Beowulf arrived in theaters on November 16, 2007, and it's a difficult task to get one's head around it. First of all, it's competing with a burnt-out run of epic fantasy films, inaugurated by Lord of the Rings and following through Troy, 300, and who knows how many others.

Second, it was produced via computer modeling, aided by motion capture technology, and it was obviously produced for a 3-D screen. Third, it attempts the Herculean task of nesting a nuanced emotional interchange within the space of a violent, jocular fantasy film. In the end, the movie transcends its debilitating aspirations.

As a technical note, I watched the film in 2-D, on a normal screen, which (according to reviewers like Kevin Carr of Film School Rejects) is hardly the full experience. When I went into it, I hadn't realized it had been constructed for 3-D, and I didn't connect the absurd perspective shots (the point of a spear, the fly-bys of mead hall interiors) with the film's contextual displacement. Somehow, these gimmicks worked, not because they made the experience more "three-dimensional," but because they brought more movement to the screen. In a movie committed to uniting dramatic pauses and sweeps with persistently high intensity, these unnecessary movements were an advantage, however unintentional it might have been.

The computer animation was the closest thing the film had to a failure, though any receptive audience will be able to get past it. For me, as a dabbler in post-production technology, the effect of lighting and movement on the renders was fascinating: in low-light scenes (i.e. Angelina's sex cave), the visuals were indistinguishable from photographic captures. If you're not really into animation, or find yourself nit-picking at distracting details, you'll have to acclimate yourself to the style, and learn to ignore it, within the first few minutes of the film. It shouldn't be all that hard.

Beth Accomando of KPBS.org said of the film, "Zemeckis’ Beowulf aspires to epic realm of 300 and the fantasy of Lord of the Rings but falls short of both. But it’s an intriguing novelty act with a few stirring scenes."  For her, and for other reviewers, the genre space where Beowulf was situated helped to discredit it. Some reviewers felt that films like 300 and Lord of the Rings vastly surpassed Beowulf; others saw in Beowulf the bad dialogue and clumsy characterization that they have seen in these previous films. I think these criticisms belie Beowulf's strength: that it aspired to be epic, but made a conscious, successful effort to be less manipulative than other films in its genre.

In fact, this was a distinguishing characteristic of Gaiman and Avary's dialogue. The most dramatic moments were understated and brief (like Grendel's death, or the relationship between Wealthow and Ursula, or Hrothgar's suicide), so they didn't linger long enough to become comedic. Other sequences (like the fight with Grendel and the "fight" with his mother) were intentionally jocular and over the top, so they didn't get in the way of the emotional dynamic of the characters. These were the experiences that Roger Ebert was responding to when he said, "I'm not complaining. I'm serious when I say the movie is funny. Some of the dialogue sounds like 'Monty Python.'"