Outland / Red Planet 4K UHD

Although Outland (1981) isn’t officially part of the Alien or Blade Runner universe, but it’s certainly cut from the same cloth.  Director Peter Hyams blue-collar space odyssey shares the same “truckers in space” visual aesthetic, trapping its characters in a corporate-funded indentured servitude that doesn’t look much more appealing than a Pennsylvania coal mine…and is actually whole lot more dangerous.

Set on a mining facility on one of Jupiter’s moons, Sean Connery stars as Marshall William O’Niel, assigned to keep the peace on an installation that seems to be having more accidents than usual.  What clues he can turn up point to a conspiracy headed by Sheppard (Peter Boyle), whose work-hard, play-hard philosophy is turning his employees into drug addicted time bombs. Outnumbered and outgunned, O’Niel is targeted for death by a hit squad arriving on the next shuttle with a countdown straight out of High Noon.

Shot with tremendous style by Hyams (who usually served as his own cinematographer), Outland is the sort-of serious sci-fi that took a backseat to Star Wars upbeat escapism.  It’s themes of corporate greed and environmental rape would be swallowed up by the Reagan era soon enough.  But it remains a top-notch thriller and one of Connery’s best performances outside of the Bond franchise.  Not so much a “space Western” as a zero-g morality play, Outland seems to suggest that even the next frontier is going to require a certain type of man (and woman) to survive.

Red Planet (2000) was one of several Mars-centric film released at the turn of the millennium.  And while it garnered the least attention, it’s aged better than its contemporaries, discarding most of the subtext and subtleties for a fast-paced survival story that throws in a malfunctioning robot for good measure.

After a catastrophic incident separates the crew, Captain Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) struggles to regain communication with the survivors on Mars surface, including “space janitor” Val Kilmer whose common-sense and calm demeanor flips the script to make him mission leader on their quest for a rendezvous point.  Meanwhile AMEE, their mechanical navigator, gets accidently stuck on military mode and proceeds to hunt them all down for sport…that’s if they don’t run out of oxygen first.

While Kilmer’s performance isn’t exactly “Iceman in space,” he still brings a lot of the cocky charm that made him an interesting leading man.  And the film backs him up with an equally interesting supporting cast, including Terence Stamp and Tom Sizemore.  The effects are convincing, the story brisk and while there are little green men in sight – for better or worse - Red Planet gets just enough right to win the battle of the Mars-based movies…at least until The Martian stole its thunder 15 years later.

Released by Arrow in a new 4K Ultra HD edition, Red Planet includes new interviews with VFX supervisor Jeffery A. Okun and costumer designer Steve Johnson, a new retrospective, deleted scenes, theatrical trailer, collector’s booklet and reversible artwork. As for Outland, it’s about damn time someone stepped up to plate and delivered a worthwhile special edition for this unheralded semi-masterpiece.  Arrow’s 4K Ultra HD features a new restoration, new interviews with Hyams, DP Stephen Goldblatt, VFX artists William Mesa, a pair of visual essays, new commentary track (and the archival one as well), plus a collector’s booklet, fold-out poster and new artwork.