You want to talk about going downhill fast? Just look at the Alien film franchise.
The original Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, is an absolute horror classic for a good reason.
The crew of the Star freighter Nostromo is woken up early from stasis by the ship’s computer. The crew, consists of ship Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), the Second in Command Kane (John Hurt), Third in Command Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Ship Science Officer and resident company man Ash (Ian Holm), Ship Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Chief Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and Assistant Engineer Brett (Harry Dean Stanton).
On company orders, they set down on a mysterious planet to investigate a crashed alien ship’s signal. While on this planet one of them is attacked and gets an alien parasite attached to their face. The crew makes first contact with a species that’s less than hospitable.
The film is a masterpiece of horror and suspense. An alien doesn’t attack the crew until the 40-minute mark, and no one is even killed until an hour in. This helps us get to know the characters and builds up the suspense as we don’t know what’s on that alien ship or what the alien can do.
The film is, in a way, a haunted house story, the only difference is the setting. The deadly alien is on the ship and there’s no way for them to escape, as outside is the deep vastness of space.
The characters also feel real: They act like regular people who are basically just truckers, but in space. For instance, before they realize that they’re only half way home, everyone is excited to be back home after a long sleep. Or how Parker keeps on going on and on about his and Brett’s share, constantly complaining about how they should be paid just as much as everyone else.
The characters aren’t just likeable, but smart too. When the alien shows up, they make some pretty shrewd decisions, like making motion trackers to help them find it and flamethrowers to kill the creature or at the very least keep it at bay.
And when they do make mistakes, they’re understandable and not head-slappingly stupid like in other horror movies. The mistakes they make are small in scale and a person would most likely make those kinds of mistakes in a high-stress situation, but these small mistakes are ultimately deadly.
The practical effects and models have aged very well, aside from very specific shots where they look hokey and the monster is obviously a guy in a rubber suit.
The Alien itself is very scary, in both the way it works and the way it looks, with the creature being designed by the late H.R. Giger.
A problem one might encounter with this film is it’s pacing; it’s slow, deliberately mind you, but slow nonetheless. If one isn’t prepared for or isn’t a fan of slow films that take time, this might not be the franchise for you.
And believe it or not, the sequel film Aliens (1986), directed by James Cameron (famous for directing The Terminator, Terminator 2, Titanic, and Avatar), is that rare sequel that is just as good or even better than the original.
After the events of Alien, Ripley (once again played by Sigourney Weaver), one of only two survivors of the Nostromo incident, is awoken 50 years later from cryo sleep. She is then convinced to return to the planet where the alien crashed ship was located, where a settlement that was set up while she was in deep has gone quiet. She is escorted with a group of Colonial Marines and synthetic (i.e., an android) named Bishop (played by Lance Henriksen).
The film goes for less of a horror feel, but more of tension mixed with action. The film does use the ingenious idea of simply having more than one alien. If one alien took down an entire crew, then think about what more than a hundred could do?
The characters, just like the last film, are very well written and fun to watch, specifically the Marines, with special mention going to Hudson (played by the late Bill Paxton), Vasquez (played by Jenette Goldstein), and Hicks (played by Michael Biehn). They’re so fun to watch that you don’t want them to die.
They also do a great job continuing the character of Ripley. After the events of the first film, she suffers from PTSD and worst of all no one believes her when she explains what happened to the crew of the Nostromo.
But when she decides to face her fears head on and return to the alien crash site, she becomes stronger for it. Ripley also becomes a surrogate mother to Newt (Carrie Henn), a young girl and the only survivor of the colony attack.
Newt herself is a fantastically written child character. Very often writers will write child characters as either little angels that couldn’t hurt a fly or demonic hell-spawn with no room in between. Newt in this film is kind and of course doesn’t really mean any real harm, but from time to time she can be a handful.
This film also does a great job with world building, for instance the alien finally gets a name, Xenomorph, and we see more of the alien life cycle.
With two great movies they really should have just stopped there, but unfortunately in 1992 Alien3 (directed by first-timer David Fincher, who later directed Fight Club and Gone Girl) was released.
I should say upfront that I watched the assembly cut, which adds 30 minutes to the film. This is the best way to watch the film, because it adds much more character development.
Alien3 follows immediately after the second film, where a Xenomorph egg somehow got on board the escape shuttle, causing the ship to crash on a prison planet where all the prisoners follow some kind of strange religion. The crash killed everyone from the last film aside from Ripley (still being played by Sigourney Weaver).
The film tries to be more, but instead of adding to the original formula, it detracts from the previous films’ equation. There is only one Xenomorph, everyone from the last film aside from Ripley is killed, the new characters aren’t very interesting or memorable, and the film’s tone is so depressing that you don’t want to finish it.
The fact that the new characters aren’t very memorable isn’t helped by the fact that they’re all bald, with few distinctive features. And it isn’t from lack of good actors. There are some great actors here, including but not limited to Charles Dutton, Pete Postlethwaite, and (Tywin Lannister himself) Charles Dance.
Earlier I mentioned that the prisoners follow some kind of strange religion, which is a fascinating idea to be sure, but the problem is that it’s never expanded upon, unlike the last film where the world building was very well done and was explained naturally.
Many of the film’s problems stem from behind-the-scenes mishaps. The film was in development hell for a long while, and the people making the film couldn’t settle on a script. In fact, when they began shooting, the script wasn’t even finished. Many sets that cost millions of dollars to make were simply scrapped because they were written out, as no one could agree on any singular vision for the film.
When the shooting came to a wrap, director David Fincher wiped his hands of the film and didn’t have any say with the editing process for the film.
The film’s effects haven’t aged well. Since the xenomorph came out of a dog (or a cow depending on which version you watch) it takes the traits from that animal. This meant they couldn’t go for the man in a suit trick they used in the previous two films.
The film instead uses a puppet, and it doesn’t look half as good as the previous two films. This mainly comes from the fact that certain shots require that the puppet be shot on a blue screen and then added in later, but whenever it does this, it sticks out.
The film isn’t great by any means, but I wouldn’t say it’s horrible either — more severely mismanaged. There are good ideas here, they just needed to be ironed out into a completed script.
If you simply must watch the film, I’ll state it again that watching the assembly cut is the superior way to see it.
Four years later Alien: Resurrection (1996) was released to movie theaters. The film was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and written by Joss Whedon (best known now for directing the first two Avengers movies and making Buffy: The Vampire Slayer TV show).
The films takes place 200 years after the Alien3, when Ripley (being played by special guest star Sigourney Weaver) is cloned so to extract the alien creature she was impregnated by in Alien3, (with the unintended side effect of making her part Xenomorph), so that scientists can make the creatures into domesticated animals. Oh, and some pirates are onboard to provide the scientists captors to experiment on.
The film is so over the top and ridiculous you’d think it’s a comedy. In fact, it was originally written that way, the problem is the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet didn’t speak a lick of English at the time, meaning that when it came time for filming, they played it completely straight.
The characters in this film are either unlikeable, forgettable, or complete morons. This even goes for Ripley, or Ripley 8 as they call her.
She may look and sound like Ellen Ripley, but she is #NotMyRipley. What made Ripley so great of a character in the previous films (all three) was she didn’t feel like an action hero. Instead, she felt like a real person with flaws and wasn’t always right or perfect. She just had the most experience dealing with Xenomorphs and a had cool enough head on her shoulders to deal with them.
In this film she is uber powerful and is cracking wise like this was an Avengers film. I think it’s supposed to endear her to us, but instead it makes me hate her more and more with every quip.
The characters (when you aren’t forgetting about them) act like total cartoon characters. Again, this clashes hard with the previous films’ characters who felt like real people you might see in real life.
However, one thing this film does better than Alien3 is the Xenomorph effect. They return to the old design and just like the first two films, they hold up pretty well.
Alien:Resurrection could be a fun time, but you need to turn your brain off, and keep it off, because at any point if you turn it back on, you’ll bang your head against the wall so much that’ll end up making a hole (I’m not sure if the hole will be in the wall or your head).
Now this may be the part where you expect me to talk about Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. However, those films feel more like a chance for Ridley Scott to show the audience that he is an artist, instead of a prequel to Alien. It doesn’t help that both films have terribly written characters and neither film technically has Xenomorphs in them. Those aren’t Xenomorphs in Alien:Covenant, these creatures in the films are actually Protomorphs.
Because of this and the fact that both are a slog to get through, both movies feel more like spin- offs rather than full blown prequels, I won’t be covering them in full detail. However, because I’m feeling generous and ripping apart bad films is one of my favorite past times, I’ll give mini-reviews for both.
Starting off, Prometheus (2012) directed by Ridley Scott. Wants to ask big ideas and be cerebral, but is bogged down in stupid characters. And clearly has no answers to any of the questions it sets up. Aside from Michael Fassbender as the insane android David, it’s not worth watching.
Next is Alien:Covenant (2017) once again directed by Ridley Scott. Like getting coal in your Christmas stocking, it is a huge disappointment. The backstory they give for the Xenomorphs is straight up nonsensical and dumb. The characters, while slightly better than ones in Prometheus, still couldn’t beat a 12-year-old at a spelling bee. Admittedly though, the film is shot beautifully and the gore is very well done.
From best to worst it goes: Aliens, Alien, Alien3, and Alien:Resurrection