Alien-Ate

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 ...

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.

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.