Creating the Ultimate Beowulf (2008 Video) User Reviews

...I guess it's shy

[TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews · 7/10 · 13 February 2010]

This is the very shortest featurette on the 2-Disc Director's Cut DVD of Beowulf, with a running time of a mere 2 minutes. As such, it doesn't delve deeply into the subject. I don't know, maybe they didn't feel there was a lot to say; it really does feel like this should have been implemented in one of the others. It consists of interviews, behind the scenes footage, including shots of the animation before it is entirely completed and clips of the film. The person who gets the most camera-time is Winstone, and it is really cool to hear him talk about wanting to play a Viking and then getting the title role in this, after having given up hope that he could get to. It's also nice that Zemeckis says that the man was, indeed, cast for his vocal performance, as it fit perfectly, which I completely agree with. This is fine enough, it just doesn't last very long, and really only amounts to saying that with the technology, they don't have to choose actors by their appearance, or be limited to what they can find, as far as regular mortals go. I recommend this to anyone who wants to watch it. 7/10

The most iconic leading man ever put on film.

[Chip_douglas · 7/10 · 29 August 2009]

The segment devoted to the titular hero and the actor who plays him is also the shortest piece on the entire double DVD set. Early on it was decided that no living actor could physically match the Beowulf Robert Zemeckis & co had in mind for this Motion Capture epic, so why bother. Instead they turned the self described 5 foot 10 inch, pudgy, middle aged Ray Winstone and turned him into a 6 foot 7 Adonis with long golden hair.

Bob Zemeckis reveals the TV movie starring Winstone he caught that inspired him to cast Ray as Beowulf and RW himself talks about always wanting to get the opportunity to play a viking, ever since he saw a certain Kirk Douglas/Ernest Borgnine movie as a kid. Click over the the Movie Connections page to find out which films they are referencing here. Doug Chiang also chimes in to talk about the evolution of the hero's design (original concepts resemble Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey).

It would have been nice to linger a bit longer on this subject, but apparently there wasn't much to tell, and since the title didn't allow for any of the supporting characters to be dissected, this documentary is over before you know it, coming just short of 2 minutes.

7 out of 10