done via motion capture technology. This worked pretty well when a scene involved individuals moving at relatively slow speeds and being seen in isolation, or with only a few characters nearby. However, for fight scenes, which involve swift, variable action, and for crowd scenes (where every person moves a bit differently) the result looked oddly stylized and slow. The opening scene, which features a rowdy drinking bout in King Hrothgar's hall, looked uncannily like a medieval-themed video game.

2. The movie claims at the very beginning to be set in sixth century Denmark (C.E. 504, to be precise), but the clothing, objects and other visuals were pure medieval mystery meat. On the rare occasions where an item of clothing or adornment was based on a real historical artifact, that artifact turned out to be from a different time period; I noticed a necklace (prominently worn by Hrothgar's queen) based recognizably on a 7th century Anglo-Saxon grave find, a 10th century Viking cup, and a harp of a shape that would not appear until the early Middle Ages. Verbal anachronisms abounded as well. For example, there were at least two references to Iceland in the hour we watched, even though Iceland would not be settled for nearly five hundred years after the setting of the movie. There was also a reference to "Vinland," the word the Vikings used for the parts of North America they would discover five hundred years in the future. If they wanted it to look like generic fantasy, why did they go to the trouble of setting it in "Denmark, 504 A.D."?

This lack of historicity and consistency in the setting bothered esrblog much more than it bothered me (he kept complaining about the non-period armor and weapons, for example). However, the images on the posters advertising the movie had prepared me for this kind of anachronism, and I was braced for it. Unfortunately, no amount of bracing could prepare me for the movie's other failings.

3. The script was truly awful. Not "funny" awful, as in, say, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes", just dull and uninspired and unconvincing. It actually was based very closely on the plot of the original Anglo-Saxon narrative poem, but the script writers were obviously afraid to use any of the translated, sonorous phrases with which the poem is often rendered in modern English, perhaps for fear those phrases would sound like bombast. Instead, they wrote their own bombast, which just sounded stupid and unconvincing. Not an improvement.

4. The voice acting was dreadful. Many of the actors spoke with some kind of English accent I didn't recognize that was soft, indistinct, and hard to understand. Worse, except in the scenes when the monsters were attacking and people were screaming, the actors spoke as though they were sleepwalking or, perhaps, drugged. By comparison, the voice acting in the Final Fantasy movie was Academy Award quality.

5. There was a bit of unintentional humor in the portion of the movie that I saw. Beowulf decides to fight the monster (who is, by the way, depicted as approximately 50 feet tall and with blueish skin covered in slime) naked. So Beowulf strips, revealing a perfect blond body with a classic six-pack, rock hard biceps, etc. Everything, that is, except Beowulf's penis. The scenes after that were then cleverly contrived so that the viewer never gets even a glimpse of Beowulf's penis. He raises his knee, or a bench is always in the way, or steam obscures it. Once, a warrior in the foreground blocks the relevant body part with his sword. Not only was this bit of (un)intended(?) symbolism amusing, it served the purpose of drawing attention away from what was meant to be a critical battle and fixing it on ... Beowulf's invisible penis. Even "The 300" wasn't this obsessed with Man as Sex Object.

6. There was a lot of gross-out horror in the film. Much blood is shed, but it doesn't exactly run; instead it clings to fighters and scenery as though it were slime. Grendel is physically disgusting to look at even though his face is still recognizably human (you can see what looks like real skin near the eyes). There's a scene where he picks up a warrior, bites the warrior's head off, and chews with his mouth open.

I guess I have to take back my comment about the absence of entertainment value; horror fans might like this part. In addition, the gross-out elements are actually true to the original story--though they are greatly emphasized and magnified for a modern audience.

7. One detail that particularly annoyed me was a violation of the laws of physics. During an early scene, Beowulf tells a tale of an incident during which he killed a sea-monster during a swimming race. As movies often do, this one showed the scene as he told it. We see Beowulf (who was naked here also, though mostly obscured by monster and seawater) flipped out of the ocean, where he lands on the back of the large, horny-hided monster. As he slides down the back of the monster, his sword rips open a bloody furrow all the way down as though the monster was made of tissue paper. Sure it would. Even a sharp modern blade wouldn't cut that well.

Anyway, by the time Beowulf had leapt onto the monster's back and was trying to punch the monster's lights out, we gave up and left the theater, so I cannot tell you how effective Angelina Jolie was as the voice of the sea hag.

The title of this entry is a quote by esrblog, and it neatly summarizes the real problem with the movie. "Beowulf" is not a bad movie because it panders to blood lust, or because it takes liberties with history or literature; it's bad because it requires the audience to pretend that a boring sword and sorcery movie with a bad script and boring characters is fun. It's a deeply stupid movie. If your interest in CGI technology compels you to see it, take your IPod into the theater with you and wear it throughout the entire picture. You'll miss nothing of importance, and suffer no brain damage as a result of watching. (esrblog disagrees with this last part--he thinks that even the visuals are brain-damaging.)