Review Detail
9.1 15 10
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
April 13, 2012
I started watching this edit take shape at the beginning and was incredible curious to sit down and watch it. Jaws 3 is a film that, for a lot of understandable reasons, is very maligned. However, I’ve always enjoyed it. I like a lot of what I think Last Survivor liked about it. It’s a fun little disaster movie. Only this time instead of being a fire, or an earthquake, the disaster was a monster shark. And That’s just pretty awesome to start with. So Last Survivor’s attempts to bring that aspect of the movie more to the forefront and really play up it’s B-movie nature, despite having been a rather large A-Picture, was a very interesting concept for me from the start. Now that I’ve had the chance to sit down and watch it I’m happy to say that I’m very pleased.
This edit takes this movies original narrative and weaves it into a whole new story, culminating in a brand new ending, and it does it superbly. The biggest change here is the incorporation of a lot of footage taken from other movies to build new sequences with the shark and rid the movie of it’s biggest Achilles heel – it’s special effects. While there’s some instances where it doesn’t quite work in my opinion, as the CGI is rather obvious, it ultimately makes the movie much more “watchable.” No it doesn’t necessarily match it’s 1980′s release date, but it doesn’t really matter. It feels right when you’re watching it, and that’s the only thing that I really care about.
I will admit that once and a while I was very aware that new effects and such had been used, most specifically towards the ending which I won’t reveal here for want of avoiding spoilers, but never once did that really bother me and more often than not the new effects seemed to fit perfectly. I could go on and on forever about this stuff and why I liked it, but I’d just end up repeating myself. Bottom line, while the editing in of the new footage wasn’t always seamless, and sometimes far from it, it just works. It’s enjoyable and fun, and I couldn’t ask for it t do more than that. So, the edit itself gets itself an 8/10 or maybe a 9/10.
Visually speaking this edit is great. That’s not to say that it looks like a spotless, faultless, 1080p Criterion Bluray release. It’s by far not that. But any problems with the look of the film has nothing to do with the edit itself, but rather the source material. So, given what LS had to work with, this is a great looking edit and looks no different from my official DVD. 10/10 there.
The audio is the most incredible thing about this edit. I don’t necessarily know what was done to which scenes, and I wouldn’t know that without going back and watching the original movie again to see if I could tell the difference. But I do know that there was a lot of work done just based on conversations in the forum. And never once could I hear where anything felt out of place, or that audio had been rebuilt. It felt absolutely perfectly synched and appropriate for the film. Stellar work. 10/10
And the presentation. Good God, this was great. I’ve loved this film for a long time, so the second disc of this DVD is an absolute must in it’s own right. It’s the closest thing we’ll probably ever come to a full fledged professionally produced special edition of this movie. The documentary provided a lot of insight into the amount of hard work and dedication that went into this, and the deleted scenes were fun just to see how the edit evolved over time. Of course, I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Ghost Shark, the special edit of Jaws 4. Incredible work, and easily the only way I’ll ever watch Jaws 4 again.
All and all I’ll give this edit a 9/10. It’d get a 10 out of 10 straight up, but I personally just have issues with giving anything a perfect score.
I started watching this edit take shape at the beginning and was incredible curious to sit down and watch it. Jaws 3 is a film that, for a lot of understandable reasons, is very maligned. However, I’ve always enjoyed it. I like a lot of what I think Last Survivor liked about it. It’s a fun little disaster movie. Only this time instead of being a fire, or an earthquake, the disaster was a monster shark. And That’s just pretty awesome to start with. So Last Survivor’s attempts to bring that aspect of the movie more to the forefront and really play up it’s B-movie nature, despite having been a rather large A-Picture, was a very interesting concept for me from the start. Now that I’ve had the chance to sit down and watch it I’m happy to say that I’m very pleased.
This edit takes this movies original narrative and weaves it into a whole new story, culminating in a brand new ending, and it does it superbly. The biggest change here is the incorporation of a lot of footage taken from other movies to build new sequences with the shark and rid the movie of it’s biggest Achilles heel – it’s special effects. While there’s some instances where it doesn’t quite work in my opinion, as the CGI is rather obvious, it ultimately makes the movie much more “watchable.” No it doesn’t necessarily match it’s 1980′s release date, but it doesn’t really matter. It feels right when you’re watching it, and that’s the only thing that I really care about.
I will admit that once and a while I was very aware that new effects and such had been used, most specifically towards the ending which I won’t reveal here for want of avoiding spoilers, but never once did that really bother me and more often than not the new effects seemed to fit perfectly. I could go on and on forever about this stuff and why I liked it, but I’d just end up repeating myself. Bottom line, while the editing in of the new footage wasn’t always seamless, and sometimes far from it, it just works. It’s enjoyable and fun, and I couldn’t ask for it t do more than that. So, the edit itself gets itself an 8/10 or maybe a 9/10.
Visually speaking this edit is great. That’s not to say that it looks like a spotless, faultless, 1080p Criterion Bluray release. It’s by far not that. But any problems with the look of the film has nothing to do with the edit itself, but rather the source material. So, given what LS had to work with, this is a great looking edit and looks no different from my official DVD. 10/10 there.
The audio is the most incredible thing about this edit. I don’t necessarily know what was done to which scenes, and I wouldn’t know that without going back and watching the original movie again to see if I could tell the difference. But I do know that there was a lot of work done just based on conversations in the forum. And never once could I hear where anything felt out of place, or that audio had been rebuilt. It felt absolutely perfectly synched and appropriate for the film. Stellar work. 10/10
And the presentation. Good God, this was great. I’ve loved this film for a long time, so the second disc of this DVD is an absolute must in it’s own right. It’s the closest thing we’ll probably ever come to a full fledged professionally produced special edition of this movie. The documentary provided a lot of insight into the amount of hard work and dedication that went into this, and the deleted scenes were fun just to see how the edit evolved over time. Of course, I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Ghost Shark, the special edit of Jaws 4. Incredible work, and easily the only way I’ll ever watch Jaws 4 again.
All and all I’ll give this edit a 9/10. It’d get a 10 out of 10 straight up, but I personally just have issues with giving anything a perfect score.
W