Beowulf

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/

This looks pretty cool. Pretty cool CGI or whatever it is.

[bubbauno]

Indiana Jones 4 trailer before too!

[Nilandia]

I'm definitely going to see Beowulf in the theaters. Even if they don't hold to the story too well (which I'm suspecting because it's not the easiest story to put into a movie), it looks like it will do really well in its own right.

Is it November yet?!

Gretchen

[bubbauno]

Think it's playing in IMAX too

[Nilandia]

::wanders off to check the nearest IMAX theaters::

Gretchen

[Fallen]

The graphics actually looked kind of shitty. The voice acting looked to be top notch, though. I am looking forward to this.

[Sean of the Thread]

Wasn't bad .. Wasn't great.

[Drew2]

I saw it non-3D and hated it. I think it would have been much better had I seen the 3D version

[Sean of the Thread]

yeah that's most likely true.

[Gan]

So far I've heard it sucked (non-3D) more than I've heard it was a good movie.

Think I'm going to avoid this and go see the tommy lee jones flick. (no country for old men or something like that).

[DCSL]

I saw the IMAX 3D version. The more I think about it, now that I'm away from the dazzling effects that stunned me into thinking it was a bare "ok", the more I hated it.

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

That is a bummer. I was hoping it'd be good.

[fallenSaint]

Was really expecting the movie to be good so went and saw it in 3D and yea ... exceptionally disappointing. ;*(

[Artha]

How could anyone see the previews and expect this movie to be ok? It's obviously just trying to cash in on the 300 market, except without the originality of style that made 300 so good.

[Crazy Bard]

Horrible movie, but Angelina Jolie was bangin.

[Fallen]

I enjoyed the movie. I saw it in digital 3D, one step down from Imax 3D. Of course, the special effects were great. I enjoyed the voice acting of several notable stars, and as I haven't read the book, I wasn't crying about how they deviated from the centuries old story.

[Davenshire]

Thanks for the info , I don't think I am going to bother going to see it.

The scenery along with the I AM BEOWULF! reminds me of the 300 THIS IS SPARTA!

I wonder if this is the first of a long line of crappy 300 explotation films.

[Chadj]

It was decent I suppose. Just barely worth the $6.50 I spent on it though. I suppose if I had gone to the movie with lower expectations, I would have enjoyed it more.

[Mighty Nikkisaurus]

I have free tickets to go see it, so I'm going to see it tonight in 3-D. I don't have high expectations-- I've read the story but I mostly want to see the action and effects.

[Sean of the Thread]

How could anyone see the previews and expect this movie to be ok? It's obviously just trying to cash in on the 300 market, except without the originality of style that made 300 so good.

Wasn't anything remotely like 300. The only stretch that you could remotely attach to 300 was the I am Beowulf comment but it was in complete context to the movie. It was when Grendel first spoke and they had a small verbal exchange about who is who when he was ripping his arm off.


Other than t hat it is what it is.. a shitty short interpretation of Beowulf. They got the meat and potatoes correct it was just blah.

[Nilandia]

I enjoyed the movie. I saw it in digital 3D, one step down from Imax 3D. Of course, the special effects were great. I enjoyed the voice acting of several notable stars, and as I haven't read the book, I wasn't crying about how they deviated from the centuries old story.
I saw it in IMAX 3D, and I have to say I was really disappointed. I've read the Seamus Heaney translation of the original poem, but I saw it with my mother, who hasn't read any translation, and she didn't like it, either.

We both agreed, this is a typical Hollywood butchery of a classic that had plenty of material on its own. It didn't need the help, but apparently because it didn't have enough scandal or sex for the producers, they had to invent over half of the plotline.

I suppose I should have expected as much, but I did have hope.

Gretchen

[Nilandia]

Other than t hat it is what it is.. a shitty short interpretation of Beowulf. They got the meat and potatoes correct it was just blah.
You give it far too much credit. A number of crucial details were left out or outright fabricated.

Gretchen

[Sean of the Thread]

You give it far too much credit. A number of crucial details were left out or outright fabricated.

Gretchen

Oh that much is true.. I certainly didn't intend to give more credit where it wasn't due.

[DCSL]

This may be a more literary criticism than some are looking for but it mirrors a debate a friend and I were having. For the record, he thought it was okay (not good) and I thought it was downright bad, as I mentioned earlier.

It's not that I loathed the fact that they deviated from the story. I mean, it was billed as an interpretation. I think I just had greater expectations of Neil Gaiman's writing because I have enjoyed his storytelling in the past. Not so with this one. It was extremely heavy-handed in some areas while glossed over and stylized in others, and it just made a bad blend to my mind. Unbalanced and awkward.

Especially, I hate to say, the character of Beowulf. Beowulf has always been a flawed hero. In fact, in most of the Norse sagas, the heroes are often more than a bit of a bastard, or they were really ugly or deformed, or a bit dimwitted on one occasion, I think. The thing is, they're human. Few of them have the gaping, obvious tragic flaw that Greek heroes do, the one that will prove their eventual downfall; they're just patently human men.

Beowulf... Beowulf was a one dimensional, egomaniacal misogynist. But I didn't even hate him. He wasn't human enough to hate. He was just boring, which is an even greater sin in character creation to my mind. I think there may have been one single instance in the entire movie when I was able to relate to the character, but it wasn't enough to make him sympathetic.

As a sidenote... I didn't even get to see Angelina Jolie naked. They're not releasing the NC-17 version in theaters like they said they were. So there's minimal violence and not a single nipple. 'cept Beowulf's. Just strategic mist and gold plating. Really disappointing.

[Sean of the Thread]

I kept thinking of Austin Powers with the nudity scenes.

[Fallen]

I guess I wasn't going into that movie expecting anything but a fun action movie. I wasn't attempting to emotionally connect to any of the characters or anything.

From what I am told, pretty much all renditions of Beowolf, live action or otherwise, have been deemed shitty. How would you people rate this one up against the others you may have seen? I've never seen any others, I don't think.

[DCSL]

I saw one other one with Gerard Butler and this crazy, hairy albino Grendel. That one was so boring, I am sad to say, that I didn't ever finish watching it. It's hard to say which one was worse. The special effects still cloud my judgement a little on this latest one. Although, if I hadn't paid to watch this one with a bunch of friends on IMAX 3D, I might have walked out on this one too. I think I hung on for the prospect of gritty 3D violence and nudity. The highlight for me was when Grendel was chewing on that guy's head. My favorite part.

[ViridianAsp]

I really didn't expect this movie to be like the story, I went in there knowing it wouldn't be, even though I had kinda hoped I was wrong.

I thought it was a good movie, even though it wasn't true to the story in a lot of ways.

[Shifted]

Yet somehow it was given a B by critics and a B- by viewers (yahoo movies)

for comparison:
Gladiator critics - B, viewers B+
300 - critics B, viewers B+
13th Warrior - critics N/A, viewers B
King Arthur - critics C+, viewers B-

I haven't seen it yet, I don't think it's been released here. I'm fairly sure i'll be dragged there to see it though.

[Sean of the Thread]

Critics opinions = http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b236/Japgross/poop.gif

[Mighty Nikkisaurus]

I actually really liked it. Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting much but the 3D was awesome and it was very entertaining.

[DCSL]

This may ruin the validity of my opinion, but I liked Hitman more than Beowulf. =X It delivered on the violence (of a different kind) and the nudity. Which... would be what it promised and I expected.

[Sean of the Thread]

I would never have paid to go see Beowulf it was just what they showed at our party.

Hitman I want to see but not until netflix baby.

[Snapp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl2GksTxo_E