AvP Outbreak

As I told Wraith, I once attempted this mash-up edit myself. I found the final product to lack a cohesive narrative, to be overly long and ultimately headache inducing. AVP is a concept that should have worked right out of the gate. Where the first movie suffers is that it played it safe with a PG-13 rating. The second movie goes for a hard R, but has some of the worst human characters in the history of both previous franchises.

Wraith has masterfully trimmed what doesn't work, while successfully expanding upon what does work with the inclusion of footage from Apocalypto and Cocoon, Some of the edits are seamless, while others are quite noticeable do to stark difference in video quality. That aside, I didn't let that affect my enjoyment of the film. I had a blast with this edit!

I'd love to see a remastered version with improved video quality and credit graphics. But this version has a fun, almost retro feel that you get used to after a while.

Gotta say this was a cool edit! All the best parts of each movie were kept and all of the excess removed. It's not HD but I didn't feel like I was missing out because of how dark the second half is anyway. That is not a slight against Wraith, but AVPR as the movie proper was filmed so dark.

The audio was all worked perfectly and if I had to point to one thing that was off, it was in the back half of the movie when the group of people who were trying to get out of town split into 2 groups. One went to the center for an air lift to get them and the other went to the hospital to get a helicopter themselves. The group that went to the hospital was missing a person (at least 1 that I noticed) by the time they got to the roof and we have no idea what happened to that guy?

Watched the first half of Wraith's AvP: Outbreak. It's from 2009 so the quality isn*t the very best and the aspect ratio seems quite stretched.

The edit itself is alright (some transitions are kind of messy) but because a lot of scenes were removed from the movie, the plot feels rushed in my opinion. I really liked the extended opening with the footage from Apocalypto though. His aim was to put both AvP entries into one cohesive movie but after watching this edit I just don‘t think this is possible.

As the original Unrated version of the first AvP is quite alright in my book as well I think I'll just stick to the original.

Sadly the second half (AvP:R) hasn‘t received any kind of color correction or brightening (would've been a major task, I know) so it‘s still way too dark to make out what‘s happening on the screen. That isn‘t Wraith‘s fault in any kind of way but I will keep searching for a tightened and brightened edit of that movie.

Edit: Found one. 16 years after the initial release I finally found a brightened, contrast- and color-corrected edit of this film (truly amazing work, done by fan editor SpoRv) and was amazed how much of a difference it makes when you‘re finally able to see what the fuck is going on. It’s still dark and I’d still recommend to watch it at night but it fits the tone. The edit I watched „only“ tackled the visual issues (still a major task) and leaves all the rest as it is in the Unrated Version.

Don‘t get me wrong: the film is still dumb. Characters and plot are paper-thin, the direction is bad, the camera often shaky, actors & actresses mediocre at best and callback moments to both franchise‘s previous entries are executed terribly but my god do costumes & effects look great when you are finally able to fucking see them. They look so good, most of the time they made me forgot what kind of nonsense was happening on the screen. Might be a effect that wears off after the enlightenment of the first watch but we‘ll see (in the truest sense of word).

I always wondered why the Strouse brothers took the one thing they‘re really good at (and that‘s the visuals) and edited it in a way you can‘t see it. Supposedly they did it in post-production (as the set photos are well lit) because they didn‘t want people to see they used special effects. But why ever and however they did it, they certainly overdid it.

This version keeps me wishing that more people would‘ve or even could’ve seen it this way (you have to know about the existence of fanedits in the first place and even then it‘s kinda hard to get). Maybe Fox/Disney will release an official overhauled version one day (called Enlightenment instead of Requiem as that title makes no sense anyway) but I don‘t think there‘s much hope.

I will even go this far and say I‘d watch the sequel (if it looks like this one) that was hinted at at the end of the film but then abandoned. Let‘s be real, I‘d watch it anyway but so I might be able to enjoy it instead of squinting my eyes all the time and then roll them backwards.

This fan edit definitely succeded at what the editor wanted it does bring the best out of both films, but it doesn't make a good movie.
If you are a fan of those movies and want to rewatch them, watch this instead because it is just the two AvP films shortened and then combined,

However, as a single movie, It feels really wired that the movie wastes time building characters at the beginning of the film only for them to quickly die, and then the protagonist from the first half doesn't show up in the second film.
You either want to split it into 2 different movies each will be 80 minutes or reduce the focus from the characters of the first part, together it just doesn't work.

The video quality also has some issues aside from being available only at 480p there are also some big changes in colors from scene to scene and the parts from the other movies aren't in the same quality, but to be fair this is an old fan edit and Wraith has a lot of other fan edits that proves he is one of the best fan editors out there.