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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Film Beowulf Trailer.

Posted by Erik Henriksen on Thu, Jul 26 at 1:15 PM

If it was up to me, The Polar Express would be retitled The Creepiest Movie of All Time. Pretty much a cinematic definition of the uncanny valley, Robert Zemeckis’ treacly Xmas flick was unintentionally but absolutely terrifying, with its dead-eyed, Santa Claus-crazed CG children roaming about. Just thinking about it gives me the willies.

All the same, I’ve been looking forward to Beowulf, Zemeckis’ next film. Like Polar, it’s all CG and motion capture—in other words, while the film stars Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins, that’s not really them onscreen. They acted their shit out on greenscreen or whatever, and a CG representation of them is what actually makes it into the film, alongside plenty of CG backgrounds and effects. While a ton of recent genre movies have been mostly or all CG (Sky Captain, the Star Wars prequels, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 300), the ambitious Zemeckis is, I think, the only one who’s still trying to push it all the way.

If you couldn’t tell by the title, Beowulf is an adaptation of that one really old (but totally badass) book you had to read in eleventh grade English; it (sort of) stars a whole bunch of solid actors (including Crispin Glover as Grendel!), and the screenplay was written by Neil Gaiman. The trailer’s interesting: I really like the tone of it (esp. the creepy/sexy stuff w/ Jolie, who’s playing Grendel’s mother, who apparently invented high heels in the middle ages). But the film’s look, at this point at least, is really uneven—some shots looks great, indistinguishable from live action, while others look like they’re from Shrek. Check it out here. Thoughts?

scaled.grendelsmomheels.png

Thanks to AICN. And yes, this is yet another trailer that uses that Requiem for a Dream song.

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Comments

Hey, I think I played that video game. What was it called, Mythiablultima?

What's the point in making an animated film that's trying to look like live action? They even make the characters look like the actors. Why not just use actors? It's animator masturbation -- getting off on the technology for their own pleasure only.

Posted by extramsg | July 27, 2007 12:56 AM

Well, it's not quite that simple. I'd argue that any time a new filmic technique is introduced, its early usage can't help but seem self-indulgent. (You could make the same argument about Pixar's first shorts, which could have easily been done w/ old-school animation techniques, but eventually brought about a way of animation that handily outdated pencils and cels, or about John Woo's slow-mo in his trademark Hong Kong stuff, which must have looked preposterous at the time but ushered in a whole new way to film action. Same w/ the steadicam, Tarantino's script structures, etc.) Once that shit gets introduced, refined, and accepted, filmmakers have an entirely new tool at their disposal, and that's almost always a very good thing. (Pretty sure we're in the refinement stage of photorealistic CG at this point.)

Also, in a lot of genre films, you're looking at them being 70-90 percent CG anyway (sets, props, effects, non-human characters, etc.). Making (or attempting to make) a realistic, entirely CG film makes sense in that context, so as to better integrate both the look and the tone of the film. And--esp. with something as loaded w/ visual potential as Grendel and Grendel's mother--it gives the filmmaker some crazy opportunities to create characters that might look like real actors, but might also be capable of stuff that actors and makeup can hardly achieve.

It also comes down to a director simply telling a story in a specific or chosen way. There are things you can do with animation that you can't do with live action, and vice versa. Sure, Miyazaki could have made Spirited Away as a live action film, but who would want that? At a few points, Polar Express did some genuinely cool and unique visual stuff thanks to its CG/motion capture technique, justifying Zemeckis' choice of method; I can't imagine that, at least in a few bits, Beowulf won't do the same.

Posted by Erik Henriksen | July 27, 2007 10:56 AM

This isn't the theme from Requiem for a Dream. It's actually the song/theme from 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later called "In the House - In a Heartbeat."

Posted by Keenan | July 29, 2007 8:44 PM

Oh. Heh. Ah, never mind, then.

Posted by Erik Henriksen | July 30, 2007 10:39 AM

Didn't mean to sound harsh or anything of course. When I first saw the trailer I thought the same exact thing, but then I realized, "Oh wait... Duh! This is the song that I've been listening to all day and not "Requiem for a Tower." Honest mistake! Great find and a great article nevertheless!

Posted by Keenan | July 30, 2007 5:35 PM

Does anyone know the name of the theme?

Posted by Maja | August 4, 2007 3:04 AM

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