TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 0: Intro

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Welcome to The Xenopod: the podcast where we watch and analyse all the Alien franchise films in release order. In this introductory episode, Simon Bowie and Jim Ross lay out the project, the reasons for watching all the Alien films, and what makes the Alien franchise different. Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remix

Get away from her, you bitch. Hello, welcome to the Xenopod, a show where we're going to talk about, contextualize, criticize the alien films, the films in the alien franchise. I'm Simon Bowie. I'm joined by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi there. And this is a brief introductory episode where we're going to outline what this project is what we're going to be talking about and why the alien franchise basically over the course

of however many episodes this is going to take this podcast series will look at each of the alien films in turn so from alien to alien resurrections and then into the alien versus predator films onto prometheus and alien covenant and perhaps we'll get sidetracked our better judgment that lot of part but we'll see how that goes we're completionists Exactly, exactly. That's the ethos of the show. We're doing it all, no matter how grisly it might get. So we're going to watch all those films,

review them one film per podcast episode, and see how they work together. As a bit of housekeeping, we're going to be looking at the original cuts, not the director's cuts. I'm aware there's directors' cuts for the first four films. I don't know if there's directors' cuts for the others, but it doesn't matter.

We're watching the original theatrical releases. if you're following along in the UK all the major films are all available on Disney Plus because they bought 20th Century Fox and these fall under the Fox Banner Jim would you like to tell us

something about your experience with the Alien franchise what what draws you to this franchise to a couple of things I mean one there are some genuinely really good films in here someone in it and I'm a bit of a

you know a sci-fi fact like if there was any one genre I probably, you know, find myself gravitating towards the most when I'm talking about films. It's probably sci-fi. Um, so there are some genuinely excellent sci-fi films in this franchise. Now, depending on your opinion, like, how many there are exactly, will vary. But basically, there are some really good ones and there are some really shit ones as well. but I think what's more interesting

rather than kind of like any sort of like subjective opinion about the quality of them is it really kind of like goes between a lot of different types of film like you know and we'll get into this in more detail the individual episodes right but the you know the original one is very much a horror film

the second one is very much kind of more a action film I don't even really know how you would describe the third one but it's kind of interesting yeah I've heard the third I've heard the third one described as a psychological thriller, and then the fourth one described as a fantasy, which we can discuss when we get into those films, but I'm not entirely sold on that, but yeah, there is

interesting genre things going on in this franchise. Yeah, so, I mean, and that's just the main, you know, the original kind of like four alien films, and then you kind of have this, you know, which has become more popular, actually really since those films came out, this weird sort of crossover thing with the Predator franchise, which I'm not going to spoil what because actually interestingly, as we go into recording this, Alien versus Predator Requiem, the second one of them,

I've not actually seen. It's the only one of these I've not seen, so obviously by the time I've recorded, obviously by the time we get to it, I'll see that, but it goes into this weird crossover to edit trains, which you know, I'm pretty sure like there's a whole world of comic books out there where, you know, this crossover happens. So it

kind of like it feels modern, not necessarily in a good way, when it gets to that. Yeah. And then you could argue, I mean, okay, Prometheus and Covenant, they are, they're prequels, right? But they're happening so long after the original films they use that they kind of fit into this, you know, in vogue thing of kind of the legacy sequel where, you know,

films are getting revived from the 70s and the 80s. So, and in between all of this, you start off with Ridley Scott was read, you've got James Cameron doing the sequel, and they're kind of like probably the most iconic films. And then it all ends up coming back around full circle, basically, by in the two most recent films as we're recording this at least are then directed again by Riddley Scott. So it's got some really

good films, it's got some not so good films but it's got a lot of different types of film and it's a very weird franchise actually when you think about that in that way. You know, when you think about other modern ones they tend to be all kind of like cut from the same cloth.

That is not the case with these at all. No, I think they're very different from say the Star Wars franchise or the Star Trek franchise, which are science fiction films all in a franchise, but they have a sort of consistency of vision and a sort of consistency of, even narrative, that the alien franchise just doesn't quite have. It's all a bit more higgledy-piggled it until, as you say, Ridley Scott sort of reclaims his authorship of it in the later years that we'll get to with

Prometheus and Covenant. I think even then actually is still, it's still, I mean, tonally, I mean, if you think about it in terms of, I mean, if we put Covenant to one side for a minute, but like Prometheus is, you know, in terms of like the timeline of the series of events for the universe, if you like, it's probably the one that's most relevant to the first film, arguably, but the tone is completely different. I mean, you know, the first one, you know, which we'll talk about in the first episode is, you know, it's a very, It's a much kind of like smaller, more claustrophobic horror film, and then the immediate thing, done by the same director, and this is, you know, ostensibly all part of the vision in his head, is, it's one of these slightly loftier sci-fi films, or kind of grand ideas about creation, things. Like, so in that sense, it's, in that sense, even then, it's, like, when, like, Ridley Scott reclaims the franchise, if you like.

It's still different. It's a different beast, partly because. it's been informed by the films that came after it, which Ridley Scott did not direct. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting case study, which is why we're looking at it. And point of order, you mentioned the Predator, the Alien versus Predator films. We are not looking at the Predator films because we don't want to because we're dead against that SEO boost that we'd get from the new Predator film. We're not interested in that. We were both such commercial concerns.

I didn't even realize that was coming out until we'd already planned for this, which is, which is funny. No, no, absolutely not. But yes, no, no predator and no predator, too, no, whatever other Predator films are up. I mean, admittedly, if we were going to do that, I mean, the Predator franchise is arguably roped. It's all over the place as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you could do it. Who knows?

Maybe we will one day, but not in this series, at least. Yeah, never say never, but not here. This is all the alien films. So, yeah, I think that gets into the reason for the show. The reason for this project is to look at the Alien franchise as this kind of continuous text. When I was studying cultural studies, you find that there's a lot of academic work and a lot of cultural criticism on Alien and on aliens. I'm thinking of Roger Lookhurst's BFI film classics book on Alien. Ross Cavanit, a cultural critic and writer, wrote from Alien to the Matrix, and in that she does a case study of the first four films, but there's less academic work on the franchise as a whole and treating it as this collective, continuous text, rather than just focusing on the good ones.

So we want to look at all the films and treat them as one continuous piece of filmmaking as it were to see how you've talked about Jim, how it develops, how it changes, how the genre changes and how that informs later films because I think it's an interesting journey and it certainly does get into very different qualities of film as I'm sure we'll see as we go through and we'll discuss it in the first episode I think the first film is essentially a perfect film and it's you know I'm shooting myself in the foot with this podcast because it's all downhill from there for me yeah but that's what we'll like be exploring it's interesting what you say there actually into like viewing it's a

continuous text and you know looking at how the filmmaking approach differs and I think particularly this will come out in the first when we look at the first four films in particular um because there are certain aspects of those which they really kind of reflect the times in which they were made and I don't mean that in a sort of like outdated opinions and nothing like that

what I mean is you've got this kind of like small intimate claustrophobic horror film at the start in the middle of the 1980s you have this action film which okay yes the protagonist is female but there's so much kind of like unbridled, machismo, like, you know, through the whole thing. It kind of feels a part of all those ridiculous action films of the 80s, but just in a, you know,

in my view, anyway, we'll get to that when we get to the episode of slightly, you know, a more intelligent way of doing it, I think. And then the third one is this sort of weird little studio interference thing where it tries to kind of go back to basics. And then the fourth one, and then, you know, you've got Resurrection, where I like to think that basically Alien is one of these franchises of these ironic titles, right? when Resurrection basically killed the franchise off for a very

long time. But that kind of even reflects when that film was made in the late 90s. And I think, I can't remember if there was uncredited, if he's credited or uncredited, but Josh Whedon you know, without getting into what a horrible person he is. Well, yeah. You know, HUD's like, rewrites

on that and a script. And like that comes through and that kind of reflects. I think he's the main screenwriter. Oh, no, he is. You're right, actually. Yes. No, and he is great. But the thing that, even that kind of reflects kind of like the tone of the sort of films of the time and stuff. And then when you even think about the, you know, the crossover films, like, that was in an era when, you know, people love doing this sort of thing. So, yeah, no, it's just interesting, it's an interesting one to see how it reflects the environment in which films of that scale were being made, how they were approached, the tone. And the fact that it basically all stems from this one, you know, this one quite small.

films. Only Riddle Scott's second film, I think, in 1979. It's just kind of incredible to think about, really. Yeah, I think that gets on to something else we're interested in here, which is the kind of contextualisation of these films of putting them in their historical place, because now it's

easy to see the alien films as this decade-spanning franchise, long running since the 70s, but when you go back and look at each film individually, you don't actually get a sense of that. Each film were differently depending on its historical context and we'll get into this with the first film

in the first episode but yeah contextualizing it in the broader scope of kind of Hollywood history and and film history more generally will be an interesting part of this exercise I think so yeah we are excited to go on this journey to discover these alien films we hope you'll subscribe to this podcast feed with this introductory podcast. Podcasts will be coming out fairly regularly on a schedule that we'll put on Twitter at at the Xenopod. So do follow us there as well.

And we will be back next time with our first episode on Alien. So if you want to follow along and watch with us, Alien is available on Disney Plus or on Blu-ray or DVD. So yeah, please do watch it with us and join us next time for the Xenopod. Game over, man! It's game over!