Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on December 5, 2003, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Hi, everyone. I just got back from plowing through Fox’s nine-disc Alien Quadrilogy. What’s been happening in the world? Did I miss Christmas?
But seriously, folks… It’s unlikely that anyone not committed to reviewing this set will sit through its 60-plus hours of material end to end, but will rather pick and choose among the many, many supplements. And Fox is to be commended for giving each of the four films in the franchise equal attention, rather than favoring the established classics Alien and Aliens over the frequently maligned Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. Each movie has been given the kind of care that would rate as exemplary as individual releases (which the four titles will be given January 6 as two-disc packages); combined with a ninth disc of extras, this set stands as a landmark of genre film presentation and celebration.
To start with, all four transfers are stellar. The most notable upgrade has been given to Aliens (the only film in the bunch letterboxed at 1.85:1; the rest are 2.35:1), which now lacks the grain that marked all previous releases, while Alien is similarly missing the grittiness on view in its recent theatrical rerelease. Both movies now appear sharp and clean as can be, boasting vibrant colors and (Alien in particular) rich, menacing blacks. The two follow-ups sport more idiosyncratic visual schemes, and Alien 3’s sepia/yellow tones and Alien Resurrection’s high-contrast images are equally well-replicated for maximum atmosphere, and are as blemish-free as their predecessors. All four films sport fresh Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio (with DTS on the first film and Resurrection as well), which in every case is crisp, full of directional activity and up to the very latest sound standards for big-ticket horror/action fare.
Even more notable than the visual/aural upgrades are the additions that have been made in terms of material. Each movie is presented in two editions: the original theatrical and a director’s or expanded version. (The latter include a function that pops a “SPECIAL EDITION” tag on the screen when new footage plays.) Alien’s new cut is, of course, the one recently released to theaters; the elongated Aliens is familiar from previous laserdisc and DVD releases. The most significant, and perhaps most awaited, update has been given to the famously troubled Alien 3. A good half hour of new footage has been added, and a few significant moments altered; here, the Alien first erupts from a dead ox, and Ripley’s final sacrifice is missing the shot of the embryonic Queen bursting from her chest. Alas, while these additions and some of the extra dialogue moments are interesting in and of themselves, they can’t truly elevate a movie that’s brimming with oppressive, nihilistic style, but is subverted by a script that degenerates into repetitive action and dialogue from the “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!” school of cinematic tough talk.
This can’t entirely be said to be David Fincher’s “director’s cut” of Alien 3, since he wasn’t directly involved in its assembly (and indeed, is the only filmmaker of the four who didn’t take part in this project). Similarly, Jean-Pierre Jeunet admits in his preface to the expanded Resurrection that the theatrical release was his preferred cut, and that the alternate version has been assembled and included simply for the benefit of curious fans. Its highlight is a neat title sequence that travels from an extreme close-up to an epic wide angle in a single take; there are also a couple of evocative new moments in which the cloned Ripley recalls or is reminded of the little girl she once tried to save. On the other hand, the filmmakers were wise to change the original ending preserved here, an unconvincing closer set on a ravaged Earth.
The processes by which the movies arrived at the versions that hit theaters are explored in the exhaustive supplemental material. Each film is accompanied (on both versions) by an audio commentary featuring between seven and 12 contributors, along with multiple featurettes that can also be viewed with the “Play All” function as one movie-length documentary. The commentary participants, perhaps necessarily, were separately recorded individually or in small groups; on Alien, for example, Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver speak together, as do Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright and Harry Dean Stanton. The latter sets the tone for his contribution by first saying, “I was thinking about pussy the whole time,” and the three actors have fun recalling the shoot (especially, no surprise, the chestburster scene). Scott and Weaver have a good deal to contribute as well—though anyone who owns the previous Alien DVD is advised to hold onto it, as it contains a Scott-only commentary that’s different from this one.
Editor Terry Rawlings, story writer/executive producer Ronald Shusett and scriptwriter Dan O’Bannon also take part in the talk, the latter delving quite a bit into the visuals as well as the story side. He does voice his displeasure with the Ash-as-robot subplot added by producers Walter Hill and David Giler in their rewrite, which he sees as a distraction from the main story. Initially intending to direct the film and work out the characterizations on set with the cast, O’Bannon says he intentionally avoided developing the characters in his first draft—an approach that has clearly inspired action screenwriters to this day. That draft can also be viewed as a text supplement, revealing just how much Hill and Giler added to the final movie, and prefaced by an O’Bannon introduction in which he points out his many influences, far beyond It! The Terror from Beyond Space; “I stole it from everybody!” he admits.
The Alien featurettes are chock full of interviews (pretty much everyone except Hill, who is mysteriously absent from this entire set) and paint a fascinating picture of the movie from first inspiration (O’Bannon’s desire to “do Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy”) to final postproduction; surprisingly, Jerry Goldsmith’s superb score was the result of much contention between the composer and Scott. Like all the docs, this one incorporates a trove of cool behind-the-scenes material; the really good stuff here is footage of actor Jon Finch in the Kane role (clearly ill even on his first day on set, he was quickly replaced with John Hurt) and lots and lots of bloody chestburster outtakes. We’re also taken on a visit to H.R. Giger’s house and (in a separate extra) get to view Weaver’s impressive screen test.
It’s all great stuff—and it gets even better on the two Aliens discs. The most surprising overall revelation of this material is how troubled a production this was, especially given the masterful film that emerged. While the project came together much quicker and easier than Alien, the set was fraught with tension between writer/director James Cameron (whose perfectionist-to-a-fault tendencies are not glossed over) and the British crew, who had a, shall we say, more relaxed approach to the work. Along the way, the 1st AD almost led a crew mutiny and was fired, original cinematographer Dick Bush was replaced and Michael Biehn stepped in after a week of shooting for another actor; at first, that performer’s identity goes unrevealed, but an FX artist later lets slip that it was James Remar. Oddly, there was a great deal of tsuris surrounding this score as well, only for James Horner’s music to not only get an Oscar nomination, but (as producer Gale Anne Hurd points out) to turn up in countless trailers.
All these stories and many more are explored in one of the year’s best commentary tracks, on which Cameron, Hurd, FX wizards Stan Winston, Robert and Dennis Skotak and Pat McClung and actors Biehn, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein and Carrie and Christopher Henn take part. Given that Cameron is all over the documentary, the bulk of this track is graciously ceded to the others, and not unexpectedly, the Biehn/Paxton/Henriksen/Goldstein team (recorded together) is the most fun. (Wait’ll you hear what movie Paxton almost took instead of this one!) But everyone has plenty to contribute, making the two and a half hours pass as swiftly with the commentary as without it. The featurettes cover plenty of distinct material, punctuated with interviews both vintage and fresh (Henriksen’s moments are especially good) and on-set/FX footage. Most impressive among the latter is the material involving the Queen, whose all-practical creation should be a lesson to many of today’s CGI-happy filmmakers.
As stated above, Fincher doesn’t take part in the Alien 3 commentary, nor do any of the producers or writers. This means that DP Alex Thomson, Rawlings, FX creators Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. and Richard Edlund, as well as actors Henriksen and Paul McGann, are left to pick up the slack, with the discussion focused largely on the technical side of things. It also means that there are gaps of silence here and there, but quite a bit of good information is imparted, as well as copious praise for Fincher, whom they recall as being under an intense amount of pressure from the studio.
Seen in clips sprinkled throughout the documentary segments, Fincher comes across as a decisive filmmaker with a good grasp of the details; even without the benefit of hindsight, it would be evident he was going places. The featurettes start by tracking the film’s tortuous development, complete with interviews with initial directors Renny Harlin and Vincent Ward, the latter of whom wound up contributing enough to win a story credit, and whose concepts sure sound interesting (and occasionally perverse—in his story, the early Alien victims are attacked on the toilet!). The production and postproduction segments contain plenty of solid material as well, ranging from sad (on-set glimpses of original DP Jordan Cronenweth, clearly suffering from the Parkinson’s disease that led him to leave the project) to hilarious (shots of a whippet in an Alien costume scampering around an FX lab).
Compared to all that has come before, the Alien Resurrection extras make the creation of that film seem like a breeze. Joss Whedon came up with a cool script that everyone liked (his first draft can be read as a text feature); after Danny Boyle considered the project, Jean-Pierre Jeunet came on board to direct, with a number of odd ideas that were supported by Weaver; and the studio had no problem with Jeunet hiring an eccentric supporting cast (including previous collaborators Ron Perlman and Dominique Pinon) or pushing the violence. So what happened? Hard to say (though in this writer’s opinion, the movie isn’t the disaster that some consider it to be), and the cast and crew’s dedication to it is palpable through both the commentary and docs.
This is particularly the case in a terrific segment dealing with the shooting of the underwater escape, which was fraught with general and personal challenges. Because the submerged set was almost entirely enclosed, the actors couldn’t come up for air and had to get oxygen from offscreen tanks; Weaver wasn’t able to train in advance and co-star Winona Ryder had anxieties derived from a childhood near-drowning accident. A more lighthearted and funny featurette concerns Weaver’s amazing one-handed backward basketball free throw, and composer John Frizzell (who considers Resurrection “an erotic film”) demonstrates the odd instruments used in his score. The highly entertaining chronicle is topped off by several contributors’ ideas of where the series should go; Jeunet says he’d like to see the Aliens’ home planet designed by Giger, and this writer, for one, seconds the motion.
The commentary by Jeunet, editor Herve Schneid, FX-ers Gillis, Woodruff and Pitof, concept artist Sylvain Despretz and actors Perlman, Pinon and Leland Orser is a fine mix of analysis, technical detail and anecdotes, the most humorous of the latter being Perlman and Orser discussing who did or did not “hold it in” during the underwater scene. We learn that Jeunet spoke almost no English when he made the movie, and that he doesn’t entirely object to studio notes and test screenings—indeed, one advance audience “saved” Dan Hedaya’s death scene. It fell to Weaver herself to argue on behalf of her “sex” scenes toward the movie’s end; she threatened not to promote the film if they were excised. All in all, another terrific track.
Major kudos must go to the documentary producer/directors Charles de Lauzirika (Alien, Aliens and Resurrection) and Fredrick Garvin (Alien 3), as well as to those responsible for assembling the commentators and editing together their observations. (Just one question: Why does Weaver only take part in the first of these?) And there’s still more: a ton of still, photo, art and promotional galleries for each movie, plus the ninth DVD, which collects trailers, laserdisc archives (for the first two films) and the British-made “Alien Evolution,” an hour-long program about the movie that started it all. While well-put-together on its own, it feels rather superfluous when placed amidst this wide-ranging package (though there is one good story about Giger’s first attempt at a chestburster), and some of the narration resorts to the sort of breathless hyperbole that the rest of the supplements gratifyingly avoid.
The best part of this disc is an ingratiating little piece on Bob Burns, the legendary movie memorabilia collector and longtime Alien fan who has amassed a huge stash of props from the four features. Not only did he receive enough stuff from the original to build a 200-foot Nostromo for one of his famous Halloween home attractions, he actually lent the Queen prop from Aliens back to the Resurrection filmmakers for re-use on screen. Any devotee of this franchise will likely drool when they see the collection of Alien mementos Burns possesses—but then, having this DVD set on one’s shelf pretty much shapes up as the next best thing.
