Beowulf
Thursday, July 26th, 2007 - 4:34pm
The trailer for the CG animated Beowulf movie came out today. I haven't seen The Polar Express so I can't say whether the CG actors look less 'dead eyed' than that film, but they look fine to me. The style they've chosen is fairly realistic, I can easily see people being put off by the uncanny valley thing.
Thoughts?
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Glad you liked it, but the CGI here creeps me out here just as much as it did in Polar Express. I think it's the reason they didn't show any long takes.
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Sure, why not? Did it seem to anyone else that they spent more time modelling Angelina than the others?
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Oh yeah, they still got the wonky-eyes.
Bear wrote:
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Can this possibly be better than Christopher Lambert's Beowulf? And the answer, naturally, is "There's no f*cking way in hell it could be any worse."
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Some shots look really good. Others had that dead-eye look. I wonder why their eyes look that way. Are they not contracting their pupils properly or something? In some scenes they looked unrealistically big.
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I think they're bigger than normal eyes, but they're also more open and less blinking. Perhaps they're zombies, or have had too much coffee.
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It's the tiny muscles around the eyes, that should be moving and aren't, that make them look dead. I've always wondered why game animators spend so much time of lip syncing, when the vast majority of emotion is conveyed through the eyes.
I thought it looked alright. It's been a while since I read Beowulf... but I can't remember a character mirroring Angelina's. He never had a Lady in the Lake type of thing, did he? I hope they don't start adding in crap like that. "Alright, I want you to picture this: It's Beowulf... but he's fighting for his LOVE. And we'll throw in a parallel with the Iraq war, too."
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I think that she's Grendel's mom?
Fedaykin98 wrote:
She's playing Grendel's Mother.
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What? Grendel's mother was a monster more hideous than Grendel himself...
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"He was killed by...The Darkness"
McChuck wrote:
Yup, IMDb confirms that Jolie will play Grendel's mom. To illustrate how bat-s insane that is, here are some artists' interpretations of how Grendel's Mom might look:
Maybe I'm forgetting some crucial passage where she could look human if she wished to... but all I'm remembering are references to her being nightmare-making. At this rate, the next announcement will be that Jenna Jameson is cast as the dragon. You heard it here first!
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Is everybody and their cousin these days trying to do their on riff on Beowulf?
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Have you seen pictures of her lately? That be a genius casting choice.
McChuck wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Well from the trailer the movie looks damn good. Neil Gaiman has hands in the the screenplay and also is an Executive Producer for the movie. As for Jolie, it's been years since I've read Beowulf but since Grendel's mom is basically a demon creature of a sorts, it's not all that far fetched to believe she changed herself into the "most beautiful woman" in the realm to seduce Beowulf. After all he did have to get her with child. Can't really stick your dick into anything that looks like what she really does look like. So eh.. it's Jolie. I have no issues. Still looks like a kick ass movie. So far a must see on opening week. Of course I also really want to see Stardust.
Prederick wrote:
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For the record, I'm not all that upset, it just seems surreal to me. Still, Grendel himself was described as being "fatherless," which could be literal or simply an insult. But Grendel's mother could be the proud owner of a V-card.
But yeah. I don't know, I guess I see a difference between changing The Bourne Supremacy, versus changing one of the older stories known to man.
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The thing about it being one of the older stories known to man is that there's a fair bit of room for interpretation, given that there might have been ambiguities in the translation.
As for the trailer...eh. It looked horrendous in what I saw of The Polar Express, and it still looks bad here. And count me among those who just don't see the point of crafting cgi lookalikes of the actors. Sure, it eliminates a the disconnect between the voice and character if it's a Famous Person who can't do voice acting, but really they might as well hire proper voice actors instead, or go the 300 route and not have to worry about the uncanny valley at all.
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What I don't get from the trailer is how Beowulf is talking to Grendel's Mother as if she is offering him some kind of deal/arrangement. It almost seems like Grendel's Mother is offering to grant Beowulf mystic powers in exchange for his immortal soul.....or Bacon Salt. The trailer did not make it clear what it was she wanted, probably the latter. From what I remember about Beowulf, it was supposed to go like this:
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Neil Gaiman is involved, therefore I will go see it. The man is a genius. like Kilroy I also am really looking forward to Stardust. The fact that Michelle Pfeiffer is in that is a serious bonus.
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Hell yeah! I also love most things CG, and will see it because of that as well. At least it does have the promise of some great fight scenes, and if they do that anywhere near like Advent Children did, it will be amazing.
See, that would cause me to not see the movie so hard, it might blink out of existence.
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Yeah, that's a draw for me as well. He's done some Beowulf related writing already; Grendel and his Mother appeared in his short story 'Monarch of the Glen' and he somehow managed to combine Beowulf, were wolves and Baywatch in another short story, 'Bay Wolf'.
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I will certainly be seeing this film.
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Once again, Pred, you make me want to find SOME situation in which I can quote your genius.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just film the movie? I mean I realize those are A-list actors, but by the time you pay for their voices AND try this level of realism in CGI, wouldn't it be the same? And most importantly, haven't we reached a point in technology where we can portray an animated John Malkovich with hair that DOESN'T look like a wig?
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Perhaps. I don't know anything about this stuff but I wonder if there is a line a movie can cross where the number of CG/Real blended scenes in the movie become more expensive than just doing the whole thing in CG.
One of the neat things about the CG approach is that they can have one actor (in this case the absolutely awesome Ray Winstone) play Beowulf at in his youth, middle age and old age without makeup and other effects that often don't look quite right.
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Gaiman's own description of the plot was "The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas of Beowulf interpretations."
I'm quite certain it'll be accurate in all the major plot points and twist the details around to create something quite unique - which is frankly all I need to watch it.
And if I haven't seen further, it's because those bloody giants blocked my sight.
While I respect Gaiman, I only saw a few of the plot points there in the middle. All the rest reminded me of a bad King Arthur remake. We'll see, though, that man can spin silk from pig's ears.
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I'm not sure if you're insulting me or not. Either way though...
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Looks pretty cool. I'll see it.
The fake looking people will bother me for about the first five minutes and I won't care/notice for the rest of it.
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