“Beowulf” – Now, What Have They Done To The Epic Poem?

Why do I watch that many movies lately, I do not know. It may be the sign of work starting to get into me and watching movies seems like an easy way out for lack of a more creative way to spend my spare time. Perhaps what Michael Watkins wrote in his book “The First 90 Days” is true: we spend the first 3 months learning and not adding much value to the organization, only thereafter do we start to contribute. No wonder the past one month has been rather busy, even when we officially cut our working hours by 10% (it was more than some of you guys to start with so don’t envy me!).

Actually, I wanted to title this review as “This Year Warrior Has A New Name, NOT!”. Inside the shower, I was pondering who are the great warriors on a movie screen. Perhaps King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in “300: March To Glory” are good candidates. Somehow, the image of Brad Pitt from “Troy” got stuck in my mind. The character Achilles certainly has my number one vote as the greatest warrior on screen.

Some may praise “Beowulf” because the hero is portrayed as a flawed human being. Some may appreciate the filming technique of motion capture much like the director’s previous work “Polar Express”. I personally am puzzled with characters fading in and out of the animation. One moment I swear I see the real face of Angelina Jolie and another moment, her face looks like a piece of computer generated graphic that doesn’t look like Angelina Jolie at all. I have been thinking hard if there is some kind of significance to all these scenes of fading in and out of reality and I can think of none. (Perhaps the further it is, the more unreal it becomes?)

From what I read in the Internet, the movie deviates from the epic poem written in year 700 for quite a bit. My humble opinion is that after reading the summary, the original story makes more sense while the movie adaptation leaves many question marks in my head.

Having said all that I dislike, some scenes are really worth mentioning. I in particularly like the battle with the dragon. It was intense and thrillingly heroic. There are some emotional moments before Beowulf heading to an epic battle. And there are some rather hilarious moments too. But other than that, I think it is for the fans of English animated films by and large.