Alien (The Director's Cut)
by Ridley Scott
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica CartwrightDirector: Ridley Scott
Cinematographer: Derek Vanlint
Editor: David Crowther
Producer: David Giler
Producer: Gordon Carroll
Producer: Ivor Powell
Producer: Ronald Shusett
Writer: Ronald Shusett
Producer: Walter Hill
Writer: Dan O'Bannon
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-06
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Alien (The Director's Cut)
Movie Review: Two Different Takes on a Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
As someone who writes science fiction on the side, I have a keen appreciation of the genre. The Alien franchise of movies is one of the few series, in my opinion, to attempt to take the topic of aliens as extraterrestrial beings and portray them as just what they are: alien. It also takes human demographics and mindset forward and realistically portrays them as they would appear in the future. With Star Trek, all the aliens are humanoid and speak American-accented English, except for the evil ones, who speak in a British fashion (granted, Star Trek canon posits the 'Preservers' as the reason why the galaxy is full of humanoids, but still, aside from all the little skin tones, bumps and ridges, the nonhuman species tend to get a little cookie-cutter in their sameness). And in the Star Trek universe, every culture aspires to be 'human'; that is, noble and selfless, which, if you look at any newspaper anywhere, obviously just isn't the case. As well, in Alien, everything is portrayed where functionality is prime. The starship Nostromo isn't shiny; it's bulky and utilitarian. Some of its decks are downright filthy. The crew piloting it isn't all spit and polish. They are nowhere near superhuman, they smoke, they curse, make sexually offensive jokes about their crewmembers, and don't generally trust each other, just like in the real world.
THE STORY-5 Stars
I give fair warning to anyone reading this review who hasn't seen the movie yet that the following paragraph is one huge spoiler which might hamper your enjoyment of the picture. Nothing ruins suspension of disbelief like knowing what's going to happen before it does. So, for those of you who this applies to, consider skipping over it to the next one.
Deep space. It is the year 2122 A.D. (according to one source) and the starship Nostromo is returning to Earth, towing a huge mobile refinery containing twenty million tons of mineral ore or oil or some such. The crew is under hibernation for the trip, but is revived by the ship's master computer mainframe, which goes by the name of 'Mother'. They are initially in good spirits, thinking that all they have to do is off-load the cargo and pick up their paychecks, but such isn't the case. Mother has brought them out from under because it has detected a signal of unknown origin and according to a clause in contract stipulations, the crew is required to investigate under penalty of total forteiture of shares. The signal is coming from a planetoid orbiting a brown dwarf planet (a brown dwarf is a planet that just narrowly avoided accruing enough mass to collapse and fission into a star, generally massing several times that of Jupiter) which in turn is in orbit around the star Zeta 2 Reticuli, approximately 33 light years from Earth, coreward latitude (meaning closer to the core of the galaxy than we are). The ship sets down and 3 of the crew trek off to find the source of the signal. It just so happens that the signal is coming from a derelict spacecraft, of a design that none of the crew has ever seen before. They enter the ship to find a nonhuman pilot of enormous size, fossilized and grown straight out of its chair. Further investigation by crewmember Cain reveals a gigantic holding bay containing thousands of egg-like objects in perfect preservation. Cain goes down for a closer look, but is attacked by a creature from one of the eggs and rendered immobile. After the other two crewmembers, Dallas and Lambert, drag him back to the Nostromo, he's given to the science officer, Ash, for study and care. The ship is nearly hulled in an attempt to remove the creature from Cain's face when it bleeds an extremely corrosive fluid from a scalpel's incision, forgoing any other attempts to excise it. A short time later, Cain revives and rejoins the crew for a meal before they return to hibernation. During the meal, he goes into convulsions as the embryo that was implanted by the 'facehugger' bursts out of his chest, leaving the rest of the crew in shock. Things quickly go from bad to worse. The creature grows extremely fast and is almost impossibly hostile, hunting the crew by moving through the vent structure. After captain Dallas's death, Ripley discovers some disturbing information. It seems that the company already knew of the signal and the ship, had some idea of what the crew would find and sent them there to retrieve a specimen. Their lives were considered of secondary importance to the creature's capture, and Ash, who turns out to be an android, was implemented by the company as a safety measure to ensure retrieval. Thus revealed, the decision is made to scuttle the ship. Only Ripley and the ship's mascot, the tomcat Jones, escape in a shuttle. The alien stows away on the shuttle, forcing Ripley to depressurize the cabin to blow it out of the airlock. She then incinerates it with the shuttle's main thrusters. End of line, until the next movie.
Screenwriter/actor Dan O'Bannon's original vision of his idea was as a straight 'B' horror movie with the simple premise of terrorizing the audience, an all-male military crew and the repository of the eggs was initially a giant pyramid on the planet. The inclusion of Ash as a foil was added later into the plot and turned the story from one of plain scare tactics into a rather deep one implicating what man is willing to do to his fellow man for the sake of a dollar. Granted, there were PLENTY of scenes meant to rip the guts from you, courage-wise, and director Ridley Scott got plenty of flak for it, (there's one instance in which an usher in one of the theaters where the movie was premiering fainted as Ash's head was clubbed off) but the addition of corporate greed and the lengths the company was willing to go to added a deep undertone of betrayal and that struck a chord with people, garnering a huge cult following and transforming this movie into the classic it is today.
Both the theatrical release and the director's cut are excellent takes on the same story. Each simply adds instances you don't see in the other version, such as the scene in the director's cut where Ripley finds Dallas and Brett cocooned in a side passage and Dallas implores her to kill him (something that was later added, in its own fashion, to the sequels), or the scene where they first listen to the alien transmission, giving the crew the first inklings of what they're about to jump into.
VISUALS-5 Stars
Even after almost thirty years and the implementation of CGI, the sequences in Alien stack up with the best of the new shows, all in anamorphic widescreen. This proves that the cast and crew really knew what they were doing and earned their pay with this one.
SOUND-5 Stars
Digital remastering really does justice to the sounds and music. I remember seeing this on tv on one of the first movie channels (my mother wouldn't let me go to it in the theaters because it was rated 'R' and she was afraid there was nudity in it; not that it mattered that there was blood and gore) and the difference fairly screams out at me. The clear sound really adds to the atmosphere.
SPECIAL FEATURES-5 Stars
I really enjoy digging into the insides of a movie to see how it came about and the director's cut gives you several hours of commentary, artwork, and snap shots to view during the shoot of the film. One interesting note is that much of the conceptual artwork for the ship and its interior was designed by French artist Moebius of Heavy Metal magazine fame.
OVERALL-5 Stars
Alien has consistently stood the test of time, remaining popular for nearly three decades and spawning several direct sequels, spinoffs, soundtracks, comics, novels and video games. All proof that this movie has the strength to dig into the human psyche and remain a classic. Two thumbs way up.
Summary of Alien (The Director's Cut)
The terror begins when the crew of a spaceship investigates a transmission from a desolate planet, and discovers a life form that is perfectly evolved to annihilate mankind. One by one, each crew member is slain until only Ripley is left, leading to an explosive conclusion that sets the stage for its stunning sequel, "Aliens."A landmark of science fiction and horror, Alien arrived in 1979 between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back as a stylishly malevolent alternative to George Lucas's space fantasy. Partially inspired by 1958's It! The Terror from Beyond Space, this instant classic set a tone of its own, offering richly detailed sets, ominous atmosphere, relentless suspense, and a flawless ensemble cast as the crew of the space freighter Nostromo, who fall prey to a vicious creature (designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger) that had gestated inside one of the ill-fated crew members. In a star-making role, Sigourney Weaver excels as sole survivor Ripley, becoming the screen's most popular heroine in a lucrative movie franchise. To measure the film's success, one need only recall the many images that have been burned into our collective psyche, including the "facehugger," the "chestburster," and Ripley's climactic encounter with the full-grown monster. Impeccably directed by Ridley Scott, Alien is one of the cinema's most unforgettable nightmares. --Jeff Shannon
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