An Alien Plague.
December 12th 2007 04:27
Category: Movies
In space no one can hear you scream…
- Alien, Twentieth Century Fox, 1979.
Way back when I can remember people making comments about that above remark and saying how very true, in space no one can hear you scream because as they pointed out space is a vacuum and in a vacuum there is no sound. Of course they failed to realise that no one would attempt to scream in a vacuum anyway, you’d end your existence real quick in a terminally messy way. Still this didn’t deter them from taking this point to heart zealously and then saying that various other sci-fi flicks that had been realised prior to Alien were oh so wrong with their sounds of explosions and weapons fire echoing in the void. They were in a nutshell unrealistic, still as a pointed out if the makers of such films had opted for the gritty realism of space travel then for large portions of the film there would be deafening silence punctuate by the sounds of people getting up from their seats and leaving the cinema.
Still digressions about physics and their applicability to sci-fi films aside Alien was when it hit the big screen an interesting film with an interesting premise. A space ship crew investigating a distress beacon on a remote planetoid way out in the boon docks of explored space. In fact despite the setting Alien was more a mystery/horror film than it was a science fiction one, the story of answering a distress call only to have some unimaginable tragedy occur that has severe repercussions could easily be played out in any other kind of setting or era. What is interesting is that having provided the audience with a fairly large mystery the makers only cover half of this mystery, they focus in on title creature of the movie, the iconic Alien. And let’s face it by now in the twenty first century that beastie has become effectively an icon of terror and carnage personified. As a young kid watching Alien for the first time I have to say it gave me the frights to put it mildly.
But the creature realistically was only part of the story, after all the hapless crew of the Nostromo had discovered on this planetoid a large alien vessel, a dead crewmember its chest ripped open and a hold fill of strange spherical objects that contained something inside. This latter ingredient would be focused upon and developed to give the story its impetus and drama, but what about the ship, what about the rotting corpse still seated in its chair, its eyeless sockets gazing into eternity? Very little was developed with these elements, in fact they only seemed to exist to give a premise for the sequel. After all what happened to the Alien that would have burst from the chest of the dead vessels lifeless crewman? Where did it go, was it killed or what? Perhaps it joined an interstellar tap dancing troupe that was passing through the part of space; who knows. It was only years later on down the track, and after several more movies with that iconic creature that I realised Alien itself was a seriously flawed movie, from the perspective of a questioning audience member. Certainly there was nothing to fault with the acting, the atmosphere or the cinematography but the story had too many loose ends, like a tapestry that had undergone serious fraying.
In the minds of the filmmakers though these thoughts did not seem to occur, how could they when they realised that this creature they’d spawned could effectively spawn more and more similar movies which would rake in the dollars from box office sales, the follow on royalties from various toys, gewgaws and gadgets not to mention the computer games. So despite Ripley blasting the Alien out the airlock of the Nostromo’s small shuttle craft all was not over, not by a long shot. As a result a few years later on down the track Aliens was released to the world, this time the makers decided to make use of that abandoned crashed alien spaceship to provide some of the impetus for the story. And this time they unleashed a literal horde of their iconic monsters. From Aliens onwards though it all became about the dollars rather than about the story, lying under all the hype, the acid blood and the teeth (teeth that would scare even a member of the Osmond family) there was something that could have produced a truly great series of films. Instead what audiences got was what would flog off merchandise and prime them for the next sequel.
From Aliens we move to Alien 3 then Alien Resurrection each of these three movies all staring the indomitable Ripley who in Resurrection gets a serious makeover and has become a clone with boosted abilities. In this instalment she is effectively Super Ripley and has something of the Alien’s DNA combined with her own genetic makeup in order to make her something more and possibly less than human. By now things have effectively become nothing more than a splatter fest, in Resurrection we actually see that what once held such promise has become effectively nothing more than a parody of itself. The horror thus lies not so much in the fact that the Aliens overrun a research facility and look like expanding throughout the known regions of space but in fact that this movie was ever made. It is interesting to note that throughout these instalments Ripley remains the main protagonist, despite having died in the third movie, perhaps this has something to do with Sigourney Weaver or maybe it is simply the fact that having a lead female hero worked so well with the first that successive makes of Alien’s films decided not to abandon what seems to be a working formula.
So as the final credits role on Resurrection the audience has the feeling that at last the nightmares are finally over, that no more will the Aliens plague their cinema and or television screens. It’s a sensation that is at best only fleeting if that for despite Resurrection not being the success its makers were hoping it to be it does not see the demise of the Aliens by a long shot. Instead there emerged…Aliens Vs Predator. Now a few years ago there was a book doing the rounds that was called the Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made (or words to that effect) and one of those fifty movies according to this work was Aliens Vs Predator. The story already existed, Dark Horse I believe had produced a several issue series revolving around this very conflict. Set in the same time frame as the previous Alien movies it involved a conflict between a Predator and an infestation of Aliens on a colony world, at some point in the conflict a human female becomes involved and earns the respect of the lone Predator.
Now Dark Horse did this story very well, it worked, but for so long no one in the movie industry wanted to pick up on this for a film until fairly recently. Whether I would call not call it one of the Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made it certainly remained in the never made category and for a while the world was spared, for a while. Eventually someone decided to do this film and thus AVP burst onto the screen; literally. Now there were two iconic space monsters engaged in a splatter fest within an abandoned complex deep in the wilds of Antarctica. Why? Because they can or rather because there was an ancient pyramid of Egyptian-Khmer-Mayan origin (now there’s something you don’t see everyday!) resting beneath the ice, a pyramid that for centuries had been used by Predators to blood their warriors in fighting against the Aliens, preparing them. Judging by the amount of effort the various studios and production companies had put into this film there was no doubt in my mind that there was going to be an AVP 2 and I had no doubt as to the mechanism behind achieving this, the infection of a Predator producing a particularly vicious breed of Alien.
So when I went and saw The Kingdom in October what should happen to appear amongst the trailers before the main feature (cue drum roll please) but the Alien Vs Predator: Requiem trailer. As expected it is the usually splatter fest with the lead female protagonist who looks like she’s either a Marine of Special Force type returning to her boon dock town after serving in one of the many conflicts raging around the world. And once again the Aliens are on the silver screen, its almost as they have via the medium of film gained a life of their own constantly spawning and creating within the American movie industry a sort of survival imperative whereby the most always be an Aliens movie at some point. Lets face it these movies are purely spectacle and follow on merchandising, great entertainment with an in depth story they are not. In fact there is probably far more depth in WWF wrestling than in an Aliens film, in fact even the title of this latest movie sounds as if it has been ripped off from a wrestling festival or TV special.
I suggest we all prep for an immediate evac and nuke this site from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure that there won’t be any future outbreaks…hopefully.
- Alien, Twentieth Century Fox, 1979.
Way back when I can remember people making comments about that above remark and saying how very true, in space no one can hear you scream because as they pointed out space is a vacuum and in a vacuum there is no sound. Of course they failed to realise that no one would attempt to scream in a vacuum anyway, you’d end your existence real quick in a terminally messy way. Still this didn’t deter them from taking this point to heart zealously and then saying that various other sci-fi flicks that had been realised prior to Alien were oh so wrong with their sounds of explosions and weapons fire echoing in the void. They were in a nutshell unrealistic, still as a pointed out if the makers of such films had opted for the gritty realism of space travel then for large portions of the film there would be deafening silence punctuate by the sounds of people getting up from their seats and leaving the cinema.
In the minds of the filmmakers though these thoughts did not seem to occur, how could they when they realised that this creature they’d spawned could effectively spawn more and more similar movies which would rake in the dollars from box office sales, the follow on royalties from various toys, gewgaws and gadgets not to mention the computer games. So despite Ripley blasting the Alien out the airlock of the Nostromo’s small shuttle craft all was not over, not by a long shot. As a result a few years later on down the track Aliens was released to the world, this time the makers decided to make use of that abandoned crashed alien spaceship to provide some of the impetus for the story. And this time they unleashed a literal horde of their iconic monsters. From Aliens onwards though it all became about the dollars rather than about the story, lying under all the hype, the acid blood and the teeth (teeth that would scare even a member of the Osmond family) there was something that could have produced a truly great series of films. Instead what audiences got was what would flog off merchandise and prime them for the next sequel.
From Aliens we move to Alien 3 then Alien Resurrection each of these three movies all staring the indomitable Ripley who in Resurrection gets a serious makeover and has become a clone with boosted abilities. In this instalment she is effectively Super Ripley and has something of the Alien’s DNA combined with her own genetic makeup in order to make her something more and possibly less than human. By now things have effectively become nothing more than a splatter fest, in Resurrection we actually see that what once held such promise has become effectively nothing more than a parody of itself. The horror thus lies not so much in the fact that the Aliens overrun a research facility and look like expanding throughout the known regions of space but in fact that this movie was ever made. It is interesting to note that throughout these instalments Ripley remains the main protagonist, despite having died in the third movie, perhaps this has something to do with Sigourney Weaver or maybe it is simply the fact that having a lead female hero worked so well with the first that successive makes of Alien’s films decided not to abandon what seems to be a working formula.
So as the final credits role on Resurrection the audience has the feeling that at last the nightmares are finally over, that no more will the Aliens plague their cinema and or television screens. It’s a sensation that is at best only fleeting if that for despite Resurrection not being the success its makers were hoping it to be it does not see the demise of the Aliens by a long shot. Instead there emerged…Aliens Vs Predator. Now a few years ago there was a book doing the rounds that was called the Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made (or words to that effect) and one of those fifty movies according to this work was Aliens Vs Predator. The story already existed, Dark Horse I believe had produced a several issue series revolving around this very conflict. Set in the same time frame as the previous Alien movies it involved a conflict between a Predator and an infestation of Aliens on a colony world, at some point in the conflict a human female becomes involved and earns the respect of the lone Predator.
Now Dark Horse did this story very well, it worked, but for so long no one in the movie industry wanted to pick up on this for a film until fairly recently. Whether I would call not call it one of the Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made it certainly remained in the never made category and for a while the world was spared, for a while. Eventually someone decided to do this film and thus AVP burst onto the screen; literally. Now there were two iconic space monsters engaged in a splatter fest within an abandoned complex deep in the wilds of Antarctica. Why? Because they can or rather because there was an ancient pyramid of Egyptian-Khmer-Mayan origin (now there’s something you don’t see everyday!) resting beneath the ice, a pyramid that for centuries had been used by Predators to blood their warriors in fighting against the Aliens, preparing them. Judging by the amount of effort the various studios and production companies had put into this film there was no doubt in my mind that there was going to be an AVP 2 and I had no doubt as to the mechanism behind achieving this, the infection of a Predator producing a particularly vicious breed of Alien.
So when I went and saw The Kingdom in October what should happen to appear amongst the trailers before the main feature (cue drum roll please) but the Alien Vs Predator: Requiem trailer. As expected it is the usually splatter fest with the lead female protagonist who looks like she’s either a Marine of Special Force type returning to her boon dock town after serving in one of the many conflicts raging around the world. And once again the Aliens are on the silver screen, its almost as they have via the medium of film gained a life of their own constantly spawning and creating within the American movie industry a sort of survival imperative whereby the most always be an Aliens movie at some point. Lets face it these movies are purely spectacle and follow on merchandising, great entertainment with an in depth story they are not. In fact there is probably far more depth in WWF wrestling than in an Aliens film, in fact even the title of this latest movie sounds as if it has been ripped off from a wrestling festival or TV special.
I suggest we all prep for an immediate evac and nuke this site from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure that there won’t be any future outbreaks…hopefully.
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