DVD Review - The Alien Quadrilogy

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page created: 11/3/03

The Alien Quadrilogy
1979-2003 (2003) - 20th Century Fox

review by Bill Hunt, Editor of The Digital Bits

Back to Disc One

On to Disc Three

Disc Two - The Beast Within: The Making of Alien

Extras Rating: A+

Pre-Production - Star Beast: Developing the Story featurette (18 mins), first draft screenplay text by Dan O'Bannon, The Visualists: Direction and Design featurette (17 mins), Ridleygrams gallery, storyboard gallery (organized by scene), conceptual artwork gallery (organized by artist, including Cobb, Foss, Moebius and Giger) , Truckers in Space: Casting featurette (15 mins), Sigourney Weaver's screen test footage (4 mins), cast portrait gallery, Production - Fear of the Unknown: Shepperton Studios, 1978 featurette (24 mins), production photo gallery (organized by subject), continuity Polaroids gallery, The Darkest Reaches: Nostromo and the Alien Planet featurette (17 mins), set photo gallery, The Eighth Passenger: Creature Design featurette (31 mins), Chestburster multi-angle sequence (5 mins - 3 angles with 2 audio tracks including production audio and director's commentary), H.R. Giger's Workshop photo gallery, Post-Production - Future Tense: Editing and Music featurette (16 mins), 7 deleted scenes (3 in 16x9 with 5.1 audio, the rest 4x3 letterbox with 2.0 audio), Outward Bound: Visual Effects featurette (19 mins), visual effects photo gallery, A Nightmare Fulfilled: Reaction to the Film featurette (19 mins), poster explorations gallery, special shoot photo gallery, premiere photo gallery, Easter egg: DVD production credits, animated film-themed menus with sound effects, separate "play/view all" option for featurettes, artwork and photos, languages: English (DD 2.0), subtitles: none

The material on Disc Two can be navigated in one of four different ways. You can choose to play all the featurettes one after the other, you can view all the images in the artwork galleries, or you can view all of the images in the production photo galleries. Of course, you can also navigate to all of the separate items individually through the regular disc menus, which are divided into three sections: Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production. I'll run down the list of each supplement in order.

While we're taking about navigation options, you should know that the Navigation Options page contains an Easter egg, but one that's not easy to access. Once you've entered this page, you have to use the number pad on your DVD player's remote to enter the U.S. theatrical release date for the film (in the case of Alien, it's 5-25-79). The procedure will differ slightly on each brand of player. With my Pioneer unit, I press 5, let the player accept the number, press 2 and 5, let the player accept the numbers, then press 7 and 9, and let the player accept the numbers. If you're successful, the Easter egg will appear automatically. What do you get for all this trouble? A few pages of DVD production credits. Yeah, I know... kind of lame.

The nine separate featurettes on Disc Two, however, are not lame in the slightest. Collectively, they form a 3-hour long documentary, entitled The Beast Within: The Making of Alien. All of them are presented in full frame aspect ratio, with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. The first of these featurettes, in the Pre-Production section, is called Star Beast: Developing the Story. It presents new video interviews with Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Ron Cobb, Gordon Carroll, David Giler and others. We learn about the origins of the story, including O'Bannon's early experiences on Dark Star and the aborted Jodorowsky adaptation of Dune, his first encounter with a number of production artists on the Dune project including H.R. Giger, how this influenced the early draft of Alien, the process by which Alien almost became a Roger Corman film, how it was picked up by Fox and the subsequent re-writing of the story by Walter Hill and David Giler (much to O'Bannon's frustration). Particular attention is given to script changes, and who contributed what ideas to the story. It's fascinating in that you can tell that O'Bannon and Giler in particular have no great love of each other.

Regardless of who contributed what ideas, the disc next presents O'Bannon's complete first draft script text, viewable on your TV, with additional (and lengthy) introduction notes by O'Bannon. The text is presented in yellow on black - you simply page through it with your remote.

The Visualists: Direction and Design featurette examines how director Ridley Scott eventually found his way to the project, and how O'Bannon managed to bring the artists he'd worked with previously onto the film, including Giger. Among those interviewed here are Scott, who talks about how he managed to double the film's budget by storyboarding the film himself, thus illustrating his vision. There are also fascinating interview clips of Giger in his studio, talking about the design of the creature, and Ron Cobb, talking about his contributions to the work.

Fleshing this topic out further are separate galleries of Ridley Scott's original storyboards for the film (known as "Ridleygrams"), additional storyboards done later for scenes more reflective of the final shooting script, and a huge gallery of conceptual artwork, organized by the various artists who created them (including Ron Cobb, Chris Foss. H.R. Giger and Moebius). There are many images here (many hundreds in all on this disc alone), including things that have never been released before. As with the script text, you navigate through them an image at a time with your remote. The galleries, you'll be happy to know, are all in anamorphic widescreen to allow for the highest possible resolution on your TV screen.

In the Truckers in Space: Casting featurette, we learn about Ridley's approach to finding the actors, and how the film was unique in its time in casting the lead role as a women. The studio resisted casting Sigourney Weaver in the role until they'd screen tested her extensively. Sigourney, in a new interview, talks about testing for the part. This is then repeated for several of the characters (and actors) in turn. Each discusses their initial impressions of the script and their parts. Of interest here is a look at film footage and photos of the original actor who was cast to play the role of Kane, and how he had to bow out on the first day of shooting due to illness.

To back up the Casting piece, the disc includes separate screen test footage for Sigourney, along with a gallery of cast portraits.

Moving on to the Production section, the first thing you'll find is a featurette entitled, Fear of the Unknown: Shepperton Studios, 1978. This is packed with interviews with the production team, discussion of tensions on the set, footage of the sets being constructed, lots (and I mean LOTS) of outtake and alternate take footage from the film, test footage, behind-the-scenes photos… you name it. There are many fascinating stories told here. I think you'll agree that this is definitely the gem of Disc Two.

Supporting this featurette on the disc is an extensive gallery of production photographs and another featuring all of the continuity Polaroids taken on set during filming. Again, all of these images are anamorphic.

Next, you get The Darkest Reaches: Nostromo and the Alien Planet, a featurette that focuses on the production design. It includes interviews with many of the designers, more footage of the set and prop construction, more outtake footage, close-ups of set pieces and detail, video of the computer animation created for read-out screens on the Nostromo and other fascinating environment related odds and ends. There's really fascinating clips of Giger at work sculpting the derelict ship and the Space Jockey, and an interview of him talking about always requesting more bones and machine parts.

There's also an additional gallery of set photos to illustrate the production design even further. You'll find numerous set detail and prop pictures, including a photo of a beer can labeled "Original and Genuine Weylan-Yutani Aspen Beer - Extra Strong - Aspen Colorado" (the original source of the name later given to the Company).

The Eighth Passenger: Creature Design provides much more detail on the work of Giger in creating the various stages of the alien life-cycle and the final creature costume and prop designs. Various members of the cast and crew talk about seeing Giger, all dressed in black, working in his make-shift studio on the set. Ridley Scott then describes how all of it was filmed to achieve the best effect on screen. This is illustrated with lots more behind-the-scenes footage and photos. Particularly interesting are interviews with the cast talking about the filming of the infamous 'chestburster' scene.

That would be cool enough, right? Not for the Quadrilogy. For this disc, you get to see the production of the Chestburster scene in its entirety - every single take of the scene, from both cameras that were used on set - is available here in a multi-angle sequence. You can view either camera separately, or a composite of the two. Then you can chose to listen to the production audio, or audio commentary by the director. You can switch on the fly, and using the 'skip' button on your remote allows you to move on to the next take.

Rounding out the Production section is a gallery of photos taken in Giger's workshop.

The last section on Disc Two is Post-Production. It starts with Future Tense: Music and Editing, which features new interview footage with editor Terry Rawlings and composer Jerry Goldsmith, who relate additional production stories. The featurette is illustrated with still more outtake and alternate take footage. Goldsmith talks about his approach to the music, and how he wanted to start the soundtrack lyrically so as not to give the film away too soon, while Ridley wanted a more mysterious opening. Attention is paid to the creative conflicts between the director and composer, and how stubbornness characterized their working relationship throughout the production. It's obvious that some of these differences persist to this day.

Fitting nicely in Post-Production are all seven of the major deleted scenes from the film that were not added back in for the Director's Cut. Some of this has been seen before, but some is newly discovered footage. Most of this material is 4x3 letterboxed, with 2.0 stereo audio, but three of the seven scenes are fully post-produced in anamorphic widescreen with 5.1 audio. These are scenes that were under consideration for restoration to the film for this DVD release, but were left out at the last minute.

Outward Bound: Visual Effects is a look at the special miniature and optical work. The featurette includes new interviews with effects supervisor Brian Johnson and other effects technicians. You'll see shots of the model construction, interesting detail shots of the models themselves, lots of model test and outtake footage, footage of Ridley himself directing some of the model shots, drawings and construction photos and much more. There's also a number of images of the shuttlecraft, seen from angles not in the final film. You even get to see some of the original spacecraft interior footage that was projected into the windows of the models for exterior shots. It's very cool stuff for effects fans.

Following up on this subject, there's a gallery of visual effects photographs to give you an even closer look at things.

Chronicling the final release of Alien to theaters is a featurette called A Nightmare Fulfilled: Reaction to the Film. Alan Ladd, Jr. recalls his wife being traumatized by the violence of the film after attending the first test screening. In fact, the production crew and studio executives were all stunned by the reaction of test audiences. People were often screaming in shock and sprinting from the theater into the bathrooms to vomit. It got so bad that theater owners actually complained about it. A Nightmare Fulfilled also addresses the impact of the film on Fox as a studio, and the film's legacy in the years that followed. Most of the participants are given an opportunity to get in a final word or two. On the whole, the piece is a nice way to end the disc's documentary look at the making of the film.

Closing out the extras on Disc Two are a trio of separate image galleries. One features various poster art explorations, another includes all of the photos taken of the cast in a special publicity shoot prior to the film's release, and the final gallery contains photos taken at the film's premiere at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.

So that's the supplement disc for Alien. Are you starting to grasp the sheer volume of material included on the Alien Quadrilogy? Believe me when I say that I've only just scratched the surface in the description above. Keep in mind also that we've only covered the first two of nine discs in the set.

With that in mind, let's move on to Disc Three… which contains James Cameron's Aliens.

On to Disc Three