Cary and I saw Beowulf in 3D at the IMAX theater on Saturday. I think the last time I read the poem was in highschool, so I don’t remember much. That’s probably a good thing, because movies rarely follow the original source material very closely.
This is a movie that practically demands to be viewed in 3D. 3D technology has come a long way since the days of the red-and-green cardboard glasses. Beowulf was filmed in “REAL D”, a 3D technique that employs special glasses with circular polarized lenses (one lense is polarized clockwise, the other counter-clockwise). The film itself is projected on screen with a single projector, showing the alternating polarized frames at 144 frames per second. Using circular polarization of the lenses (instead of linear polarization) allegedly reduces the amount of “ghosting” (one eye seeing the image intended for the other eye) when the viewer tilts his head (though I did see some, it wasn’t that bad). The REAL D method is also supposed to reduce the headache-inducing properties of older 3D techniques.
At any rate, the 3D was amazing. And although there were a few cheesy shots in the film that were made to show off the 3D effect (like a spear being shoved right into the “camera”), they were few and far between. Despite the fact that 3D is still seen as a novelty, Beowulf‘s story and digital acting was good enough to outshine the technology used in making it. Although Beowulf screams the line “I AM BEOWULF” a few too many times, the story is solid and the characters are engaging. Beowulf’s narcissism was present in the source material, so you can’t blame him for being in love with himself in the film, too.
Just like 3D, creating entirely computer-generated humans is an art form that’s still in its infancy; but the characters in Beowulf are a huge step towards believable photorealistic digital actors. Many of the characters in this film were based on the actors who supplied their voices (Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright-Penn, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich), and the modeling of their faces was, for the most part, dead on. There were one or two scenes with characters in closeup that were eerily real. Background characters were a little less real, and there were scenes here and there where main characters looked a tad lifeless, but nowhere near director Robert Zemeckis’ previous 3D film The Polar Express.
At this point, I’d say the biggest flaw in animating digital humans is with the hands. The animators seem to have trouble moving characters’ hands in a natural way unless the hands are actively doing something (like holding a weapon or other object). At times, the characters’ hands resembled mannequin hands stuck awkwardly on the end of their arms. I think it’s one of the last areas that’s preventing CGI humans from looking completely real.
There’s a term coined by the Japanese called “the uncanny valley”. It’s a robotics term that describes how humans react emotionally to robots that are made to look human. The hypothesis is that as robots look increasingly more human, our positive emotional response to them increases but only to a point. At a certain point, the humanlike appearance begins to repulse (approacthing the look of a corpse or zombie). There’s a nice graph on the Wikipedia page that describes this.
This hypothesis can be applied to computer rendered humans as well as robots. If you watch the film The Polar Express, you’ll get a good idea of what it’s like to be in the Uncanny Valley. Many of the characters in that film are very real-looking, but for a split second here and there, their eyes seem lifeless, or their movment just a bit too unnatural. At that point, the emotional response dips into the Uncanny Valley, and it’s a bit unsettling.
Fortunately for Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf spends very little time in the Uncanny Valley. It’s a real tribute to the animators, modelers, lighting riggers and texture artists that worked on the film.