Real actors versus Animated Characters (Beowulf)

I just got home, after watching Beowulf, the movie. It was a sad and unpleasent experience. Overall, the Computer Generated Scenes were pretty ok, but not amazing, and the characters, well, that`s an entire different story, and the point of this article.

Why did this movie fail so miserably?
I could find hundreads of reasons, but mainly, it wasn`t believable alltogether. The characters are halo. Their gestures, their face expression felt auckword in many scenes.
Why an animated character will never be comparable with that of a real life actor, no matter how far the computer graphics will ever evolve?
It`s not about the way an actor looks that makes the movie believable. It`s the way it impersonates the imagined character, the way he breaths life the character. Throu him, the viewer can "feel" the movie, can empathise with that character.
A good actor can make the movie come alive, while a soulles computer generated character will never be able to make the "act" credible, or even more, to make the character unforgattable. Just think of Marlon Brando`s performance in The Godfather. He`s ideea was to put cotton under his thong, so his voice is more deep, and he made the character of Vito Corleone an unforgattable one for generations. Behind a computer generated character there are a bunch of people, like puppet masters, that try to make it "seam" like their puppets are alive, and they usually try so hard that it becomes more then fake, it goes straight to beeing ridiculous.

I hope that most of the people are able to appreciate the performance of talented actors, that make a movie come alive, that make a good story simply shine.
The animators seam to have forgotten that beeing human it`s all about imperfections. Our skin is not perfect, it doesen`t immaculatly shine in the moonlight, nor it`s immune to scratches.

About Beowulf, this new overhyped movie, i can only say that i am extremly dissapointed. Not because i expected it to be a great movie, but because it didn`t manage to be even a fairly good movie. The story is badly told, the script lacks in depth, the scenes are childish, the directing is average. I have all my respect for Ridley Scott, he was the reason i spent my money to see this movie in the first place. I tought that if a great director like Ridley Scott got involved , it can`t go that wrong. Well, it was worse then i imagined. Beowulf is a ridiculous movie, that didn`t manage to deliver, not even by far.

About the movies tehnology and feature promises:
Beowulf’s performances (both bodies and faces) were captured using a Vicon marker-basedContour was introduced at Siggraph 2006, Mova showed the contrast between the few hundred markers used to capture Angelina Jolie’s face compared with the 100s of thousands of points that are captured using Contour, and the difference achievable in terms of enhanced photorealism and reduction in production cost. The first motion pictures using Contour are scheduled for 2008 release.