I love Beowulf, the story not the movie. Beowulf is western Literature’s oldest tale. A tale very much changed from its Norse roots, to include Christianity as that became more dominant but usually remains true to its Nordic origins. The movie had great promise, and I wish I could have seen it in 3D, but that was not in the cards. Overall this was a dead on accurate portrayal of a common translation of the epic story. Keeping the same pace, names and feel.

The decision to go with 100% animation still baffles me. On to the review, 8 points and it shall be yours. This movies gets the full 8 because of my love for the story not the movie. The story deserves more explanation, than the movie earns.

1. True to the story. Kept everything and omitted nothing that I can see. It took some interpretations and ran with them
2. Sound Editing was perfect and impressive. Score was beautifully accentual, did not interrupt the flow of the movie
3. Voice acting was very good be they needed to standardize on an accent
4. – They needed subtitles for Grendle’s pseudo German. I understood most of it but i might have been the only one
5. – Animation lends itself to a comic interpretation of the serious events, a definitely disjointed experiance.
6. – Animation seemed inconsistent. Angelina Jolie was a perfect likeness in one scene and in the next frame not so much.
7. – Animation was poor quality when compared to others out there, looked too much like a video game. Gears of War had better graphics.
8. -Uncanny valley strikes again. Almost but not quite exactly looks human, but the little things throw it off.

I argued with myself over this grade. On one hand this is the most accurate to a story movie I have even seen. And that alone earns a high mark. But the animation quality and consistency needs so much work that it ruined most of the movie for me. The Uncanny Valley lives on, little things like lack of muscle strain in the models when they are supposed to be dramatically straining, lack of texture & details on things like legs and backs gives the character models a cartoon look. It is with a heavy heart that i give my final verdict of a 4, this did not live up to my expectations. Should have been filmed like 300 instead they went with Shrek-drama.