Alien Resurrection - is it really so bad?

I needed to tidy, I needed to cook soup. I needed distraction that enabled me to lie under my duvet on the sofa and not do anything.

Not fancying another dose of Hawk the Slayer, I put Alien Resurrection on, which was sitting neglected next to it on a particularly dusty part of the shelf. I thought I might try and watch it with fresh eyes, and see if it is truly as bad as I remembered.


Alien is a classic piece of atmospheric, and let us not forget, sexual, horror. Aliens is a crash bang action fest where the extended cut should be avoided. And Fincher's Alien 3 gets slated by many, but I rather like it thanks to its strong cast and oily, greasy vibe. Where does Alien 4 fit in?

Needless to say, even taking a charitable view, it is comfortably the worst of the 4. Again, it's a strong cast with it's cultish crew of Ron Perlman, Dominic Pinon, and Michael Wincott, and Winona Ryder is not so really out of place. But it's script writer, a certain Josh Whedon, is. "If those things get loose, it's gonna make the Lacerta Plague look like a fucking square dance!" is symptomatic of the "yoof interest" awful dialogue that finds its way into the script. Add to this the endlessly clanged desire to explore Ripley's historic desire for motherhood results in a clearly not giving a toss Sigourney Weaver creeping around like a genetically engineered incestuous abuser, muttering in am dram fashion when she isn't cosying up to xenomorphs for some borderline interspecies nookie.

"I'm the monster's mother..." "You mean....my baby?..." Weaver breathes, and the audience giggles, turning into outright cackles when Brad Dourif's signature oddball introduces "The Newborn", the human-alien iceberg that sinks the movie in many more pieces that the Titanic went down in. Looking like a heavily KY'd Scooby Doo villain, the brain eating space pug dog roars, whimpers and coos through 'emotional' scenes with Weaver that plunge the depths of emetic bathos.

And then we have Jeunet's direction. It seems to me that he feels pretty early on in the piece that his chances of making a visceral masterpiece have been fatally compromised, and so decides to lather the gore on and seemingly stick cameras down people's throats on several occasions, while trying to fit in a bit of humour such as spaceship General chap Dan Hedaya giving a cornball salute before picking his cerebellum out of an alienised hole in the back of his skull. But the nadir is the scene where clone number 8 Ripley meets the previous failure versions of herself, seemingly including Captain Caveman in a jar; and Joey Deacon clone strapped to a bed dribbling "kill me" before meeting a humane and painless death at the end of a..er...flamethrower.

"Kill Me?" "Kill Us" chanted the audience.

Prometheus

Got round to watching this on Christmas Day.

I'd been led to believe it's very bad. It isn't. It's just a wee bit "meh" - with odd sorts of plot holes that either the film, or my own stupid brain, aren't explaining.

Like why is there a Geiger illustration of an alien seen in the Engineer habitat before anything resembling "The Alien"  - which seems to be created by genetic chance event instigated by David the android - exists, and David's motivation for carrying out a little unpleasant human experimentation isn't really explained.

As is also to be fair typical for movies of this nature, characters do daft things for no reason; "ooh look we're in a bit of this unknown habitat where strage creatures are afoot, let's stay here stomping about like idiots instead of leaving." That sort of thing. Other characters seem to have absoloutely nothing to do in the film whatsoever, hello to you most of the Prometheus crew!

The film is pretty. It has great scale. It's not unenjoyable. But the equation "Ridley Scott plus Alien Prequel" provides a lesser answer than what we hoped.

Hard On for Trailers

An obsession about trailers is the same as any other fetish really...

There is no difference between the fanboy sweating and getting hot at the latest Prometheus trailer and the man watching an amply sized woman crushing bananas down her cleavage. The kid looking for details upon Batman's new cape is the same as the man who peers intently at the speculumned delicates of his lady love as she rides a shiny set of medical stirrups.

I gave up on it. I got vaguely excited at the Prometheus trailers in a follow-the-herd sort of way, then after the first one wondered why I was bothering...if I want to see the film, I'll see the bloody film, not analyse frame frame by tedious frame some 60 second snippet of it product placing its way into your psyche.

I don't recall the Harry Potter books being read out on the radio, random page by random page, still less anyone getting excited about it. Watch the movies people, don't give in to the endless hype machine of squid-enema-medical-eyeball licking-furry playing trailer porn.

Its getting boring.

Hey, I'm writing a Feature Film Screenplay

I've wanted to for many many years, but have always been afraid to.

Now, I'm conquering my fears, my ADHD, my disorganisation, and I'm having a go. Just as an experiment. Just to see if I can do it. The presence of Prometheus inspires. As does watching all the Lord of the Rings special features...the process of creation is such a wonderful thing.

It's an adaptation, of a very very obscure sci fi novel - will worry about rights later, if it ever comes to that. I'm making changes, making it my own, trying to find something new in the story, trying to make it more relevant to 2012, trying to make a stronger story. Because my primary function is as a storyteller above all else.

I'm writing a feature film.

And I'm doing it from memory.

OPINION - Prometheus and the Too Futuristic Prequels

Well, with many other people I sat into the first advert break of Homeland, which I never watch, to see the Prometheus trailer.

I was excited, but stupid-feeling. I had become one of the hated fanboy trailer freaks who sit through a 4 hour domestic drama set on a farm in India in order to see a trailer for the latest Spielberg attraction, while scrawling notes in a jotter at banshee pace.

I've only done it before. Honest. And only because I was keen to see what aforementioned Spielberg's martian fighting machines looked like. But I wanted to part of something; I wanted to be a member of the community of the first, and do my #areyouseeingthis - hello Corporal Hicks was it? - tweets with the rest of the UK, or world, whatever.

And I was going to write about it - ooh that's a very nostromo looking silhouette there, hmm the Prometheus ship reminds me of Serenity crossed with the Betty from Alien Resurrection; or my god Wutani engineered the xenomorphs - HUMANITY BROUGHT IT UPON THEMSELVES!!!!

But no. Leave it to proper film writers, not hopeless wannabes like me.

The point that does occur, with all the flashing lights, colourful spacesuits, super resoloution pictures, flashy computer screens, and a space jockey hologram thing where he looks far too much like the elephant man not to have a slight giggle, the whole film looks too new.

It's a prequel world. Set god knows how many years before the low tech grimey "Space Truckers" of the first Alien movie, the world of Prometheus features rinky dink gesture control displays and neon heads up displays. Alien had  Apple 2 10 pixels per square yard monitors the size of a postage stamp. Is humantiy supposed to have devolved in the same amount of time it factually took us to get from the Wright Flyer at Kittyhawk to the Jumbo Jet?

It doesnt make sense!

Take David, the beautiful nazi wet dream android played by the enviable Michael Fassbender. He is supposed to have evolved into those far more attractive models, er Ian Holm and Lance Henrickson!

Logically, surely the android should thus have started looking like Kirk Douglas' scrotum???

It's a minor point I know. I'm a pointlessly cross silly geek. Of course film makers are going to want to use the nicest tricks, the fanciest shizzle, all their latest effects. But to me, it never rings true. The TV Enterprise prequel emphasised "Hey, No sliding automatic doors!!!" but still looked like it was filmed 400 years later, while the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot prequel looked like it was shot 4000 years later.

And as far Star Wars Episode 1, it was "A Long time ago, in a galaxy far far shinier and newer, than the first one."

My ever lasting prequel bugbear. And may god curse my soul.

PICTURE - Ridley Scott on Prometheus set