Filmography
Nov. 24th, 2007 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyBeowulf - in 3D!
Let me first point out that the only reason we saw this in 3D was because that was the only format that the little cinema round the corner from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_g_man was showing it in. I had no particularly desire to see this in 3D, and indeed, in some places it was a bit - well, overkill is unfortunately the right word, because this really was incredibly messy in places, and some of the extra 3D detail I could have done without, being a Delicate Flower. This also goes for the battle scenes - or, as I should say, the scenes of Gratuitous Mass Carnage. Now, I know the original saga is full of people getting slain and eaten in banqueting halls, but at the same time... well, let's just say I was quite glad just how predictable these moments were, and thus how easy it was to look at my knees at the appropriate moments.
That said, let's have a plot moment - essentially it starts out as a faithful telling of the Beowulf saga (Grendel, killing of Grendel, Grendel's mother's revenge, need to kill Grendel's mother) but then essentially goes a bit Neil-Gaiman-shaped in order to make a sensible narrative bridge between the two halves of the saga (Grendel/Grendel's mother and the dragon that turns up in Beowulf's old age). It turns out that Grendel's mother isn't a hag after all, but has a habit of seducing kings and making babies from them that turn into monsters and ravage the land - the offspring of King Hrothgar, to whose aid Beowulf comes, was Grendel himself, whereas Beowulf sires the fearsome golden dragon, who Beowulf must kill in order to save his kingdom from further ravages of demons. Of course, Beowulf himself tells the tale of how he killed Grendel's mother, and that passes into folklore, doing a nice commentary of how one constructs personal mythology and yet still has to live with the consequences of such falsification. Oh, and there's the Oedipal concern there, obviously.
The CGI is pretty good all through - it takes a while to get used to the fact it is CGI, but you forget in the main and just get reminded at odd moments when it's not quite as smooth as it should be. Angelina Jolie's face looks like it is pasted on via Photoshop, though. What is far more disturbing is that they have Ray Winston voicing Beowulf. Ray Winston. With the cockney/East End accent and all. And, oh my goodness, does that jar. I mean, yes, you manage to get used to it, but it's very silly. As are the first five minutes of the film, which essentially is a whole lot of 'look! Vikings! drunk! brawling! a bit of raucous singing! woah! we're period, chaps, period!' followed by the gratuitous gorey bit, so I have to say it took me some time to settle into this.
I am amazed it got away with a PG-13 rating. It's awful, and quite frankly if I don't have nightmares tonight I'll be glad. G's reason was that it is a cartoon and thus not so scary. *shiver*
Now, another good point that G has made is that this is essentially a mock-up of the 300 phenomenon - it's taken the whole macho glory thingie and essentially inverted it, twisted it and shown precisely why the concept of mythic heroism is a load of old bollocks. The most obvious example of this, of course, is that 'This is Sparta!" gets transmuted into 'I am Beowulf!'. The parodies are already on YouTube. Heroes aren't always heroes, although obviously there is the redemptive opportunity - which gets subverted with a big unsubtle twist in the ambiguity of the film's ending. There's a lot of self-awareness in there about how one portrays oneself, the effect of having a story to tell, the way in which mythology is created and shaped. That kind of visible 'spin' is actually a very valuable thing to have in the cinemas at the moment - an awareness of PR is perhaps not untimely.
All that said - some of the dialogue was pretty rubbish, the violence was far too OTT, the plot started to go a bit bumpy when we had to make the transition into the 'bridging the gap between plot A and plot B' Gaiman solution, decent option though it was. I'm giving it three - it's a reasonable enough effort, but I will not be watching it again unless I wish to write a critical comparison of it and 300 for a learned paper somewhere. Which, now I think about it, would at least be a decent use of the material. Some thoughts for that might later end up in a different post.
Let me first point out that the only reason we saw this in 3D was because that was the only format that the little cinema round the corner from
the_g_man was showing it in. I had no particularly desire to see this in 3D, and indeed, in some places it was a bit - well, overkill is unfortunately the right word, because this really was incredibly messy in places, and some of the extra 3D detail I could have done without, being a Delicate Flower. This also goes for the battle scenes - or, as I should say, the scenes of Gratuitous Mass Carnage. Now, I know the original saga is full of people getting slain and eaten in banqueting halls, but at the same time... well, let's just say I was quite glad just how predictable these moments were, and thus how easy it was to look at my knees at the appropriate moments.That said, let's have a plot moment - essentially it starts out as a faithful telling of the Beowulf saga (Grendel, killing of Grendel, Grendel's mother's revenge, need to kill Grendel's mother) but then essentially goes a bit Neil-Gaiman-shaped in order to make a sensible narrative bridge between the two halves of the saga (Grendel/Grendel's mother and the dragon that turns up in Beowulf's old age). It turns out that Grendel's mother isn't a hag after all, but has a habit of seducing kings and making babies from them that turn into monsters and ravage the land - the offspring of King Hrothgar, to whose aid Beowulf comes, was Grendel himself, whereas Beowulf sires the fearsome golden dragon, who Beowulf must kill in order to save his kingdom from further ravages of demons. Of course, Beowulf himself tells the tale of how he killed Grendel's mother, and that passes into folklore, doing a nice commentary of how one constructs personal mythology and yet still has to live with the consequences of such falsification. Oh, and there's the Oedipal concern there, obviously.
The CGI is pretty good all through - it takes a while to get used to the fact it is CGI, but you forget in the main and just get reminded at odd moments when it's not quite as smooth as it should be. Angelina Jolie's face looks like it is pasted on via Photoshop, though. What is far more disturbing is that they have Ray Winston voicing Beowulf. Ray Winston. With the cockney/East End accent and all. And, oh my goodness, does that jar. I mean, yes, you manage to get used to it, but it's very silly. As are the first five minutes of the film, which essentially is a whole lot of 'look! Vikings! drunk! brawling! a bit of raucous singing! woah! we're period, chaps, period!' followed by the gratuitous gorey bit, so I have to say it took me some time to settle into this.
I am amazed it got away with a PG-13 rating. It's awful, and quite frankly if I don't have nightmares tonight I'll be glad. G's reason was that it is a cartoon and thus not so scary. *shiver*
Now, another good point that G has made is that this is essentially a mock-up of the 300 phenomenon - it's taken the whole macho glory thingie and essentially inverted it, twisted it and shown precisely why the concept of mythic heroism is a load of old bollocks. The most obvious example of this, of course, is that 'This is Sparta!" gets transmuted into 'I am Beowulf!'. The parodies are already on YouTube. Heroes aren't always heroes, although obviously there is the redemptive opportunity - which gets subverted with a big unsubtle twist in the ambiguity of the film's ending. There's a lot of self-awareness in there about how one portrays oneself, the effect of having a story to tell, the way in which mythology is created and shaped. That kind of visible 'spin' is actually a very valuable thing to have in the cinemas at the moment - an awareness of PR is perhaps not untimely.
All that said - some of the dialogue was pretty rubbish, the violence was far too OTT, the plot started to go a bit bumpy when we had to make the transition into the 'bridging the gap between plot A and plot B' Gaiman solution, decent option though it was. I'm giving it three - it's a reasonable enough effort, but I will not be watching it again unless I wish to write a critical comparison of it and 300 for a learned paper somewhere. Which, now I think about it, would at least be a decent use of the material. Some thoughts for that might later end up in a different post.
