“I’m here to kill your mon-shtaaah!”

Yesterday at Comic Con in San Diego, a teaser for Robbert Zemeckis’ latest, Beowulf, was released. I feel like I was one of the few who instantly recognized it as CGI. There were a bunch of people wondering what was the purpose of giving the actors some kind of filter in post production like in 300 or Sin City that was so slight it was barely noticeable. What these people are missing is that giving the film some lighting and texture effect was not the objective, but they were in fact digital puppets modeled to look like the Beowulf’s real life actors. That is not Angelina Jolie coming out of the water in the teaser but a CGI puppet modeled to look exactly like her. Then, motion capture was used to give her life though I’m not sure wheater or not the REAL Angelina Jolie provided the performance.

My question is: why? What is the point of making what is really an animated movie with characters that look EXACTLY like their real life counter parts? I mean, if thats the case, just make it LIVE ACTION! Zemeckis seems to have a love/hate relationship with animation. He was quoted as bascially hating the process on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, however he really wants to make animated movies…just without that pesky animation.

My favorite part about this whole thing is the website. When you go to www.beowulfmovie.com, an intro screen loads up and Beowulf proclaims “I’m here to kill your mon-shtaaah!”. Its hilarious.