The post was about Beowulf. The blogger insisted he’d hate the movie but he’d see it anyway, and he hopes the new digital 3D (especially IMAX) takes off.

I simply don’t understand why people are so excited to hate this movie. Why they post over and over on site after site that Beowulf will suck but they’ll see it anyway. Or that Beowulf (the poem) sucks and they won’t see the movie.

One commenter said there was no IMAX near him so he wouldn’t see it in IMAX.
One, bless him (or her) knows Neil Gaiman properly and is as excited as I am.
One was concerned about the CGI, the uncanny valley situation. I believe I cover that below.

One said Beowulf (which, I need hardly remind you, is an EPIC about a MONSTER and a MEAD HALL and some VIKINGS and another MONSTER) was “too nerdy.”

The word “poem” apparently scares some people off (though that commenter referred to it as a “book”). I feel bad for the people whose teachers didn’t explain to them why a poem has power, how to read one starting from “April is the cruelest month” or finish another with “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” and feel what you’re being told. Even the easy stuff, Tyger and like that, is terrifying in the right light. What seems like gibberish at first (“anyone lived in a pretty how town”) is joy incarnate in the right light. Why is that right light not shining in every school?

This just shows ignorance. Ignorance and willful ignorance to boot. It makes me crazy.

This is the comment I left:

It’s not the same Beowulf from high school. The poem is only half this story; the other half is Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman *making things up* (to use Neil’s phrase), and those are two guys who are damned good at making things up.

Personally, I think Beowulf is an awesome story. Monsters and men and mead. It’s good rollicking stuff. I don’t know how long ago high school was for the other poster, but if it was the Seamus Heaney translation you didn’t read, you missed out. For me, high school was before that translation came out.

I’ll be seeing it in IMAX 3D to be sure (at Channelside in Tampa, as I’ll be visiting my parents down there for Thanksgiving). I’m glad I’m able to be near an appropriate theater right around opening weekend so I can see it without any preconceptions.

The internet’s preconceptions–dozens upon dozens of bloggers and reviewers declaiming the movie’s faults *without having seen it*–are baffling to me. You don’t know the movie until you’ve seen it.

As far as the CGI, I fully expect it to be much better than Davy Jones, who was exponentially better than the Polar Express, which was better than Final Fantasy. Every single time they do this technology, they get it better. Don’t believe me? Watch Gollum in Fellowship of the Ring, then watch Gollum in Return of the King. Look at the shading, the eye tracking, the lip movement, the movement of the fingers when the fingers aren’t in focus. This is the speed of the improvement in this technology, and the day is soon when these CGI characters come OUT of the uncanny valley and into daily life.

For now, while the CGI is still recognizable as it is, Beowulf has the advantage of being a fantasy movie, the advantage of being able to make the argument that this is the only way to have the human characters and the nonhuman characters appear from the *very beginning* to belong in the same world. That’s key; it’s not Johnny Depp facing off against a CGI monster, it’s a CGI Ray Winstone facing off against a CGI Grendel (and Grendel’s mother), and that’s got to be more of a fair fight.

I can’t wait.

The Noble Collection Products:

Ah, yes, my alethiometer. I knew it would come. I even guessed the price right.

April 30, babies.