I had hopes but it looks bad in the trailers.  Neil Gaiman’s work is not consistent IMO.

You are not alone:
* Why animate the entire movie? This could have been done live action and it probably would have looked better (see: 300).
* Angelina Jolie does nothing for me. In fact, she’s a turn off.
* Robert Zemeckis has done some great work but he’s a all over the map as far as quality is concerned. Plus, almost all of his movies have been comedies. Sure, Romancing the Stone was a great movie but Danny DeVito is no Grendel.
* If they can’t even make the trailer interesting then what does that say about the movie?

I may put it in the Netflix queue but I’m certainly not going to invest my too-few actual movie hours on it. That time will be much better spent watching Fred Clause.

I’m with you also.  It’s been a while since I watched Excalibur, so maybe I’ll give that another spin first. Conan is another great option.  I agree with Jerry that I’ll be spending my precious few movie dollars on Fred Claus also, with the whole family.  My kids may tempt me to see Beowulf, but I will resist because I think it looks hoaky and I just like real people movies. Angelina is a skanky turn-off for me also. You’re not alone David.

Cheryl’s planning to see it, just because Gaiman wrote it, but that’s not enough for me. My idea of something worth watching that he wrote is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115288/">Neverwhere</q>. I do agree that Conan is fun, and I love the music done in both movies.

The underlying story of Beowulf is pretty simplistic, largely amounting to “fight, fight, fight, go home, fight, die”.  In the abstract, that sounds like a great idea for an action/suspense movie, but I already know the plot points, which kills the suspense.  And I already know the ending, which kills the payoff, either because it’s not a surprise or because it does violence to the source material.

When you add that to the appearance of the trailers (about which I completely concur), I have almost exactly zero interest in this movie.

Of course, they might be hoping to attract an audience comprised entirely of 14 year old role playing geeks, but if I were the producers I would be worried. I should be the target audience for a movie like this, yet it completely missed the mark for me.

If I were in the prediction business, I would predict that this one will have a pretty solid opening weekend and then fade faster than Ron Paul’s chance of winning the GOP nomination.

And, for the record, I thought I was the only one for whom Angelina Jolie was a turn-off. Can’t stand her.

Danny DeVito is no Grendel.

Heheh. Yeah.

You know, at one point I actually had an inspiration to write a Beowulf song. I got a few small pieces written, then bogged down because it was more an amusing idea than anything else. I figured the Banana Boat Song was the obvious tune to use:

Be-o! Be-o-wulf!
Grendel come and invade me home.
Be-o! Beo-o-wulf!
Grendel come and invade me home.

Come, mistah Beowulf, fight against the monstah.
Grendel come and invade me home.
Come, mistah Beowulf, fight against the monstah.
Grendel come and invade me home.

And it’s six men, seven men, eight men, lunch!
Grendel come and invade me home.
Six men, seven men, eight men, lunch!
Grendel come and invade me home.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how I feel about that…

You could always scrub the comment, but you can’t scrub your brain.