Beowulf is a far more successful and nuanced film that 300, which also used extensive digital effects. Many of the reviews have overlooked the intelligence of the Beowulf script, dwelling instead on its many defects. Even so, the decision to craft the story for a modern audience, rather than to attempt a genuine adaptation of the epic poem, led to a significant missed opportunity. The poem has great power — its pagan world, alien to our own, so like it in ways — that would translate into a compelling film, if only someone had the courage to make it.

I saw the 3-D version of this film. 3-D technology has vastly improved since its first introduction to American audiences in the 1950s. (I remember as a kid watching the film 13 Ghosts in 3-D at a theater in East Point, Georgia.) In Beowulf 3-D technology becomes another dimension of the film's insistence on spectacle. It is noticeable at first as a kind of novelty, but after a few minutes it ceases to be of much interest. In general, it lends little to the film.