And thus we have arrived at the end, closing the door on one of science fiction’s prominent film franchises. In a way this comes as a relief. Don’t get me wrong, talking about movies is what I love to do, but at the same time the last two movies of this franchise can really take it out of me as both a reviewer and a fan. Alien 3 was a bad movie but a lot of that can be blamed on studio interference, Alien Resurrection on the other hand has no excuse. It’s terrible simply because it’s a terrible movie.
I’m going to break a little bit of the trend here and actually not talk about the production history of this one because it’s unremarkable. Joss Whedon (we’ll get back to him.) wrote a script, then they hired Jean Pierre Jeunet 9the guy that directed Amelie, The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, all of which are highly recommended.) and the movie went into production without any major problems. Honestly of the movies in the series, the making of documentary for this installment was the most dull to slog through. It was all run of the mill and the only interesting part was learning how they pulled off some of the model shots in the movie because I’m always interested in that.
So why is this one a terrible movie? I mean the last one was really REALLY bad but how could this one be any worse? It’s not nearly as bleak, and it’s got a more solid narrative than the last movie, so what’s the big deal?
Mostly it boils down to one major factor: no one was really all that interested in making this one. The director says in interviews how baffled he was that he was chosen, the producers weren’t too hot on the script, and even a lot of the actors seem to only be in this one for the paycheck. A lot of this apathy comes across on the screen as the characters slog from one location to the other with the only instances staying on the mind being weird, random moments that mostly seem to come from Jeunet’s odd style trying to fit in.
However being dull isn’t the main killing point for this one. No for that I have to say something that will probably get me some death threats, but I have to say it because it was a huge flaw with the movie: Joss Whedon’s script was not very good. Whedon’s fans have tried to defend this movie, and some with very well thought out arguments, but a bad script is still a bad script. The main issue I have is how it starts the plot and puts the xenomorphs back into the mix.
It is revealed that the actions of Alien 3 happened 200 years in the movie’s past, and a team of military scientist have cloned Ripley to try and retrieve the queen embryo that she was carrying at the time of her death. Now, for those that haven’t rolled their eyes yet, genetics don’t work that way. First of all let’s ignore the fact that Ripley jumped into a vat of molten lead wiping out all trace of the creature due to the extremely high temperatures, after all the film does. This idea of cloning Ripley to get the alien queen is patently absurd. Why? A: Ripley’s DNA does not include the alien queen embryo. B: Why didn’t they just clone the alien queen embryo? No, don’t just point out that this is science fiction, that I need to just allow my suspension of disbelief to take hold, none of that excuses this. Cloning Ripley would not net you the queen because when you clone something you’re starting with a based genetic code and duplicating it. The xenomorph is a parasite, and thus is just an invader to the body that has no real effect other than when it bursts out of the chest. It does not alter your DNA. However, if you can get the DNA of Ripley to make a clone, then just keep sifting that molten pit of lead and find all the pieces for the alien queen. One of the things that they bring up about the RIpley clone is that they are worried that she is regaining her memories and that she might remember that the last part of her life was a quest to completely destroy the xenomorphs... So why did you bring HER back again? They try to hand wave this away with a whole “the samples were corrupted” BS exposition dump, but again genetics don’t work that way. And I’m not some crazy biologist or anything, they brought this damn idea up in Jurassic Park. A crucial part of that movie was that the dinosaurs were cloned, but the scientists needed to use the DNA of a frog to fill in the holes in the genetic sequences left by, you know, being in the ground for 65 million years.
Now, you might say that part of the xenomorph physiology has them take traits from their host to shape their final form. Fine, I’ll play. Yes, this COULD potentially lead to an alien/human hybrid, but that’s it. Yes, this is something that happens in the movie, but it still doesn’t hold water. YOU STILL WOULD NOT GET THE QUEEN EMBRYO!
And it’s not like I’m ragging on Joss Whedon to bait his rabid fan base, I happen to like a lot of the things he’s done. But the man is not perfect, no one is. Hell I have several filmmakers that I love even more than him and they’ve all made some things that are less than stellar. I’m not even ragging on the rest of the people behind this film. Jeunet is a very talented visual storyteller, and his director of photography Darius Khondji does give the film a lot in the looking really cool department. But all in all this movie just never works.
It just can’t settle on a tone. It bounces between dry humor one minute, intense action the next, mind fuck horror after that and then back to wry one liners. It makes it hard to take anything in the movie seriously. Even the actors don’t seem to be all that concerned about what’s going on, mostly there to just have fun being in an Alien movie. No one’s really bad or anything, just not taking things seriously and when you’ve built an entire franchise on serious horror, playing up the camp is not a good idea.
If there’s any entertainment to be had in this movie it’s to marvel at the sheer amount of WTF moments and basically just the fact that this movie gets as bad as it does. Both version are the same kind of terrible and I again can’t really give any points to this movie because it’s just awful.
0 out of 5
But what of the franchise’s future? The xenomorphs made it back onto the big screen in the Alien Versus Predator films, why shouldn’t I talk about them? Because there’s not terribly much to say. Both films are awful, the first for being both too tame and because it plays fast and loose with the continuity and the second for being stupid, really stupid. Prometheus was probably the best idea to go with at this point seeing how the franchise had gone down the crapper. Hopefully its reasonable numbers at the box office will keep steering the franchise out of the nose dive it has been in for a long time. Fingers crossed over here.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Alien Retrospective Part 3: Alien 3
UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH! It’s sad, but well known rule of fandom that no matter how much you love something, be it a movie, comic, TV show, etc., no matter how rabid or unhealthy (and boy does it sometimes get REAL unhealthy.) that love affair is, it will inevitably fuck you in someway. And I’m talking the hardcore sweaty pound your ass with no lube prison rape type of fucking here. With Star Trek it was (Debatably) movie 5, (or 1, or 7, or 9 or 10, or the reboot, or Voyager, or Enterprise, OR anything that came with TNG like i said, it’s debatable and down to the individual nerd.), with James Cameron’s Terminator franchise it was the unneeded third film (Which IS flawed, but by no means terrible, just useless.), Spider man fans got to suffer through both the disastrous Clone Saga (4+ years of confusing plot twists and tiresome marketing ploys.) AND the heinous One More Day (unless you like whining, selfish character actions, and outright immoral decisions, you probably shouldn’t read comics and just go back to your Jersey Shore DVDs) and us movies lovers have had to to deal with things like Michael Bay. (so clearly our pain is the greatest!) This is getting convoluted, the point is that there is always a point where the great and awesome starts to decompose, leaving so much crap. And boy is there no better word to describe this movie.
Alien 3 is one of those movies that for a long time held a certain infamy in sci fi fandom not just because of how bad it was, but also because of how it (to that point at least) ended the series. Those claiming to like it were either stoned on sight or acknowledged as 12 year olds that just didn’t know any better. Ok, not really but this movie was basically the Highlander 2 of the Alien franchise when it hit, and it’s not hard to see why: On fundamental level, this movie doesn’t, nay outright CAN’T work. Why is that?
A lot of that has to do with the studio seeing dollar signs in the wake of Aliens buying them all new yachts, they wanted more and they wanted it now. However, this time there wasn’t the amazing story of the young talent out of obscurity like the first two films. This time there wasn’t the good idea spark to drive the story, there wasn’t a story at all. This was a studio rushing to get another sequel out to pay for the helipad add on they wanted for their yachts. How naked was this cash grab? They didn’t have a script, hadn’t confirmed that SIgourney Weaver was returning, they had no director, or really anything other than a vague idea probably written on a cocktail napkin; but they put out a trailer, with a proposed release date. I mentioned Aliens had a troubled production due to James Cameron’s frustrations working with a non-american crew for the first time, but that was a four second slap fight compared to what happened to this movie’s PRE-PRODUCTION alone. There are so many reject scripts for this that some of them have actually been turn into other movies. You want an example? Pitch Black. Yes, writer director David Twohy took a script he was hired to write for this sequel, re-dressed and tweaked it, and thus we had Pitch Black. People like Near Dark co-writer Eric Red wrote a few drafts, acclaimed sci fi author William Gibson wrote a few drafts, there were drafts that had Ripley, drafts that didn’t, drafts that had Hicks and Bishop going to the xenomorph home world, some that focused on entirely new characters, and I’m sure there’s probably a trashed draft of just the words ‘fuck you!’ written over and over by some poor writer having to go back and rewrite his script again because the studio couldn’t make up its mind. They also hired directors, as in plural because both quit at some point, and again, THEY STILL HAD NO SOLID SCRIPT! Ok, that’s not quite true of second director Vincent Ward. He had an idea that the studio apparently at some point liked, and to be fair, a fair amount of the plot elements from it remain in the final film. However, at some point while they were dealing with him, and they were starting to build sets by this point, the studio wanted all kinds of changes and thus in frustration Ward quit and they had to find someone else to handle this crazy train that was fast derailing. That was David Fincher. Fincher, if you haven’t heard, is a truly amazing talent and is one of the best filmmakers we have currently working in the world with amazing works like Se7en, Fight Club and The Social Network. This was his feature film debut, and why he still makes films baffles me. The studio was hounding him the whole time, they were always asking for changes, to get the film finished faster despite that, and they were sending producers in to reinforce these other things, all because they needed the neon lit helipad for their... ok, I’m done with the yacht metaphor, but the point is they weren’t out to make a film, they were out to make a profit. As you can imagine, David Fincher’s job was nothing short an act of masochism just by showing up for work everyday having to deal with the new notes from the producers. And what was the result? A domestic gross that only gave them five million dollars in profit, and the only big money coming from overseas to make up for it. Those that want comparison: Alien grossed around 70 million in pure profit DOMESTICALLY and Aliens grossed about the same, despite the budget being twice the size of movie one. That’s BEFORE you add the overseas numbers to get HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS.
This brings up a point that I’d like to talk about for movies in general, but I’d rather save that for an editorial and just briefly discuss the major bullet points. A lot of the times, hindsight makes us a lot angrier than we should probably be, especially on things like studio decisions that affect entire films. It usually comes up with people that have seen a far superior director’s cut and are raging about why it was changed for theatrical release and all that jazz. And you know what? It makes me angry too, I firmly believe that the studio choice to add a useless voice over to Blade Runner was a terrible idea and probably hurt that movie’s chances to succeed, or that the Love Conquers All Version of Brazil is a boil from the darkest corner of Satan’s ass, but when I really look at some of these things I have to sigh and shake my head because I see that in a way the producers were sort of right. Hollywood is a business, sleek awesome looking movies cost money, and the bigger the production, the bigger the risk. Were these people creatively right? No! These were terrible ideas! But at the same time, were they completely wrong for thinking something might not play well and they may end up in financial ruin? Yes. Hell, Terry Gilliam actually won a campaign to keep the studio from releasing that version of Brazil and his cut STILL flopped on arrival and only became profitable thanks to a cult following of fans that adore it. However, this wasn’t just a studio imposing a change on something part way through, or wanting the ending reshot. (Both of which happened anyway.) This was a studio that was micro managing the thing every step of the way, when they had no idea what they actually wanted to do in the first place.
And it shows in the finished product. I may have rambled about the studio interference but it is at the core of a lot of the problems with this movie. The story is basically non-existent being merely a retread of the first film with a new cast and a different location. The characters, save Ripley, are all thin and flat only ever standing out thanks to the disturbingly high caliber of the actors involved (Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Pete Postlethwaite, Charles S Dutton). The alien really has no menace due to being seen far more than before. The opening is insulting to the fans that grew to love the characters from the previous movies that were killed.
This is all a shame because a lot of the actual components that make up the film are good by themselves. For example, I think some of the sound design is very well done. Elliot Goldenthal’s score is appropriately morose fitting the movie’s attempted tone (and overall feeling it leaves you with so I guess mission accomplished there.) Terry Rawlings returned to edit the movie, and probably needed a stiff drink while doing so, and while the overall film is still a turd, it’s a well put together turd in spots. And Fincher’s choices as a director indicate the talent he later proved in far less torturous productions.
But to me most criminal of all things done in this movie, it’s the ruination of Ripley’s character development from the previous movie. Part of the point of Newt’s character was that she and Ripley were both orphans in a way thanks to the xenomorphs, Ripley because it caused her to be lost in the vacuum of space and Newt because they killed her parents. Through the course of the film they both grow a bond with each other resulting Ripley basically adopting her and because of this they were able to together put the nightmare behind them. It was a good piece of character development because Ripley still had her chances to be badass, but also got to have more depth added with essentially being a single mother by movie’s end. Then in this movie, all that is pretty much ruined by killing newt in the opening credits. Yes, it is carried over sort of by having Ripley mourn her death but it’s basically tossed aside afterwards and Newt may as well have not existed. Hell, Michael Biehn hated the idea of killing everyone right away so much he refused to give them rights to use his likeness unless they paid him just as much for that as he had for being in Aliens.
I get it, it’s meant to take Ripley into a new state of mind and take away everything she had left to make it easier for her to commit suicide to get rid of the xenomorph and thematically for the sake of the film’s apocalyptic theme. That doesn’t change the fact that it comes off as a middle finger to the fans of the franchise that liked the end of the last movie. It makes it hardly worth it to talk about RIpley’s character because all they have her do the whole movie is want to die, and by the end so do a lot of the audience.
This movie isn’t scary it’s just depressing. It had some moments of worth but it never comes together and it does so much about ruining things from the last movie that as a fan I just can’t deal with it. The re-edited version is a bit of an improvement thanks to a couple things but the big problems are still there. The movie is a meandering mess and it should come as no surprise that David Fincher has done everything he can to separate himself from it, refusing any involvement in the DVD special edition. And I honestly can’t recommend this outside general curiosity, and next time things are only going to get worse.
Both versions:
1 out of 5
Alien 3 is one of those movies that for a long time held a certain infamy in sci fi fandom not just because of how bad it was, but also because of how it (to that point at least) ended the series. Those claiming to like it were either stoned on sight or acknowledged as 12 year olds that just didn’t know any better. Ok, not really but this movie was basically the Highlander 2 of the Alien franchise when it hit, and it’s not hard to see why: On fundamental level, this movie doesn’t, nay outright CAN’T work. Why is that?
A lot of that has to do with the studio seeing dollar signs in the wake of Aliens buying them all new yachts, they wanted more and they wanted it now. However, this time there wasn’t the amazing story of the young talent out of obscurity like the first two films. This time there wasn’t the good idea spark to drive the story, there wasn’t a story at all. This was a studio rushing to get another sequel out to pay for the helipad add on they wanted for their yachts. How naked was this cash grab? They didn’t have a script, hadn’t confirmed that SIgourney Weaver was returning, they had no director, or really anything other than a vague idea probably written on a cocktail napkin; but they put out a trailer, with a proposed release date. I mentioned Aliens had a troubled production due to James Cameron’s frustrations working with a non-american crew for the first time, but that was a four second slap fight compared to what happened to this movie’s PRE-PRODUCTION alone. There are so many reject scripts for this that some of them have actually been turn into other movies. You want an example? Pitch Black. Yes, writer director David Twohy took a script he was hired to write for this sequel, re-dressed and tweaked it, and thus we had Pitch Black. People like Near Dark co-writer Eric Red wrote a few drafts, acclaimed sci fi author William Gibson wrote a few drafts, there were drafts that had Ripley, drafts that didn’t, drafts that had Hicks and Bishop going to the xenomorph home world, some that focused on entirely new characters, and I’m sure there’s probably a trashed draft of just the words ‘fuck you!’ written over and over by some poor writer having to go back and rewrite his script again because the studio couldn’t make up its mind. They also hired directors, as in plural because both quit at some point, and again, THEY STILL HAD NO SOLID SCRIPT! Ok, that’s not quite true of second director Vincent Ward. He had an idea that the studio apparently at some point liked, and to be fair, a fair amount of the plot elements from it remain in the final film. However, at some point while they were dealing with him, and they were starting to build sets by this point, the studio wanted all kinds of changes and thus in frustration Ward quit and they had to find someone else to handle this crazy train that was fast derailing. That was David Fincher. Fincher, if you haven’t heard, is a truly amazing talent and is one of the best filmmakers we have currently working in the world with amazing works like Se7en, Fight Club and The Social Network. This was his feature film debut, and why he still makes films baffles me. The studio was hounding him the whole time, they were always asking for changes, to get the film finished faster despite that, and they were sending producers in to reinforce these other things, all because they needed the neon lit helipad for their... ok, I’m done with the yacht metaphor, but the point is they weren’t out to make a film, they were out to make a profit. As you can imagine, David Fincher’s job was nothing short an act of masochism just by showing up for work everyday having to deal with the new notes from the producers. And what was the result? A domestic gross that only gave them five million dollars in profit, and the only big money coming from overseas to make up for it. Those that want comparison: Alien grossed around 70 million in pure profit DOMESTICALLY and Aliens grossed about the same, despite the budget being twice the size of movie one. That’s BEFORE you add the overseas numbers to get HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS.
This brings up a point that I’d like to talk about for movies in general, but I’d rather save that for an editorial and just briefly discuss the major bullet points. A lot of the times, hindsight makes us a lot angrier than we should probably be, especially on things like studio decisions that affect entire films. It usually comes up with people that have seen a far superior director’s cut and are raging about why it was changed for theatrical release and all that jazz. And you know what? It makes me angry too, I firmly believe that the studio choice to add a useless voice over to Blade Runner was a terrible idea and probably hurt that movie’s chances to succeed, or that the Love Conquers All Version of Brazil is a boil from the darkest corner of Satan’s ass, but when I really look at some of these things I have to sigh and shake my head because I see that in a way the producers were sort of right. Hollywood is a business, sleek awesome looking movies cost money, and the bigger the production, the bigger the risk. Were these people creatively right? No! These were terrible ideas! But at the same time, were they completely wrong for thinking something might not play well and they may end up in financial ruin? Yes. Hell, Terry Gilliam actually won a campaign to keep the studio from releasing that version of Brazil and his cut STILL flopped on arrival and only became profitable thanks to a cult following of fans that adore it. However, this wasn’t just a studio imposing a change on something part way through, or wanting the ending reshot. (Both of which happened anyway.) This was a studio that was micro managing the thing every step of the way, when they had no idea what they actually wanted to do in the first place.
And it shows in the finished product. I may have rambled about the studio interference but it is at the core of a lot of the problems with this movie. The story is basically non-existent being merely a retread of the first film with a new cast and a different location. The characters, save Ripley, are all thin and flat only ever standing out thanks to the disturbingly high caliber of the actors involved (Charles Dance, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Pete Postlethwaite, Charles S Dutton). The alien really has no menace due to being seen far more than before. The opening is insulting to the fans that grew to love the characters from the previous movies that were killed.
This is all a shame because a lot of the actual components that make up the film are good by themselves. For example, I think some of the sound design is very well done. Elliot Goldenthal’s score is appropriately morose fitting the movie’s attempted tone (and overall feeling it leaves you with so I guess mission accomplished there.) Terry Rawlings returned to edit the movie, and probably needed a stiff drink while doing so, and while the overall film is still a turd, it’s a well put together turd in spots. And Fincher’s choices as a director indicate the talent he later proved in far less torturous productions.
But to me most criminal of all things done in this movie, it’s the ruination of Ripley’s character development from the previous movie. Part of the point of Newt’s character was that she and Ripley were both orphans in a way thanks to the xenomorphs, Ripley because it caused her to be lost in the vacuum of space and Newt because they killed her parents. Through the course of the film they both grow a bond with each other resulting Ripley basically adopting her and because of this they were able to together put the nightmare behind them. It was a good piece of character development because Ripley still had her chances to be badass, but also got to have more depth added with essentially being a single mother by movie’s end. Then in this movie, all that is pretty much ruined by killing newt in the opening credits. Yes, it is carried over sort of by having Ripley mourn her death but it’s basically tossed aside afterwards and Newt may as well have not existed. Hell, Michael Biehn hated the idea of killing everyone right away so much he refused to give them rights to use his likeness unless they paid him just as much for that as he had for being in Aliens.
I get it, it’s meant to take Ripley into a new state of mind and take away everything she had left to make it easier for her to commit suicide to get rid of the xenomorph and thematically for the sake of the film’s apocalyptic theme. That doesn’t change the fact that it comes off as a middle finger to the fans of the franchise that liked the end of the last movie. It makes it hardly worth it to talk about RIpley’s character because all they have her do the whole movie is want to die, and by the end so do a lot of the audience.
This movie isn’t scary it’s just depressing. It had some moments of worth but it never comes together and it does so much about ruining things from the last movie that as a fan I just can’t deal with it. The re-edited version is a bit of an improvement thanks to a couple things but the big problems are still there. The movie is a meandering mess and it should come as no surprise that David Fincher has done everything he can to separate himself from it, refusing any involvement in the DVD special edition. And I honestly can’t recommend this outside general curiosity, and next time things are only going to get worse.
Both versions:
1 out of 5
Friday, September 7, 2012
Alien Retrospective Part 2: Aliens
Sequels are a very very muddy territory to walk into. I mean really think about this, how many different kinds of sequels are there out there? You have the most obvious in direct sequels, (Back to the Future 2, Star Trek 2 [KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!] etc.) and then you have spiritual sequels (Casino). But let’s not forget things like sequels that are only sequels because they take place in the same universe (Soldier, the new Marvel movie universe, and pretty much all of Kevin Smith’s filmography.) and then you have sequels that have nothing to do with the original save maybe a character or something like that (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.) After all that, you then have the terrible, though sadly mostly true stereotype that sequels at most are meh-ish versions of the previous movies or just outright suck. The problem with that is that you then also have those sequels that aren’t only good, but they leave the first one in the dust with how great they are. Terminator 2:Judgment Day, The Dark Knight, the above mentioned Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan and of course the grand kahuna of all great sequels The Empire Strikes Back. The point of all this rambling is that sequels are tricky tricky things to pull off, and basically as a viewer, a sequel is like playing the movie version of russian roulette. You have five chances of it being great, good, ok, meh or bad, but there is still that one chance that it will shoot you in the face with terrible.
Thus we come to Aliens. Surprising no one now, but a bit of a shocker then, the first Alien was vastly successful, and almost immediately sequel talks began. Ridley Scott was offered the reigns once again, but he was already working on Blade Runner, and for a long time the project pretty much languished until 1983ish where it first started to take off, and it was all thanks to Dino De Laurentiis being a bit of a dick. No really, here’s the story: James Cameron was finished with and had been shopping around the script for his film The Terminator. It was getting a lot of buzz around it and the movie was about to go into production, the cast was chosen and ready, everything. But then De laurentiis halted it by using a clause in Schwarzenegger’s contract to pre-empt the massive Austrian to star in the mostly abysmal Conan The Destroyer, all because he knew that The Terminator would likely launch Arnold into the stratosphere (you know, like it ended up doing.) and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try to do it first with another Conan movie. So for about six months Cameron was all set to go on a movie, that had lost the title character, and he didn’t have the time to even film another small project in the meantime, so what was he to do? He took a writing assignment, for the sequel to Alien. Yes, before he was even shooting his second movie (First movie was Piranha 2:The Spawning, but he doesn’t want you to know that.) he was already writing his third. By the time that draft was finished, he was able to go and shoot his super awesome sci fi action piece, and then one of the most unheard of things in hollywood happened: The producers loved his script so much, they sat on it until they could see how he stacked up as a director with The Terminator, and if that was a hit he’d direct their project too. Guess what happened? So Cameron and company headed to London and brought Terminator effects guru Stan Winston with them, for what was from most accounts a trying shoot due to the cultural differences between the American director and the British crew, mostly relating to things like the schedule for breaks, apparently tea time became the bane of Cameron’s life at this point, and the fact that a lot of the crew had a lot of loyalty to Ridley Scott’s film and they weren’t interested in the sequel. The interviews on the two disk special edition DVD go into much more detail, but all in all the shoot was an endurance test of massive proportions. But the love and care is on the screen, not the anger and frustration.
Yes Aliens falls into that sequel category of “just as good, if not better than the original”. The reason relies a lot in the angle Cameron took with his script. His thought was that we’d seen how some random spaceship crew had handled this menacing creature, but now we know what to expect from them, we can plan for it and oh I don’t know, send in a squad of space marines armed to the teeth? I mean, this would be like a cakewalk for them, with time afterward for a few drinks and a round of poker to go with. But that’s the beauty of it, he knows going in that the only way to terrify you again, while not being a retread is to up the ante, and then have the aliens, now known as xenomorphs, call the bluff. Things go horribly wrong and most of the squad is wiped out and the drop ship to the main vessel is destroyed, and our heroes are stuck on a planet where LITERALLY EVERY LIVING THING WANTS TO KILL THEM.
But let’s backtrack a bit, what about tying things up from the first movie? Well, it’s 57 years in the future and Ripley (ok, this is the last chance to avoid spoilers for the first film) as the sole survivor of the Nostromo was stranded in space on the ships life boat, is now utterly alone and everything she knew is long gone. The planet that they explored in the first movie has actually been colonized for crying out loud. No one believes her about the xenomorph, and it pretty much feels like life is one endless pile of “I hate you!” for Lt. Ellen Ripley. (... hmmm, well given how the other sequels turned out....) But then something strange happens, the communications with the colony stop, and they don’t want to rule out the possibility of Ripley’s story, asking her to go along as a consultant if that ends up being the case.
The movie has numerous strengths. Much like it’s predecessor it’s a master of atmosphere, giving us a much brighter view of the colony before the xenomorphs show up, and then turning the lights out to reveal ominous shadows and twisted metal corridors. The different perspective given when we go into the marine’s personal cameras two adds a jarring tension due to the drop in picture quality. And once we go into the alien lair, all bets are off. Most surprising about this atmosphere is how well it’s kept when we need to be pulled out and let the marines unload on things, even in those situations we’re on the edge of our seat because Cameron knows where to put the camera, the monsters, and where to have the marine firing to build the suspense, without diminishing the action.
Not to mention that all the actors involved are so game for this. Of course everyone talks about how well Sigourney Weaver returns to the role of Ripley (she was nominated for an oscar for this performance after all.) but I know I’m not alone in naming my favorite character as Bill Paxton’s Hudson, because he’s hilarious and badass at the same time. Michael Biehn’s Hicks is also great as the corporal turned squad leader, and of course you have Jenette Goldstein as the baddest of the badass Vasquez. All rounded out by first timer Carrie Henn as the reminder that sometimes child actors CAN be good.
Plus, while aspects of the original alien concept are removed or simplified for the sake of there being too many needed to do all the finer work they could do on just one, it still keeps enough of the design to be instantly familiar and also adds a nice aspect to their life cycle in the form of the alien queen, who was a technical marvel in and of herself, giving us one of the greatest fight scenes ever committed to film in the film’s climax. Stan Winston really went above and beyond as he normally does to give us great work and it really shines on screen with all the different elements and actions we never got to see the various stages of the xenomorph do in the first film (face huggers walking across the floor, more animated chest burster etc.) adding more intrigue and depth to the creatures without having to bog us down with exposition dialogue.
But the big question here is which version should you watch? Well, I honestly think both version of the film are great, they’re solid 5 out of 5 material, but the special edition version is the better one. It adds a couple subplot that were cut for time, and especially a crucial scene where we see Ripley react to news that her daughter had died of old age while she was drifting in the void of space. It’s honestly a much more solid film, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the theatrical film was still great.
Overall Aliens is what I would love all sequels to be. It’s a great continuation of the story, without suffering the staleness of a retread. It goes bigger, but not in an obvious or half hearted way. And it remembers that nostalgia for the first film can only get you so far, you still have to be a GOOD movie too.
Both Versions: 5 out of 5
Next time, the dark times begin with Alien 3
Thus we come to Aliens. Surprising no one now, but a bit of a shocker then, the first Alien was vastly successful, and almost immediately sequel talks began. Ridley Scott was offered the reigns once again, but he was already working on Blade Runner, and for a long time the project pretty much languished until 1983ish where it first started to take off, and it was all thanks to Dino De Laurentiis being a bit of a dick. No really, here’s the story: James Cameron was finished with and had been shopping around the script for his film The Terminator. It was getting a lot of buzz around it and the movie was about to go into production, the cast was chosen and ready, everything. But then De laurentiis halted it by using a clause in Schwarzenegger’s contract to pre-empt the massive Austrian to star in the mostly abysmal Conan The Destroyer, all because he knew that The Terminator would likely launch Arnold into the stratosphere (you know, like it ended up doing.) and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t try to do it first with another Conan movie. So for about six months Cameron was all set to go on a movie, that had lost the title character, and he didn’t have the time to even film another small project in the meantime, so what was he to do? He took a writing assignment, for the sequel to Alien. Yes, before he was even shooting his second movie (First movie was Piranha 2:The Spawning, but he doesn’t want you to know that.) he was already writing his third. By the time that draft was finished, he was able to go and shoot his super awesome sci fi action piece, and then one of the most unheard of things in hollywood happened: The producers loved his script so much, they sat on it until they could see how he stacked up as a director with The Terminator, and if that was a hit he’d direct their project too. Guess what happened? So Cameron and company headed to London and brought Terminator effects guru Stan Winston with them, for what was from most accounts a trying shoot due to the cultural differences between the American director and the British crew, mostly relating to things like the schedule for breaks, apparently tea time became the bane of Cameron’s life at this point, and the fact that a lot of the crew had a lot of loyalty to Ridley Scott’s film and they weren’t interested in the sequel. The interviews on the two disk special edition DVD go into much more detail, but all in all the shoot was an endurance test of massive proportions. But the love and care is on the screen, not the anger and frustration.
Yes Aliens falls into that sequel category of “just as good, if not better than the original”. The reason relies a lot in the angle Cameron took with his script. His thought was that we’d seen how some random spaceship crew had handled this menacing creature, but now we know what to expect from them, we can plan for it and oh I don’t know, send in a squad of space marines armed to the teeth? I mean, this would be like a cakewalk for them, with time afterward for a few drinks and a round of poker to go with. But that’s the beauty of it, he knows going in that the only way to terrify you again, while not being a retread is to up the ante, and then have the aliens, now known as xenomorphs, call the bluff. Things go horribly wrong and most of the squad is wiped out and the drop ship to the main vessel is destroyed, and our heroes are stuck on a planet where LITERALLY EVERY LIVING THING WANTS TO KILL THEM.
But let’s backtrack a bit, what about tying things up from the first movie? Well, it’s 57 years in the future and Ripley (ok, this is the last chance to avoid spoilers for the first film) as the sole survivor of the Nostromo was stranded in space on the ships life boat, is now utterly alone and everything she knew is long gone. The planet that they explored in the first movie has actually been colonized for crying out loud. No one believes her about the xenomorph, and it pretty much feels like life is one endless pile of “I hate you!” for Lt. Ellen Ripley. (... hmmm, well given how the other sequels turned out....) But then something strange happens, the communications with the colony stop, and they don’t want to rule out the possibility of Ripley’s story, asking her to go along as a consultant if that ends up being the case.
The movie has numerous strengths. Much like it’s predecessor it’s a master of atmosphere, giving us a much brighter view of the colony before the xenomorphs show up, and then turning the lights out to reveal ominous shadows and twisted metal corridors. The different perspective given when we go into the marine’s personal cameras two adds a jarring tension due to the drop in picture quality. And once we go into the alien lair, all bets are off. Most surprising about this atmosphere is how well it’s kept when we need to be pulled out and let the marines unload on things, even in those situations we’re on the edge of our seat because Cameron knows where to put the camera, the monsters, and where to have the marine firing to build the suspense, without diminishing the action.
Not to mention that all the actors involved are so game for this. Of course everyone talks about how well Sigourney Weaver returns to the role of Ripley (she was nominated for an oscar for this performance after all.) but I know I’m not alone in naming my favorite character as Bill Paxton’s Hudson, because he’s hilarious and badass at the same time. Michael Biehn’s Hicks is also great as the corporal turned squad leader, and of course you have Jenette Goldstein as the baddest of the badass Vasquez. All rounded out by first timer Carrie Henn as the reminder that sometimes child actors CAN be good.
Plus, while aspects of the original alien concept are removed or simplified for the sake of there being too many needed to do all the finer work they could do on just one, it still keeps enough of the design to be instantly familiar and also adds a nice aspect to their life cycle in the form of the alien queen, who was a technical marvel in and of herself, giving us one of the greatest fight scenes ever committed to film in the film’s climax. Stan Winston really went above and beyond as he normally does to give us great work and it really shines on screen with all the different elements and actions we never got to see the various stages of the xenomorph do in the first film (face huggers walking across the floor, more animated chest burster etc.) adding more intrigue and depth to the creatures without having to bog us down with exposition dialogue.
But the big question here is which version should you watch? Well, I honestly think both version of the film are great, they’re solid 5 out of 5 material, but the special edition version is the better one. It adds a couple subplot that were cut for time, and especially a crucial scene where we see Ripley react to news that her daughter had died of old age while she was drifting in the void of space. It’s honestly a much more solid film, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the theatrical film was still great.
Overall Aliens is what I would love all sequels to be. It’s a great continuation of the story, without suffering the staleness of a retread. It goes bigger, but not in an obvious or half hearted way. And it remembers that nostalgia for the first film can only get you so far, you still have to be a GOOD movie too.
Both Versions: 5 out of 5
Next time, the dark times begin with Alien 3
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