Alien-Ate

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

Excellent work done by TMBTM here. He couldn’t quite save this movie in my eyes but it’s a heck of a lot better. As far as his editing skills on this I would easily rate 10/10 (watching the doc on your visual effects work was quite fascinating). Sadly, the movie itself is still such a phenomenal snooze-fest, although his unique ending was pretty sweet.

I give it an 8/10. Great execution/editing, but the film isn’t worth watching again.

Year Later Jedit: Upped the A/V and narrative score.

Spoiler maybe:

This is a hard one to review or rate for me. I love most of the changes to the film, but I can’t ignore my intense dislike of the original film. My problems with it are soaked right into the fabric of the film in a way that no edit could wash out completely. TM and I talked several times about the difficulties of editing this film, especially the ending. The original finale is very weak, and the absurdities ruin whatever little good actually was there. TM has made a clever (if potentially controversial) change to the entire last section of the film. I don’t know if it’s better, but it’s certainly bold. And that’s kind of what the film needed, a big bold decision that Fox would almost certainly never have allowed. The film can now properly be the self-contained bastard stepchild of the Alien trilogy that it always was at heart.
Ellen Ripley is dead and gone. Ripley 8′s story starts here, and more importantly it now ends here, as it should be.

I usually rate on my enjoyment level of the film, regardless of other contributing factors like source material and so on. But this time I feel compelled to rate on the more ephemeral reactions I had to the edit. Clever, bold ideas. New effects to tell the changed story. Joy at some of my most hated elements from the original being gone. And in one case, the same kind of in-joke injected approach to editing that I try to do myself. Let’s see how many people spot it.

The film will probably never rate better than a low 6 for me, but I have to give the edit a strong 9 out 10.

P.S. TM, thanks for taking my feedback in the spirit it was intended rather than being insulted by it.

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.

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