I'm in Atlanta and have the option of seeing this here in either "Real D" (DLP) or "IMAX 3D" - which one is preferred? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of each form of 3D?

IMAX 3D works better for some, Real D works better for others, it's a crap shoot.

That said, I think this movie was actually played in jest in many scenes so the "immature" laughing wasn't necessarily out of place, I think Zemeckis was going for it in numerous scenes.

In my case there's an Imax 3D theater showing it right across the street from the theater showing it in Real 3D. The regular theater charges more for 3D movies so I guess I might as well see it at the IMAX theater.

FWIW, there were quite a few people in my theater for the 3D showing, but they weren't into it that much. I don't think this movie will fail because it sucks (which it really doesn't, at least IMO) as much as people just couldn't care less. If it doesn't open big that doesn't mean people skipped it because it sucked, as they haven't had time to read many reviews yet, as they just didn't give a shit about it in the first place.

^It made almost $10 million yesterday somehow. SO, it probably should have a $25 million weekend. Thats pretty good for a movie like this.

I saw it IMAX 3D yesterday and absolutely loved it. Visually, of course, I thought it was great, gorgeous. I felt only a few moments of the dead eyes, most othertimes I could feel the soul. The eyes were very detailed and had the right amount of shine and translucency and having the actors actual eye movements greatly helped. The dead eyes may come down to the lighting they chose or possibly manipulation of the performace. The close-ups were stunning, I wish they held some shots a little longer, but I'll just pause the DVD.

I found the changes to the poem intriguing. They shed a point of view on the poem that worked very well. The connections all made sense and I love that Beowulf is an embellisher. Still he was a great hero, and did the right thing in the end.

Above all, I think the characters is what made me love the film so much. Beowulf's depth was touching to an extent, but the way people reacted to him, Wiglaf for instance really made me feel for him. Wealtheow was so sympathetic, I didn't expect that and Penn is mostly the reason I felt that way. Unferth was a great foil for Beowulf and humoursly performed. Hrothgar was so mad in a irresistable way. I wish we spent more time with Grendel, Glover was great but it was hard to really judge him, hopefully on subsequent viewings I'll appreciate him more. Jolie as Grendel's Mother was surprsing, a great performace. Sexy too. Wiglaf was the most likeable character, I'd like to believe he wasn't tempted.

Any complaints come down to a bit too much sex humour, but I will not complain about that wench's whoppers jiggling about. I also felt the story and characters could've been fleshed out a little more. There was a good number of quiet scenes, but more could've only helped.

Still have a lot more thoughts, but I want to see it again and think on it more.

I found it to be a decently fun time. Some of it did look pretty good but some of it looked absolutely horrible (Grendel was an embarrassment visually IMO).
Overall 3.25 out of 5.

Just got back from seeing this in real 3D, and it was great. I am curious as to how the almost nudity plays while watching it on a regular screen. The Grendel fight was near hysterical at times with the well placed 3D swords blocking the nudity. It was like watching an Animated Austin Powers film at times during the fight.

I really loved that first part of the film. The humour played well enough, and it was all intentional. I liked Grendel's look for the most part, but he should've been beefier. The model looked very detailed to me and I loved the slimey look of it. You could really see Glover's performance too, which no way in hell would be possible if that was prosthetics.

Neil Gaiman really likes this review because he feels it reviews the film he and Roger Avary wrote: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/arti...ehold_beowulf/

While I enjoyed the immense undertaking of the CGI effort to create this film, I felt the story wasn't all that interesting in the 3rd act, in fact, I would say that it pretty much limps to the finish, even though there is a good action sequence at the end, it didn't much resonate with me, leaving me with a "eh" reaction to the film on the whole. I can't say the characters were developed all that well, which contributed to my non-empathetic response to the overall film.

The Austin Power-ish nude sequence was played too cute in a sequence that could have been much more powerful and ferocious, the viewer is asked to spend a little too much attention on what "clever" things would pop up to hide Beowulf's nakedness.

The dead eyes from The Polar Express is almost a thing of the past in this film, although I did see the RealD 3-D presentation, the dead eyes crop up here and there, like for John Malkovich's character (in one early sequence, I thought he was a blind man because that's how his eyes reacted) and also Anthony Hopkins' character (the eyes slip into a quasi-buffoonish look to them, like they weren't quite anchored to anything in the scene). The 2-D presentation is easier to take in all the details as the 3-D tends to obscure the fine rendering of each frame and things look a little blurry for the 3-D effect to take effect. I wouldn't advise skipping the 3-D presentation because it's pretty nifty, but it causes the film to have a slightly darker tone to it, while the 2-D version is a smidge brighter and provides more details to the CGI rendering.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.

The final draft of the screenplay actually begins with the scene that opens the 3rd act. I was expecting the film to open this way but i guess they decided to go another direction in the final cut of the film. It would be interesting to see the film this way. I think it might have worked better with the bookend approach but i don't know, it reads pretty good that way but i guess it could be different once its on screen.

Saw it, wasn't impressed. The story just limps along in between the two major action scenes, which weren't all that great either. The naked fight scene got more laughs than anything else, which the random objects popping up all over the place to cover Beowulf's shame. The movie seems like it wants to say something about the fallibility of heroes and kings, but the characters are all too paper-thin to say much of anything. They're more cartoonish than the movie itself. Shrek and Princess Fiona are more real than Beowulf and Queen Whats-her-name, and Angelina Jolie just coos her way through all her scenes.

So I take it that Robert Zemeckis has patched up any differences he may have had with Crispin Glover?

While it was mildly entertaining... what I got out of this is that I'd love to play this as a video game like Shadow of the Colossus.

Gotta agree about the lack of intensity. If they wanted to be serious about it, they needed to go the Eastern Promises route. Otherwise, why bother?

The Grendel scenes are pretty gruesome but it seemed to me like some of the bloodier parts were edited down from the R-rated trailer released online a while back. Anyone else catch this? If true, perhaps there will be an unrated cut in the future.

was very anti-climactic. Little things like this really drain the inherent power of such visceral scenes. Really people, it's not necessary to over-do it.

A question:



Edited to add that I really enjoyed the 3-D IMAX experience (not so with Harry Potter or Superman Returns) and will probably see it again in one of the other formats.

It dragged for me, and I really found it a bore. I guess I don't really care for realistically animated CGI films. If this is what Justice League will be, I am scared.

dragged? I fell asleep on it around three times.... the pacing was terrible - the only cool scene was the dragon scene and the scene where Beowulf was fighting in the buff was just ridiculous - where I have seen this before oh yeah, last month in Eastern Promises... ;)

I just saw it and I really enjoyed the film. The movie slowed a bit in the middle but it didn't bother me because I honestly didn't go in for just wall to wall action. I've always been a fan of the story and this version more than satisfied. I saw it in 3D and it looked great.

Yeah, I was completely engrossed in the story and was never bored for even a second. :shrug:

Let me preface this by saying I have yet to actually SEE Beowulf... but, from the commericals, it doesn't look like much of an upgrade animation-wise from that Final Fantasy movie that came out and subsequently bombed, what, SIX years ago??? I'd have thought that technology would have improved leaps and bounds since 2001.

there is a big difference between FF and Beowulf. FF used complete CGI. Everything was rendered through computer animation. Beowulf used Motion Capture. They had real actors do the acting and then rendered it to computer animation. In essence, they were making a hybrid real live action and computer animation movie.

Also, Beowulf looks better IMO.

The character's eyes were the WORST part of the animation. It was like a bunch of blind people. Had they been able to get that right, I would have been pleased with the overall look, but it was way too distracting.

Overall, it just wan't a very interesting movie.

The animation is far more fluid than that of Final Fantasy, and the visual design of the character was far more impressive. Huge improvement over it.

I actually don't get all the praise FF:TSW gets for its animation, I watched it upon release and wasn't particularly impressed, and saw it again a few months back -- aside from being a boring movie, the visuals just weren't very good (characters moved like marionettes).

And at least in Eastern Promises Cronenberg had the cojones to actually show some...uh, cojones. -eek-