Alien burst onto the pop cultural scene when alien entities were looked on with favor, wonder, and goodwill. Think of the lanky sightseers in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), or the eccentric oddities in the Star Wars (1977) cantina, the intergalactic place where everybody knows your species. It was Alien that restored the palpable horror in extraterrestrial encounters that began in The Thing from Another World (1951) and continued throughout the 1950s and into the 60s. But the difference between the experience of Alien and, say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), is the national trauma of seeing the blood and guts of Vietnam close encounters on the six o'clock news.
The documentary begins with the birth of the idea, a brainchild of filmmaker Dan O'Bannon, who was sparked onto the idea of a parasitic alien creature by H.R. Giger's conceptual artwork created for an aborted pass at Dune. The documentary gives equal weight to each step of the project's gestation, from several script drafts penned by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, to nibbles of interest from Roger Corman, and finally, to 20th Century-Fox's conclusive participation, headed at the time by Alan Ladd, Jr., a dead-ringer for his father. Initially interested in the unprecedented chestbursting scene, Fox and its production partner Brandywine Films commissioned a final script by Brandywine's Walter Hill and David Giler. The Brandywine team made several major adjustments from O'Bannon and Shusett's script, including changing Ripley from a male into a female character.
The Alien Saga touches briefly on the first film's influence on the horror/science fiction genres, but develops fully the production history of the Alien's spawn, namely its three sequels. Each sequel, from the blockbuster Aliens to the critically misunderstood Alien3 and the pretentious, over-the-top Alien Resurrection, is given a complete historical analysis, from casting to shooting to critical and popular reception. Cast members like Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Tom Skerritt, Carrie Henn and Ian Holm discuss their experiences, while Michael Biehn, Ripley's love interest and hard-nosed grunt in Aliens, discusses his displeasure at his character being unceremoniously killed off for Alien3. Ridley Scott and James Cameron, directors of the first two films, appear in archival interviews, but there's not a peep from directors David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, helmers of the last two.
Aside from candid and insightful interviews, The Alien Saga offers theatrical trailers, featurettes and other unseen material, including H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical conceptual artwork, on-the-set footage of the productions in process, and even rare screen tests of Sigourney Weaver, directed by Ridley Scott on elaborate sets built in London. The Alien Saga DVD is a great primer for Fox's upcoming Alien Quadrilogy, the comprehensive set of all four films. On the other hand, the DVD could stand as a reason not to invest in the sure-to-be hefty boxed set. Either way, The Alien Saga is worth a look, not just for the fascinating history behind a popular franchise, but a reminder to just how unique and daring the Alien series was - and still is.
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by Scott McGee
