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Beowulf is a 2007 motion capture film loosely based on the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a similar motion capture technique to that used by the director in The Polar Express. The cast includes Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Alison Lohman, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Brendan Gleeson, and Angelina Jolie. It was released in the United States, Canada and the UK on November 16, 2007, and was available to view in IMAX 3D and Real D format.

Plot

Set in Denmark, King Hrothgar has constructed a new mead hall, Heorot. The noisy celebration at the hall disturbs the deformed monster Grendel, who is pained by the noise even from miles away on the high moors. He attacks the hall, killing many of the men inside. Hrothgar challenges Grendel to fight him instead, but the monster after quietly staring at Hrothgar for a few moments, runs screaming off into the night. Back at his lair, Grendel is admonished by his (unseen) mother for attacking the humans and possibly inviting retribution. She calms down after Grendel tells her that he did not harm Hrothgar. The following morning, Hrothgar closes Heorot and proclaims that he will give half the gold in the kingdom to any man who can defeat Grendel. Soon Beowulf and his men arrive by ship from Geatland, and Beowulf offers to destroy Grendel. He convinces Hrothgar to reopen Heorot and let Beowulf's men stay there. Unferth, the King's advisor, challenges Beowulf's credibility. The warrior tells a tall tale of how he slew several sea serpents, and is capable of slaying Grendel too. Hrothgar offers Beowulf his precious golden drinking horn taken from the dragon Fafnir as a reward for Grendel's death. Beowulf is more entranced by Hrothgar's young queen, Wealtheow.

That evening, Beowulf asks his men to sing loudly. He undresses in order to fight the unarmoured Grendel on equal terms and elects to sleep until the monster arrives. As expected, Grendel is infuriated by the noise and attacks the hall. Beowulf fights him with his bare hands, proving more than a match for the nearly invulnerable demon. After Beowulf punches out the monster's sensitive ear, Grendel tries to flee for his life, only to have Beowulf taunt him and eventually rip his arm off. The dying Grendel flees back to his cave, where he tells the name of his killer to his mother. Beowulf is proclaimed a hero. That night, a private conversation between Hrothgar and Wealtheow indirectly reveals that Hrothgar was in fact the father of Grendel. Wealtheow has been refusing to sleep with her husband out of revulsion. This is why the king has no heir.

Enraged by grief over her son's death, Grendel's mother flies to Heorot. She distracts Beowulf in a dream by taking the guise of Wealtheow. When Beowulf awakes, he finds that all of his men in the hall have been killed, skinned and hung from the rafters like hunting game. Only his friend Wiglaf survived, only because he had been at the beach preparing their ship for departure. Beowulf confronts Hrothgar, who tells Beowulf that Grendel's mother is indeed the last of the monsters. Unferth apologizes to Beowulf for having doubted him, and offers his sword Hrunting for use against Grendel's mother.

Beowulf and Wiglaf seek out the flooded cave of Grendel's mother. Beowulf enters the cave alone to find it filled to the celing with treasure. Grendel's mother appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman, offering him fame and power if he will give her another son. She also asks for the Dragon Horn of Hrothgar, with the promise that Heorot will be safe as long as it is in her possession. Beowulf gives in to her temptations.

Beowulf returns to Heorot, claiming to have slain Grendel's mother. He brings back Grendel's head as proof of his deeds. He says that he lost Unferth's sword and Hrothgar's horn during the battle. In private, Hrothgar points out inconsistencies in Beowulf's story and asks if he did indeed slay Grendel's Mother. When Beowulf doesn't give a straight answer, Hrothgar knowingly says that with Grendel's death, he is no longer the cursed one. King Hrothgar names Beowulf heir to the throne. Hrothgar then leaps from the balcony to his death to the surprised horror of everyone. Beowulf is crowned king, and takes Wealtheow as his wife.

Many years pass. King Beowulf is unable to enjoy his power and glory, and his relationship with Wealtheow has grown cold. When Unferth's slave Cain finds the Horn of Hrothgar on a barren hill, Beowulf understands that Grendel's mother has ended their deal. Heorot is in danger once more. That night he dreams of his son by Grendel's mother. The son, who appears as a golden youth, threatens to kill Beowulf's wife and his young mistress Ursula. The next morning before dawn, a fierce dragon attacks a village outside of Heorot. The dragon gives a message to Unferth for Beowulf: "The sins of the father!"

Beowulf and Wiglaf ride to the cave of Grendel's mother and Beowulf confronts the dragon. The dragon flies to Beowulf's castle, but Beowulf is able to cling to its back. The dragon spots Wealtheow and Ursula on the castle wall and attempts to burn them. Beowulf finally manages to rip the dragon's heart out, severing one arm and burning the other in the process. The two fall to the shores far below. The dragon's form changes to that of the golden man from Beowulf's dreams. Wiglaf arrives at the beach in time to hear Beowulf's last words. Beowulf leaves his kingdom to Wiglaf.

Wiglaf prepares a Viking funeral for Beowulf. As Wiglaf watches the burning boat that serves as Beowulf's funeral pyre, he sees Grendel's mother kissing the corpse. Grendel's mother then appears in the water in human form and beckons to Wiglaf. It is unknown if the cycle will continue.

Production

Author Neil Gaiman and screenwriter Roger Avary wrote a screen adaptation of Beowulf in May 1997 (they had met while working on a film adaptation of Gaiman's The Sandman in 1996, before Warner Bros. canceled it). The script had been optioned by ImageMovers in the same year and set up at DreamWorks with Avary slated to direct and Robert Zemeckis producing. Avary stated he wanted to make a small-scale, gritty film, with a budget of $15-20 million, similar to Jabberwocky or Excalibur.The project eventually went into turnaround after the option expired, the rights returned to Avary, who went on to direct an adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. In January 2005, producer Steve Bing, at the behest of Zemeckis who was wanting to direct the film himself, revived the production by convincing Avary that Zemeckis' vision, supported by the strength of digitally enhanced live action, was worth relinquishing the directorial reins. Zemeckis did not like the poem, but enjoyed reading the screenplay. Because of the expanded budget, Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, because "there is nothing that you could write that would cost me more than a million dollars per minute to film. Go wild!" In particular, the entire fight with the dragon was rewritten from a talky confrontation to a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.

Sony Pictures Imageworks created the animation for the film. Animation supervisor Kenn MacDonald explained that Zemeckis used motion capture because “Even though it feels like live action, there were a lot of shots where Bob cut loose. Amazing shots. Impossible with live action actors. This method of filmmaking gives him freedom and complete control. He doesn’t have to worry about lighting. The actors don’t have to hit marks. They don’t have to know where the camera is. It’s pure performance." A 25 x 35-foot stage was built, and it used 244 Vicon MX40 cameras. Actors on set wore seventy-eight body markers, and transparent costumes. The cameras recorded realtime footage of the performances, shots which Zemeckis reviewed. The director then used a virtual camera to choose camera angles from the footage which was edited together. Two teams of animators worked on the film, with one group working on replicating the facial performances, the other working on body movement. The animators said they worked very closely on replicating the human characters, but the character of Grendel had to be almost reworked, because he is a monster, not human.

In designing the dragon, production designer Doug Chiang wanted to create something unique in film. The designers looked at bats and flying squirrels for inspiration, and also designed its tail to allow underwater propulsion. As the beast is Beowulf's son with Grendel's mother, elements such as Winstone's eyes and cheekbone structure were incorporated into its look. The three primary monsters in the film share a golden color scheme, because they are all related. Grendel has patches of gold skin, but because of his torment, he has shed much of his scales as well as exposing his internal workings. He still had to resemble Crispin Glover though: the animators decided to adapt Glover's own parted hairstyle to Grendel, albeit with bald patches.

Cast

The cast members of Beowulf were filmed on a motion capture stage. They were altered on screen using computer-generated imagery, but their animated counterparts bear much resemblance to themselves.

The protagonist, Beowulf, is portrayed by Ray Winstone. Zemeckis cast Winstone after seeing his performance as King Henry VIII of England on television. On the topic of the original poem, Winstone commented during an interview that "I had the beauty of not reading the book, which I understand portrays Beowulf as a very one-dimensional kind of character - a hero and a warrior and that was it. I didn't have any of that baggage to bring with me."[6] Winstone enjoyed working with motion capture, stating that “You were allowed to go, like theater, where you carry a scene on and you become engrossed within the scene. I loved the speed of it. There was no time to sit around. You actually cracked on with a scene and your energy levels were kept up. There was no time to actually sit around and lose your concentration. So, for me, I actually really, really enjoyed this experience." Winstone also noted that his computer-generated counterpart resembled himself at the age of eighteen, although the filmmakers did not have a photo for reference. Winstone also played a dwarf performer, and both the dragon and the "Golden Man."

The antagonists Grendel and Grendel's mother are portrayed by Crispin Glover and Angelina Jolie, respectively. Glover had previously worked with Zemeckis in Back to the Future (1985), when he portrayed George McFly. Zemeckis had found Glover tiresome on set, because of his lack of understanding of shooting a film, but realized this would not be a problem as on a motion capture film he could choose his angles later.Glover's dialogue was entirely in Old English.Jolie had wanted to work with Zemeckis. She had read the poem years ago but could not remember it well until she read the script and was able to recall basic themes. The actress was told that she "was going to be a lizard. Then I was brought into a room with Bob, and a bunch of pictures and examples, and he showed me this picture of a woman half painted gold, and then a lizard. And, I’ve got kids and I thought 'That's great. That's so bizarre. I'm going to be this crazy reptilian person and creature.'" Jolie filmed her role over two days when she was three months pregnant. She was startled by the character's nude human form, stating that for an animated film “I was really surprised that I felt that exposed."

King Hrothgar is portrayed by Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins noted in an interview that since Zemeckis is an American, he wasn't certain what accent Hopkins should use for the role of Hrothgar. Hopkins told him, "Well, Welsh would be my closest because that's where I come from." It was also his first time working with motion capture technology. Hopkins noted that “I didn't know what was expected. It was explained to me, I'm not stupid, but I still don't get the idea of how it works. I have no idea [...] you don't have sets, so it is like being in a Brecht play, you know, with just bare bones and you have nothing else." When asked if he had to read the original poem of Beowulf in school, Hopkins replied: "No, I was hopeless at school. I couldn't read anything. I mean I could read, but I was so inattentive. I was one of those poor kids, you know, who was just very slow, didn't know what they were talking about [...] So I tried to get around to reading Beowulf just before I did this movie, and it was a good modern translation. It was Trevor Griffiths, I’m not sure, but I couldn't hack it, and I tend to like to just go with the script if it's a good script."

Unferth is portrayed by John Malkovich. Malkovich became involved in the project because one of his friends, who had worked with Zemeckis, "spoke very highly of him. I had always found him a very interesting and innovative filmmaker. I liked the script very much and I liked the group involved and the process interested me a great deal also." He found the experience of working with motion capture to be similar to his experiences working in the theater. He also found the process intriguing: "say you do a normal day of filmmaking. Sometimes that’s 1/8th of a page, sometimes it’s 3/8th of a page, normally let’s say it’s 2-1/2 pages, maybe 3. Now it’s probably a little more than it used to be but not always. So you may be acting for a total of 20 minutes a day. In this, you act the entire day all the time except for the tiny amount of time it takes them to sort of coordinate the computer information, let’s say, and make sure that the computers are reading the data and that you’re transmitting the data. It interests me on that level because I’m a professional actor so I’d just as soon act as sit around." Malkovich also recalled that he studied the original poem in high school, and that “I think we got smacked if we couldn’t recite a certain number of stanzas. It was in the Old English class and I think my rendition was exemplary."