Robert Zemeckis’s computer-animated adaptation of Beowulf led the box-office this weekend, and it will likely continue to perform well over the Thanksgiving holiday. The film utilizes a high-tech animation process some say portends the future of filmmaking (James Cameron’s next feature will employ the same technology).
Comparing it to its source material is of little use. It’s been streamlined and modernized, and now bears more resemblance to a computer game than an ancient epic. And despite a number of favorable reviews, the best that can be said about it is that it is an empty spectacle, devoid of substance and unconcerned with providing even the barest cinematic pleasure. There’s plenty of bloody fighting, and yet nothing much happens. The movie is not so much a real battle as a military parade—a carefully orchestrated show of arms more notable for the power and technology on display than for any real movement.
Shot using a process called motion capture, in which the performances of real actors are captured by computer sensors and then digitally rendered and presented in 3-D (you even get to keep the glasses), Beowulf shows off its digital wizardry at every opportunity. Mostly this means a parade of gory imagery pushing out from the screen, demanding attention in the way of a small child tugging on your shirt. There are flying 3-D arrows, thrusting 3-D swords, severed 3-D heads, and buckets of 3-D blood oozing out toward the audience. Like the cheap, crude 3-D films of the 1950’s, the presentation is pure gimmickry.
The technique seems intended to add weight and substance, to heighten the drama and add intensity to the action by making everything seem more real. But the computerized animation only serves to make everything seem hollow and fake. The detail on the animated humans is impressive—every hair and facial pore is visible—but such detail fails to impart a convincing sense of human presence. Instead, the people move awkwardly, like expensive toys controlled by remote.
In fact, the entire production has the disconnected feeling of watching a video game being played by someone else. It seems content to engage the audience solely through technology, and, as a result, lacks even the shallow visual pleasures of a bombastic Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps more worrisome are the desires of the production team to attain an impossible standard of perfection and of the movie-going public to disengage from anything approaching reality. What does it say when even the face and figure of Angelina Jolie must be digitally nipped, tucked, smoothed, and polished? If this is the future of film, does that mean it will lose all touch with what is physical, human, imperfect, real?
