Grendel

I just read a review defending this film because it had a low budget, now my take on things.

The CGI monsters was reasonable well animated but was implemented in the worst possible way. The fight scenes weren't even fights it was just one shot of an actor then one shot of monster with very interaction at all. When the monster did interact it looked like it was done in paintshop pro. In my opinion if you have a low budget you should use models and puppets. They may not look as fancy but at least they interact, just look at Peter Jacksons early films.

As for the acting Beowulf did an descent job but the rest of the cast were either not trying or they forgot where they where.

The script seemed confused to me. One minute they would be talking as if it were a modern day setting the next you get drama club Shakespeare speech. I'm not say it should be all 'ye' and 'that it be' but you need to find a cohesive balance so the lines sound like they come from the same person.

I did notice one part near the start when Beowulf was quoting the old testament which would have been find had he not spent the rest of the films talking about the gods and portents.

In short, this film is a very slightly polished turd, but a turn none the less.

Where to begin? Anachronism? High tech cross bow with a scope in about 500AD? Arrows with explosive charges in 500AD? A monster Grendel that looks like a robocop and obviously never interacts with any of the weapons fired or swung against him? The heart torn out of his victim's chest without any sense of contact? Possibly the blond who would fit in on a recent fashion show with her make-up and streaked hair? The ancient Danish court represented in Classical Greek style? The queen played by Marina Sirtis more savaged by her makeup artist than by madness? The effects are way too weak to carry this story. There are some stories that don't mind or even benefit from cheap effects, but this Grendel isn't one of them.

What about characters who seem to jump about in their attitudes without motivation? A bravado idiot prince whose home has already been savaged more than once by the monster Grendel seems to have less respect for the danger he faces than Beowulf who was sent from afar from the land of the Geats to help the desperate Danes. In this it feels more like an old cowboy western than any kind of myth.

Beowulf is an ancient tale from an era with almost no literary tradition and much of both its sentiment and its drama is obscure. I suspect that any modern telling which doesn't make an intelligent attempt to penetrate the obscurity must fail. I didn't love the recent "Beowulf and Grendel" which sees Grendel essentially as human and sees Hrothgar and his Danes as too arrogant and stupid to recognize Grendel's attacks as well-justified vengeance, but I had to respect its revisionist position that Hrothgar's Danes were a bunch of macho thugs who never grasped, even after it was all over, that they had brought this nightmare on themselves, and therefore, the original story of Beowulf, as it was written, was a misrepresentation of the real story. I think there's a more complex meaning to be understood than that, but this "Grendel's" terrible secret that Grendel's attacks are tied to previous human sacrifice doesn't really bring us closer to the shame experienced by Hrothgar and the Danes.

This Beowulf has little to recommend it as traditional myth or as modern fantasy. I give it a 4: higher than it deserves, but always hopeful that a poor effort will draw attention by someone who is up to telling the story intelligently. In the meantime, Sci-Fi's movie-making seems to be following the NASA policy that it's better to build lots of probes that fail than a few that succeed.

I don't think anyone here would expect an Oscar nod for a Sci-Fi original movie, so let's keep things in perspective. This production actually had a budget of only 1.4 million, as you well know that's almost more than they pour into one episode of BattleStar Galactica.

For what it is worth (meaning taking the budget into consideration), It's pretty damn good. Sure let's all make fun of the CG monster and the fact that it didn't bleed even when it's head got cut off. But there was a pretty epic setting (Bulgaria), and aside from a couple bad seeds the acting was pretty good, and the Photography was much better than average.

Let's consider the behind the scenes too... "Script", and let's pretend the director had a bit of latitude. The direction was very good. Most people say "garbage in - garbage out". I feel given what there was to work with the director made the most of it and pulled it off deserving praise. And you don't have to even have liked the flick to approach it in a critical way like this.

In my opinion this is a great forum to discuss all aspects of any release. My only piece of advice is to please not react in a knee-jerk way immediately after you've condemned someone's creative work. Great constructive criticism takes just as much effort and introspection. It's really easy to say something sucks; people likely won't pay you much attention though unless you do it constructively.

It's hard to say what was the worst thing about this show: the bad acting, poor acoustics of different portions, bad CGI, improper sets for the period, the poor script. It would have been nice if the script followed the original tale a bit closer -- there's enough tension and good material in Beowulf to provide a great deal of good material, and a better story line, than the scriptwriters could come up with.

And why introduce a strange new weapon like a crossbow that fires explosive bolts?

I see that this movie was made in "only" 21 days. It shows in the lack of quality. I'm beginning to think this is general (poor) attitude taken by Sci-Fi channel (and others) when it comes to making movies out of classic tales in the past few years.

What a waste!

This movie lost me with the crossbow RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). It was like someone cut and pasted a scene from Robocop. I half expected Beowulf to say exclaim, "I LIKE IT!"

I watched this because I like Chris Bruno from "The Dead Zone" TV show and he did his part. He chose a strange accent, but at least he kept it consistent for the whole movie -- unlike any of his costars. They kept slipping into all kinds of speech from old English to modern English, sometimes in the same sentence.

There are already many comments on how this movie is different from the source material. However, even on its own, this movie's plot is not good. It's just boring, which even the low budget doesn't excuse. Having a low budget means that you need to at least have a good story, dialog and decent acting. Those things don't cost much. Instead, they spent their money on half-assed CGI and some decent costumes and sets.

Life is too short to watch this movie.