Welcome to the fantastic world of “beowulf”

Angelina Jolie’s lips look even fuller than usual. She’s emerging from a pool of dank cave water, rivulets of gold streaming gently down her body. Her flaxen hair is braided down her back in a long tail that slowly undulates and slaps the dark pool around her.

Welcome to the world of Warner Bros.’ epic adventure “Beowulf,” as imagined by Robert Zemeckis, the same filmmaker who gave us the children’s classic “The Polar Express.” Except this time Zemeckis is using his increasingly sophisticated bag of tricks to serve up adult fantasy (or a minimum of PG-13).

Adapted from the oldest story in the English language, “Beowulf” is a hyper fierce tale of the warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) who must slay the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover). Later, Grendel’s mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to re-establish her dominion over the kingdom.

Zemeckis’ producing partner Steve Starkey is betting that “Beowulf’s” horror-fantasy elements coupled with digital 3-D — not to mention a digitally enhanced Jolie matched with a heroic Beowulf — will be embraced by a genre crowd hungry for a big story with big themes that also delivers heaping amounts of cinematic spectacle. “I think this will be right up comic fans’ alley,” Starkey said.

After poring over dozens of translations of the historic Anglo-Saxon epic poem, best known as required reading by high school and college English students, screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary started translating the 3,183 lines of heroic poetry into cinematic language in May 1997. 

What they delivered is a story of a brave and heroic young hero who makes small personal compromises that don’t seem hugely important along the path to his dreams but ultimately catch up to him.

The hyper-real look of “Beowulf” is a testament to Zemeckis’ unique brand of fantastical experimentation. Gaiman and Avary infused the script with allusions to gold, mead (medieval honey wine), “a proper fire-breathing dragon” and glory. Zemeckis then translated those words into a dark-washed denim world, speckled with fluorescence and phosphorescent water, luminous glints of golden bracelets, goblets and the reptilian villain, Grendel.

Also pulled into “Beowulf’s” motion-capture fold are the film’s royal family — Anthony Hopkins (King Hrothgar) and Robin Wright Penn (Queen Wealhtheow), and John Malkovich (Unferth) — who performed  30  days of “principal mocapography” at Culver Studios on a 30-by-30-foot stage wearing standard-issue bodysuits covered head-to-toe in tiny sensors recorded by dozens of digital cameras back in December 2005. 

Gaiman admits he personally had his doubts about Zemeckis’ ability to pull off “Beowulf” but after seeing his first clips of the film, he was convinced that Zemeckis, with his motion-capture filmmaking style and digital 3-D world, has made quantum advances in his unique filmic grammar since “The Polar Express.” “It’s so hyper-real and immersive, once you are two to three minutes in, I think it will own you for the full 90 minutes.” – Warner Bros.