Alien

Index	Alien Film Series	Index
Alien Aliens Alien 3 Alien Resurrection	The Alien film series was something that I never really wanted to go and see; terror in space, it all sounded a bit corny to me. It wasn’t until Alien3 that I was forced into going to the local cinema to endure. Unfortunately, my suspicions were spot on, I hated it. It was all so confused and I didn’t even get half the plot. I swore never to watch another Alien film as long as I lived. It wasn’t until a few years later that one lazy Sunday afternoon the film appeared on the television, and due to lack of batteries in the remote or pure laziness I decided to give it another go, despite my fears. I am so glad that I did, from that moment on I was hooked and rushed out to hire the other films previously released. Now, you might be asking yourself, why the sudden change of mind? Well, the answer to that is quite simple. When I spoke to my friend, who I had been to see Alien 3 with, about not liking the film the first time around, he pointed out to me that that day he had left his glasses at home so we had had to sit on the front row on the left-hand-side of the theatre. I had only seen that side of the film, which explained my lack of plot understanding and the disjointedness of the film. Since that day I’ve been an avid fan and I’ve never sat on the front row of a cinema again!
	Alien	Index
	Alien: released 1979 Setting: 2122 Ship: Nostromo Director: Ridley Scott It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? You’re cruising along in stasis when the company computer wakes you up out of a rather nice dream and you have to go and investigate an alien transmission for no extra pay. Well, this is what happened to our friends Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and crew, who find themselves in a Union calling situation. The film is based around the finding of an alien ship on an uninhabited planet where the crew discovers a harvest of alien ‘eggs’ which have the nasty habit of spewing out little bony knuckled aliens which attach themselves to any unsuspecting face. Unluckily it was officer Kane’s (John Hurt) face which was chosen to have the alien wrapped around it. After a bit of quarantine Kane is fit and well again, but we know that that isn’t going to be the case. After a vicious looking thing rips its way out of Kane’s chest, whilst he was tucking into some salad, all hell broke loose on board. The alien quickly develops into an armour plated killing machine with acid for blood and tears its way through the crew who are only armed with some dodgy movement detectors, that only serve to heighten all our blood pressure, and some pretty ramshackle flamethrowers that couldn’t light a cigarette on a breezy day. The single alien picks off the crew one by one, whilst Ripley keeps her head, which is more than can be said for the in house robot Ash (Ian Holm) who flips his lid (under the strain of orders from the ‘Company’ to capture the alien) and tries to take poor old Ripley out as if she hasn’t got enough on her plate…
	Aliens	Index
	Aliens: released 1986 Setting: 57 years later Destination: lv-426 Director: James Cameron Well, we had to wait long enough, seven years for us and 57 for Ripley, but after all, the aliens are back. This new offering was quite a change from the slow moving, deliberate and corner angled shots of Alien. James Cameron takes the reigns and guides us through a highly paced shoot ‘em up on LC-426. Everyone knows this one as the ‘guns one’, although the Marines get their rifles taken off them in one scene. This time Ripley is found 57 years later in her escape pod and gets blamed for the blowing up of Nostromo because the Alien had no insurance cover. The Company’s a bit annoyed and basically makes life hell for Ripley until one day a mining colony, who just happens to be on that planet, goes missing. Ripley gets paid a visit by the company, namely Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and the military; Lieutenant Gorman. Burke instils about as much confidence as one of the aliens themselves and the Lieutenant is just as hapless. The visit is owed to the fact that the Company wants Ripley to go back and help out on the mining colony where a whole load of stupid miners have gone missing or got themselves ‘lost’. The proposition is enticing; we (the Company) blamed you for Nostromo’s destruction and took your job from you and now we want you to go back and save our butts and get killed for trying. Well, of course our brave young lass agrees. Okay, it takes a few more nightmares and sweaty nights for Ripley, but she agrees on the condition that they are going to exterminate the alien and not bring it back. Yeah, right! This time Ripley has the help of a band of undisciplined marines and there is even a hint of a romantic connection with Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn, who is brought along for the ride by Cameron from Terminator) but there’s not much time for that as thousands of Aliens are running loose. Ripley brings out her motherly instincts as she looks after a colony girl called Newt (Carrie Henn) whilst she becomes more macho by the minute as she tapes various guns together to take on the aliens alone. This time Ripley does have on hand the flying skills of a new robot called Bishop (Lance Henriksen) who she learns to rely on despite her initial fears and food throwing. But as usual, Ripley has to fight against the Company as well, and it’s Burke who tries to get one of those armour plated killing machines back to Earth. Needless to say, Ripley gets away after disposing of the queen with some pretty cool gadgets and ends up in stasis again waiting for the next wicked turn in her miserable life.
	Alien 3	Index
	Alien 3: released 1992 Setting: Fiorina 161 Director: David fincher Who would want to be Ripley? Poor thing, she escaped the aliens again in the last offering and brought Hicks, Bishop and Newt along for the jolt. But Ripley has an uncanny habit of getting on a spaceship and leaving on an escape pod, and this time is no different after a fire on the Sulaco. However, things get worse from there on, not only has she lost her ship again but finds herself on a hardly habitable planet which turns out to be a penal colony for rapists and murders. The situation doesn’t get any better as she discovers that Newt and Hicks were killed and that the fire was intentionally started. Her suspicions are realised when one of the inmates’ dog dies after the haul mark chest explosion of the aliens. Ripley finds herself with no guns (supposedly one of the conditions for Weaver to do the film) fighting a single alien again whilst she has time for a bit of romance with the doctor with a shady past (Charles Dance) and surrounded by a whole load of inmates who are desperate to show her why they were sent there in the first place, with only their cooked up religion pulling back on their fierce libidos. This is a return to Alien with its tight angles, suspense and corridor chases. A plan is forged which consists of killing the alien in a forge (no pun intended), but underlying all this is Ripley’s realisation that she’s going to be a mum in her late forties, although she’s put off because a baby alien would be a bit difficult to get into a good school. Whilst Ripley has been knocked up, the cast steadily gets knocked off by the alien. The up shot of all this is that Ripley ends up throwing herself in molten lead, just as the Company arrives, in order to kill the alien and also the Alien franchise. But these franchises are tougher than you think…
	Alien Resurrection	Index
	Alien Resurrection: 1997 Setting: Two centuries later Director: Jean-Pierre Jeune After supposedly killing off the alien and the franchise, Ripley’s back or is she? Well, yes and no. How do you get around the fact that Ripley’s dead and Weaver wants another pay day. You could try the old Bobby Ewing trick, I was just in the shower all the time, but in Alien Resurrection it was a bit more dramatic than that. Poor old Ripley hasn’t been put out of her misery alter all, they’ve only gone and cloned her so that the US military can impregnate her with the alien to get a queen out of her. The scientists decide to keep the queen for a pet and they dutifully harvest its eggs like Old MacDonald. Later a ship arrives, the Betty, full of bad old mercenaries and one of its members called Call (Winona Ryder) is on a mission to kill Ripley and stop her from creating more aliens. But Ripley, who is an updated version with go faster stripes of the original with some pretty bad memories of the first Ripley, is too much for our Call, who as always, surprise, surprise turns out to be an android. The lacklustre plot plods on, the alien escapes and, well you know the rest. The film is good enough in itself, but the franchise was a bit tired by now and had become too clichéd.