ReWatch: a few thoughts on the Aliens franchise

Alien (1979, d. Ridley Scott - theatrical cut)
Aliens (1986, d. James Cameron - directors cut)
Alien3 (1992, d. David Fincher - renegade cut)
Alien Resurrection (1997, d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet - theatrical cut)
Prometheus (2012, d. Ridley Scott)

I think I've undervalued the Alien franchise almost entirely.  As a youth, horror movies and the concept of horror and gore upset me greatly, so I avoided the Alien franchise until I was in my mid-teens.  I mean, I already knew the general thrust of Ridley Scott's original feature thanks to a Mad Magazine digest I had for some time which broke down the beats of the movie but as a spoof.  Also, I knew the chestburster scene but from Spaceballs.  Comedy was the context in which I could handle horror.

But as a teenage geek, into comics and sci-fi and toys, Alien and Aliens were huge.  Dark Horse had started publishing comic books, Kenner was making some really cool looking action figures, and there was a new Alien film on the horizon.  Plus, my geeky friends were all about how cool the Xenomorphs and Colonial Marines were.  In preparation for Alien3, I watched the first two films and started reading the comics starting with Aliens: Genocide, and yeah, I got all in on Xenomorphs, buying many of the action figures... and yet, I wasn't entirely sold.  At the same time, I was getting into The Predator and certainly took a much bigger shining to that franchise (I most definitely bought more Predator figures and comics than Aliens).

Of the original two films, the "cool one" was Aliens, because it was so much more action heavy and bombastic, with big catch phrases like "Game over, man" and "Get away from her, you bitch", but I liked the simmering pacing of Scott's original masterpiece, the subtlety of the technology and how the effects were less smoke and slime and more sets and shadows.  The aesthetic of Alien was closer to Star Wars, which as you know is totally my thing.  Plus, Alien, leaves so many answers on the table, like Star Wars ... well, maybe not nearly as expansive as Star Wars, but certainly there's a lot of world building just put out there that kind of makes you want to know more.  What is Earth like in this future.  What is the Weyland Yutani Corporation's business?  What's the deal with that found spaceship? What's up with this alien....what does it want?

Subsequent films and comics do explore these questions, and yet, returning to Scott's original film, it still inspires those same questions.  Even knowing some of the answers, there's still the sense of awe and inspiration to the picture, and the possibilities of stories in this reality, not just Alien stories, seem endless.

While obviously there's a couple of effects pieces that seem clunky by today's standards (Ash's prosthetic head), the film still holds up in every department.  The acting is phenomenal, the sets are wonderful, the tone and pacing is perfect, the music from Jerry Goldsmith is so reserved that it allows the sound design of the ship noise or space suit breathing to dominate.  It's classic for a reason.

this poster is so 80's

I have a harder time with Cameron's Aliens.  I have developed a real distaste for Cameron over the years.  He's a fan of bigger, louder, more action, less characterization.  His idea for characters tends to be broad strokes, on the nose dialogue, and a "the audience gets it" sensibility.  Most of his films have this tendency, and it doesn't make them bad movies, and certainly he's a craftsman at big effects laden pictures, but I don't tend to enjoy them nearly as much.

This may have been the first time I've seen Aliens: "the Directors Cut", where Cameron adds back in more backstory for Newt and more of Ripley dealing with being lost in time (having been in cryosleep for 60 years, her daughter has passed away from old age).  Both of these expansions makes their connection more meaningful.  It does make for a better movie.  And yet...I find Cameron's fascination with American-style military bravado upsetting.  I believe he intends his films to be critical of this kind of demeanor... I mean the swagger and bravado does ultimately gets pretty much all of them killed, and yet he can't help but making them all seem cool, with neat gadgets, big muscles and no fear.

The film still looks quite good, though the miniatures are quite obviously miniatures and you may notice there's not nearly as many aliens as you think they are (as many Colonial Marines die from friendly fire or accidents as they do from the aliens attacking).  Some of the sets look very much like sets, and the pacing of the film is action beats so the horror aspect of the first is all but gone.  I think the action is what people respond to, but to me the film keeps falling flat on its face from line delivery.  I can't tell if it's the script or the direction, either way Cameron is to blame.  To the point that half of Ripley's line deliveries - we're talking Sigourney Weaver here, a great actor - are painful, just painful to behold. I don't see that problem with Weaver in any of the other films.

Geeky people I meet don't like that I don't like Aliens, but I also don't hate it.  But it's Cameron-isms just make it a film that doesn't resonate with me, and I don't think very fondly of it.  I didn't not enjoy watching it this time around, if that's any consolation.  But people do get upset with me when I tell them I like Alien3 better.  Because I do.

this poster is so 90's

Or that's the stance I've taken for almost 30 years.  I don't have much attachment to Aliens so the fact that Newt and Hicks are dead at the start of the film doesn't bother me at all.  I think it's a bold thing to do, actually.  But I like choices like this (see also The Last Jedi).  And it takes Ripley immediately out of any comfort zone...and places her on an all male (and mutant double-Y chromosome) penitentiary planet.  And puts inside her an alien queen, while the prison colonists are picked off by an alien that came out of a bull (it's a bull in the "Renegade cut" but a dog in the theatrical version).

Basically the Aliens toys is where they hammered home the fact that the Xenomorph adopts some of the physical characteristics of its host, and I've always liked that idea, so it's good to see a differently styled and performing alien here.  A quadripedal one as opposed to the bipeds of the first two films.  Of course, Alien3's the first time a xenomorph is rendered with CGI and it's not great.  They didn't have the ability to really render shading and texture the same as they do today, so any CGI effect doesn't feel organic to the movie.  Thankfully the majority of the scenes they use a puppet, and there's not much call for other CGI given the abandoned factory set they constructed.

Alien3 is a bleak film, it's very fatalist.  Ripley knows her time is limited, she's the only woman trapped in a prison of dangerous men, and she knows that if the Corporation finds out about her that they will make her a lab rat (or kill her and take the alien baby).  Ripley doesn't make many connections with these convicts, and as characters there's a relative sameness to them.  As such, their deaths don't really have any real impact, but as a whole the mood is just ominous and overwhelming.  Plus, it's got Fincher's style, which goes a long way.

It's kind of a laborious film though.  The "Renegade cut", which tries to approximate Fincher's desired cut based on his notes (Fincher has notoriously disowned the film and never wants to look at or discuss it again) extends the length of the theatrical cut and it feels long.  The theatrical cut I *was* fine with but seems very messy in comparison.  It's not a perfect movie, it's not always the most exciting movie, and I don't even know if I truly like it all that much, and yet I still prefer it to Aliens.

When we got to rewatching Alien Resurrection is where I realized how unique the Alien franchise is.  Each film has its own very distinctive directorial voice to it, and each film definitely has its own tone.  For better or worse, but mostly for better.  The cohesiveness of the franchise, of Ripley's journey, despite its many different styles, remains.  There's a through line that somehow works, even if Resurrection as a coda is kind of a slap in the face to the character.  Yet even that slap works.

visually striking, terrible at
selling the movie

I remember being so disappointed with Resurrection when I saw it in theatres, and being disappointed again watching it on whatever video format I was watching (Laserdisc perhaps).  The film just didn't seem to work for me.  I had expectations and it didn't deliver.  Yet, 20+ years since last watching the film, there were so many scenes and images that remained embedded in my brain... that must mean something.

The script largely came from Joss Whedon (no comment) and it has all the action-adventurousness, nerdy jokes, and exploitation of the franchise that one would expect from a Whedon script.  Jeunet is best known for the sweet, twee, playful, meticulous Amelie, and in hindsight, he's tried to bring that playfulness and meticulousness to the Alien universe (no sweetness or twee mercifully) with what were initially unfavourable results.  

And yet, this time around, I found myself very appreciative of what this film is, at least for some of it.  The first 45 minutes of the film are rather wondrous.  Jeunet's lens is still playful and curious, finding the strangest angels and viewpoints to the point that it feels antithetical to an Alien film, even though the elaborate sets, distinctive costuming and effects all pop in their own right and feel like next generation Aliens.

There's a new corporate military on the scene, and they've cloned Ripley from DNA from the prison planet in Alien3, the purpose to try and get an alien queen for research purposes.  There's a scientist played by the always deranged Brad Dourif who is a Grizzly Man-like character: a guy who thinks he can befriend the beast.  Then there's a rag-tag group of mercenaries who become the anti-hero squad Ripley aligns herself with.  They're kind of a fun group (mostly it's Ron Perlman's charisma carrying the whole squad).  Unfortunately they include Call, played by Winona Ryder.  She's an android built by androids, there to destroy the aliens and the cloning project.  She should be tough, and Ryder is the wrong performer for the role through and through.  There's nothing appealing about Call, and the idea was to set her up as the post-Ripley face of the franchise.  Instead she almost put the last nail in it.  She's awful, and I think having a director and crew who barely understand English didn't help the situation.  She's easily the worst performance in the franchise (and yet most of the other performances in this film are superior to those in Aliens).

This clone of Ripley is delightful though.  I remember not liking the performace originally but this time around I found it really fun, and Weaver was owning it with a smile on her face.  She has this connection to the Aliens because her DNA has mixed with theirs, and likewise they have a connection with her.  It's goofy, but it's fun to explore.

There's a crackerjack action sequence with a swimming Alien which I love, and just some cool, nerdy takes on Aliens stuff happening throughout the feature.  But for some reason it doesn't all work, and again I think it goes back to Jeunet's style and Whedon's script.  It's light, it's more adventuresome, and there is absolutely nothing scary about it.  It's a very sweaty, gross movie, maybe not the sweatiest of the very sweaty franchise, but certainly the grossest. The hybrid alien that closes out the film is haunting and ugly and yet, it's got those big innocent eyes that make it kind of a tragic figure.  The last 15 minutes of this film is so out there, so weird.  It doesn't feel like it fits in the franchise at all, and yet, I kind of delight in it all the same.  It's just SO WEIRD.  It's not a great movie, but I kind of glad it exists.

a most gorgeous poster

Now, this may be a bold take, but Prometheus is my favourite film in the franchise. I wrote about the film years ago when it came out, and I loved it.  I still love it.  This I think is my fourth or fifth viewing of the film, which is basically Star Wars and Marvel numbers because I don't tend to rewatch films anymore (there's just too much content).  And yeah, my love hasn't diminished one iota.  

I think this is where I've always wanted the franchise to go... elsewhere, a little outside of the Xenomorphs and certainly away from Ripley.  Let's see what else is going on in this universe, how other people live.  That it acts as a sort of origin story for Alien's "space jockey", an origin story for the xenomorphs (basically an experimental weapon created by the Engineers) and an origin story of humanity (also an experiment of the Engineers) is all wonderful.  It provides these quasi-answers to questions one might have had about the aliens' origins from the first film, and yet, it doesn't really answer them to any satisfaction. Why, is one question that refuses to be answered.  Why did the engineers create humanity, and why do they want to seemingly destroy it?   Why have they created so many weapons of mass destruction.  We don't get these answers.

We find out some Weyland Yutani background, but it's seeded in a weird family drama that's maybe the fourth plot line of the movie.  And there's David, a robot who is exploring the idea of god.  The Engineers are man's god. Man is his god.  What can he be god of?  Can he destroy his god?  Can he destroy god's god?  These are the things David likes to think about.  He's malevolent in his quest for answers to theoretical questions... it's not personal.  He has no soul, no emotions, no inhibitions.

David's story takes on a new life in the lamentable Alien:Covenant.  I hear that Scott cut out about 40 minutes of character and story beats from that film to slim it down into a more taut horror film, but it's the lesser for any decent sense of characterization, and the world building left in feels pigeonholed.  It certainly does a disservice to what Prometheus sets up (see I'm reacting to Covenant the way people reacted to Alien3 ).  There's thought that Scott had a larger 5 story arc in mind starting with Prometheus but it doesn't seem to be coming to fruition.  I think Scott is kind of obsessed with artificial life (see also Blade Runner and Raised By Wolves, the former of which is marginally in the Alien's universe, the latter seems like it's universe-adjacent) and had more of an Aliens vs Robots thing in mind.

But forgetting all of what went on after Prometheus the film weirdly stands on its own to me...it's connected, but also disconnected, and the arc from start to finish is satisfying that I don't really need everything else outside of it.  Which isn't to say that I will only ever watch Prometheus ever again.  No, I'll probably return to every film (yes, even Covenant) at some point.  

Now that Disney basically owns the Alien franchise, I'm very curious what comes next.  Obviously it's not going to be Ripley (nor likely Ridley) centric, which means it's going to be new terrain.  The first stop in the the Disney stable is the first ever Aliens comic book from Marvel.  (Hopefully there's no attempts to try to integrate the Xenomorphs into the Marvel Universe, as that universe already has the Brood, which were a riff on Aliens in X-Men in the 80's...plus, Dark Horse paired with DC a lot to bring Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and the Justice League versus Aliens.  That's maybe too much superhero crossover).  My hope, especially after re-watching all these films, is that they continue to choose interesting directors with a strong individualistic sensibility to carry the franchise on, and that they don't get lost in trying to serialize it too tightly.  Alien/s doesn't need a grand operatic saga feel, it needs distinct voices to continue to give it new and unique life.