Headline: Robert Zemeckis has been stricken blind!

That’s the kindest thing I could think of to say. At least it would be an excuse. Barring sudden blindness, the only other reason I can find for his having approved any of the animation in his new CGI fiasco, Beowulf, is if he just simply can’t see because his head is so far up his... well, let’s just move on to the film.

Beowulf, in a sentence is the single worst piece of commercial CGI animation I have ever seen.

First, let me say that I saw the film in Real D’s 3D system (though not the IMAX version) and there is no doubt that Real D has technology that works impressively and creates a very effective illusion of depth. When a good movie comes along that doesn’t just toss the technology around as a gimmick, 3D will be poised to truly enhance the moviegoer’s options for a great theater experience. That said, here’s why Beowulf hasn’t got a prayer of achieving that goal.

As if a metaphor for the movie being made in what appears to have been a creative vacuum, the movie itself looks and sounds like it was shot and recorded in one as well. The audio in the film is almost always a single  voice speaking. When a voice is speaking, it is studio clean without a note of influence to the scenes setting or surroundings. When the monster Grendel speaks, it is jarring to hear clean and clear enunciation emanating from a mangled, broken and monstrous face. Magically though, his voice becomes a bit drawled and stunted in a later scene. There is no music score that can be remembered and absolutely no sense of distance, place, or of a character’s physical activity, conveyed through sound. Water doesn’t splash, ripples don’t wash onto rocks, fire doesn’t crackle. I have never sensed such shortcomings in the audio production of a movie, of any kind, apart from purely amateur production. I am at a complete loss as to how such a critical factor in production could completely fail.

The movie is so startlingly inferior in it’s animation, I was wishing I could have taken notes in the dark just to remember all of the things I saw that flat out looked bad. The notes would have filled pages (as they did the moment I got back to my desk from the theater).

Let’s go down a list in no particular order of offense:

Nothing gets wet. Well, that is until Beowulf comes popping up out of a mystical lake and actually drips for a little while. Prior to that, no one and nothing gets water on it, even in a driving rain. There are no puddles, there’s no dripping hair or wet clothing. In fact, no one ever breaks a sweat. Oh, wait, people get spattered with red paint-like blood. Does that count?

Like the rain, snow falls but never lands. There are snowy landscapes, so it must have landed at sometime, but never so we can see it. Maybe it’s part of the magic?Did they have enchanted clothing in Beowulf that made it impossible for snow to stick? And no, it doesn’t melt either ‘cause that would mean something would have to get wet.

Part of the blame rightly should land on Sony Pictures Imageworks animation studio. They’re the perpetrators of this bad art and they should be hiding their heads. (And their names from the credits.) I don’t know how many animators work at Imageworks, but clearly, something that doesn’t work there are the laws of physics. Nothing that moves in Beowulf affects it’s surroundings. Nothing seems to have weight. There is no breeze, no wind. Shadows flicker for no reason, light seems to come from inexplicable sources, the waver of light from a close-by flame seems annoyingly out of sync. Pieces of dirt kicked up from the hooves of galloping horses are uniformly the same, show no mark from where they were kicked up from, and the passing of the horse disturbs not a single blade of grass or swirl of snow. Underwater bubbles look like glass ping pong balls and sand looks like oversized beads of wax. The environment is more affected by the presence of characters in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Let’s get to artistry, because there is nearly none in the movie. Character faces have been an ongoing problem for the folks at Imageworks. Incredibly, no one seems to think that’s a reason to be in a different business, but hey, it’s not my money paying these guys. I did a post over at Moviedozer Dailies, that quotes an article from Forbes.com. In the article, animation supervisors at Imageworks admitted that they don’t have a handle on animating eyes. Well they do if they would just start animating zombie movies. In Beowulf, every character suffers from the lack of ability of Sony’s animators. The Queen oft times looks cross-eyed, most characters spend significant screen time looking vacant or dumbstruck, and the overall effect is that most of the time the characters appear as though blind and trying to follow the action with hearing alone. It is a fault you will notice from the first face glimpsed and one that aggravates through to the last frame.

When a moment of realism shines thorough in someone’s facial features, I’m guessing it’s a safe bet that you’re seeing frames of live-action footage simply colored over with light animation. That’s all the animation as should have been attempted, considering the skill level that Sony’s studio has brought to the project.

The limbs, torsos and body skin of every character looked like wax. Clothing often appears to move with the flow of elasticized vinyl, folds of skin, as though stretching silly putty. Light sources rarely illuminated anything more than themselves, i.e. sparks that float across faces, torches moving across arms and sets, etc. Worse yet, the touch of a hand grabbing an arm or fingers stroking a face, seem to hover just above the skin so there is no flexing or indentation made to the flesh in the slightest. If there was the illusion of “touch” created in a movie as old as Roger Rabbit, what possible excuse is there here? Even simple things like aging are left inconsistent, with Beowulf’s aging adding wrinkles while his queen simply gets a bit of gray hair.

And here a word about motion-capture, the vaulted technology that Mr. Zemeckis has parlayed into investments from several studios, and is heralding as “break through” stuff. If the wires and contraptions of motion-capture work, why is it (in these hands at least), once again only a means to create such glaringly spastic results? Movement of characters throughout the film look stinted, jerky and unnatural. A horse galloping in battle moved with the rocking motion associated with a child’s mechanical arcade ride. Bodies hurtling through the air fly with no sense of gravity or natural proportions. Motion-capture does NOT work here and studios backing Mr. Zemeckis should be braced for a mass exodus of their stock holders.

There is so much more lacking. Scenic backgrounds against the 3D of foregrounds, particularly when looking through open doors or in stark outdoor settings, made the images appear to have been filmed using rear projection. (No fault of the 3D system.) Inconsistencies in animation quality of even the same character from scene to scene, even shot to shot, vary wildly, as if when in close up, the animator knew they had to work a little harder to create real art. Or is it simply that in relatively still close-up, the task is simpler to understand and tackle? I had the feeling, time and time again, that animators were continually being reminded where and when to pay attention to detail. It’s clear that those reminders didn’t come nearly often enough.

This is, by far, the longest entry I have ever published on the Hucksters page (and the very first time the same subject has warranted back to back columns), hopefully it will be the last time I sit through a film that deserves such complete scorn. Here’s the bottom line. The entire film never exceeded (and barely matched) the animation level of Shrek. The movie made me feel as if I was looking at a child’s Viewmaster reels. The animation in Beowulf is bad. Worse, the people responsible for Beowulf did not care one bit that they (with the track record of Monster House and The Polar Express considered) don’t seem to know how to produce a product of quality in this medium. Robert Zemeckis should abandon his efforts in this area and go back to live-action direction... maybe. It will take a lot to win back respect from this moviegoer. If you were to base their future on this single film, Sony Pictures Imageworks Animation Studio should shutter it’s doors and quit.

The final word here should go to Real D. The future of new films, good films, coming to theaters resplendent in their full 3D treatment is incredibly promising. Once filmmakers embrace the technology as a storytelling tool and not a vehicle for silly and cliched sight gags, great things will come. The studio that gets this right will make cinematic history. You can bet that the names Zemeckis and Sony won’t be involved.