Beowulf: Hype or Hit?

Posted by Movie_Maven

November 14, 2007 |

Created entirely from high tech, computer animated graphics to the tune of around 150 million dollars, Beowulf promises to deliver a cinematic breakthrough. It fuses live-action performance and mixes 3-D and digital animation in the same vein as Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Andy Serkis‘ pitiable Gollum.

The actors are not really on screen; what you see are mere simulacra…digital renderings so tantalizingly lifelike and offering a kind of artistic license not afforded with flesh and bones characters. The actors do provide various movements and voices, but that is about it.

The question is whether or not audiences will settle into the picture as technological prowess and thereby whet an appetite for more. At 150 million, that gamble will be a tough one to lose if it’s deemed a slick gimmick.

Here’s a trailer for it so you can get a glimpse:

Comments

3 Comments so far

Cameron on November 23, 2007 9:58 am
It worked for “300″ so it’s not a technology issue. It just needs to be good!
Glenn on November 29, 2007 3:37 am
Yes it did for “300″ though there were real actors on screen mixed with the CG stuff. You’re right…it does simply need to be a good movie. I will see this though, and from what I’ve heard from those who have, they have been impressed.
Christopher Waldrop on January 6, 2008 5:13 pm
I won’t say I didn’t like it, just that I have mixed feelings about it. I’ve read the original epic too many times to not appreciate how hard it was to try and make it cinematic, to actually scale it down for the screen, but the computer animated graphics just bothered me. There was something, for lack of a better word, unnatural about them, and they were very distracting.