boe_dye's scathing review of this ruined epic.

Rating: 1/10 (18 November 2007)

This movie, was by far the most awful trash i have ever had to sit through. it was terrible.
Now, i will admit i have never actually read the original story, so understand that this is coming solely from a cinematic stand point.
I like epic movies, i like stories and characters that are larger then life. all that i know about beowulf is just that. an epic tale of good vs evil, a struggle between powers. battles so huge that the very mention of them strikes fear into your soul. characters that legends are made out of.
That sort of thing.
This movie, however was so pathetic that within 90 seconds i wanted to leave.
It (the film) was just screaming "good lord, why do i exist because the audience knows that this story is so much grander, and yet i am merely a sick sad portrayal of one of the oldest stories known to man."
What really killed it was the CGI. now, i knew going into it, that it heavily relied on CGI. i am not going to be one of the snotty critics who thumb their noses at technology, it certainly has it's place. but this essentially made fun of the story.
Grendel didn't look evil, he looked pathetic. he looked like a walking pile of burnt marshmallows and the mummy (from the mummy, 1999). and any emotion and inflection that the characters might have felt were all lost on the CGI.
Try to imagine the LOTR trilogy trying to be serious if the whole thing was made to look like shrek or the polar express (and at times there were some scenes that made you think of shrek). Imagine frodo and his look of anguish and pain and desperation because of the burden of the ring being taken away because he looks like mr conductor, and that basically is what you get.
Now what was done with polar express, i liked. it fit the story. this however is what destroyed the story. any cartoon character can ride a dragon and do unbelievable things, it's really nothing special. but seeing man. a real flesh and blood man kill a demon child, or a fire breathing dragon with his bare hands, that is the stuff of legends. yeah i understand that there needs to be CGI enhancement to make a human do certain things on screen, but not CGI with human enhancements. thats like an ugly woman putting on 3 inches of makeup and 10 gallons of perfume so that she looks beautiful.
...
Oh, and angelina jolie looked AWFUL. nude or not nude, she looked ridiculous. imagine what lara croft really looks like in tomb raider and you get the idea...
...okay maybe not that bad but close...
...
And to make matters worse, according to the other two film goers that were in the theatre (one of whom had actually read the original story), the ending was changed...
This movie, to me, seemed to be desperately trying to ride on the coattails of 300. now yes, i know the script was being written in 97 and 300 (TPB) was written in 98. and regardless of which on was shot first, the point is, which one was released first. a lot can happen between here and now.
300 is a perfect example of what this movie could have been.
In the end, what the Hollywood trend seems to be following is this; let's try to copy what the real artists are doing and make our own version of it. kinda like what go-bots were to transformers. and while we are at it, let's make it so that the kids can see it too so instead of making it what it should be, lets water it down to pg13 and make more money out of it.
I would suggest anyone wanting to see to simply not. it isn't even worth the time to watch online.