Beowulf – Blu-ray Disc Review

July 27, 2008 – 4:21 AM - Posted by: Justin Sluss

Tags: Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Bonus View, Crispin Glover, Paramount, Ray Winstone, Robert Zemeckis, Robin Wright Penn

has an average rating of 6.7 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
Dolby TrueHD 5.1
are ALL in HD with Picture-In-Picture
–
– 2007
– 113 minutes
– Paramount

Overall Verdict – Definitely Worth A Look

Buy it for $27.95 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by Justin Sluss

Theatrical Trailer:

The Movie Itself is loosely based on the Old English poem of the same name, “Beowulf” and was Directed by Robert Zemeckis who’s brought you such films in the past as “Back to the Future” , “Cast Away” and “Forrest Gump” to name just a few. Lately he’s had this wild hair up his ass I guess and wanted to show off his technology of motion capture video that they turn into computer animated video basically from what I can tell and it comes along with flaws. Seems like a painstaking effort and watching it also seems, while impressive, a bit of a waste of time. His first entry into this realm came in “The Polar Express“, which was entertaining. Zemeckis also helped to produce “Monster House” using the same motion capture technology. I’ll stop with explaining what the film is done in and do more explaining of what the story is about.

Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is summoned after Grendel (Crispin Glover) interrupts a banquet pretty much destroying everything in sight. King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) offers a large amount of gold to anyone who can eliminate this beast. Legendary hero Beowulf answers this call. The beast is soon defeated leading a huge celebration. Unfortunately the beast’s mother (Angelina Jolie) is quiet upset and soon kills all of Beowulf’s men. Skipping forward a bit, the King declares that Beowulf should marry the Queen (Robin Wright-Penn) after his successful defeat of both Grendel and his mother. The film flashes forward a few decades and finds Beowulf as the King. Everything is fine until mistakes from Beowulf’s past return to greet him resulting in Beowulf having to fight another demon in order to save himself and his kingdom. What results is a film that is visually interesting but just can’t muster enough substance over style to become another worth watching more than once.

While I was a fan of Zemeckis’ last 3-D film “The Polar Express” in that the film combined a real sense of the characters, music and story, “Beowulf” (despite a solid cast of actors) rarely captivated me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen what Zemeckis did with “Express” that I already knew what was coming so perhaps the surprise of the style wasn’t as new to me. Or maybe it was that the film tried to tell too much within the rather short 113 minute run time. Many have read the original text so anyone looking for a direct story to film adaptation will be disappointed as the film’s two main writers, which they mention in an included feature, took a few liberties with the story.

“Beowulf” certainly isn’t a bad movie per se but just lacks the overall interest and spark the film should have created. Considering that the original text is a classic and that the film could have easily been made into something just that much more special, this one was a big disappointment for myself.

Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Dual-Layered Blu-ray Disc). First off this film in Hi-Def is obviously REALLY FUN TO LOOK AT with it’s unique visual animation style that Zemeckis and his company have done on past films like “The Polar Express.” The good news is they’ve fine tuned that and it looks a little bit more lifelike than before on past efforts while at the same time does have it’s problems. They (the problems) aren’t of the nature of the actual video quality itself but rather the visual animation style used. There’s honestly nothing really wrong with this Hi Def transfer. It seems to be as I can tell now from two viewings, almost flawless and again as I said earlier really fun to look at (for a while anyway).

This visual presentation in Hi Def has some really vivid color to the palette, very very much detail to the picture quality and even an almost “3D” visual appearance at times. This was shot using motion capture and 3D cameras, it in fact aired in “3D” in some theaters so it’s no surprise this still is somewhat present and sure to get you attention on the Blu-ray release. “Beowulf” on Blu-ray earns itself a respectable and almost flawless “4 ½ Star Rating” for the overall video quality.

Audio Quality on this release is in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround. The bass starts out as soon as the film does by shaking the room during the introduction (credits) to the film with the Music done by Allan Silvestri. Dialogue is delivered very clear here with no problems in the surround mix to be spoken of. The sound effects seem pretty realistic and definitely manage to help get you into the action happening before your eyes.

This easily earns itself a “4 ½ Star Rating” for overall audio quality. No complaints here about the sound in any way really, it just didn’t amaze me enough to score any higher than that. This does prove to be a excellent upgrade to the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 featured on the previous HD-DVD release, I will definitely say that much for it.

Bonus Materials are all presented in High Definition video using the AVC MPEG-4 codec and feature Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound.

• Beowulf in the Volume” is a feature that allows the viewer to watch the film via a Picture-In-Picture experience and see the original green screen footage in comparison with the final product (in the full screen). This appears to be using Bonus View for this PIP experience and still captivates the viewer almost like “300” did back on the ill-fated HD-DVD format. I can only imagine what Paramount‘s “Transformers” will be like on Blu-ray after finally seeing this a reality.
• Deleted Scenes (12 minutes) are fairly interesting (as most are not actually finished scenes) and overall worth a watch.
• A Hero’s Journey: The Making of “Beowulf” (24 minutes) shows us how the cast made the film via the green-screen process.
• Beasts of Burden – Designing the Creatures of “Beowulf” (7 minutes) gives us a glance into the artistic aspects of the film. The most casual viewer probably won’t find this worth the watch in all honesty.
• Creating the Ultimate “Beowulf“ (2 minutes) reveals finally to fans why Zemeckis decided to cast Ray Winstone as the film’s hero. For those of you who don’t know and/or read message boards — much criticism was sent Robert Zemeckis way for said decision.
• The Origins of Beowulf (5 minutes) features the film’s two main writers (Roger Avery and Neil Gaiman) with director Robert Zemeckis for a brief talk about the original story and how they brought it to the big screen.
• A Conversation with Robert Zemeckis (10 minutes) is an interview session that Zemeckis had with a group of people at the University of Southern California.
• The Journey Continues (20 minutes worth of features found here are basically the extra 20 minutes of features found in the “A Hero’s Journey” feature.
• Trailer is the full theatrical trailer presented in glorious High Definition.

Overall I’d say these bonus materials we get here a pretty damn impressive in comparison to the original features on the previously released HD-DVD of the film. The only thing that seems to be lacking here is any type of web-enabled content via BD-Live for example here on Blu-ray. Rest assured though Paramount does have plans to feature BD-Live on the upcoming release of “Transformers” on Blu-ray Disc.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

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