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Beowulf: Director's Cut
[HD DVD] R0 - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen & Noor Razzak (18th March 2008). |
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The Film
 Flashback to three years ago: Oh man, did you hear that Robert Zemeckis is working on a “Beowulf” movie? Yeah, did you hear that Neil Gaiman AND Roger Avery are penning the script? Do you have any idea how awesome that is going to be? There is no way that movie is going to NOT be awesome! Flash forward to today: Crap. Nothing stings worse the potential of a great film being spoiled. I see the cast and the crew of this movie working on one of my favorite classical tales, and all I can expect are great things. I hate to say I was sorely disappointed with “Beowulf”. The film begins with the slob King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), ruler of the Thanes, leading a feast in his great new hall. The film wants you to know that all these people do is eat, burp, drink, then probably eat some more. The only person not having the time of their life is Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn), the Queen. The sinful and depraved acts of the court are soon interrupted by Grendel (Crispin Glover), who tears into the hall, proceeding to throw many Thanes towards the camera. This brings me to first and possibly biggest problem with the movie. “Beowulf” was shot as a 3D film. When a movie is shot thusly, it really doesn’t transfer well back to two dimensions. While watching the movie in intended 3D, it is pretty neat to see gold, soldiers, and blood thrown at your face. But when you are seeing it in boring 2D, the gimmick is never even born, and just gets annoying after a while. And without the 3D scenes, “Beowulf” has very little going for it. The film feels like it can never decide whether it is classic literature, or a new badass take on the classic tale. The results mostly feel skewed and awkward. This isn’t helped by the many scenes in which nudity is blocked out with childishly placed candle sticks, or golden paint covering the breasts of an otherwise naked Grendel’s Mother (Angelina Jolie). Things don’t get much better when the titular hero arrives into town, offering to slay Grendel. I just never bought into the performance behind “Beowulf”, let alone any of the other characters. Everything just feels so artificial. This leads me to wonder why the movie is CG. The characters were mapped and digitized, but they all look pretty much like their real life counterparts (aside from the title character, played by the doughy Ray Winstone). The attempted blend of CG and real life animations looks more creepy than interesting, and made it nearly impossible to focus on the film’s dialogue or story. After watching the movie again, I’m hard-pressed to find one redeemable feature within it. I didn’t like the acting, the way things were constantly flying at the screen, or the liberties taken with the original material, which make up for a lackluster story at best. On the upside, some of the sea monsters were kind of neat. This movie just doesn’t do the epic story justice, and I’m starting to think that no film ever could. It should also be noted that film is presented as the ‘Unrated Director’s Cut’ version with scenes “Too intense for theaters”, though I honestly didn’t notice what was added in from the theatrical run. According to the press release provided by Paramount Pictures, the theatrical cut and unrated cut have an identical running time of 114 minutes, so I am very curious as to what was added in.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 this transfer is presented in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been created using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The film was created digitally and this transfer has been struck from the film's original digital source. The results are breathtaking, I'd certainly regard this transfer was reference quality material. The picture is sharp and wonderfully detail right down to the skin pigments and imperfections that were animated onto the characters. Facial hair especially is impressive and looks as real as ever. Background detail is also impressive and you can see the vast level of detail the animation crew applied to this film. Colors are rendered well and skin tones appear natural. Black levels are bold and I cold not spot a single defect with this pristine image.
Audio
Three audio tracks are included in English Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (presented at 1.5 Mbps) as well as French Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 tracks. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its English track. While this film is lacking in uncompressed or lossless audio this Dolby Digital Plus track is quite good. Dialogue is clear and distortion free and the surround effects are aggressive and powerful. Action scenes erupt from speaker to speaker immersing the viewer in the film. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.
Extras
Paramount has released this film with an impressive HD collection of extras that includes a picture-in-picture behind-the-scenes feature, a collection of 5 featurettes, deleted scenes and a theatrical trailer. Below is a closer look at these supplements broken down per disc. DISC ONE: The main extra on this disc is the exclusive supplement entitled "Beowulf: In The Volume" a picture-in-picture behind-the-scenes feature that takes you through the making of the film while you watch the film. Basically this is a video commentary, in it you get to see artwork and storyboards but most interesting is the footage of the cast performing the parts on the motion capture stage. This relatively new technology is gaining momentum as a preferred special effects tool and it was great to see the actors do their thing for the special camera that records movement based on a series of points (or reflective balls) placed on the actors. With previous PiP features I was bored quickly, and sometimes the navigation was a bit cumbersome, not so with this feature, once you start this viewing process it's hard to stop considering the making of process of this film is so fascinating. Also on this disc is some web enabled content, this allows you to connect to the Paramount site via the Ethernet port of your player granting you access to additional extras such as promotional featurettes and more information on the production and the cast and crew. If you really need to explore more about this film then this feature will only really provide you with some additional material, I found it to contain too much promotional fluff. On a side note I wonder how much longer these features will remain active now that HD DVD is officially dead? DISC TWO: The first extra is “A Hero’s Journey: The Making of Beowulf” featurette, you can watch this extra in two different ways, the first is the standard clip that runs for 23 minutes 55 seconds, or you can watch the "Interactive Version" which extends this feature to 44 minutes. This featurette chronicles the film from the early rehearsals, through the process of motion capturing the performances, and to the film’s eventual wrap. The primary focus of the 23 minutes is on the ‘mo-cap’, and should be interesting to anyone who hasn’t seen the making-of on the Zemeckis produced “Monster House” (2006), because the two are very similar in explaining how the process works. There is a certain comedic level offered from this extra, as it is incredibly silly to see actors take their roles so seriously in black spandex suits with dots all over their faces. The featurette concludes with Zemeckis claiming that his movie is going to open doors to a whole new generation of film. In the "Interactive Version" pop-up icons can be seen on screen to take you to further mini-featurettes that look at the following topics: "Volume," "T-Pose," "What is E.O.G?," "Lay of the Land," "Givin' Props," "Scanners," "Stunts and Rigs," "Plan of Attack," "Fight Me," and "Baby It's Cold Inside". Next is "The Journey Continues" featurettes, if you're not into the while "Interactive" thing you can watch the mini-featurettes from the above extra individually with a 'play all' function. Collectively these extras run around 20 minutes here they are are on their own: - "The Volume" runs for 2 minutes 21 seconds. - "T-Pose" runs for 1 minute 55 seconds. - "What is E.O.G?" runs for 2 minutes 54 seconds. - "Lay of the Land" runs for 1 minute 56 seconds. - "Givin' Props" runs for 2 minutes 8 seconds. - "Scanners" runs for 1 minute 42 seconds. - "Stunts and Rigs" runs for 2 minutes 7 seconds. - "Plan of Attack" runs for 2 minutes 11 seconds. - "Fight Me" runs for 2 minutes 27 seconds. - "Baby It's Cold Inside" runs for 1 minute 53 seconds. The next extra is “Beasts of Burden – Designing the Creatures of Beowulf” a featurette that runs for 6 minutes 56 seconds. Since the monsters of the film were easily the most entertaining part, this short clip was slightly interesting. The focus on Grendel really shows how much the crew wanted him to be like Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” films (2001-2003) however. When the focus is switched to Jolie’s performance as Grendel’s mother, the special FX crew basically gushes over how beautiful she is. This clip also offers a better look at the movie’s sea monsters, which really didn’t get enough screen time. Next up is “The Origins of Beowulf” another featurette that runs for 5 minutes 13 seconds, playing as an homage to the original literary work that the film is based on. The film dissects why the story has survived as long as it has and why certain changes to the story were made as well as why Zemeckis thought it needed a modern day adaptation. Considering how much the film touts a “This ain’t your daddy’s Beowulf” attitude, it treats the original epic poem with the utmost respect in this extra. “Creating the Ultimate Beowulf” runs for 1 minute 59 seconds, and is a short featurette explaining how the titular character was shaped. “The Art of Beowulf” runs for 5 minutes 25 seconds, this featurette shows how the look of the movie came to be, explaining how the filmmakers wanted to ad a new twist to the classic tale, mixing a look of fantasy with a look a realism. Next is "A Conversation with Robert Zemeckis" featurette which runs for 10 minutes 9 seconds. This footage was shot after a screening of the film at USC, here the director talks about why he chose to make this film and on using this process, how the mo-cap process affords him more control, on the types of stories you can tell with this process and on being tech savvy to work with the technology as well as his love for 3D style among other things. The disc also includes 11 deleted scenes in the form of incomplete animatics. They are: - "Grendel Runs Towards Herot" runs for 15 seconds, the create runs towards the city with haste. - "Hrothgar Awakened by Unferth" runs for 50 seconds, the servant wakes the king after another tragedy. - "Scylding's Watch Escorts Beowulf" runs for 56 seconds, the guard takes Beowulf and his men to the edge of the city but goes no further. - "Wealthow Shows Beowulf the Sundial" runs for 1 minute 42 seconds – In this scene the king’s wife develops her affection for the hero, and Beowulf makes it clear that he is a hero that is unafraid of death. - "Beowulf Boasts to the People of Herot" runs for 1 minute 11 seconds – a scene in which the hero’s vanity is emphasized. - "Beowulf Hammers Grendel's Arm" runs for 13 seconds, Beowulf hangs the torn appendage above the doorway. - "Celebration and Seduction" runs for 2 minutes 13 seconds – Beowulf’s troops get drunk and flirt with the local women of Herot. Beowulf and Wealthow’s relationship is also solidified more so in this scene. - "Wulfgar Greets Beowulf at the Stockade" runs for 1 minute 21 seconds – Beowulf’s troops show a sign of good faith to their guests. - "Beowulf’s Day Unferth Finds the Horn" runs for 2 minutes 31 seconds – Beowulf is heralded by the people as a hero, while Unferth complains about the hero’s supposed feats, while Cain unearths something that may challenge the hero’s word. - "Cain on the Barrows (Original)" runs for 1 minute 11 seconds – Cain explains how he found Beowulf’s magic horn. - "Cain on the Barrows (Alternate)" runs for 56 seconds, another version of the scene. Also included is the theatrical trailer which runs for 1 minute 56 seconds.
Overall
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