An examination of Wikipedia's entry on "Beowulf" -- I didn't read it in high school, either -- confirms what I suspected,
which is that the new computer-animated movie version has added some details not found in the original. The 9th-century epic poem did not portray Grendel's monstrous mother as a sleek, nude siren, for example, nor did the dragon, in its natural form, look like the Silver Surfer. Just so you know. Approximately one-third of the theaters showing "Beowulf" will do so digitally and in 3-D. If you're going to see it, that's the way to go. Without the elements of crystal-clear digital projection and awe-inspiring 3-D animation, the film doesn't have much going for it. To see it in a traditional 2-D, 35-millimeter format would be like having someone hum a Beethoven symphony for you. You'd get the idea, but you wouldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Even under ideal circumstances, the fuss about the film should be restrained. Robert Zemeckis, fascinated with the motion-capture technology he used in "The Polar Express," has taken advantage of the latest developments for "Beowulf," and the action scenes are suitably spectacular. Yet the technology still can't make people's eyes look anything other than dead and soulless, and facial expressions still aren't realistically fluid. They're not even as good as the characters' faces are in Pixar films.
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