Geektastic Movies for 2015

[Dharus]

Alien was enspired by The Thing and they started working on it in 1976. Filming started in late 77

Filming started in 78 and only after Star Wars was a huge hit.

Despite the multiple rewrites, 20th Century Fox did not express confidence in financing a science-fiction film. However, after the success of Star Wars in 1977 the studio's interest in the genre rose substantially. According to Carroll: "When Star Wars came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre." O'Bannon recalled that "They wanted to follow through on Star Wars, and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien".[15] Alien was greenlit by 20th Century Fox at an initial budget of $4.2 million.[15][27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28film%29

Hollywood realized that sci-fi could make money. The Thing was a great movie for its time much like War of the Worlds which is probably why it was re-released. Mad Max is and was horrible. Close Encounters I lump in with E.T. as "Disney" films. Ironic. However Close Encounters still didn't escape Star Wars...

Visual effects[edit]
Douglas Trumbull was the visual effects supervisor, while Carlo Rambaldi designed the aliens. Trumbull joked that the visual effects budget, at $3.3 million, could have been used to produce another film [in addition to this one]. His work helped lead to advances in motion control photography. The mother ship was designed by Ralph McQuarrie and built by Greg Jein. The look of the ship was inspired by an oil refinery Spielberg saw at night in India.[4] Instead of the metallic hardware look used in Star Wars, the emphasis was on a more luminescent look for the UFOs. One of the UFO models was actually an oxygen mask with lights attached to it, used because of its irregular shape. As a subtle in-joke, Dennis Muren (who had just finished working on Star Wars) put a small R2-D2 model onto the underside of the mothership.[3] The model of the mothership is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Annex at Washington Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia.[3]

Reception[edit]
The film was originally to be released in summer 1977, but was pushed back to November because of the various problems during production.[5] Upon its release, Close Encounters became a box office success, grossing $116.39 million in North America and $171.7 million in foreign countries, totaling $288 million.[22] It became Columbia Pictures' most successful film at that time.[14] Jonathan Rosenbaum refers to the film as "the best expression of Spielberg's benign, dreamy-eyed vision."[23] A.D. Murphy of Variety gave a positive review but felt "Close Encounters lacks the warmth and humanity of George Lucas's Star Wars". Murphy found most of the film slow-paced, but praised the film's climax.[24] Pauline Kael called it "a kid's film in the best sense."[7] Jean Renoir compared Spielberg's storytelling to Jules Verne and Georges Méliès.[6] Ray Bradbury declared it the greatest science fiction film ever made.[25] Based on 46 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, 96% ("Certified Fresh") of the reviewers have enjoyed the film and the site's consensus states "Close Encounters' most iconic bits (the theme, the mashed-potato sculpture, etc.) have been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that it's easy to forget that its treatment of aliens as peaceful beings rather than warmongering monsters was somewhat groundbreaking in 1977."[26]