i must have seen a different film!!

Admirable film.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

They told a completely different tale misusing the title and character names of Beowulf. Aside from that, the story was awful in every way, which would take too long to detail. This film should not have been made.

7 1/2Beowulf doesn't disappoint for the most part, delivering a mature and dark setting filled with demons and heroes broken by lust and desire for power. The graphics are still amazing to look at after more than ten years, and the score is definitely fitting.

spoilers, but I didn't. there are things i really liked this movie, but they are few and far between. Overall this movie is just generic. It's score is pretty much the score of Shrek. yeah... Shrek... The movie that was parodying fairy-tales. That isn't a good sign for a fantasy movie. The characters pretty much fit under the general fantasy archetypes. The drunk and incompetent king, the brave but flawed warrior, the bitter queen, the good friend to the hero, the evil seductress of a villain, and so on and so forth. honestly if it wasn't for this movie's animation style there would be nothing special about it at all.But that's what i do love about the movie. It's animation allows for the monsters to look real when compared to the human characters, and the artistic vision these animators had for Grendel is perfect. No he isn't the monster from the story, he is the monster made for this movie. he's gross, speaks incomprehensible olde English, scream yells and whines, and generally is just gross. The dragon that shows up later in the movie is kind of generic, but he is well animated and well detailed.overall, Beowulf is an average 6/10. Don't ASK ME WHY THAT'S MY AVERAGE SCORE INSTEAD OF 5 CAUSE I DON'T KNOW. Just kidding I know I'm the only person that will ever read this review

A lot of things have been said about Beowulf that are entirely undeserved. Amazing, a masterpiece, the best movie of the year... Beowulf is none of these things. When this movie came out, it was recommended to me that i avoid it, because it was not worth the money. I should have listened. They should have also explained, that it was not worth the time. Allow me to explain. I am aware that this film is entirely CG. It was made clear to me within seconds of it. The poorly textured skin, the bad motion capture, the poor fluid dynamics, everything about this film stuck out like a sore thumb. Perhaps i noticed more because visual effects is what i do for a living, but even with that, no other film i have EVER watched (and i am not exaggerating) has EVER given me a worse case of filmmakers sickness. Many movies i have watched where the CG is noticeable, but its never brought me out of the story to this extent where i can't even pay attention to anything else. And don't get me wrong, i was still about to excuse it, hoping i would look it up and find a 10 million dollar budget, or perhaps less. But no, this movie cost a whopping 130 million. All of which was pîssed carelessly down the drain.The creators say it was a CG masterpiece. It was not. I've seen students that make better work for their first character design portfolio. They could have bothered to use normal maps or bump maps to create a more realistic skin textures, especially considering the amount of skin shown. They didn't. They supposedly used next gen motion capture. I was surprised to find they even used it at all. They could have done better with a decent animator and some blend shapes. With that kind of budget they should have used Realflow, with simulated fluid dynamics instead of the cheap wave displacements that don't even interact with the characters in the water. they didn't even use a Fresnel shader on the water, it was so freaking amateur. the only decent work was done in the design of Grendel and the sea monsters, and that was in imagination, rather than detail. None of the characters had life to them, the recoil of limbs, a sense of tissue, recoil, anticipation. The animators straight up didn't know the 12 basic principles of animation. Lets remember, this is 2007. We can't bash something that was done 7 years ago can we? Yes, we can. The incredible hulk came out a year later with only 30 million more of a budget, and a hyper realism that put this movie to shame, like child's play. Assassins creed II came out just 2 years later with considerably MORE CG elements, 3 cities worth including a variety of landscapes and only a 30 million budget, less than a 4th of what this movie cost, and rendered it with a considerable amount of detail, reflections and depth of field IN REAL TIME that came close to what this movie accomplished with offline render farms, of a major studio. Just recently watchdogs was released, with a budget of 68 million and graphics that pretty much beat Beowulf to a pulp, also in real time. And lets remember, these are video games we are talking about. They have poly counts to worry about, and part of that budget went to programmers, and level designers, there is absolutely NO excuse why Beowulf should have created the garbage it did with the budget it had, and the 4 or so locations it even dealt with. What, you can't even hire a dynamics expert? You're really going to burst a frigging piece of wood into a mist of stock footage splinters rather than the more realistic approach, 3D prefracturing and hard body sims? I could do that with just 100$ and the action essentials pack and it still would look better. You're frigging kidding me here.I could go on all day about the graphics, terrible blood hits, that weird gold coating Angelina Jolie--Angelina Jolie? Seriously?--but you know what, lets address what else is wrong with the film. For one, they completely ruined a classic short story. The dialog is so corny. The characters are all f*cked in the head, and they're not even good caricatures of scumbags, they're just plain unbelievable. And when i say unbelievable i mean those characters could not and would not exist under any circumstances and if they did exist and you put them into a room together they would not behave as such. One moment the dude is kicking his slave the next he is talking about honor and glory? Or the drunken king who's clothes basically fall off and then the next minute he's a fighter and a hero and then the next he's a poor man begging for help? I mean make up your mind goddåmn it. And the worst part is, in the story he's nothing like that. Beowulf doesn't f*ck Grendels mother either. And she's not pretty. And Grendel isn't a whiny little bîtch. And i'm not sure he even speaks. And there's this whole part they left out about ever hero trying and failing, and this epic battle as Grendel's mother drags Beowulf down under the lake that i was really hoping to see, instead the dude just basically jumped in the water and then hopped out in the underground cavern all Mario like, like he doesn't even need to grab ahold of something and pull himself out, he can just swim jump. Its f*cking stupid man. I hate you people. Next time the producers have millions of dollars to pîss away, give it to me. Or maybe flush it down the toilet. The toilet would find a better use for it.