Beowulf Director's Cut
March 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: HD DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Seeing Beowulf in 3D was my movie-going highlight of 2007. I’ve always been one to follow the latest technical developments. Beowulf impressed me the same way the first Cinemascope movies did, or the first Ray Harryhausen Dynamation movie I saw, or my first Vista Vision film, or This is Cinerama, or Oklahoma in Todd AO. I wasn’t expecting much from Beowulf, because of personal experience with earlier 3D, the kind from the 1950s that used two projectors (thus requiring an intermission) and required one to wear polarized glasses that were very dark. The initial experience was fairly good, but the headache it caused dulled the positive memories of the movie. Later 3D adventures, using single projectors and sometimes glasses with different-colored lenses, were only memorable as good tries. But this 2007 Beowulf was a horse of a different color. The sturdy plastic-framed glasses were nearly clear and as comfortable as glasses can be (I forgot I had them on after ten minutes) and the effect was the most immersive cinematic event I have ever experienced.

Of course, director Robert Zemeckis and his crew stacked the deck. The motion-capture system of animation was used, so special effects had a "sky’s the limit" aspect to them. There was the usual amount of head-ducking material, as arrows, bodies, you name it were literally thrown out at the audience. And, yes, people ducked. But 3D didn’t stop there. Zemeckis created numerous scenes where foreground and background action was exaggerated or strongly emphasized. These scenes had incredible depth, and coupled with multichannel sound, they that had very precise placement and drew me into the picture in a manner never experienced before.

So how does the 2D HD DVD version stack up to an act almost impossible to follow. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no. The image is one of the sharpest to appear on HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc. Every detail is piercingly etched. Colors are rich. Dark scenes are absolutely clear, and there’s no doubt what is going on, as there is sometimes with the standard-definition DVD. But there is often the overriding feeling that the foreground is detached from the background. This effect is quite alarming on the standard-definition disc. Upconverted, the foregrounds are quite detailed, but the backgrounds, because they have less detail in the original standard definition, have a lack of detail. This helps create the effect of detachment. It has a lot to do with the way this movie was shot.

The HD DVD, however, smoothes this problem out by having both foregrounds and backgrounds in equal focus. The Dolby Digital Plus sound is rich and full, far better than the "plain" Dolby Digital 5.1 sound on the DVD, with lots of oomph in the big climatic scenes and singular transparency in quieter ones. The far-above-average video and audio transfers are not 3D, however. There’s no big-as-all-outdoors screen to suck you into the action, so one is forced to concentrate more on the story. And there, Beowulf comes up lacking. There’s good acting, but the story has little heart. We care for the actors no more than we care for a special effect, for in a very real sense the actors are special effects. The HD DVD is worth owning for the battle scene against the magnificent dragon that takes place at the end. That sequence seems to work in any dimension. The Director’s Cut, by the way, just allows a bit more gore.

The HD DVD has a picture-in-picture feature on the first disc that allows one to see the bare-bones scenes before digital manipulation. It’s basically the same as the comparison offered on the HD DVD version of 300. (How Blu-ray producers can claim this as a great effect visible on some Blu-ray players is beyond me, when all HD DVD players have offered it from the get-go.) In addition to this feature there’s a second disc loaded with HD featurettes, with such fanciful titles as "Beasts of Burden -- Designing the Creatures of Beowulf." There are also deleted scenes and a conversation with Robert Zemeckis.

As this is being written, the end has come for HD DVD -- it has lost to Blu-ray. The video and audio quality of this disc make absurd any claim that Bu-ray Disc has of being better. If this is to be one of the last HD DVDs (and only time can tell), it is one heck of a swan song.

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