Blu Ray Screencaps of Alien3.
Many people were disappointed by Alien3, they feel that after the adrenaline pumping excitement of Aliens that it was a bit of a downer and too bleak and in killing off some characters they loved they feel that the third film disrespects the audience, i disagree, i feel that not all films need a happy ending, there is something inevitable about what happens in this film and it's done in a way that brings the series to a logical conclusion, that isn't to say this film is perfect, far from it, indeed there are some aspects i dislike about this film, i'm not too keen on the foul mouthed prisoners, in fact that's why i like the theatrical cut because i just don't care to see more of those characters, that and the fact the theatrical cut's ending is much more satisfying to me.
It's a very flawed film which had a much troubled production, perhaps Twentieth Century Fox should have spent more time on the script and delayed filming of the movie for a year or two, expensive sets had been built and so they went ahead despite not having a proper script ready, as it stands i feel it mostly works, it's not the disaster some would have you believe it is. The workprint is interesting but the theatrical works better. David Fincher was asked to get involved back in 2003 to make a directors cut but he replied in order to do that he would need to destroy all the negatives and re-shoot the film from scratch.
The image quality on this disc is slightly disappointing due to the fact they are using an old master, there has been some filtering of the higher frequencies and some grain reduction, both these issues are on the master and not something which has been added especially for the blu ray, you can actually see a faint thin line at the edge of the film frame which is an indication of filtering, i have also carefully checked some individual scenes and i noticed that when a scene cut to a new shot that grain would be in the image for one frame and then the grain reduction for the further frames could be seen to be applied, this was not visible while viewing the film on my screen but could be seen via careful analysis on the computer, i also believe the additional workprint scenes show a tad more detail, probably because they were prepared years later for the 2003 workprint, it's a shame Fox didn't make a new 4K scan for this film as i believe it could look much better than this,
The sound quality is good, Alien3 had a blowup 70mm presentation in 1992 and that version was heard in six track magnetic Dolby Stereo with the added bonus of split surrounds, i would think they may have used this as the basis for the mix on this release, for those watching the workprint edition then you will be delighted to know that some of the cast returned and redid their vocals for scenes which had poor sound quality on the last release, pity that Fox could take the time to do that but not make a brand new 4K scan, still they have to leave something to encourage fans to upgrade and i'm sure Alien 3 will eventually get that new 4K scan.
View blu ray screencaps of Alien3 below. Click twice for the full HD image.
