Word: monsterous
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...giant strides into Mead Hall and bellows, "I am Beowulf, and I'm here to kill your monster." That's how Hollywood turns a Danish warrior from an eighth-century Old English epic into a movie hero. Deep-voiced announcer: "He's big. He's bold. And he's boastful... He's Beowulf...
...this exam, mark Y for Yes. It's got power and depth, and two kings whose greatness is diluted by hubris, and a thrilling dragon fight, and the demon Grendel as a tortured outcast, and a naked monster who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie. In their use of "performance capture," a technique that fans of traditional animation view with the sternest skepticism, the film's makers have managed to show more acute behavioral emotion, as well as some fantastic images uncapturable in live action. You want to read Beowulf? Get the book, I'm not stopping you. You want...
...familiar even to those who don't know the poem. The kingdom of old Hrothgar (voiced and modeled by Anthony Hopkins) is troubled by the predatory sorties of Grendel (Crispin Hellion Glover). Accompanied by his "14 brave thanes," Beowulf (Ray Winstone) comes across the sea to slay the monster and, not incidentally, add another laurel to his own legend. He repels a Grendel attack on Mead Hall, severing the beast's arm. Grendel limps back to his lair, where his mother - she has no name, so we'll call her Grendma - watches him die. When Beowulf discovers the lair, Grendma...
...with pathos, as much for monster as for man. Grendel is a horror, a plague, to Hrothgar's kingdom, but he seems plaintive, lonely, in his cave. He complains to his mother in some Scandivanian tongue, as if Gollum had shown up in a Bergman film. Up close he has the physiognomy of Rondo Hatton, the actor whose acromegalic face got him roles as villains in ?40s mysteries and horror films. Grendel too seems typecast for villainy, but maybe the humans just don't understand how close he is to them. Why, they might...
...kids aren't likely to parse the fine points of the script's psychology. They and their parents will be wowed by the battle scenes, a nifty sea-monster montage and Beowulf's climactic dogfight with a dragon. No question you lose a little character nuance in "character capture"; they don't look quite real. But the effects scenes look realer, more integrated into the visual fabric, because they meet the traced-over live-action elements halfway. It all suggests that this kind of a moviemaking is more than a stunt. By imagining the distant past so vividly, Zemeckis...