Excerpt: "MÉTAL HURLANT: 1974 – 1987. RÉVOLUTION OF THE HUMANOÏDES. (PART 4)"

"...With the DUNE project now shelved,  Giraud, who had already been working on simultaneous projects of his own with Métal Hurlant, was in the throes of burnout.  Jodorowsky, who became depressed after his version of DUNE was canceled, commissioned Giraud to work on two comic projects with him, however, Hollywood has a knack of recycled ideas and more particularly shelved preproduction teams, with UK director Ridely Scott’s space horror ALIEN about to begin production, he morphed Jodorowsky’s DUNE team onto his new project, including Giraud.   H.R. Giger conceived the visual concept for the iconic Alien creature, Giraud designed the space outfits for the doomed crew members, giving their own aesthetics a very humanist, yet also an almost xeno edge.  It was to the credit of the set designs for ALIEN, which came from Jodorowsky’s ex-creative dream team, that ended up defining Ridely Scott’s iconic space horror.  Showcasing their ability to create unique differentials between the human and alien set pieces, whist complementing each other onto an original concept.  From that point, working with Ridely Scott, Giraud’s skills as a conceptual designer were now being seen within Hollywood, despite Jodorowsky’s failure to produce his version of DUNE, the Métal Hurlant presence was now been sourced by some of the grander science fiction productions, to which a Giraud was now mingling with the American creatives, such as Dan O’Brannon who was to create the special effects for the ill fated DUNE project. Also ended up working on ALIEN, later offering a story for Giraud to illustrate titled “The Long Goodnight” for the 1976 issue of Métal Hurlant, that in turn, ended up, once again influencing the preproduction of Ridley Scott’s next science fiction movie BLADE RUNNER which was released in 1982, with its dytopian backdrop of a future city fused with the old and new.   Yet, these ideas of an archaic retrofitted future, were not entirely the ideas of Giraud, they had previously explored by the generalist theme from the pages of Métal Hurlant since its first publication in 1974..."

___

Full article: https://chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/05/metal-hurlant-1974-1987-revolution-of_16.html

(A.Glass 2021)