Alien-Ate

As with all TMBTM films the visual and audio editing are flawless. Unless you know what has been cut you'll never notice something is missing. Picture quality is what's to be expected from DVD quality.

As for the narrative and enjoyment I'm a little torn. I'm not a fan of the original by any means, and anything that helps strengthen the story is a win. But, as TM2YC pointed out, by cutting out the more ridiculous things only highlights how nonsensical it all is. There were also a few instances where the pacing felt just a tad rushed.

The big change was the ending. While I see what TMBTM was going for it just didn't work for me. Maybe it was fine for others, but I just couldn't buy what happened to Ripley. I don't want to spoil it for others so I'll leave it at that.

Is the edit worth your time? Definitely. While not perfect it is better than the original. I think that this is just one of those films that is impossible to fix in a satisfactory way due to the how the original film was put together.

Audio/Video Quality: 9
It's standard-Def but that aside it's a nice encode and a well put together DVD. The blue regraded look is much more in keeping with the rest of the franchise. The making of feature on the DVD was genius.

Visual Editing: 9
This is very impressive indeed, with the extra footage (From other movies) not just integrated well but for the most part, seemless (The FX work towards the end is amazeballs!). Having just re-watched AR, I was impressed at how easy TMBTM made some of the removals look. However, there was one spot where I thought the removal of Ripley's "F*ck" line was awkward. An excellent FX fix was applied but the edit didn't work for me because of the clearly mismatched line delivery from Brad Dourif in the next shot. I didn't see the need for it's removal, so I felt if it couldn't be removed safely, it should have been left in.

Audio Editing: 9
Mostly this was invisible but a few moments stood out but those largely felt like sounds that were added for fun rather than to be perfect. The extra little sounds and refrences to the other films were much appreciated.

Narrative: 8
I don't much care for the original film as the plot is all over the place. With a quarter removed, there is less to get frustrated with, and it now clips along at a new "boredom resistant" pace. However, the stripped down story only serves to highlight the nonsensical elements of the plot, and the silliness of the whole setup. I've found this with other fanedits that do such a great job stripping out the offensive stuff, that you are able to see the film underneath clearly for the first time and find the problems go even deeper than you imagined. But I wasn't expecting those deep-rooted issues to ever be fixable, so for me the narrative was improved overall. Also, the new ending is much, much better in pure story terms, even if I'm not sure I would have liked what was done with (Or to) our favourite heroine, if this had been the original cut.

Enjoyment: 8
It's still several leagues below the quality of Aliens 1-3 but I can say for the first time ever, I actually enjoyed this film. With the source material as it is, I don't think a better version of this movie could be put together. In future, when I feel the need for an Aliens marathon, I'll be putting this disc right in after the workprint of Alien3. Thanks TMBTM

Well, there's not a whole ton to say here except it's better than the original. Not that I hated the original or anything but it did have a slew of problems, mostly stemming from weirdness, strange dialogue, and odd twisting camera shots. This edit removes most of that stuff, which is good. There's still some left, but I guess it'd be hard to fix all of it. At 90 minutes, it's pretty brisk, but I think a few more minutes of stuff could have gone. I agree about shortening the water scene, also I think trimming the scene were Frank strays away would have worked better.

I liked the fact that this cut let Ripley go...thought the end bits with Call yelling "ripley!" for no reason was strange, and that one part could have been cut. Aside from the very minor stuff that could still be cut, I'm good with this version of the film.

I like the dirtiness and grit of this movie, but just something about it - even in this edit - feels too lighthearted and not dark/serious enough for an Alien film. When all is said and done, this cut is better than the original. I gave the original a 7/10 and this an 8/10. Now if only I could get it in HD...

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 ...

This was definitely a different take on the film and actually quite a great idea.

The editing was good, but unfortunately lacked character development, for the crewmembers.
The audio work was good, and didn’t change in levels too much. Was hardly noticeable.
What you where trying to do here though with Special Effects as well as footage from other films was very impressive, and creative. I can’t really knock ya for trying here, some of the effects where really well done and I know roto-scoping that queen from AvP was a big pain. The only thing I have to say is the colors in the composite where a little off so you could really see on those sequences what you where adding, but it was such a creative and large Endeavour to go about, we can’t really knock ya for attempting FX of these levels.

Very well done and definitely a creative take on Alien 4 which was a pretty horrible movie to begin with.

I would love to see an edit that does away with the whole Flesh Alien thing.