I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I’m actually very excited about Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture drool-fest, Beowulf, coming out tomorrow. I should probably know better. When dialog scenes are replaced with slick CG versions it’s a pretty safe indication that the movie will be little more than eye candy. Nevertheless, I’m dying to see an impossibly ripped Beowulf kick some Grendel ass.

My excitement about the movie has made me feel like a eleven year-old again, which has me thinking about two other passions from my younger years: stop-motion animation and Legos. I haven’t done much to nurture either of those loves in the last decade and a half, so I was unaware that there are a handful of hilarious videos on YouTube featuring stop-motion animated Lego mini-figs playing out scenes from movies. The best one I found was a the well-crafted short above, depicting the opening act of Beowulf, apparently “made for a school project.”

While Zemeckis pours millions into pushing CG animation to the next level, I’m glad there are still kids out there making movie magic in their basements, one frame at a time.