It’s hard to say what the films are going to look like twenty years from now. What is clear is that since the introduction of computer graphics and editing the medium is far more fluid than it was before Neo broke through the wall of reality in The Matrix. And that trend isn’t slowing down.

While some directors opine over the good old days of “real movies”, others are diving straight into the pixellated world. Zemeckis has already made one fully digital magnum opus, but this time he’s going for psuedo-literary violence over Christmas cheer.

It’s an interesting bookend for a year of digital cinema that began with the post-modern mash-up of 300, a comic-book epic that turned green-screen performances into box-office gold..  But Beowulf throws away the few remaining scraps of human flesh for a fully rendered cut-scene that, if nothing else,will show us just how much digital reality $150 million dollars can buy.

And you can see it in 3D!  The retro tomorrow is here today.