TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 2: ALIENS (1986)

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

You're now fully enveloped by a Facehugger feeding on your nutrients and pumping you full of information, contextualisation, and thematic analysis of the 1986 film, ALIENS. Simon and Jim take you through the second film in the Alien franchise and discover the path that James Cameron took the films down.Content warning: body horror; death; space travel; fear of flying; sexual imagery.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/9RMIX3TG

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to the Xenapod, a podcast where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, contextualizing them, critiquing them, and offering our perspective on them. I'm Simon Bowie. Joining me is Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello, Simon. Last time you likened our first episode to a levery egg opening in front of you.

So I think this time we're well in the audience rather are well and truly covered by a facehugger. You know, it is feeding off their nutrients and it is pumping information kind of into their, down their throat, down their throat, into their chest. Hit the subscribe button, folks. Yeah. Like and subscribe. Oh dear Yeah I'm looking forward to this

Because I I hadn't A bit like the first one I hadn't watched it in a few years The last time I watched it Was actually in a cinema It was at the Art Special House in Cambridge But that was quite some time ago now

And I had Just watching it in the context Of what we're trying to do here With this podcast series I had some interesting reactions to it in my head So yeah no I'm looking forward to discussing it. Yeah, yeah.

Me too. It's been a bit a while since I've seen it, and I've never seen this one in a cinema. So I was watching it on my projector, kind of big screen, and it's, yeah, interesting contextually. But yes, before I was all the audience,

we are discussing aliens this month, the 1986 sequel to Alien, directed by James Cameron. For a bit of context, after Alien came out, there was kind of a slew of rip-offs, sci-fi films that attempted

to do something similar with like aliens in, you know, horror in space the kind of thing that alien did. Roger Lookhurst refers to Norman Warren's In Seminoid, Harry Davenport's Extra

and O'Bannon, who wrote the script for Alien originally, wrote another script called Life Force. So all of those kind of ripped off Alien and immediately the production company for Alien wanted to make a sequel, wanted to make Alien 2. 20th Century Fox held this up because they'd done some weird Hollywood accounting on Alien, which meant that it technically, technically made a loss, didn't make a profit, so the production

company had to sue 20th Century Fox to try and get the money that they were owed because it was actually a huge commercial success, so it was delayed between 1979 when Alien came out and 1986 when this eventually came out. Which for the time I find fascinating actually, because I mean, I think at the, you know, the time we're discussing this, you know, 2023, I think we've kind of grown a bit used to kind of like there being huge gaps between sequels or some popular, you know, like, I mean, at the time we recorded this, and Indiana Jones 5 is coming out. we've had legacy sequels for Star War.

You know, there's all sorts of things. But if you think it in the context of... Even the big franchise things, like the New Guardians of the Galaxy film just came out and there was, what, six years between those? But it's interesting because I think when you think in the context of like, you know, when we do sequels, that feels like quite a long time.

I mean, especially for something that was as successful as alien was because, I mean, it made its budget back like, what, I know, 10, 12 times over or something, you know, it's ridiculously successful. Yeah, it earned 100 million dollars against a 10 million dollar budget. Yeah, exactly. And I probably assumed I came for like home video and stuff after at the time, you know, which would obviously be a much bigger deal in the pre-streaming age. So yeah, it's kind of fascinating.

It took this long to actually get something to the screen, which was a sequel to it. Yeah, like I say, a lot of this was tied up in kind of litigation. and stuff. But they eventually, the studio eventually came round to the idea of a sequel and they found a scriptwriter who was kind of shopping a script around town called The Terminator. That scriptwriter was James Cameron and he submitted a 42 page treatment for what they were calling Alien 2. The studio liked it enough to kind of press on with developing the sequel. The story has it that Cameron came into a room where the word alien was written on a whiteboard during a pitch meeting with the executives and all he did was add a dollar sign at the end

of Alien. I read this as well. I refuse to believe this actually happened. It sounds too sort of like on the nose, James Cameron to me. Yeah. I don't know about it but yeah, there we are. I must have been looking back over James Cameron's filmography for this, right? The thing that I found fascinating, which I didn't know off the top of my head, is his first film was Piranha II, the Spawning. Which I don't know, which kind of like,

because it kind of indicates why, you know, his aliens approach is maybe greeted with a little bit of, like, a little bit of skepticism with kind of like, you know, because at the time this would be talking, right? They were talking about this. The term they aren't come out. right you know and we now think of the chairman you're like a you know classic sort of action sci-fi film but i mean before

that you're talking about one guy with one credit piranha to the spawning you know so it seems as good a time as i need to talk about james camman um because i don't like james camman like i am i am anti james camman from the jump i think he's is this him or his films or both let's say both Because I was, he's one of these guys that whenever I listen to him talk, I'm like, I would not like you if I knew you. I just wouldn't. I like some of his films, but I, you know, I have major problems with some of them as well. What I think is, I think he is a competent director. I think he's competent at structure, story, at getting characters on screen, fine. I don't think he's a visionary director, but I think he is now sold. His brand is. as a visionary director.

I'd agree with that. And I just don't see it. Well, back when he used to make films before he made big CG, extravaganzas, life-changing experiences. I think Titanic's good, you know? It is competently directed.

It is well put together. But it's not, you know, it's not kind of Ridley Scott level. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. I think the other thing I would say, like, you know, I don't want to jump the gun too much

on what we're going to say about the film. But I think about kind of I think about aliens in particular kind of my reaction to re-watching this, which is a film I really, which is, you know, I mean, I don't think it'll come

as a surprise to anybody and don't want to wreck it like, you know, less than 10 minutes into the episode of it. Like, it's a film I really like, right? I really enjoy. But, and in particular,

his two terminator films, I also think are excellent. But then I think about his other thing, it's actually surprising how few films he's made. So you've got the, you know, you've got the abyss, you've got the Avatar films,

and you've got the, the future Avatar films what I will say is I think he's a much better I agree with the point that he's not a visionary director in the way that we kind of think about or the way we maybe should think about that right because

you know I can already hear people beating an angry path to my microphone saying you know avatar what you're talking about but I think in the way we should think about it I'd agree with the fact that he's not but what I would say is I think he's a far better director and let's say filmmaker right to kind of like

get away from the auturie kind of connotations of the word director, right? I think he's a much better filmmaker than he is a writer, right? And I'm thinking about some of the dialogue in aliens actually, even a film I like, I'm thinking about Titanic, I'm thinking about Avatar. And I think you can kind of see, you can kind of see the start of that here a little bit in like how some characters are dealt with like, you kind of get away with it in the Terminator because it's very much stripped back in terms of that because of the nature of the

set up of that film. Here, though, I think also you've got a lot more characters interacting than you did in The Terminator. I mean, the Terminator is a fairly sparse cast list and one of them is, you know, the Terminator whereas here you've kind of got, you know, and we very quickly get to the set up

with like the, you know, the Collodial Marines and all this sort of stuff. And I think you start to see it. So no, I would agree with what you said there and it's interesting. to, it's interesting to watch the film in that context, because you kind of go, ah, yeah, okay, I, I, I, I said, this is, this has been something that's been present all along in his films. That's it. It's interesting coming to this film as a sequel to Alien and not part of this massive franchise, and because you see how they're reacting to the first film, and developing some of the themes and the world building of that first film, but it's not, it doesn't quite feel locked into, what the franchise will eventually become. The other thing that's interesting about,

we'll get into this a little bit more later on, it's one of these films where I enjoy it, and I think it's a very good film, but I think the film itself is much better than its influence has ended up being, right? And I think the influence of the first alien and aliens on the rest of the franchise,

and we'll also talk about this more when we get to those films, but they've both kind of captured lightning in a bottle in a way that the other ones after it have really struggled to do since right you know the thing that like things have attempted to redo the kind of the more sort of horror you know the classic line that's all that was done as kind of like you know haunted house and space type thing of the first one and not really managed it other things have attempted to do the whole the very action-led

bombastic spectacular approach that this takes and again I don't think I've managed it so the thing that's interesting is they've both got their own kind of influence

both more widely and within this series of films itself but they both represent the pinnacle of that other things have tried to recreate the approach of alien and it's more

horror-led approach and have failed in my view to varying degrees and things have tried to recreate the action-led approach of aliens and have also failed to varying degrees. I would argue that

the worst films have come out of those trying to emulate aliens than alien would be my view. You know, we'll get to that when we get to those episodes later, but I think that's true because I think maybe aliens is one of these films where people have looked at it and it's successful, people enjoy it, but they've maybe learnt the wrong

lessons from it. You know, so, yeah, it's interesting the reaction I had to this re-watching it because there's a lot that I think is absolutely superb and works very well there are other things which it's a little bit like my reaction to some of the Avatar and Avatar way of water aspects of James Cameron's films

and I'm like, there's sincerity here and you're setting things up to undermine them but it's a far... I mean, you know, it sounds like a ridiculous thing to say like, you know, no shit Jim but it's a much less subtle film than alien and I don't mean that just in kind of like, you know, guns going off

and flame throwers going off. I'm even talking about how it develops some of its some of its themes, right? Because some of the stuff carries across, right? And we'll probably get into that. Like, the whole kind of like, you know, corporate malfeasance, corporate exploitation stuff. It's also present here.

It's carried over thematically. Yeah, I can tell they're reacting to it, but it's much less subtle than the first one, much less kind of intelligent, actually, I'd argue. Much less subtle. And we can discuss it later, but I think the dialogue is a lot less naturalistic, a lot more movie, a lot more Hollywood.

than alien. The only other thing I'll mention on the making now is Kamen turned in the finished script in February 1985, just hours before a writer's strike began, which is interesting because we're in the midst of another writer strike now in Hollywood. And yeah, the film went on to be made. We can talk about some of the making of as we go through, but it came out in 1986 in the summer. It wasn't kind of expected to be one of the... the big blockbuster films of the summer that year in 1986 that summer top gun came out but it wasn't

expected to be a big summer because there were not many sequels not many blockbusters and Stephen Spielberg didn't make a film so people weren't expecting it to be a huge summer and aliens was kind of a sleeper hit that was number one at the box office for at least two weekends let's go through the narrative let's go through what happens. We take place kind of immediately after Alien. At the end of Alien, Ripley's been set

adrift in the escape pod from the Nostromo. I say almost immediately after, because 57 years have actually passed, but for Ripley, no time has passed. She gets woken up by a salvage operation and they take her to Gateway Station,

which is a big station orbiting Earth. When she's there, no one believes her story. The company, Weyland Yutani, don't believe her story about aliens on board. They are to continue the first film's theme of kind of space capitalism. They're very concerned about the loss of their multi-billion dollar, you know, spaceship, the Nostromo, their big truck through space. They're very concerned about the loss of that and there's a whole sequence of auditing and insurance issues we're watching the theatrical release in the special edition there is a scene of

Ripley learning that her daughter has died Amanda Ripley not died grown naturally to old age and which kind of which ties into the film's later themes of of kind of motherhood and family and cut out of the theatrical release I guess it slows things down at the start where there is lot of kind of slow scenes building towards actually going to back to LV426. But it's interesting. Amanda Ripley gets picked up in the alien isolation films, the alien isolation game, which treats her as a protagonist and is about her encountering the aliens during her lifetime. Talk about coincidences.

Yes, rather. I think something that's interesting about these initial sequences, you know, when we're that we're dealing with the Gateway Station kind of this corporate hearing stuff is this is when we're kind of introduced to the character Burke, right? Who becomes quite important later on. He's kind of this sort of obsequious, oily

kind of, you know, corporate type who's clearly trying to make nice with Ripley. But, you know, I mean, I think we're pretty suspicious of him from the start. And I think actually one of the other differences between special edition theatrical cuts, there's a bit that's actually cut out where it's, you know, it's

your suspicion of him is heightened via Ripley a little bit sooner but like it's you know it's not it's not really needed thanks to the the performance i think in some of the dialogue but the thing that i find interesting about it is the way that it sets up this relationship with him and ripley where he's actually kind of like very subtly patronizing a lot of the time right and the one bit that actually stood out to me was when he calls her kiddo at one point and i'm like I made a note of that, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it really stood out. Yeah, early signs, there were early signs in the performance, in the character's mannerisms, that this character's a dick.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Beyond his funny little futuristic suit jacket with the collar popped up slightly. Yeah, he calls a kiddo, which she's old enough to be his grandmother. Yeah, well, this is the thing, right? It's not obvious because of the, like, the time jump you've had from her being ceases, but the movie must be like decades older than him at this point. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it really stands out to me, actually, and I think that's some, you know, we've criticized

Cameron's scripts and sort of like the writing before this, but it's actually that, that's one character where I think early on, less so later, I would argue, where that initial work actually pays off very well. And I think it's actually quite well set up that. And that's a bit that stands out to me about the initial stretch, apart from sort of like setting up this kind of like the PTSD basically that I think Ripley holds from the first film there's a lot of work goes into that during these sequences as well I think yeah but but Burke is kind of the face of the company yeah in the last film the company was a kind of faceless malevolent entity in this one burke is the face of the company and it's the

blandest whitest face you could imagine and because that's kind of how this flavor of space capitalism operates. Yeah, so fairly quickly, Ripley has to go back to a life of kind of working in the cargo bay for the Gateway Station. But Burke and Lieutenant Gorman

come to her with a proposition to go back to LV426. They have lost contact with the colonists, the terraforming colonists on that planet, and want to go back to ensure their safety to find out what's happened to them.

Burke assures her that this time they're taking a whole bunch of colonial marines, tough hombres, he calls them, who are going to ensure that there's no trouble on the surface. Ripley eventually agrees to this, and she says goodbye to Jonesy. She says goodbye to Jones, the ship's cat, from the last film, and I believe that's the last we see of Jonesy, at least in the films. I don't know if there's comics or whatever that cover the long life of Jonesy on Gateway Station.

Arguably the only true survivor. Maybe he encountered the xenomorphs again. I don't know. Let's assume he lives a long and peaceful life on Gateway Station. Dies of old age. I think once they kind of set off and Ripley is trying to find something to do amongst all these Marines, I think it's something else that actually stood out to me This is another James Cameron filmography thing is

I think this may be the first ever use of Chekhov's Mek suit in cinema Yeah You show a Mek suit in the first act And you'll have to have used it by the conclusion Yeah so they set off They set off on the Salarco Which is kind of a spaceship that looks like a giant rifle Floating through space

It is very phallic It's very, you know, masculine war energy it's even got a grip hanging down at the bottom and we have a series of kind of vignette scenes introducing the Colonial Marines this selection of characters who I actually think are introduced very well I think there's a lot of nice little character moments

that say a lot without doing a lot of establishing you know like you said with Burke coming across of the dick without doing too much in the script to do that. Like, you see Sergeant O'Pone waking up, immediately putting a cigar into his mouth. That tells us who this character is. We know who this is now.

Bill Paxton's Hudson is kind of immediately set up as full of bravado, but also has hidden debts. He's immediately concerned about the coldness of the floor. He's not like the other means who are just kind of getting on with business. This is where the film's discussion of gender roles as well really starts. There's a lot of masculine energy around the Marines,

kind of bravado, performed masculinity. They talk about rescuing the colonists from their virginity. There's jokes about having sex with other men. There's a kind of sense of gay panic among these Marines, even though at least a few of them are women. Yeah, and it's interesting. It's interesting that, I think, so Vasquez, right, about whom a joke is made about by one of the other means about confusing her for a man.

I find it also quite telling, yeah, I find it also quite telling that she has given the line referring to Ripley, like, who's Snow White, right? So it's setting up that kind of contrast between the Marines, regardless of their gender with Ripley from the start and the way that this is kind of going to not reverse but the way that these are going to be not the reversing of the gender roles

but maybe kind of like the questioning of what those kind of gender characteristics are as the film goes on and what signifies each and I think that's probably one of the more interesting aspects of the one of the more interesting aspects of the film from me but you're kind of right in the sense that it's all set up

this initial scene, right? That's the jumping off point for this whole thing, and I think Vasquez is a very important character with regards to the way this is all then positioned after that. Yeah, it's kind of, where Alien treated Ripley as kind of non-gendered, in a sense that we kind of discussed last time, this film very much sets up as the feminine to the Marines masculine. Yeah. In a complex way, there's a little more to it than that. And this femininity is kind of emphasised in the special edition, where there's talk of Ripley's daughter, Amanda,

which, like I say, will come into the themes of motherhood that develop later. There's also some sense of the discussion of class issues from the previous film. The lieutenant won't sit with his men. He kind of sits at a separate table. Again, so does Burke and Ripley. and they're kind of immediately separated from the grunts so there's this kind of class issues as represented in kind of military structure

and we're setting up Gorman as very different from the rest of his men from the grunts who will actually do the fighting so we're introduced to a lot of characters we're introduced to Bishop who is an android he's revealed as an android immediately rather than Ash who was kind of hidden Ripley doesn't trust Bishop at first

there's a clear issue because of her previous experience with Ash yeah there is a lot of setting up in these eventual scenes initial scenes in the cargo bay in the like you say Chekhov's loading mechanism

Chekhov's power mech suit and I think there is a lot of kind of Chekhov setting up in this film that kind of eventually does feel a little formulaic in terms of Cameron's screenplay. There's a scene later on where Hicks gets out a shotgun, says I keep this for emergencies, keep this for close encounters, and then he immediately uses the shotgun. It's like set up and then pay off immediately. The Marines are combat

dropped onto LV426. As someone with fear of flying, this combat drop scene is very effective. But there's another great character beat where Hicks falls asleep during the combat drop. while Lieutenant Gorman is sweaty, his hands are clasped around the arm grips, he can barely move from his terror, whereas Hicks, who presumably has done all this before, and is actually the more kind of seasoned veteran than the lieutenant, is just cool with it all. So, yeah, the real strength of these first scenes is building out the world. I think there's a lot of world building, building on the world that Alien kind of alluded to, but doing it from a fresh perspective, doing it from the kind of military perspective,

rather than the kind of working class space trucker perspective that we had in Alien. Yeah. And I think it does that rather well. There's one line in, yeah, Ross Cavaney in her work on aliens. Her overview of the Force for Alien films picks out this bit of Cameron's screenplay, which describes the atmospheric processing plants on the planet that are doing the terror farming. And it reads, visible across a half kilometer of Barron Heath background is the massive complex of the nearest atmosphere processor, looking like a power plant bred with an active volcano.

Its fiery glow pulses in the low cloud cover like a steel mill. I think that's just great scene setting I think that's just good screenplay scene setting that isn't dialogue that often doesn't get picked up on in these kind of critical appraisals but that I think contributes to the entire

kind of vibe of the film because I think I've alluded to it but I think the dialogue in this film is a lot more corny it can be a lot more hokey and it's a lot more Hollywood than the kind of naturalistic dialogue of alien where they're kind of

talking over one another there's a lot of cross talk it'll feel a lot more natural in alien in this you have a lot more kind of Hollywood quotey bits which contributes to this film having a lot more quotable lines

like you know game over man game over it's nuke the site from orbit yeah and one of the um I think I did you're right it's a lot more quotable and I think that that's part of what, you know, we alluded to it in the intro

episode and also when we're talking about Alien, it's kind of it is quite reflective of the time the film was made, right? Because it's here in that sort of thing where you can see kind of the how this shares a bit of a kinship with kind of like

these 80s action films that we all think of, right? And obviously you've got that link with like, I mean, okay, the term terminator is not quite the in the same stable. You've got that link with Cameron, you know, The Terminator and Schwarzenegger. Like, if you think 80s action film, this is the sort of thing that you think about.

And it's interesting, like, it does reflect that and that kind of, like, prevailing style at the time. And you're right, it does end up with a lot more... I mean, this kind of, like, this whole sequence from when they land through into kind of... when they start to go into the structure, it does have a lot of those lines, right? I mean, the line,

which I actually considered as a possible thing for the title of this series was like, you know, when they're told not to use their guns what are we supposed to use, man, harsh language, right? You know, there are a lot of lines like that, so yeah, you're right. It has a lot more

quotability than the alien. And there are bits where that pays off. I think that's a really good line. I think in context it also works, but there are other places where it shows up in much cordier fashion, as you've pointed out. it's at this point where I think

the contrast with Alien really starts to settle in like I mean it's set it's stalled out pretty early with those initial sequences and the introduction of the readings but it's during this process leading up to kind of like what I would say is maybe the first big set piece where it really starts to really indicate this is going to be a very very different type of film yeah there's some especially corny dialogue between Ripley and Newt that I think has a strong contrast to what we saw in Alien But yes, I think you're right.

I think aliens kind of fits more into a blockbuster template because of when it's coming out in the 80s. Like we are, you know, several, we're a decade on from Jaws at this point. So there is a kind of a more established framework for what a blockbuster looks like. And even though this is a sleeper hit, it is still a blockbuster film. Like they were expecting it to be a big release. and so there is more of a framework for how these kind of films look and feel. Yeah, this seems like as good a time as any to set out my kind of thesis statement for interpretation in that. I watched Star Trek the motion picture a few weeks ago.

The director's cut. And I think what Star Trek, the motion picture is to Raph Khan, alien is to aliens. I think there's a lot of good comparisons between. the two that set out what the two do differently from their sequels and so Raff of Kahn is a sequel to Star Trek the Motion Picture that comes many years after the original in 1979 interestingly the only comparison I could find online which I also noticed is that Jerry Goldsmith did the soundtrack to Star Trek the Motion Picture and Alien and James Horner does Raff of Kahn

and aliens. That is interesting. Yeah, and James Horner, because of the way Cameron was working, didn't actually have enough time to do the soundtrack for aliens the way he wanted. He wanted six weeks, Cameron gave him free. So he's actually recycled a lot of themes from other work, including Raph of Khan, and you can find kind of YouTube comparisons of the two soundtracks. But I think the real differences are thematic, like,

Star Trek, the Motion Picture, has a kind of cosmic awe to it. It is about space as this unknowable cosmic force, and that kind of aligns with alien, and its depiction of the alien as unknowable, as cosmic as Lovecraftian, and then Raff of Kahn just takes it in an action direction, similar to aliens. And both of them draw on real military organizations, put them in a space context. So in Raph of Kahn, it's the Navy.

Starfleet suddenly becomes like the... the Navy on Earth. In this, it's the Marines. And in aliens, they're just called colonial Marines. It's an interesting comparison, actually, because I'm doing this on the fly, right? So forgive me, this is not particularly well thought out. And you're far more of Fay with, you know, Star Trek is a kind of series and franchise and I am. But another echo of this is actually probably also the influence of said films as well, because I would argue, you know, the Rath of Kahn, which again is a film that I like, but it's another one of these films where as good as you could argue that film is itself, the influence of it has probably been

quite bad in a lot of respects. And I think, and, you know, anybody who knows me will probably shout at me for banging this drum. But, you know, I think about actually the thing that which basically completely ate Rath of Kahn, which was Star Trek into darkness, right, of the new breed of Star Trek films. And basically that came about through the influence of Rath of can in my view it's a terrible film i think it's absolutely abysmal because it's trying to repeat a lot of the same beats with like you know nowhere near the actual kind of wheat behind any of them um so it it's an interesting comparison you're making there and i can actually see echoes of it in other ways about kind of the influence of these films as well um but yeah no as a that's a very

apt comparison i would say yeah so i'm kind of framing my whole critique on aliens through this interpretation, because Raff of Khan, you just said, maybe has some malign influence on later versions, but it is beloved. It is like everyone's favorite Star Trek film. And I personally don't particularly like it, whereas I think Star Trek the motion picture is a masterpiece. Same with Alien. I think Alien, perfect film, a masterpiece. Aliens, a severe dropping quality. Not bad, not a bad film, but such a dropping quality compared to the masterpiece that I think Alien is. And again, people love aliens. Aliens is, like, regarded as one of the best sequels, maybe the best Alien franchise film.

I'm a lot more mixed on it. Well, that's where it comes up quite a lot, actually. It comes up, you know, because you've got the old thing about kind of like, you know, sequels are never better than their originals, right? And I actually question whether that's true, especially in this day and age of things, getting a million sequels, right? If you throw enough darts at the dark Or you're going to hit at least once, right?

But this is actually used as an exact Like, you know, if you kind of like think about like, you know, pre kind of comic book Mega Franchise days, you know, sequels that are better and they're original, right? And this is one that comes up quite a lot, right? And I think it comes up quite a lot. Alongside, I would say, probably the Godfather Part 2 is the other kind of one that kind of gets mentioned in the same sort of context. And it's sort of like having watched both of these films multiple. times now. I really don't think that's true. But I think the thing that makes it difficult to really

make that argument. And I'm going to sound a little bit patronising here. I don't really mean to, but I think there's some truth of what I'm saying here. I think it's not. I think Alien is a better film, but the thing that makes the comparison difficult is they are, and it's very hard to understand this because one is a direct sequel to the other. They're trying to do such different things, such different things. And I think for what Aliens is trying to do, it does it very well, right? I don't think... It's like you say, it's not a bad film.

It's a good film. I even say it's a very good film, but in terms of what it's actually setting out to do, Alien is brilliant. Like, it is superb, right? Aliens is just really good. And I think that makes that comparison very difficult because you kind of think of them as being together.

But they're not really. They are very different films, very different. That's it. They're doing different things. And you can say the same of Stratts at the Motion Picture and Raff of Khan. They're doing entirely different things. And the series turns into something that I do not prefer. I prefer the originals of these series.

And that's kind of personal taste. Aliens is competent. It is well put together. I just quoted from the screenplay because I think it's very good. It's just not doing the things that I liked from the first film, you know. Although it's interesting. And there are echoes of it. So to return to this initial sequence

where they're, you know, they first go into the structure. The first point where I kind of like feel there's some sort of reverence for the original, right, is as Vasquez opens up the corridor that they go into. And it's just, I find it quite interesting because at this point, up to this point has been a very noisy film, right? You know, there's a lot of, you know,

gearing up and suiting up, mecksuits going around the place. So, like, you know, landers coming in through, storms and what I find interesting is this is the first point where it feels like it's trying to do something more stripped back. It doesn't last very long, right? But as they open up the corridor, the sound cuts out, right? And it becomes very quiet and a lot more like we're back on than the stromo, right? You've kind of got this kind of like dingy corridor and it goes very quiet. And I think this is the point where it actually shows a little bit of

reverence for the original. It doesn't last very long and it leads into kind of its own signatures. There's one thing that I want to talk about once we get onto it and we kind of think more about the action set pieces. But that's maybe where you kind of like get a little bit of a reminder about what made the original so good. Yes. It doesn't last very long, right? But that's the first point where I was kind of like, ah, okay, hold on. This is the first hint that you're actually coming from similar material here. Yeah.

And I find that interesting. I think that's true. And Ros Cavaney agrees in her overview of aliens that these initial sequences, this kind of slow buildup through the first half, very much builds on the original film and then departs at the point where the action starts, which is in the kind of refinery that they eventually go down to. Just one more note on this being a sequel. James Cameron, and I'm quoting from Rose Cavanies chapter again,

James Cameron refers to his intent with how the sequel should work like this. He says, you can take that mental programming that the audience has from the first film and work little twists and turns on it. Play against her expectations, but not in a hostile way. What I tried to do in aliens is make the scenes function if you haven't seen the first film, but have a second layer of resonance for those who have. It goes back to the idea of film being a possible. participatory experience rather than just a passive one.

So that's like you say, the scene of them going into the colony works perfectly well if you haven't seen the first film, but like you say, it has a second layer of resonance for you who has seen it because it's bringing up that kind of slow buildup of the first film. So yes, the Marines enter the colony, they have a look around, they discover that the colonists were actually experimenting on facehuggers, on xenomorphs, and hatching eggs and studying them like the company wanted to do in the first film. We discover they meet Newt, the young girl, who the Marines immediately dismiss and ignores useless,

but Ripley recognizes her as a person and takes care of her, feeds and cleans her and jokes with her. They then discover a lot of heat signatures in the power, plant's refinery. So head down into the refinery to discover what these heat signatures are and see if the colonists might be down there. There is a scene where they discover one of the colonists kind of cocooned, which is basically a deleted scene from alien, turned into a scene here, but that speaks to the fate of the colonists. They have all been harvested, cocooned for later propagation by the aliens. Down in the refinery, everything's quiet, there's more slow build-up,

and then all hell breaks loose when the aliens reveal themselves. And flame throwers go off, half the Marines are wiped out, including characters that have been pretty well established. It's pretty bold to suddenly kill all those characters off. Lieutenant Gorman panics. He's in over his head, he hasn't planned the operation properly. He has to have them take all their magazines away because they're explosive rounds and they would set up a thermonuclear detonation. So he's paralysed with indecision

whereas Ripley suddenly takes charge and goes in to save the Marines. This is kind of where the big action kicks off and where it changes from the kind of slow buildup into the big action scenes that are kind of characteristic of this film and will become characteristic of the franchise, I think it's fair to say. Yeah, I think so.

They do a lot with a little in these scenes. They create the impression of alien hordes. There's hordes of xenomorphs this time round, rather than just the one. But they actually only had a few suits. H.R. Giga was not involved in the production design for this. They went with Stan Winston instead, because Giga had a prior commitment. and Stan Winston only made a limited number of suits that they had to work with. Ros Cavaney says six.

Stan Winston's website says 12, so we'll go with 12. But there's only 12 suits, and it looks like there are hundreds. At any one time, it looks like there could be several dozen of these things crawling about. In a way that actually works very well, and that comes down to lighting, it comes down to how they move, it comes down to how they're framed, that I think worked really well. I think this sequence is where the film

distinguishes itself a little bit, I think, in terms of how it deals with certain things. And it's also where some of the themes start to really start to come to the fore, right? So first of all, the way in which the aliens, or I suppose they are officially known as zero

morse by this point, because I think we've had the sequence where they're officially called that in the buildup, right? The way they'd reveal themselves is actually superbly done here. It's a little bit like but again, right, I think it does it very well

and there's another reveal later on which I think is particularly well executed but in this sequence kind of like you know again another famous line they're coming out of the walls right because they really are and I think the way that that's all put together and then revealed both of the way Cameron shoots it and kind of the

imagination come with it is great and I think it's extremely well executed. If I'm being uncharitable, I would say that really that is a particularly kind of skillful call back to the first film, right? Because you think about you know, you think about the climax

to alien when she's in the escape bottom, the way that basically the xenomorph is in plain sight. You don't actually notice it until it kind of decides to decide to move. It's really an echo of that. So even some of the stuff that the film is doing really well at this point and

I'm trying not to be charlish because it is executed extremely well. You can argue it really only exists as a result of kind of the imagination from the first film, right, because of the design of the creatures and the way that it can blend into these kind of like, this sort of like semi-mechanical industrial setting. So that's the, that's the first thing. I think this is also probably the point where it starts to set up these themes of motherhood and kind of maternal instinct and so forth, because we haven't quite got to the kind of the queen reveal, right? That's quite far off

I think there's probably a hint of it after this when they make reference to the eggs but... Yeah, I think they question where the eggs come from. Yeah, exactly. Bishop says there must be something we haven't seen yet. Yeah, right. Yeah. But it's the fact that basically they get

swarmed and attacked after basically they've burnt some, like the face hugger eggs, right? It's basically the chess buster not the face, so the colonists who they find still alive

and then a chest buster appears they then flame throw it and that's the point of which shit hits the fan, right? Basically it's almost like it's a response to that. It's like a response to the killing of the young almost. So this is where the film really starts to kind of like kick off on its themes and kind of how it's actually

going to deal with advancing the story and the plot which is through these action set pieces and this is kind of a big spectacular one to kick things off. I think the other thing that's interesting about this sequence is this I would argue is really the point at which so when you think about the character

Ellen Ripley now, right? You know, looking at it from a 20, 23 vantage point with you know, the four films that she, well, you know, three or four, depending on how you want to define the character, but the point is being the protagonist kind of Sigourney

Weaver being the star of these first four films, really. I think this scene, right? Not even, like this film, obviously, but this scene is really the point where it starts to develop this idea of her as the badass, right? Where she overrides Gorman and drives the APC. Yeah, and I think what's interesting about it, yeah, I think what's interesting about it is it's not really as a result of some sort of inherent badassery. It's because basically she's just becoming the embodiment of the embodiment of, of keeping your head whilst all around you are losing theirs.

Yeah. And I find that an interesting. You know, because like the classic image of Ripley also comes from this film and it's like, you know, I think it's some of the poster of films. It's like, you know, her standing with you kind of like, you know, the gun in one hand and kind of like the backdrop.

Yeah, we'll get it later. But when she strips down, she's just in her vest and she's kind of got this huge gun. Like that is, that's the poster image. That becomes the poster image for Ripley as a character. Yeah. really kicked off during this scene and I find it interested the way it comes about

just as a kind of like her just needing to sort shit out rather than necessarily exactly on the gendered reading all the men have completely failed she's left in the APC with Burke and Garman Burke can't do anything he's a company man

Garman is an officer who is entirely unprepared for actual combat and someone who has been in the situation before has to do something has to step up. Yeah. So she does and she saves some of the Marines.

She saves Hicks and Hudson and they decide they need to get away. They want to make a plan to escape the planet. They override Burke who says we can't just escape, we need to preserve this multi-million dollar installation and they want to get the plane out of there, get the shuttle back to orbit and yeah, nuke the site from orbit. They call the shuttle, the shuttle crashes immediately. The character called Spunkmire. Poor Spunk Meyer is immediately devoured by one of the aliens that snuck aboard the shuttle.

And there's no way off. There's a lot of scenes of Bill Paxton panicking. He's really got into this mindset now of them being totally screwed, basically. He is entirely panicking. I read, I can't remember where, probably in Ros Cavanies chapter, that Bill Paxton's idea of the character was that he'd only been trained on simulators. He'd done so much simulation that he can't work properly in live combat. He's a kind of badass in his own mind.

He kind of brought that out in the character with the line Game Over, Man Game Over, because he's kind of relating it all to a video game. But they do decide on a plan of action. Hicks, mostly Hicks and Ripley come up with a plan to seal off elements of the base, seal off the control room, arm themselves, and, yes, find a way out. Well, they want to seal themselves up at first, but Bishop tells them that the plant is about to blow, it is venting gas, is about to go thermonuclear, so they do need to find a way. way to communicate with the other shuttle aboard the Silago and bring it down to the service so they can get out.

There's a scene where Ripley and New are caught in a trap that Burke has set with the facehuggers. Burke is revealed to be a dick, which we kind of knew all along. It's more as it then becomes

explicit. He is. Yeah. But he's very much set them up to die. And then the aliens attack. they come in through the ceiling. There's a great shot of them coming through the ceiling that again looks like there's loads.

There's actually only about 12 alien suits that they made for the film. I think the, just to, like the Burke, the assault shot to call them it a reveal because I mean, I suppose it's more of a confirmation than the reveal, but this is probably, this is an example of where

I think it's dealing with similar, in some ways, right? it's playing off the themes of the original alien but it's doing it in a less subtle way right? Because in the original alien you've got the, you know, the faceless company, you know, you can get into the fact that the

kind of the computer on the Nostromo in the first one is called mother, but I won't get into that right now, but the fact that it's kind of like this faceless company saying so like, you know, the crew are expendable, bring it back for study, blah, blah, blah. There's something

to me, having that kind of like faceless thing is inherently more sinister, right? Whereas here it's a lot more explicit, right? It's a guy who wants to make money and we're treated to this. In retrospect, I think it's a little bit clunky, right? Where basically Ripley explains his motivations to every other member of the crew, right? You know, he needed to do this and art to do this, you know, and it's fine, right, in the sense that it kind of, you know, it does what it's supposed to, but it, and I think that that kind of scene where they're trapped in the lab with the facehugger is really good, right? I think that's a very, that's a nice, tense scene, which is unlike anything, which I think has really happened, any, either in this film the previous one to that point, a lot of the horrors come from, you know, the gestation, the facehugger attaching it.

to you rather than, you know, the face of her trying to do that. So I think it's a very interesting scene, but the follow-up where then kind of like, you know, Burke's motivations are essentially explained is kind of indicative of the way that this is a little bit more heavy-handed with the way it deals with some of this stuff. Yeah. And that scene stood out to me in that regard. Yeah. The whole thing is a lot more explaining than Scott's film. I think Cameron likes to explain things he likes to have a coherent world

he is doing a lot of world building in this but it is all explained there is no kind of mystery to it in the way that there was in Scott's film so like the the space jockey in alien is just an image

that is not explained it's all the stronger for that we'll talk about it in several episodes when it does get explained but for now It is, you know, just a cool image that adds a layer of mystery. Whereas Cameron does want to explain a lot more. So we get the whole life cycle of the xenomorph in this film.

We get, yeah, a lot more explicit stuff from the company. The company is explicitly bad. And here is this guy who represents that. It is not, you know, faceless capitalism anymore. It's bad dudes like Burke. And, yeah, it all goes into this sense that Cameron wants to set things up, check off style, and then pay them off, which, yeah, is kind of disappointing to me. I think there's something lost when the company is not some faceless kind of capitalist force, but it is just a cooperation with people like we would recognize being dicks and screwing each other. over for a percentage, as Ripley says.

And I think there's something lost as well in these action scenes of the kind of hordes of anonymous cinemorphs getting shot to death or run over. I think it takes away from something of the mystery of the alien, something of the cosmic horror

of the first film. When they're not cosmic threats, they're just, as a film says, bugs to be hunted. A lot of that mystique of the first film I feel is lost when you can just shoot an alien in the head and it dies

I mean obviously they didn't have weapons in the first film so kind of in canon there is a reason this one to explode but it feels a little disappointing to me I agree with that and I think the other thing is the film revels in it actually

right it's not it's not something where kind of like it's just you know part of the fabric of the fact that they have weapons this time I mean we get to treat to a lot of shots of Xenomorfs basically exploding upon the point or shot and things. Exactly. The Hicks fires a shotgun at one, point blank,

it explodes. One of their skulls is run over by the APC on the way out of the power plant. It's just crushed immediately. Again, this is a special edition scene, but there's a scene where they're just they set up two remote turrets and they just mow down hundreds of xenomorphs. It's all kind of disappointing to me, because I like

the kind of cosmic threat of this weird thing in the first film. This kind of Lovecraftian horror that you couldn't understand, that couldn't be killed by conventional means, that is just seemingly immortal. It's just gone, as they kind of mow down

the hordes of xenomorphs in this film. It's just a point. The action's done well. Like I say, it is competent. It is a good screenplay. It's just, thematically, it seems like something's been lost. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think it, to a certain extent, it is a function of the first film existing, though.

I mean, like, we spoke about in the first episode that one of the things that makes the alien so terrifying in the first one is the rapid way it changes, right? Yeah. The fact that you've got the face hugger, and then that becomes a chest buster, and then that becomes a full-grown thing. And it's like, in that lead-up, you have no idea what it is you're dealing with. In this film, to an extent, you do know what you're dealing with. And what I would argue is I think... You do, and it gets codified as well.

Like I say, Cameron wants to explain it and set it in stone, this is a life cycle. Yeah. And I think the way it deals with their threat in this one is because it's not an unknown thing. And this is, and again, like, you can argue this is indicative of the time in which it's made and the fact that it's kind of, you know,

coming off the wake of this kind of like establishment of the blockbuster as we now understand it. well we can't recreate that mystery so we've got to have more and bigger right and that's kind of reflected in a whole bunch of ways you could argue

it's reflected even in the concept of the queen itself which is actually kind of a concept which I kind of have mixed feelings about the establishment of that you know we'll come to that later but here basically what in the absence of being able to recreate that mystery it just throws

a million of them at the screen and as you say it results in a lot of good set pieces, like really good action sequences. I do think it kind of reduces the threat of the creature itself, right? Because it's replaced the threat of this thing with the number of these things, right? The issue is no longer the fact that we have to kind of deal with this organism, which is, you know, a perfect organism, as I said in the first film, right? It's not now, right? you know, I mean, it's not.

They're still very terrifying. You can run it over with a tyre. Yeah, but the threat now comes from numbers, right? Yeah. And I think, I would agree with you to an extent that whilst this is a really well done film and the action's good, that aspect of it is disappointing. And I do think it has consequences for all the films that try to adapt it, adapt the concept after this. And that's what I mean about kind of like the influence of this being a lot worse than the, like,

the actual film. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. So the aliens attack. They kill Burke. They kill Hudson. They injure Hicks. Gorman and Vasquez in the tunnels

sacrifice themselves on a grenade to ensure that their compatriots can escape. And this kind of pays off the discussion of class that I mentioned earlier. Yeah, as Roscaveney again puts it, This pays off with an expression of human solidarity. Between Gorman, the officer class white man, and Vasquez, the butch woman of color,

Grunt, they come together in the end and sacrifice themselves in solidarity to help their colleagues escape. You know, classes superseded, classes ascended above for the expression of something greater, which is solidarity and escape. Newt gets separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures So Ripley and Bishop and Hicks make their way to the drop ship But they can't escape without Newt Ripley wants to arm herself and descend into the alien hive to rescue her And in this scene Ripley goes down into the alien hive

And discovers the alien queen The queen is surrounded by dozens of eggs She's just kind of sitting around laying eggs and there's a kind of a scene of communication between the two as Ripley looks to the Queen, threatens the eggs, the workers, the soldiers back off, and there's kind of this understanding between the Queen and Ripley. Which watching it back is a bit of an odd sequence to watch, to be honest.

Well, yeah, I do and I don't understand Ripley's motivation in this scene, like this, you know, not to be all cinema scenes about it, all the eggs are going to be destroyed when the reactor blows up anyway so I don't understand why Ripley flame throws them other than out of spite

well I mean I think I think it is that I think it is spite but it's more is the reason for creatures that have been portrayed as like sure I mean like

they establish a little bit more intelligence in this film than completely ill for something that's largely feral like this kind of like I'm not going to lie watching it back, even as much as I like this film, this kind of like, sort of like tacit, unspoken negotiation scene

played out a bit strangely to me. It feels like a bit of a James Cameronism, really. I think it works with this idea of the Queen having a lot more intelligence than the workers than the soldiers. The Queen kind of communicates with Ripley, like you say. There's this unspoken deal between them. the queen can as we're going to see the queen

uses tools the queen can use a lift the queen understands that attaching herself to the drop ship is a way to get revenge on Ripley the queen is clearly more intelligent than the others it feels a little convenient it feels a little

like you say Camerony you know it's this is very much a Cameron thing that I can't see Scott doing and ultimately there's this disappointment again that the aliens have this life cycle that can be explained by a queen

they're just like insects on earth there's not this unknowable life cycle involving eggs coming from somewhere they just become analogous to insects this is kind of very much a modern problem but the other thing is I this probably says more about my pot culture

consumption than anything else but I find it very hard to walk the kind of like the sequence where Ripley notices like the ovipositor and kind of like where the eggs are coming from and realizes what's going on. I can't watch that now and not think of the Futurama episode where they find out how slurm is made. Yes, with the Slum Queen. Yeah, right. And, you know, for better or worse, I can't watch that now without that immediately coming to mind, which inherently kind of robs it of some seriousness for me, unfortunately.

I always wanted to try slurm. Like, even in that episode, the slurm looks delicious. It has like this green, you know, glow, and, you know, Fry gets addicted to it. And I think I kind of set it up as like Coca-Cola, you know, a kind of soft drink. But it looks really good. I would drink a slurm even knowing where it comes from within the show. I would love to see somebody cut together that sequence with the sequence of the eggs being played in the European

and I actually think it would work quite a bit better than you think really So Ripley destroys the Queen's eggs And escapes on the drop ship Moments before the colony explodes There's a nuclear blast blows up the entire colony But they managed to get away at the last minute

Very action scene, very blockbuster They're back aboard the Salarcaro, everything's great, everything's safe Suddenly Bishop is torn in half Because the queen has snuck onto the drop ship And wants to take her revenge on Newt Ripley gets in the exosuit The mechuit cargo loader that we saw earlier And fights the queen

There's the iconic line, get away from her bitch And Ripley pushes the queen into the airlock Flushes her out into space I mean this is the culmination of the fight The film's themes of motherhood and feminine force and kind of the human feminine versus the monstrous feminine, which we discussed a little in the last film, in the last episode rather. Ripley has become an Ursat's mother to Newt.

There's kind of this symbolic nuclear family unit between Hicks, Ripley and Newt, and this nuclear family, this tidy little all-American family triumphs over the weirder family of the alien queen and her kind of insectile life cycle.

There's another instance of the classic Cameron pounding lack of subtlety as well when Newt actually calls Ripley mommy, which I really watch. Does that happen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no idea. Right at the point of the cloud.

they embrace and she calls it, which is which, I mean, okay, I mean, yes, it's a nice emotional moment, but it's pretty well established by this point, and that's kind of like the relationship that they've cultivated between them. I don't think, you know, I don't think you really need that moment. So that's, you know, whilst I don't think it like ruins the moment or anything for me, it is

a nice little perfect one word line example of the lack of subtlety. we're talking about. And I think James Cameron gets away with him a lot of his films because I think there's, I think there is actual sincerity there in a lot of the things he's trying to express. And this even applies to the Avatar films really, but it's

not subtle at all. Like it is really hammered home in ways that I think you could view as a little bit patronising, I think. And I think that's actually quite a good little example of it, I think. That is a good example. I miss that. And, yeah, lack of sincerity is certainly not my problem with Cameron's films.

No. Quite the opposite. Particularly with Avatar, there is an almost excess of sincerity. Yeah. That I can't quite stand. But yes, that's more or less the end of the film. Hicks is injured. He's placed into a cryo chamber to sleep back on the way home.

Similarly, Newt, Newt is placed in a crow chamber, and they all set off back to Earth, and I'm sure they'll be very happy, and nothing will go wrong with their journey back to Earth. We'll see Hicks and Newt in the next movie. Absolutely, they'll all be very healthy. Yes. It's a competent film, like we've said. I think it reduces a lot of what I liked about the first film. I think there's a lot of reducing things.

there is reducing the xenomorphs to analogous to insects there is reducing Ripley's character to a traditionally gendered character reducing her not reducing her to a mother figure but you know turning this ambiguous interesting character from the first film into a more traditional female character turn it down the same corner frankly Yes, yeah, great point Not to kind of like

beat the anti-James Cameron drum a lot But I mean, the The echoes with that Especially when you consider that they both basically came at the same time That was his second film This is his third film It's very Very clear what the echoes are there

And it's like you say I don't think this is a bad film As I say far from it I think it's a very good film And I think the thing I would say, which is a little bit patronising, is you know, we've established that I think Alien is the better film, right? Even for what it's trying to do, right?

I think if you compare aliens against Alien, what Alien was trying to do, it's not doing that, right? It's not a good film in that respect. But that's not what it's trying to do. So taking on its own terms... No, it's trying to do something different. Yeah. So taking on its own terms, I think it's very good.

but I think I do find it an inevitably less interesting film and the slightly patronising thing I would say is it is a much more accessible film I would argue right and I think it's more likely to it's it's the sort of film that does very it does numbers

right that's really what it comes down to because it has it you know even things like you know to refer back to when you were talking about you know the pilot of the land in being attacked by xenomorph and it crashes, right, and kind of strands them. Even that is rendered in the most spectacular bombastic way possible, right? This thing doesn't just crash and, like, they see an explosion on the horizon and go,

it crashes into where they're going to be. Yeah, basically, you know, and they need to dive out of the way, and there's wreckage everywhere, and they need to pull wreckage off Gorman and, like, you know, everything is dialed up to 11, right? You know, if something can be done in a spectacular, bombastic way, it is. and I think that, you know, that's just what this film is. That's what it's trying to be. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that.

Sorry, I'm just trying to find it. In Ros Cavanies chapter, there is a scene just after that where Ripley and Newt, Newt says, we're not going home, are we? Ripley says, no, I'm sorry. Oh, then Newt says that great line. They come mostly at night. mostly.

And they are posed, Rosse Kavanaugh says, they are posed not just as mother and daughter, but as the mother and daughter of official, maybe Soviet art, the sunset is in their faces, they are heroically standing together. It is,

yeah, it is very cinematic. It is very framed. It is, you know, propaganda-like. She's comparing it to Soviet propaganda. It is propaganda-like, and it's kind of structured

perfection. Yeah. So, you know, that that whole sequence really is just indicative of the difference and approach. And I think, you know, I've said sort of like the influence of the first film, the second film, on the series after, and, you know, both have tried to emulate

one of those films and have done it less effectively. But I'd actually argue further than that, depending on which film you pick, and I think this is probably more relevant to the films that Ridley Scott goes on to add to the series and we'll cover them when we come to them. Yes. I think

basically this just sets up an entire identity crisis for the series of films that it never quite recovers from, really. Yeah. You know, you're caught between people who are like yourself and to a certain extent me who kind of like prefer alien and really regard that as

the masterpiece which is superbly done. And then like or not, I think when you when you talk about this series of films, I think more people think of aliens, right? Just purely through sheer numbers, right? If you think about people who saw it at the time and, you know, things,

I think maybe people are more likely to re-watch. I think it's aliens. Like, people talk about aliens as one of those films where they watch it if it comes on the TV. They will sit down and just watch it through. Whereas I feel with alien, that is something you have to sit down and go to. Like, you go to a,

cinema screening of Alien, you sit down and watch Alien, you don't just pick it up halfway through, which you can easily do with this. Well, that's the thing. You can with this, right? Because it's so structured around set pieces, and I think the plot is

more typical. I'm not going to say it's simpler, because part of the appeal of Alien is that the plot is so simple, right? It's that very stripped back thing that we've already spoken about. But this is a more typical kind of progression of a blockbuster film

it is quite easy to pick it up halfway through and kind of get a sense of what's going on which is again why I bring in the Rath of Khan metaphor in that I think that does the same thing that does exactly what this does to the franchise but for Star Trek

it takes it in a blockbustery direction you have these interesting films that are the first in the series that are followed by sequels that take it in a lot more form me like direction you know everything ultimately becomes star wars yeah which is a shame yeah no i agree and i think about that like that that kind of like identity crisis i think that these first two films set up is really reflecting later films i think if i think about a lot of my problems again not to jump

the gun on when we talk about them in in their own episodes it kind of highlights a lot of what my problem is with Prometheus, for instance, right? And we'll talk about that in more depth there, because I feel like it's kind of caught between these two. It's also, like, interestingly, about that film, it's also trying to do yet another different thing on top of these two. But I think it's also caught between these two stools. Yeah, I mean, speaking of identity crisis, we'll be covering Alien Free next month, and that's, yes, got a lot of identity issues, partly from this film and it's worth, it's worth to be emphasizing that we're talking about theatrical cuts of these films, Because it's also being an issue with aliens and that, you know, special edition director's cuts exist of both of these things.

But with Alien 3, this is when it starts to really become like a major issue with this franchise completely. It's like, you know, it makes the whole kind of like different cuts of Blade Runner thing. I don't know what is about Ridley Scott franchises here. But it makes that look simple, the amount of different things floating around for this. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. The only other thing I wanted to mention was something about the making of this film

that we didn't get to and this is mostly from Rebecca Keegan's book The Futurist, The Life and Films of James Cameron is about the making of the film and how this was made at Pinewood Studios Cameron was a Canadian director coming over and was not used to the kind of British work ethic how the British make films

and this is kind of an anecdote you get a lot around these 70s and 80s films where the director was impatient about British guys having their tea breaks at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock they go to the pub for lunch they knock off strictly at 5 and it's an interesting insight into American and Canadian directors coming over to somewhere where we have workers' rights and discovering that things work differently here so Cameron was very frustrated at the at the working practices

of the film of the film crew he was 31 at the time that the film was made so he absolutely was not used to this some of the some of the sort of stories you hear about Cameron this is kind of the reason why I don't always seem to particularly like well yeah this explains

a lot of my antipathy towards him because I read this just before we started recording at the end of filming Cameron told the crew this has been a long and difficult shoot fraught by many problems but the one thing that kept me going through it all was a certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood

never come back and that you sorry bastards would still be here Jesus Christ that's a wrap oh Lord what a nice guy Yeah. What dick.

Jesus Christ, I've never heard that for. Oh, God. Dear Lord. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I think, um, putting aside by just Dean for James Cameron as a person to work with. I think the thing I'd finish off with this film is I have a lot of issues with it, right? Some within the Texas.

of the film itself, but some are kind of like, with it, you know, it's influenced beyond that, but, and I realize that this is a complicated concept in the age of social media, like, having issues of things you like, right? I feel like I should be here saying this is the best film ever and you shouldn't criticize it or something, but, um,

you know, like, there are, like, we both like this film. Yeah, yeah, you know. We just like it less than alien and recognize the problems with it. Yeah, I think so. And I, and I think the irony is, I think some of it you can actually blame on Alien in the sense that Alien is such a good film, in making a sequel to it, you're kind of boxed in a bit with how much you can do, right? Because you can't

really do the same thing again, because then by definition it's probably going to be less effective than Alien, right? Because I don't think, I don't really think there's anything you can do, for what that film was trying to do, I don't think there is anything you can really do better, right? You might be able to do it differently, but, you know, essentially you are going to be treading over the same path and I think it's really driven very hard by its concept and this is driven a lot more by character in general you know in terms of kind of like you know how they set people up how they play off one another what they represent right and I think that gives the film both its strengths and its weaknesses right its strengths in the sense of you know how characters

react to situations and interact with one another if we put aside kind of like how well I think the action is directed, that's kind of the bit that you get into. But I think it does come, and you've said this already, it comes at the cost of the concept, right? I think once you get, and I think part of the reason that this series struggles so much after this, and in my view, it does, right? You know, we'll get to that when we do the episodes on the subsequent films, because I think each one, as we've already said, reflects the time in which it's made, and I think the things it struggles with are different with each film, right? I think they each try to capture this lightning in a bottle

in a different way and they fail for different reasons. But you could argue a lot of it comes from here, right? It's because the concept becomes so devalued here, right? The mystique and the horror of the alien itself is gone after this, right? You know, it's not to say that it's not a terrifying thing to think of, But from a filmmaking perspective, from a storytelling perspective, the mystique is gone. The horror is gone, right? And I think every single film struggles with that after it.

And they try to come at it from different ways to try and re-establish this. And for varying reasons, I don't think they do. And I think you can blame it on this film. Yeah, they try and reintroduce mystery in ways that don't work because of how codified, how explained, how locked in, how world-built, this film has made the entire setting you know he's

really built a world out of it um building on scott's work but it's clear even in this film that he wants to build his own world he wants to build pandora he wants to build his avatar fantasy world

and the echoes with avatar are really quite strong actually when i know when i rewatch this just in terms of kind of like military corporate set up. Yeah, I'm thinking of the colonial marines. Yeah, the capitalist exploitation of other planets, of a species. There's themes that run through. I don't think they're done as well in Avatar as in this. So yeah, no, it's an interest, it's like I see, it's a film I like,

but I think the series of films has really been a victim of the success of this one and I'd say we'll get into it when we get to the individual episodes and I think no more... I think it probably as I say it manifests in different ways with different but you know I mean like the way it manifests

in Prometheus is very different to the way it manifests in alien theories very different to way it manifests in the alien versus predator films right they all have their own different shortcomings but I think a lot of the time, it does all stand from this. Yeah. This film, I'm sure we'll come to discuss it. This represents a path taken that diverges from the path that could have been taken.

Yeah. The path that they did not take that this film takes, it sets up everything, as we will discuss, as is the point of this podcast. And I think another thing that's interesting, actually, is the way in which this is kind of regarded as sacrosanct. almost as well, I find interesting, because I think we may, I think we're still decided we may do an episode where we talk about kind of like, you know, failed concepts or concepts of this series that didn't come to fruition. And I find it interesting how many of them, like, you know, and again, it's something about James Cameron franchises, right? You think about the way the Terminator series went, right? There's been a lot

of attempts, particularly with that one, which involves time travel and all this sort of thing, to kind of like reclaim the overarching narrative, right? We're going to ignore everything after this point. We'll start again from here. Right. From here. And whenever that happens with the alien films, I'll just mean a couple of things. Like, there was, you know, stuff kicking around and we'll talk about it. Generally speaking, very few of them look to erase aliens.

You know, like, it's a wildly successful film, which is regarded as sacrosan. But the funny thing is, I think if you were trying to reinvent this franchise and retool it and try and give it a new lease of life, you should go from alien. You should wipe away what

James Cameron, as good as I think the film is, I think it boxes you, like you said, because so much has explained, it boxes you into a corner here about what you can then do with it after that, because you can't contradict things that have been explicitly laid out here.

Yeah, and I think we can very much get into this next month with Alien Free, because of the sheer number of concepts and ideas they had for that film. That led in different directions and what that film eventually, came, which we will all discuss next month.

But yes, I want you to round fingers off for a quick round of xenobiology, the feature where we talk about what we learned about the alien in this film. And like we've been saying, you learn basically everything. We get the full matriarchal life cycle of the xenomorph. We get the name xenomorph. During the briefing with the Marines, they refer to this creature as a xenomorph in a way that I think is just meant to refer to an alien. like an unknown alien that they do not know falls under the category xenomorph but again it becomes codified as the specific name of this species in a way that I think the franchise did not have to go down but does we sort of know this from the first film but this film confirms that the host gets killed when a facehug is taken off we also learn in this film a lot about how the xenomorph can die it can be shot to death it can be run over etc The alien director's cut has this, but we watched the theatrical release. So in this film, we learned that they keep their victims alive as hosts

for later propagation of the species. We learn that they can build organic structures that form nests. And the queen shows some level of intelligence, like we said, using tools, communicating with Ripley. And the queen is quite hardy, really. The queen must survive in vacuum when she goes up on the drive. upship going into orbit. So that's something that we've not seen before. But yeah, that is aliens. We will return next month to discuss alien free. Is there anything else you wish to say

about aliens and our journey onwards? I don't think so about aliens. I think we've said everything we want to. I think it's interesting. I think we'll start talking about this film though, like how mixed your feelings actually are about a film which I really think. Which, again, I want to re-emphasise this. I think it's an excellent film. I love watching it. But I think, you know, I think the way in which kind of you feel is a lot more mixed about it. I mean, frankly, I think that's the reason for doing this podcast.

Because I think once you actually start to get into the guts of these is a series and a connected set of films rather than stand-alone things, I think you can start to look at these things a little bit more clearly. And I think this is, we're going to get into a stretch now. where I think it starts to become particularly interesting because this is when we start to really get into the space where Hollywood has this extremely valuable property with an immense amount of imagination

behind it and this wonderful, you know, this wonderful creation in terms of like what you can do with it cinematically and it just fumbles the ball constantly. You know, like, as I say, to varying degrees, right? And I have a Gaelian three in particular. I'm looking forward to talking about that just because there are so many things to talk about with that

in terms of how not to take this concept and run with it and how you talk about that kind of whether you're talking about alien aliens or them as a pair I think whatever way you look at it it fumbles it quite spectacularly and it goes severely downhill before it then recovers slightly maybe so yeah I'm looking forward to getting into that yeah so yes next time we'll be covering 1992's alien free that comes six years after after aliens until then please follow us on Twitter at the Xenopod

subscribe in your podcast app of choice they're all listed on the take one cinema.net website where you can find links to the RSS feed and the feed in various podcast places and until then we'll leave you by saying I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit it's the only way to be sure game over man it's game over You know, Oh.

Oh. Oh. You know. No. No. No. No. No.

You know, Oh, Oh, Oh, No No No No.