Never before has the "circle of life" been more applicable to a home video release than it is to Paramount Home Entertainment’s Beowulf Director’s Cut. The high profile HD DVD title comes at the end of the format’s short run and will likely be one of the final films released in "red." In HD DVDs death, a new life sprouts with the commercially successful use of new motion capture techniques applied to animation the director, Robert Zemeckis, first pioneered with lesser results in The Polar Express.

Underneath the glitz and glamour of near (but not quite) photorealistic imagery in Beowulf is a fairly fluffy and gory expansion of the original Beowulf 3000 word poem that haunts middle school students' dreams. It retells the first documented instances of greed, lust, power, monsters and heroes in the English language utilizing the performances of Crispin Glover, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, and Angelina Jolie as captured by a small army of infrared sensors capable of recording each actor's subtle movements.

The core events are intact with a monster, Grendel, haunting the kingdom of King Hrothgar until he is ultimately defeated by Beowulf in an act of naked superhuman bravery. The story then extends to explore the relationship between Grendel and his mother, and what transpires between her and Beowulf when she discovers who killed her son.

New twists added by the writers are telegraphed early on leaving little room for surprise other than the "wow" factor of a giant golden dragon laying waste to attacking forces or a naked Angelina Jolie glistening in water. That "wow" factor is enough to hold one’s attention, especially as the animation ratchets up in complexity as the story hits its final action-packed act.

As an entirely computer generated film, there’s no preconceived expectations Beowulf will looking nothing short of spectacular in 1080p. With no dedicated supplemental features competing for disc space, Paramount had no excuse with HD DVDs 30GB capacity to not deliver an AVC MPEG-4 encoded transfer fitting of the artists meticulously detailed work. Beowulf’s visuals and strong contrast in high definition are the epitome of demo viewing material.

The total high definition package carries over to the audio that never seems to let up, especially during Grendel’s early scream-filled attacks. The audio mix sounds strong and clear enough to be lossless Dolby TrueHD, only it isn’t. Paramount chose to utilize Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 lossy audio instead, perhaps to free up additional disc space for the video. Someone not familiar with the disc specs will struggle to determine whether the audio is lossy or not. Unless Paramount utilizes Dolby TrueHD on the imminent Blu-ray version, we’ll never know.

It comes as no surprise Paramount spared "no expense" in culling together a wide selection of informative and cutting edge 1080p HD supplemental features to compliment Beowulf’s high profile release. Disc one offers up a pair of HD DVD exclusives starting with Beowulf in the Volume, a feature-length picture-in-picture box displaying the raw motion capture images synced with the finished film. The process is so intriguing that it’s hard to turn this feature off once firing it up. Also offered is Web Access to a series of brief snippets about the film including the cast, technologies, etc. This information could as easily been offered on disc two instead.

Speaking of the second disc, it kicks off with a bang and is home to the bulk of material. A Hero’s Journey The Making of Beowulf is a "fly on the wall" look at Zemekis and his team designing and filming the 28 day shoot for motion capture. As if this material wasn’t technologically intriguing already, Paramount has included optional pop-up trivia, a feature typically found in the feature film, and the ability to jump out to shorter featurettes that expand on the terminology used by the cast and crew. All-inclusive features like this are the future of home video, rather than endless lists of documentaries, interviews and more.

Each of the short featurettes accessible via A Hero’s Journey can also be viewed separately in The Journey Continues. There are 10 in all, which I recommend viewing in context with the previous feature rather than on their own.

Next up are four meatier featurettes whose names speak for themselves: Beasts of Burden – Designing the Creatures spends time with designer Doug Chiang; Origins of Beowulf explains the original story (which Zemekis hates) and the changes made for the big screen; Creating the Ultimate Beowulf offers yet more motion capture footage; and The Art of Beowulf shows off some of the preproduction artwork along with breaking down the film’s design decisions.

Rounding out the special features are A Conversation with Robert Zemeckis in which the director answers decidedly poor questions with obvious boilerplate answers; a total of 11 Deleted Scenes in rough animatic form; and the Theatrical Trailer.

Beowulf is one step closer to achieving true photorealism in filmmaking, but we aren’t quite there. Zemeckis' fascination with breaking new ground in animation should bring about the achievement sooner rather than later. For now, Beowulf on HD DVD offers up glorious eye and ear candy that supersedes any storytelling shortcomings. Better yet, this packed two-disc set should hopefully find its way onto Blu-ray in the not too distant future.

- Dan Bradley

View all Amazon.com Blu-ray and HD DVD pre-orders

Cheers: Great HD demo flick The animation is mostly stunning Performances do shine through All HD extras	Jeers: On HD DVD, not Blu-ray Fluffy story No lossless audio
Overall: 8.4 Movie     7.3 Video     10.0 Audio     9.2 Extras     9.0 Replay     8.5