Grendel (Sci-Fi Original)

Warning: This post is a spoiler if you plan to watch this movie.

Story: 5
Action: 3
Acting: 3
FX: 3
Durability: 1

I was flipping through the channels and landed on Sci-Fi, thinking this was the Beowulf & Grendel movie from 2005. It was actually a new movie from 2007 made for the Sci-Fi channel. It's a completely different interpretation of the original. There are more characters and it doesn't follow the sequence of the original. It starts out the same way with Grendel terrorizing the Danes, but the battle at Heorot with Grendel was a loss. Grendel was instead defeated in a second battle in the forest. Instead of a hand-to-hand fight, Beowulf defeats Grendel with an exploding crossbow (in other words, a rocket launcher) that stuns him. Then he charged forward with his sword to finish the job. Unferth in this version was Hrothgar's son and not as cowardly as he was supposed to be. He died heroically against Grendel's mother. There was no Wiglaf. Instead, Beowulf had an apprentice, Fin.

Grendel was a poorly integrated CG character that looked like a large gorilla with decorative tentacles sticking out. His mother looked like the Manbat from the Batman comics. Animation on both characters was stiff. The battle scenes consisted of a series of cuts between one of the monsters making a move and a live action actor swinging a weapon. There was no moving around. It looked like one of those RPG games where the player characters step up, swinging a weapon then step back and let the monster take a hack.

So far, so bad and the acting couldn't save this movie either. Emotions were over-emphasized rather than built-up. I guess bad acting works great with bad fx. And durability? Well, Beowulf running around with a rocket launcher doesn't do it for me. Watching this once was enough!

This is already the 4th Beowulf post, but it's just a coincidence. I'm not a huge fanatic. I just liked the 3-D animated movie.