Blu ray screencaps of Aliens with BD impressions on the transfer and film.
James Cameron got home cinema fans hot under the collar when he announced earlier in the year that Aliens had been completely de-noised and de-grained, this led many to believe the blu ray transfer would be a DNR trainwreck, everyone can rest easy though because it's a wonderful transfer and film grain is still visible throughout the film, i do actually wonder if Lowry Digital who handled the restoration of Aliens did actually completely remove all film grain and then add some back in, i feel it's quite possible that is what happened and if so then they have done a far better job than they did on the first three Bond movies, of course if they actually did de-noise and de-grain the film this would mean Cameron's statement was accurate.
Some people may be upset about the colour timing of this release as it does differ from previous incarnations of the film but it has been personally supervised by the director and i had no objections, people with a much better eye for colours than myself may object to this look.
Aliens has never looked this good in any home format and it could be argued that the release now looks better than the original cinema print, this shows that technology when used correctly can work wonders, all too often it's a studio hack behind the controls and the director is not involved in the transfer, i daresay for every great transfer that utilizes the tools correctly you will get ten releases which don't and that's all down to time, money and the effort put in or lack of it, Aliens had plenty of time, money and effort put into doing the film justice.
The plot of Aliens should be well known by now, the sole survivor of the Nostromo, Ripley, is found floating in space after 57 years in hyper sleep, the company Weyland-Yutani are a little unhappy about Ripley blowing up their expensive ship in Alien and they do not believe her story about what happened, they tell her that the planet LV-426 is now a terraforming colony, well naturally they lose communication with the colony and after a little persuasion Ripley agrees to go back with a bunch of badass marines on the understanding that they are going to wipe out the Aliens, Jones the cat the other survivor from Alien is lucky because this time he stays at home.
Thats the basic storyline but James Cameron who wrote the screenplay as well as directed the film brings lots of nice touches to the film, the attention to detail is superb and although some of the marines are a little stereotypical it's good to watch a sequel that expands on the original concept and adds in new elements as well as throwing in a few surprises along the way.
Sigourney Weaver acts her socks off in this film and you can see she had matured as an actress between this film and the original seven years earlier, Bill Paxton as Hudson does tend to go overboard at times but that leads up to the second half of the film where we see he isn't as cool as he thinks he is, Hicks is the cool marine and also the sympathetic one, the little girl Newt is a great addition among these burly marines and gives Ripley something to live for, watch the special edition of Aliens and you will understand why Newt becomes so important to Ripley.
The sound quality is also very good, there is a real energy about this sound mix and the music score comes alive, i was also surprised at the amount of deep bass, i recommend staying past the end titles and you will be treated to a demo quality THX trailer, your subwoofer will love you if you do this. I am personally very happy with the transfers of both Alien and Aliens.
You can view some blu ray screencaps from Aliens below, double click to see the full HD image.
