I started writing a fucking long-winded, pretentious post examining and dissecting the Alien films when the realisation that it was all a load of guff. What it boils down to is that Aliens are cool and the first two films in the franchise were fantastic. I mean, it’s 1979 and people are still reeling after the runaway success of Star Wars and its aliens, especially the lethal yet lovable Chewbacca when all of a sudden, Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon come along with the godking of biomechanical nightmares himself, H.R. Giger, in tow and say “You think that’s cool? Wait till you get a load of this!” and unleash a terrifying vision of extra-terrestial horror on us.

Here we have a creature that starts out as a spider like being that rapes your face, forcing you to give it a blow-job, impregnates you and then laughs as you convulse over the breakfast table and your ribcage bursts open and this little snake-like imp with very pointy teeth pokes it’s head out of what’s left of your guts, giggling like Muttley and slithers off into the darkness before you can say “You’ve got to be fucking kidding!” Your first instinct is stamp on the scrawny little worm-shit but you can’t for two reasons: the first is that it’s got acid for blood. Fucking acid for fucking blood! That answers the question why you can’t go all Harry Callahan on it’s alien bee-hind because it you’re shit outta luck, punk. Secondly, by the time you track it down, it will have evolved into an 8ft tall monster with big fucking claws, a long spikey tail and not just a mouth with lots of big, pointy teeth but one of those plus another mouth inside with more pointy teeth which it’ll use to punch a hole in your head that you could stick your fist in and scratch what’s left of your brain. Oh yeah, and despite it’s size, it’s quick, agile, seemingly immune to gravity and quicker than you are and it still has that ol’ acid for blood.

However, both Alien and Aliens managed to not make the films about the titular creatures but actually made them films about the human characters. Alien took itself seriously as a film, recruiting good actors not associated with either the horror or sci-fi genres and a director who cut his teeth on Hovis adverts and whose preceding film was the gorgeous period piece “The Duellists”. James Cameron made a fantastic sequel by not trying to emulate the nature of the first film but went his own way with an action-cum-disaster movie featuring a bunch of generally likable, kick-ass marines, big fucking guns, even more aliens (that were far better than the original in that they didn’t so obviously seem to be a Man-In-Suit) and hugely quotable dialogue.

Unfortunately, the franchise went into decline with Alien³ although despite not being anywhere near as good as the first two, I still quite like it. What made the first two films so successful can actually be identified by working out why the third installment didn’t really work. After the frenetic nature of Aliens, Alien³ tried to recapture some sense of the original film by going back to one creature. Multiple attempts at getting a script together (including versions by William “Neuromancer” Gibson, one by Eric “The Hitcher” Red and one by David “Pitch Black” Twohy), producer interference and director David Fincher leaving the project after principal shooting was never going to help.

Despite having substantially different takes on the subject matter, the first two films were very similar in terms of how the story played out. Each film had an ensemble cast of memorable and distinct characters. The interaction between them was never that straightforward and led to mucho conflict: Ash (and Mother) turned against the “expendable” crew of the Nostromo in Alien and in Aliens, Lt. Gorman was ineffectual (and got most of the marines killed in their first incursion) while Carter Burke was only interested in profit and paydays and was willing to sacrifice Ripley and Newt and screw the marines all for a chance of promotion and a golden handshake. Then there was the environment: in Alien, the crew are essentially trapped in a spaceship with no-where to run. They have no choice but to track down and eliminate the alien - although they can’t shoot it because it’s got acid blood which will eat through the hull and pffft: death by asphyxiation. In Aliens, the environment is potentially a safe haven if they can sit tight in the command centre until help arrives - if only it wasn’t for that pesky atmosphere processor which is actually a nuclear reactor and about to go boom-diddy-boom.

Finally, the films work because they have very strong themes (sex and birth in Alien, motherhood in Aliens) which fill the films with symbology, subtext and other wanky words like that which basically infer that your mind is being affected by subconscious associatons with extremely familiar concepts. (See my piece about Gods and Mothers for some exploration of this).

Alien³ was, in theory, another ensemble piece but who the fuck can remember any of the characters apart from the doctor, the black guy and the wardens? I think the reason the characters are so unmemorable is for the same reason Bill Martell puts forward as to why we care about the soldiers in Aliens but not in Black Hawk Down - they’re indistinguishable from each other, primarily because of that shaved head thing. As such, we don’t really seem to care about them. Secondly, there’s no threat from the environment. It’s a prison, for sure but it’s a great big, planet-sized prison - so hardly claustrophobic and not about to go boom. There’s also not much in the way of really solid inter character conflict - sure, Ripley is at some threat from the sexually frustrated inmates but it doesn’t really mean much. There’s no real betrayal by anyone (Aaron lets the company know because he thinks that’s the right thing to do) and what themes are hinted at (Ripley being an outsider/alien herself, religion and redemption) aren’t really explored. Finally, they changed the nature of the beast itself: although it was an interesting concept to have an alien take on characteristics of its host, making a “dog alien” took away some of the threat, in my opinion. It seemed to be more of an animal and not inclined to demonstrate any of the intelligence that was hinted at in Aliens (”What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!”) It didn’t help that we were given an alien-eye viewpoint of some of the action.

Some of these problems could have been resolved by introducing more threat from elsewhere: I would have had Newt survive the crash but made some of the inmates very obvious pederasts (including the doctor). Ripley would then have had to defend Newt from both the humans and the alien. Make the planet atmosphere toxic so they can’t escape the prison and then work more on the theme of sin vs redemption and I think it might have made more of an impact. Especially if it turned out that Newt was impregnated…

Alien: Resurrection was a disaster through and through. I don’t mind watching it so much for the first two acts - it reminds me a lot of some of the Aliens inspired comics from the early nineties - but the final act with the “Newborn” was atrocious. I can’t believe it was written by Joss Whedon although having said that, I love some of the characters in it, especially those played by Ron Perlman and Dominique Pinon. To be honest though, I think the biggest problem with it is the wrong director. I love Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films in general but I don’t think he was the right person for this franchise. To be fair, there’s actually a lot I do like about the film it’s just that the ending is so abysmal that it ruins the rest of it. There also seems to be a lack of theme - or at least none that I can really identify that comes across well. As a whole, it’s the weakest of the four films which is a shame because it had a lot of potential.

So - is there a conclusion to this? Not so much. Aliens are cool. They’re fascinating and horrific in equal measures, playing to all sorts of primal fears as a nightmare creature that can’t be stopped - a terrifying, iconic monster that has become a legend in its own right.