I went to see it this morning.
It’s bad.
The dialogue is fine, and vocally the performances are pretty good. The plot however takes a fair few liberties with the story, particularly in the last 2/3rds of the film. Seeing as the story has lasted since the 8th century, is there really any need to tamper with the original plot?
The motion capture is pretty horrid. Characters who don’t have big bushy beards particularly suffer from look like inhuman mannequins. Movement, particular rapid movement looks horribly jerky. You can get away with it in special effects sequences in live action, but the problem is the entire film is a special effect sequence and so your eye is drawn to it again and again.
It’s best evidenced in the final third of the film when there’s a lot of running. The running doesn’t look like normal human running, it looks like normal human running filmed, and then frames have been removed. I’ve seen 3 frame walk cycles in traditional animation that looked more like running that the running did here.
And this is why mo-cap fails in comparison with animation or live action. Whereas animation is the creation of an illusion of reality, motion capture is taking a real performance, and making it more artificial. It’s ruining performances. John Malkovich’s in particular in the case of this film.