Beowulf in IMAX 3D

ac3raven — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:52:00 GMT

It was kind of a haphazard plan, but my cousin and I decided that it would be a good idea to see the recent Beowulf rendition by Zemeckis in IMAX and in 3D. We saw it today (Saturday) and the experience was well worth the 10.25 I paid for it, I would have been willing to pay 20.50 for it!

Firstly, I have to say that despite the criticism this film received prior to its debut about the CGI overlay style, I think it worked extremely well. The CGI overlay opened up options in terms of cinematography, allowing the fantasy-esque appeal of the story to be fleshed out via stylistic lighting, and more creative camera work. The 3D goggles I was wearing certainly helped to immerse me into the films settings and plot, although the 3D was a bit overwhelming at first. Visually, Beowulf was excellent, but the real question is whether or not the story-arc of the movie was handled well.

If you've read the text of Beowulf, then you know that it is a very generic (by today's standards) story with subtle undertones of love, grief, and the imperfect nature of man. The text focuses on heroism, defining the archetypal hero with attributes such as courage, physical strength, perseverance and what not. Well, I can tell you the movie pulls these things off very accurately, and of course that's not necessarily a good thing. Yes the fact that the movie followed the story arch of the text for the most part is respectable, but its also predictable. The movie suffers only because the reference material is so generic and lacking of depth. It's an action movie, nothing more really; that said, it is a good movie, one worth paying a steep price to see and you'll like it if your not expecting too much from it.

I sit down in the IMAX theater, and one of the first things I wondered was how Grendel would be portrayed. I've seen 3 different personalities of this being (Beowulf the original text, Beowulf and Grendel, with Gerard Butler, and the novel simply titled Grendel). Both the movie with Gerard Butler as Beowulf and the novel (more of a long short story) Grendel portray the being as a victim rather than a criminal and the same goes for the Zemeckis version. Giving Grendel a backstory adds just a little more depth to the story so I'm glad they went that route.

Overall it was a good movie (especially in IMAX 3D), but keeping in mind the not-so-deep reference material, I guess there was no reasonable way to make it anything more than an action fest. The visuals were nice, the casting was good (although I think they could have found a better actress to play the role of Grendel's mother, Jolie just wasn't strange enough), and the plot was executed finely.

I'm giving Beowulf a 7/10

The Doubleshot Expresso : english

Beowulf in IMAX 3D