This time it’s poor? (Aliens (DVD))

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	Aliens (DVD)
Date:	23/06/01 (205 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent presentation of the film itself in terms of both image and sound, comprehensive photo gallery, interesting interview with James Cameron.

Disadvantages: No Director’s Commentary, only one trailer included, no music audio options — essentially, this is not an extras-lite DVD, but it simply has nowhere near as much content as the Alien DVD it follows.

After the impressive package that was the ‘Alien’ DVD, expectations were running high as the ‘Aliens’ disc was slotted into my player. Aliens is a very popular film indeed, and some people even seem to like it more than the first film. My own opinion, however, is that this film, whilst admittedly good, is slightly inferior to Alien, and unfortunately the same turned out to be true of the DVD release.


THE FILM
The film starts as Ripley is found in a state of suspended animation, drifting through space in one of the Nostromo escape pods after the events of the first film. She is shocked to discover that she was in hibernation for nearly 60 years and upset to discover that her young daughter died two years ago as a middle-aged woman, and reacts in disbelief when her story about the events onboard the Nostromo is dismissed and her licence is revoked. Worse, Ripley learns that the planet on which the Nostromo landed in the first film, LV-426, is now home to more than a hundred colonists — needless to say, her warnings to the Weiland-Yutani Corporation about their safety are dismissed arbitrarily.

When contact is suddenly lost with the LV-426 colony, Ripley reluctantly agrees to travel, along with Burke, a Company lawyer who unsuccessfully represented her at her tribunal, and a group of American marines to the colony in order to establish what has happened. There, they find that the only survivor is the young girl Newt, and that all the other colonists have been killed by Aliens. Then, the marines themselves come under attack, and it is not long before they are decimated, the survivors (including Ripley and Newt) barricading themselves into a corner of the colony complex and fighting for their very lives…


THE DISC

· Distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment [F1-SGB 01802DVD].
20th Century Fox are still one of the better companies releasing DVDs in the region 2 market, and Alie
ns is another solid (if admittedly not exceptional) disc.

· Rating: 18.
Aliens is actually, when one sits back and considers, a very, very violent film indeed; it was unlikely ever to achieve a rating other than 18 on this basis, especially with the footage added to make up the Special Edition.

· Region: 2 (PAL encoding).
Region 2 covers Europe and Japan; this disc should be suited to all UK DVD players, as well as any multi-region or region free player which can support PAL playback.

· Type and case: DVD9 with clear Amaray keepcase.
DVD9s have a single side with two data layers pressed to that side. The layer change during the film is not noticeable on my player.

· Running time: feature 148 minutes approx.
This is the Aliens Special Edition: featuring more than twenty minutes of extra footage not seen in the original theatrical release this is now the ‘standard’ version of the film in the same way that the Blade Runner Director’s Cut has become for that film.

· Picture format: 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.
Or, at least, a very close 16:9 anamorphic widescreen approximation. Why Cameron chose to shoot in this ratio rather than the 2.35:1 scope of the original is perhaps unclear until one considers that this film is much more based around fast action and the diversion of the audience’s attention quickly than the slowly portrayed, dark vistas of Alien. The print itself is very well presented, the colours nicely reproduced from the (dark and gloomy, as with all of the Alien films) original cinema prints; the fleshtones are accurately reproduced, and the shadows are well rendered (which, in this film, is to say ‘prominent’).

· Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1.
In audio terms this is the full monty; we would, of course, have expected no less in a well-publicised release of a well-known film, but this is still a welcome and highly effective soundtrack very well execut
ed. All five main audio tracks are used to their full advantage — when an Alien is supposed to be coming from behind, we sure know about it…

· Subtitles: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, English for the Hearing Impaired.

· Extras: Interview with James Cameron, ‘Aliens: Behind the Scenes’, Theatrical Trailer, Photo Gallery.

The interview with James Cameron is a 12-minute long videotaped affair, presented in 4:3, dating from 1986 and conducted by American journalist Don Shay of Cinefex magazine. In it James Cameron discusses three main items: his attitudes to the fact that the film is a sequel, and the fact that this can prove to be an advantage as well as a disadvantage; the psychological motivations of the Ripley character, including the fact that after the events of the first film Ripley is a wreck — this is what drives her to return to planet LV-426 — but that at the end of this film she has at last managed to find some measure of peace for herself; and the design of the Alien creatures, including the facts that there were only six suits in the film and that Cameron specifically desired the suits to be simple so that the motion of those working inside them could be less human-like. An generally interesting piece.

The ‘Aliens: Behind the Scenes’ consists of 8 subsections accessible through an interactive menu: ‘Miniature of the Colony’, ‘Miniature of the Atmosphere Processor’, ‘The Face-Hugger Mechanism’, ‘Sculpting the Chest-Burster’, ‘Testing the Chest-Burster’s Inner Skeleton’, ‘Testing the Queen’, ‘Sculpting the Miniature Queen’, and ‘Sculpting the Full Size Queen’. All of these are videotaped sections of film-contemporary origin presented in 4:3. Several of the sections are image-only (i.e. silent).

The Theat
rical Trailer is a compilation clip-show of just over two minutes’ duration, showing a selection of highlights from the film in 4:3 aspect ratio, slightly scratched film. There is no narration until the end, at which time a gravelly-voiced narrator announces: “Aliens … this time it’s war!”. As always, a welcome addition to the DVD.

In common with the Alien DVD release, the Photo Gallery contained within is very comprehensive, with separate sections dedicated to: Cast and Crew, The Narcissus, Salvage Ship and Gateway Station, The LV-426 Earth Colony, The Jorden Tractor, Assets of the Colonial Marines, Face-Huggers, The Alien Nest, Chest-Bursters, Aliens, The Queen / The Power Loader, and Theatrical Release. Each of these section contains still images embedded as a single frame in the usual way, progression through the emulated slide-show achieved by using the cursor buttons on one’s remote control.

· Menus: as with the Alien DVD, this was obviously a prestige project for 20th Century Fox, and no expense has been spared on the menus, which are designed as a kind of computer display in the centre of the screen, slightly garbled transmissions (accompanied by sound) are accompanied by menu options in rounded ‘buttons’. Altogether the presentation is very effective, and this is top rate work once again.


CONCLUSION
Undoubtedly, the Aliens DVD is a respectable package. It contains a pristine print of the film in terms of both sound and image. It contains the theatrical trailer, a comprehensive photo gallery and a worthy selection of other extras. However, it does not contain a Director’s Commentary, as many film fans would have hoped and as the Alien DVD did. Also, it does not contain the range of audio options that the Alien disc did.

Essentially, after the Alien DVD one cannot help but feel somewhat disappointed with the comparative lack of extras on this disc; there is no d
oubt that a Commentary would have made a much more satisfactory disc.

Essentially, this disc is not actually BAD, it is just that, unfortunately, the standard of our expectations was raised somewhat by the first Alien DVD, and this disc just falls under those standards by the narrowest of margins.

However, of course, four stars is still a high rating!

Summary: