Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
Stoutor
It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Helloturia
I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.
Jason Kennedy Luttgens
Ah "Beowulf" great story, An Balls out Anglo-Saxon poem from long ago. Ah Robert Zemeckis and Neil (sandman) Gaiman, two enormously overrated hacks. Hence we have "Beowulf" the cheesy cartoon! I know, some are screaming it's CGI! Big, fat hair deal, it's animated, for the most part badly, I do give this cartoon a 5, largely because it has one kick-ass dragon! But dozy is it dumb.Beowulf, voiced by Ray Winstone but bearing no resemblance to the pudgy actor, is a conceited, boastful lying pig-ape in this cartoon who roams bout with his fellow geeks, oops sorry, Geats, offering to slay monsters and demons in return for women or gold. Yeah, what a hero. His BFF is Hamish, sorry Waflig, or some such dippy name, it's Hamish from "Braveheart" Honest. At the beleaguered hall of Santa Claus, oops again sorry, it's Hrothgar, voiced by Anthony Hopkins, apparently he's started drinking again. King Santa had a young queen who looks like an uncomfortable waxen cross breed between Meryl Streep and Robin Wright if she was fat and wore a bad wig. Anyhoo, Hrothgar made some mistake sand his hall is being bitch-smacked by the monster Grendel who looks rather like a knobby troll.Naturally Beobreath rips Grendel and wins the day. For some reasons no explained by this cartoon he goes to see GRendel's Mom, voiced in a Russian accent by Agnelina Jolie. Ah Good ole Bob Zemeckis, he gives us the cartoon asses of Hopkins and Winstone, but Angie? Nah, gold dipped and phony as hell. Sigh.After Hrothgar drowns in his corn flakes, Beowuss becomes king. Flash forward ma ny years, we don't' know how many, and Beo has a queen and a girl Urusla, who looks like a min-me of the queen. Princess? Daughter, no just some bitch for Beoballs to hammer at night when he gets bored with Robin, er Wealthrow, Uh-huh, again what a great "hero" he is! Well he's sinned big time too and that comes back to bite him in his still tight and curiously hairless rear.Ugh, there are some pluses here, some dynamic action, some rousing songs, but it's all misogynistic and dumb and well it's a freakin cartoon! It's also waay long and simplistic. Even the ending is kinda vague, though most epic poems or sagas if you prefer, were vague in their endings, i. e. GAwain and the Green Knight. Anyhoo, check "Beowulf' the cartoon if you liked "Brave" pretty similar and again the Dragon is awesome!! 15yold boys may rate this much higher.
Python Hyena
Beowulf (2007): Dir: Robert Zemeckis / Cast: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright, Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover: Total suck fest about a man of great strength named Beowulf who arrives to slay the feared monster Grendel. Setup works given an interrupted celebration that unfortunately didn't involve shutting down the film. Director Robert Zemeckis sinks with pitiful dialogue, formula storytelling, a laughable conclusion, and special effects that are about as festive as an outdoor toilet. This is a major disappointment for the director who made Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Ray Winstone constantly bellows, "I am Beowulf!" as if he's trying to convince himself. Didn't anyone realize how ridiculous this looked? Anthony Hopkins plays the regretful drunken King who pays for his earlier actions. It is the one passable performance in the film. Robin Wright basically sits and looks pretty. We can at least be thankful that she isn't yelling out Beowulf's name. Crispin Glover plays the monster Grendel. Finally Angelina Jolie as the marketing payoff as Grendel's mother who seeks revenge but not before trying to seduce Beowulf thus teasing the audience. Message of heroism is not evident in the laughable delivery but what is evident is that Zemeckis may need a stiff drink after this one. Score: 2 ½ / 10
Ben Hinman
A lot of things have been said about Beowulf that are entirely undeserved. Amazing, a masterpiece, the best movie of the year... Beowulf is none of these things. When this movie came out, it was recommended to me that i avoid it, because it was not worth the money. I should have listened. They should have also explained, that it was not worth the time. Allow me to explain. I am aware that this film is entirely CG. It was made clear to me within seconds of it. The poorly textured skin, the bad motion capture, the poor fluid dynamics, everything about this film stuck out like a sore thumb. Perhaps i noticed more because visual effects is what i do for a living, but even with that, no other film i have EVER watched (and i am not exaggerating) has EVER given me a worse case of filmmakers sickness. Many movies i have watched where the CG is noticeable, but its never brought me out of the story to this extent where i can't even pay attention to anything else. And don't get me wrong, i was still about to excuse it, hoping i would look it up and find a 10 million dollar budget, or perhaps less. But no, this movie cost a whopping 130 million. All of which was pîssed carelessly down the drain.The creators say it was a CG masterpiece. It was not. I've seen students that make better work for their first character design portfolio. They could have bothered to use normal maps or bump maps to create a more realistic skin textures, especially considering the amount of skin shown. They didn't. They supposedly used next gen motion capture. I was surprised to find they even used it at all. They could have done better with a decent animator and some blend shapes. With that kind of budget they should have used Realflow, with simulated fluid dynamics instead of the cheap wave displacements that don't even interact with the characters in the water. they didn't even use a Fresnel shader on the water, it was so freaking amateur. the only decent work was done in the design of Grendel and the sea monsters, and that was in imagination, rather than detail. None of the characters had life to them, the recoil of limbs, a sense of tissue, recoil, anticipation. The animators straight up didn't know the 12 basic principles of animation. Lets remember, this is 2007. We can't bash something that was done 7 years ago can we? Yes, we can. The incredible hulk came out a year later with only 30 million more of a budget, and a hyper realism that put this movie to shame, like child's play. Assassins creed II came out just 2 years later with considerably MORE CG elements, 3 cities worth including a variety of landscapes and only a 30 million budget, less than a 4th of what this movie cost, and rendered it with a considerable amount of detail, reflections and depth of field IN REAL TIME that came close to what this movie accomplished with offline render farms, of a major studio. Just recently watchdogs was released, with a budget of 68 million and graphics that pretty much beat Beowulf to a pulp, also in real time. And lets remember, these are video games we are talking about. They have poly counts to worry about, and part of that budget went to programmers, and level designers, there is absolutely NO excuse why Beowulf should have created the garbage it did with the budget it had, and the 4 or so locations it even dealt with. What, you can't even hire a dynamics expert? You're really going to burst a frigging piece of wood into a mist of stock footage splinters rather than the more realistic approach, 3D prefracturing and hard body sims? I could do that with just 100$ and the action essentials pack and it still would look better. You're frigging kidding me here.I could go on all day about the graphics, terrible blood hits, that weird gold coating Angelina Jolie--Angelina Jolie? Seriously?--but you know what, lets address what else is wrong with the film. For one, they completely ruined a classic short story. The dialog is so corny. The characters are all f*cked in the head, and they're not even good caricatures of scumbags, they're just plain unbelievable. And when i say unbelievable i mean those characters could not and would not exist under any circumstances and if they did exist and you put them into a room together they would not behave as such. One moment the dude is kicking his slave the next he is talking about honor and glory? Or the drunken king who's clothes basically fall off and then the next minute he's a fighter and a hero and then the next he's a poor man begging for help? I mean make up your mind goddåmn it. And the worst part is, in the story he's nothing like that. Beowulf doesn't f*ck Grendels mother either. And she's not pretty. And Grendel isn't a whiny little bîtch. And i'm not sure he even speaks. And there's this whole part they left out about ever hero trying and failing, and this epic battle as Grendel's mother drags Beowulf down under the lake that i was really hoping to see, instead the dude just basically jumped in the water and then hopped out in the underground cavern all Mario like, like he doesn't even need to grab ahold of something and pull himself out, he can just swim jump. Its f*cking stupid man. I hate you people. Next time the producers have millions of dollars to pîss away, give it to me. Or maybe flush it down the toilet. The toilet would find a better use for it.
Prismark10
The Olde English poem about the Norse adventure of warrior Beowulf who battles the creature Grendel and then later his mother gets the CGI treatment from director Robert Zemeckis.To be fair CGI would give the film a better graphic representation of the poem but the CGI actors still have that dead eye visuals.The film is set in the time of pagan gods but Christianity is in the fringes and King Hrothgar's (Anthony Hopkins) counsellor John Malkovich is an early convert. However the life of merriment in the kingdom is disturbed when Grendel attacks and the King offers a large bounty to the person who slays him but the King seems to harbour a dark secret which is wife (Robin Wright)is suspicious of.Beowulf (Ray Winstone)takes up the challenge and then goes into battle with his mother (a sultry CGI Angelina Jolie) and it seems the mistakes of the past are about to repeat itself.The film is an adaptation of the poem and the visuals add an atmosphere especially the action sequences but the CGI visuals of the actors are still not right. The mixture of different acting styles looks jarring such as mixing Welsh Hopkins, Cockney Winstone and American Malkovich.The film is also portentous and actually starts to drag once the action and slaughter is finished as the screenplay had to expand the story in order for it to be turned into a feature length film.
