Serious About Series: The Alien Quadrilogy

 You can get much more "alien" than Alien.

"Alien invasion week" seems like a great time to try out what I'd like to turn into a new regular feature - - Serious About Series. The aim of this is to take a holistic look at group of a movies; examining how they fare on their own and in relation to each other instead of simply reviewing each one. Flicks will usually be grouped by series, but the umbrella's wide-enough to include unifiers like setting, actor and genre. You could look at last week's "Dick Comparison" as the prototype for this, and those movies were connected by their original author. 

 Giger's nightmarish designs were light years ahead of the curve. They're just as provocative today as they were 30 years ago, wouldn't you agree?

Alien (1979) Dir. Ridley Scott

This was something like the star child birthed from all the ectoplasmic currents bubbling in the science fiction zeitgeist throughout the 70s. Much of the effects crew had migrated from Jodorowsky’s ambitious, aborted adaptation of Dune, the plot was a somber re-work of O’Bannon’s parodic Dark Star and the look took conscious inspiration from the likes of Heavy Metal magazine and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's maybe that latter influence which can be most attributed to the enduringly visceral quality of the film's gritty realism. If Star Wars’ felt like a lived-in future two years earlier, then this movie, with its overlapping and half-audible conversations, felt like stowing away in the bowels of the most decrepit spaceship in the collective imagination. Indeed, the thread of SF in cinema verite style stretches all through to today with Battle: LA, does it not? 

When the ship's designed to look like a rifle with an affixed bayonet, you get the sense that everything's pretty intense. 

Aliens (1986) Dir. James Cameron

This is a textbook example of a justified and well-executed sequel. Not only does it answer lingering questions from the first movie - - Just who is laying those eggs? What would happen if somebody with real weapons went up against the aliens? - - it also moves the plot into a direction that respects what came before without re-treading any ground. In less capable hands, following a horror with an actioner would feel like a betrayal of spirit. With Cameron, though, it's a natural evolution that flips tensions brilliantly. Putting Ripley in a position where she has to place trust in an android (after Ash turned on her so spectacularly in the first one) lays a knife-sharp suspense under every scene Bishop's in. You're just waiting for him to “turn heel” and start monologuing about "admirable purity."  Friendship with dangerous machines and unorthodox family units were themes Cameron revisited like jazz standards in Terminator 2, of course. Both films are remarkable for their deft balances of touching emotional arcs and uniquely credible, mean action that never, ever lets up.  

 Comparisons to the Passion of Joan of Arc get brought up a lot...

Alien3 (1992) Dir. David Fincher

I fully realize I’m getting into lunatic apologist territory by singing the praises of a movie that’s been disowned by its director, but I still stand firm by my opinion that this provides one of the most fitting arc conclusions I've seen in any series. Continuing on to another genre, I see this as an operatic tragedy (a quality Elliot Goldenthal’s elegiac and bombastic score makes unavoidable) where the Alien's more akin to the relentless Furies of Greek mythology - - horrific, evil forces of nature who just keep coming back even after the story's supposed to be over.  

Take this solely as a record of Ripley's personal experience and  its apparent negatives seem much more like positives. It's the tale of noble, but doomed, soul who’s survived so much unbelievable horror and loss that she can’t even bear to grow too attached to these convict monks - - this latest batch of victims - - because she knows the forces of fate are against them all. Few movies have such a palpable sense of dread saturating them from frame one. Fans cry fowl about the brutal offing of Hicks and Newt and say it's too dark. Well, aren't Alien movies supposed to be dark? You want a lighter Alien, watch, the next one. Nah, the series needs to be bleak and a protagonist sacrificing herself to stop this monstrous force of nature, once and for all, is the most appropriate ending for a bleak series to me. 

 Don't make those puppy dog eyes at me.

Alien Resurrection (1998) Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jeunet’s an excellent filmmaker with a truly-distinct style and voice. City of Lost Children and Amelie are excellent films, but even as nightmarish as the former got, I don’t think Jeunet’s playful whimsy jibes with the aforementioned mean bleakness of this series. I stress tone because this actually has a lot of conceptually-rich material. Ripley getting cloned by Weyland-Yutani shows just how low their underhanded treachery can go when they'll even find a way to cheat somebody else's death. Her new form having traces of xenomorph DNA is a suitable realization of the line from Alien3 about how the monster's been part of her life for so long, she can't remember anything else. And the half-human Newborn is a ghoulish creation that deservedly belongs in the same demented menagerie as the Queen and the Dog Alien (its dewy eyes and childlike shriek make for one chilling death scene,too!)   

But the tone? At times, this felt like a parody of Alien that was only reined back a few degrees after some development meetings. It feels like some burlesque spoof; an instrument that's still out-of-tune even when it hits some right notes. As you can guess, this is the entry in the series I prefer to ignore.