Beowulf trailer up

[Icarusintel]

Zemeckis is back with another CG movie. This time it's Beowulf.

Looks pretty sweet.

 

[Thunderclap]

Looks interesting. I'm a bit unsure about making Grendel's mother Angelina frikkin' Jolie instead of, you know, the hideous flesh-eating troglodyte she was in the book, but maybe they can get it to work. Also, amazing CGI. I didn't realize I wasn't watching live action until halfway through the trailer. The original poem "Beowulf" itself is kickass. I read Seamus Heaney's translation and loved it.

I'm sure a lot of people will also recommend Gardner's "Grendel". Not to derail the thread, but I absolutely despised that book and cheered when Beowulf showed up to slaughter that whiny emo SOB Grendel.

 

[DeusExMachina]

I hated Beowulf after reading Grendel. Grendel should've wiped the floor with his tyrannical ass.

But Grendel is one of my favorite books. I hope Gaiman and Avary took some ideas from that and put it into the movie.

 

[Nid Banikeri]

Ohh I remember reading that book in secondary school, should be interestin if they keep to the book.

 

[PvtRyan]

The CGI is great, but it seems it's using CGI for the sake of CGI. Is there really a reason why everything needs to be CGI?

 

[Asuka]

Looks meh. Angelina Jolie looks retarded and sounds retarded for that roll.

 

[bigpapa400lb]

The CGI is great, but it seems it's using CGI for the sake of CGI. Is there really a reason why everything needs to be CGI?

To push the [img=http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/921/ist2409580envelopehy9.th.jpg] of animation.

 

[StardogChampion]

The animation looks good but the faces of all the characters look like shit. Especially when they're not talking or pulling some expression. Beowulf's face looks particularly dumb, even in the picture above the quicktime movie.

I don't get why it's all CGI either. I guess it's cheaper to get actors to do voice overs than actually act.

 

[Gray Fox]

Wonder how long it will be till they make a Gilgamesh movie.

 

[Thunderclap]

I don't quite understand why they are doing this in motion capture, except for "the hell of it".

I mean, those people are photorealistic except for the fact that they all have paralysis of the face. Why not just have the real actors there.

Real Life graphics kick ass over MoCap any day of the week. I wouldn't object to all CGI backgrounds, 300 did it and did it well (IMO), but motion captured people seems pointless.

I don't know, I admit I'm a bit biased (well, actually, incredibly biased) towards old-fashioned 2D animation, you know, the one that was actually art, but I still think they should have gone live actors or if they had to be different, rotoscoped it (as it was done to great effect in A Scanner Darkly.

Oh well, maybe I judge too harshly. I'm glad they put the fyredrake in, because, you know, that fire-spittin' lizard was the basis of the second half of the entire poem.

@Greyfox. Hell yeah for Gilgamesh! Bring on Humbaba!

 

[Bad^Hat]

I think it looks cool. Except the slightly emotionless expressions... and then I guess you have to question why they had to use the actor's real faces if it's CG.

Yeah, you know what, it's kind of stupid. But it'll probably be visually awesome anyway. Also I wanna see some Jolie-demon-boob.

 

[leib10]

Overuse of CGI.

 

[Thunderclap]

This particular style of computer animation of near-photorealistic actors still leaves me pretty cold. It didn't work in Final Fantasy, didn't work in Polar Express (also by Zemeckis) and from what little I've seen from this trailer, I'm not sure it will work for me here, either. I still can't help but wonder, "why bother?" I mean, why not just preserve the full performance of your actors and highlight it with really good CGI effects? This mostly just amounts to wrapping your actors' faces in celophane so that they can't show their full range of experssion. It's just odd to me.

Even with millions of hours of animating you can't capture the subtle nuances of the human face yet, apparently.

It is an interesting take on the tale though. Grendel is still Grendel, you can even see him in the trailer -- nasty looking blighter (played by Crispin Glover, probably best known as George McFly) Beowulf kills him, just like in the story. But Grendel's mother then seduces Beowulf with the promise of worldly fame and power, in return for him to sire a son on her. Zoom 30 years later, when Beowulf is a famed warrior-king ... and a dragon shows up, who I am fairly sure is his son by Grendel's mother.

I'm going off a remark by, I believe, Zemeckis that the story is about how Beowulf makes certain compromises and decisions which catch up with him when he's in his 50s. Certainly, I think they've envisioned most of the nifty set-pieces (I'm not sure if we'll see Beowulf fighting sea-monsters, but who knows), so changes are being made for dramatic effect. Specifically, I think it's a fair point that in the poem, there's not a great deal of connection drawn between Beowulf's actions in the first part versus what he does at the end as a king. In that sense, the poem is quite episodic, and that would not translate well. So, they'll be changing that to try and draw thematic parallels and connections throughout the story, start to finish.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

Looks okay. I hate angelina jolie though :flame:

 

[Krynn72]

Seeing as I still like the final fantasy 8 cutscenes, this style of CG doesnt bother me at all. The only thing I didnt like about the trailer was Angelina Jolie. Although, her acting skills will probably translate perfectly into CG since there isnt much depth to her ability anyways.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

I <3 FFVIII and this still bothers me. Also did I mention I can't stand angelina jolie?

 

[Absinthe]

I don't understand you people.

 

[The Monkey]

Why couldn't they have used the real actors instead of this CGI crap?

 

[Tick]

music was stolen from 28 days later

 

[Asknoone]

I'm with Thunder.