ON THIS PAGE: A HEROIC EPIC FOR THE AGES; CAPTURING GREAT PERFORMANCES

READ MORE ABOUT: REIMAGINING 2-D IN 3D; THE HISTORY OF BEOWULF; DIRECTOR PRODUCER ROBERT ZEMECKIS, AND WRITERS  NEIL GAIMAN AND ROGER AVARY

A HEROIC EPIC FOR THE AGES
Set in a magical era veiled by the mists of time, replete with heroes and monsters, adventure and valor, gold and glory, one exceptional man, Beowulf, emerges to save an ancient Danish kingdom from annihilation by an ungodly creature. In return, this legendary six foot-six-inch Viking, brimming with daring confidence and ambition, succeeds to the throne.
The name Beowulf resounds throughout the kingdom and songs are sung of his exceptional prowess and deeds after he comes to the rescue of King Hrothgar, whose kingdom has been devastated by Grendel, a ruthless monster who has tortured and devoured its residents, leaving them in a constant state of panic and fear.
In ridding the kingdom of this savage beast, Beowulf gains fame and fortune for himself. Great riches and overwhelming temptations are thrown at him. How wisely he chooses to handle his newfound power will forever define his fate as a warrior, a champion, a leader, a husband and, most importantly, as a man.
Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language. While Robert Zemeckis' film adaptation contains many of the poem's characters and themes - great monsters and heroes, the eternal conflict between good and evil, and a layered exploration of the nature of valor and glory - it is definitely not your high school teacher's Beowulf.
"Frankly, nothing about the original poem appealed to me. I remember being assigned to read it in junior high school and not being able to understand it because it was in Old English," admits Zemeckis. "It was one of those horrible assignments. I never really thought about it after that, never considered that it might make for an interesting story. But when I read the screenplay that Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary did, I was immediately captivated. I asked them, 'What is it about this screenplay that makes this story so fascinating when the poem, to me, was so boring?' And their answer was, 'Well, let's see, the poem was written somewhere between the 7th century and the 12th century. But the story had been told for centuries before that. The only people in the 7th century who knew how to write were monks. So, we can assume they did a lot of editing.' Neil and Roger explored deeper into the text, looking between the lines, questioning the holes in the source material, and adding back what they theorized the monks might have edited out (or added) and why. They managed to keep the essence of the poem but made it more accessible to a modern audience and made some revolutionary discoveries along the way. This should stir some debate in academia."
As he worked with the writers to develop the story further, Zemeckis became a student of the subject in a way that would make his junior high school teacher proud. "Once I became intrigued by the script, I went back and re-read the poem, talked to Beowulf scholars and immersed myself in the legend. Many of the themes that are in Beowulf were lifted from the Bible - a heroic man's journey, the fight between good and evil and the price of glory. And you see that Beowulf is the foundation for all our modern heroes, from Conan to Superman to the Incredible Hulk."
"What's so attractive about the Beowulf legend is that it is wrapped up in this great action-adventure-mythological-epic world with monsters and seductresses, creatures that have certainly existed, at least in our subconscious, since ancient times," adds producer Jack Rapke.
In retrospect, Gaiman and Avary seem the perfect talents for this project. Gaiman, as his biography notes, "… is listed in the Dictionary of Literacy Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers and is a prolific creator of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics and drama." In particular, Gaiman is beloved by comic book fans for his DC Comics series Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards and three Harvey Awards; Sandman
19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to win a literary award.
Avary is similarly celebrated for his dark, edgy, groundbreaking screenplays and films, including his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Pulp Fiction," (shared with Quentin Tarantino), and his influential cult films as a director, the Cannes Prix très spécial winning "Killing Zoe" and the adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel The Rules of Attraction.
Gaiman and Avary originally began their collaboration when they decided to work together on a screenplay version of Gaiman's Sandman. While that project never came to fruition, the two recognized that they were kindred spirits. Nevertheless, adapting the Beowulf poem for the screen proved to be a long, strange and ultimately rewarding trip for Gaiman and Avary.
"Roger and I hit it off during the Sandman process. I very much liked him and the way his mind worked," says Gaiman. "At some point, Roger mentioned to me that he'd always wanted to make Beowulf into a movie, but he'd never been able to work out a way to get from the first two acts to the third, because the structure is such that you begin with Beowulf's fight, then fighting Grendel's mother and then move forward 50 years when he fights the dragon. It's not the normal three-act structure of screenplays. I suggested a few ways that it could work. There was a pause and Roger said, 'When are you free?'"
Basically, Neil came up with the key operator of a unified field theory of Beowulf, which I had been working on for a decade." says Avary. "The poem always seemed disjointed to me and, in particular, Beowulf never seemed to be the most reliable of narrators. For instance, Grendel never attacks Hrothgar; he just torments him. Why? It made me ask the simple question that for some reason no one has ever asked before: who is Grendel's father? It really plagued me. All of Grendel's behavior began to make sense when examined in that light. Later, Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm and Grendel slinks off to his cave to die. After Grendel's mother's retribution, Beowulf ventures into the cave, ostensibly to kill Grendel's mother. Yet he emerges from the cave with Grendel's head, not the head of the Mother, which is really perplexing. Beowulf says he killed Grendel's mother, but we only have his word. Where's the proof that he killed the mother? It became obvious to me that Beowulf had fallen prey to the same temptations I surmised had befallen Hrothgar - the temptations of a siren. He had made a pact with a demon.
"Then, in the second half of the poem," Avary continues, "after Beowulf has become king, a dragon attacks him and his kingdom. I couldn't figure out how this fit into everything. I was telling Neil about my theories, when he made the remarkable insight that the dragon might be Beowulf's son - his sin comes back to haunt him. Suddenly, the two halves of the Beowulf epic, which had always seemed so disjointed, made perfect story arc sense. Had it been a snake, it would have bit me. It's quite possible that these elements of the structure had been lost over hundreds of years of verbal telling, and further diluted by the Christian monks who added elements of Christianity when they transcribed it to the parchment we now know as MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv."
Gaiman and Avary are not the first to notice the awkward construction of the original poem. David Wright points out in the Penguin Classics edition of Beowulf that "… the early critics and commentators of Beowulf and a good many of the later ones have been sarcastic about the clumsiness of the plot. For the poem is a bit of a rag-bag as well, stuffed with fragments from the history of Scandinavian tribes and spilling over with untidy-looking references to apparently irrelevant events and legends." Wright also notes that Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien appreciated the poem's power. In his famous essay, Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics, Tolkien noticed, among other things, that although Beowulf is a superhero of sorts he is, in the end, human and his all-too-human traits contribute to his downfall. "He is a man and that for him and many is sufficient tragedy." Zemeckis saw the hero along similar lines. "Our Beowulf is a bit more flawed, more like a human hero than a god. He's not a Thor character. He is a real person who has a lot of flaws - hubris being chief among them."
It's a good bet that Tolkien did not have as much fun as Gaiman and Avary did when writing about their main character. "Roger and I flew down to Mexico and he borrowed a house from a friend for a week," says Gaiman, "a week of absolute madness. We were surrounded by translations of Beowulf, all the different ones we could find, including some with Old English on one page and the English translation on the other. We hooked up our computers and we wrote like mad. We returned home with a script, one that Bob Zemeckis read and immediately wanted to do."
Zemeckis, whose groundbreaking film "The Polar Express" featured a new format he had developed called performance capture, realized that this new art form would lend itself perfectly to Gaiman and Avary's epic "Beowulf" - a tale populated by larger-than-life characters - great heroes and demons - and spectacular battles, all set in a mythic land.
"Bob saw the possibilities of telling this story in this new style that we had established on 'Polar Express,'" says producer Steve Starkey. One of the advantages afforded by performance capture, Starkey points out, is less about technology and more about actors. A myriad of digital sensors are attached to their faces and to their bodies, via a form-fitting lycra suit, so that the actors' live performances are "captured," to be input into a computer. All the action takes place in an invisible box called a volume, which is divided up into quadrants that can house as many as 40 cameras. (The volume is performance capture-speak for soundstage and is so-called because it allows multiple cameras to photograph the scenes in a three-dimensional space. The classic geometric formula for "volume" is x, y and z, representing width, height and length). Specifically, a volume is the area where the cameras are all aimed, within which face and body data may be captured. Takes or "beats" from multiple capture sessions can be edited and blended, mixed and matched and, as Zemeckis demonstrated in "The Polar Express," the result can be a compelling new medium that is not at all "cartoony" but rather tethered to the actual creative expression of the actors and director.
Now, with "Beowulf," Zemeckis was ready to take the technology to the next level. "When you do a performance capture film you have the ability to do two forms of casting, one for performance and one for likeness, which means you can actually separate what a character looks like in the film from the performer who portrays that character," says Starkey. "It's one of the reasons we decided to do the film in this style; for instance, no one on the planet looks like the character Bob envisioned for Beowulf or could perform on the level Bob wanted for this film. Beowulf is bigger than life and there is no single human actor who embodies everything Bob saw in the character. So, how do you blend these two irreconcilable aspects? By casting the best actor possible and creating that look, a six-foot-six Christ-like image in the computer. The same is true with Grendel. If we were doing Grendel in a traditional film, we would have had a 12-foot puppet on set and created additional computer graphics. In this case, we could get the perfect performer, who portrayed all of Grendel's pain and suffering but wasn't limited by prosthetics or uncomfortable suits. If we had shot this film traditionally, we could never have done all that," Starkey concludes.
"Because it is a mythological fable, the demand for photo reality was not as paramount as it might be," adds producer Rapke. "Also, to replicate the conceptual visual world Bob envisioned would be almost impossible in the 2D world. Using this process gave us the opportunity to cast whoever we felt was the perfect actor for each part. So, for us, it was the best way to get over certain hurdles and do a lot of things which would have been impossible in a traditional live action format."
Avary adds that performance capture realized the film the way he had always envisioned it and, in addition, it presented an almost limitless canvas.
"The interesting thing to me was that the performance capture process really allowed the film to be performance-based. I had always seen it as a chamber piece - it's in court, and there's intrigue between people with their myriad relationships. I always wanted it to be a fully formed, emotional experience. I also remember Bob saying, 'C'mon, guys, do whatever you want - when Beowulf fights the dragon, let's really have him fight the dragon.' We weren't restricted by anything, so Neil and I were able to write without the shackles we'd normally have on a film," Avary notes.
Although Avary had initially written the film with the intention of directing it himself, ultimately he understood that Zemeckis' performance capture model was the best way to bring his vision to the screen. What surprised and gratified Avary was that he continued to be a part of the filmmaking process.
"In most other Hollywood scenarios, I would have been banned to a gulag in Siberia. I fully expected that. It's not only a testament to how great a director Bob is but also how great a man he is that he did the exact opposite. With no ego, he invited me closer into the circle. He recognized that Neil and I had a distinct point of view of the film and he welcomed our involvement and input throughout," Avary explains.

CAPTURING GREAT PERFORMANCES
Essentially, performance capture removed appearance, age, color, and gender from the casting equation. Zemeckis' choice of Ray Winstone to play the lead character is the quintessential example of the freedom in casting performance capture provides. Initially, Zemeckis hadn't thought of Winstone, but when he heard the actor's distinctive voice he was convinced he'd found his Beowulf. "My wife was watching Ray doing an adaptation of 'Henry VIII' on TV and I heard his voice and said, 'Oh my God that sounds like Beowulf!' I went and watched him and he had so much power and this ability to tap into the animal part of his humanity. That's a big part of Beowulf - he has a real visceral quality. He cares only about what he can kill, what he can eat, who he can screw. Ray is an amazing, powerful actor who has the ability to tap into that primeval aspect," Zemeckis says.
No one was more surprised than Winstone when Zemeckis approached him for the part. "I was doing Martin Scorsese's film 'The Departed' in New York when I got the call that they were interested in seeing me for 'Beowulf.' I came to Los Angeles to meet with Bob, and I thought, I'm traveling a long way for a job interview, but I did it because I think he's a genius. He asked what I thought of the script and I told him I thought it was the story of a man whose greed for gold, ambition, power and fame ultimately consumes him. He's a bigger monster in many ways than any of the demons he faces. As the conversation went on, I realized that it wasn't an audition; Bob actually wanted me to do the film, which was quite a shock to me," Winstone recalls.
The adventure elements of the script appealed to Winstone as did the opportunity to delve into a medium that was new to him. The candid Winstone is the first to say "… I didn't know anything about the original poem. My children tell me they know about it. But (the script) is a fantastic story and I've always wanted to play a Viking. The great thing about the (performance capture) technique, is that it allowed someone like me, who is 5'10" and a little on the plump side, to play a 6'6" golden-haired Viking. The process initially sounded complicated and a little bit uncomfortable, but I am a bit of a sucker for things I think I can't do, so I was very excited to try it," Winstone says.
An equally important attraction for Winstone was the stellar cast of co-stars Zemeckis had assembled. "The people working in this movie are amazing - the list goes on and on. Anthony Hopkins has been one of my favorites since I was a kid, and it was such a pleasure just to watch him work. I happened to work with Robin Wright Penn in London and she is a fine actress, as is Angelina Jolie, who I'd known for five years and is just fantastic. And Brendan Gleeson, my old mate, who I worked with on "Cold Mountain," as well as Crispin Glover and John Malkovich, who are so clever and inventive. They're such excellent actors, I knew I'd learn something on a job like this, just working with them," says Winstone.
Zemeckis notes that performance capture, in addition to fulfilling Winstone's wish to play a Viking, gave all his actors the luxury of performing unfettered by the demands of conventional filmmaking. "The thing I love about performance capture is that it allows the actor to give the director those magic moments, those things the actor does you never expected," Zemeckis explains.
"You have this wide open canvas where the actor can bring whatever he or she wants to the character because you're not under the same constraints that you'd have on a live-action film. The actors are liberated from the tyranny of a normal movie - it's not about lighting, it's not about setting up the camera, it's not about the hair and make-up or costumes. It is absolute performance and great actors, like the ones in this movie, relish that. You don't have to break up the scene to get coverage - we did wide shots and close-ups at the same time. So the actors dictate the rhythm of the scenes, which we did from beginning to end, as much as we could. It was like theater, except that it was being captured in 3D."
Anthony Hopkins, who plays King Hrothgar, notes that the performance capture technique coupled with Zemeckis' directing style made for an open, laid-back atmosphere that aided the creative process. "What's interesting about this way of acting - with no sets, no costumes, just these silly suits with dots all over your face, is that you can do the whole scene and it goes very quickly because you don't have to break it up the way you do on a conventional film. And Robert Zemeckis is a pretty free and easy director, although he has a strong vision and knows what he wants. We'd play a five or six page scene out in its entirety and after maybe five or six takes, whenever Bob was confident he had the performances, we'd move on. So, my character appears early in the drama, maybe page three or four of the script, and finishes on page 76, but I worked on the film for only about eight days, which is an impossible schedule on a traditional film. The first day I was a little apprehensive but the process gives you a great sense of freedom, that anything goes," Hopkins says.
King Hrothgar harbors a secret past that comes back to haunt him and his kingdom, in the form of the monster Grendel. Until Grendel's horrifying appearance, however, Hrothgar leads a charmed life and enjoys it; he and his people are profligate and celebratory, partaking in sensual pursuits and pleasures whenever they can.
"I thought, well, Hrothgar is a man of his people and at the beginning of the film I play him as a candid kind of drunken buffoon, which was fun. I also found some darker elements to him and went for those - played another level of him," Hopkins explains.
Hopkins, the first actor cast, decided to use his native Welsh accent "because Welsh is an ancient language, several thousand years old." Zemeckis notes that "there were long debates about how Welsh might have grown out of Old English. Whatever it was, when Anthony said these wonderful phrases that Roger and Neil wrote in his Welsh accent they sounded perfect."
Hopkins' lilting cadence became the template for the other actors. "We all decided to do a Welsh-ish accent," Robin Wright Penn, who plays Hrothgar's wife, the lovely, hapless Queen Wealthow. "The story is obviously set in Denmark but it was written in Old English and Tony had such a great Welsh accent naturally. It seemed like a good middle-line to go for, instead of traditional British, and we couldn't really do Old English because nobody would understand it. The dialogue was asking for us to be able to roll and tap our Rs and the Welsh accent allowed us to access that."
Robin Wright Penn and Zemeckis had worked together before on the Oscar-winning "Forrest Gump." As in that film, the "Beowulf" story follows her character through several decades.
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