I saw the caps of this today was astoundingly relieved. It's not as de-grained as nearly as I feared. It looks like a normal negative emulsion from 1985. Unfortunately, the purist in me would like to have the original. I know it was grainier than they wanted but why the hell are people so afraid of grain now that HD is in style? Like fuck. It's film. And I always felt is sort of suited Aliens, it gave it that sort of Vietnam-documentary type of look, with all the handheld camerawork. I wonder if in the future people will object to handheld camera work and want everything to be smooth steadicam work if people won't go back and image-stabilize all those handheld shots.

Anyway, as far as filtering the film for BR, this release is a model example, to Cameron's credit. It does indeed look beautiful. But it needn't be filtered in the first place. Luckily there is already HD captures of this. Cameron says it was the extended cut only, which I would be fine with, but my understanding was that the theatrical version would be branched. Well, at least there IS some debat about whether unwanted grain is to be equated with dirt and scratches, rather than any outright revisionism like adding new CG.