Review Detail

I've been away from the forums for a bit and will be running away again after I drop this review. Life has demanded it. But I saw the release for this pop up as a browser notification and I couldn't resist grabbing it. I had a deadline to hit this evening, so this was my reward for meeting that before cracking on with other stuff I have to do. And what a treat! More specifics below.


QUALITY

There is some noticeable compression occasionally, but generally I think the visual quality is solid. There are a lot of different sources which vary, naturally, (sometimes for obvious reasons) but it works for the intended vibe.


VISUAL

There's a lot of impressive visual editing going on and I don't really have any complaints. Some of the most fun I had in this edit was from cleverly integrated visual gags. I'm not even sure how half this stuff is done. It's wonderful.

Another reviewer had an issue with the shift in aspect ratio partway through, and I have to disagree. It's a necessary shift - for it to match, you would either have to have the entire edit in 4:3 or you would have to crop the other footage to widescreen. The former would be a lot of work and a great shame, and the latter would look terrible. You would lose too much of the image and the already lo-res footage would be very fuzzy. The way I see it, the shift in aspect ratio occurs at a point where we are taken out of the edit and into another, older realm. It stays consistent during the shift and then it switches back. It never feels unnatural, IMO. Blue Yoda has a style that incorporates all sorts of wild ideas that play off of each other, to a point where it doesn't make sense to expect complete aesthetic consistency.


AUDIO

Generally good and I don't want to get nitpicky. A couple of things I think worth mentioning though is that the lack of foley during the Norwegian camp scene took me out of the edit a bit and the sound used for when Mac busts open the door felt really out of place. I also feel that generally the new scoring is nearly always much louder than it needs to be and at its worst is drowning out dialogue. Having said that, I never felt like I needed to keep turning my volume up and down, which is something I often find when some editors rescore. Some kick-ass music choices as well and some really great attention to detail (for example, the sonic shift during "Another One Bites the Dust" as we switch perspectives and distance from the source was really well done).


NARRATIVE

Honestly, all I've seen from Blue Yoda are some pretty nutty shorts and so for their first feature I kind of assumed it would literally be a feature-length assault on the senses. Turns out it's not that AT ALL. I'm not going into spoiler territory but, if you want some expectations set, this is actually a fairly restrained edit (relatively speaking). The original narrative is stuck to fairly closely, and occasionally we have some really wild stuff that gets incorporated; the new setup is excellent, and all the combination of footage towards the end is very well executed and thought out. I loved it to bits and I think BlueYoda did a good job of striking a balance between madness and coherence. Having said that, I would so be down to see the madness leaned into further. The deleted scenes were an absolute blast and I would love to see a version that incorporates these (where possible) and maybe even some of the unused stuff from the trailers.

As has been mentioned in another review, subtitles are recommended! I think for some scenes they are almost essential to the gag.

One minor comment I have is that at the very end of the final credits there's a brief bit of the ending scene of The Thing that then abruptly cuts off - was this an error? Seemed very odd, like maybe there was a scrap bit of footage that went unnoticed.


ENJOYMENT

Wonderful job. Great fun. I laughed a lot (and I needed to). I love the whole package that's been put together: 4 unique trailers, two beautifully put together posters and a deleted scenes/oddities compilation. All worth your while and something that just makes the experience more special. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to see more often in the fanediting community. Bold fan-mixes that take footage to places you never expect. Hopefully this isn't the last time we see BlueYoda try their hands at a feature-length.