Beowulf movie fangirling

[rallamajoop]

A couple of weeks back, jaseroque, pinneagig and I went to see Beowulf (the CG-animated movie which Neil Gaiman helped to adapt and script - this being naturally why I heard of it in the first place). Now, obviously, I’ve left it untraditionally late to rant about it, but I got sidetracked after we got home and didn’t think about it later. Only now, we just got hold of the ending theme, and listening to it again just about gave me goosebumps - that’s how great an impression this movie left on me. I’m not sure if it’s still showing at the cinemas, but if so and you haven’t seen it, go see it!

What Beowulf is

To abbreviate the wikipedia article “Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating to circa 1010. It has risen to national epic status in England. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland (modern southern Sweden) and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retainers.”

Of course, that’s just the original poem. The movie is the CG animated story of how a frighteningly macho man takes out a series of monsters all no expense spared on the accompanying action sequences of blood and gore. What blew me away is how they took that idea and - without even rethinking much of the poem - expanded it into a story with some amazing depth to it. But more on that below.

Things that were awesome about Beowulf

• The Queen. For a movie that is so tough and manly that it’s practically drowning in its own testosterone, this was a movie with some awesome female characters, and she was right at the top of the list. We don’t even hear her speak for the first two scenes, she’s had a pretty miserable deal from life going from one end of the story to the other, but just about every line she ever gets to utter has impact. She doesn’t even really have to do anything except hang around and be quietly kickarse in the background of this movie, and she was still voted into highlight status in our post-movie chatter. Honestly, why can’t more movies do lead females half as wonderful as her?
• The other characters. This is the kind of script that makes you like even the characters you weren’t expecting to like. I liked the old king, I liked Beowulf himself, I liked his friend/sidekick guy - I even liked his girltoy from the later part of the movie. The monsters hit this great balance between being just sympathetic enough to be interesting without being any less utterly monsterous for it. This movie is like one giant, textbook example of how to do characterisation right. Take notes.
• Nekkid!Beowulf. So there’s this battle early in the story where he’s completely in the nud. No, really - this came straight out of the original poem, it’s not gratuitous nudity, it’s historical accuracy! And if a nekkid!hero tackling a monster isn’t good enough in its own right, the lengths they go to to cover up any offensive bits had us killing ourselves with laughter (intentionally on the writer's part, I’m sure). While I’m on the nekkid subject, then I also need to point out that Beowulf has nekkid!Angelina Jolie (well, covered by a thin film of metallic stuff really, but this doesn’t seem to have put people off) in it too, because I’m sure a good portion of this movie’s profits have been based on that point alone. And, uh, that was totally non-gratuitous and plot-relevant too, honest! *cough*
• The story. Holy crap, did I love what they did with the story - I was spoiled for the twist towards the end and I still loved it. It isn’t often a movie goes into a final action sequence and actually has me on the edge of my seat, and the ending and all the stuff about heroism and how much people need heroes even if they’re not who they pretend to be… *happy, happy fangirl moment* Lovely.

Things that could have been better about Beowulf

• The 3D version. We saw it in 3D, but we all regretted it. pinneagig and I found the glasses more uncomfortable than anything, and jaseroque (who needs to leave her eyes to science when she dies, I swear!) couldn’t even see any of the 3D going on. Overall, it was more distracting than it was necessary, so unless you’re really big on the 3D thing, I’d go see the 2D version.
• The middle bit. Thing is, there kinda wasn’t one - the movie goes straight from ‘Beowulf has been made king’ to ‘Beowulf is at the end of his reign and ooh shit are things about to go nekkid!Angelina Jolie-shaped pear-shaped’ without anything in between. I hasten to add it didn’t need anything in between, you could fill in the blanks purely from your imagination, but it’d have been nice to see something in the middle there, just as a side note.
• Rotating!Angelina Jolie (yes, still nekkid too, did you have to ask?) This is one of those scenes you see, boggle at, then talk to everyone else after the movie to discover they were boggling at it just as much. One or two revolutions, okay, more than that, and it just looked like she standing on an invisible turntable. But at least it gave us all something to laugh about at the end.

Things you fsking need to know before you see Beowulf

• It’s been released with a PG rating in some places, which is completely insane on levels I cannot even articulate. This is not a movie for the squeamish, this is a movie where you will be seeing a monster that looks like it would have been hideous even before it had all the skin ripped off its body eat a man’s head off his living body and chew on it in front of the camera for rather too long for comfort. The gore had even me feeling a bit queasy up until the nekkid!Beowulf scene, but by the time I’d finished cacking myself with laughter over that, me and the movie were already getting on fine and I was quite willing to take whatever else it might throw at me with it’s weird sense of humour.
• What happens in the original poem. Neither jaseroque or pinneagig had read up on it, and sadly neither of them got nearly so much out of the movie as I did. I don’t suggest you actually read the thing - it’s written in old English an apparently nearly incomprehensible these days, but if you don’t have at least a summary, you’re not going to have any idea why the way they’ve reinterpreted the story is as genius as it is. Seriously, ask me for a run down before you see it if you need one - I will be only too happy to provide.

The leftover interesting bits

• The Christian aspect. Christian themes were apparently something that were pasted awkwardly over the originally pagan poem sometime before the first written version appeared, and so are intrinsically part of its history yet feel a bit out of place. The impressive thing is that they actually worked that contrast directly into the movie by setting the story in a period where Christianity was beginning to spread across Europe and, as Beowulf tells us, replacing the age of heroes with a new age of martyrs. It’s not really presented as either a good thing or a bad thing necessarily, but it’s a change that leaves poor Beowulf feeling like he’s a relic from a past time - and when the monsters come back again at the end, waving crosses or hiding in churches does sweet bugger all to keep them away.
  
  The part that amused us is that, when the crazy religious right are busily telling us all that we all have to go see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (despite there being very little in the movie version that screamed Christianity on a level you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it) and that Brokeback Mountain and The Golden Compass are the work of the devil (despite all mentions of religion being completely removed from the latter), Beowulf seems to have gone under their radar. I mean - here’s a movie that says, yeah, Christianity happened, but it’s not exactly going to solve all your problems at once and it may even make you look a bit pathetic. But while I’m sure those groups still hated it, they seem to have been way too busy publicly leaping on bigger budget films that dance around even saying the word “Christian” to work up much of a stink about this one.
  
  Bit of a shame, really, I’m sure Beowulf could have used the extra publicity.
• The animation. Beowulf is full CGI, and while I think there’s still room for improvement, they worked well with it. There’s no line to distract you between where the real actors stop and the special effects kick in - they’re all part of the same world. But the weird part for me was that when you compare Beowulf to something like Advent Children, you can really see the stylistic differences between how the Americans tackle CG characters to how the Japanese do it, despite the fact I’m sure they’re working with a lot of the same technology and all trying for the same goal of uber-realism. Anyway, we certainly didn’t lose any of the experience to bad animation, and that’s all you can ask.