Region 4 Winners and Losers

    The Region 1 release of the Alien Quadrilogy has just taken place (December 2003); ours is reportedly out, too, although our official release date for the box set is 10th December. You will be able to buy this 2-disc edition separately (from January 2004), or as part of the Alien Quadrilogy, and you'll get the same thing — the only difference is that the Quadrilogy includes an exclusive ninth disc.

    The Region 1 version has a couple of additional features on the movie disc (the extras disc is the same). Unfortunately, the additional features are rather nice to have:

• optional changed footage marker for the Special Edition
• separate access to deleted and extended scenes
• commentary on both versions

    Comparing the 2 disc Alien Quadrilogy version with the older 1-disc Alien Legacy version of this film is a bit cruel; this is an extremely one-sided comparison:

    The 2-disc Region 4 edition is missing:

• theatrical trailer (but see the bonus disc...)
• featurette: Behind the Scenes (3:53)

    The 1-disc Region 4 edition is missing:

• audio commentary by cast and crew
• three hours of high quality featurettes
• the first-draft screenplay (400 pages)
• hundreds of photos and shots of artwork

    Total knockout on the extras front to the newcomer. The transfer on the new disc is slightly better than the old one, even with the seamless branching for the two versions. All up, I have to report this as a rout: the two disc version is comprehensively better than the one disc.