4k-UHD/Movie Review: Alien

 

Alien is the 1979 horror/action film directed by Ridley Scott that started the Alien franchise. It stars Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skeritt, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, and Yaphet Kotto. The story involves the crew of a space tug called the Nostromo being awakened from suspended animation while returning to Earth by the ship's computer when a transmission from a nearby moon is detected. The crew is tasked with investigating the source of the transmission, which turns out to be a large spaceship with a dead alien with a hole in its chest. While investigating the ship, one of the crew members is attacked by a creature that ends up being brought aboard the ship. From there, it becomes a fairly standard monster/chase movie.

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc.  The 4k set was released in conjunction with the 40th Anniversary of the film. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is outstanding. While the film does retain some grain and noise from the transfer, the movie looks better than it has on any prior physical media release. The extras (which are included on the UHD disc), however, are limited. There are two different versions of the movie, the Director's Cut and the theatrical version. There are commentary tracks on each version of the movie. On the Director's Cut, there is a commentary track that included Scott and all of the crew members that was recorded in 2003. The commentary track on the theatrical version was recorded by Scott in 1999. Then, you can watch the theatrical version of the movie with two different scores. One is the theatrical isolated score, and the other is Jerry Goldsmith's original score, which was heavily changed for the movie's release. Then, there are a handful of deleted and extended scenes. If you own the Alien Quadrilogy on DVD or Blu-Ray, that set has a lot of extras that were not transferred over to this release. So, if you are a person who is a fan of bonus content, you will want to keep that set. Ultimately, the movie is good but dated (as the newer movies in the franchise have proven). The physical release is very good (aside from the fact that not all the prior bonus content was included) and is definitely worth the pickup.