It's now cool to like Alien3, and Star Wars (Andor)

There are a couple of things I would have blogged about before now but somehow I couldn't find the way in in to the subjects. Disparate subjects if you're not a sci-fi nerd.

 

 

Star Wars Andor  is the new Star Wars TV series. It has been critically lauded so I'm saying nothing startling here, but just to reiterate, Andor is at least a decade more mature and sophisticated than anything we've seen previously from the Galaxy Far Far Away.

Alien 3 is a movie which came out 20 years ago and was critically reviled for good reason on release. As David Fincher's first movie it has been appreciated somewhat since by some critics and fans, though is still pretty much hated by popular film fat by mainstream film fan.

The settings of both are heavily influenced buy the landscapes of post-industrial England. 

One of the things that makes Star Wars Andor so special and such a success in comparison to other recent Star Wars content is it to use of striking real-world locations. In the same manner as it's predecessor movie Star Wars Rogue One used real world British locations, Star Wars Andor made use of real-world locations such as the Barbican Centre the McLaren Technology Centre and newly developed parts of Blackpool Pleasure Beach

The intelligent use of locations in Andor is striking on several levels. I recognised  many of these locations  and yet they still looked more exotic then the Fate locations in the other shows just because of their presentation I guess it also striking but parts of 21st century Britain look so convincingly dystopian when they are actually part of a real world reality. (another current sci-fi TV series I have not yet reviewed is The Peripheral which I did cover at length in book form when originally released. The Peripheral TV series also makes use of contemporary landmarks in London to populate a dystopian reality).

But the particular set location in and all that I want to draw attention to here is not a real world location. It is the huge physical set depicting the planet Ferrix, apparently built in a quarry somewhere in England, What makes this stand out to me is the familiarity of this alien setting in a galaxy far far away, a tight-knit working-class community surrounded by red brick deep class loyalty rigid social structures based on on the work and a cast iron resilience and loyalty.

Ferrix is very reminiscent of the working class communities in Yorkshire and the North which can be seen in movies such as Brassed Off.

Alien3 was universally loathed upon release but the revised Assembly Cut has given us an excuse to revisit it and maybe even appreciate it's unrelenting darkness. Once again somehow American directors and creators and production designers looked for an alien landscape and culture and went to post-industrial landscapes heavily influenced by the North East. The planet in Alien3 Fury 161 is a mixture of penal colony and abandoned industrial smelter. Anyone familiar with the ending of Newcastle set Get Carter will instantly see the giant cranes and bleak seascapes.

The inclusion in Alien3 of faces such Brian Glover, an icon of Northern England acting, makes this allusion even more more obvious.

In a different franchise, the introduction to Ridley Scott's original Blade Runner is another striking visual inspiration from the same area. 

In earlier versions of this blog this would probably have been a review. but I've never reviewed anything Star Wars here  despite being a massive fan since seeing it in Canada on initial release. I actually reviewed Alien 3 Assembly Cut a few years ago go before the release of Alien Covenant.

I guess I should try that all up now I've already said Star Wars Andor is brilliant coming in a close second behind Severance as my TV of 2022. Watching some of the standard Star Wars Disney output really tests your loyalty to something you love. There is obviously relief when you hear people saying Star Wars Andor is the best Star Wars not since the 70s, but ever they are not being entirely unrealistic.

Fan disappointment and disillusionment has also of course recently been a major problem with the recent Alien films, going right back to the crushing experience of Alien3. I never reviewed Alien Covenant upon release I was as initially uncertain of several plot surprises. 

Last week, in an attempt to make a visit to Avatar 2 to slightly more palatable, I re-watched the Alien films which I'm less familiar with. Alien3 Assembly Cut was as good as it was when I saw it a few years ago (which is to say still flawed but a huge improvement over the original release). Prometheus was I would say 20% better than my last viewing and I strongly defended it the first time round. With Covenant, now I could anticipate the plot, the second viewing was a huge improvement. If you felt these unappreciated Alien films were a disappointment initially I suggest you give them another chance. They are obviously meant to be surprising, different, and shocking.

 

Obsessive thinking on the subjects listed above has been hugely helped by several brilliant podcasts which I've been using to escape the news.  For Star Wars, the Rebel Force Radio podcast is a great example of an old time fan podcast which sounds like a great radio show run by two older guys with some opinions, but nothing too toxic. It sounds as warm and welcoming as NPR Car Talk if you're aware of that radio phenomena. I highly recommend it if you need to re-discover your enthusiasm for that much abused franchise.

For Alien, The Perfect Organism podcast really helps bring to life what you might be regarding as an even more tired subject. Their approach is unflinchingly cerebral and quite informed. Even their contentious arguments are well put and worth listening to. Alien3 is actually their favourite of the movies - it's now cool to like Alien3, the most hated franchise movie of the last 30 years!

There's a lesson for fans in all of this. If we can find ourselves coming to terms with and appreciating a movie in Alien3, which is a slapdash mess which starts by brutally slaying two favourite characters from the preceding classic movie, then surely fans long term can cope with any kind of substandard content. Redemption and forgiveness is probably somewhere down the line for the worst recent Star Wars content, but, when the garbage is peppered with nuggets of gold like Star Wars Andor (and Prey, the recent excellent Predator movie) there are always reasons to hang on in there and always give the creators another chance to get it right.

More on Alien

Ridley Scott's Alien and Hitler's favourite painting

The painting Isle of the Dead, created by Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin,  had a significant impact on the design of the planet in the film Alien: Covenant. The painting, which depicts a boat carrying a dead person towards an island with a mysterious and foreboding atmosphere, has influenced the film's portrayal of the planet as a bleak, desolate and ominous environment.

The painting had an iconic, almost meme like influence on pre WW2 Europe. It was immensely popular and attracted a wide variety of admirers. Freud kept a reproduction in his office; Lenin had one above his bed; Hitler bought one of the originals. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that reproductions of the painting could be “found in every Berlin home”

Alien Covenant concept Artist Wayne Haag (with the assistance of Steve Messing) intentionally referenced this painting at the request of Ridley Scott.

WH: There's a definite influence from ... I think I mentioned Böcklin. We referenced Arnold Böcklin a lot.

AVPForum: The 'Isle of the Dead', is it?

WH: Right. So there's a look and a feel to Böcklin's paintings, and that's what Ridley's aiming at. It's not so much the detail, necessarily, although he's big on trees. Oh he loved the trees.... but there's a general overall look and feel to his paintings that we were riffing off.

Isle of the Dead had a connection to Alien before the first movie went before the cameras. HR Giger, the famous conceptual artist behind the biomechanical creature designs throughout the Alien films, did several of his own versions of Isle of The Dead in 1977, two years before Ridley Scott enlisted him to work on Alien.

Isle of the Dead had already inspired a noir horror film directed by the 1940s master of atmospheric suspense, Val Lewton.

 The painting's use of dark and ominous clouds, combined with its focus on the boat's journey towards an unknown destination, creates a feeling of unease and foreboding. This same sense of dread and mystery is evident in the design of the planet in Alien: Covenant, which is characterized by its dark and desolate landscapes, shrouded in mist and mystery. The planet's surface is dotted with towering cliffs and eerie, moss-covered ruins, lending an air of ancient and unspoiled terror to the environment.

The use of the painting Isle of the Dead in the film's design also speaks to the themes of death and mortality that are central to the film. The painting's depiction of the journey towards the afterlife is mirrored in the film by the characters' journey to the planet, where they encounter danger and death at every turn. The painting's focus on the fleeting nature of life and the uncertainty of the afterlife is echoed in the film's exploration of the fragility of human existence in the face of the universe's uncaring and indifferent forces.

In conclusion, the influence of the painting Isle of the Dead on the design of the planet in Alien: Covenant has been significant. The painting's eerie and ominous atmosphere, combined with its themes of death and mortality, have helped to create a sense of dread and mystery that is central to the film's portrayal of the planet. The use of this painting in the film's design speaks to the filmmakers' commitment to creating a unique and immersive environment, one that evokes a sense of unease and foreboding that stays with the viewer long after the film has ended.

The real surprise of the recent Alien prequels is that the real antagonist is not the Alien, but the rogue AI, David 8, fantastically played by Micheal Fassbinder. It is in the spirit of David 8 that I dedicate this entry in my blog to my new friend ChatGPT, as just about everything above this paragraph was generated by a (helpful) AI.

More on Alien and Isle of The Dead

More on Alien

The best way get over ALIEN3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION is to accept them in all their grim ugliness

The best way to get over depressing experiences is to accept them and learn from them. Prompted by next weeks release of Alien : Covenant,  my A L I E N 1-4 binge revealed a lot and improved them all.

I was not alone in disliking Alien3 and Alien : Resurrection at the time of release. They were, and remain, grim experiences but for different reasons.

Alien3 Assembly Cut

There is perhaps no movie sequel with a worse reputation for following the narrative of the previous movie. After investing ourselves in the survival of beloved characters through the nerve shredding final hour of Aliens, moviegoers all over the world were astonished to find Hicks, Newt and Bishop butchered off screen at the start of Alien3. It was perhaps the most infamous piece of movie franchise suicide in history.

From the outset Alien3 has everything against it

• The worst premise of any movie sequel in history
• Lousy effects
• 3rd hand script (who are those characters at the end?)
• Stupid pacing and development
• Only character worth identifying with, Charles Dance's Clemens, dies in first half
• Needlessly Sadistic tone - Autopsy on Newt?
• Abuse of a great director to be in David Fincher

And yet, despite all that, the Assembly cut of this butchered movie is not bad at all. The stunning  opening shots of Fury 161 hint at the level of bleakness you should be expecting.

This is a funereal movie, because it hints heavily that THIS IS THE LAST ALIEN FILM. There is obviously a real determination to finish the franchise on a particular tone. (Completely undermined by the cynicism of A4 but we'll get to that)

Fincher really created an atmosphere comparable to Scott's film, and like Alien it is immeasurably better on a big HD screen. Suddenly we can appreciate breathtaking set design, a great setting and some riveting performances.

We still can't escape the flawed concept and the production hell which resulted but separated from the two previous movies this would be a cult classic. A Shakespearean version of Outland?

This comparison falls apart quickly. Shakespeare's plays stand out because they are the vision of one man from conception to execution. Part of the magic of Elizabethan theatre, is that the artist produced  work directly for mass audience with no filter.

Whereas

The average Hollywood script which reaches the screen is more like a monstrous hybrid of committee ideas that have absorbed and corrupted the world of many talented contributors. They produce a series of experiments until something accidentally stumbles onto the screen.
Let us bow our heads briefly to
Vincent Ward's Alien3
William Gibson Alien3

The best 'Assembly Cut' of Alien3 was only put together by someone else, Charles de Lauzirika, as David Fincher absolutely refused to return to the project - so actually my Shakespeare comparison could not be farther off, Elizabethan theatre is the complete opposite of Alien3, and it's similarly compromised sequel.

Assembly Cut?
 In my opinion this vast improvement over the original release of Alien3. It makes the most of a great setting and provides a reasonably coherent storyline - somehow - from one of cinema's great production car crashes.

Alien Resurrection Special Edition

In 1996, with the movie world still reeling from the reaction to Alien3, Alien Resurrection somehow appeared, again with Sigourey Weaver with a big producers paycheck, this time shot in LA.. because.."..decision to film outside of England was influenced by Weaver, who believed that the previous films' travel schedules exhausted the crew".
In tone it tries to recapture the action and emotion of the James Cameron sequel, without unfortunately any unconvincing action or emotion.

Unlike Fincher's doomed movie it seems to have a lot going for it from the credits

• Soon to be great screenwriter Joss Whedon (I am another priest of the church of Whedon)
• Great experienced director Jeunet  (go and see Delicatessen and City of Lost Children immediately if you have not already)
• Great cast
• Not terrible concept - the human alien hybrid is even worse than the aliens.

But, and here is the main issue, Jeunet's great gallic sense of humour might have transferred to Pinewood but it sure doesn't fit in LA. Right from the off the 'bug opening' gives it a definite comedic tone, which was a slur ironically applied the first Alien vs Predator film, which is a step up on virtually every level from this.

The LA shoot obviously killed this movie right off the drawing board. Looked at now the movie functions like a two hour ad for Pinewood Studious and British effects crews. Whole production screams cheapo exploitative LA knockoff. ROGER CORMAN PRESENTS EDGAR ALLEN POE'S THE ALIEN RESSURECTION - but without anything like AIPs panache, featuring fake looking firearms and occasional model shots that would look unconvincing in Blakes 7.

Not that the script is without blame. I've not read the original script and I'm a massive fan of Whedon so I'll go easy, but this is even less satisfying than the butchered schizo tale in Alien3. I've heard  Whedon defenders claim its best seen as a dark episode of Firefly but Alien4 wouldn't be a good episode of Firefly. We get the least convincing 200 year time jump ever, with only slight changes in costumes and hair style over centuries. Bare hints that Earth is a hellhole are never explored.

Perhaps most irritating, if you are directly comparing with previous instalments, the Alien's acidic blood, a major plot point from the first movie,  is selectively forgotten about.

At worst this produces a jokey self referential fan film tht shouldn't be seen outside a scifi convention. Most obvious in jokey self referential dialogue which I just don't have the enthusiasm even to repeat.

but

like Alien3, we just have to accept it, on some level, to get over it. and we can. Alien Resurrection is a far better a horror film about great concepts and characters exploited by a cynical movie corporations than it is about fictitious characters exploited by fictional aliens and corporations.

Like '8' herself Alien Resurrection is a abortive experiment which should probably never happened but did. The self referential quote we should be referencing a quote from Aliens "You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage"

When the Newborn butchers the Alien Queen we are forced to conclude human cynicism is even more powerful than the Aliens themselves, but by then the existence of the movie itself has made that obvious. It appears the only way to go after undermining the honest desolation of Alien3 is jokey cynicism on very level, and the jokes aren't even funny.

Ironically the best scene, when '8' finds her predecessors in room 1-7, hints at the creative waste and loss behind the scenes. You can almost see ruined sequel concepts and great ideas suffering in the background and perhaps Ripley/Weavers realisation of how much she has exploited and tortured a character that built her acting career. It's the best  scene in the movie by a light year, perhaps because it is the only scene with Weaver seeming to care.

Special Edition?
I'm obviously not a fan of this movie but the changes made in the directors cut at least make it more Jeunet, so it is at least more honest. Apparently the painfully un-amusing 'bug' opening scene got Jeunet the job. "Jean-Pierre Jeunet allegedly secured his position as director by explaining the "bug opening" he planned to incorporate to 20th Century Fox executives. Ironically, the sequence was ultimately cut from the theatrical release of the film due to budget constraints"

Jeunet at least gives us Earth - and Paris! I bet they can see the Luc Besson museum from there

 

The other movie industry story exposed here is all about Hollywood Star Power.

Surviving actress from classic movie is granted greater and greater creative control over subsequent instalments allowing some bizarre selfish creative decisions (Alien3) and some selfish production mistakes (Alien : Resurrection badly shot in a murky LA shed because transatlantic travel deemed an inconvenience).
Haggling over money before committing to Alien3 killed at least two promising scripts (William Gibson's Alien3, featuring Newt and Hicks without Ripley was a casualty) and her subsequent commitment to Alien4, for a bigger paycheck, undermines most of the final funereal intent of Alien3.


Alien 'Directors Cut' and Aliens Special Edition <

Ripley dooms Hicks, Newt and Bishop by momentarily losing control in ALIENS

Prompted by next weeks release of Alien : Covenant,  my A L I E N 1-4 binge revealed a lot and improved my opinion of them all. Rather than go back to the familiar versions I tracked down the alternative cuts of each film which have appeared over the years and tried to compare with the originals.

Alien 'Directors Cut'

Ridley Scott's Alien 1979 is still a Rolls Royce of a horror film and is a stone cold cinema classic on any level, comfortably head on shoulders above the other movies in this series. Acting. dialog, set design, soundtrack, direction - you name it.

It wasn't quite so appreciated in the year of it's release. The 51st Academy awards, the year it was released, only recognised Ridley Scott's Alien for Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects.

In a year when  the Vietnam experience finally broke through into Hollywood cinema I can see how The Deer Hunter and Coming Home would clean up the actual awards, but here are the 1979 movies nominated for Oscars instead of Alien in various categories

• An Unmarried Woman (best picture)
• Heaven Can Wait (best director)
• Same Time Next Year (best actress)
• An Unmarried Woman (best actress)
• An Unmarried Woman (best original screenplay)

I must watch An Unmarried Woman - it must be a hell of a movie.

and
The Swarm (Best costume design)*

Directors Cut?
Changes are minimal, even the inclusion of the Dallas cocoon scene is truncated and explains little.

Aliens Special Edition

In 1986 James Cameron's classic sequel, was considered the equal, if not an improvement, on Scott's first film. Now I have to say it's growing old fast, and  relies on some great comedic performances. Even those of us who know the dialog well enough to see it coming still laugh at the samesscenes, surely a tribute to magnificent comic delivery and commitment of the actors and their director.

But even even the fantastic model work is looking creaky, and the stars on stripes the 'US Colonial Marines' looks very out of place. It looks like very conventional 80s  action film.

Some of this must be down to the medium on which we now what these films. In the 80s and 90s, seen on VHS and DVD usually on small screens, Aliens is comfortably a better movie than the original. Today, on HD full size screens, Alien looks like the grand gothic space opera that it is, and Aliens looks like a fun tv show in comparison, even when it has perhaps the greatest pacing and character interaction of the decade.

It's a shame Cameron's classic looks so flat and conventional compared to Scott's film, but ironically it may be enhanced long term by way it sets up once-reviled Alien3. Seen between Alien and Alien3, two restrained atmospheric suspense films, Aliens is a cathartic monument to thoughtless uncontrolled violence. This is the downfall of the characters, setting up the tragic events which begin the next instalment.

I am positive that James Cameron did not intend this ....but when watched and accepted as a long narrative Ripley Newt, Bishop and Hicks are effectively doomed in Aliens.  Ripley has rescued Newt, and should hurry back to the Dropship knowing the imminent destruction of everything around her is about to happen in a nuclear explosion. This would obviously destroy the nest and dormant Queen she leaves behind.

Instead, when backing out of the egg chamber, Ripley, the most controlled of female characters, loses control of her emotions and stops to open fire on the egg chamber with flame and gunfire. The Queen survives this of course, and by provoking it and turning it into an enemy that pursues her into the Sulaco she almost certainly sets up the tragedy at the start of Alien3.

I explained my theory of Ripley's tragic loss of control to a friend of mine in the pub the other day - his response was "That's easy for you to say, you weren't there"

Special Edition?
Before James Cameron's Aliens it was naturally assumed that any movie sequel would be inferior to the original, Four years later the Special Edition of this movie also proved that a later release with added scenes could also improve on the original (notably the Special Edition of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind had not been been an improvement).
This version includes several scenes which enhance the original release, we get to see the fate of the world Ripley left behind, 60 years in the past, and a mini introductory battle featuring drone sentry weapons which really puts the scale of the threat in perspective.


* The Swarm is a notorious stinker but I love it



Next > Alien3 Assembly Cut and Alien Resurrection Special Edition

A L I E N 1-4 watched back-to-back revealed a lot

Prompted by next weeks release of Alien : Covenant,  my A L I E N 1-4 binge improved them all.

Alien 'Directors Cut' and Aliens Special Edition

Alien3 Assembly Cut and Alien Resurrection Special Edition

In an attempt to distance myself from this I watched the alternate versions of these films rather than the original releases which I knew well. They are all longer than the originals, and I think improvements, even when the directors (Jeunet and Scott) still prefer the original release.

An example, above. This is a brief shot of the Royal FaceHugger Alien (and actor Christopher Fairbank, recently seen in Guardians of The Galaxy) cut from the butchered cinema release of Alien3, but restored for the Assembly Cut. It effectively covers one of the many plotholes in the original version of the movie.

These movies are so familiar to me it is very difficult to sit outside the effect they had on my life at various times. My first exposure to Alien 1979 was through books and Jerry Goldsmiths incredible soundtrack, I was too young to see it at the cinema. I saw Aliens in Leicester Sq with a raucous group of college friends. Alien3 I watched in disbelief with everyone else but knew what was coming as I'd heard the rumours at work at Forbidden Planet. Resurrection was a sad end to a film series, and for me, a post college life about to change.

Ridley Scott's Prometheus explained for morons

A bit peeved.

Finally caught up with that big movie of the summer, the one that allegedly made no sense, left a million loose ends, and requires half an hour of extras on the blu-ray to explain. I was expecting something like Peter Greenaway's Prosperos Books or some Terence Malik art  film. Instead I saw the best Alien movie since James Cameron's, leaving me with a level of stupefied disbelief at the people who struggled to deal with the plot.

What bits honestly didn't you understand? Can I dumb it down enough for you?

- It's  a remake of Aliens vs Predator with less Predators and more pretty pictures

Is that dumb enough?

How about

- it's a spooky mysterious space monster movie

It's got 'loose ends'? Hello? Blade Runner anyone? I guess these people are completely unfamiliar with anything ever written by Phiilp K Dick?

Unexplained plot elements? Does someone want to to explain to me how Daniel Craig acquired Sean Connery's gadget equipped Aston Martin in the "the best bond film of all time"*

(*all British newspapers)

Is it not enough that, aside from the Alien stuff, Prometheus is obviously the best Ridley Scott film since 2007, arguably since Gladiator (If you want to gauge the level of improvement, Ridley Scott's last movie featured 13th century landing craft in the most flat out ridiculous beach scene I've ever seen in a movie).

One of the benefits of being a middle aged movie fan is that you can remember the drubbing that classic movies got upon their original release. It is recognised today that classics like Blade Runner and John Carpenter's The Thing were somewhat - ahem - under appreciated on their release; but people forget Ridley Scott's Alien got a similar rough ride. "Nonsensical" is a word I remember. "Good horror movie terrible scifi movie" is another. "Captain Kirk wouldn't blow his ship up by accident" was maybe the most flat out stupid.

The lapses in logic in Alien, AND The Thing AND Prometheus are, for me, a bonus. These are nightmares. I don't want everything fully explained. I like that I don't know WTF Pyramid Head is in Silent Hill. I want my terror to come with a hefty dose of disorientation.

Loose ends? You should try some Italian horror movies.. it would take a week of DVD extras to explain the haunted underwater basement in Dario Argento's Inferno. Honestly,  these people would need a 5000 word backstory to view Fuseli's Nightmare.

The Alien films all generally make narrative sense but the horror of disorientation is a theme running through them, not so much in nightmare imagery like heads growing spider legs and running across the floor, but just in the loss of trusted authority figures. From the death of Captain Dallas on-wards the authority figure in each of the Alien movies dies or is lost and the collapse of the group dynamic (in contrast to the united front of 50s monster movies) is all part of the nightmare.

Compared to some of those re-valuated 80s classics Prometheus actually got an easy ride from critics this summer and made enough money for Ridley and Co to consider a sequel.What I think really irritates me is that I was lead to expect some Giger drenched version of The Shining and actually got something fast paced and straightforward, that was nevertheless beguiling, mysterious, thought provoking, funny and really scary in places. Frankly, for me, it could have been a whole lot more vague and mysterious, but I loved it as it was.

I highly recommend Prometheus for your Halloween viewing.

Mysterious inexplicable fish loose ends from the trip to see Damien Hirst's Verity statue in Ilfracome harbour

Y'know.. just because I know there are people who respond to this blog who genuinely, no kidding, ARE morons.. the plot of Prometheus is explained here