| |
|
(Just for a bit of context - this thread was originally started aaaages ago in response to this chatter in the Comics forum. So it was started sorta in the middle of - well, not even a discussion, just some banter. Hence the lame-o first post and abstract and everything. Perhaps it should now be changed to “Hey, let’s talk about the Alien films” or something like that, perhaps that might stop anyone taking this thread as being good for content-free breeze-shootin’. I'll go and edit the first post if anyone thinks it'll help. Regardless, I still think this whole ‘which one is best?’ thing - although certainly a bit goofy and geeky and dumb-sounding - is a good enough way of kicking off any discussion about these films. Given that each subsequent film is set up to be different, that each one seems to consciously kick against the ending of the last - the lonely, long-way-from-home set-up of Alien giving way to the get-an-entire-army-on-your-side thing of Aliens; the triumphant, sleep-all-the-way-home ending of that film giving way to a third film that instantly pisses away all The Triumph and then proceeds to kill any glimmer of hope that there might ever be any triumphs ever again; the tiny, personal sacrifice at the end of that film giving way to the lurid Humanoïdes Associés vibe of the fourth, then I think its fair enough to refer to the contrasts when describing what you like.
But I also think it’d be unfortunate if the initial, er, ‘lith utrabrawl’ slant to this thread is still being taken as a green light to give full vent to that stuff howevermany years later, especially when someone has bumped the thread with a thoughtful and interesting post on why Alien Resurrection is working for him. So could I possibly suggest at this point that anyone who's still inclined to snarl about whichever film they *hate* might perhaps pause, and then reign in the snarl a little? Please. I’m not even thinking of anyone in particular here, I just don’t want anyone to suddenly kick off.)
Anyway. Distinctions, though? The differences? Fair game. And I’m still interested in this ‘Alien and Alien3 are essentially the same storyline’ thing, ES, because I’m still not seeing it, man. I think they're miles apart. Never mind about quibbling over whether Newt can be described as a cute kid or whether Hicks is really ‘a sort of love interest’ or not (my point there, for what its worth: I’m not talking about onscreen sexing. Just that he’s the one you’re supposed to worry about and want to survive to the end along with Ripley. Not Hudson, not Vasquez or Drake or whoever. Hicks and Ripley make eyes at each other once or twice, they’re A Man and A Woman, and it’s A James Cameron Film, and so they’re only a couple in that sense and no more, okay?), or indeed whether or not having no guns at all (Alien and Alien3) is really ‘essentially’ different from not having enough bullets to go in those guns (Aliens).
But, when you say Of course it isn't exactly the same, but I think re-hash is a fair accusation. The situation in both Alien and Alien3 is a group of unarmed humans effectively trapped in a warren of pipes and machinery with an unstoppable creature who exists only to kill. Their only hope is to -- you can stop right there, because that’s where the distinction I’m making is. The hope thing. That the prisoners and Ripley in Alien3 aren’t “hoping” to survive, and the crew in Alien all are, and that's a very very very different plot dynamic. I can totally get behind the argument that the ‘action sequence’ at the end of Alien3 isn’t a particularly well-constructed piece of film-making, but then, it’s most certainly not like Alien in that no-one in it is either trying to survive past the hour or get away entirely, and Ripley in particular is absolutely fixed on her imminent death.
And that’s another thing: you feel the characters are “walking cliches,” but I'd suggest that the prisoners don’t register as sparkling individuals because Ripley doesn’t ever get to know them, man. Doesn't want to. They’re not interesting because Ripley’s not interested in them, she’s tightly focussed on her own situation from the moment she wakes up, and barely even looks at many of the prisoners long enough to see them. You think Clemens’ death in Alien3 is comparable to Dallas’s death in Alien? She doesn’t give a flying fuck about Clemens, she doesn’t confide in him, she goes over his head first opportunity after she realises how much Andrews hates him. He’s not important to her, he’s just the doctor, and the good thing about Clemens is the way Charles Dance plays him as a guy who *thinks* he could be a main character, even as everyone else just talks around him. And anyway, the alien that's inside Ripley instantly becomes a far more compelling concern for her than the one that's jumping around and dicing prisoners, and that's not because she ever has any hope that she can survive its birth, it’s because the personal dilemma of having an alien inside you and what you then do about that is what the film is about.
On the final Bishop scene. Bishop, who proves he's not a corporate plant, walks back on in the final scene mindlessly loyal to Weyland-Yutani and spouting Burke-isms like the second film never happened. Again, that’s sorta the point. A bit of an Empire Strikes Back moment, only with this Empire getting the last word and still undeniably In Charge, and Ripley being offered a way out if only she’ll give herself up to their care. After the Inescapable Death theme that’s dominated Alien3, the prospect of Ripley’s survival is being offered to her, right at the last, by a Bishop robot that pretends to be human in order to gain her trust, ie a horrid lying robot. Horrible, creepy fucking way he frames it, too: “You can still have a life... [and here Lance gives a quite terrifying awful sensitive-guy smile] ...children.” Wonderful stuff from Sigourney in response, where Ripley so clearly wants to believe all this shit he’s telling her, and then the Stirring Moment is where she refuses, where she turns it all down, her hearts’ desire to just live and be happy, simply because she absolutely won't take what he’s telling her on trust.
And rightly so, because then we see that he *is* an android and *is* only interested in the alien inside her after all, the bastard. So at the end she knows that by diving into the furnace she’s dying to save a universe that doesn’t remotely deserve the sacrifice, a universe that’s brim-full of lying fucks and pretty much entirely ruled by the inescapable forces of Teh Corporate Evil. And yet still she chooses to dive to destroy the alien, her alien, because even though it’s only a tiny, personal little sacrifice, it’s nevertheless all she can do, and it’s her choice, not the Company’s, and it’s the right thing to do as she sees it.
Which is a really weird place to take the audience.
Anyway. Alien3's on telly this Friday, like I said. Anybody wants to give it another chance, we can talk about it in this thread afterwards, and in the meantime I’ll try and dig up a rather fab piece that Amy Taubin wrote about it for Sight & Sound, because I remeber it as being rather brilliantly written and has oodles of great stuff about all the subtext. |
|
|
