Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American adult animated fantasy action film produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. It is based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and featuring the voices of Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, and Angelina Jolie. Its plot depicts the rise and fall of the warrior Beowulf after he travels to Denmark to kill a monster. It was produced by Shangri-La Entertainment and Zemeckis's ImageMovers and features characters animated using motion-capture animation, which was previously used in The Polar Express (2004) and Monster House (2006).
Beowulf
- Steve Starkey
- Robert Zemeckis
- Jack Rapke
Robert Presley
Jeremiah O'Driscoll
- Paramount Pictures
(North America) - Warner Bros. Pictures
(International)
- November 5, 2007 (Westwood)
- November 16, 2007 (United States)
114 minutes
United States
English
$150 million[1]
$196.4 million[1]
Beowulf premiered at Westwood, Los Angeles on November 5, 2007 and was released theatrically in the United States on November 16, 2007 by Paramount Pictures, with Warner Bros. Pictures handling international distribution. It received moderately positive reviews from critics, who complimented the CGI visual-effects, performance-capture, and voice acting, while criticizing aspects of the interpretation of the poem. The film underperformed at the box office, having earned only $196.4 million on a $150 million production budget (not including marketing costs).
Plot[edit]
In 507, the legendary Geatish warrior Beowulf travels to Denmark with his band of soldiers including his best friend Wiglaf to help King Hrothgar, who needs a hero to slay Grendel, a hideously malformed troll-like creature with insuperable strength and cunning who attacked and killed many of Hrothgar's warriors during a celebration in the mead hall Heorot. Upon arriving, Beowulf becomes attracted to Hrothgar's wife Queen Wealtheow.
The men celebrate in Heorot to lure Grendel out while Beowulf strips naked and relaxes before Grendel arrives to ensure a fair and equal fight. During the fight, Beowulf discovers that Grendel has hypersensitive hearing and ruptures the creature's eardrum. Grendel shrinks in size and manages to escape only after Beowulf severs his arm, mortally wounding him. In thanks for freeing his kingdom from the monster, Hrothgar gives Beowulf his golden drinking horn, which commemorates Hrothgar's victory over the mighty dragon Fafnir.
In his cave, Grendel's mother swears revenge over his corpse. She travels to Heorot and slaughters Beowulf's men in the night. Hrothgar tells both Beowulf and Wiglaf that Grendel's mother is the last of the Water Demons. Hrothgar's adviser, Unferth, offers Beowulf his sword Hrunting to slay Grendel's mother. Beowulf and Wiglaf then travel to the demon's cave, where Beowulf enters alone and encounters the demon, who takes the form of a beautiful, gold-covered naked woman. He tries to kill her with Hrunting but fails due to her magic. Instead, she seduces him with promises to make him king in exchange for the drinking horn and a son to replace Grendel, which Beowulf agrees to when they both kiss. Afterwards, Beowulf returns to Heorot with Grendel's head and announces he has killed Grendel's mother. He recounts embellished stories of a fight, claiming he left the sword impaled in the body of Grendel's mother and lost the golden drinking horn in the battle.
Hrothgar speaks to Beowulf privately, and asks if he truly killed Grendel's mother. Despite Beowulf's boasting and calling Grendel's mother a hag, Hrothgar is not fooled. Hrothgar says all that matters is that Grendel is dead and the curse of Grendel's mother is no longer his to bear. He indirectly reveals that he had also been seduced by the demon, and Grendel was the result of their tryst. Beowulf is shocked upon realizing Hrothgar is Grendel's father and that the curse has now been passed on to him after his affair with the demon. Hrothgar declares Beowulf to be king upon his death and he commits suicide by jumping from the castle parapet onto the beach below. Grendel's mother appears as a gold light in the surf and drags Hrothgar's corpse into the sea as the crowd kneels to the newly crowned King Beowulf, fulfilling their bargain.
Fifty years later, the elderly Beowulf is the estranged husband of Wealtheow, who has converted to Christianity. Beowulf has a mistress, Ursula, but his tryst with Grendel's mother has left him sterile to both his wife and mistress. On the anniversary of Beowulf's victory against Grendel, Unferth returns the golden drinking horn, which his slave had found on the moors. That night, a nearby village is destroyed by a dragon, which then transforms into a golden figure, who orders Unferth to give a message to King Beowulf, the dragon's father: the sins of the father have returned to him (referencing the Faustian bargain curse cycle of Grendel's mother that he agreed to). Afterwards, Beowulf privately confesses to Wealtheow about his affair with Grendel's mother and they reconcile.
Beowulf and Wiglaf go to the cave once again, and Beowulf enters alone. When Grendel's mother appears, Beowulf throws her the golden horn, but she refuses it and the dragon attacks Beowulf's castle, threatening Wealtheow and Ursula. Despite his age, Beowulf goes to great lengths to stop the dragon and break the curse. Beowulf is mortally wounded in the struggle, but manages to kill the dragon by ripping its heart out, and he and the creature tumble to the rocky beach below the castle. The dragon transforms into its golden humanoid form, before being washed out to sea. Before he dies, Beowulf tries to tell Wiglaf the truth about his affair with Grendel's mother and acknowledge his son, but Wiglaf insists on keeping his legacy intact.
As the new king, Wiglaf gives Beowulf a Norse funeral. Wiglaf finds the golden horn in the sand and sees Grendel's mother give Beowulf a final kiss as his burning ship sinks into the sea. Grendel's mother slowly rises to the water's surface and seductively beckons Wiglaf towards her. He wades into the sea, while holding the golden drinking horn, before pausing halfway in the surf. They both stare at each other, with Grendel's mother seductively waiting and Wiglaf clearly tempted but showing resistance.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Author Neil Gaiman and screenwriter Roger Avary wrote a screen adaptation of Beowulf in May 1997 (they had met while working on a film adaptation of Gaiman's The Sandman in 1996 before Warner Bros. canceled it).[2][8] The script had been optioned by ImageMovers in the same year and set up at DreamWorks with Avary slated to direct and Robert Zemeckis producing. Avary stated he wanted to make a small-scale, gritty film with a budget of US$15–20 million, similar to Jabberwocky or Excalibur.[2] The project eventually went into turnaround after the option expired, to which the rights returned to Avary, who went on to direct an adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. In January 2005, producer Steve Bing, at the behest of Zemeckis who was wanting to direct the film himself, revived the production by convincing Avary that Zemeckis' vision, supported by the strength of digitally enhanced live action, was worth relinquishing the directorial reins.[9][10] Zemeckis did not like the poem, but enjoyed reading the screenplay. Because of the expanded budget, Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, because "there is nothing that you could write that would cost me more than a million dollars per minute to film. Go wild!" In particular, the entire fight with the dragon was rewritten from a talky confrontation to a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.[2]
Animation and visual effects[edit]
Zemeckis drew inspiration for the visual-effects of Beowulf from experience with The Polar Express, which uses motion-capture technology to create three-dimensional CGI images of characters.[11] Appointing Jerome Chen, whom Zemeckis worked with on The Polar Express, the two decided to chart realism as their foremost goal.
Animation supervisor Kenn MacDonald explained that Zemeckis used motion capture because "Even though it feels like live-action, there were a lot of shots where Bob cut loose. Amazing shots. Impossible with live-action actors. This method of filmmaking gives him freedom and complete control. He doesn't have to worry about lighting. The actors don't have to hit marks. They don't have to know where the camera is. It's pure performance." A 25 × 35-foot stage was built, and it used 244 Vicon MX40 cameras. Actors on set wore seventy eight body markers. The cameras recorded real-time footage of the performances, shots which Zemeckis reviewed. The director then used a virtual-camera to choose camera angles from the footage which was edited together. Two teams of animators worked on the film, with one group working on replicating the facial performances, the other working on body movement. The animators said they worked very closely on replicating the human characters, but the character of Grendel had to be almost reworked, because he is a monster, not human.[12]
Over 450 graphic designers were chosen for the project, the largest team ever assembled for a Sony Pictures Imageworks-produced movie as of 2007.[11] Designers at Imageworks generated new animation tools for facial, body and cloth design especially for the movie, and elements of keyframe animation were incorporated into the film in order to capture the facial expressions of the actors and actresses.[11] The mead hall battle scene near the beginning of the film, among others, required numerous props that served as additional markers; these markers allowed for a more accurate manifestation of a battlefield setting as the battle progressed.[11] However, the data being collected by the markers slowed down the studios' computer equipment and five months were spent developing a new save/load system that would increase the efficiency of the studios' resources.[11] To aid in the process of rendering the massive quantities of information, the development team used cached data. In the cases that using cached data was not possible, the scenes were rendered using foreground occlusion, which involves the blurring of different overlays of a single scene in an attempt to generate a single scene film.[11]
Other elements of the film were borrowed from that of others created by Imageworks: Spider-Man 3 lent the lighting techniques it used and the fluid engine present in the Sandman, while the waves of the ocean and the cave of Grendel's mother were modeled after the wave fluid engine used in Surf's Up. The 2007 film Ghost Rider lent Beowulf the fluid engine that was used to model the movements of protagonist Johnny Blaze.[11] Jerome Chen worked to process large crowd scenes as early as possible, as additional time would be needed to process these scenes in particular.[11] As a result, the film's development team designed a priority scale and incorporated it into their processors so graphic artists would be able to work with the scenes when they arrived.[11]
So much data was produced in the course of the creation of the film, the studio was forced to upgrade all of its processors to multicore versions, which run quicker and more efficiently. The creation of additional rendering nodes throughout Culver City, California was necessitated by the movie's production.[11] Mark Vulcano, who had previously worked on VeggieTales and Monster House, served as Senior Character Animator for the film.
In designing the dragon, production designer Doug Chiang wanted to create something unique in film. The designers looked at bats and flying squirrels for inspiration, and also designed its tail to allow underwater propulsion. As the beast is Beowulf's son with Grendel's mother, elements such as Winstone's eyes and cheekbone structure were incorporated into its look.[13] The three primary monsters in the film share a golden color scheme, because they are all related. Grendel has patches of gold skin, but because of his torment, he has shed much of his scales and exposed his internal workings. He still had to resemble Crispin Glover though: the animators decided to adapt Glover's own parted hairstyle to Grendel, albeit with bald patches.[12]
Zemeckis insisted that the character Beowulf resemble depictions of Jesus, believing that a correlation could be made between Christ's face and a universally accepted appeal.[14] Zemeckis used Alan Ritchson for the physical model, facial image and movement for the title character of Beowulf.[15] Avary had the idea to make Beowulf fight Grendel naked as a reference to Richard Corben's comic book Den, while also taking inspiration from legendary berserkers, who purportedly fought in battles while naked.[16]
One objective Zemeckis, Gaiman and Avary shared was to expand on the original poem as it has been recorded. Beowulf is generally considered to be a pagan tale written down by Christian monks, which for Zemeckis and Avary represented the possibility that the original story had been tampered with in order to better fit Christian sensibilities.[16][19] They found this to be a reasonable explanation for critical elements to the story that are absent from the poem, such as the identity of Grendel's father, why he abstains from attacking Hrothgar, and the lack of proof that Grendel's mother had been slain.[16]
In order to restore those points, they offered their own interpretation for motivations behind Grendel's behavior and for what happened in the cave of Grendel's mother, justifying it by arguing that Beowulf acts as an unreliable narrator in the portion of the poem in which he describes his battle with Grendel's mother.[20] Avary said their goal was "to remain truer to the letter of the epic but to read between the lines and find greater truths that had been explored before,"[21] while Gaiman commented, "the glory of Beowulf is that you are allowed to retell it" due to the presence of many other adaptations that offered their own take on it.[16]
These choices also helped them to better connect the third act to the second of their screenplay, which is divided in the poem by a 50-year gap.[18]
Some of the changes made by the film as noted by scholars include:
This is not the first time that the theme of a relationship between Beowulf and Grendel's mother was explored by Gaiman. In his 1998 collection of short stories, Smoke and Mirrors, the poem Bay Wolf is a retelling of Beowulf in a modern-day setting. In this story, Beowulf as the narrator is ambiguous about what happened between Grendel's mother and himself.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Beowulf ranked #1 in the United States and Canada box office during its opening weekend date of November 18,[42] grossing $27.5 million in 3,153 theaters.[43]
At the end of its theatrical run, the film had grossed an estimated domestic total of $82.3 million and a foreign box office total of $114.1 million for a worldwide gross of $196.4 million.[44]
Critical response[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Beowulf has received an approval rating of 71% based on 194 reviews, with an average score of 6.50/10. The website's consensus reads, "Featuring groundbreaking animation, stunning visuals, and a talented cast, Beowulf has in spades what more faithful book adaptations forget to bring: pure cinematic entertainment."[45] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 59 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[46] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.
Giving Beowulf three out of four stars, Roger Ebert commented that the film is a satire of the original poem.[47] Time magazine critic Richard Corliss described the film as one with "power and depth" and suggested that the "effects scenes look realer, more integrated into the visual fabric, because they meet the traced-over live-action elements halfway. It all suggests that this kind of a moviemaking is more than a stunt. By imagining the distant past so vividly, Zemeckis and his team prove that character capture has a future."[48] Corliss later named it the tenth-best film of 2007.[49] Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers praised the motion capture used in the film and argued that "The eighth-century Beowulf, goosed into twenty-first century life by a screenplay from sci-fi guru Neil Gaiman and Pulp Fiction's Roger Avary, will have you jumping out of your skin and begging for more... I've never seen a 3-D movie pop with this kind of clarity and oomph. It's outrageously entertaining."[50]
Tom Ambrose of Empire gave the film four out of five stars. He wrote that Beowulf is "the finest example to date of the capabilities of this new technique [...] Previously, 3D movies were blurry, migraine-inducing affairs. Beowulf is a huge step forward [...] Although his Cockney accent initially seems incongruous [...] Winstone's turn ultimately reveals a burgeoning humanity and poignant humility." Ambrose also argues that "the creepy dead eyes thing has been fixed."[51] Justin Chang of Variety thought that the screenwriters "have taken some intriguing liberties with the heroic narrative [... the] result is, at least, a much livelier piece of storytelling than the charmless Polar Express." He also stated that "Zemeckis prioritizes spectacle over human engagement, in his reliance on a medium that allows for enormous range and fluidity in its visual effects yet reduces his characters to 3-D automatons. While the technology has improved since 2004's Polar Express (particularly in the characters' more lifelike eyes), the actors still don't seem entirely there."[52]
Kenneth Turan of NPR criticized the film, writing: "It's been 50 years since Hollywood first started flirting with 3-D movies, and the special glasses required for viewing have gotten a whole lot more substantial. The stories being filmed are just as flimsy. Of course Beowulf does have a more impressive literary pedigree than, say, Bwana Devil. But you'd never know that by looking at the movie. Beowulf's story of a hero who slays monsters has become a fanboy fantasy that panders with demonic energy to the young male demographic."[53] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times compared the poem with the film, stating that "If you don't remember this evil babe from the poem, it's because she's almost entirely the invention of the screenwriters Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman and the director Robert Zemeckis, who together have plumped her up in words, deeds and curves. These creative interventions aren't especially surprising given the source material and the nature of big-studio adaptations. There's plenty of action in Beowulf, but even its more vigorous bloodletting pales next to its rich language, exotic setting and mythic grandeur."[54]
Academic response[edit]
Scholars and authors criticized the changes made to the poem's story. Southern Methodist University's Director of Medieval Studies Bonnie Wheeler is "convinced that the new Robert Zemeckis movie treatment sacrifices the power of the original for a plot line that propels Beowulf into seduction by Angelina Jolie—the mother of the monster he has just slain. What man doesn't get involved with Angelina Jolie?' Wheeler asks. 'It's a great cop-out on a great poem.' ... 'For me, the sad thing is the movie returns to... a view of the horror of woman, the monstrous female who will kill off the male,' Wheeler says. 'It seems to me you could do so much better now. And the story of Beowulf is so much more powerful.'"[55] Other commentators pointed to the theories elucidated in John Grigsby's work Beowulf and Grendel, where Grendel's mother was linked with the ancient Germanic fertility goddess Nerthus.[56]
However, there were also positive academic reviews. Philosophy professor Stephen T. Asma argued that "Zemeckis's more tender-minded film version suggests that the people who cast out Grendel are the real monsters. The monster, according to this charity paradigm, is just misunderstood rather than evil (similar to the version presented in John Gardner's novel Grendel). The blame for Grendel's violence is shifted to the humans, who sinned against him earlier and brought the vengeance upon themselves. The only real monsters, in this tradition, are pride and prejudice. In the film, Grendel is even visually altered after his injury to look like an innocent, albeit scaly, little child. In the original Beowulf, the monsters are outcasts because they're bad (just as Cain, their progenitor, was outcast because he killed his brother), but in the film Beowulf the monsters are bad because they're outcasts [...] Contrary to the original Beowulf, the new film wants us to understand and humanize our monsters."[57]