Alien-Ate

TMBTM, I could kiss you flat on the mouth for this! Alien is my favorite movie of all time, and the whole original trilogy means a lot to me, but Resurrection is a blight on this series. Because I'm such a fan of the rest of them, though, I keep compulsively watching it, and it gets worse every time. With your edit, you have finally given me a version of Alien 4 that I can enjoy. You cut every single thing I was hoping you would. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. God bless you. The basketball scene, while still in the movie, plays like the small character-building scene that it should be instead of a forced set-piece. The aliens no longer have an argument among themselves before breaking out of their cell (My understanding is that they have a hive mind, so this never made any sense and made them feel more like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park). Poor, miscast Dan Hedaya is barely in the thing! The color correction, toned-down music, and less frenetic cutting amps the tension significantly. The SFX work is terrific and subtle (when it needs to be). Everything was just spot-on.

And that ending! WOW! Kudos for going with this bold choice. It works so much better that the theatrical ending that I really feel like the way you re-worked it should have been the way it played in the first place. You nailed it.

This review is gonna be harsh, but I'm not going to blame the editor for this. Okay, I'll blame him for the ending, as it somehow managed to accomplish the impossible task of being even more ludicrous than the original. But with that exception, I'm not gonna blame TMBTM. He did what he could to try and fix this film. It's still bad, but it's not "as" bad. It's mediocre.

The reconstruction of the first act is fantastic. I'm not sure how TMBTM did it, because it conveys most of the same information that the original cut did, and yet it made the characters more interesting. I guess it goes to show that timing is everything.

Unfortunately, the rest of the edit goes in a downward slope after that strong beginning. There are still plenty of scenes that make no sense, and I'm not sure if it's even possible to cut them out. The underwater sequence is the scene that bothers me the most. In that one sequence, we get two poorly done character deaths, Christie's ridiculous geometric shooting skills, and a nonsensical plot twist revolving around Call. And while I respect the fixing of one of those deaths, it still doesn't change the other three problems.

The fact is that this is an edit of Alien: Resurrection. It's still going to be flawed. If you choose to watch this, keep your mind wide open. It's still nothing when compared to the first two Alien movies, but if all you want is a less cringy version of A:R, then give it a watch. Just don't expect Citizen Kane. You're bound to be disappointed if you do.

This will almost replace the original theatrical version for me, which I did not like too much, though it had its strengths.

The extreme silly stuff is gone, the story is still intact and has a neat twist at the end, though I also could have lived with he original - but TMBTM usually tries to surprise us with creativity, and again he succeeds, IMHO.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed this fan edit, I did not get how the station soldier joined the space pirates group; maybe I was too tired … and unfortunately they still can hold their breath like a full 5 minutes in the underwater scene ...

Overall Comment: A film made bearable.

Audio/Video Quality: Quality with regards to the DVD format, can be a loose-and-goose specially with today's advancing TV models but once I've exported it to a format of the best quality possible, everything came to light, The cut looked grainy and huddled with colors that didn't aged well, although the lighting was well supported with good color corrections.

Visual/Audio Editing: Subtle changes made on the cut was very satisfying to see, in addition to the well transitioned scenes. I've got no qualms on the audio presentation, the additions of sound effects were well blended with each and every scene.

Narrative: With the restructuring of the narrative, the cut came to a fast and progressive pace, the removal of certain scenes made scenes run fluidly with the structure without any signs of stopping, and corrections on some gave characters a true and on-point purpose.

Enjoyment: I love this cut, it made the film bearable and engaging, whilst the original was a total disappointment, this however gave it hope and a chance.

9 out of 10.
I’m probably in a minority that never hated the original version of Alien Resurrection, but I have to admit to never actually missing any of the footage TMBTM excised to create this fan edit. I also found the change of direction at the finale to feel completely natural, and I didn’t notice where there were new fx added until I watched the featurette. I’m impressed. The film moves along at a much faster pace now but never feels like there’s anything missing, there’s no obvious jarring video or audio edits, to my eyes, drawing your attention to themselves, and as much as I liked the surreal touches in the original, I never felt like they were missed. I watched the AVI and would say the video and audio quality was as good as the format can deliver, so no disappointments there. I liked this fanedit a lot. It won’t replace my original version but it’ll probably get watched as much, if not maybe a little more