Beowulf

Blu-ray Review

Paramount Home Entertainment

Released: August 5, 2008

Paramount Home Entertainment has released one of the most visually impressive films to date on the high-def Blu-ray format in Beowulf.

Beowulf is one of the oldest stories of all time as it is the classic hero story, taken by Robert Zemeckis and writers Neil Gaiman and Rogery Avary, and turned into a blockbuster film. The movie follows Beowulf, a man who becomes the heroic figure over a small town.

He comes into this small town to kill the beast of the film, Grendel. The story evolves as Beowful also has a companion along with him in Wiglaf. You also find out some secrets about the king of the small town, and other characters.

Zemeckis put together an amazing cast of characters for the film, starting with Ray Winstone as Beowulf. Anthony Hopkins plays the role as King Hrothgar, and John Malkovich plays Unrerth. Angelina Jolie also makes a short appearance as well. The villain, Grendel, is played by Crispin Glover.

Overall the cast does a great job of bringing this unique film to the big screen as the way it was filmed and how the technology was used is just breath-taking.

The amazing visuals of the film almost completely overshadow the cast and story, which are also both great in their own right.

The video quality for the Blu-ray release had a lot of hype going into it, considering how great it looked in theaters.

Thankfully, the video quality of the release is near perfect and is presented in 2.35 aspect ratio. The video is presented in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50, and is easily reference-quality.

The visuals in 1080p will absolutely blow you away as the film looks almost too real at times when you consider that it is all animation.

The environments look fantastic and the details are far more crisp compared to the standard DVD version of the film. Facial details, color saturation, and black levels are spot on as well.

The audio aspect of the Blu-ray release is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and packs quite a bit of bass, putting the subwoofer and surround channels to work from start to finish.

The surround sound is presented nicely, with some great special effects which come off as both impact-full and realistic. There is not much to complain about with the great dialogue, a nice upgrade over the HD-DVD release.

There are some nice extras packed into the Blu-ray release of Beowulf.

Starting out, the Blu-ray release has a picture-in-picture video to enjoy while you watch the movie called Beowful in Volume. This is basically your director’s commentary for the film as it shows a lot of insight into how it was made, good stuff. It allows you to watch extras while you are actually watching the movie.

Going beyond that nice feature, you are also presented A Heroes Journey: The Making of Beowulf. This lengthy feature is a making of for the film and shows how the film was put together with the visuals, cast comments, and other extra tidbits of information thrown in.

The Journey Continues feature runs for over twenty minutes as well and focuses on Ray Winstone, Beowulf, talking about his part and how the technology works as well. Anthony Hopkins and others fill in as well showing how they did their performances.

There are a few other shorter features included here. The first is The Origins of Beowulf which runs for over five minutes and gives information on the original story of Beowulf. There is also a six-minute feature on the creatures of Beowulf and how they were made.

The Art of Beowulf runs for just over five minutes and looks into the artwork of the film, while Creating The Ultimate Beowful is a very short video feature on how they created the character himself.

Finally, there is a ten-minute Q&A session with Bob Zemeckis as he takes questions from a crowd at USC about the film.

Rounding out the extras include the full theatrical trailer in HD, as well as 12-minutes of deleted scenes.

Beowulf is a great release on the Blu-ray format with plenty of stuff tacked on top of the already impressive movie. The visuals and audio are top notch, and the special features are sure to please any fan. You will not be disappointed with Beowulf on Blu-ray.

Film: 8.0

An enjoyable film with great visuals, a solid story, and an entertaining cast.

Video: 9.2

Beowulf looks phenomenal on the Blu-ray format, incredible sharpness and detail.

Audio: 9.2

Nothing to complain about here with excellent use of the surround channels, bass, and more.

Special Features: 8.5

A very nice set of extra features, with the only thing lacking being web-enabled content.

Final Score: 8.7