In space, nobody can hear you spout clichés.
Forty years ago, in the wake of the scifi boom bought about
by Star Wars and Close Encounters, Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon gave us a very
different space-set film that created entirely new, deliciously nightmarish
aesthetics. The bio-organic body horror of Swiss master of the macabre HR Giger
was combined with dark, industrial starship interiors that were a far cry from
the Enterprise or the Death Star. It may have been homaged, ripped off, or
redone a thousand times since, but it’s time to go back to the original
masterpiece that is the 1979 Alien.
I’ve touched on my feelings with the franchise in my review
of Alien Resurrection, but it’s a good a time as any to get into detail with
the one that started it all off, why it worked, and if it holds up. Considering
the films in the series generally accepted to be…not so good outnumber the ones
agreed upon to be at least decent, it’s important here to focus on just what
caught people in the first place.
Alien itself rose from some of the old scifi horror flicks
of the 1950s, like ‘It! The Terror from Beyond Space’, and ‘The Thing From
Another World’ (also remade by John Carpenter into a horror film superb in its
own right). There might have been other inspirations, with such titles as
‘Attack of the Mutant Bunions’ or ‘Terror! Elvis Tries Acting’. Fundamentally
it’s a riff on old stories, back to the tales of travellers stumbling into a
haunted house, but much like Star Wars, it boils down to what it did with these
old fixtures, and it did them with enough panache and glorious gloomy style
that audiences in ’79 were instantly hooked.
Yes, I can’t get enough of what Scott and Giger did here—the
industrial lower decks of the starship Nostromo look real enough that even many
plastic iPod-carved modern sets rarely match them. The seventies décor and DOS
monitors of the other parts may seem charmingly dated, but there’s enough
detail, from corporate logos to dozens of labels, that it still works. And
there’s the stunning, bio-mechanical combination of sets and matte paintings
that formed the innards of the crashed ancient derelict. The scene where the
ruptured body of the fossilized pilot is found may be a one-off, and the
scenery very elaborate for such a short scene, but it makes enough of a creepy
impact that it fires the imagination (prequels aside…).
Indeed, it’s perhaps the first half of the film that I
prefer, as we slowly build up deliciously creepy tension with unknown distress
calls, windswept landscapes of strange rock formations, and the mystery of this
organic extraterrestrial craft. The crew of the Nostromo are relatable enough
as just blue collar workers in over their heads, and most of their decisions
are reasonable enough for folks being manipulated by callous and uncaring
corporations. Sure, we might chuckle at John Hurt sticking his face into an
alien egg, but in 1979, how was anyone meant to see what was coming next?
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| "He'll be alright, this happens to anyone that watches Aliens vs. Predator." |
Yes, I’m talking about that scene—one that has been copied
so many times it does lose a bit of impact. Hurt was a fairly big star then, so
seeing him writhe around in pain before ‘giving birth’ was genuinely
shocking—imagine, say, the same happening to Benedict Cumberbatch for how it would’ve
felt. But, we can’t look at this film in isolation really, so this brings us to
the second half of the film. It’s a bit more predictable—one by one, the
characters line up to die, but once again, it’s the style and direction that
still holds up so damn well. And, as played by the uniquely lanky Bolaji
Badejo, so does the alien itself.
Yes, the xenomorph is shot perfectly—you see only glimpses
of the glistening phallic carapace, you see it contorted in metal rafters and
in shafts, even concealed into the mechanical piping. It moves deliberately, with
sadistic intelligence, and there is no doubt it’ll end your day bloodily. As a
lil’ kid, the inhuman features, the lack of eyes, the strange curves, made it
scary enough that it was hard for me to even look at it. Grown up, I may be
more desensitized, but there’s no debating it looks damn cool.
But yes, the alien’s murder spree can feel a little
predictable. The revelation of Ian Holm’s Ash does mix things up, and delivers
that cynical anti-corporate message that was fairly prevalent in seventies
scifi. However, the cast soon drops until only Sigourney Weaver, then an unknown,
is left, and truly comes into her own.
The last ten minutes aboard the Nostromo to me are the standard for how this sort of thing
should be shot and directed—the frantic desperation in the face of the
self-destruct countdown, the jittering claustrophobic camerawork and flashing
lights to match the panic, the knowledge that this thing is still out there and
behind every corner—often imitated, but very rarely matched. On a side note, there’s
a deleted scene that shows other characters done in by the creature being
transformed into more eggs—an interesting one, but for me it sort of upsets the
perfect pacing you get in the regular cut.
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| Mwa. Perfection. |
And that’s why, despite some of its slow pace, Alien ends on
a superb note—catharsis, relief, but still a note of uncertainty, as the
shuttle fades away into deep space. Not of all it has aged perfectly—Ash’s
disembodied head looks laughable, and depending on the cut, it is a bit slow at
times, but the finale is excellent, and above all, the atmosphere and mood are
perfect. It may not be truly scary to current audiences, after all these years
of being copied and homaged, but for aesthetic and tension, it’s like fine wine.
Ripley went on to be codified as one of the great heroines
of cinematic scifi—ass kicking, resourceful, not taking shit from anyone, but
still enduring enough to feel human and relatable. This was one aspect, however,
missing from the knockoffs that flooded the B-movie scene into the early 80s,
most of them from schlock king Roger Corman. These ranged from the trashy but
memorable, like Galaxy of Terror, to the unwatchable, like...sigh...Inseminoid. Many
scenes of gory alien births came, but very little with the buildup and finesse
that gave Alien its punch.
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| In space, nobody can hear you not give a crap. |
Xenomorphs and other things cribbed from Alien would also
greatly influence the rising videogame market—everything from Metroid to
Contra, which either just flat out pasted facehuggers or tried to replicate the
film’s sense of tension and claustrophobia. Games based on the Alien series
itself flooded in like acid blood, and continue to this very day—from the
excellent Alien Isolation, to Colonial Marines, which apparently was coded by a
monkey pressing its butt cheeks onto a keyboard.
On that note, I might as well give my cursory thoughts on
the rest of the series:
-Aliens: Alongside Cameron’s own Terminator 2, it’s a both a
scifi classic in its own right and a truly sublime sequel that arguably outdoes
the original. Every single aspect is insanely memorable, from sound effects
like buzzing pulse rifles to motion tracker beeps, to dialogue, to the sets,
and the mind-blowing animatronics of the Alien queen. Ripley’s character is
developed far more and her badassery is codified forever. This ranks as one of
my favorite movies of all time, period—I love it.
-Alien 3: I don’t consider this one to be as terrible as
some make it out to be, but nor the underappreciated masterpiece that others
claim. It suffered from a godawful pre-production that chewed through half a
dozen scripts, and while it has some decent mood and nicely shot moments, it
could’ve been better. A decent if flawed film, and one that had the balls to
end it all there…
-Alien Resurrection: …if not for this one. See my review.
-Prometheus: Hoo boy. I wouldn’t go far as to hate this
film, but there is a lot that could’ve been done better, or different. Once
again, Scott delivers some striking visuals, and tries his best to execute some
lofty ideas, but it doesn’t come together as it should. I can see a better film
trying to rise up, but writer Daniel Lindelof frankly didn’t have the chops to
pull it off.
-Alien: Covenant: HOO
BOY. I’ll give it this—as far as individual scenes go, there are some that
beat any in Prometheus for excitement and visuals. But it’s even less cohesive,
and you can really feel Scott and the studio trying to impose very different
visions. One wants to do his android story, the other just wants more gory
xenomorph action, but with characters that lacked the down to earth relatable
feel as in the original.
So yeah. Despite shitty sequels, ripoffs, and imitations, watching
the original Alien in isolation (there’s a play for the fans there) helps you
appreciate why it was imitated and ripped off so many times. I think what made
the original was a combination of Scott’s visuals and O’Bannon’s writing.
Ridley is very talented with the mechanics of filmmaking, but definitely needs
a good strong script to go with it, as Prometheus and so on proved. He would go
on to codify the entire cyberpunk genre with Blade Runner not long after this
film, proving this point further. As for O’Bannon, he went on to do batshit but
memorable flicks like Lifeforce, the hysterically awesome 80s zombie
extravanganza Return of the Living Dead, and one of my favorite pieces of scifi
action cheese, Total Recall.
Though speaking of the writing, I could do entire essays on
the ideas dropped from the final product—specifically ones that spelled out
just how intelligent the alien was mean to be. One ending had it actually
murder Ripley, and then sent out her closing narration by imitating her voice…
All in all? Over the decades, and despite some wrinkles,
Alien is a survivor. Its structural perfection is matched only by its versatility.
This is Roman, signing off.
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