ALIEN QUADRILOGY

DECEMBER 2nd: Updated information on the final disc of the Quadrilogy below.

As this article presumes a familiarity with each of the Alien films as well as the features of the Alien Legacy box set, it's recommend that you read our Legacy review before proceeding--I'm charging ahead with minimal preamble.-Bill Chambers

DISC 1 - ALIEN/ALIEN: DIRECTOR'S CUT

Ridley Scott can't seem to quell the urge to tamper with his films (next: Blade Runner - The Director's Cut of the Director's Cut--no lie), but while I think we can agree that Alien was fine the way it was, the Director's Cut (whose terms are personally defined by Scott in a note accompanying the nine-disc Alien Quadrilogy), prepared this year in time for exhibition at the Toronto International Film Festival, arguably revitalizes an over-observed masterpiece through judicious, nearly imperceptible tightening. (The Director's Cut is a minute shorter than Alien even though it extends the film by one scene.) The DVD sports a "deleted footage" marker that identifies the 2003 alterations when activated (note that doing so impedes all other subtitle options), but I opted for a clean viewing to mimic the elusive moviehouse experience; little stood out, per se, with the obvious exception of the cocoon sequence--a welcome restoration I found distracting for the unanticipated reason that it was obviously re-recorded with today's technology (having never really moved beyond the live-sound stage) and therefore sounds mismatched with the '79 audio, updated though it may be. The 5.1 remix is shrill but exceptionally layered, capably rendered in both DTS and Dolby Digital on DVD, a dual layer platter that utilizes branching technology (as do all of the Quadrilogy movie discs) to allow the cohabitation of the theatrical and alternative versions with no detriment to picture quality. The 2.31:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation is the film's most brilliant yet--the Legacy transfer is officially outmoded. (The Legacy's Alien disc itself, however, is not, as Scott's solo commentary track is the exclusive domain of that DVD.) In "Supplement," uncover a commentary--featuring "32-year-old" Scott, Sigourney Weaver (at the mike with Ridley), screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, editor Terry Rawlings, and co-stars Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, and John Hurt--that, as with each yakker in the THX-certified Quadrilogy, is edited two different ways depending on which version of the film you've selected. The deleted/extended scenes isolated from the Director's Cut (also a common characteristic of the Quadrilogy) round out the disc.

DISC 2 - ALIEN SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Alien's supplementary DVD establishes a pattern adhered to across-the-board by the bonus platters of the Quadrilogy: a making-of is split into "Pre-Production," "Production," and "Post-Production" segments or viewable as a feature film by entering the "Navigation" submenu and choosing the play-all function. Ditto various artwork/photo galleries. I'll be discussing individual addenda.

The Beast Within: The Making of Alien
directed by Charles de Lauzirika

PRE-PRODUCTION

Star Beast: Developing the Story (18 mins.)
The Quadrilogy immediately announces that it will play fair with this chronicle of O'Bannon's residual anger towards Alejandro Jodorowsky--for stringing him along on a Dune adaptation that never materialized--and Walter Hill (given voice here by toffee-nosed producing partner David Giler), for glomming onto O'Bannon's Alien script despite a proud bias against sci-fi--"which was certainly reflected in the various drafts he and Giler did," O'Bannon haughtily recalls. O'Bannon's collaborator Shusett is more diplomatic, crediting Giler/Hill with "the best thing in the movie," Ash the "robutt." "Star Beast" (incidentally, O'Bannon's working title for Alien) instantly hooks you with its candour, and the click to the next episode is an anxious one.

First Draft Screenplay
O'Bannon's heretofore-unseen pre-Giler/Hill draft, with a lengthy, text-based introduction/screed from the author in which he recounts the groundless plagiarism suit brought against him by a cretin named Jack Hammer.

The Visualists: Direction and Design (17 mins.)
O'Bannon whips up an excuse for leaving Alien's unisex characters undeveloped on the page (something about hearing that Altman did that) while Giler explains that Hill was going to direct the picture himself but lacked the temperament (an assertion borne out by the eventual Supernova). Robert Aldrich was close to signing on, but failed the litmus question of "How would you do the facehugger?" (Aldrich purportedly replied, "I'll buy a piece of liver and stick it on the guy.") Eventually The Duellists' Ridley Scott was hired, himself no genre buff but intrigued by the idea of doing "Texas Chain Saw in space." O'Bannon ingratiated himself with Scott by familiarizing him with the art of H.R. Giger (whom O'Bannon outs as an opium addict), giving the screenwriter unprecedented control for someone so subverted by the powers-that-be. If I didn't have a time-consuming obligation to summarize these docs, I'd never want them to end.

Ridley-Grams
The storyboard doodles that persuaded Fox to hire Scott, annotated by Ridley himself. They are, incidentally, at 1.33:1.

Storyboard Archive
Storyboards for the "landing," "breach," "awakening," "expedition," and "Narcissus" sequences.

The Art of Alien
A portfolio of Ron Cobb's, Chris Foss', H.R. Giger's, and Jean "Moebius" Giraud's conceptual drawings and paintings, indexed by artist.

Truckers in Space (15 mins.)
Giler reveals that it was Fox's distaff successes Julia and The Turning Point that had them convinced that Alien with a female lead would perform to bigger numbers. Enter Sigourney, who says she's not particularly happy with her work in the film. Cast members Ian Holm and Yaphett Kotto--remembered as difficult--are not interviewed, but an outtake from Jon Finch's single day on the picture (he was replaced by John Hurt) compensates.

Cast Portrait Gallery
From Cartwright to Weaver.

PRODUCTION

Fear of the Unknown: Shepperton Studios, 1978 (24 mins.)
Veronica Cartwright flashes back to set temperatures so hot that they knocked John Hurt unconscious, something that was taken lightly until Ridley's children, doubling for Hurt, Cartwright, and Skerritt, passed out, too. Weaver engenders sympathy and provides insight into the way an actor's mind operates when telling an anecdote about how she kept her allergy to cats a secret for fear they would replace her and keep the kitty. By then, Fox had banned O'Bannon from screening rushes, so he would sneak into the projection booth to watch them.

Production Gallery: Bob Penn
Penn's snapshots of the Nostromo, egg chamber, Kane's "fate," "Brett's Death & Mu-Th-Ur," Ash, Parker and Lambert's deaths, the cocoons, The Narcissus, and "filming in progress."

Continuity Polaroids

The Darkest Reaches: Nostromo and Alien Planet (17 mins.)
Production Designer Roger Christian handled the Nostromo's interior, for which Cobb designed a number of hilarious industrial-warning symbols. Many old-fashioned sleights of hand were pulled--call me a geek if you must, but I found the divulgement of the Nostromo's mirrored corridors (giving them the illusion of a great depth) honestly epiphanical.

Archives: The Sets of Alien
Photos of Christian's, et al handiwork.

The Eighth Passenger: Creature Design (32 mins.)
Not to be confused with Sharpline Art's bonus Legacy disc. The sight to see here is the Swiss Giger weirding himself out mid-interview; he doesn't convey a sense of mental instability at all, however--Shusett's claim that no one on the crew would go near Giger save Scott and O'Bannon confirms that weird art can foster prejudice. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious, Francis Bacon's influence on the chestburster is paid lip service, and we're treated to amusing accounts of the film's experiments in puppetry. "We did have some times," quips Cartwright at the close.

The Chestburster
Two B-roll angles of Kane's demise plus a third composite angle, with or without Scott commentary/production audio.

H.R. Giger's Workshop
A photo gallery of Giger at work. Have a nice nightmare.

POST-PRODUCTION

Future Tense: Editing and Music (16 mins.)
Terry Rawlings budged his way into editing Alien by turning down the opportunity to mix its sound, as he had done on Scott's The Duellists; with his knack for flattery--"When you get Ridley's rushes, it's like walking through an art gallery"--it's not difficult to fathom Scott's gamble. But the embarrassingly frank interview with composer Jerry Goldsmith, who was royally screwed, ironically, by Rawlings' gifted ear, hits a behind-the-scenes nerve that's almost as raw as O'Bannon's.

Deleted Scenes
Seven altogether, none eventful. Those that were contemplated for inclusion in the 2003 Director's Cut are anamorphically presented in remastered widescreen with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. Have I wallowed in Scott's asexual universe for too long at this point, or does the bit where Ripley comforts a hysterical Lambert point have Sapphic overtones?

Outward Bound: Visual Effects (19 mins.)
In what becomes a running gag of the Quadrilogy, Alien took a chance on an unassuming young director with perfectionist instincts (cf. James Cameron, David Fincher)--F/X photography was delayed by Scott's insistence on supervising it.

Visual Effects Gallery
A behind-the-scissors-and-glue photo archive.

A Nightmare Fulfilled: Reaction to the Film (14 mins.)
Is the world too cynical for this kind of history to repeat itself? Then-studio prez Alan Ladd, Jr. reports that ushers keeled over at the Dallas preview screening of Alien, and that the film deeply traumatized his own ex-wife. O'Bannon felt vindicated sitting in a theatre where it was going down like gangbusters; he wept openly for the picture's entirety. He thinks the unfortunate side-effect of Alien is that it closed the book on the genre; I'm inclined to agree.

Poster Explorations
A fascinating gallery of abandoned one-sheets, on many of which the film goes by "The Alien."

DISC 3 - ALIENS/ALIENS: SPECIAL EDITION

The Aliens platter of the Quadrilogy is noteworthy since it marks the theatrical cut's DVD debut. If it weren't for the Special Edition's expansion of Ripley's backstory and a subtle design flourish in the scene leading up to the needless but effective facehugger attack on Newt's dad (that is, a Big Wheel tricycle bearing the Weyland-Utani logo), I'd consider the leaner theatrical version (whose duration is a not-exactly-famished 137 minutes) the authority. Two details shared by both incarnations that I neglected to file under "Negative Findings" in my Legacy report drove me battier than ever on a refresh viewing, the first the deus ex machina-like coincidence of LV426 migrants finally striking out as far as xenomorph territory within days of Ripley's reawakening (remember that LV426 was settled twenty years prior to the recovery of her lifeboat), the second that Aliens is thus far the only series entry to be shot at 1.85:1. The shift in aspect ratios (from 2.35:1) somehow cheapens our impression of the film's ambition. The disc's qualitative assessments remain unchanged from the Legacy; yak-track participants: director James Cameron (barely present among Aliens' video-based extras, he's fast becoming one of the great DVD commentators (see: Solaris)), producer Gale Ann Hurd, F/X technicians Stan Winston, Bob Skotak, Dennis Skotak, and Pat McClurg, and gung ho actors Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Carrie Henn.

DISC 4 - ALIENS: BONUS MATERIAL

Superior Firepower: The Making of Aliens
directed by Charles de Lauzirika

PRE-PRODUCTION

57 Years Later: Continuing the Story (11 mins.)
Cameron's story pitch so wowed the studio that they not only went back on their determination to leave Alien unsequelized, but also agreed to wait for Cameron to finish The Terminator (postponed by Dino De Laurentiis' petty redemption of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Destroyer contract). Weaver wasn't informed that Aliens was in the offing until three months before principal photography--luckily she said yes at a reasonable price.

Original Treatment
One of Cameron's famous "scriptments"--prose formatted like a screenplay. Interestingly (or not), Cameron is listed beneath Giler and Hill on the cover page.

Building Better Worlds: From Concept to Construction (13 mins.)
Guess what conceptual artist Syd Mead was doing when Cameron rang: judging the Miss Universe pageant! Cobb resurfaces with more recollections of humorous graphics that, for better or worse, are illegible on screen (like the amusing "nose art" Marine slogan "We endanger species"). The former Mrs. James Cameron, hotshot producer Hurd, receives her first unfavourable review here from production designer Peter Lamont (he of the 007 series), who criticizes her advice for coping with budget problems: "Just cut it out." (Mirrors, incidentally, also saved Lamont's ass. Note to self.)

The Art of Aliens
A portfolio of Ron Cobb's, Syd Mead's, and James Cameron's conceptual drawings and paintings, indexed by artist.

Previsualizations: Multi-Angle Videomatics
Test video of select models compared with finished 35mm results, with or without commentary from miniature effects supervisor Pat McClung.

Preparing for Battle: Casting and Characterization (17 mins.)
Where's Michael Biehn?, you'll ask the TV, but he wasn't actually part of the original cast. Casting director Mary Selway practically chokes on the phrase "American military" while explaining conflicts with British Actors Equity, members of which don't quite fall in line with the Marine stereotype. The little boys in love with Henn from afar were legion, and the Quadrilogy unveils her adult appearance for the world.

Cast Portrait Gallery
From Biehn to Weaver.

PRODUCTION

This Time It's War: Pinewood Studios, 1985 (20 mins.)
DP Dick Bush (tee-hee) lived by a dead code that gave the cinematographer free rein over lighting (F/X guru Stan Winston implies this wouldn't have caused problems were Cameron not "cursed with vision"); commercial cameraman Adrian Biddle (a Scott protégé) took over a couple of weeks into the shoot. Biehn replaced an unnamed actor in the role of Hicks as a favour to Cameron, literally stepping into the other man's boots. But it's not until the "tea lady" reminiscences (you have to be there) that these Aliens supplements start to take on a life of their own apart from the Quadrilogy's Alien content.

Production Gallery
A photo archive of production stills.

Continuity Polaroids

The Risk Always Lives: Weapons and Action (15 mins.)
In an '86 interview (the talking heads conducted between takes are blessedly lacking in fluff), Weaver fears accusations of hypocrisy for doing the film in light of her anti-gun lobbying. Paxton provokes a déjà vu with his tale of passing out on set. And in an amusing but mortifying gaffe, we see an out-of-control 747 towing vehicle mow down the camera pointing at it.

Weapons and Vehicles
Photo archive.

Bug Hunt: Creature Design (16 mins.)
Tom Woodruff, Jr.--one of the xenomorph's puppeteers and later, on Alien 3 & 4, its embodiment--rationalizes the Cameron-mandated changes to Giger's designs (the chestburster was outfitted with limbs to diminish its "larval" façade)--so methinks, anyway, for Woodruff's crew has a tendency to step on one another's words. The innovative, "pull-toy" facehugger is the sort of thing Ed Wood lived for--but never could pull off.

Beauty and the Bitch: Power Loader and Alien (22 mins.)
The Queen looks awful on video--it just goes to show you that it's all in the lighting. More actor obsequiousness: the milk that Henriksen had to swallow and spit up for Bishop's decimation went bad, and he would simply puke at regular intervals in lieu of asking for replacement dairy. The power loader, you may recall from the Legacy Aliens, is not a bit hydraulic, but a horse suit with Sigourney for the head.

Stan Winston's Workshop
A photo archive. Stan's is hardly as disturbing as Giger's workspace.

Two Orphans: Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn (14 mins.)
"I got to meet Carrie Henn," Weaver says generously and without a trace of sarcasm at the beginning of this featurette. Henn exposes Cameron for the Premingerian bully that he is (God bless 'im) by ratting him out for separating Henn from her mother to send her into a more potent panic on screen. He also forced her to sit through Alien, which, far from traumatizing her (attention overprotective parents), sent her into fits of laughter.

POST-PRODUCTION

The Final Countdown (16 mins.)
I have new respect for James Horner, whose candid dismissal of Hurd's ignorance is intercut with Hurd's disingenuous praise for Horner's achievement with Aliens. Granted approximately four days to score the entire film (writing and recording it), Horner doubted that he was up to the task; "We'll just get someone who is," Hurd apparently threatened, to which Horner replied, "Please do." The terrific flourish ("cue 12") that accompanies Ripley's sealing of the airlock was written overnight--pretty remarkable for a piece of music that would become a staple of trailers for action movies.

Film Finish and Release
A photo archive of Hurd and Cameron at the mixing board with Horner.

The Power of Real Tech: Visual Effects (28 mins.)
A celebration of F/X men Bob and Dennis Skotak's budget-fooling efforts that more or less pools together the mini-docs of the Legacy's Aliens platter.

Visual Effects Gallery
An annotated photo archive.

Aliens Unleashed (12 mins.)
Henriksen was so flabbergasted by the final product (in a good way), he couldn't bring himself to speak to Cameron post-screening, promising a thoughtful letter he never sent--misleading Cameron to believe that Henriksen hated the picture. Henn admits that the film did frighten her on occasion. I'm happy for their success with Aliens, but frankly resentful of the homework it's left me with.

Special Shoot
Promotional shots of the cast.

DISC 5 - ALIEN³/ALIEN³: SPECIAL EDITION

Running a full half-hour longer than the theatrical release, the Special Edition of Alien³ is a reconstruction of the fabled workprint that has been mythologized in cineaste circles like some nineties equivalent to Orson Welles' original, gone-forever The Magnificent Ambersons; luckily, there's such a thing as posterity (and a studio archivist) in the modern era. Before we launch into an overview of the Alien³: Special Edition (henceforth A3SE), I think it's important to note that, just because this is the last version of the film before director David Fincher relinquished autonomy, that doesn't make it a "director's cut"--Fincher is a perfectionist, and given his druthers would likely have kept tinkering with the A3SE, which was submitted for evaluation at Fox's behest several months in advance of Alien³'s Memorial Day opening. It's frankly a little slack in places, and that's something Fincher's films never are, even when they're overstuffed (like Fight Club).

What the picture cries out for is a compromise between Alien³ and its SE. I don't know who mandated the most significant alteration to the SE, but it was, in fact, also the wisest: A3SE finds a side of beef--an ox, to be precise--incubating a chestburster, while in the finished film, the victim is a dog. Though the ox makes for a fittingly baroque silhouette, there's a humanity to canines that strengthens the anguish of the funeral passage with which the mutt's disembowelment is intercut. (Too, the quadruped alien looks comical emerging from a bovine carcass.) In fact, Alien³ strikes me as less emotionally reluctant than the A3SE, despite its sacrifice of pillow talk between Ripley and Clemens (Charles Dance) and an additional gesture of mourning following the accidental detonation of a contact bomb.

The A3SE feels heavy-handedly (as opposed to allusively) Biblical at times: oxen are slaughtered in a ritualistic fashion; Ripley is told "we're waiting for God to return" upon first entering the commissary; Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) conducts sermons in multiple, and explicitly invokes the Apocalypse; blood rains from the vents after Clemens is killed; and prayers precede the setting off of the climactic mousetrap. This brings it closer to Vincent Ward's rejected premise for the film, transforming Fiorina 161, with its shaved denizens of born-again prisoners, into a truly monastic colony and accentuating the "Immaculate Conception" parallel of Ripley's pregnancy; and yet, in the A3SE, Ripley's offspring does not pop out of her ribcage as she's engulfed by flames. So much religious fervour anticipates a fire baptism whose non-arrival gives Ripley's suicide an abrupt quality.

The A3SE reinstates the breadth of a severely truncated subplot involving Golic (Paul McGann, later "Doctor Who" in the BBC institution's abortive American rethink), the man who escapes harm in "the dragon"'s initial attack only to be driven mad by the encounter. His face encrusted with the plasma of others for most of his screen time, Golic now operates under the assumption that he and the alien have bonded and schemes to set it free from a successful incarceration. One can see why this was among the chosen elisions, because it's closer to a character beat than to a story beat (the former is always considered expendable when a film's length is an issue), but that the movie is underpopulated with distinct personalities argues in favour of preserving it. (As editor Terry Rawlings shrewdly observes, predicting that Golic will foil his comrades, Gilligan-style, additionally ups the tension of the film's latter half.) Ditto an extra beat that cultivates the friendship between Ripley and the sanguine Aaron (Ralph Brown) wherein they request permission from Weyland-Utani to terminate the xenomorph--painting Aaron's fate in even more nihilistic strokes. If Fincher outed himself as a Bond fan by temporarily signing on to helm the third instalment of another espionage franchise, Mission: Impossible III, Ripley's sparkling bronze appearance as she washes ashore may well be an homage to Goldfinger, and this previously unseen sequence is important for showing Clemens to be her rescuer, uniting the pair cosmically rather than arbitrarily. Their seaside meeting has the added benefit of enriching Alien³'s visual texture, opening up as it does the film's contained setting, from which there's otherwise no pronounced relief.

So the emperor isn't quite naked, but the A3SE's Holy Grail rep overwhelms the reality, which is that, like the Alien³ we know best, it's a diamond in the rough--one that was included in the Quadrilogy with Fincher's blessing but not his participation. (Frankly, I doubt that Fox put up a fight, considering the inevitable delays he would've caused: production on the Panic Room Special Edition continues apace 21 months after it was okay'd!) Many paranoid disclaimers preface the A3SE on Disc Five of the Quadrilogy, marking the optically undetectable reintegration of footage (again via seamless branching to and from the theatrical edition) as a pleasant surprise; claims of inaudible dialogue due to the impossibility of looping eleven-year-old stems are mostly without merit, save a brief Ripley/Dillon exchange regarding the nefarious Company and one or two lines spoken by Bishop II (Lance Henriksen). Subtitles, easily disabled, sprout up automatically for whatever Fox has deemed impossible to hear, but as with the previous entries in the Quadrilogy, the "Special Edition" marker inhibits any other captioning option. Sound and image assessments are identical to my experience with the '99 DVD, short of an A/B comparison. Commentators: DP Alex Thomson, editor Rawlings (commencing his contribution with "I wish that David had fought a little harder"), F/X techies Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff, Jr., and Richard Edlund, and thesps McGann and Henriksen.

DISC 6 - ALIEN³: BONUS MATERIAL

The Making of Alien³
directed by Fredrick Garvin

PRE-PRODUCTION

Development: Concluding the Story (17 mins.)
Renny Harlin is surprisingly cogent while recapping the creative differences that led to his resignation from Alien³ a year into prepping it. (He felt the Alcatraz-in-space idea that Hill and Giler had was not branching out enough from the milieu of the previous movies.) Henn mentions an off-the-cuff idea for Alien³ that Cameron whispered in her ear to no avail.

Tales of the Wooden Planet: Vincent Ward's Vision (13 mins.)
Vincent Ward (What Dreams May Come), who vacated the director's chair, too, describes his mental picture for Alien³--from its monk planet (fabricated from wood) to a pursuit through a wheat field--complete with visual aids. It all sounds very cool until Giler punctures the bubble: "We never could get him to explain the whole wood planet." Woodruff, Jr. ventures that Ward's aliens had "too human an agenda."

The Art of Arceon
A portfolio of conceptual art based on Ward's screenplay.

Pre-Production: Part I (12 mins.)
Jon Landau, Fox's president in charge of physical production circa 1991, feigns sympathy for Fincher ("He didn't have a script going in," Landau marvels ad nauseum), but the leopard shows his spots in later featurettes. Weaver remembers Fincher instantly endearing himself to her by answering her question "How do you see Ripley in this one?" with, "I dunno--bald?" Biehn reiterates his intense disappointment with not being asked to return, which led him to turn down a huge sum of money for the use of his likeness in the film ("I was sorta stupid back then," he confides). "If I'd known David Fincher was gonna be David Fincher..." Biehn laments.

Storyboards
Archives for every major sequence of the theatrical and Special editions.

The Art of Fiorina
Exterior and interior blueprints.

Xeno-Erotic: H.R. Giger's Re-Design (10 mins.)
Fincher insisted on re-hiring Giger (pleasing Weaver--who thinks (as I do), that the aliens in Aliens kind of suck--to no end), but scheduling constraints meant that very few of the artist's ideas reached the screen. Giger's garbled English is a thing of poetry; of Fincher's alien, he says, "It should be like Bambi and a creature you like," and his sketch for said creature specifies "stiff, usles [sic] hands."

PRODUCTION

Production: Part I (18 mins.)
Unstinting glimpses of Fincher directing--his eyes never leave the monitor. Fox sock-puppet Ezra Swerdlow, barely able to repress his contempt for Fincher, terms Parkinsons-afflicted cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth "the only person David was reverential towards." (Cronenweth's son Jeff subsequently shot Fincher's Fight Club.) Alex Thomson replaced Cronenweth on Alien³ after the infirmary scenes were in the can; a SteadiCam accident helped Thomson develop a texture for the picture that was his own.

Production Gallery
A photo archive.

Furnace Construction: Time-lapse Sequence (5 mins.)
Norman Reynolds' furnace is rapidly erected.

Adaptive Organism: Creature Design (21 mins.)
A featurette with an inordinate amount of dialogue dedicated to stuff that's only in the Special Edition, such as the "Bambi-burster" and EEV Bioscan (an overcooked X-ray simulation). A greyhound draped in the alien exoskeleton is indescribably creepy--until he moves, and becomes just another dog in a Christmas sweater.

A.D.I.'s Workshop
A photo archive of Woodruff's crew.

EEV Bioscan
A tri-angle-plus-composite vignette with optional commentary from Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.'s Alec Gillis.

Production: Part II (15 mins.)
This is where the troubles are sketched with the most depth. Rawlings returned to the fold and avows his preference for the Special Edition, whose assembly ("a wasted effort") was a stall tactic on the studio's part--they perceived production not as having ended, but come to a stop, and asked for reshoot-assisted surgery on the picture. Make-up man Greg Cannom, hired to fashion a bald cap for Weaver (because her contract guaranteed her a $40K bonus for head-shaving past a specific date), dismisses the Fincher/Rawlings cut as revolting (thanks to the autopsy of Newt, something I consider challenging but not for its gore quotient), and Landau speaks of deleting the Golic subplot as if the White Knight to Fincher's helpless princess.

Production: Part III (9 mins.)
"Fincher was great," Henriksen states in no uncertain terms; Weaver concurs, and Charles Dance adds, "I'd jump up off a bridge for David." Rawlings says that Fincher and Scott have a comparable eye. "Rage against the Fox machinery" ultimately killed the movie, according to Swerdlow; Giler, in a rare departure from an opinionated stance, offers that Alien³ was simply undone by "money. That's all it is."

POST-PRODUCTION

Optical Fury: Visual Effects (23 mins.)
Richard Edlund (haven't seen him for a while) on his "Mo' Motion" methodology, a precursor to the virtual sets pioneered by Lucas and Spielberg. Vintage views of Fincher crabbily supervising complex puppetry (not Edlund's forte, I'd wager) brush up against the typical dissection of miniature, matte, and CGI techniques.

Music, Editing and Sound (15 mins.)
Composer Elliot Goldenthal gets the last word in a grudge match with supervising sound editors Gary S. Gerlich and Gregory M. Gerlich, who resemble seat-fillers on "Tool Time"--he wonders if more ADR was needed (the picture sounds crappy to his ears), but mostly he's sore because he wrote a purposely industrial score that was mixed out at every opportunity. Fincher dropped off the face of the earth come the mix, according to Goldenthal; the final cues were incorporated and finessing was done with the ruckus of the L.A. riots in the background and no director in the hot seat.

Visual Effects Gallery
A photo archive.

Post-Mortem (8 mins.)
Thomson confesses, "Personally I've always been confused by who's who and what's what." Join the club, I'm tempted to say--just can't believe I'm saying it to the cinematographer. Still, a good picture that Giler somewhat hyperbolically reminds us grossed as much as, if not more than, Alien. Harlin returns to toast Fincher on his mere nicking by the Sword of Damocles.

Special Shoot
Promotional cast photos.

DISC 7 - ALIEN RESURRECTION/ALIEN RESURRECTION: SPECIAL EDITION

Perhaps the most unheralded ingredient of the Quadrilogy is the Special Edition of Alien Resurrection (hereafter ARSE--pretty funny, huh?). Jean-Pierre Jeunet introduces this mediocre variation on a mediocre film; the ARSE opens (hehe) with the splatting of a CG bug against a window of the Auriga (a prologue Jeunet deemed tonally inappropriate in the first place), pads the dialogue in Ripley 8's quasi-autopsy, and concludes with the now-familiar "I'm a stranger here myself," but spoken on a hillside overlooking an unconvincingly ruined Paris. (Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder may as well have been superimposed onto a frame-grab of Amélie.) I can't muster any enthusiasm for these trés précieux alterations, reason being they're at aesthetic odds with the rest of the picture (if consistent with Jeunet's own oeuvre), though I suppose the image of the quashed insect foreshadows the alien-human hybrid's irreverent demise. C'est bon? Nah, c'est yawn. Yakkers: Jeunet, F/X talent Gillis, Woodruff, Jr., and Pitof, conceptual artist Sylvain Despretz, and performers Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, and Leland Orser. Video, in 2.32:1 anamorphic widescreen, is as gorgeously harsh as before, but a sensational DTS upgrade is bestowed upon the 5.1 mix.

DISC 8 - ALIEN RESURRECTION: BONUS MATERIAL

One Step Beyond: The Making of Alien: Resurrection
directed by Charles de Lauzirika

PRE-PRODUCTION

From the Ashes: Reviving the Story (10 mins.)
"We opposed Alien 4," says Giler--"We read the script and thought, Well this is just gonna ruin the franchise." If nothing else, these extras teach a vital lesson: Giler aside, Joss Whedon's first draft had the whole town abuzz (don't believe me? A film school peer of mine was anxiously sent the script within weeks of its circulation in a care package from his friend in L.A.); Jeunet and the studio got along like a house on fire; nobody in the cast or crew was replaced mid-shoot; the composer had seven months to score the picture; and everyone was sad to see it end. Moral of the story? Smooth production=lousy movie.

First Draft Screenplay
Whedon's screenplay, unabridged.

French Twist: Direction and Design (26 mins.)
Conceptual artist Sylvain Despretz gets the ball rolling on the inevitable recap of the rift that Alien Resurrection caused in Jeunet and Marc Caro's partnership. Still, Caro drafted a lot of costumes that were later adapted by Bob Ringwood, who was "pretty pissed off" that the book on the making of the film awarded Caro every ounce of wardrobe credit.

Under the Skin: Casting and Characterizations (13 mins.)
Ron Perlman calls Alien Resurrection "a walk in the park compared to City of Lost Children," Jeunet's previous film on which he was the only English-speaking member of the production. Winona Ryder did not submit to a new talking head for the disc--de Lauzirika might be exacting a form of revenge on the alleged kleptomaniac in excerpting Ryder's cute confession that she stole props from the set! Weaver's face-time is also limited to period interviews, wherein she scoffs at the notion of an Alien Vs. Predator movie; wonder how she took the news.

Test Footage: Concepts and Costumes
A.D.I.'s dry runs at the alien lifecycles and messier human kills (with or without commentary from Gillis), as well as hair and make-up tests for Weaver.

The Marc Caro Portfolio
Character designs by Jeunet's erstwhile co-conspirator.

The Art of Alien Resurrection
Conceptual art galleries.

Storyboards
Eight individual archives of hyper-detailed storyboards.

Pre-Visualizations
Toggle between key actions in storyboard, video storyboard, and storyboard-video storyboard-finished film composite forms, with video rehearsal or final mix audio.

PRODUCTION

Death From Below: Fox Studios Los Angeles, 1996 (32 mins.)
A tedious how-they-did-it focused on the underwater pursuit. After the parameters (flooded soundstage, submersible fluorescent lights, terrified actors) are established, we start to feel a little waterlogged ourselves.

In the Zone (7 mins.)
Sigourney genuinely made that impossible basket.

Production Gallery
Photo archive.

Unnatural Mutation: Creature Design (26 mins.)
"I love these guys!" Jeunet professes of Woodruff and Gillis. Illustrating the aesthetic gulf between Jeunet and Cameron, Jeunet ordered up "more larval" chestbursters.

A.D.I.'s Workshop
Photo archive.

POST-PRODUCTION

Genetic Composition: Music (13 mins.)
John Frizzell's "Romantic" score doesn't do it for me, but his demonstration of weird instruments like the "rubbing rod" whet my schlock appetite.

Virtual Aliens: Computer Generated Imagery (10 mins.)
Blue Sky was recruited to pop the franchise's CGI cherry based on their cockroach animation for Joe's Apartment. The results are mixed, but there's one absolutely faultless illusion in the film, and Blue Sky is responsible.

A Matter of Scale: Miniature Photography (23 mins.)
Jeunet and Khondji threw wrenches in the machine by asking for models that would first of all fit snugly within the 2.35:1 frame and second of all impress under Khondji's high-contrast lighting conditions.

Visual Effects Gallery
Photo archive.

Critical Juncture: Reaction to the Film (14 mins.)
Despretz deftly sums up the median response to Alien Resurrection: "I thought it was really extraordinarily pretty...but it didn't leave a groove." From there, the film's constituency speculates the future of the franchise; almost everybody, Gilder included, draws the conclusion that the next step is to prequelize Alien--something that Paul W.S. Anderson is in the process of botching with spring 2004's Alien Vs. Predator.

Special Shoot
Promotional Cast Photos.

ALIEN Quadrilogy - BONUS DISC 9 & CHEEKY END NOTES

Ripley tells the creature in Alien³, "I can't remember a time when you weren't in my life"--those words (and Weaver's chilling delivery of them) really resonated with me by the time I reached the ninth and final disc of the Quadrilogy. Bless the gods it's just a ROM-enabled interactive compilation of the shooting scripts for the four films with interface-embedded links to slides of "Dark Horse" comic covers and the Quadrilogy's homepage. MASSIVE BLUNDER ALERT, DECEMBER 2ND, 2003: Due to a technical gaffe for which I assume full responsibility, my machine misinterpreted the ninth DVD as having zero video-based supplements. That is, of course, not the case: a semi-redundant bonus documentary from Britain's Channel 4 ("Alien Evolution"), a 7-minute promotional short for Alien from 1979, an American Cinematheque Q&A with Ridley, neato LaserDisc "recreations" of the then-groundbreaking Alien and Aliens boxes, a negligible Alien³ featurette, a 17-minute piece on Bob Burns--an obsessive collector of Alien memorabilia--called "Aliens in the Basement," and a slew of trailers and TV spots for the Alien quartet put this behemoth, plus yours truly, to bed. Apologies for the error and any inconvenience it may have caused. A few weeks ago, some xenomoron posted on Home Theater Forum that he wouldn't be purchasing this set because a gatefold with a five-foot wingspan sounds vaguely inconvenient to him (the packaging is indeed cumbersome, but who cares?); the only complaint to be lodged is that Fox didn't do something this definitive with the Legacy. You can't see me, but I'm smiling through fatigue--and if I'm not sad that this 78-hour task is over, the realization that I'll never encounter a juicier box set dawns bittersweetly.