Review Detail

No opening gofer! Muzzle flashes! No alien corpse in the warehouse! Love all these changes and. the technical proficiency necessary to pull them off.

Visually, everything looks great and the cuts are well done. My only real gripe is that there is a little frame rate stutter/frame loss when Indy "thinks he was closer" and he punches the truck passenger out of the truck. Not a big deal, but noticeable.

I absolutely love how you were able to give some agency to Indy by having him shoot that nameless russian in the foot ON PURPOSE. No doubt a lot of Indy's charm over the decades has been him making decisions on the fly and having a little bit of luck help him out, but this whole film relies too heavilly on this this convenience. So great idea and great implementation.

When Dovchenko tackles Indy onto the the glass porthole above the rocket sled, this was sped up and a welcome change to keep things moving.

Now the good stuff! The nixie tubes! So much more love than this film deserves or has received! A small but oh so welcome little correction.

The nuke scene: although I don't really think the color correction and additional effects were completely necessary, the lower trajectory and the addition of Indy's screams upon impact are an audio uniquity I find severely lacking in this film that are put to perfect use here. Softens the blow of this improperly implemented scene.

The scene in which Indy looks longingly at the pictures of Marcus and his Dad are so much more powerful in this version by the editing staple of showing and not telling. Great job here. Although the omitted lines do leave a gap in room tone that makes the alteration noticeable.

Mac sitting down in reverse in the Soviet encampment tent. Same thing. Looks great but the lack of room tone makes the cut apparent.

Everything else about this edit works well. Nothing really stands out as having been changed and therefore just glides along as best as this movie can all things considered.

I think that reverting Mutt from Indy's son, to just Marion's son, is a necessary change that not too many fan edits seem to want to make. I don't mind Mutt being his offspring, but it's not set up very well in the original film and it has the awkward and unearned attempt at the passing of the torch from our hero to some underdeveloped greaser stereotype. There aren't even any additional or deleted scenes that could be poorly implemented back into the film to help this. So it just works better letting that aspect fade away into the background.

Which brings me to the confrontation with the Aliens within the pyramid. AMAZING. I can't believe that this was all done with a little extra filmed footage and a still image of the final alien. The idea of Spalko's subjective experience and the finesse with which it has been pulled off is incredible work! I would have no problem saying that this is by far the best change to the ending of any cut out there.

From there it cuts straight to the wedding stuff. Having no forced happy couple moment atop the pyramid makes their nuptuals a little more passionless than they already are. But not a terrible idea.

Overall, this is definitely in my top three if not top two favorite cuts of this film. And I would highly recommend it.