Beowulf by Paul Bullock

The year 2004 produced few cinematic sights as terrifying as that of Tom Hanks taking a group of kids to visit Santa in The Polar Express. Based on Chris Van Allsburg’s short story, Robert Zemeckis’s ground-breaking animation starred Hanks as the kindly conductor of the titular magical vessel. Only it didn’t. Via the wonders of motion capture technology, Zemeckis shot Hanks in live action before ‘painting’ over him with computer animation. The results were nightmarish. Hanks’s frame, facial structure and mannerisms were replicated perfectly, but the technology failed to capture the subtleties and nuances of human skin, hair and eyes, turning America’s best-loved actor into a dead-eyed escapee from Vincent Price’s House of Wax. Now, that same process is back in the rather less jolly form of Beowulf. Can the mythical beast slayer fare any better than Forest Gump?

Yes, and no. On a basic film-making level, this is a far superior piece of work. Zemeckis’s direction is more confident, Alan Silvestri’s music has all the epic swell and grandeur of Howard Shore’s scores for Lord of the Rings and the screenplay is one of the best of the year. Stardust scribe Neil Gaiman and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avery have penned an intelligent and authentic adaptation of what is, let’s not forget, a poem so old that elements of the original text have become lost amid the sands of time. This affords the writers licence to adjust the story as they see fit and they take full advantage, notably by implicating King Hrothgar in the creation of Crispin Glover‘s monstrous Grendel. But while their alterations are certainly significant they actually help rather than bastardise the story’s emotional resonance and themes of greed, lust and power, meaning fans and scholars won’t be too displeased with their work.

Also excelling are the actors. While it struggles with skin, motion capture technology is exceptionally good at replicating the small nuances of human movements and Zemeckis has gathered a cast that is more than capable of creating such subtleties. Robin Wright-Penn lends the king’s underwritten wife a sense of dignity and nobility in the face of his adultery. Angelina Jolie, her voluptuous lips and hourglass hips accentuated by computer and covered with nothing more than some well-placed gold paint, is the perfect fit for Grendel’s demonic temptress of a mother. And Crispin Glover once again proves he’s one of Hollywood’s most under-rated actors by producing a physically and vocally astonishing performance that gives motion capture king Andy Serkis a run for his money. Only Ray Winstone struggles, which, considering he takes the lead role here, is certainly a problem, but not one that‘s entirely his fault.

Presumably, Zemeckis cast the actor for his gruff vulnerability and relatable charisma, both of which are put to good use as the flawed fighter. But in real life, of course, Winstone is a tubby 50-year-old Cockney and not a slim, muscular 20-something Norse warrior. So while most of the actors are on screen in carbon copy form, Zemeckis has had to push the technology further than ever before for Winstone, by crafting a brand new character from his basic face and frame, one that looks like Winstone, only thirty years younger, several stone lighter and a few hundred gym visits more buff. The result is both brilliant and bizarre. From a distance, he looks every inch the Nietzschean superman, his muscles growing muscles, his torso seemingly crafted from stone. But get close and the subtleties of Winstone‘s talents are lost beneath a haze of unrealistic pixels. The face looks rubbery. The eyes often seem dead. The mouth, usually so good in mo-cap, sometimes looks like its been stolen from a blow-up sex doll. If you’ve seen him howling “I am Beowulf” in the trailer, you’ll see what we mean. It’s almost there, but almost, when the goal is to replicate real life, is nowhere near enough.

The rest of the characters are something of a hodge-podge. While Brendan Gleeson as Beowulf’s trusted sidekick Wiglaf and Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar look uncannily realistic both in terms of movement and skin, you get the feeling that’s only because their rubbery imperfections can be hidden by blemishes, battle debris and facial hair. Women and children, however, tend not to have such concealing facial features, but rather soft, smooth and supple skin, the creation of which leaves the technology at something of a loss. The kids in The Polar Express all looked like they had failed the auditions for a Village of the Damned remake, so eerily cherublike was their skin, and here all the women seem just as weird, with Wright-Penn looking porcelain-skinned, oddly milky and almost exactly the same as Alison Lohman, who turns up in the film’s final act as the older Beowulf’s young mistress.

You wonder then, what the point of this technology is. From the rolling, frozen hills to the gruesome mythical beasties, a lot of Beowulf looks very impressive indeed. But there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been created in live action with a decent effects house, some creative location scouting and a talented cinematographer. What’s more, with Zemeckis now so besotted by this format that he’s apparently going to dedicate the rest of his career to it, you can’t help but fear for his creative future. He may be a director best known for his Back to the Future trilogy and forays into fantasy (films which are well-suited to this format), but Contact and Castaway have proven that he is a diverse and eclectic helmer who is much, much more than just a technology-obsessed geek. Whether or not he will make such adventurous, grounded films in this format remains to be seen, but it's hard to see them working out if he does. After all, would you be able to take seriously the sight of a computer generated Jodie Foster pondering the mysteries of space? We wouldn't...

In the end, the only real advantage of this technology is that it makes cinema feel unique and exciting in a way it struggles to do in our times of iPhones and downloading. For all its flaws, this is a singular cinematic experience and when viewed in 3D IMAX form (the film is being released on big screen 3D, digital 2D and good old 35mm), it feels like an event that has something to offer for the whole family. A word of warning though. 3D IMAX films are incredibly overwhelming experiences and Beowulf is a surprisingly visceral film, boasting impalement, bodily dismemberment and Anthony Hopkins’s naked arse all in three glorious dimensions. It may be a 12A, but kids should only go if they managed to last through the darker stages of Lord of the Rings, and even then parents should tread with caution. Mind you, if they lived through Hanks’s train ride, watching Winstone rip out a dragon’s heart with his bare hands will be a walk in the park. Hell, even we’re still having nightmares over Zombie Tom and we’re old enough to remember when he was the one fighting the ghouls in The Burbs…