Sunday 14 May 2017

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 <


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