Penland: Beowulf CGI

In the CGI version of Beowulf, I found the special effects to be corny, and at times distracting from the storyline. It took me awhile to get used to the digital animation, but there were some points in the movie where it did not work well at all. Every time Angelina Jolie’s character, Grendel’s mother, came onto the screen, I immediately began to notice the bad animation. Her character’s CGI was very distracting; The movements of her body did not work well.

One scene with Grendel’s mother that particularly bothered me was the very end scene, where she flew down to kiss Beowulf’s dead body. Her golden tail stood out very obviously compared to the rest of the scene, and when she hovered above Beowulf, the movements of her body looked stiff and unrealistic. I also found this to be a distracting problem throughout the movie with all of the characters; especially when Beowulf fought Grendel. His body looked about as flexible as a Ken doll, which was very distracting, which emphasized the fact that the CGI was not very convincing.

The facial movements of Grendel’s mother were much more advanced than other characters, however. Two of the characters that appeared to be very stiff in their facial movements were Beowulf and the Queen. When they spoke to each other at various parts of the movie, I felt as though I was watching the animation of a cheap, 1990s video game.

Grendel’s mother was the most distracting thing about this movie. To improve her character, editors should have fixed her tail, because it detracted from the point of the movie. If the characters’ facial movements had been improved as well, the quality of the movie would be so much better.