Beowulf Restricted Trailer For A PG Movie
Posted by John Campeaon 05. 09. 2007in News Chat
First of all, the new upcoming Beowulf film was something I was looking forward to… until I saw the new Restricted trailer. Visually, the movie just looks… I don’t know… creepy… and not in a good way. It just feels like I’m watching a video game or something. Why that works for Marvel and not for Beowulf Im’ not sure… but the trailer just didn’t sit right with me at all.
Now, having said that… our friends over at RopeOfSilicon bring up a very interesting question. Here’s what they had to say:
I am growing increasingly tired of all this Restricted Beowulf stuff as Paramount continues to push their cinematic videogame on us leading us to believe it is something it isn’t. It has already been said the film is going to be PG-13 even though we continually are getting these “unrated” trailers and now there is even a “Restricted” section on the official site boasting a brand new Internet-only restricted trailer. Oh boy, and guess what, you have to live in the U.S. and be 18 or older to give it a watch.
Now I know that pushing things is all the rage in marketing. “See footage too shocking to show in theaters” boasts on DVD boxes and whatnot. But has it really come to this? Restricted trailer for PG-13 films? Are they that desperate to try to generate buzz? Am I the only one here who thinks this is rather ridiculous?
Look, I get it. Market in such a way to appeal to your edgy hungry demographic… which making the movie accessable to as many asses in the seats as possible. But isn’t it a bit misleading to have an “R” rated trailer for a PG film? After watching the trailer… there wasn’t anything in it worth giving an R to anyway. What do you think of the trailer? Am I way off here? (By the way, to view the trailer if you live outside of the US, use the name Daniel Glickman, Zip code 20016 and birthday 11/24/44 via our friends at Slashfilm)
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I too really couldn’t understand why this is a R-rated trailer. As for the trailer,some of it looks very Optimusgood some of it looks like a 6th generation videogame.But i amlooking forward to it.
I talked about the exact same issue on my site before reading it here or on ROS. :-)
Seems like a horrible marketing misstep.
Vic
As far as the Marvel / Beowulf thing – it’s called the “uncanny valley”. Check it out on Wikipedia. I actually deal with some of this stuff in my work – basically, the graph of realism vs believability has this funny curve right at the end. Making something more realistic usually makes it more believable, until it’s almost lifelike. At that point, the rules change, because you start to pick up on subtle cues that tell you something’s wrong with what you’re seeing, and it just looks creepy. So making it a little more realistic actually makes it less believable. The Marvel clip was in a good place: high poly-count, smooth animations, but you’d never confuse it with real footage. Beowulf crosses the line into the uncanny valley. It’s so realistic it ALMOST looks real, except not quite, which just makes it disturbing.
The motion-capture shit looks CREEPY AS HELL.
I thought I remember hearing that they were considering releasing two versions of the film to theaters. One PG-13 and one R. I swear I read that somewhere. I love the story of Beowulf but the motion capture stuff weirds me out. I couldn’t sit through “The Polar Express” because of it, but I’m willing to give this one a shot.
Well clearly, John, you must know the R part of the preview is Angelina’s computer generated NUDE body. Yes it is only CG, BUT none-the-less NUDE and in the movie we shall simply blur out those unnecessarily visible body parts….or we’ll throw a robe on her or something. ahEM!
According to IMDB the intention was to release a PG-13 version in regular theatres and an NC-17 version in 3D IMAX. They may cut it down to an R, and just put out an unrated DVD, but it’s not clear yet.