I recently watched the Beowulf movie. What, you didn’t know there was a Beowulf movie? Don’t worry, I didn’t know either until I realized it was part of a large group of movies that I copied from a friend’s external hard drive (thanks, Itai).
Before I go any further, I just want to get this out there – the movie is not exactly like the Beowulf story that you know from high school if you were born before 1965. If you were born after 1965, like I was, you probably know nothing or virtually nothing about Beowulf, as I didn’t before watching the movie and then reading about it in Wikipedia. So right, there are differences between the movie and the classic tale. That might bother you, but it doesn’t really bother me since I’ve never read it and I have no plans to do so.
Speaking of the story, it’s pretty good. I guess it pretty much covers all the bases that have to be covered in an epic for it to become part of the literary canon. But that’s not the reason to watch the movie. You should watch the movie because the computer graphics are amazing. Maybe I didn’t realize because I’ve willfully avoided video games and cartoons for my entire adult life, but computer imaging has really advanced so much that it can blow you away if you’re an old man of 27 like I am. Apparently they used actual actors playing out the parts and then computers to fill in the gaps. Or something like that. I don’t know, but I was really impressed.
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