So, seeing as
Prometheus has just hit the screens, I thought I would take a little look back
at the previous 3 films in the Alien franchise, i.e. Alien, Aliens and Alien 3. I am essentially reviewing 3
movies in one all of which happen to be over 20 years old. Say what you like
about this blog, but you can’t say that I don’t keep up with current trends.
Also it will contain spoilers, but come on Alien came out in 1979 and is one of
the biggest sci – fi films ever made, if you haven’t seen it by now, you would
probably know the story as it is part of popular culture. But anyway, I
digress, pay attention now class.
Ok so the first film in the franchise is the Ridley Scott
vehicle Alien. The film follows the exploits of the crew of the
commercial towing spaceship Nostromo. They have basically been mining space
gold and are returning to earth when the ship’s crew is awakened from their
hyper sleep as the ship has detected a rogue signal from an unknown planet.
From then on chaos ensues, one crew member Kane, played by John Hurt discovers
a large room full of eggs, one of which hatches sending an alien onto his face,
which then proceeds to impregnate him in the mouth (don’t worry ladies, this
sort of thing can’t happen to humans, so please keep up the good work ;)). Anywho,
with the alien baby sweetly nuzzling in his chest Kane awakens from his coma
only to have the bloody thing burst out of him at the dinner table in one of
the most famous instances of bad etiquette ever recorded on film, it also
happens to be one of the most iconic film scenes ever made, but that doesn’t
matter. Moving swiftly on, this alien grows like a motherfucker and begins to
pick off the crew in various ways, helped along the way by the ships android
with the extra bastard implant, played by Ian Holm, until our heroine Ripley is
the last remaining crew member who successfully manages to beat the alien in
the end, YAY!!
Alien is consistently ranked as not just one of the best sci –
fi movies ever made, but one of the best movies ever made, a reputation which I
think is entirely justified. Alien is quite simply brilliant. I
read Roger Ebert’s review in which he made an interesting point that each cast
member is considerably older than your average horror movie cast, with
Sigourney Weaver being the youngest at 30, this adds a level of maturity to the
film and at no point do you see a teenage girl screaming helplessly. There are
of course moments of terror for the ship’s crew, but they come across as
totally genuine. The cast therefore play their parts extremely well, Sigourney
Weaver is obviously a stand out and in many ways this film catapulted her
career. However I reserve special praise for Ian Holm who plays the android
Ash. The thing is, he is secretly an android, and so his performance is
significantly understated and delightfully evil when it counts.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention the special
effects of the film; considering this was 1979 they are way above the standard
I would expect from a film of that era. But they stand the test of time and
even watching it in 2012 you could easily mistake it for a more modern film.
There is no CGI here thank god.
Speaking of CGI that moves me nicely on to the sequel Aliens.
I only mention CGI in this context because the second film in the franchise is
directed by CGI’s biggest fan, Mr James Cameron. However thankfully, Aliens
represents one of the rare occasions where Mr Cameron doesn’t completely fuck
up his film and viciously beat his audience over the head with it.
The film once again follows the exploits of Ripley, who
after drifting in space for 57 years is rescued by the company she originally
worked for Weyland – Yutani, who completely refute her story of the aliens and
basically tell her she is well mental. The film doesn’t end there of course,
but did you expect it to, come on then it would have only been like 40 minutes
long. Anyway, remember that planet from the first one where Kane found all the
alien eggs? Well it’s only been bloody colonised by humans with around 200 of
them living there! I know, that can only end badly, which it inevitably does.
The alien race is able to make its comeback when a couple out doing whatever
work they do comes across an alien egg and the man is impregnated by the face
hugger. Of course he is brought back to the human colony and the alien manages
to kill pretty much everyone, aside from one plucky child known as Newt. We are
spared seeing everyone get killed as the plot mainly revolves around a group of
marines sent in to investigate. Joining them is Ripley, who misses her
opportunity to say ‘see, I fucking told you so!’ but instead goes along with
the marines as a consultant. Turns out that they don’t just have one alien to
deal with, like in the first film, but an entire swarm of the bastards. Much
like the first though, the team of marines is slowly thinned out by the creature and Ripley is again left
to be all heroic and stuff, whilst at the same time protecting Newt whom she
forms a motherly bond with. Ripley isn’t completely alone, along the way she is
aided by several of the marines, such as Private Hudson, played by James
Cameron’s favourite actor Bill Paxton, as well as Corporal Hicks played by
Michael Biehn, the non-terminator one from Terminator, also, despite her
initial mistrust of yet another android Ripley is aided by Bishop played by
Lance Henrikksen. Eventually Ripley is able to once again defeat the alien and
escape the forsaken planet before it is destroyed and everyone is happy again.
It is notoriously difficult to create a sequel to something
that had such widespread success, The Matrix Reloaded being a painful
example. Therefore Aliens had only one choice, it had to go bigger and more
extravagant that its predecessor, which is does to an extremely awesome degree.
Sigourney Weaver is once again brilliant as Ripley and even Bill Paxton puts in
a good performance, once you get over how annoying his character is initially.
In my opinion Aliens would have been the perfect place to end the franchise,
Ripley ends up with a sort of replacement daughter (her real daughter dies
whilst she was asleep for 57 years) and the aliens have seemingly been
eradicated, but alas clearly some greedy movie execs spent most of what was
made from the film on cocaine and hookers and decided to make the threequal,
sigh…
I don’t want to dwell much on the third film, because it’s
simply not worth it, but anyway here we go!
Having once again been left in special space sleep at the
end of Aliens the movie opens with the crash landing of the ship,
which results in the deaths of Hicks and Newt, who had both managed to survive
at the end of the second film. Ripley is understandably a little upset with
this and wonders exactly why the ship crashed. I won’t beat around the bush,
the ship crashed because there was an alien on board and it started a fire. The
planet she crashes on happens to be a high security prison planet, full of the
worst kinds of prisoners available, including murderers, rapists and child
molesters. So immediately you lose any sympathy for potential victims of the
monster. Nevertheless, the alien proceeds to cause havoc throughout the prison,
killing people etc etc. Somewhere along the way, Ripley also realises that she
has a chest burster inside her, which makes her go all emo and decide that she
has to die to avoid the alien from ever getting back to earth, right after she
destroys the alien on the planet first.
That’s about it really, Alien 3 has all the mainstays of a
bad horror sequel including numerous instances of individuals breaking away
from the group so that the monster can pick them off a bit easier, and lots
more fucks, not the sexy kind, the sweary kind. Then there is the extra gore,
which has become a staple of horror sequels, in this case it just isn’t
necessary. In the first two films there is surprisingly little blood and guts,
as the aliens were simply intent on using the humans to breed, in Alien
3 however our space villain appears to be intent on turning this into
saw in space and eating everyone’s brains like some kind of terrifying zombie
vampire. Also is that CGI I see, because it certainly
looked like it and James Cameron didn’t even direct this one!
Another thing that bothered me was the fact that the image
of Ripley from is one of a very strong woman, and historically she has become a
symbol for the female hero in film. However this reputation is significantly
diminished not long after landing on the planet when Ripley randomly shags the
dishy British doctor, played by Charles Dance, also known as the bad guy from Last
Action Hero. This I found very surprising, I mean I know she had been
without a man for what was like over 60 years, but it was kind of unnecessary
for the film.
So basically if you want the storyline to be rounded off
then watch Alien 3 it does have a pretty definitive ending, although Alien
Resurrection kind of starts it all up again, but I am not including
that because I don’t think it counts. Otherwise though, just stick to the first
two films, they are so much better and if you want you can use the ending of
Aliens as the real ending, which is what I do because I am a bit of a loser.
GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY
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