review by boon23

Prologue:
I found the original a mostly slow, yet detailed watching experience that did not entertain me too much. Yet I do like medieval movies. This is a drastic cut. The good comments and reviews led me to being quite excited about watching it.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
The idea to cut back to the very source of the Beowulf & Grendel story is nice, because the original suffers from distractions and long rather dull moments IMO. However cutting it down so much to just 35 minutes did not make it appear as a movie anymore. The plot is well delivered though and works. Being Beowulf centric it took the best of what the movie had to offer and made it more of an action movie in the way of 13th Warrior.
On the bad side all the subtlety of the original story (motives of the Troll and his mother) is gone and what is left is a superficial (fitting to the title) slayer movie.
The ending fell flat through a drastic cut from the funeral to Beowulf on the ship leaving Denland.
Overall I was mildly entertained, but in the end disappointed by the unnecessarily quick ending.
editing: 8 of 10 (the ending was not well executed, the end credits list people that were not in the fanedit)
entertainment: 5 of 10 (original 6 of 10. What was too long in the original was too short in this fanedit)

Image and video quality:
Image and video quality were very good. Womble once more shows its strength here.
Video quality: 10 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
There were no hard audio cuts. Audio was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
The DVD comes with a still menu with no sound. There is an animated chapter selection without sound. I have seen worse. The cover art was created by me, so I cannot take it into account. There are no extras.
To sum it up:
Animated scene selection is nice but not really necessary for such a short movie. The project would have been better with more effort, like the inclusion of extras. As it is it feels like a rushed job.
resulting in a 4 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 6 of 10 (because I stick in this case to my concept of not rating more than 1 star higher than the movie was entertaining for me)
A quite good firstling.

It’s not a wonder of story telling, but we have no trouble following what’s happening. I’ll award it 7 out of 10 for being a generally good work but not feeling like it’s a full story.

I’m actually quite partial to Beowulf and Grendel, I think it was much better than the animated Beowulf that came after it. Sure, they both take liberties with the story, but at least with B&G, I felt that the backstory they gave Grendel was far more believable.

Anyhoo – so what we have here is an almost purist edition of Beowulf, the original Anglo-Saxon story. But cutting out 70 minutes is pretty bold – does it work?

By and large – yes. B&G is fleshed out with back stories and extra characters, but at the core, is the original story. Strip all those extra elements out and you still have Beowulf the original story at the centre…

Of course, some will argue that now they don’t understand Grendel’s motivation – but then again, he never had one in the original tale – as the editor puts – “a ****king troll just does what a ****ing troll does.”. Now he’s a nuisance to which our heroes try to resolve.

Another issue some might be considering is lack of character development – but, your main characters are Beowulf, Grendel and Hrothgar….Grendel, is well Grendel….but surprisingly, Beowulf and Hrothgar do get enough lines and time on the screen for us to have a sense of who they are and what they’re about.

So, in terms of the actual edit and story – 10/10

Video and Audio quality were also spot on – good first entry – well done!