What's the Point of Motion Capture?

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2007)

.....and I'm not sure about the 6-10...perhaps it's for the 3-D, which is really quite a spectacular achievement...being able to essentially move your head around in an environment and look this way and that, choosing to focus on what you will.....
But, the computer animation is nothing more than an all-inclusive production design, which is fine- all films have to have a unifying production design. But to paint over real actors, when they are already being used seems a terrible waste, when the technology still can't render the human form believable. They're coming closer, but the actor's main tool, his face and mouth, still have yet to be fully realized.
Motion capture gets the broad strokes of body movement, giving the body a sense of mass on-screen, which is why this technique looks so much better than the digital avatar that stands in for Toby McGuire in the Spiderman films. Spidy has no sense of mass when it isn't McGuire. But all the actors in Beowulf do not have realistically expressive faces, and consequently the film falls apart. Given that the plot is thin gruel, not worthy of a two-hour plus film, Zemeckis would have been better off to use the techniques employed in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and let the real actors play around in a digital environment. The photorealism would be intact, and the actors would be allowed to bring all their chops to bear.
To be sure, motion capture is fine when the actors are covered in digital make-up a la Gollum, and I'm sure Ray Winstone appreciates the fitness programme that he did not have to embark on to get himself ripped for this role, but that's it! So what's the point? Filmgoers have been willingly suspending their disbelief for the sake of buying the fantasy since the original King Kong, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Ray Harryhausen was delivering the goods way before digital technology came about.
This film works only as a technological exercise. Someday they will be able to replicate an actor's facial features exactly, mimicking the skin and muscle contractions that make the human face such a magnificent tool for the performer. But until then, why not use the real thing? And none of this substitutes for telling a good story. Beowulf is a sad commentary on American films that make technique king over substance. That's why Andy Warhol isn't Rembrandt.