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Thursday, December 2, 2010

BD impressions: Alien 3

2:08 PM / BD Impressions / 2 Comments

One of those cases where the tortuous production history is a lot more interesting than the resultant film.

ALIEN 3 is, to put it bluntly, a mess, and a lot of the time it's not even an entertaining mess. Taking into account the degree of behind the scenes interference to which it was subjected, I suppose the surprising thing is not that it ended up in such a chaotic state but rather that MORE films don't turn out this way, given that such tales of executive meddling aren't exactly uncommon in Hollywood (though this admittedly does seem to be a particularly extreme example).

I chose to watch the assembly cut, which I believe constitutes an approximation of David Fincher's ultimate intentions for the film before he abandoned the project during post-production, though that may have been a mistake as I felt the extended running time did it no favours, and I was certainly suffering from viewer's fatigue towards the end. In terms of its place in the series, it was obviously woefully inferior to ALIEN, and while I would mark it a good few notches below ALIENS as well, I must admit I did feel that there were certain aspects that it handled better than its predecessor.

It definitely got me on side at the beginning by dispensing with the insufferable Newt and captain whatsisname (the one played by Michael Beihn), and I felt that placing the characters in an environment with no access to firearms was a marvellous touch, avoiding as it did the gung-ho bang-bang malarkey from ALIENS. The attempted rape of Ripley was well-shot, and I enjoyed Charles Dance's understated performance as the medic... but on the other hand the various death scenes felt really lacklustre, and as with ALIENS the film succumbed to the burden of an over-sized cast I couldn't bring myself to care about (though oddly enough I found this cadre of rapists and murderers a whole lot less loathsome than the soldiers in the previous film).

Nicely shot, great score by Elliot Goldenthal... but on the other hand, really poor effects, a script that spends way too long treading water (there are only so many ways you can have characters saying "We're fucked" to each other before it becomes tedious), and a general sense of the ideas behind it being better than the execution. I definitely didn't get the sense that it was the atrocity some claim it to be, but I did feel that Fincher and co dropped the ball overall. That said, I can't help wondering to what extent its less than rosy reputation stems from the ALIENS fans being disappointed by its less gun-heavy, more understated approach.

Image quality: Oh dear, not a pretty sight at all. After being spoiled by the excellent quality of the previous two films on BD, I was disappointed to discover that Fox appear to have used an outdated master for the third instalment. Detail is inconsistent but leans towards soft for the most part. There is a fairly noticeable improvement in clarity in the scenes added back in for the assembly cut, but it would be a stretch to call even these "good". Grain reduction is apparent too, and the image tends to be pretty murky... although the latter may have been a deliberate aesthetic choice. Either way, it all looks incredibly mediocre and it's a damn shame to see this instalment in "the MU-TH-UR of all Blu-ray collections" (to quote the back of the box) given such half-assed treatment. 6/10

Alien 3
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 23.4 GB (theatrical cut), 29.4 GB (special edition);
average bit rate (including audio): 29.17 Mbit/sec (theatrical cut), 29.08 Mbit/sec (special edition)

2 Comments

 
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