Beowulf? You must be joking...

Haven't been to the movies in awhile (other than taking Daniel to see BeeMovie, which he liked much more than I did). Tonight I decided I'd go see Beowulf.

What a disappointment that was. I knew going into it that it was a "motion capture animation" - they put the actors into the fancy high tech suits that track their movements, and use that as a framework to build CGI characters.

Even knowing that's what I was getting myself in for, it was still a big disappointment. All through the movie I kept thinking: Why? WHen you've got the likes of Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovitch, let us see THEM. Don't waste their talent by replacing their ever so expressive faces with animated caricatures of humanity that aren't even a tenth as expressive.

Not to mention the fact that I cringed every time I saw one of the CGI horses galloping. That was a sight to make any equestrian cry.

I just visited imdb to see what people there were saying about the movie. One statement caught my attention: I saw this movie today and every movie I've ever seen in the last 40 years now looks as quaint to me as the silent movies looked to me in my era.

You are kidding, right? I mean, granted, if you've seen nothing but Saturday Morning Cartoons, this is mighty impressive, but otherwise, if you've ever seen anything with a bit of humanity to it...

What makes it even worse is...I just went online and read a plot summary of Beowulf (the epic peom) and found that they seriously massacred the story.

I suppose that's no surprise, but it makes me wonder...why did they make this movie in the first place? :D