Really, Ridley?! Alien: Covenant Is The Best You Could Come Up With?!

The Good: Directing and acting in the first third, Michael Fassbender's performance for most of the movie
The Bad: Entirely formulaic plot, Ridiculous reversals, Michael Fassbender's acting is too good to make the end convincing, Stupid, stupid characters, Emotionally unrealistic characters
The Basics: Alien: Covenant is an utter disappointment for anyone who loves the franchise . . . or movies in general.


For the past few months, the film I have been most excited about seeing has been Alien: Covenant. For sure, the Alien franchise (reviewed here!) has had some duds, but one of my strongest moments of cinephilic joy came in seeing Prometheus (reviewed here!) in IMAX 3-D. So, tonight, I schlepped out 85 miles to a theater with a 70 ft. screen to see Alien: Covenant. And, sadly, it was not worth it.

Alien: Covenant is, sadly, garbage. Everything that was good and clever in Prometheus is missing from Alien: Covenant. Everything that made Alien scary is passe in Alien: Covenant; the elements that made Aliens a great sequel seem cheaply recycled in Alien: Covenant. Even the darkness of Alien 3 that robbed fans of the prior episode's "happy ending" is presented in Alien: Covenant as a glossed-over, expository afterthought. The inventiveness of Alien Resurrection even is lacking from Alien: Covenant.

Sadly, by the point Alien: Covenant was made, the Alien-franchise films have developed into something of a formula. Introduce the characters and setting (usually Ripley), isolate the characters, introduce some form of the alien life form, the alien is hunted while the alien(s) hunt the human characters, drama with an android, someone makes it to safety . . . psych(!), resolution. Alien: Covenant only minimally challenges that well-established formula. In fact, the big differences of Alien: Covenant are pretty easy to define: this time the chestburster comes out the back, there are no real chestbursters (just tiny xenomorphs), and the aliens are not really the villains this time. And, apparently, Ridley Scott listened to the commentary track on Alien and decided to side with Veronica Cartwright; Alien: Covenant features a character actually making a good-faith attempt to communicate with the xenomorph and it positively responds. Take that, Tom Skerritt!

So, what actually happens in Alien: Covenant and why is it so bad?

Opening with David being brought online by Peter Weyland, David and Weyland discuss the nature of creators and the created. Leaping forward to ten years after the Prometheus disappeared and was presumed destroyed, the Company has sent the colony ship Covenant into deep space to colonize a distant world. The synthetic human, Walter, is acting as custodian of the ship, crew and cargo (colonists and embryoes) when a nutrino pulse cripples the ship, forcing him to wake up the crew. In the process, the captain is killed, leaving Daniels a widow and making the faith-based Oram Captain. While Tenessee is out fixing the solar collectors, his helmet intercepts a message. Returning to the Covenant, the crew works to decipher the message, but all they can do is identify that it includes John Denver's "Country Roads." Walter discovers that the signal came from a previously undiscovered planet that is both closer to Covenant's current location and is a better match for a human population. Given how the captain died in his cryotube, the crew is resistant to returning to sleep, so over Daniels's objections, Oram reroutes the Covenant to the new planet.

Arriving at the planet, the Covenant crew is surprised by the volatility of storms in the upper atmosphere, so they leave a skeleton crew aboard and take most of the crew down to the surface. There, they split up and two of the crew step on spores that they then become infected by. By nightfall, the two infected crewmembers are killed birthing xenomorphs and more of the crew is lost when their dropship is destroyed. When all looks bleak, the colonists are rescued by none other than David, who takes them to safety in a city that was once home to the Engineers. There, Daniels recognizes him as twitchy and she sends Walter in to learn the truth of what happened to the Prometheus and how he got to the alien planet in the alien ship. Soon, though, Walter's loyalties are tested as David's experiments using Engineer technology are slowly revealed and various xenomorphs start hunting the crew!

Alien: Covenant takes a lesson from, of things Alien Vs. Predator in that it includes facehuggers that impregnate at ridiculously fast speeds. That is paired with a first xenomorph style creature that gets huge very fast and skips the larval chestburster stage. And, apparently, people in the future lack a sneeze reaction.

Fundamentally, the big problem with Alien: Covenant is in the acting of Michael Fassbender. Fassbender is a great actor and he convincingly creates two distinctly different characters in Alien: Covenant in Walter and David. The problem is that he's such a good actor that he fails to sell the film's supposed big surprise reversal because of how he is playing his character. As Spock once noted: it's easier for an enlightened person to play a barbarian than for a barbarian to portray an enlightened. By similar extension, it's much harder for the mad scientist to play the lovelorn android than for the loving synth to play the madman.

Finally, many of the characters in defy sensibility. I like a good satirical commentary on the intelligence of people who make decisions based primarily on faith, but Oram is played as just plain stupid (sorry Billy Crudup!). Having encountered David cozied up to a xenomorph (who looked like it was designed by Guillermo Del Toro), Oram follows David literally into the dark basement. On the commentary track for Prometheus, the writers discuss how they were painfully aware that they had characters walking into the (figurative) haunted basement, so they worked hard to make that apparent defiance of reason character-driven. And it works. There is no such attention to detail or reason in Oram's decision.

The surprises in Alien: Covenant are often more obvious than surprising. Ridley Scott telegraphs a lot of the big moments and makes explicit almost everything in the film in a way that diminishes the mystery that Prometheus established well. In fact, the only element that is not overly-explained (arguably) is that the recorder David and Walter play is made of bone and probably came from Elizabeth Shaw's corpse. But, Scott didn't need to make that explicit when he has David holding it like a weapon when the object is taken out of frame. Does Scott truly think that the audience is so stupid they've forgotten it is in David's hand?! And while there is a lot of carnage in Alien: Covenant a lot of it happens so fast that its graphicness is undone by the speed of the effects.

Alien: Covenant has a few good moments, but the promise of its opening scene is that it will be philosophical and/or clever. But the moment the first whatever-morph appears on screen, Alien: Covenant degenerates into an over-the-top bloodbath orchestrated by a mad scientist and it stops being satisfying, smart or even enjoyable unfortunately early.

For other movies currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2
Colossal
Life

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Surviving Space: The Martian Balances Practical Science And Entertainment Shockingly Well!

The Good: Decent performances, Interesting characters, Good pacing for the relative lack of plot
The Bad: Glossed-over characters/initial pacing seems very fast
The Basics: The Martian does what several of the recent science fiction space exploration films have failed to do in creating a plausible narrative that remains entertaining.


Whatever NASA is currently spending on advertising - if it even has an advertising budget at this point - it might as well reroute that money. Hollywood films are produced with a much more significant budget and between Gravity (reviewed here!), Interstellar (reviewed here!) and now The Martian, the enthusiasm for practical space travel seems to be the highest it has been in years. Despite all of the initial hype for Gravity and the fantastic elements that made Interstellar a box-office hit, the superior film of the three is The Martian.

I was drawn to The Martian based on the strength of director Ridley Scott's prior science fiction work, Prometheus (reviewed here!) and I was somewhat surprised that my appreciation of that film did not get me excited about any of Scott's projects in between. I was pretty psyched to go into The Martian without any knowledge about the film outside the tagline on the movie poster and the fact that Matt Damon was the lead in it. That led me to the rare pleasant surprise of a survival film whose ending was not immediately apparent the moment the initial concept of the film was revealed.

Eighteen days into the Ares III exploration of Mars, NASA suddenly detects a storm that will sweep over the mission's landing site. The crew of the lander is notified minutes before the storm hits and they evacuate the land station for the lander. In the process of struggling through the storm, astronaut and mission botanist Mark Watney is impaled by a transmitter antenna and blown back. Mission Commander Melissa Lewis opts to save the remaining crewmembers by lifting off after trying everything they can to search for him in the space of a minute. The rocket lifts off and the next morning, Watney wakes up to his suit's oxygen alarm going off. He makes it back to the shelter, removes the metal that pierced him and his suit and he resolves to survive for the four years needed before the next manned mission to Mars arrives. He builds a greenhouse, creates a water supply, and plants potatoes.

On Earth, NASA's director Teddy Sanders declares Mark dead and the director of the Ares project, Vincent Kapor starts to look ahead on funding the subsequent missions to Mars. When Mindy Park at the satellite station on Earth notices movement at the Ares III landing site, Kapor and Sanders work to control the narrative and figure out how they may best help Watney out. Sanders remains adamant that the crew of the Ares III not be told Watney is alive (as they are not equipped to mount a rescue mission and NASA does not want to risk losing them in such an attempt). Months in, though, Watney tries to figure out how to get to the Ares IV landing site (some 3500 kilometers away) and how to communicate with Earth (which he does by scavenging the old Pathfinder probe. But as NASA prepares to drop supplies to Watney, the airlock to the greenhouse blows off and Watney's chances of surviving until supplies can arrive plummet. When Chinese scientists step in to assist with the problem of resupplying Watney, the mission has the potential to change and everyone involved is faced with critical choices.

The Martian is a geek's dream for a practical space film that also manages to be entertaining. Until very late in the film, the practical problems are practically addressed. Unlike Gravity which relied a great deal on spectacle, The Martian features scientists who are utilizing mathematics and science to solve problems. The Martian has spectacle, but it is minimized in favor of quiet moments, references to budget problems, and a surprising amount of time where Matt Damon's Mark Whatney talks to himself.

What The Martian does exceptionally well is balance the story of Watney on Mars with the rescue attempts being made by the people on Earth. Initially, Watney's story seems ridiculously simple. He finds himself abandoned on Mars with all of the supplies he actually needs and the moment he sees the first potato plant growing, it's hard to feel a sense of urgency about him being lost in space. In fact, the two biggest plot issues seem to be with the set-up and the solution.

Mark Watney gets left behind on Mars in a very reasonable way. The mission commander makes a tough call and opts to save five lives over prolonging the search for Watney. The storm that causes the initial conflict is incredibly severe and seems to come out of nowhere, such that the team barely makes it from the habitat to the lander ship. That's a tough conceit to buy right off that bat; that NASA either so blunders the weather models or that the Mars team doesn't have weather monitoring instruments of their own forces the film's premise. As well, the moment Watney is discovered alive on Mars, the question becomes how to help him survive or rescue him, which is reasonable. While one might expect a film to not have to address all contingencies, in a film as science-laden as The Martian, it seems odd that no one on screen pitches that Ares IV would come with a more advanced rover to pick Watney up at the Ares III site. Unburdened by the thoughts of how to move himself to the Ares IV site, Watney could have been more cautious and, perhaps, done some things like focus on building a secondary greenhouse to double down on his survival chances.

All that said, The Martian is otherwise gripping. Matt Damon does an excellent job of playing an astronaut who retains his humanity and wry sense of humor in the face of exceptional odds against his very survival. It takes a pretty impressive performer to carry a film on one's own, but Damon pulls it off. Every minute one spends watching Watney try to figure out how to survive is gripping.

Watney's story is balanced - mostly effectively - by the NASA storyline where Teddy Sanders basically acts like the average Star Trek captain and forces engineers to do things faster than they are comfortable and with a seemingly unlimited budget (budget problems are referenced, but what the film lacks is a single, key scene with the American President where Sanders bluntly states that he does not want to be the President who let an American astronaut die in space out of respect for budgetary concerns). Jeff Daniels plays Sanders with credibility, as Chiwetel Ejiofor does as Vincent Kapoor. Kristen Wiig is entirely underused, as are the talents of most of the crew of the Ares III mission. And there is something unsettling, these days, about watching a film where Sean Bean plays a character that has every reason to be expected to survive the film.

Ultimately, with minimal flare, Ridley Scott paints a picture of what space exploration looks like when smart people work together to survive a very basic problem with finite resources. And Scott and Damon make it entirely watchable and entertaining.

For other films featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor, be sure to see my reviews of:
Doctor Strange
12 Years A Slave
Salt
2012
Children Of Men
Serenity
Four Brothers
Love Actually

8.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Were It Not For The Furious Gods, Prometheus: The Art Of The Film Would Be Indispensible To Fans!

The Good: Decent stories, Great artwork, Affordable
The Bad: Repetitive, Nothing exclusive, Incomplete
The Basics: Prometheus: The Art Of The Film is an excellent tool for building hype for the film Prometheus and it is a wonderful resource to moviemakers, but there is nothing unique to it, which makes it more dated than timeless!


Back when Prometheus (reviewed here!) was first released, I was incredibly excited about the film. In fact, despite the problems with the plot of the film, I remain a pretty active fan of Prometheus. My wife seems to have tapped into that and she has picked me up a decent number of Prometheus-related gifts. The latest gift that is related to my love of Prometheus is Prometheus: The Art Of The Film. Prometheus: The Art Of The Film, by Mark Salisbury, is a book by Titan Books, a publisher that seems to specialize with releasing coffeetable books to coincide with genre blockbuster film releases.

Such is the case with Prometheus: The Art Of The Film. Salisbury wrote the book well and the sources are incredible, but in a world where so much information if available at the tip of one’s fingers thanks to the internet, books like Prometheus: The Art Of The Film lose their edge. In the specific case of Prometheus: The Art Of The Film, Salisbury and Titan Books run into the dual problems of not being exclusive/thorough enough and having to compete with a pretty impressive documentary. The former problem is one that has to irk people like Salisbury; just last week, artwork surfaced for a film that was being pitched around the time of Prometheus’s conception, an Aliens sequel featuring Ripley and Corporal Hicks that was the brainchild of director Neill Blomkamp. There is not even the faintest allusion to the project in Prometheus: The Art Of The Film and, considering the breaking news on the subject was art-related, print media once again takes a hit to the awesome power of the internet.

Unfortunately, Prometheus: The Art Of The Film is competing directly with The Furious Gods: The Making Of Prometheus (reviewed here!), a documentary that was released with the Blu-Ray version of the film. This is unfortunate because in Prometheus: The Art Of The Film, Mark Salisbury culls a number of great behind-the-scenes stories about how Prometheus was conceptualized and visualized . . . but the documentary includes all the same stories and more!

The benefit, of course, for Prometheus: The Art Of The Film is that it is a solid, stable book (those who want to take time to appreciate the artwork can linger on the pages as opposed to pausing a Blu-Ray) as opposed to a flickering screen.

As the title suggests, Prometheus: The Art Of The Film is a nonfiction, hardcover, book which explores how the film Prometheus was made. The writing is from Mark Salisbury (with a forward by Ridley Scott) and it is Salisbury’s relaying of a number of stories from the creative staff and stars of Prometheus. Salisbury charts the course of the creation of the film from the first pitches to the major rewrites through the storyboard sessions. He then got extensive interviews with creative personnel associated with the creation of Prometheus - costume designers, ship/vehicle designers, set dressers, etc. – in order to get the stories behind how the look and feel of Prometheus was developed. The level of thought behind every aspect of the designs in Prometheus is impressive and Salisbury catalogues the stories well, from the various thoughts behind the spacesuits that Shaw would wear to the various revisions of the Ampule found on the alien planet!

What makes Prometheus: The Art Of The Film worthwhile and still worth picking up for die-hard fans (even after they have watched the documentary) are the book’s extensive photographs. Prometheus: The Art Of The Film is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes production pictures that incredibly detail the entire process of conceptualizing and creating the iconic images of Prometheus. The photographs are presented on beautiful, glossy, pages and anyone looking to make a science fiction epic will appreciate the level of detail captured in the pictures in the book. They are worthy of study.

Titan Books originally asked $39.95 for Prometheus: The Art Of The Film, but as the hype for Prometheus has died down, so has the price of the coffeetable book deflated. The advantage of this is that at clearance prices, Prometheus: The Art Of The Film becomes an indispensable asset to die-hard fans instead of a cashgrab. Despite being trumped by The Furious Gods, Prometheus: The Art Of The Film remains worthwhile and enjoyable.

For other Prometheus-related and film tie-in reviews, please check out my reviews of:
NECA Prometheus Holographic Engineer (Pressure Suit) Action Figure
Watchmen Portraits By Clay Enos
The Official Star Trek Prop And Costume Auction Book

5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Underwhelming And Real, The Counselor Crashes.

The Good: Decent writing, Fair direction
The Bad: Characters are virtually impossible to empathize with, No stellar performances
The Basics: In The Counselor, Ridley Scott finds it impossible to make Cormac McCarthy’s characters interesting – though he has performers who present their lines well and he directs the stark film well.


What do you do, if you’re a big Hollywood director, who has spent two years working on one of the biggest, most ambitious, science fiction films of the year? In the case of Ridley Scott, apparently, you move onto something smaller, more manageable, and much more real. Following his immersion in the creation of Prometheus (reviewed here!), Scott opted to direct the latest cinematic endeavor of Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor. While the adaptation of McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men (reviewed here!) went on to win the Best Picture Oscar, there is virtually no hope that The Counselor will follow in that tradition.

The fault does not go to Scott, who does everything he can to use the film medium well. The Counselor looks good, though there is a prevalence of sun-washed scenes that becomes tiresome to the eyes. And many of the lines delivered in The Counselor are actually clever. But the fundamental problem with the film’s writing is that those lines are either incongruent to the realism of the film (real people do not speak in eloquent generalizations) or the performers deliver them as if they are just lines (without developing a forceful sense of the character’s reality to back them up). This is especially problematic for Cameron Diaz’s Malkina (who is essentially a manipulative archetype).

In Mexico, smugglers cleverly use a septic tank service to hide their cocaine, which they then smuggle over the U.S. border into Texas. In Amsterdam, The Counselor buys a ring for his girlfriend, Laura, despite being worried that the big diamond will attract the wrong kind of attention to her. After he proposes (Laura agrees to marry him), The Counselor and Laura attend a party thrown by Reiner, who has an interest in power . . . and how The Counselor is not rising to his full potential given his influence. After Westray pitches the Counselor on an exceptional drug deal (despite warning him that it might not be worth getting involved in), The Counselor is seen actually doing his job, in the form of getting his client’s son, The Green Hornet, bailed out of prison.

But, when the Green Hornet is killed and the drug stash is stolen, The Counselor is implicated. As Riener, the Wireman, and a notorious drug cartel all battle for control of the stolen drugs, the Counselor is drawn in. In an effort to rescue Laura, who has been kidnapped by the cartel, The Counselor meets with the Jefe, though all his efforts might be for naught as the Jefe is not the true power behind the debacle.

The Counselor is one of those unfortunate thrillers where the establishing information in the movie reveals enough to make the seasoned filmgoer have a pretty good idea who the real villain is. This is an unfortunate occurrence for The Counselor in that the movie spends so much time on the red herrings, shootouts and chases that the human interactions that motivate all of them are sorely neglected. Instead of being smart and challenging, the viewer sits it out, waiting for the big reveal.

The big reveal comes at the expense of making the title character truly resonate. When The Counselor falls out of the film, there are so few characters left that the remainder of the film is spent with the villain almost out of default.

None of the characters are particularly empathetic. In fact, arguably the most realistic and human character is Laura, but she is so thinly rendered in The Counselor that the viewer cares only in the abstract (and for the effect it has on the Counselor) when she is kidnapped. The Counselor’s moral ambiguity makes it difficult to root for him . . . his bad choices get him embroiled in the entire drug smuggling debacle, so the damage he suffers and the collateral damage to those around him is more predictable than shocking.

On the acting front, The Counselor features a talented cast, used in the most mediocre fashion. Cameron Diaz is stiff and abstractly philosophical with her lines for the bulk of her scenes in the film. Michael Fassbender shows none of his innate charisma and does not seem like a powerful or particularly smart individual, which is imperative for the viewer to believe in order for The Counselor to work. Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz do not give the viewer anything they have not seen in previous films.

In all, The Counselor is a fairly transparent thriller that is heavy on the themes, low on the thrills. In the end, that makes it entirely forgettable.

For other works with Micheal Fassbender, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
12 Years A Slave
Haywire
X-Men: First Class
Jonah Hex
300

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Underwhelming Vision Of The Future, Blade Runner (The Definitive Edition) Is More Blah Than Bang.

The Good: Vision, Concept, Moments of character
The Bad: Pacing, Mostly flat characters, Performances that are hardly noteworthy, Choppy editing, Somewhat pointless overall story
The Basics: The final cut of Blade Runner, now on Blu-Ray, presents a science fiction “classic” that is far less compelling than its die-hard fans would have the general populace believe.


Back when I was in college, there was a lot of hype about Blade Runner. It was probably because it was right around the fifteenth anniversary of the film and Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut was being cinematically released to the joy and ire of the fans. I vaguely recall watching the film on VHS and the experience was so anti-memorable that I could not even tell you which version of the film I saw at the time. After a new friend recommended Blade Runner to me, I decided to give it another chance. For that, I decided to use the latest Definitive Edition from the multi-disc Blu-Ray pack that Ridley Scott is currently assuring fans will be the last version of the film.

The newest version of Blade Runner has the film as a stark, straightforward narrative, without any voiceovers and without much in the way of real charm or thematic meaning outside its own narrative. In other words, unlike the best in science fiction, Blade Runner says little about who we are or who we might become and instead creates a dystopian future that is much harder to get into than the Ridley Scott sycophants would have the rest of us believe.

In 2019 Los Angeles, the world is dark and the skyscrapers are tall and so large that people get around in flying cars. In this world, where Earth has colonies off-world, a mega corporation (Tyrell) has built androids so realistic that they cannot be told apart from humans. To prevent humanity from being replaced or menaced by the Replicants, the androids are given a four-year lifespan, after which they automatically deactivate. Unfortunately, rebellious Replicants are fighting for their survival and four violent Replicants make it back to Earth (Los Angeles) where they begin to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation and neighborhoods where they create a (largely unseen) menace.

As a result of the imminent threat represented by the four surviving escaped Replicants, the retired Blade Runner (those sent out to manually deactivate – kill – the Replicants) Deckard is called back into service. Deckard begins to hunt the leads needed to find the four Replicants as they close in on the head of the Tyrell Corporation. In trying to understand the Replicants, Deckard visits Dr. Eldon Tyrell and discovers the doctor has built a Replicant so perfect she was not aware of her true nature. This begins to blur the lines for Deckard as he pursues the renegades and is forced to put them down.

Blade Runner is a mess. There are a number of classic science fiction works I enjoy, but Blade Runner is not one of them. First, the story is an incredibly basic one. After a pretty awesome bang of a beginning (which involves one of the escapees being interrogating and then snapping, shooting his interrogator out of the blue), the movie descends into one of the laziest investigation films of all time. Indeed, Blade Runner takes its time having Deckard get on track with his investigation that it makes Chinatown look like a focused roller coaster of a film by comparison. Because it takes so long for Deckard to get focused and commit to actually hunting down the Replicants, the film relies a great deal upon mood and setting instead of character, substance, or even plot to engage the viewer. Sadly, this fails for Ridley Scott because the film is slow and does not make an effort to immediately build to anything (even a consistent sense of mood).

In other words, once you’ve flown by the giant Coke ad in the flying car in the smoke-filled metropolis once, it’s not doing much to fly by it another three times. That’s not great cinema and it is not interesting storytelling.

On the character front, Blade Runner is filled with characters, not a single one of whom “pops.” The main antagonist, Ray Batty, is a villain who ostensibly wants nothing more than to be able to survive beyond his expiration date, which frustrates him because he has no idea when that expiration date might be (Replicants are programmed with a full range of memories, so they often have no idea where their remembered lives end and their actual lives in the real world began). Batty is a militant leader who is focused upon getting the answers he needs to survive or, barring that, revenge upon his creator. That said, he doesn’t have much that he really wants to live for. Life for the sake of living isn’t a terribly compelling characterization. Ray Batty does not seem to have any particular dreams or aspirations outside living and given how filthy and smoky the world of Blade Runner is, it is hard to take his (or his associates’) drive to survive all that seriously.

At the other end of the spectrum, Deckard is an equally unlikable protagonist, played by Harrison Ford. Ford plays Deckard with such ambivalence and stiffness that fans have wondered for the past 25 years, as one of the Replicants in the movie questions, if he is even human. Deckard has no zest, no spark of life, nothing interesting in his life and his fling with Rachael is little more than sex . . . and not even particularly interesting sex.

The result is a film that is thematically murky as the sets are smoke-obscured and a “classic” that is far less satisfying than many other engaging science fiction works from before, the same time, or since.

For other works that Ridley Scott has been involved in, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Prometheus
The A-Team
Cyrus
Gladiator
Matchstick Men
Alien

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Lucking Into Masterpiece, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus Details How Prometheus Was Developed!

| | | The Good: Amazing detailing, Very thorough
The Bad: Some of the camerawork, A few notable missed opportunities
The Basics: An intense documentary for fans of Prometheus, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is more than just a bonus feature!


Love it or hate it, Prometheus was a mammoth cinematic undertaking and it is a pretty ballsy idea. At its heart, Prometheus is essentially a two hour film to explain a model/set piece seen for under three minutes in Alien. To capture the incredible process of creating Prometheus, director and documentarian Charles de Lauzirika created the documentary The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus. Personally, I was pissed that the only way I could get all of the bonus features for Prometheus was with the four-disc version of the film. I do not yet have a 3-D Blu-Ray or 3-D television, so having to shell out five dollars extra for a disc that I could not even play, irked the crap out of me. That was until I watched The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus.

The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is the cornerstone of the exclusive disc available only in the four-disc version of Prometheus (reviewed here!). The documentary, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is a three hour, forty-one minute presentation that explores every aspect of the creation of the film Prometheus. Having excitedly watched the documentary twice now, all I can really say is: 1. Wow! John Spaihts got screwed, and 2. Wow! How could such an incredible film come out of such a haphazard creative process?!

To be fair to director Charles de Lauzirika, it is tough to create an enduring and interesting documentary on a film. Far too often, any form of documentary on the creation of a film is a ten to twenty minute featurette designed to help sell the DVDs to fans who crave exclusive content. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus takes some cues from the successful documentary Lost In La Mancha (reviewed here!), which documented the collapse of a Terry Gilliam film. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus successfully explores the genesis of Prometheus from the earliest concept aspects through the promotional material.

While pitching to executives at Fox, writer John Spaihts was asked about revisiting the Alien Universe and began generating ideas for director Ridley Scott, who was interested in returning to science fiction and that particular universe. Very shortly thereafter, Spaihts, Scott, and a visualization team began creating the film that would evolve into Prometheus. With production ramping up, the studio got nervous about using Spaihts’s work alone and Damon Lindelof was brought in to rewrite the script, working closely with Ridley Scott.

With the production design visualized for the entities, vehicles, ships, and equipment of the film, Prometheus was cast, the film was shot, and a massive, viral marketing campaign launched in order to make it one of the most anticipated films of 2012. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus explores every aspect of that.

The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is impressive in its level of detail. Elements like the process of designing the giant transport vehicle that came out of Prometheus create an unparalleled level of documenting for a modern film. Director Charles de Lauzirika managed to get some incredible footage of behind-the-scenes moments from the preproduction materials through the casting and alternate takes of scenes. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus actually makes Prometheus seem like one of the great “happy accidents” of modern cinema. De Lauzirika captures amazing footage of writer John Spaihts and Ridley Scott who discuss the creation of Prometheus in a way that makes it clear that production was very much under way before anything remotely resembling a finished script was prepared! Prometheus, then, was far less about telling the story it ultimately came up with, than it was justifying an evolution of various alien creatures on screen!

With impressive candid footage of the incredible process Noomi Rapace went through to create Shaw and get the look and feel of the character right, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus has great footage of all of the cast members and it manages to be entertaining as well as incredibly informative.

What The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus lacks is probing questions and a real sense of curiosity from the filmmaker. This film is, unfortunately at times, a very pure documentary. Charles de Lauzirika does not ask (or use footage if he did ask) about what many of the participants actually think or feel about what they are going through. Spaihts, for example, talks about how he was not surprised to have the project taken out from under him, but he never says how he actually felt about it. He expresses no dissatisfaction with the fact that what he wrote was radically altered by Damon Lindeloff. Similarly, de Lauzirika never gets Ridley Scott to open up on his deeper motivations for taking on Prometheus. Long before the film had a spiritual component, Scott was creating it and his only real solid idea, as detailed by The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus, was that he wanted the H.R. Geiger-designed “space jockey” to be a suit for something that was human beneath.

What is missing from The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus are the probing moments or even using fully what de Lauzirika had access to. The best example of missed opportunities comes when de Lauzirika captures H.R. Geiger’s visit to the production offices, Ridley Scott speaks for Geiger. How de Lauzirika could not get Geiger to talk about his thoughts on what Scott was doing weakens that portion of the film.

Ultimately, though, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is far more than a DVD bonus feature. It manages to not repeat too much of what is already present in the DVD commentary tracks on Prometheus and the documentary has wonderful bonus features of its own. Loaded with “Enhancements,” The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus gives the viewer the option to see featurettes within the documentary that provide additional material – especially in the artwork department – that will keep Prometheus geeks entertained for hours and hours on end.

Informative and educational, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is enough to satisfy fans and convince Prometheus detractors that an exceptional amount of thought went into developing the film, regardless of the results!

For other Prometheus-related reviews, be sure to check out my takes on:
NECA’s Prometheus Engineer (Chair Suit) Action Figure
NECA’s Prometheus Engineer (Pressure Suit) Action Figure
The Alien Quadrillogy

6.5/10

For other film reviews, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Divorced From The Marketing, Prometheus Is Still More Than “Alien: The Next Generation!”

The Good: Interesting characters, Engaging philosophical elements, Great effects, Decent pacing, Good initial story, Good acting.
The Bad: Plot develops into something far too familiar (derivative).
The Basics: With Prometheus, a science vessel inadvertently awakens a powerful, potentially malevolent force that might redefine humanity’s understanding of itself!


Entering 2012, there was no film I was more excited about than The Dark Knight Rises (reviewed here!). From pretty much the moment Anne Hathaway was cast as Selina Kyle, I was psyched. But on New Year’s Day, I visited the IMDB and saw the movie poster for Prometheus posted there. And I began to look into what the film was about. And suddenly, there was a new movie I was anticipating. With the earliest press about Prometheus debating whether or not the movie, which Ridley Scott had announced as the story of the “space jockey” from Alien, would actually be a prequel to Alien, I was hooked on every scrap of information that was released about Prometheus.

So, I began to consider what a prequel would actually mean. If the film was actually going to be about the giant alien seen in the crashed derelict spacecraft in Alien, it would – I reasoned – have to be set quite some time ago. After all, the “space jockey” was a fossil. So, it seemed logical that any real prequel to Alien that focused on the space jockey would have to be about how that crescent-shaped ship crashed on the planet with the methane crystals in the atmosphere. To satisfy fans – and I am a fan of the Alien Quadrilogy (reviewed here!) – it would have to establish the space jockey setting the twelve-second repeating beacon that the Nostromo was sent to investigate and answer how the space jockey became infected with the alien that burst out of its chest, leaving the fossilized remains.

By those criteria, Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien. Set in the same universe as Alien, Prometheus is an entirely tangential story that populates the Alien universe more than it has been (in Aliens, one of the Marines refers to Ripley’s seeing an alien in such a derisive tone that makes it sound like humans have not had much experience with extraterrestrials, despite other Marines referring to sex with the, presumably, androgynous Arcturians). A science fiction-horror film that tries to be smart and cerebral, Prometheus develops into a fight for survival on a distant world that is likely to please the fans of the Alien franchise.

Except for those looking for something truly new.

The only real, lasting, disappointment from Prometheus is that the build-up implied that the film would be something truly new and different. For all of the incredible aspects of Prometheus, the plot structure too-closely mirrors other installments in the Alien franchise, so that the film that originally seemed audacious enough to truly do its own thing, eventually becomes a whittling down process that seems more like it is trying to squeeze back into the mold, as opposed to truly break it.

That said, Prometheus is incredible and must be seen on the big screen (biggest possible!) in order to truly appreciate the depth, scope and grandeur of all its aspects, even its scariest ones.

Following the discovery on Earth of potential extraterrestrial influence with disparate ancient civilizations, the Weyland Corporation sends an expedition to a remote sector of space in the hopes of discovering who those aliens were and how they influenced humanity. The android, David, awakens the crew of the science ship Prometheus, who include scientists, the ship’s captain and a representative from the Weyland Corporation, Meredith Vickers. Landing on a moon around a gas giant, the Prometheus crew finds an alien structure and inside they discover alien bodies. They also find storage containers. With a sandstorm coming that will cut off the team from the landed ship, the chief scientists – Shaw and Holloway – and David return to the Prometheus.

Aboard the Prometheus, the scientists study an alien head they recovered, while David opens one of the alien containers and infects Holloway with material from it. With the storm passed, another team returns to the temple to find those left behind dead. David accesses another level of the temple, which is actually an alien space ship. While Holloway’s health worsens, David learns that the aliens had, in fact, been to Earth and they may still have plans for it. Desperate to stop the spread of the parasites that are growing within Holloway and Shaw, as well as prevent the ancient aliens from returning to Earth to wipe out humanity, Vickers, Captain Janeck, David, and Shaw work against the alien entities and the sinister Weyland Corporation.

Prometheus is notable in that it does what both great science fiction and great films do; it successfully tries to explore something greater than itself. In many ways, Prometheus is an incredibly well-detailed extension of the old adage that one should not look into the face of their own gods. Elizabeth Shaw is, from a young age, motivated by a strong desire to learn and seek her creator. While she is a scientist, she adopts the idea that humanity was seeded on Earth and the artwork from ancient cultures implies to her that the engineers of humanity’s development returned or lived among ancient humans. Hers is a quest to, essentially, seek out her god.

In many ways, that is the quest of David, as well. Programmed by the Weyland Corporation, David has a full understanding that his programming is limited to a human mindset. David wants to experience something more and his place in Prometheus solidifies the metaphor of the dangers of seeking god, especially when one has something they want of it. Both Shaw and David yearn for discovery (though David has been programmed alternative directives) and Prometheus starts as their search.

But the theme of exploring humanity’s origins and trying to understand who we are and why we exist comes to a pretty abrupt end once Holloway is infected. Instead of simply following that course and trying to provide the audience with answers which were bound to disappoint theists everywhere, Prometheus takes a right turn into horror. The cerebral aspects of Prometheus are not completely negated or done away with – there is an entire conspiracy plotline that becomes far more active in the film’s latter half that is smartly presented – but once Holloway and Shaw become human incubators, Prometheus makes the transition from mildly scary science fiction to an action adventure film that is more in line with the standard horror film than Star Trek or Star Wars.

Prometheus manages to present engaging characters – which might be why it is so disturbing that the film turns into the bloodbath it does. While there are a few members of the Prometheus crew who never leap into being more than background characters, the main crew is remarkably well-defined. Even Vickers, who initially is cast as a cold, efficient, Company-oriented woman who might seem to have no real personality to her outside a sense of ruthless efficiency, is given a compelling reason for all of her actions in the film’s latter half. The relationship between Shaw and Holloway (who is an atheist) works well as an “opposites attract” type relationship while they share a common interest in the archaeological evidence they collated prior to the flight and a sense of adventure that makes their journey together seem plausible.

But, like Alien, Prometheus takes a step back from its characters to become a film that is a series of confrontations and desperate escapes. This, of course, leaves the viewer feeling somewhat jerked around as the characters one gets invested in in Prometheus do not have great chances of survival and the body count in the film is predictably high.

What sets Prometheus apart from other science fiction horrors, in addition to the philosophy and stronger sense of characters at the film’s outset, is the caliber of acting. Prometheus might seem to be playing with a stacked deck with Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and Michael Fassbender (with brief initial roles from Patrick Wilson and Guy Pearce as well), but the performers truly do give something new of themselves, each and every one. In Prometheus, Elba has a more casual and accessible role as Janeck than in any other role I have yet seen him. He is professional, but approachable and Elba plays Janeck as a guy who cares, which offsets Theron’s Vickers very nicely, as they share many scenes together.

As for Charlize Theron, Prometheus gives her a nice chance to play villainous with more purpose than she was able to illustrate in Snow White And The Huntsman (reviewed here!). Theron plays steely well and she makes Meredith Vickers often feel less human than Michael Fassbender’s David, but she makes the role work. As Vickers is given more backstory, Theron infuses more emotion to her, without ever making the character go through any form of ridiculous transition. Theron establishes Vickers with a strong sense of personality and she never slips from that.

As the resident android, David, in Prometheus, Michael Fassbender obviously has a significant acting challenge. Fassbender continues to impress with his range as David. In Prometheus, he manages to play a character that is clearly not human, while making him seem more than just a guy with somewhat stiff mannerisms. For lack of a better analogy, Fassbender does not make David into a character like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Data, as an android searching for what it means to be human. Instead, Fassbender manages to simply embody an android by acting soulless. His performance is without spark or zest and that wonderfully frees him to make David seem like an android, without making him unsympathetic. Fassbender dominates his scenes and he still has the ability to evoke complex emotions with simply a look.

The obvious protagonist in Prometheus is Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace. Prometheus is actually the first film I have seen Rapace in and it was enough to make me willing to look her up in other works. She plays Shaw’s idealism exceptionally well – with literal wide-eyed excitement and she is credible in the film’s later sequences which require her to seem both tormented and as something of an action heroine.

The effects in Prometheus are absolutely amazing, making it a visual wonder that ought to be viewed on the biggest possible screen. Having now seen it again, this time in IMAX 3-D, I have to say that is THE way to see Prometheus! Ridley Scott uses the whole canvass for the IMAX presentation and even on that, there are several moments, like when the Prometheus is entering orbit and the atmosphere, that the ship is tiny, even in IMAX. It will be virtually impossible to see on DVD!

The 3-D effects for the IMAX presentation are simply stunning. Because the film was filmed in 3-D, the effects are like watching a box filled with characters and settings, as opposed to post-produced 3-D, which basically looks like two levels. Prometheus is rich in depth, even in the smaller moments, in 3-D IMAX.

As well, the audio presentation is exceptional. Events like the silt pounding the ship and crew make one's chair vibrate from the intensity and the climax of the film is so much richer with the IMAX soundsystem. I was also much more aware of the soundtrack the second time through and the haunting theme to Prometheus lends the film a wonderful sense of adventure and, later, horror.

But Prometheus is not flawless; it’s own familiarity robs it of that. But for fans of the Alien franchise who have been looking for something exciting that is new but on the familiar canvass, after so many false starts and disappointing sequels, Prometheus feels like coming home.

For other works with Micheal Fassbender, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Haywire
X-Men: First Class
Jonah Hex
300

9.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all of the films I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Long Con, Over Before It Gets Going: Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men!

The Good: Decent acting, Interesting characters, Not a bad story
The Bad: REAL predictable for anyone with a brain who is awake
The Basics: Despite some real problems with the basic story, which tries to fool the audience, Matchstick Men is entertaining.


There's a single detail, early in the movie Matchstick Men that makes the movie dreadfully obvious and predictable. It's a simple detail and were I to reveal it here in my review, it would not ruin the movie for most people. Still, I won't give it away, not even that. Sufficed to say, when a movie is about con artists, one has to figure the movie is in some way a con itself. Matchstick Men never pretends to be anything smarter than that, so when the "big reversal" comes, most of us will not be surprised.

Roy Waller is a con artist who is a germaphobe and possibly obsessive compulsive. He's living the life of a grifter and doing quite well with his professional partner Frank. After a severe bout of stress, Roy finds himself in need of medicine and takes up therapy with Dr. Klein, who gets him to start questioning the way he lives his life. Dr. Klein helps Roy find his daughter and when Roy meets his adolescent daughter Angela, he begins to teach her the tricks of the con artist trade. Roy and Angela soon find themselves in a sticky situation involving a con.

And ultimately, of course, that leads to the real reversal in the movie.

Sigh. Some movies just try to be clever and succeed only when its pandering to the viewers of the lowest intelligence. Matchstick Men is not that bad. It's well-written, has moments that are clever, but it simply fails to get the well-watched viewer to forget its premise. Quite directly, all of the clues for what's truly going on in the movie are there, out in plain sight and the only way to miss them is, well, I don't know how one would miss them because I didn't.

The characters are interesting, though Roy's transformation is ridiculously quick. Roy goes from being a germaphobic con artist to a man who simply wants to be a good father very quickly. So, when the resolutions begin to fall into place, it's somewhat surprising that he doesn't go on a mean ticking streak. It makes the viewer feel like his initial disorder - or sense of disorder - was more an act than an actual character flaw or aspect of personality.

Conversely, all the acting is real good. Bruce McGill is fantastic as the Chuck, the mark. He's believable as greedy and turns violent perfectly. Bruce Altman is wonderful as Dr. Klein and his performance is no doubt what sells much of the movie. Even Sam Rockwell is good as Roy's partner in cons. He makes us believe the character thoroughly from beginning to end. Rockwell creates personas for Frank throughout the movie and that keeps the pace flowing.

Nicholas Cage is great as Roy. This is possibly the best performance I've seen him in. He is funny as the quirky germaphobe at the beginning (think Monk as a con artist) and despite the speed it happens at, Cage is able to soften his face at moments to make the viewer know how much his character cares about his new daughter. He plays the shifting role with ease and he incorporates mannerisms and facial expressions well to convince the audience of his character's growth and change. At the end, in fact, Cage gives an entirely different performance than what we see throughout the rest of the film.

Alison Lohman is given the lion's share of work to do here, though. Lohman's ability to sell the viewer on the enthusiastic girl one minute, then turn it on the dime to be the troubled, bothered damaged girl the next is perfect. Lohman's character so easily manipulates Roy because Lohman manipulates the audience. Her youth, innocence and playful demeanor, combined with the way she is able to cry on a dime, tugs at something very visceral and protective within Roy and the audience. She does a tremendous job in the role.

Ultimately, it's just enough of a good time for me to recommend. However, like The Game (reviewed here!), where the reversal is supposed to be big, revelatory and shocking, it falls short to fans of movies, books and television who have seen this all before. This is done well, but it starts with a serious disadvantage; trying to con an audience in the know.

For other works that Ridley Scott has been involved in, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The A-Team
Cyrus
Gladiator
Alien

6/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Alien: The Science Fiction/Horror Classic On DVD Still Satisfies!

The Good: Excellent acting, Good sense of mood, Plot, Interesting characters, Great DVD extras!
The Bad: A little light on character
The Basics: Alien tells the story of a group of workers trapped on a mining ship, hunted by an extraterrestrial animal in one of the classics that pioneered the science-fiction/horror genre.


Being the first one out of the gate does not necessarily guarantee perfection or create a classic. In the realm of science fiction/horror, though, being the first out of the gate gave the masters of the genre a chance to pioneer the conceits that would be imitated and recreated in virtually all of the films in the science fiction/horror subgenre that followed. In the case of Alien, now available on DVD separate from the Alien Quadrilogy (reviewed here), the film is both legitimately great and a true pioneer. Unlike shows like Star Trek and films like Star Wars, Alien presented a dark, quiet universe, without an extensive population where the greatest enemies are much more subtle.

The commercial starship Nostromo is hauling ore back from the outer rim of the galaxy when its crew, which had been in suspended animation, is woken up. Finding themselves nowhere near home, the crew led by Captain Dallas discovers that the ship has been diverted because it picked up an alien radio signal. Dallas is given new orders, to find the source of the signal and the ragtag crew of workers is forced to set down on a dismal, inhospitable planet.

Once there, the two mechanics work to get the ship prepared for liftoff while Dallas, the ship's navigator Lambert, and executive officer Kane go for a walk outside while Science Officer Ash waits aboard the ship. The trio discovers a crashed alien vessel filled with eggs that are awakened by their arrival. They arrive back at the Nostromo with Kane carrying a parasite. The parasite soon dies and Kane is killed through the violent birth of a new lifeform from his body. Dallas, warrant officer Ripley and the other four members of the crew liftoff from the planet and in space, they find themselves hunting the lifeform through the ship, only to become the hunted themselves.

Alien, which was released in the late 1970s, has never looked as good as it does on this DVD. Remastered and cleaned up with a branching function that allows the viewer to see the film as it was originally presented or in the more recent Director's cut, Alien looks and sounds good, regardless of whatever else one might think about it. The truth is, there is a lot to like about Alien.

First, this is a film that has a wonderful sense of mood and rather effectively sets a creepy tone throughout. The Nostromo is a dirty ship and it is populated by people who are working stiffs, not heroes. Indeed, these are not military people, they are workers and their main concerns are staying alive and making money. As a result, the feel of the crew is one of ordinary people who are suddenly put in the unenviable position of finding their lives on the line based on the corporate greed of the Company which demands they investigate the radio signal.

The genius of Alien that makes it so scary is that the menace comes from without - in the form of the alien life form - and within, from the Company. This keeps the film from being monolithic and a straightforward chase film. Dallas is barely able to keep control of his crew and, in fact, the only way the two mechanics get back to working on the ship is when Ripley threatens them with loss of their paychecks. Ash and Ripley lay out the interests of the Company and compel those motivated by basic greed to risk their lives for the money. In this way, Alien is much like Jaws, in that it tells the story that on one level appears to be a simple horror film, while on a deeper level explores the evils of rampant capitalism.

Of course, in Alien, there is a very real monster which begins hunting the crew. It is a nightmarish creature that is easily one of the coolest looking, most iconic creatures in science fiction or horror films. The brilliance of Ridley Scott's Alien is that the actual creature is barely in the film, making its brief appearances all the more shocking. The hunt through the ship becomes scary because of the shadows, filthy surfaces and the unpredictability of the creature.

And this is what makes Alien truly great to this day; the characters, like the audience, have no idea what the creature is, where it is or how it will behave. As a result, the audience is terrorized with the crew of the Nostromo. Arguably, this was scarier when it was originally released because the plot conventions pioneered by the film had not been repeated and reworked in hundreds of other movies. But Alien was the one that set the essential number of plot reversals, the conventions of killing off the person who goes solo and the reversals near the end.

What makes it still work to this day is the realism of it. Sure, it's set in space on a space ship and it involves landing on planets and encountering nasty space monsters. But outside that, it's incredibly real. The characters bicker among themselves. They have their own priorities and limitations. These are people who do not have limitless supplies, they do not all get along and they are pretty much only looking out for themselves. But the best, most realistic, aspect of Alien is that not everything works. Things do not go as planned for the crew when they try to stop the alien. Simple things like flashlights not working and scanners giving out incorrect information play the audience - and the Nostromo crew - into entertaining disaster.

The actors sell the film perfectly. Tom Skerritt is Dallas and he portrays the captain of the commercial vessel perfectly as a man beleaguered by problems and underwhelmed by principles. In almost every scene he carries himself like a man bearing a heavy weight with the sense that there is no relief in sight. At the same time, he is able to speak with a calm authority that makes it perfectly believable that the Company would have contracted him to run the ship.

Similarly, Sigourney Weaver memorably explodes onto the screen as Ripley, a rules-abiding officer whose purpose seems to be to execute the will of the Company as their mouthpiece. Weaver's performance is one of the most human as the things her character clings to are stripped away in the face of the alien attack. Weaver perfectly embodies the normal person called upon to do the extraordinary when circumstances radically alter and she has a quality to her that makes the transition believable. Indeed, it is the impatience Weaver infuses into Ripley's early scenes that hint to the viewer that she has the strength to fight to survive.

With an impressive supporting cast including John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Yaphet Koto, and Ian Holm, Alien's performers add to the horror in a way that sells the picture perfectly.

This is not to say that Alien is a perfect film. It is slow in the beginning. It's tone is magnificent, but it belabors the build-up like a roller coaster with an especially high beginning ascent. It works, but it requires a trust in Ridley Scott. The only point that trust is truly violated is near the end of the film when Sigourney Weaver's butt crack is exposed for honestly no good reason (and we write that as fans of Weaver's work and butt!).

With hours of features, commentary tracks and an alternate cut that restores a scene that adds nothing special back into the film (indeed, in some ways it lessens the impact of the alien), this DVD set is a tremendous value and whatever is lacking from the film that keeps it from being perfect, the DVD bonuses more than make up for with informative and entertaining content.

This is a treasure trove for fans of science fiction, horror, or anyone who just wants something truly different. And it's quite easy to see how this little movie, set in a dank and miserable corner of a filthy universe spawned a franchise.

For other works featuring Sir Ian Holm, please check out my reviews of:
Brazil
The Fellowship Of The Ring
The Return Of The King

Alien - 9.5/10
with Aliens and Alien 3 as one long movie - 10/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page for a complete listing of all I have available!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Life And Death Of Ellen Ripley In A (Mostly) Amazing DVD Set! The Alien Quadrilogy

The Good: Three great films, Amazing DVD bonuses, Character, Acting, Mood
The Bad: Plots get repetitive, Final film is absolutely terrible
The Basics: Even exceptional DVD extras cannot save this boxed set from the stink of one of the films, though it is arguably an incredible example of what DVD can be!


For the past few years, I've been arguing that the best older television shows ought to create boxed sets featuring the entire series of a show for true fans and collectors, then break the series up into season boxed sets. This rewards the big fans who shell out the big money first by giving them everything and a little bit more and making those who are more inclined to pick and choose wait. Seriously, who cares what happened in the final season of Family Ties? Who was still watching? The producers of those DVDs where the series ran forever can successfully beat the low-sales virtually guaranteed to come with the later seasons by selling the entire series first. For shows with six season (for example) where the last season may not have lived up to the expectations of the fans, this is more likely to get the material out there and sold as opposed to breaking it down. Given the choice between buying a weak season for completion and getting something else (which given the variety and choices out there is virtually guaranteed each week!), I think most people will opt for getting something new that thrills them rather than completing a collection.

Nothing proves this idea better than the Alien Quadrilogy. This lush, beautiful, big boxed set features three tremendous films and one truly abysmal one. Sales of the Alien Quadrilogy, which preceded the DVD release of the individual films Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, were phenomenal and the nine disc set features a disc not available to those who picked and choosed. And because it came out before the individual releases, this was not a clear attempt to milk fans for more money by providing something extra in the unified boxed set after one had already purchased the component parts. That is classy. It ought to be the model for DVD producers everywhere.

The Alien Quadrilogy (a term coined for this boxed set, meaning "series of four" the way "trilogy" means "series of three") is a beautiful set of nine DVDs that is obsessed with providing the viewers with everything possible that there is to know about the series that began with Alien. Discs 1,3,5, and 7 feature the films of the Alien Quadrilogy, each with a branching option to allow the viewer to watch the original theatrical cut or a new Special Edition or Director's cut remastered for the set (or before). This means that viewers may choose at the opening menu between watching the 1979 theatrical version of Alien and the 2003 director's cut (with essentially one added scene and bits cut out, resulting in a film that is a minute shorter), the 1986 theatrical version of Aliens or the 1991 Special Edition which restores almost twenty minutes to the film, the 1992 theatrical cut of Alien 3 or the thirty minute longer special edition remade for the DVD release based on notes and an assembly print (the director had nothing to do with this special edition), and the theatrical version of the 1997 release Alien Resurrection and its 2003 special edition made for the DVD which offers an alternate beginning more familiar to fans of The City Of Lost Children with about seven more minutes of footage. The beauty here is that the originals are preserved while the alternate cuts are made available, both with full commentary from production and cast members.

For those unfamiliar with the Alien story, over the course of four films, Ellen Ripley is plagued by a nightmarish alien life form that terrorizes her and those she is with. In Alien, her mining ship is diverted to a remote planet where one of the crew becomes infected with a parasite. The parasite lays an egg which soon erupts from the crewmember and the resulting life form grows fast into a creature that systematically kills the crew. Ripley manages to escape, but awakens years later to find that a colony has been established on that same remote planet and now there are scores of the creatures, which a crew of Marines are brought in to thwart. Barely surviving that encounter, Ripley is thrown into dire straits again with one on a prison planet. Finally, Ripley awakens to find that she is a part of an experiment orchestrated by a corrupt government to use the alien life forms as a weapon.

The common element throughout the films, of course, is the character of Ellen Ripley. Ripley is an iconic heroic character whose journey takes her from worker to mother to leader to . . . well, that's why Alien Resurrection sucks; the character arc is pretty much complete when the fourth film begins and viewers are asked to buy the premises. The truth is, were it not for the overwhelming quality of the bonus features in this boxed set - had it been only the four films included - the rating would have been much closer to average as the final film sucks the series down that far.

Ripley is played by Sigourney Weaver and this is a role that defines Weaver as a badass actress capable of playing the action heroine. Throughout the films, she plays Ripley as terrified and terrorized, strong and in control, and self-reliant and animalistic. She is tough when she has to be, emotive and realistic when it is appropriate. She is a truly great actress and this is one of the highlights of her career.

Weaver is joined in various installments of the series by other notables such as Tom Skerrit, John Hurt, Bill Paxton, Michael Beihn, Lance Henriksen, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Winona Ryder, and Ron Perlman. This is a series that has attracted some true greats and here they live up to their reputations and deliver performances that involve maintaining a mood, progressing movement and/or delivering some of the most memorable one-liners in cinematic history.

What the Alien Quadrilogy excels at is establishing a mood. Alien pioneered the science fiction-horror, Aliens arguably created the summer blockbuster action-adventure, Alien 3 is a taut character-driven chase film, and Alien Resurrection, for all its problems, is a pretty tight action film with characters fleeing from the new wave of creatures. Even in Alien Resurrection, there's a pretty wonderful sense of movement, even if that's all it has going for it.

The Alien Quadrilogy comes with a ninth disc which looks at the franchise as a whole and has material not otherwise available. Following on the heels of extensive documentary and featurette supplements on discs 2,4,6, and 8, the ninth disc adds to the treasure trove by providing an even larger sense of the Alien universe. This includes a gallery of Dark Horse comic book covers, a look at the props from the films, trailers and more. It's impressive.

All in all, the Alien Quadrilogy is a great value, but its packaging does not inform the buyer of all they ought to know. In short, the universe of the Alien films is a dark, stark, adult universe. These are films intended for adults (all four are rated "R") and the bonus content is honest and frank about the production elements and complications that arose on the sets (especially with Alien 3). This is a wonderful set for the adult science fiction fan.

And yes, the sheer amount of bonus features on these discs blew fans away when it was originally released and it does truly set a standard for DVD quality. Indeed, the only boxed set to give this set a run for its money would have to be Freaks And Geeks, a short-lived television show whose DVD presentation is packed with deleted scenes, outtakes, and featurettes and two commentary tracks per episode! It might be a completely different niche, but when we're comparing DVDs, these two sets stack up as two of the best for the simple volume of materials (the bonus discs in the Alien Quadrilogy are PACKED!).

This set is a must for anyone who loves science fiction, horror or wants to see the true potential of the DVD medium!

For more information on the individual films in the Alien Quadrilogy, please check out my reviews of the films at:
Alien
Aliens
Alien 3
Alien Resurrection

8/10

For other film reviews, please visit my indexs page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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