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ALIEN QUADRILOGY celebrates one of the most popular series in the history of the movies. In addition to containing a mind-blowing amount of behind-the-scenes featurettes and documentaries, this comprehensive multi-pack includes multiple versions of each feature film.
ALIEN (1979 Theatrical Version and 2003 Director's Cut), ALIENS (1986 Theatrical Version and 1991 Special Edition Version), ALIEN 3 (1992 Theatrical Version and 2003 Special Edition Version), and, finally, ALIEN RESURRECTION (1997 Theatrical Version and 2003 Special Edition Version).
Full length commentaries provided by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Dan O'Bannon, Ron Shusett, Stan Winston, Tom Woodruff Jr., Alec Gillis, Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Michael Biehn, Lance Henrickson, Bill Paxton, Carrie Henn, Jenette Goldstein, Paul McGann, Ron Perlman, and more.
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Ridley Scott: I said (to the studio) I have to do a storyboard movie. So with great excitement and glee, I storyboard the movie, which actually took me 3 1/2 weeks, I worked day and night. Went back, and the budget doubled, which shows you the power of a well thought storyboard because we went from 4.2 (million in budget) to 8.4 or something like that. They suddenly saw a way to do the film, which was not doing a bunch of sets that looked like painted cardboard boxes with a dodgy man in a rubber suit running around as the beast.
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But in fact I put a statement into it . . . I don't like the word, but I had a vision of what to do with the space craft and what to do with the space suit. I was fully influenced at that moment mostly by 2001 and Star Wars, I thought that first Star Wars was formidable, but that was a fairy story. I was going to do the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of Science Fiction.
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David Giler: Walter (Hill) was originally going to do it (direct). But he decided he didn't have the temperament for special effects. We needed to have a director that was going give it some kind of real . . . other than traditional science fiction look. Whoever directed this movie was not going to quit on a monster until he has it . . . that you can believe it. That it will look right. And I thought this was the single most important thing you could have for this movie.
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Ronald Shusett: Dan said somehow the monster has to get onboard this ship in a way that will amaze everybody. And so I wake up in the middle of the night, I said Dan I have an idea. The monster screws one of the people. He says what? What are you talking about? He jumps in his face, plants a tube down him, inserts a seed in him, and later it comes bursting out of his stomach. And Dan goes, my God, that's the most amazing thing I've ever heard. And we sat up all night and wrote.
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Dan O'Bannon: A couple years down the line, I decided to do Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy. And that was the germ of Alien. I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a space craft and a small number of astronauts. I had this creepy opening, in which astronauts awaken to find that their voyage has been interrupted. They were receiving a signal from this mysterious planetoid in alien language. They go down to investigate, they get stalled down there, their ship breaks down.
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Ivor Powell: And whether they drew from others, they probably did, like everybody, they drew consciously or sub-consciously from things like Terror From Beyond Space, but they actually . . . the ingredient of this thing, they incubated it into a human being made the whole damn thing stand out.
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Sigourney Weaver: I got this audition, they sent me the script which of course not knowing the designs, I pictured this big yellow blob of gelatin chasing me. (laughs) Nothing as elegant as it turned out to be.
And I actually went to the wrong place. And I called my agent, I said I don't know, the script was . . . she said, just go. We got to do what was basically a run through of the movie with the real kind of set. What I didn't like about my performance because I was trying to be tough.
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Tom Skerritt: When I read initially, I wasn't drawn to the project. Ridley wasn't attached, it was my understanding going to be a 2 or 3 million dollar budget. Well I thought you are not going to make an effective film for that.
It's not a nice piece of material with potential, but you are not giving it that potential. About a month later I got a call from England, one of the producers at the time, and told me that Ridley was going to be directing it and there was a budget that will realize the potential.
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Veronica Cartwright:Originally I had read for Ripley and I was called back and I read again for Ripley with Ridley there. Then I was due to go over to England, so I talked to my agent and asked if they are still casting for Alien.
I might as well go see them and let them know I am here. So I went in again and I read again while I was there. I come home and I find out I get it. So I go over thinking I was doing the part of Ripley until wardrobe called and said I need to get my gear for Lambert.
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Ron Cobb: The ship is a strange mixture of retro-fitted old technology. Kind of an industrial nightmare. Like being trapped in a factory or something. So I talked Ridley into all these industrial symbols and color coding to create that industrial revolution feel.
Some of them were semi-humorous such as a space person floating upside meaning don't open this door. I went in all these directions and somehow it all fit together, Ridley made it fit all together. He's a wonderful artist and he wanted it to look a lot like a Mobeus design ship.
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Ridley Scott: We visited a bomber graveyard of aircraft. There's Wellington bombers and Spitfires, and falling apart. Roger said if I buy two of those scrap metal, it would take me a month to dismantle this.
We'll put in organized pieces on shelves and we can make sculptural corridors. Let's say I do six feet and you come down and say yea I like that, six feet. Then once you got that repetition down that length of corridor, we just worked on it that way and it looked like it flew.
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