The film reviews have been completed, but the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set still contains two extra discs, jammed with bonus features. If you want to see individual reviews of the films themselves, follow the Alien Anthology tag, and you’ll be taken to all of DoBlu’s coverage of the release.
Moving into the extras, disc 5 is titled Making Alien Anthology. This is certainly the heart of the bonus features. Each film is given its own section, beginning of course with Alien. The Beast Within is the main feature here, split into nine different sections. Each one of these sections is split off into different enhancement pods to further explore certain topics. In all, there are 27 pods, totaling an additional 79-minutes of content. Note that all of these extras, including everything mentioned from here on out, remain in SD.
Each of the sequels is given the same treatment. Aliens‘ documentary is called Superior Firepower, split into 11 sections, with 25 enhancement pods running just under and hour. Alien 3’s documentary, arguably the best on the disc for the honesty about the mess that was production, is called Wreckage and Rage. The 29 pods here run 74-minutes. Finally, Alien Resurrection is given the doc One Step Beyond, 10 sections here, a great look at the miniature work in there as well. The 26 pods run 75-minutes.
Disc 6, titled Alien Anthology Archives, is where you find everything else. Again, each film has its own section, split into three parts: Pre-production, Post-production, and Aftermath. Within these parts you’ll find a mish-mash of content, from stills, unused concepts, additional deleted scenes, trailers, and even the bonus features from the Laserdisc releases, where appropriate. It’s a wealth of knowledge and potential trivia.
A fifth section titled Anthology looks at things that are not related to a specific film. Things here are two cuts of a TV documentary, parodies, comics, and a wonderful look at Bob Burns’ collection of full Alien props, including things never even used in the films. [xrr rating=5/5 label=Extras]
One question still remains, and that is how these discs are stored. That’s where DoBlu’s video review comes in. You can view the embedded version below, or visit our YouTube page for the HD version:
Matt Paprocki
Matt Paprocki has critiqued home media and video games for 20 years across outlets like Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, Forbes, IGN, Playboy, Polygon, Ars, and others. His current passion project is the technically minded DoBlu.com. You can read Matt's body of work via his personal WordPress blog, and follow him on Twitter @Matt_Paprocki.
Wow, a very detailed review! Great job!
Thanks!