Jaws III: Monster

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.

April 13, 2012

JAWS 3 MONSTER

And what a monster it is! A Monster of Awesomeness!!!

I had a great time watching this.
Unfortunately, I can not say too much, as I don’t want to SPOIL any of the fun and creative narrative changes Last Survivor has made. Let me just say this is not the JAWS 3 any of you remember. It is a fun beer (root beer for those of you under 18) and popcorn B-Movie monster flick.

So what can I comment on?
The new narrative works pretty flawlessly and is completely coherent, which was a concern considering footage from other movies was included to tell this new tale of terror. Most of the new footage fits fairly seamlessly, though some do stand out a bit more than others due to colour correction not perfectly matching or the footage that is clearly from a different style of film (cgi or documentary). But this does not detract from the experience. In fact, it only enhances the b-movie experience. Especially, if you watch the edit a second time knowing the new ending, you will appreciate all these little touches even more. All the cuts and transitions are expertly done. I did not notice any real hard cuts or flash frames. All exceptionally well crafted.

From a personal stand point though, I think I would have preferred the cut Alternate Seaworld scene to the final version, as I think it would have added more to the final pay off. But that is just me. Never too much monster. LOL!

The sound work is boggling and incredible. My hat off to you good sir.
I think I would have just let Bruce eat me rather than do all the audio rebuilding you did.
The opening Ski Sequence is masterful. I would never have suspected it was rebuilt from scratch. It is THAT good! Loved all the 80s pop tunes, made the movie experience even more authentic in my mind. All the audio was clean and clear and sounded awesome on my surround sound system.

So JAWS MONSTER is a fantastic Saturday Matinee ride. Highly recommended.

But Wait! There is more!
Holy Neptune’s Trident, is there ever ALOT more!

LS provides audio commentary on Monster. First off, kudos to you to have the courage to do that. I don’t think I ever would. And secondly, and more importantly, thanks for making the commentary so informative and entertaining. I really enjoyed hearing your perspective and passion for this project.

Then we have an entire second dvd of extras. These include the aforementioned deleted scenes, all of which are interesting from the creative process stand point and how an edit evolves with time. I thought the Dreamscape was an interesting notion and well crafted but completely understand why it did not make the final cut.

Along with the Deleted Scenes is an absolutely amazingly informative documentary about the history of Jaws 3 and the creation of this fan edit. Very professionally done. I learned tons. You know, I may be a crazy, but the idea of the Burned/Scarred Bruce from Jaws 2 returning seeking revenge sounds really cool and twisted to me!

And then there is the final extra item, a short fan edit of Jaws The Revenge entitled GHOST SHARK. Where Jaws Monster is a fun, popcorn romp, GHOST SHARK is a dark, moody, suspenseful psychological terror tale. These two edits are so different in tone and style it is hard at first to believe they were made by the same editor. And I mean that as the highest of compliments. Ghost Shark is OUTSTANDING! I real hidden gem is this already overflowing sunken galley of treasures!

So in case I have been too vague through this review,
I LOVED THIS FAN EDIT!

THUMBS WAY UP!

Congrats LS on a truly stunning piece of work.

April 17, 2012

This rocked the house! Super awesome fanedit dude!

Reviewed by Gatos on May 17, 2012

LastSurvivor is a faneditor whose work I respect and enjoy. So when I read about his plans for Jaws 3 I realized how passionate he was about the project and I realized I was gonna have to buy Jaws 3 so I could see this edit. So my Jaws 3 dvd is still wrapped in plastic and will probably remain so.

As usual I didn’t read any other reviews before writing this. The edit itself, excellent on the technical end. Listening to some of LS’s commentary helped fill in the details on a lot of the hard work he had to do on this edit. I was particularly impressed with the audio work on the opening scene, and I also thought the instance of filtering what was originally a day scene and making it look like night. I honestly wouldn’t have known had I not listened to the commentary. Nice touch with making yourself the DJ! If I ever need a voice over actor I know who to hire.

The movie itself, I didn’t really enjoy it that much, but that’s just me. The new ending was extremely creative though. However I did really enjoy Ghost Shark. Cool closing credits.

The documentary was great and is probably my favorite part of the whole edit. I followed the In-the-Works thread on a regular basis and know how time consuming it was to put this special feature together. Very interesting to hear all the training the actors went through. The tank that they built to film the underwater scenes was cool. I was surprised to learn that so many of the actors in the film were/are embarrassed by their involvement.

These special features definitely raised the bar on what a fanedit release can be. So well done.

Because I didn’t really enjoy the main edit (through no fault of the editor, everyone has different preferences) I rate this an 8/10.

I really enjoyed this. I’m not qualified to comment on the technical side other than to say it was really well edited, all the changes to the direction of the film and the audio edits were transparent and never drew attention to themselves. I’ve seen more monster movies than I can count and the new footage was integrated into the film as well as most of those films, it didn’t distract from the story even though I was aware none of it was there in the original verison and, overall, I’d say the new shark and other fx fit a lot better than the old ones. I liked the new direction the film took, I found it a lot of fun. I’m not an editor but, purely as a viewer, it all worked really well for me as a fun monster b movie. The whole thing was a great package, a lot of care obviously went into creating all the extras. And for a non editor like me it’s really interesting to get to see what you guys do behind the scenes. Great work and, for me, well worth the wait.