In a year long campaign to honour Twentieth Century Fox’s 75th birthday, many classics from the studios vast back catalogue will be re-released on Blu-ray for the first time including an October release for the ALIEN ANTHOLOGY.
All four ALIEN films have been reinvigorated for an intense Blu-ray high-definition viewing experience. The release also marks the debut of MU-TH-UR Mode, a fully interactive companion that takes the extensive materials in anthology and puts them in the user's hand - connecting fans to special features on all six discs and instantly providing an index of all available ALIEN content, including over 60 hours of special features and over 12,000 images.
It’s even more timely in light of Ridley Scott’s admission earlier this year that he’s working on not one, but two ’Alien’ prequels. This news will have excited many and struck fear into the hearts of others. Quite simply, the first two films of the anthology are without par in the science fiction universe. Forget films 3 & 4 (which are bad but tolerable) and don’t even mention the travesty of uniting the xenomorphs with Predators (who could have ever thought that was a good idea?).
Has the current fashion for prequels just gone too far? The most obvious fear is that the ‘does a Lucas’, i.e forever taint the Star Wards trilogy with 3 unsuccessful prequels. And all of this in light of the unintentional hilarity that was Scotts ‘Robin Hood’, released to universally bad reviews in Spring. What we need to ask ourselves is, should the man who made the first iconic film, then went on to make ‘Bladerunner’ be allowed another crack at the whip? It would be churlish to say no. But what would these films focus on? Scott has spoken to a few of the trade papers on this subject.
"I sat thinking about the franchise, which died on the road way back and was lying in the dust, and I thought, 'What I should do is go back. In the first Alien, when John Hurt climbed up and over the top of the rise there was a massive giant lying in a chair. The chair was either a form of engine or some piece of technology, and I always thought: no one has ever asked 'Who was the space jockey?' Inside the suit is a being.
"What we're going to try to do is squeeze in two prequels … because if you explain who [the space jockey] was and where he came from, then you may want to … go to the place where his people came from."
This seems reasonable, yet part of the appeal of the first films and indeed the mystery surrounding the ‘space jockey’ or ‘The Pilot’ (which I much prefer) is what makes the films so special; so much is left to the viewers imagination. The brief moments when we see the enormous bulk of the bleached out ‘pilot’ are magical and intense. Would an origin story spoil the effect? Very probably. It’ll certainly get the fan boys knickers in a twist. Another bone of contention will surely be the news that it’s going to be shot in 3D. Aside from the suspected gimmickry of this as an idea it also negates the dark and brooding claustrophobia which are the first films great success. It’s a fact that 3D shooting is complex and involves very bright lighting which will have to be graded down in post production.
In 3D everyone can hear you scream.