Alien Planet
by Pierre de Lespinois
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Curtis Clark, James Garvin, Jamie Haines, Stephen Hawking, Wayne D. BarloweDirector: Pierre de Lespinois
Producer: Pierre de Lespinois
Producer: Frances LoCascio
Producer: James R. Cowan
Producer: John Copeland
Producer: Tomi Landis
Writer: Peter Crabbe
Writer: Steve Eder
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Published), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Published)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-16
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Alien Planet
Movie Review: You MUST get this dvd
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are at all interested in the possibilities of life on other worlds, evolution, interstellar travel or the very creative art of Wayne Barlowe (Barlowe's Guides to Extraterrestrials and to Fantasy, Barlowe's Inferno, Brushfire...), you have to get a hold of this dvd. I do not have cable or satellite television, and so did not see this when it aired on Discovery Channel, but I knew about it, and I was so excited that they finally decided to do a CG "documentary" of Barlowe's incredible Expedition (1990), which is, as another reviewer observed, the first and only really serious 'what if'- type exploration of the possibilities of an extraterrestrial ecosystem - not about little green men - an entire world crafted lovingly and exquisitely by a master painter. Expedition was created in the great alternative/speculative-evolution tradition of Dougal Dixon's After Man, New Dinosaurs and Man After Man (Dixon, by the way, helped create The Future is Wild). So, I've been dying to see Alien Planet and got a copy yesterday when it was released. I was worried, however, that they would mess up such a complex and beautiful thing as Expedition by trying to bring it to the screen, especially when I saw that the thing was only about $10.
I needn't have worried! It surpassed all my expectations. Though they understandably changed the 'story' a little (perhaps for the better), Alien Planet is very faithful to the look and vision of Expedition. Darwin IV looks crisp and alive and glorious and real! The computer animation is so well done. They left out some of the animals shown in the book, but not many. I liked the idea of the robotic probes. By the way, for those who haven't seen the book Expedition (which is presented the same way he later presented the landscapes and denizens of Hell in Barlowe's Inferno - as something like a far-traveling naturalist's journal with accompanying paintings, much like an expedition notebook of, say, Audubon or Charles D. himself or one of the pioneer naturalists of the past centuries), Darwin IV is a life-filled Mars-sized planet that we explore a couple of centuries from now, filled with wild and beautiful vistas and populated with a vast and sometimes deadly array of unprecedented echolocating animals, some of them, due to the lower-than-Earth gravity, achieving sizes many times that of the largest sauropod dinosaurs of Earth (I might add, also, that the aliens in the movie Pitch Black certainly seem to be extremely Barlowesque!). My only reservation about Alien Planet is that, although it does say "based on the book Expedition by Wayne Barlowe" at the opening and closing, they do not go to great lengths to make this evident: Wayne's screentime commentary segments are very minor compared to those of the more famous scientists such as Horner and Hawking, who are only trying to help lend the credibility of scientific authority to this speculative vision of a creative genius interested in the possibilities of an alternative natural history to that of our own world. This is not those scientists' creation at all, but one man's brainchild. When he is shown, it merely says "author and artist", and viewers might be thinking "who is this guy?" Anyway, this dvd ranks right up there with the Walking With... series, Dinosaur Planet, When Dinosaurs Roamed America and The Future is Wild, and though it is shorter than most of those, it may be my favorite. What a bargain for ten bucks!
Summary of Alien Planet
"A spacecraft from another solar system invades the night sky. But this is not our sky, and we are the invaders. The search for alien life has begun." So begins Alien Planet, a Discovery Channel production that combines cutting-edge computer animation and video technology, interspersed with interviews of top scientists and filmmakers (Stephen Hawking and George Lucas, among others), to examine what life might really be like on another planet. Darwin IV, the subject of this interstellar journey, is home to a wild variety of dinosaur-like creatures, bizarre beasts, and exotic vegetation of every kind. The idea is human beings have sent an unmanned spacecraft, packed with computer-driven droids--something right out of Star Wars--to a planet 6.5 light years away. We follow along as the probes explore the planet and encounter aliens and situations of every kind, as the scientists weigh in on what they think we might really find there, and why. It?s all motivated and informed by real missions being undertaken today. While it?s all speculative, the story itself is still fascinating and events unfold according to the laws of physics, just as they would here on earth. The viewer experiences Darwin IV through the eyes of the probes; the spectacular computer animation offers stunning recreations of their explorations, and the creatures the writers have come up with are highly imaginative. The scientists? insights add to the experience by explaining the thinking behind the moments in the story, and by being appropriately relatable (one contributor compares sending the unmanned probes to the planet to watching your child at a spelling bee, hoping they make the right choice). While it?s obvious that Alien Planet is a great show for students and educators, its appeal is far wider,this is a highly entertaining program that should feed the imagination of anyone who?s ever wondered about life on other planets.--Daniel Vancini
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