Things which I did not like about Beowulf: the way that either the 3D glasses directly or my regular glasses compressed beneath them were pushing against my sinuses so hard that occasional tears would stream down my face, and also the way that this gave me a nearly blinding headache by the end of the movie. I also wasn’t a giant fan of the times when coins or rocks or other small objects would fly out of the screen at me; the closer they got, the more out of focus and obviously fake they looked.

Things which I did like about Beowulf: practically everything else. I expected it to be gorgeous and awesome, and it pretty well was, what with the strides in depth of field they’ve made over the past few years. The screen really does look like it’s there in front of you spread out with the same depth as though you were in the front row at Beowulf: The Play, with the added bonus that the larger objects sometimes stick out over the audience instead of staying on the stage. The people looked… well, pretty fake at first, but mostly not too fake towards the end, as though my brain just took an hour or so to accept them. (Oddly, Grendel never looked the least bit fake.) The acting was often over the top, but look at the source material! And it had a good bit of subtlety and skill in it when needed.

So, a long time ago, like in the 4 digits range of years ago, someone wrote down a poem. In it, a warrior called Beowulf came to Denmark to kill a monster that was bothering everyone there. Later, he killed its mother, because of how she was unhappy about her son having been killed. Much later still as a king, he killed a dragon, but died doing so. That’s basically the entire story, as far as it goes. The only things particularly notable about it are that the stories are padded out to extreme length, partly with battle details but mostly with braggadocio on the behalf of the protagonist, and that it is the first piece of literature written in English. (Where first equals oldest in existence, at least that we’ve found yet. But since English doesn’t greatly predate the poem, it’s a fairly easy claim to make.) All of which adds up to a story with eye candy that has clearly been leveraged to great effect, but not much else going for it, right? Right.

Except, wrong! 10th century pre-British people understood spectacle[1], make no mistake. But they did not particularly understand story structure, probably because mostly what people wanted out of their story-telling was to be amused or excited, and you don’t really need themes or foreshadowing or alliteration (well, it was a performed piece; probably alliteration was fine, but they for sure frowned on fucking foreshadowing) to accomplish these goals. With our rather more sophisticated modern tastes[1], we of course hope for a little bit more to tie everything together. And with Neil Gaiman in the script credits, I can’t really act surprised that we got it. My point is, there was a lot more movie there than I expected from the trailers. Comedy[2], pathos, consequence and regret, all in addition to completely acceptable spectacle. I can dig it.

I did say I liked practically everything else. In the interests of full disclosure, one more thing bugged me. Late in the film, there’s a damsel-in-distress scene. I’m not automatically opposed to these on principle, but it simultaneously served no plot function and required no masculine intervention to solve, and yet I immediately knew that they were going to need the big strong man to come save them and had to roll my eyes. To those who will complain that modern feminism postdates the story of Beowulf, and thus making a point of the girls saving themselves would have been a little bit grating and out of place: I agree completely! The scene served no purpose at all and should have been removed entirely, is all I’m saying.

[1] By which I mean, check out the rack on Grendel’s mom!
[2] Clever scripting, sure, but also pretty decent physical comedy. Beowulf runs around naked, but the goods are always artfully concealed by random candlesticks or severed arms or things. Which is only a little funny by itself and has been done before, except that the 3D thing makes it seem as though if you crane your neck just right, stupid Wiglaf will no longer be blocking your view. (Trust me, the girl in the seat next to me was trying.)