Rage against the Beasts Part 1 or 2 Dinner Must Be Prepared!

Movie review: Alien

The 4K releases for Alien and Alines. The third one and Resurrection would not be covered by this humble blogger at this time. Partially because I do not own home release of those. The other reason might be…

Corman Connection

2024 marks the forty-fifty anniversary of Alien. It’s bit surreal to think that this influential flick is almost half a century old. But then again, several of its cast (Like John Hurt) and staff (Like co-writer Dan O’Bannon and one among several designers H.R Giger.) members are no longer with us. A producer who almost got on board also past recently as the time of writing. I am of course talking about the (in)famous “Schlock Maestro”, Roger Corman. Yours truly mainly would love to thank him for this anime his “Women in Prison” flicks inspired.

Much like the Matrix, Alien’s round number anniversary back in 2019 was more celebrated. The 4K release pictured above came out back then. Unlike Aliens’ “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” in 2024, Alien 4K release was rather light with only 2 commentary tracks as its behind-the-scene special feature. Yours truly suspect that it was to make way for coffee table book the Making of Alien back then.

Reading this heavy thing on a desk is certainly more tiring than reading it on a coffee table.

2019 also saw the release of 95 minutes long documentary Memory: The Origins of Alien. Corman was interviewed for this feature, in which he claimed that he declined Dan O’Bannon’s script and suggested that they deserved a bigger budget than he was able to cough up. The rest, as they say, is history. This marks Corman’s connection to the 1979 original. His connection to the 1986 sequel is no weaker, as that flick’s writer-director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd both started their career in film making under him.

As May gives away to June in 2024, it’s high time for me to have my say regarding the influential science fiction flicks in both release and chronological order. I am not going to call the 1979 flick a “horror” flick and I got reasons for it. That would be good as any place to start.

The relative weak sauce

As the bodies drifted, their blood boiled in the vacuum and their inner organs were vomited out, until they turned into strange blobs surrounded by crystalline clouds made from the liquid they exuded.

-----The Three-body Problem, written by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu

As I mentioned before, Mr. Cixin Liu introduced my teenaged self to the world of horror. The passage above from Three-body Problem did come up in my mind in the recent couple of years, mainly because neither the Chinese nor the English language adaption did the bit probably bloody. Perhaps it’s just the bigger picture they focused on? Either way, I read the passage in Simplified/Standard Chinese back when I was 16, more than a full year before my first view of Alien. So, how could I think of the Chestburster scene other than “This is weak sauce”? That bloody day people had on set in early August 1978 aside.

Of course, back in the late 1970s days, Chestburster scene was seen as Alien’s money shot. So much so that “Ash being a robot, and his head will be smashed in” was a twist added for the third act having a similarly shocking horror imagery. The so-called birth scene is still not showed fully on Chinese stream service like Bilbili.

Maybe I just listened to Scott Adkins and his stunt performing buddies (Excluding Gareth Evans, of course. He is just a demanding dickhead of a director), Brett’s death in the hand of adult Alien being cut short is disappointing. They even put the Alien tail going up between his legs footage before Ms. Lambert’s death. Scott can claim he took the show less let audience imagine the rest route all he wants, I just think the long build-up and short pay-off approach are the signs of weak sauce.

Minutes, not hours

I abandoned the Alien game subtitled Isolation only 104 minutes in. It nearly bored me to death before the iconic dickhead monster can be properly introduced. Billed as “finally a good video game based on the right Alien movie” by many, this first-person horror game felt off to me from the very beginning. No jump button in first person action game feels off and the so-called “puzzles” honestly felt insulting. Not to mention the save system. The game asked me “would you kindly sneak around those 4 assholes with guns?” and I replied “Certainly not”.

The 1979 movie is mostly about 6 homo sapiens and 1 meat-bag of a different kind (Ash the fleshy robot, not Jones the orange cat. Or I would have typed “fur ball”) putting up with each other. The director Ridley Scott kept saying that sole survivor Ripley was only alone for the last 17 minutes of the film. So how dare Creative Assemble call Ripley Jr.’s 17 hours long journey as a lone survivor faithful to the 1979 flick while the film was obviously sold on its ensemble cast. At least, in Japan.

Translation from top to bottom: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” “Alert! Approaching Alien!” “The very first hype space suspense of this century.”

This poster featuring all 7 ensemble members was hard to come by on the internet, so yours truly just took a picture of it off 2019’s Making of Alien book. The iconic dickhead monster is nowhere to be seen here. So, from far to close and left to right, let’s see the 7 “little Indians” shall we?

Kane played by John Hurt, whose face was hugged by Facehugger and chest from where Chestburster burst out of. Being the first one to bite the dust, Hurt sure was the Sean Bean before Bean himself got such reputation: the Name people got for a show whose characters are usually doomed to be killed off. Hurt played Caligula in BBC’s I, Claudia, a show covering the life story of the fourth Roman Emperor. Caligula was the third Roman Emperor so take a wild guess what happened to him. Hint would be an A word and it’s not “abdication”.

Ash played by Ian Holm, “a god damned robot” that is arguably the real horror monster of this film. Funny enough, the sexual undertone of Ash choking Ripely with a rolled up magazine did not hit me, until I saw the scene with those nude photos blurred out on Bilibili…

Parker played by Yaphet Kotto, the man who almost barbecued the dickhead monster. But instead, his death reveals the monster’s rather nasty bird-like eat habit: just one bite and left the mess around.

Lambert played by Veronica Cartwright, the scared shitless Ms. “Leg It”. With the theatrical cut on Bilibili shaving off several bloody seconds from the Chestburster scene, Lambert’s blood-chilling scream made her death with the most “on-screen” one even though it’s not visible to audience and Ripley. Her arms dangling is not pleasant to watch either.

Brett played by Harry Dean Stanton, aka the very bottom member of Nostromo and the first victim of the adult dickhead monster. The late Mr. Stanton humbly claimed that he was yet able to play “scared” in Alien’s audio commentary. Personally, I think the face he make before death is suitable for the occasion given that the doomed man clearly does not know what the actual fuck he was looking at.

What the actual f…AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Captain Dallas played by Tom Skerritt, the first actor cast for the flick. Dallas, by all means and purposes, was set up as one of those usual space hero with that raven beard. I would love to think he putting himself between Ripley and the dead Facehugger is a sign of his heroism, rather than the sexual relationship he and Ripley have in some early draft of the movie’s script.

Dallas’ heroism comes to a sudden end when he takes a wrong turn in the air duct and gets got by the dickhead monster. Strangely there can be three possibilities depends on what cut you watch. Let’s begin with 2003’s Director’s Cut where he is cocooned and begs Ripley to kill him, simple enough. In the longer Theatrical Cut, he is either eaten or blown up when the ship Norstomo explodes.

Last but not least, Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver. Ms. Weaver and the aforementioned Ms. Cartwright were both born in 1949 but about 6 months apart and with the day miHoYo’s country of origin was established in between. Sigourney being only 28 when the movie was shot is of course the younger one.

The interaction among those 7 is where this film shines. Of course the first 2 to die can be seen as the weak links: Kane does not stand out until that Facehugger get up his face and Brett only says “Right.” But the tension between bridge crew (Dallas, Kane, Ripley and Lambert) and mechanics (Parker and Brett) regarding payment is fun to watch. Dan O’Bannon envisioned a landing foul-up for this film and the tension between 2 crews is highlighted by it as the 3 bridge members go off to investigate something alien, while the 2 mechanics get real shit to do. Between them being Ripley overwatching the repair and Ash being Ash.

The Director who did cut

Yours truly usually prefer “extended cut” to “director’s cut” since the alternative cuts available to us common folks are usually longer. But Ridley Scott is an odd duck on this front. The director’s cut of Alien in 2003 runs about 115 minutes, one minute shorter and even the cut watchable on Bilibili is longer with seconds of Chest bursting shaved off.

The director’s cut was how I watched the movie for the first time and maybe it gave me the impression that this film is about the crew. The first scene added would be Lambert slapping Ripley after the latter insisting on the quarantine protocol and not letting Dallas and Lambert along with Kane who got a finger monster on his face.

The other 2 scenes being: after Brett’s death, Ripley and Parker going in and see blood dipped down; during Ripley’s “17 minutes” as the long survivor, she found a very dead Brett and a still alive Dallas being feed to Alien eggs. I can take or leave those, especially after Aliens’ Queen laying eggs was taken by Fox as canon instead of one single dickhead cable of fucking themselves.

Now the vegetable is out of the way

Alien’s dead Facehugger made of seafood.

If it cannot be more obvious: yours truly is more of an Aliens person than an Alien person. I cannot stand the Alien game for more than a couple of hours yet I cannot count how many games inspired by Aliens I played and enjoyed. Still, being the stone cold classic as it is, Alien does provide point for me to admire.

The film’s influence on science fiction literature cannot be ignored by readers of those. No, I’m not just talking about William Gibson, for I haven’t read anything by this Canadian since the year 2013. Speake of that year, it was when Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie came, by the end of that book there is a scene where its hero had to space some monster out of her spaceship. The year before this book, Caliban’s War came out. In the second book of Expanse series, the crew of Rocinante also is forced to get one single titular Caliban out of their ship. Neither of those books would have done so without Dan O’Bannon writing the scene in his first draft and Ridley Scott sticking to his gun about shooting the scene.

Then I would say if you cannot stand 1970s deliberate pacing, just skip this one. Personally I had the storyboards Ridely Scott drew more fun to read while felt bit sleepy during this flick. Go watch the Expanse instead, you all. Or stay tune to hear why I prefer Aliens.

(To be concluded in Tech Warrior Ripley)