The Movie Blog

Crispin Glover Frustrated over reaction to his Beowulf character

By Rodney - February 26, 2008 - 21:11 America/Montreal

Crispin Glover, still best known as George McFly in Back to the Future, talks about how people view his role in Beowulf, presuming he was just a voice actor.

MTVMovies Blog says Glover disagrees:

Crispin Glover for one was thrilled with the technology he told me. “I did not know until I saw [the film] whether nuances in my performance would come through.” Of course there is a downside he continued, “It’s a strange thing now that people have seen it. It’s a little bit frustrating in that people don’t realize they’re watching my performance. It’s a strange kind of experience. You’re surrounded by 240 cameras and you’re with the other cameras. People think you’re in a dark room just doing a voice. I would describe it more as a very nuanced makeup job than as animation.”

The effects in Beowulf were astounding, and even though it was technically an animated feature, the motion capture was performed by the actors voicing the characters, so it sorta isn’t at the same time.

I feel the capture adds as much to the character as the voice does? No matter how well a character is voiced, if the actions do not portray the feel or the presence of the character. Doesn’t mean that the voice and presence have to be the same actors, but to address Glover’s point, he was offering up both aspects of the character and should duly be recognized for it.

Sadly people still wanted to talk about legal feud with Zemeckis back in the 80s but he assures everyone that what is done is done.