Blu Ray Screencaps of Alien Resurrection.
Alien Resurrection was intended to be a new start for the Alien films, a re-invention which would pave the way for more sequels to be made, the next film was going to be set on Earth and that scenario had been talked about for many years, as it turns out the film did not engage viewers and was considered a disappointment at the American box office where it took just $47m dollars, it did take around $160m dollars worldwide but Twentieth Century Fox did not consider this a large enough return on their initial $75m dollar investment, you must take into account the fact that the studio would not see all of that $160m dollars since it has to be split with the cinema chains and i doubt after advertising costs that the film was in any way profitable for Fox thus the Alien franchise was stalled and we would see two Alien Vs Predator films instead, let's hope Ridley Scott can get things back on track with his two Alien prequels, the first of which will hit movie theaters in 2011.
About twelve years ago, on my first viewing of Alien Resurrection, i was not impressed, i disliked the film intensely, i felt it desecrated the memory of the previous films which had ended appropriately with Alien3, It was many years later when the Alien Quadrilogy boxset was released that i re-visited the movie, i watched the extended cut and enjoyed it much more this time around, the science behind cloning had evolved and i accepted the premise in this film, now watching it again, i think it's a lot better than i originally thought, the direction by Jean Pierre Jeunet is good, his visual style is unique and brings much to this film, Sigourney Weaver has some funny lines in this film, one which had me laughing was when Ron Perlman who plays Johner asks her what she did last time she faced the Aliens she replies she died, I like the extended cut of the film except for one thing, the opening titles, i prefer the theatrical cut opening titles, the motherhood theme is also explored in this film with the Ripley clone sharing much in common with the alien species, the hybrid alien baby can be viewed as a misguided Frankenstein's monster, by that we could examine it closer and come to the conclusion that the human species is the monster in cloning such abominations and perhaps this creature deserves sympathy and not to be treated as something evil that must be killed, perhaps thats why Ripley cries for it, she has lost so much in the previous films and now it's happening again.
Jean Pierre Jeunet has criticised Fox over the transfer of this blu ray, he is annoyed at not being involved in this release, he even states the blu ray quality is no better than the dvd version of the film, that's just hyperbole, the film looks considerably better than any dvd version, there is much more detail and better compression with no edge enhancement issues to speak of, it's not perfect though, i did see some compression artifacts and there has been some filtering of detail and film grain is not always compressed well but i believe these issues exist on the master they are using, some scenes have a mild thin line around the frame which is a sign of filtering, some scenes do not have this line and the grain structure of those scenes is also better resolved with more fine detail on display, so really it's a mixed bag, if they had made a brand new 4K scan then i believe this could have looked the best of the four films, as it stands it is better than the third film but not as good as it could have been, but Jeunet is wrong to say it looks worse than a dvd, rest assured it's much better quality than any dvd edition of the film.
The sound quality is very good, it's an active sound mix with lots of directionality and the surround speakers are put to good use here, bass is also deep and plentiful when called for, it's certainly the best sound mix of the Alien Anthology boxset but then it should be as it was made at a time when digital sound was now established for all major motion picture releases. My speakers got a good workout with the sound mix on offer here and i had no complaints about the sound.
View blu ray screencaps of Alien Resurrection below. Click twice for the full HD image.
