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Reexamining: Aliens
I've made many, many questionable choices in my life, but one of the more glaring has to be the night I rented both Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens and watched them back to back.
No, not for the expected bouts of night terrors -- but because of two films that share a universe (or really even the vaguest sense of continuity), there aren't two as disparate as those two films. The former is an excellent deep-space Jaws, taking the unseen and unfathomable adversary to even greater extremes and with enough surprises to make for a pretty much unforgettable cinematic experience in and of itself. The latter, though, I have to say, has lodged in my heart as Cameron's best film, one that solidifies the species's mythology and vitality to such a degree that not even four abysmal follow-ups can kill the franchise outright. But it's not even the same genre as Alien -- it's an action-adventure of horrific nature, and when the first slow-paced, mostly expository act transitions into the second, you're invested in the foul-mouthed, entertainingly-flawed survivors (played by people you've never heard of before) in a way you just weren't with the ill-fated crew of the Nostromo.
And even after almost a quarter of a century, it holds up. Some of the effects are a bit dated, which is to be expected, but the performances and the script are still extremely tight, even with the Director's Cut. Yes, I'm watching it in DVD-quality for the first time, and it's a treat, having worn my VHS copy down to mulch long, long ago. And it's funny how cliché so much of it seems now -- space marines, squad-based combat, dropships, power loaders, the corporation, hive mentality -- when no single piece of media did more to establish them as cliché than this film (with Starship Troopers being a close second). But they work. My sole regret is seeing them in tandem -- that's never going to allow Alien to achieve in my mind what it really should be. It had years to solidify its place in the nexus of sci-fi and horror, and it had five minutes before the tape rewound and I popped in Aliens and Jim Cameron cranked the carnage up to crazy-go-nuts. (If Superman can have his franchise rebooted back to pre-Richard-Pryor days, surely they can rewind Ripley to even the first trailer to the Aliens sequel.)
So I'm hearing the hyperbole that's bubbling into the blogosphere re: Cameron's upcoming Avatar, and nothing I'm reading is making me feel it just yet. I'm sure the technology's going to be impressive, I'm sure we'll see millions of dollars in each frame of the film, but Cameron worries me. I'm no longer surprised when filmmakers become outed as fetishists, mistaking the technology for the craft, but in Cameron's case, I'd have a more tangible sense of loss if he disappears in a blizzard of CGI and a maze of render farms. He's shown more range and more depth than most filmmakers who've tumbled into the Lucas Pit, and I have more faith in his imagination than most. Fingers crossed.
But whatever December holds, I can always curl up with my colonial marine comfort food. "Someone wake up Hicks."
No, not for the expected bouts of night terrors -- but because of two films that share a universe (or really even the vaguest sense of continuity), there aren't two as disparate as those two films. The former is an excellent deep-space Jaws, taking the unseen and unfathomable adversary to even greater extremes and with enough surprises to make for a pretty much unforgettable cinematic experience in and of itself. The latter, though, I have to say, has lodged in my heart as Cameron's best film, one that solidifies the species's mythology and vitality to such a degree that not even four abysmal follow-ups can kill the franchise outright. But it's not even the same genre as Alien -- it's an action-adventure of horrific nature, and when the first slow-paced, mostly expository act transitions into the second, you're invested in the foul-mouthed, entertainingly-flawed survivors (played by people you've never heard of before) in a way you just weren't with the ill-fated crew of the Nostromo.
And even after almost a quarter of a century, it holds up. Some of the effects are a bit dated, which is to be expected, but the performances and the script are still extremely tight, even with the Director's Cut. Yes, I'm watching it in DVD-quality for the first time, and it's a treat, having worn my VHS copy down to mulch long, long ago. And it's funny how cliché so much of it seems now -- space marines, squad-based combat, dropships, power loaders, the corporation, hive mentality -- when no single piece of media did more to establish them as cliché than this film (with Starship Troopers being a close second). But they work. My sole regret is seeing them in tandem -- that's never going to allow Alien to achieve in my mind what it really should be. It had years to solidify its place in the nexus of sci-fi and horror, and it had five minutes before the tape rewound and I popped in Aliens and Jim Cameron cranked the carnage up to crazy-go-nuts. (If Superman can have his franchise rebooted back to pre-Richard-Pryor days, surely they can rewind Ripley to even the first trailer to the Aliens sequel.)
So I'm hearing the hyperbole that's bubbling into the blogosphere re: Cameron's upcoming Avatar, and nothing I'm reading is making me feel it just yet. I'm sure the technology's going to be impressive, I'm sure we'll see millions of dollars in each frame of the film, but Cameron worries me. I'm no longer surprised when filmmakers become outed as fetishists, mistaking the technology for the craft, but in Cameron's case, I'd have a more tangible sense of loss if he disappears in a blizzard of CGI and a maze of render farms. He's shown more range and more depth than most filmmakers who've tumbled into the Lucas Pit, and I have more faith in his imagination than most. Fingers crossed.
But whatever December holds, I can always curl up with my colonial marine comfort food. "Someone wake up Hicks."
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In my case, I saw the sequel first. Not surprising, really, as just the trailer for Alien (which we saw at the drive-in, yep) gave me nightmares, whereas the sequel came out during high school and had the Cool Guy From Terminator in it. By the time I saw the original, it was much less horrifying than it should have been, simply because I knew the mythology and could grin a little at the special effects.
And that first Alien 3 trailer... Oh, if only.
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