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BeowulfA review in verse.

By Dana StevensPosted Friday, Nov. 16, 2007, at 11:12 AM ET

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Ray Winstone as Beowulf.

Lo! Let this humble scribe unlock her word-hoard
To tell of great Zemeckis, he of Gump
And Contact, Back to th' Future, Cast Away.
He, stone-romancer, framer of Roger Rabbit,
Hollywood myth-molder, box-office bard.

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Far had he fallen with Polar Express,
An animated washout whose technique
Obscured its content, thanks to CGI.
The Z-man's new technique, performance capture,
Looked creepy in those days. The critics snarled.

But brave Zemeckis takes them on again
With Beowulf, a 3-D spectacle
Like none before. The Anglo-Saxon poem,
Dreaded by school kids since the world was young,
His manly grip reshapes to graphic novel.

It all begins in Hrothgar's hallowed halls.
By Anthony Hopkins played, this Danish king
Partakes of mead and merriment one night
Alongside fair Wealthow, his noble queen
(Robin Wright Penn, snatched from the bed of Sean).

But havoc's in the works: A foul beast,
Grendel by name, by Crispin Glover voiced,
Bestrides the mead hall, butchering at will,
Head-crunching, hurling, ripping limb from limb,
Then flees with quarry to his mountain lair.

Saddened, King Hrothgar summons Beowulf,
A foreign hero, to defend the Danes.
Ray Winstone, chubby star of Sexy Beast,
Now digitally remade as a hunk,
Gives flesh to this 6-foot-6 superman.

After a splendid battle—in which, nude,
His manhood hidden Austin Powers-style
'Neath sconce and scabbard painstakingly placed,
The hero slays the monster—Grendel flees,
To die beside his mother in their den.

And what a mother! Naked, drenched in gold,
With nipples airbrushed to avoid an R
And feet tricked out with built-in high-heeled shoes,
Brad Pitt's hell-bride emerges from the bog
To take revenge on he who slew her son.

Thus bows the movie's second, lesser half,
When grief and guilt—that psychobabble stuff—
Displace the gleeful carnage of the first.
Instead of killing Grendel's sultry dam,
Dense Beowulf lies with her, then lets her live.

Two score and 10 years onward, now a king,
The 'Wulf will face the wages of his sin.
A golden dragon ravages the land,
Of origin unknown—just take a guess!—
And Beowulf must fight him, die, or both.

Despite the second hour's bogging down
In royal squabbling and dull self-reproach,
This final battle thrills and charms at once.
The airborne chase is monumental fun,
The hero's prowess whopping. None alive

Could call Zemeckis subtle; but his style
Well suits the poem's crude and earthy brawn.
Comic-Con geeks and cinephiles alike
Will gape at the resplendent imagery
(But don ye specs, and see it in 3-D).

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Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

I know that books can't make a perfect transition as written to the silver screen, but it always irks me that films made "based" on the classics seem to take pains to radically alter the story. The obvious example here is that in the original text, Beowulf doesn't sleep with Grendel's mother, he decapitates her with a sword from her treasure horde; a sword that "no other man could have wielded in battle."

The same problem arose in that horrible, horrible movie Troy a few years ago, in which Menalaeus is dispatched within nearly the first ten minutes of the film (no no no no no. what the fuck? The man triumphs [by the strength of others] takes Helen home and helps Telemachaeus a little in the Odyssey.).

Before I start to sound like a zealot, I thought that a lot of changes to the LOTR story worked very, very well on-screen (Tom Bombadil makes for an interesting character on paper, but a magic gnome singing bad poetry for twenty minutes would have made even the nerdiest elf cry out for death). It's just that writers seem to always think to themselves, "hmm, here's a universally renowned piece of writing that has been immensely popular on both a widespread and perhaps scholarly level for 60/1000/3000 years. I surely have the skill and intellect to improve on it! What the hell did that Homer loser know that I didn't get out of USC?"

--hellifiknow

(To reply, click here.)

When I first saw the trailer for this movie a couple of months ago, I didn't realize for a few seconds that I was watching a completely computer generated footage. But after a while it became evident that it was. But that didn't bother me. After all if all the CG movies looked like "real" movies what would be the point of making CGI movies? (Other than saving money on hiring big name actors maybe?) But what did bother me was how eerily creepy the characters looked in the movie. The same creepiness (so called "Uncanny Valley") that we've experienced in Polar Express. I think the technology got a whole lot advanced since PE but it seems it still has a room to grow. I think the whole weirdness stems mostly from the computer generated characters' rigid facial expressions and those staring eyes.

--jihanj

(To reply, click here.)

(11/17)

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