Alien vs. Predator (2004)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Cast: Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner

Have I Seen it Before: Probably?

Did I Like It: That’s likely the problem. It definitely doesn’t feel like it would be a movie I would watch twice. In fact, I only started running it because after running through the entire Alien series in the lead up to Alien: Romulus (2024), I found myself re-charmed by those acid-filled critters. Where else was I going to get a fix? Playing Alien: Isolation, the most frustratingly hard game created in recent times*? Suddenly start getting into expanded universe novels and comics? That seems like a crazy move, especially when my life is already filled to the brim with barely coherent EUs**.

And yet, I probably have seen it before, although most of the film has disappeared into the ether of being unmemorable. The entire film has a familiar sameness throughout, and any surprise—the only one I can readily point to is the inclusion of Henriksen as the pater familias of what would one day become the Weyland Yutani—I met with less of an “Oh, really?” and more of a “Oh, that’s right.” Maybe it’s a film made up of dim references to other things that work. Great films can do that, even in this series. Aliens (1986) is just a war movie in space, but it feels like a great war movie in space. This is just a list of films I wish I would have watched instead.

I just wanted some sci-fi cheese, and even on that level I found the endeavor to be a little bit underwhelming. Limiting the scope to the then present day of 2004 and keeping things limited to Earth tries desperately to harness <The Thing (1982)>, but that also just adds one more tepid reference, and limits the scope of a film series whose main attraction is easily the gnarly, fucked up things you’re likely to find in the vast, unforgiving abyss of the cosmos.

Maybe I should just start re-watching the Predator films. That’s probably the most sensible way forward.

*I have been watching a lot of Youtube videos of people eating it in Isolation. And, yes, I am thinking of getting back into the game.

**I did start picking up EU novels and comics. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced

Have I Seen it Before: No… Except for… No. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Did I Like It: With last year’s strike, it feels like there just haven’t been that many movies released this year, and as such I was a little worried that my best-of list at the end of the year would be mostly 2023 films which didn’t see a wide release until this year.

Happy to report that his film shoots up to the tippy-top of the list. It is the best film of the series since Aliens (1986) by several miles. The production design of the film is top notch, always selling me on the fact that this takes place between Alien (1979) and its sequel. I’ve never been more delighted to report that in the future, the Commodore 64 will see something of a renaissance.

The movie takes the Xenomorphs in new directions, and nearly all of those new directions are terrifying. I spent most of the two-hour runtime with my with my jaw on the floor or recoiling in terror. Much of my obscene tank of popcorn masquerading as a small did not get eaten.

This praise is not without some very real reservations. While it is the best since Aliens, neither of the first two movies’ positions as all-time greats are threatened here. Mainly my qualms comes in the shape of fan service. I’m not reflexively anti-fan service. A film can truck exclusively in fan service (I’m looking in your direction, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and still be enjoyable within that context. References to what has come before are fine too. I’m honestly kind of charmed by this film being a soft reboot for the franchise, while also not being at all ashamed of what came before, when we might have forgiven them for ignoring some of what had come before. The problem comes with dialogue call backs. Andy (Jonsson, easily the MVP of the cast) indicates he prefers the term “artificial person,” I’m fine. When Andy also tries to give one of the xenomorphs an order which we all heard before, I rolled my eyes, but everyone else in the theater cheered. Maybe I’m wrong? When Rain concludes the film with a log entry proclaiming her final girl status, I can’t help but be a tad disappointed that a film which was so well-crafted and felt so fresh (the intermediate stage between full-xenomorph and chestburster, anyone?) decides to offer us these sort of nuggets that never feel quite as right as the rest of the film surrounding it.

Prometheus (2012)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba

Have I Seen It Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Is it possible to give a film partial credit? The last entry in the Alien franchise*, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (1997) benefited from an (just ever so slightly) above average script, but was weighed down by visual effects that removed any of the threat from the xenomorphs. This is working with the other formula and hoping for some degree of better success. The visuals are often stunning. The interiors of the ship Prometheus pull elements from the design of the Nostromo in Alien (1979) but extend it into a new environment that is always interesting to look at. I almost don’t mind that I can’t even kind of believe that the tech on display in this film looks wildly more advanced than the tech on the Nostromo, despite that first film taking place thirty years later.

Then there’s the story. One of the great “what the hell is that?” moments of Alien is the landing party coming across the Space Jockey. Alien doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything about how that poor unfortunate soul got something to leap out of them. It is content instead to let us wonder about how deeply weird this universe might be the deeper into the cosmos you drift. Jumping off with the idea of how that guy got into that seat is a shaky one to begin with. Jamming all of the wonder of that moment into its own two hour movie is pretty much guaranteed to dampen that wonder when one goes back to watch Alien again. But the film isn’t even really about that. It’s about those people, but LV-426 is kept as far away as possible. Even those squirrelly xenomorphs are only injected—sort of—as an afterthought that reeks of a studio note. How does one classify a bad idea that’s ultimately also a half-measure? “Uneven” is probably the nicest one for which I can immediately reach.

*I’m not looking in your direction any vs. Predator films, not because I’m looking down at you, but more because I can make the following point more smoothly without you getting in the way.

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. You buy an Alien box set in a couple of different formats, and you’re bound to give in. My biggest memory of the film, however, is it opening along with the grand opening of the AMC Southroads 20 here in Tulsa, and my poor little 13 year would have wanted nothing more in life than to just go to the theater of my own accord and watch a mindless monster movie sequel.

Did I Like It: I’ve been watching a lot of 90s late-series genre movies lately, and there’s no way to judge this movie by exceptionally harsh standards. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) should have probably been cancelled before shooting began. Batman & Robin (1997) is a movie I have been spending a lot of my life really loathing, and for some good reason, but I’ve come to understand that someone out there might enjoy it. Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) I keep referencing in recent reviews, mainly because the more I think about it, the worse the movie gets. Ultimately, this one could be a lot worse, and sort of works in fits and starts as a b sci-fi movie. It’s a step up from Alien 3 (1992), although the last entry didn’t exactly leave us with a lot of beloved characters to suddenly kill in a prologue.

One doesn’t necessarily want to engage in a lot of blind praise for Joss Whedon, but the story of this film is its strong suit. Ultimately the pitch of “a prototype version of the crew from Firefly and Serenity (2005)) up against a new batch of Xenomorphs is a nice idea for a movie. Sure, the notion that some of Ripley’s (Weaver) memories survive into a clone is a little silly, but the cloning plot line does give the movie something of a reason for existing, and more importantly gives Weaver new and interesting things to do. All of this concludes with an ending that seems ready for a future (that was not meant to be) for the series—which Alien 3 was resolutely against—even if that history was meant to focus on Ryder’s Call, always inhabiting the film as if she is waiting to take over in the event Weaver gets bored.

Special effects are the film’s Achilles’ heel, though. There is some interesting and genuinely unsettling creature work when the film focuses—really only for a single scene—on the array of Ripley clone drafts. But our friend the Xenomorph never looked—and never would look—so underwhelming. Physical actors in suits look like the costumes were hastily put together. The otherworldly quality of H.R. Giger or Stan Winston are gone. The less said about the more extensive attempts—Alien 3 tried it occasionally—to render the creatures using CGI, the better. If I had wanted to play the Alien Resurrection game on the original Playstation, I would have just done that.

Alien 3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I get the complaints about the film. Hell, I feel the complaints about this film. Having an opening sequence designed solely to take the air out of any positive feelings one might have had at the end of Aliens (1986) feels like an injury one is not likely to overcome over the next nearly two hours. I think it is probably pretty fair to say—and Fincher would likely to agree—that David Fincher with one arm tied behind his back is not the filmmaker that James Cameron or Ridley Scott are in their prime. Editing problems abound. Early CGI effects abound that seem less designed to wow than to try and paper over some of those aforementioned editing problems. It all ends in a bummer. For a big summer movie, it’s a sad, not very thrilling affair.

And yet…

I’ve had the weird misfortune of watching a lot of misbegotten 90s sequels lately, and the more misbegotten those films are, there’s a rash of “Where’s Skippy?” moments. A beloved—or even liked—character from previous entries is missing from the entry. Inevitably, the actor reads the script and bows out of the prospect of more-of-the-same. The script isn’t re-written to be not include the character. Instead, there’s is fifteen seconds of dialogue about why the character is just off camera (“I broke up with Jack” Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); “Taggart’s retired in Arizona” Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)), after which we are introduced to the same type of character so that the script wouldn’t have to be re-written and… gasp… the movie might lose its release date.

That doesn’t happen here. We can be horrified by Newt and Hicks’ fate (or lack of one in this film), but at the very least the filmmakers have something akin to the courage of making Ripley (Weaver, still good despite doing one film too many) always seem as if she is in mourning. The film may not care about characters from Aliens, but at least they didn’t send them to Arizona. It’s a film about mortality and mourning, and while the mangling of a big studio movie that would make any big studio nervous dulls that theme somewhat, the theme can’t be extinguished.

Aliens (1986)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn

Have I Seen it Before: It is one of the greats..

Did I Like It: It is one of the greats…

*I viewed the 1990 special edition, which is notedly preferred by director James Cameron.*

There can be a problem with director’s cuts, especially when the vast majority of additional footage is lumped into the first forty-five minutes of the movie. Hard to front load a story like that, but Cameron is right in his introduction. This movie has 40 miles of bad road before things go truly pear-shaped, but when it does, that first bunch of the film is necessary. Without them, the film would be less. It would be more like most of the bland movies that exist now. Most writing advice would have you start your story as close to the meat of the action is possible, and I’m glad that Cameron ignored—at least in one format—that advice.

This first sequel in the Alien series is a master class in floating opposites, and miraculously, it makes a strong argument for itself as the superior film. Where Alien (1979) is steeped in subtext within the relationships between the characters. 

The original film straddles between a space-based haunted house movie, demonic possession movie, slasher, and monster man-in-suit shocker, all while staying firmly weighted in Horror. This one embraces a full-throated action vein by becoming a Vietnam War picture in space, but still feels of a piece with the original film. It’s a tricky thing to do, as most movies in a series that try to jump genre usually have to jettison much of what made the earlier films work.

The people of the Nostromo in the original film don’t particularly care for each other or the work they do in the cosmos, but they’ve been on the job for so long that they would never dare speak about it. In this film, the marines have much more clearly defined relationships. The subtext is gone, but the motivations are far clearer, and richer for the specificity. In the original film, Ripley’s (Weaver) mission to recover the ships cat is a gaping flaw in the work, if for no other reason than not one character appears to have any particular attachment to the cat up until that point. Here, Ripley’s forming of a surrogate family makes her quest to recover Newt (Henn) makes perfect sense.

Is this sequel superior to its progenitor? I’m not sure there is an objective answer to that, as it will almost exclusively (as with a great many things) be a matter of taste. It’s certainly in the running, and it isn’t exactly like any other film in the series can compete in that fight.

Alien (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, and Bolaji Badejo as himself.

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: As Brett says, “Right…” 

This is another movie that proves difficult to try and write about critically with any sort of honesty. It’s a great film. You know it’s a great film* because they’ve been trying to remake it about a thousand times in the forty years since it was unleashed. And after you see a great film several times, it’s harder still—if not downright impossible—to unpack the experience. One is more struck by the little things that one may not think about on first blush.

The performances are pitch perfect and so against what would be the obvious direction a film like this could have taken. Ash (Holm) particularly stands out on second watch. He slithers through the movie, fighting down his glee (or as much glee as a robot could muster) that things are about to go down. 

The others are no slouches, either. They don’t particularly like each other—or at the very least, have gotten sick of one another after this much time beyond the frontier—and it shows. They don’t even like being in space, which is unique in both this series, and in science fiction as a whole. 

All of this comes about as subtext as well. Never once does one character turn to another and say, “I don’t like you, and I don’t like having to work in outer space.” This, along with the occasionally insane design gives the entire world a lived-in feel that Star Wars or Trek series often reaches for and comes up wanting.

Another element that never fails to delight—although it is likely less of an intentional choice and more of a reality of the time in which it was made—is the technology that surrounds the characters. Between clicking and clacking, displaying nonsense numbers as comprehensible data, and literally everything about the Mother computer make me long for a time when every piece of tech in a film didn’t look like it was designed by Tony Stark. Eagle-eyed readers of these reviews might detect a hypocrisy in that thought, as I have often extolled the virtue of films resisting looking like they were filmed at the time in which they were, but if films still used computers like this, it’d be impossible to tell when any film is made without consulting IMDB or Wikipedia, and that would make me a very happy camper, indeed.

If a film doesn’t have these little things, maybe it is not all that great in the first place. We are lucky that this one has them in spades. They make them worth coming back to every once in a while.

*While it is a great film, it is a competitive candidate for best trailer of all time. You have to kind of imagine yourself as a person who has no idea what the film is about when watching it, but from that perspective its one of the greats.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride

Have I Seen it Before: Once in the theater, and once on blu ray.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty effusive about the film in the earlier review above, but considering I’ve only glanced at it a couple of times, maybe it had less of an impact than I originally thought.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “But My, Oh My, How Delicious The Cheeseburgers Will Be: The Future Of Cinema?” published on 05/28/2017.

Saw Alien: Covenant this week. The movie flew under my radar for the longest time, despite my love for the first two films of the series, and my not-quite-hate for Ridley Scott’s previous re-entry into the Alien universe, Prometheus (2012). But, when the opportunity comes to take off work a little early and catch a matinee, I am helpless against the prospect’s siren song*.

So, much to my surprise, the movie is actually good. It’s not an earth shattering revelation of a movie—for such an experience this year, you’re probably going to have to begin and end with Jordan Peele’s debut masterwork, Get Out—but it certainly irons out some of the more forgettable moments that muddied reactions to Prometheus, extending the philosophical rumination on the origins of man in a bleak universe to its natural, psychotic conclusion. It manages to be the kind of head trip that Prometheus so desperately wanted to be, without unravelling into a pointedly turgid lecture more at home in a freshman philosophy course.

And yet, there’s a lot that’s even more familiar about the movie. An egg opens up. The egg spits out a creature that is equal parts spider and Georgie O’Keefe painting. A little guy bursts out of one of the human guys. The little guy grows bigger, uses it secondary head to eat a few other guys. Acid is spilled, airlocks are blown, and everyone goes back to cryosleep, perhaps never to wake up again. It’s the same old story, a fight for love and biological weaponry.

Yes, I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve also eaten plenty of cheeseburgers before**, but it is rare that you eat a cheeseburger that is exceptionally well made, just as it is equally rare that a fairly basic monster movie is made as well as Scott and his crew made Covenant.

And that’s when a borderline-depressing thought occurred to me: the franchise movie is dangerously close to becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression. Sure, this summer we’ll be waylaid by inevitable crap like The Emoji Movie and Michael Bay’s latest attempt to make a Transformers film that isn’t technically a violation of the Geneva convention. But Ridley Scott—a legitimate and respectable filmmaker—has made his plans known to spend a sizable chunk of his twilight years trying to make more Alien movies, an effort many of us can agree he near-perfected in his first attempt nearly forty years ago. Kenneth Branagh went in a few short years from forging full-text productions of the Bard to making Chris Hemsworth a household name in Thor (2011). Sam Mendes made Oscar-bait like American Beauty (1999)***, then made 1 1/2 great Bond movies. Christopher Nolan moved from indie darlings to Batmen, and continues his quest to put the genie back in the bottle with the upcoming Dunkirk. Hell, movie news sites were abuzz just a few months ago with talk that Aaron Sorkin took meetings with Marvel Studios for some unknown project.****

I suppose this all means that original big-budget movies are going to be harder to harder to find. For every Pacific Rim (2013) there’s going to be a Pirates of the Caribbean: One More and Johnny Can Get The Rest of His Wigs Out Of Australia. That’s pretty measurably bad, mainly because I was holding out for 2Dark 2Shadows: Basically Just Mortdecai With Different Opening Titles.

But, it could also mean that the big tentpole movies will be better, on average. That has to be good, right? I mean, an Aaron Sorkin-penned Iron Man 3 would be… Well, it’d have a lot more references to Gilbert and Sullivan than the rest of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that has to count for something, right?

*See my ill-advised venture to watch this years undeniably weird, yet nearly shot-for-shot remake of The Breakfast Club (1985), entitled Saban’s Power Rangers.

**Probably too many; I get it.

***We could go on an on about whether or not American Beauty is a good movie. It’d make a half decent blog, if it weren’t for the fact that my answer would be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. (Note from 2019: There’s no way American Beauty is any degree of watchable anymore. I’m reasonably sure about that.)

****Yes, every individual named in that paragraph is a man. That’s another issue entirely, and one that Hollywood is working fairly slowly to fix.