I went into this movie intentionally not knowing anything about it.
All I knew about Beowulf is that it is based on an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, probably around the same time as – or a little before, King Arthur.
The birth of Christianity was suggested in the movie with several references to the new Roman God, Jesus Christ. If you watch closely enough, a Christian church was destroyed by one of the pivotal characters and the lead character himself had a hand painted portrait of Mary with Jesus. Not knowing the poem I’m not sure if Beowulf is meant to be an allegory about the death of the old belief systems being replaced with new systems, or if its a depiction of one character’s struggle to lead in a time of drastic changes. The method of the Church’s destruction might be viewed as old-world Deity punishment and testing of new believers, but that’s not for me to discuss.
Beowulf has been filmed in a motion capture manner, allowing the actors to do their scenes in regular dayclothes without having to go through the rigmorole of daily makeup and costume sessions. The end result is a slight puzzlement over seeing true-to-life depictions of real actors so if you can get past that aspect of the movie, Beowulf is almost entertaining enough in its own right. I spent alot of time wondering if the incidental characters were purely CGI or also motion captured actors just because it was a nice little challenge. Alot of the time, CGI movies just reuse character images with ‘randomised’ scripts that look nothing like the real thing, so watching the incidentals and wondering on their basis filled alot of potentially ho-hum screen time.
At times, Beowulf comes across as a little racier than the PG-13 rating it has been allowed. Ignoring Jolie’s nakedness, and that of Beowulf in an early scene, we get fed some spicy dialogue where a rough-and-ready sailor is pressuring a local maid for a quick nasty – a little earlier in the film the same maid had been flirting with the sailor by showing off some strategically displaced cleavage with animated thrusting gestures and grunting. After getting all the rebuttals in the world, the male character finally asks ‘How about a quick gobble then?’. A short time later in a new scene, Beowulf asks his men to engage in some loud singing to goad Grendel into attacking their location. As a result, some of the dirtiest singing came bouncing into my ears. Luckily enough, the American audience around me didn’t pick up on some of the language used and were almost stone silent when the group of sailors sung about someone’s lovely mother being such a friendly girl she needed an iceberg to cool her twat.
Some of the larger fight scenes in Beowulf became a little gory. In a pivotal scene we see Beowulf slice an arm off within a chain mail shirt, to allow him enough reach to stab the heart of a Dragon. We don’t see \”the cut\” since its hidden so well, but if you look at all you’ll clearly see the lack of a shoulder between a left sleeve and the torso on Beowulf’s armour. The audience also cringed at seeing the internal organs of the Dragon too. Seeing an arm get torn from Grendel can add to a squeamish person’s discomfort as well, but luckily there’s nothing really surprising. Generally if its a fight scene, there is a chance of Gore. You’ve been warned.
I felt a bit lost once Beowulf became old. Alot of time had passed, 50 years according to Wikipedia, and yet Beowulf didn’t have any children. He does have a mistress who could pass for one of his children, though. The Queen’s acceptance of the mistress is a little unusual too, she doesn’t show the atypical jealousy we would normally see in a movie like this. There is a peaceful \”well, if he loves you and you love him…\” sort of interaction between the two characters. I almost had the feeling that if the story didn’t end the way it did, the Queen and the mistress would have become friends even with sharing Beowulf. Beowulf appears to be torn between the two women and doesnt quite know how to behave, but they have accepted their dilemma and seem to be willing to see where it would end if given a natural lifespan.
I cannot compare Beowulf with the poem, so I am not going to say whether it was true to the original or not. I’ve pointed out the facets I was interested in, and the elements that got my attention whether they were good or not.
Generally speaking, Beowulf is not your typical date movie in the same vein as a Sandra Bullock movie. Instead, people who want to see something slightly unusual with a familiar background should see it.
An older kids movie + gore + adult themes. If the censors were on their game when the movie was rated, it would have been given an M15+ instead of PG-13.