Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (2007) at USC

I saw “Beowulf” a couple of weeks early this evening as part of a sneak preview for USC students…. I think it’ll blow your mind… as it stands, it has some fantastic D&D-esque scenes and the animation is amazing (I had to remind myself at times that it was animated and not a real actor… sometimes it looks animated, but man do they suck you in at other times)

I saw an early screening of “Beowulf 3-D” this evening on campus. Director Robert Zemeckis is a USC alum, so he allowed it to be shown on campus over the past two nights.

The previews hadn’t done much for me and looked too cartoony, like “Shrek.” I was stunned by the look of the real thing though.  A few times here and there I thought ‘cartoon’ but there were also many more times where I was like ‘is that real?’  Angelina Jolie looks hands-down real in all her scenes.

The action – particularly the last act – is very “Lord of the Rings.”  The message of the story is interesting and kept my attention.  After seeing how good their ‘performance capture’ system looks now, I kept thinking “Wow, how good is James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ going to look in a couple more years?”  I’m now a lot more confident that the technology has caught up enough to make Jim’s grand vision a reality.

I have no idea how it got a PG-13, other than for being a ‘cartoon.’  It’s insanely violent and had nudity of sorts in the form of  Angelina Jolie.  At least at USC, reaction was very loud, with the audience jumping all over the place. I actually thought one of my old study group members was going to walk out early on after the intensity of it being a bit too much for her to handle.