I caught an advance screening of BEOWULF in IMAX 3D, and I can't remember the last time a movie made me feel such giddy excitement. Having read the epic poem many times, I've always wanted to see how someone might make a good movie adaptation of the story, especially considering that the poem really has very little story to work from, being mostly a series of battles (Beowulf v. Grendel, Beowulf v. Grendel's mother, Beowulf v. a dragon).

In particular, I've always wanted to see two things: 1) an exciting and visually stunning rendition of Beowulf's battle with the dragon, and 2) the story told in such a way that the dragon actually fits into it organically, rather than simply seeming like a 'then-Beowulf-fought-a-fire-dragon-and-died' coda.

BEOWULF the movie grants both of these wishes, and so much more.

Firstly, as pure spectacle, BEOWULF is breathtaking. See it in IMAX 3D! Sweet Odin, what they can do with ones and zeros these days. (Speaking of which, when I first saw the BEOWULF trailer and saw how the digital characters looked so close to being the actors, but not quite, I thought to myself, they may as well have just filmed the actors instead of motion-capturing them. Having now seen the movie, I can see why they made it this way: it enabled them to have complete control over every detail in every frame, including the characters. Only with animation can filmmakers have that degree of control, and, let's face it, director Robert Zemeckis likes control. With motion capture, Bobby-Z gets the control of animation combined with the look of live action -- almost. The technology still isn't quite there for me to believe that's really Anthony Hopkins up there, but it's getting closer. But I digress. And speaking of actors, I was especially impressed by the multilayered portrayal of Grendel, and so watched the end credits to find out who played him: Crispin Glover. Awesome, absolutely. But I digress again.)

Secondly, the movie uses the poem as a leaping-off point into a deeper, more intricate, more emotionally complex story. Without spoiling anything, I'll only say that the movie plays more-or-less like the poem until Beowulf faces Grendel's mother, and then the story becomes something extraordinary (and even provocative, with not-subtle jabs at religion, especially Christianity). Neil Gaiman cowrote the script, and his phenomenal stamp is all over the story.

And the battle with the fire dragon? In my opinion, no one can outdo Zemeckis when it comes to building a suspenseful climax (ROMANCING THE STONE, the first BACK TO THE FUTURE, and DEATH BECOMES HER being prime examples), and he's in top form here. I see enough movies to be pretty jaded, yet the dragon sequence had me literally gasping, my heart racing.

(On a side note: it's rather amazing how much explicit gore can be packed into a PG-13 movie (although were this a low-budget movie with no big names associated with it, I'm sure it would have gotten an R rating, but that's due to the MPAA being a sac of hypocritical blobs of bullshit, but that's a different critique). The original poem was itself incredibly gory, but it somehow never occurred to me that the movie would show all of it so lingeringly. Just a side note.)

Was BEOWULF flawless? Far from it. It had its, alas, very silly parts, most glaring being the first battle between Beowulf and Grendel, in which Beowulf disrobes and fights naked, which wasn't so silly in and of itself except for the lengths to which the filmmakers went to hide the naughty bits from the audience's view by always making sure random objects were between said naughty bits and the camera: a spear, a helmet, a severed limb, ad nauseam. Which was far more distracting than if we had simply seen the actor's motion-captured old feller flopping about. (But of course, show heads being crushed, bodies torn in half, and blood spraying into the audience in 3D, but Odin forbid we catch a glimpse of reproductive organs.)

Quibbles aside, BEOWULF is easily one of the best fantasy movies ever. If you loved LORD OF THE RINGS, if you love Neil Gaiman, if you like fantasy at all, see it!