Beowulf in 3D did huge business, and with many more 3D movies on the way, this could very well be the future of entertainment.

What is most remarkable about Beowulf is the animation style: Nearly photorealistic. But what is also interesting is director Robert Zemeckis’ decision to make the movie 3D. The primary goal of Zemeckis, the producers and the studio was to make a 3D movie first, and a traditional 2D movie second.

According to the Denver Post, only 20% of theaters screening Beowulf were 3D, yet they accounted for 40% of the opening weekend gross of $28.1 million. And in it’s second weekend, IMAX theaters accounted for 17% of total box office grosses although they accounted for only 2% of total screens! Of course, theaters screening in 3D charged extra, but the attendance numbers were huge. With that kind of success, what’s next for 3D film entertainment?

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I’m back from being out of town last week. Although I managed to post up a couple of reviews, a lot of news didn’t get covered. Here’s a summary of last week’s highlights:

- Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire) will play Sarek, Spock’s father, in the new and currently in production Star Trek movie. (StarTrek.com) Hey! They added another old guy to the cast!

- David Twohy, director of both Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick apparently wants Vin Diesel back to play Riddick again. (ComingSoon.net) I thought the first one was pretty dumb the first time I saw it, but upon repeated viewings it grew on me. I also thought that Chronicles was cool in a “guilty pleasure” sort of way.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: In 3D Beowulf is an incredible visual experience that you must see… but leave the kids at home.

I need to make a few things clear before I begin my review:

1. I have not read the source material in any form, be it the classic poem or any graphic novelization of it.

2. Folks, please ignore the PG-13 rating given to this film. This is an R-rated movie!! How in the hell it was given a PG-13 boggles my mind.

3. This is a review of the IMAX 3D version of the film, not the standard projection version and the review will reflect that experience.

The plot of Beowulf is pretty straightforward on the face of it: Monster torments the local kingdom periodically, the King finally says enough is enough, a hero and his hearty band of men show up to defeat the monster, monster defeated… but not really.

You’ve probably read about it (lots of articles about it here on this site) and between all the weirdness of the publicity campaign (restricted trailers for a supposedly PG-13 film) and the talk about how real (or fake) the CGI characters look you may be wondering if it’s worth watching.

I’m here to tell you: Hell yes, it is.

There’s been a lot of online discussion regarding the upcoming CGI motion capture movie Beowulf by Robert Zemeckis. While there was some great buzz about it this summer based on the 3D footage shown at the San Diego Comic-Con, for the most part since then people haven’t exactly been talking this one up. Much of the discussion has been centered on the attempt at photorealistic CGI characters, which although it has progressed leaps and bounds, still has a creepy, living-dead quality to it.

Of course there’s also been the controversy surrounding the bizarre decision to release red-band trailers for a movie that will be rated PG-13 (wierdest marketing ever). I’ve commented here previously that I think this mixed-message promotion will come back and bit them in the butt. I’ve also stated that really the primary reason I plan on seeing the film is for the one-two punch combo of IMAX and 3D. Visually, for folks that check out the movie in that venue I think Beowulf is going to blow people away.

But does that mean the movie, as a whole, will be any good? Not necessarily, and this latest bit of footage really, really scares me… and not in a horror movie kind of way.

The Beowulf site has four new TV commercials you can view online (the first one is below). Interestingly, although all of us savvy movie website readers know it will be rated PG-13, the commercials state that “This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated.”

TV spot #2 includes the following text:

“Some temptations cannot be resisted, some sins cannot be forgiven”

Sounds like a PG-13 movie, doesn’t it?

Either they’re reconsidering rating it R (which it seems to me it should be rated) or they just didn’t have the info at the time they produced the commercials.

There’s a new list out (don’t we all just love lists?) of the 20 most anticipated movies coming out in the next 12 months.

Movietickets.com polled 2,000 active moviegoers to determine what movies they were most looking forward to. What’s an “active moviegoer” you ask? It’s someone who’s seen a lot of movies this summer. Over 50% of those polled have seen at least six films this summer, with almost 20% having seen 11 or more! So I would imagine that means that many of those polled were teenagers or in their early 20’s.

Before I get to the big list, here’s the breakdown by gender:

Top Five Films Guys Are Looking Forward To:

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2. The Dark Knight
3. Iron Man
4. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
5. American Gangster

Top Five Films The Ladies Are Looking Forward To:

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
3. The Dark Knight
4. American Gangster
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Come on girls, aren’t you interested in Iron Man, a suave playboy/James Bond-type that wears armor and flies?

I guess CGI motion-capture nudity doesn’t count as much as live action, fleshy nudity: Beowulf has been given a PG-13 rating by the MPAA. On the other hand (and thankfully) the Johnny Depp starring film version of Sweeney Todd will be rated R. I’d say that’s appropriate for a movie about a throat-slitting barber that grinds his victims into meat pies.

Here are the detailed descriptions from the MPAA for the ratings:

There’s a new trailer out for Beowulf. After seeing 300, I still can’t help but feel that the king in this movie is channeling King Leonidas…

And again, based on the Comic-Con footage, the first trailer and now this one, I still cannot fathom how they can cut this down to a PG-13 and have it be any good. It just looks like it should pull out all the stops and go for the R-rating. I mean heck, look at the aforementioned 300: That was rated R and still made bucketloads of money.

Anyway, on to the new trailer.

I’m confused… Yet another “red band” trailer for the upcoming motion-capture epic Beowulf has been released (click on the image above to go see it). For those of you who don’t know, a red band trailer is one that is not suited for all audiences (as opposed to the familiar trailers that start with the green background). Red band trailers are considered “restricted” and contain R-rated material.

Why am I confused by this?

It seems to be trailer day today. Both AVP2 came out and now the Beowulf trailer that was shown at the San Diego Comic-Con has come online. Sue me, but at the time I sat there at the Con watching the trailer I knew nothing about this movie, not even that it was a motion capture (aka “mo-cap”) CGI film. Not knowing that, it gave off kind of a surreal feeling. The fact that I thought I was supposed to be watching live action but seeing that something was “off” about it was causing my brain to overheat.

Of course eventually I figured it out when they did various closeups of the actors faces and they looked a bit like Tim Allen’s Santa robot in The Santa Claus 2.