This is a new movie that just came out in the US last Friday. Since its required reading for all seniors at my school, we, the students, persuaded our teachers to give us a field trip to see it. And they did.

I personally am fascinated by the epic poem of Beowulf. If you haven't read it I suggest you do. And then read Grendel(John Gardner). A handful of extistensalism(sp?) and nihlism is good once in a while. Anyway, its a must read and for most Americans, you usually study it in highschool.

I was stoked to see the movie. It was weird to see it done in complete animation, but when it came to the fight scenes, like with the dragon, it was amazing. Once you got used to it the animation wasn't that bad. Think FF:AC. There were some parts that it looked almost real. As amazing as it is, it was easy to tell that it was made for 3-d viewing, so I suggest seeing it in i-max if you haven't already.

The movie followed the epic loosely, but it wasn't that bad story wise:
It bothered me that Beowulf didn't kill Grendel's mother. They could have made a very sexy battle out of that. But it did tie into a story for the dragon instead of some random fight like in the book. Also, I was dissapointed in Wiglaf. He was supposed to be the one to kill the dragon, or so I remember, but he didn't. Oh well. Wiglaf did take Beowulf's throne like in the epic. And I missed Beowulf's tower... *sniff*

All in all, I recommend seeing this movie if for the pure fact that you want to see the epic poem put to life.

Mm, I saw it yesterday, and thought it was pretty okay in my opinion. I didn't like the cg actually; I thought it was distracting. In FF:AC, the art style was great, and the cg was a perfect fit for the movie. I wasn't too found of the art style in Beowulf, and think it would've been better off as a live action movie. I did like their depiction of Grendel though. He was...disturbing. X3

Pretty good movie. Would've been better as a live action movie I think. Art was technically good (photorealistic in some scenes), but not particularly inspired. Facial animation weren't always great. (Beowulf's expressions didn't seem to convey his anger as well as they should have in a lot of cases. He looked silly yelling "I. AM. BEOWULF!" instead of awesome, as he should have.)

I give the movie a solid B!
And see I agree that it was made for 3d, hahah.

I agree that it should have been live action. Either they were aiming for something or they didn't have enough money to make it right in live action

Doesn't CGI the way they did it cost a lot more than live action? Also, it's a lot more work to make a movie with CG-mocap than live action, because if you want to do it right, you need to spend at least four hours editing a single frame, so I doubt it was budget-related. Then again, I haven't seen it, so it could be really low-q CG, and I just don't know about it... I'd like to see this movie though, because I thought the poem was really interesting. Apparently there was another Beowulf movie released a few years back, but I heard it was pretty bad. Beowulf & Grendel, I believe. And apparently, it has more swearing than a Samuel L. Jackson flick.

I saw this about a week ago. All in all I'd say it was fairly well done, but I do agree the CG was probably not the way to go.

Honestly (and I feel pretty stupid saying this) I had no idea it -was- CG until I actually watched it. I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the trailers. :P I'm a little confused as to why they decided on CG when all they did was make copies of the voice actors. ...okay, maybe (maybe!) Hopkins isn't really that fat, but they could've given him a body suit or something.

I haven't seen the older movie either but I heard it wasn't great. I think it was one of those "made for tv" things and the whole 3 hours was just Wulfy (shut up, I'll call him what I want) picking on Grendel, who was basically just a caveman rather than the awesomely disturbed troll thingy in this new version.

I wouldn't say the CG was "bad"... Just out of place and (to me) pointless.

I think it would've been much better live.