Alien, released in 1979, was the first film to take horror to space. Now, in its digitally re-mastered 4K version on the occasion of the film’s 40th anniversary, it still feels contemporary, serious and deadly. The movie is most famous for the role of Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver, who goes from a girlish character to a tough woman, killing the alien (which has a character arc of its own) in the process.
The India premiere of the film was screened at the Jio MAMI 21st Mumbai Film Festival with Star to very enthusiastic response from audiences. The film may yet see a countrywide release this year.
Ridley Scott directed the film, which was written by Dan O’Bannon. Swiss artist HR Giger’s warped vision of aliens as lethal beings found a home in the movie. This perception was markedly different from pictures such as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s to Scott’s credit – this was only his second film – that he stayed true to the story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Scott is well-known for a wide-ranging body of work that includes The Martian, Gladiator, Thelma and Louise, and Blade Runner.
The 4K restoration involves cleaning the original cine films first and scanning them into 4K digital formats before starting to adjust the images, voices and colours. Other films such as the Coen Brothers’ classic Blood Simple have undergone 4K restorations.
Alien was screened at MAMI along with a documentary, Memory: The Origins of Alien. The documentary traced various influences on the feature film ranging from comic books to earlier drafts of sci-fi movie screenplays. Memory is yet to see a widespread release in India.
Memory also focused extensively on the scene in which the alien, in an early form, bursts out of the chest of one of the astronauts. The documentary delved into detail on how the crucial scene was staged in the absence of CGI.
When the film opens, the crew of the Nostromo, a spacecraft on its return trip to Earth, receives an SOS signal from an unknown planet and sets out to investigate it. When protocol is violated, the eponymous alien that grows very big very fast enters the craft to the utter horror of the crew, picking them off one by one.
Released during the height of the feminist movement in post-Vietnam US in the late 1970s, Alien had a strong heroine in Weaver, who iconised the role across the breadth of the entire original franchise. There are four films in the original series and two prequel movies in the franchise.
Alien takes its time getting there; the initial shots of the exterior and interior of the spaceship are paced leisurely. Until the standout ‘chestburster’ scene – when you get the bang for your buck – you wouldn’t be faulted for walking out of the theatre.
Upon release, the film saw negative reviews from a number of influential critics. But as later versions of the film were released, most of them revised their earlier held opinions. The film won an Academy Award for best visual effects and made Weaver a major star.