The Book Was Better by Angel

I am having a serious crisis of faith over the new movie Beowulf. Written by fantasy golden boy Neil Gaiman and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf stars, to name a fraction of the cast, the likes of Hannibal Lector, Marty McFly's dad, and glistening, naked Lara Croft with tentacles and shit all over. As an English-majoring, Han-shot-first-style fantasy geek, I feel like I should have at least a category five nerd boner, but I can't muster more than a stale, lingering fart of excitement. So the premise is that they filmed the actors performing the movie and then went back through, completely replacing everyone with uncanny-valley CGI models. While I may be flaccid and limp, I get the feeling that Zemeckis has a serious hard on for computer animation (read: fetish). I have to question his choice here. Was pasting Ray Winstone's fat head on top of a muscle-bound meathead a la Ichi the Killer too unconvincing? Maybe little Shiloh made Angelina's disrobed body resemble a crumpled paper bag on top of a droopy oyster. Whatever inspired this dubious choice, about the only joy I get watching the trailer comes from imagining the bizarre set of matrices and formulae use to select which animators would get to construct a CGI nude Angelina Jolie completely from scratch (and whether they had to work from memory or a real live naked Angelina Jolie).

Interestingly enough, Beowulf was developed at the same time as the video game of the same name, which according to previews has only marginally worse effects. The only thing the film appears to have going for it is naked CGI Angelina Jolie. This is unfortunate, because computer-generated sex scenes top my List of Masturbatory Aides that Make Me Feel Pathetic and without Dignity (joining its brothers: Japanese animation, furry porn, pictures of dragons fucking cars, and interactive computer-generated sex scenes in video games based on movies).