Feb
11
Quintessential Quadrilogies | Alien
Filed Under Movies
After “Star Wars” became an unexpected box office behemoth, the executives at 20th Century Fox scrambled to greenlight more science fiction B-movies dressed up as A-pictures. One of those projects was “Star Beast,” a script by the late Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Retitled “Alien,” the film was directed by the brilliant Ridley Scott, who took the simple concept of “‘Jaws’ in space” and created a unique vision of sci-fi/horror that’s still aped to this day by lesser filmmakers. The film also put the 30-year-old actress Sigourney Weaver on the map and advanced the role of the female hero in genre films a full five years before James Cameron called “action” on the set of “The Terminator.”
“Alien” spawned three direct sequels as well as two piece of shit “Alien vs. Predator” spinoffs that I don’t count as part of the film cycle because they play fast and loose with the continuity of the previous installments. Let’s just ignore those, shall we?
Scott’s “Alien,” released in 1979, is so perfectly streamlined story-wise. From what I understand, most of O’Bannon and Shusett’s script was thrown out, and the actors were encouraged to improvise. But the story spine remains intact. A civilian mining ship way the hell out in the cosmos receives a distress call. When they answer it, one of the crew is attacked by some spidery parasite that plants an embryo in chest. The gestating creature inside him comes to term during dinner, and explodes out of his torso, ruining everyone’s meal. The monster grows to its full seven feet in height in short order and lurks within the bowels of the ship. It bleeds acid and has a tongue that doubles as a fanged mouth. Remaining members of the crew are picked off one by one until only Sigourney Weaver’s Lt. Ripley remains and must face down the hideous beastie in her underwear.
Seven(!) years came and went before James Cameron’s “Aliens” (plural, FTW!) opened in ‘86. Gone is the psychological horror and psycho-sexual business. “Aliens” is rather a rip-snorting action movie, easily one of Cameron’s most satisfying efforts and a game-changer in its own right. How many subsequent genre movies have had an elite team of commandos confronting some sort of science-fictiony freaks? In the film, Weaver returns as Ripley, who’s awakened nearly 60 years after she went into hypersleep aboard her escape pod. She now suffers from PTSD and receives a demotion from the Company when little evidence corroborates her story about the “xenomorph” (great word) that killed her fellow crewmembers. When the Company loses contact with colonists on the planetoid where the monster from the first film originated, Ripley reluctantly joins a team of space marines who are sent in to investigate. It turns out that LV-426 is crawling with xenomorphs that promptly make a meal out of the troops. The alien queen then kidnaps an orphaned little girl that Ripley’s been looking after, and what follows are some of the best setpieces of the series. Ripley’s final confrontation with the queen has one of the most chest-thumping zingers (“Get away from her, you bitch!”) to date. The final showdown with Ripley in a power loader and the queen gnashing and clawing at her is absolutely terrific.
“Alien 3″ is where the franchise comes off the rails. (For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to review the theatrical version of the film rather than the so-called director’s cut.) The project was doomed from the start when 20th Century Fox teased the film with trailers that boasted, “On Earth, everyone can hear you scream,” then went back on their promise to have an Earthbound “Alien” picture. After numerous scripts and directors came and went, music video virtuoso David Fincher was hired to direct. The script was unfinished with new pages being delivered daily. Rather than Earth, the film is set on a murky, rusted-out prison planet, where anonymous bald-headed convicts are picked off by a lone xenomorph until Ripley destroys the monster and sacrifices herself to save the human race from weaponized star beasts.
If anything, “Alien 3″ is a victim of the franchise’s success. The studio, to their credit, wanted to try something bold and new with each installment. After all, it had worked twice before. The first two films also had troubled shoots as well. But “Alien 3″ is too uncommercial in its approach to the material. The Space Truckers in movie one and Space Marines in movie two are characters whose deaths the audience mourns, and in both instances, Ripley emerges as the unlikely hero we root for because the odds are so overwhelmingly stacked against her. In movie three, who gives a shit if the xenomorph kills a bunch of rapists and murderers? They’re rat bastards. Meanwhile, Ripley’s driven into suicidal depression because she discovers an alien fetus growing inside her, so she spends a chunk of the movie moping around and wanting to kill herself. She’s decidedly unheroic in that respect. The movie’s an ugly, confusing and overwhelmingly dour slog.
And that’s the point. Fincher clearly wants to strip away all the crowd-pleasing trappings of the previous film and surprise the audience with a downer of a blockbuster. But it doesn’t work. It’s an exercise in atmosphere and it makes for a hell of a trailer with some great visuals. As a film, it comes up short. I don’t think the blame should fall squarely on Fincher, who was at a disadvantage from minute one. No, the studio wanted more to make a release date than a worthy second sequel.
After “Alien 3″ underperformed at the box office in ‘92, it seemed like the franchise had run its course. Then “Alien: Resurrection” opened in 1997. Set 200 years after “Alien 3,” the film delivers on its title by cloning Ripley and the Alien Queen aboard a military starship. Another corporate entity is determined to weaponize the xenomorphs. The xenomorphs, however, have other plans. They break free from their containment cells, and the mayhem begins. This time, Ripley allies herself with a gimmicky band of space pirates. She’s not the same Ripley from the earlier film, but a weird hybrid of a human and a xenomorph. This gives her the ability to retain the memories and pragmatism of her previous self as well as corrosive blood. The xenomorphs’ attitude towards her is kind of confusing. There’s a funky bit that could be interpreted as a sex scene between Ripley and a xenomorph. And yet, later on the Newborn — one of the shittiest looking rubber monsters I’ve ever seen in a commercial Hollywood film — seems to want to kill Ripley because that sort of thing is what you build a climax around.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who would go on to direct “Amelie” believe it or not, cobbles together elements of the previous three films. It’s a horror movie and it’s an action movie and still it’s got an indie sensibility. Winona Ryder’s in it, FTW. Joss Whedon’s script is a little hammy and self-aware for the franchise, but that particular screenwriting style was omnipresent in the 1990s. Thing is, the biggest problem with “Alien: Resurrection” isn’t its general weirdness, but that it doesn’t really break any new or interesting ground. It’s more of the same. We’ve done all this before and better. This is the third time in the series where Ripley and some xenomorph fight it out in an airlock.
“Alien: Resurrection” didn’t set the box office on fire, and as such, the “Alien” series has been dormant ever since. For years, there were threats of a fifth film. Now it appears a prequel might happen. You never can tell. I think all the worthy stories featuring Ripley and the xenomorphs have been told and a couple unworthy ones as well. But when the franchise soars, it’s light years ahead of almost everything else in the sci-fi genre.
-Brad Lohan
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