Beowulf... in 3D

I’ve seen the movie two times now. No, I didn’t think it was so good that I had to watch it twice. I blame it on peer pressure. The first time I watched it was on IMAX, after our family’s thanksgiving dinner. The second time, I just watched it in an ordinary theater. That was when I realized that I wasted money on the IMAX version, which was allegedly in full 3D, in contrast to most mainstream IMAX flicks wherein there are only selected 3D scenes.

I know 3D scenes can’t salvage a bad movie. *cough* harry potter *cough* *cough* *cough*, but I knew that it can enhance the viewing experience. Advertisements saying that the whole movie was in 3D made it difficult for me to pass up. But since the movie was filmed in motion capture technology blended with full CGI environments, the movie already looked 3D to begin with. There’s not much noticeable differences except for a few scenes when certain objects seemed to be thrown at you. Obviously the IMAX version was rushed, and not much effort was put into it. Most scenes only had two layers, so the full 3D effect was hardly noticeable. It’s a pity, since the 3D effects were breathtaking in certain scenes. The opening credits were the most impressive scene. What more if the same effort was given for the rest of the movie! Although they weren’t exactly lying when they said that the whole movie was in 3D, the 3D effects weren’t constant, so it seemed like some sort of a rip-off.

The movie itself was quite good. I’m not sure how faithful it was to the source material--- 3^rd year high school seems like eons ago… but I’m willing to bet liberal changes were made to make it appeal to mass audiences. I remember thinking back then that Beowulf was boring as hell. Using the image of Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother was a good decision. Making Grendel look like that however, was not. I imagine Grendel to be menacing, a monster evoking fear. In the movie, he does look gross, but far from menacing. Instead of being afraid, he looked like something you’d laugh at. And his voice was clearly not helping. Who’d be afraid of a monster who sounded like some retard? And I’ll never get used to motion captured acting. Yeah, the technological advancements are indeed amazing, but wouldn’t it be cheaper to just make the actors act in front of the camera themselves since they’d still have to pay them for the use of their likeness? Why waste so much effort trying to make the characters look as real as possible when you could easily make the actual person act in front of the camera? Plus it’s hard to relate to characters whose eyes look so empty. No matter how advanced technology has become, they still won’t be able to capture all the nuances of human expression. Leave the CG effects to animals, monsters, spaceships, backgrounds, whatever. It’s still best to use real people to play the part of people in movies.

Oh yeah, the obligatory rating… I’d give the movie 4 stars, IMAX version or not. I would’ve given it another point or half a point if they used real actors instead. It had the epic movie potential that it never got to reach since the essential human connection was severely lacking.