Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

OOF. Yeah SPOILER ALERT, I guess… for just about every film in the franchise. Although I’m going to try to keep the details of Alien: Romulus under wraps.

I freaking LOVE the Alien franchise. I saw the second and third before I sat down to a marathon which included the first and the fourth. That was all that was out at the time. I thought the first was boring at first but I was watching it with a friend who was a bit antsy and dreading the rest of the films because of how slow it seemed to him. I saw it through his eyes and became a bit antsy on his behalf. Seeing it again later on my own terms, man the first film is so well done. Sigourney Weaver is so believable. The whole crew is great really. Ridley Scott is a brilliant director. H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph is truly terrifying in a good way. The exhilarating dread this film achieves is palpable. It has not been topped. But it also left us with a lot of questions that have gone unanswered for over four decades. Questions like: Where did the Xenomorphs come from, who was that giant humanoid in the pilot seat of that weird Juggernaut spacecraft, why was the company so interested in the Xenomorphs, and why did the android go psychotic?

The sequel, Aliens with an S, was a different kind of movie with a different kind of director. Watch the directors cut by the way. James Cameron takes the helm and creates more of an action flick than horror. I appreciate both for different reasons. One thing that did get on my nerves was Bill Paxton. He’s normally great. The Greatest Game Ever Played is one of my favorite movies. He directed that one. His character in Aliens with an S was just so obnoxious and I thought he needed to exit unceremoniously early on in the film or just shut up! How did this guy make it in the marines!?! Still a great movie though… mostly.

Enter Alien 3. We’re back to a single alien and horror. This film was almost unanimously hated but I unapologetically love it. It was my favorite and still is in many ways. I love the atmosphere, the setting, the desolate penal colony planet inhabited solely by a remainder of inmates turned monks. I love everything Charles Dance does. Charles S Dutton was phenomenal too. Some of the effects didn’t age too well. They tried some animation and I think some cgi and it looks a bit silly by today’s standards. The practical effects are still great though and the ending was amazing.

Plus! Alien 3 posited the notion that these Xenomorphs did not necessarily have to gestate in a human host but could come through any animal what got caught by the facehugger. Thus we have a dog being impergnated in the theatrical cut and a bull in the superior directors cut. This concept was explored in a line of toys that followed Aliens with an S and featured a bull alien, a gorilla alien, a rhino alien, a mantis alien, and a cobra alien. Very cool concept and I want to draw up my own. Could you imagine a penguin Xenomorph?

Then we have Alien Resurection (sad trombone). Resurection was just standard 1990’s coolness p0rn. Just a showcase of cool looking alien crap the producers thought we wanted to see but none of the cerebral brilliance of the previous films. A far FAR cry from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece and very obviously a cash grab. The characters were either shallow or gratuitously melodramatic. I got hung up on the biological gobbledygook that was presented in this story. At the time it felt like escalation solely for the sake of one-upping the previous films. That’s probably exactly what it was but I accept it now because of things that came up in later films. I guess I’d still include this in a marathon though. It still has Sigourney Weaver and brings in Ron Pearlman and Winona Ryder, not to mention Brad Dourif, so I guess it’s not all bad. I’ll say it is hilariously outrageous at times which can translate into entertainment I suppose.

Alien VS Predator was not considered canon I guess? It didn’t quite make sense with the timelines. Lance Henricksen plays THE Mr. Weyland in this or at least A Mr. Weyland. Perhaps an ancestor? Incidentally Lance plays an android in AlienS and Alien 3 and then the human creator of said Lancedroid at the end of Alien 3 although that throws his apparent age out of continuity. I do know events in Prometheus and Covenant throw AvP all out of whack chronologically if Lance was meant to be the same Mr. Weyland. They (gnomes) should not have made the AvP contemporary with modern day. If it had been set in the future concordantly with Alien, it may have made more sense. How cool would it be to see a Predator in the Alien setting? Someone, make that movie!

Personally, I liked AvP a lot. I was as surprised as anyone that it was only PG-13. Gore and violence-wise it was pretty tame. Even the “unrated” cut just awkwardly inserted shots of gore periodically thrown up against the wall. I’m usually not an advocate for such content and I never condone gratuitous horror but when it makes sense for a good story… it just seemed like AvP needed to be filmed as R rated from the start. That’s what the audience of both the Alien and the Predator franchise were expecting. Despite all this, it was still a cool movie. I saw this in the theater. Someone brought a toddler who was terrified and started screaming. One annoyed patron actually yelled “Get the kid outta here!” Hilarious. Poor kid.

Alien Versus Predator: Requiem was hot garbage and I refuse to acknowledge it as even being a movie. I don’t think The Brothers Strause, an effects team who directed this piece of tripe, had ever seen a Predator film nor an Alien film and just assumed these were teen slasher flicks so that’s what they made. I’m usually accepting of opinions as they are very personal and I usually respect a person’s likes and dislikes. I make an exception however for anyone who says anything remotely positive about this film. It was stupid as all get out.

(To be continued… look for From Alien to Alien Romulus part 2 of 3)