Tag Archives: Alien

Blomkamp’s Alien in trouble…?

That was quick.

A few weeks back, the internet community was salivating at the curiously timed release of director Neill Blomkamp’s sketches regarding a possible fifth Alien film, one that features an older Ripley and, intriguingly, acid scarred Hicks.

To say I, like many others, was intrigued is an understatement.  I love the first two Alien films but felt the series made a very bad turn with Alien 3, which in the opening minutes cancelled out all the good that Aliens had accomplished by mercilessly -and, to my mind stupidly- killing off both Newt and Hicks, the only other human survivors of Aliens.  Alien Resurrection, to me, was a decent enough film which was neither terribly good or bad…but very mediocre.

So when Mr. Blomkamp’s ideas surfaced, the idea that the studios would have the -let’s face it- balls to consider a new Alien film that (it had to, right?) effectively ignore the events of Aliens 3 and Resurrection felt daring, fascinating, and quite bold.

Fox Studios took note of the fan reaction and, in short order, Mr. Blomkamp reported that his next film would be this new Alien feature, and there was much rejoicing.

But lost in all the hoopla was the fact that Mr. Blomkamp had a new film about to come out, Chappie.

As I said above, the release of all this Alien stuff was “curiously” timed.  After all, rather than push a new project, wouldn’t Mr. Blomkamp want to push his new project and get it to succeed before he starts jumping on his next project?

Beneath the excitement over this potential new Alien film, some started to question why the director was turning the chance to promote his to be released film into a push for his next one.

There grew a feeling that Chappie, like Mr. Blomkamp’s previous film Elysium, wasn’t all that good and Mr. Blomkamp and the studios knew it and that’s why he was pushing his next work.

Well, Chappie’s been released and the critical reviews haven’t been all that good.  Rottentomatoes.com currently has the film hovering in the 30% range for critics, a pretty dreadful score.  Audiences, however, appear to like it more, giving it a far better 67% positive.

Still the word of mouth doesn’t appear all that strong and it doesn’t look like Chappie will survive too long in its release.

Which has created a noticeable shift in opinion among many regarding Mr. Blomkamp’s Alien film.  People who were clamoring for Mr. Blomkamp’s take on the Alien franchise are, quite suddenly, ambivalent regarding his involvement.  Mr. Blomkamp has made three films so far, the well received -and successful- District 9 and followed that up with Elysium and Chappie, both of which appear to be disappointments.

Has the bloom left the rose?

I think it has.

The first sign of trouble was this intriguing article from Jeremy Smith and published on Ain’t It Cool News.  Now I know there’s a lot of nonsense published on that site, but now and again they present some articles that offer you food for thought, something Mr. Smith certainly has.  Read it for yourself:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/70604

Perhaps the most hard hitting lines from that article are these.  I’ve bolded the statement that really hit home:

That last bit from Blomkamp (that he feels his talents aren’t best utilized as a director) comes courtesy of an interview with Uproxx’s Mike Ryan (which was conducted before the “ALIEN 5” deal was announced), and I think it’s a huge red flag. Given that Blomkamp now admits he “fucked up” ELYSIUM, and is so enamored of his latest movie, CHAPPiE, that he spent a good chunk of the press tour promoting his involvement in a new ALIEN flick, I’m not sure he should be getting a shot at a major franchise that could give a passionate filmmaker – i.e. one who believes with absolute certainty that he/she is a director – a significant career boost.

Ouch.

If Chappie winds up being a huge bust, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fox changes their mind about doing Mr. Blomkamp’s Alien.

Given what’s gone on, perhaps, just perhaps, that’s not such a bad thing.

Still, I would love to see someone give us a Alien film that brings back Ripley, Hicks, and Newt.

As always, we’ll see.

New Alien movie to ignore last two…?

A short while back, director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) made considerable waves among the movie fandom community when he presented images of an older Ripley and a disfigured Hicks, late from the movie Aliens, and noted he had worked on an idea for a sequel to that film that would complete the Alien/Aliens saga.

The images (you can see them here) clearly got peoples’ attention at Fox Studios as this film has been green-lighted and will be Mr. Blomkamp’s follow up to Chappie.

One thing that people wondered, of course, was where this film might fit in the Alien cinematic universe timeline.  Alien 3, after all, essentially took place “immediately” after the events of Aliens and clearly showed both Hicks and Newt were dead.  The images Mr. Blomkamp presented, though, had an elderly and disfigured Hicks standing alongside a more mature Ripley.

What gives?

Well, it now appears this new Alien film might well ignore the events presented in both Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection:

http://www.slashfilm.com/blomkamps-alien/

Since learning of this there have been some commentaries pro and con regarding the need -if there even is one- to follow “continuity” or ignore it.  Given the fact that few hold either Alien 3 or Alien Resurrection in as high regard as the first two films, I suspect it will be easier for audiences to accept the idea of ignoring these later two Alien films.

Continuity, I find, is a curious thing.  If you’re into comic books, continuity can be a blessing as well as a curse.  The Superman who appeared in Action Comics #1 way back in 1938 is not the same Superman as is presented today.  Sure, he still sports the Clark Kent “disguise” and has the hots for Lois Lane (both ideas present in that first Superman story) and he is from Krypton, but there are noticeable difference.  That Superman, for instance, couldn’t fly.  He jumped very far.  He was also a no-nonsense bad-ass who wasn’t adverse to “eye for an eye” type justice.  In that very first story, if memory serves, he beats a woman beater!

In movies, too, there have been series that featured continuity “glitches”.  In the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967) Sean Connery’s Bond comes face to face with Blofeld (played by Donald Pleasance), his S.P.E.C.T.R.E. nemesis.  Yet in the film that follow this one, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, not only is Connery replaced with actor George Lazenby, but Bond once again comes face to face with Blofeld (this time played by Telly Savalas) yet the two do not appear to recognize each other!

Then there’s the fact that the original Star Wars, before George Lucas made all the big and little changes to it, clearly had Luke Skywalker fall instantly head over heels for Princess Leia who, in the very next film, is revealed to be his twin sister!

The bottom line for me is that I don’t have much of a problem ignoring either Alien 3 or Resurrection.  While I felt neither film was “horrible”, considering what came immediately before, these last two films in the series were much weaker.  I’m curious to see what Mr. Blomkamp is up to, though having seen his first two films he’s only batting 500.  I enjoyed District 9 but didn’t like Elysium much at all.

Hopefully, his Alien film will be more in line with District 9.

Alien vs. Outland

There was no intention on my part to watch both Alien (1979) and Outland (1981) one after the other.  That is, however, what happened.  I like both films, and as I mentioned in my blog entry noting the then upcoming release of Outland on Blu Ray (you can read about that here) I always felt that that film was heavily inspired, at least from a visual standpoint, by Alien as much as its plot was inspired by the famous western High Noon.

Starting a couple of nights ago I sat down and watched Alien from start to end.  The next day, I did the same for Outland.  While I’ve seen bits and pieces of both films over the years, I don’t think its much of an exaggeration to say I haven’t seen either film, from beginning to end, in perhaps two or possibly more decades.

Revisiting films is an interesting experience.  Sometimes, a movie that blew you away in your younger years simply doesn’t do much for you years later.  There are myriad reasons this might happen.  If you like action films, you have to realize that movies have become “quicker”, and their thrills have become bigger and bigger spectacles.

In the case of Alien, when I originally saw that film back in 1979 (or maybe 1980), it quite frankly scared the shit out of me.  The film was incredibly beautiful to look at, but its heart was as dark as could be.  I loved several things about it:  The dread of finding that lost alien ship and its deadly cargo.  The chest bursting scene (who didn’t?!), the revelation of what Ash was, and, of course, the surprise “hero” of the piece.

It’s hard today to point out how daring and fascinating a film Alien was.  Indeed, while many justifiably focused on the frights, there was a cleverness to the script and story that should not be overlooked.  Tom Skerritt’s Dallas, for example, was presented to audiences as the “hero” of the piece.  He was the captain of the ship, after all, and the commanding officer.  Despite his outward scruffiness, he looked and talked the part of the hero.  Yet in a very clever bit of screenwriting, it was his actions that may well have resulted in the tragedy that followed.  He was the one, after all, who ignored sterilization protocol and insisted the “infected” Kane be brought back into the ship.

The character of Ash was also a very clever piece of writing.  The big reveal of who he was, in my opinion, was every bit as memorable as the chest bursting sequence.  What an interesting, unique, and ultimately horrifying way to show a robot!

However, like comedy, the genre of horror often relies on “surprising” the viewers.  With the passage of time and the cribbing of ideas, often this element of surprise simply loses that uniqueness with the arrival of sequels and other movies in that vein.

In the case of re-watching Alien, I realized just how much damage that film’s sequel, Aliens did to the original work.  In Alien, you have the single creature mercilessly, stealthily, wiping out one cast member after the other.  In Aliens, we have the protagonists face an army of such creatures.  Suddenly, what was a stealthy being, a creature that hid incredibly well in the shadows and picked off its victims one after the other…a creature that showed evil malice and almost supernatural “hunting” skills, was reduced to the equivalent of an angry wasp.  The alien creatures buzzed around, getting swatted here and there, drawing fear from their numbers rather than evil intent.

Mind you, I’m not knocking Aliens as a movie.  I think it remains a terrific thrill ride.  However, while watching Alien for the first time in so many years it was difficult to get myself in that same frame of mind I had when I first saw it and the alien creature was such a unique and terrifying movie villain.  To put it bluntly, it was hard to once again feel terrified of a single creature attacking while, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but recall the army of such creatures faced -and defeated- in Aliens.

I still love Alien.  I still think it remains one of the greatest horror/sci-fi hybrids ever created.  However, I would be lying if I said that subsequent works haven’t somewhat diminished the shocks one originally felt while watching this film.

So, the next night I watched Outland.  Clearly, the impact of Alien, released only a couple of years before, was on the mind of the movie’s makers.  The visuals, indeed the film itself, could fit comfortably within the Alien universe, though it does not feature any alien creatures at all.

Sean Connery is Marshall O’Niel, a somewhat washed up man sent to the mining colony on Io (a moon of Jupiter) where he comes upon a mystery involving the apparent suicides of various miners.  As mentioned before, Outland’s story becomes a rather large “homage” (or, if you’re less forgiving, “rip off”) of High Noon, especially in the film’s last acts.  While the film was successful, I suspect the knowledge that it so blatantly used High Noon’s story framework made many dismiss it.  Today, the film isn’t nearly as well known as Alien, and it was only last week that the Blu Ray edition was finally released.  For those interested, the Blu Ray presents a beautiful picture and sound.  It is, however, a fairly “bare bones” release.  The only extras present are a theatrical trailer and director comments.  The director comments are worth checking out.  The previous bare bones DVD edition was apparently of very, very poor quality, so this is pretty much the first time modern audiences get to see this film in such nice shape.

And you know what?  It actually holds up after all these years.

Mind you, I was one of “those people” back then irritated by the High Noon parallels.  Upon re-watching the film, I was far more forgiving and just went with it.  What I found was a pretty exciting piece of action cinema, with Sean Connery delivering a damn good multi-faceted performance.  In fact, this could well be one of his more complete acting jobs, as he’s called upon to be alternately tough, vulnerable, desperate, sarcastic, and, yes, even on rare occasions quite humorous.  Frances Sternhagen goes toe-to-delightful-toe with Mr. Connery as Dr. Lazarus (I’ve got to groan at that waaaay too symbolic name!), his only real ally in the space mining outfit.  The movie builds its plot nicely, and the only bit of silliness the audience has to accept (and I’ve mentioned it in my previous entry) is that given the sensitive nature of this station, the idea that there could be any gun play at all is pretty damn ridiculous.

However, again, I could go with the flow and accept it.

As far as the visuals and effects, considering we are dealing with a thirty plus year old film, they remain quite good.  Yes, there are some effects that look a little creaky here and there but, frankly, there was very little to complain about.

In the end, watching Alien and Outland back to back proved an interesting experience and a definite blast from the past.  While one can’t entirely forget what came afterwards, it was interesting to revisit these two films which presented a decidedly darker view of science fictional worlds.