WARNING!

[triadruid]

Do NOT, under any circumstances, no matter how much they bribe you or make you drink beforehand, go see Beowulf.

That was the worst piece of cinema I we've seen in years.... worse than Wing Commander, and possibly worse than The Chronicles of Riddick. Certainly worse than Van Helsing..!

This has been a Public Service Announcement from E3 & celtic_elk.

Amama ua noa. The prayer has flown.

Comments

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

Really? cerrunos really wants to see it. We almost went last night but didn't. What didn't you like about? Was it the digitization of real people or something else?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

The animation is bad.
The voice acting is bad.
The songs are bad.
The fight scenes are okay, but sort of fundamentally silly.
The dialogue is AWFUL, which is impressive considering Neil Gaiman helped write the screenplay...

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

songs?!?! There are songs?

The only sane explaination for this I can thik of is that they have the scops retelling the old epics in song.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

You would think that. Instead it's a sort of high-pitched pop-song by the Queen on the harp (I wish I was making that up), and a hilariously bad rendition of "Beowulf's Song" by his thegns...

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

"High-pitched pop-song by the Queen"

Took me to a certain Rhapsody that I *never* needed to relate to Beowulf.

*shudder*

[otterkin.livejournal.com]

Do I get to be smug about his one?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes, Celtic_elk says you get to be. :)

[kenllama.livejournal.com]

me too! me too!

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

::iz sad::

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It does hew relatively close to the original story (compared to, say, Troy), but that's it's only saving grace.

[gamera-spinning.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is why you went. You had already said that you weren't interested in seeing it when you saw that it was animated.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Never underestimate the power of stupidity + large numbers of people...

[malvito.livejournal.com]

It was, to be fair, a Friday Night Movie.

Whether or not that is a recommendation is a matter of point of view.

I generally agree with your assessment, though I'm not sure I agree that it was worse than Van Helsing, which was not worth the $2.00 I spent to see it. But that raises a question of which movie is more of a nadir, a race which is not really worth winning.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

It was, to be fair, a Friday Night Movie.

True, and I guess I wasn't at all certain they had promoted it as such. They never seemed to be able to decide if they were playing it straight or parodying the source material...

I think what pissed me off the worst was that they had such potential, in the actors/writers/technology/budget, to do something marvelous with the material. The fact that Grendel and his mother spoke Old English only made it more frustrating because someone obviously had some familiarity with the source material... but it should have been the Geats and Danes, not the ancient monsters. And then not only ignoring the "Mark of Cain" link for the monsters, but naming the priest's assistant/slave "Cain"? Madness.

Then again, we thought Van Helsing was so bad that we stayed through to the next film in that theater as compensation - unfortunately that turned out to be Troy, so I'm not certain we ever got our money's worth that night.

[celtic-elk.livejournal.com]

I'll suck up some of the credit for that, although featherynscale and kittenpants assented as well.

[bondgirl51.livejournal.com]

LOL

I, of course, have exactly the opposite opinion.

But when I go to the cinema, I no longer say "do I like it?" I say "Was this successful in achieving it's goals?" Beowulf is a manly poem of manliness and bravado and testosterone. Also some christian overtones and a few other themes.

So is the film.
I found it successful. :D
And, in it being exactly what it meant to be? I loved it. lol


But you didn't. Okie dokie. :D

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure there are people out there that liked it, and I'm glad for them. Just none of the four of us (or by the sounds of it, anyone else in the theater) was particularly satisfied. :)

[leiandra.livejournal.com]

osh wants to know if it's worse than "Bloodrayne"

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Never saw that one, so I can't help. It was definitely worse than either of the Underworld movies, though...

[leiandra.livejournal.com]

Oh, ouch. Thanks for the tip.

[celtic-elk.livejournal.com]

Bloodrayne at least had Kristanna Loken's bared breasts. And no bad pop songs. Other than that...it's a toss-up.

Kristanna Loken was the chick from T3:Rise, right?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Dunno; her bare chest vs. Angelina's gold-leaf chest... tough call.

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

I just bought Van Helsing last night, and own the Riddick 3-pack... good movies... not cinema, more like action/adventure gummybears for the soul... but I likes me some gummybears.

I will assume that the new Beowulf is much like the new 300 then? Not really accurate, but fun?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Like 300, but less well-executed. See my comment to 8elements above.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

hot digital abs?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Meh. We got non-digitized Gerard Butler abs in 300, right? I definitely liked this less than 300...

[danit4blogs.livejournal.com]

a) this wasn't high on my selective list of movies to see in the theatre
b) any movie that has a promo w/ the line "I AM BEOWULF!" (reminiscent of 300) might make it as a movie i rent when i have a freebie coupon at Blockbuster
c) i just had a gut feeling when i first realized it was animation & not live action, that this movie was going to suck...

so, yeah, i probably wasn't going to see it anyway, but thanks for pointing out the huge pothole in the road, anwyay... ;)

[zenfajita.livejournal.com]

Seriously. No matter how much you drink beforehand?

I was amazed to see RottenTomatoes has given it 71% approval, but I'm still taking your advice. There were decent reviews of Polar Express when it came out; a couple years later everyone agrees it was execrable. Zemeckis can ruin anything. Even, it seems, Neil Gaiman.

TMI section:
(although i kinda liked Van Helsing...)

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Yeah; featherynscale enjoyed the hell out of Van Helsing, but even she thought this was definitely worse.

We had to go home and drink (and warn the Internets) immediately; I think if you could arrange a situation where no one actually had to pay for the copy, and there was plenty of booze on hand, it might make a decent Bad Movie Night film. Our entire theater was howling...

[hekatatia.livejournal.com]

I'd already decided to leave it for a rental - eventually. But yeesh! That bad, huh?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

[apocalypticbob.livejournal.com]

Went and saw it Friday night, unfortunately, and decided that the only way to see that movie was with copious amounts of alcohol...think of the drinking game if you took a drink every time someone said "drink" or "mead"...my head hurts just thinking about it!