Since TH-cam age-gated this video, I've since re-edited it to ensure it won't get flagged. Please drop your likes and share this video around! :) Eric's Links: My debut cyberpunk/cosmic horror book just got an epic re-release with a sick new cover, check it out! www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJDZ73PD/ Links to Books and Socials: linktr.ee/EricMalikyte
I don't think you understood Aliens, though. It wasn't about the alien(s). We had already seen the alien's life cycle, etc. None of that was going to be a surprise anymore after Alien. Aliens is about Ripley, her trauma, facing her nightmares, and having a second chance to be a mother after losing her daughter. That's the genius of Cameron, taking the story in a very different direction without disrespecting or contracting the original. Trying to replicate Alien would have been a disaster. In fact, you can't even rewatch Alien and replicate the experience, because the mystery is gone. You already know Kane is going to be facehugged and chestbursted, you already know Ash is an android, etc. It's like hearing a joke again after knowing the punchline. You may enjoy the retelling of the joke or the story, but the power of that first experience is gone forever. 3 is a disaster in many ways. Mainly, breaking continuity with that stupid magic egg on the Sulaco, and killing Hicks and Newt in the opening credits, making the first two movies pointless. And then Ripley dies. The opposite of what the first two movies were about: Surviving seemingly impossible odds by being resourceful and brave. 4 is a cartoonish parody of itself, but not a huge middle finger like 3.
Oh, I understand all that about Aliens, but that discussion really isn't part of the scope of this video, which is why it's really just a foot-note here and frankly does not have to be said because it's blatantly obvious. There's a lot more to the original Alien than just the life cycle of the creature, though. Many people look at Alien and don't really think about what the alien actually represents thematically, and that's a general problem with media analysis online. The first film's ending is also extremely bleak. Ripley does survive, but that survival may as well be a death sentence out in the black of space where it is extremely unlikely she'll be rescued. It's not necessarily about surviving against all odds. 3 and 4 fail because they fail to understand the cosmic horror themes of the first film. 3 tries to recapture the original's bleak atmosphere without understanding those inner, thematic workings, and becomes nothing more than a simple creature feature. And I agree about the 4th film entirely, it's a campy mess.
Our alien is called a Xenomorph, the name meaning 'foreign form', because it doesn't have one single form, it accentuates the hostile features of its host with a robust, incredibly energy efficient biomechanical structure with a very hostile ant-like hive behaviour. I always thought it was called the perfect organism not because it could be super sneaky or kill easily, but because it could invade any ecosystem, impregnate the dominant life form on that planet taking all it's traits that have perfectly adapted it to that environment, dialing up it's offensive and defencive abilities and overnight replacing it as the new dominant life form, with it's hive-like mentality making every creature it spawns work together for the sole purpose of domination of that environment. No deliberation, no morality, no fanfare. This was not taken advantage of at all in the movies. We only ever see it use a dog as a host, and even then it looked far too much like the human spawned xenomorph, trading their imagination for recognition. There's a lot of questions that the films raised that I'm sure everyone has their own head canon for. They're obviosuly not naturally evolved creatures, so who made them? What purpose? What is the space Jockey, and Is it a biological componant of the machinary or a species that naturally evolved? Why were they carrying eggs? Where were they going and where from? Why haven't humans seen the space jokeys before.. Or have we.. Where are they now? How many other space fairing intelligent species are out there, do they interact, are they at war, are they long gone and how? How did Wayland Yutani know about the xenomorph? And so many more questions. The biggest problem with these movies (ignoring the poor writing/characters) (Prometheus, Covenant) in my opinion isn't that they tried to answer them, but that the answers they gave lack creativity, they're bland.. Not knowing was more exciting than the answers we were given. The space jockeys? Albino body builders who also created you using black goo Every question you have about the xenomorph? Black goo.. Who created the xenomorph and why? A delusional android that went from experimenting with black goo with the motivation to be a better creator than his own, to wanting to create the perfect weaponized organism to destroy his creators and the engineers (Fuck I hate that they're called that). The black goo was used as a cheap tool by the writer to try to create different flavours of the xeno we know and love that might as bloody well be magic, it was used to give the delusional android its' power and will never be explained, because it can't be... You can't even use your imagination to answer what it is, because after seeing its' inconsistent directional effects, you'll always be wrong. The fact is, it is and always will be whatever the writer wants it to be and do. And that's pathetic. To further that, Romulus just tries to recreate the first movie, they don't just lack creativity, they put a torch to it. While typing this, I was struggling not to type up better ideas/answers I just came up with on the spot lol.
The black strain xenomorphs are Engineers' products as a new form of labor. Ones built so well they rebelled the ultimate workers became renegade. And what do some humans do? They play up the worst elements of the xenomorphs. The failures they see as ideal for their limited view of them as mere weapons.
If I remember, Scott threw out all those questions as uninteresting and not what the fans want. People want bigger issues. Like God. Scott has gone religious on us, see?
The Engineers outdid themselves in creating the optimum slave organism to work in a wide variety of climates including outer space. What the synthetic brains call "perfect" as optimal function in any environment and not even alive in a true organic sense. Think living robots that can reproduce and are dangerous when they turn renegade. They can double as weapons but only less advanced define differences between weapons and tools for other jobs. Unfortunately like their creators the Qin'Qangs (star-heads) did the same with their black protean slaves the Shoggoths. The pilots are not independent beings being literally integrated to the ships they fly. Organic to machine interface.
It's not called that at all. It was only ever a generic term for any alien species. Gorman used the word, to show the audience that he's an educated officer school graduate and not raised from the ranks. The species has never been given a name. And if it had at the time Aliens was written, Gorman simply would not know it. It's only in bullshit non-canon crap like comics and games, where they mistakenly used the word xenomorph for that particular species, and that's because the people writing those don't necessarily know squat about the source material. They watch it once, hear Gorman use that word, and then they're like: "Oh, they're called xenomorphs", even though it's clear from the context in which it's used, that they are not.
@@ashscott6068 The point I think you're missing is that calling it "Xenomorph" is just a corporate-speak version of just calling it "The Alien." Hell, if it really matters that much just say Giger's Alien.
I spent decades thinking that the alien pilot was from a race evolved from an elephantine background! Finding out, years later, what the Engineers actually looked like was one of life's disappointments!
I didn't think of it as an elephant. I assumed it was cybernetic (or biomechanical as Giger said). It seemed to be fused to the chair, like it was grown for a specific function. The tube entering its head looks like some kind of life support system.
you thought it was elephant related because dark horse puked out mostly bad Alien/Aliens comics in the 80's and 90's, and one of their writers created that and it went viral - unfortunately. Anyway, we are meant to think it biomechanical and fused/growing from its chair - we know this because Dallas says this, but also, a space suit of normal means of ANY kind would not fossilize like bone and sometimes flesh does. the entire thing sticking out of the chair is biologic - there is no distinction between living and mechanical at that point. Either a child who doesn't really understand the context, or an adult who is dumber than any child and got to write about it, is why you or anyone thinks of elephants. I guess its subjective - but a society where pilots of ships grow out their chairs or are otherwise fused with their ships, its way bigger nightmare fuel than large humanoid elephants.
The engineers don't even scale the same as the Space Jockey - hate any of the Alien movies with the 'engineers' & the black goo nonsense that can do anything the plot dictates. They don't even sync with the originals.
Yep. I was really enjoying Romulus until they mentioned the goo. If they were going to use black goo, it should have been like William Gibson intended, by having them evolve this viral capability to spread via viral load. Would have been terrifying.
@@storyrant Another thing I hated about Romulus was the Rook/Ash thing. At this point am sick & tired of this digital Weekend at Bernies sh!te, attempting to resurrect dead actors who can no longer have any input or say in their characters performance, what was the point of him being based on Ian Holm anyway, it could've been anyone - except for MEMBERBERRIES! Hell if it was Ridley crowbarring in the goo & engineers stuff, he might as well just get Fassbender back in instead to really gel it to his prequel nonsense.
@@storyrant It's in the scene where the Android is explaining the goo, They only refined it, It's the substance that Facehuggers use to implant the chesturburster (it doesn't implant an embryo, it implants the substance wich develops into a xenomorph with dna from the host)
Space Jockey was terrifying and mysterious, because your mind kept throwing things in. What they were? And from where? And what happened in Prometheus was disecting all that to kitty litter. I have seen Alien like few trillion times. First time as a kid during 80's. And yes, it gave me nightmares.
What is also so sad is that in the first 2 Alien films they made such effort to try to hide the fact that it was a guy in a suit (even if in some moments it was impossible to hide the fact). And, even if we jump from Xeno to Engineer, what did the Spacejockey end up being, in the very plot itself? A guy in a suit! Talk about going against all original movie making logic when even the plot openly shows what they behind the scenes desperately were trying to hide. It shows just how much the mind-set of the actual production of making an Alien film has changed fundamentally.
Go check out CM Kosemen’s breakdown of the derelict and space jockey. It’s really, really good, and will transport both you blokes back to 1979. I promise you.
@@storyrant I never had nightmares though I was 22 at that time. the lunch birth did shock me. Though I recognized the natural analog among certain wasps and what they use them for.
You yourself are asking exactly the questions they started to answer. If they didnt people would be complain that there wasnt any answers. Which is it now?
He's another one of those chameleon actors who physically transforms for every one of his roles. For years, I never made the connection that Bilbo and Ash were the same guy.
My personal beef with the prequels is more than anything that they messed with the origin of the alien. Sure,in later movies we saw that David did not create the Aliens, but Prometheus really made it seem that way. In later installements it was made to be still artificially created by the engineers, which brings me to my main point: What I personally found so terrifying was that the alien was an animal and not a bio weapon. Hear me out on this: For once, you have the unknown factor and you can take some aspects of our own planet's fauna and play around with. Then, imagine what kind of ecosystem out there is so messed up that this kind of creature evolved? What are other parts of that ecosystem? And, if this is just one random species, what other worlds out there hide millions of the same level of terrifying creatures out there? This is what frightened and enamoured me to this series back then. You could argue that a species intelligent enough out there to create such a terrifying bio weapon is way more scary, but honestly, seeing the kind of evil that mankind created with way lesser technology makes a killer organism kind of not stand out.
@@voopu The reason why the bio-weapon angle doesn't bother me has everything to do with my love of Shoggoths in Lovecraftian horror. But I absolutely can see it the other way too. Maybe it would have worked better if they EVOLVED the viral reproductive ability in Gibson's drafts?
I had similar thoguhts. One of the thing i was told when i was younger about humans compared to most other if not all other animals on this planet is that we make the einviroment adapt to us, not the other way round. I liek the idea that the Aliens do somthing similar, turning any world the end up on into a massive hive, consuming and convering all other viable life forms, redcuing the planet to nothing, waiting for another chance to spread across the galaxy.
It's from was too biomechanical, too "perfect" to be natural. Sorry but it's lore is consistent. It was found like cargo in a giant biomech spaceship. Onin aliens the sequel did it start to be more animal like. And "natural"
I liken them to Shoggoths in the Cthulhu Mythos. Though they were created by the Elder Things, they are extremely dangerous and are pretty unpredictable. If Xenos took a page out of some of the more horrific and creative things done with Shoggoths then they would be truly terrifying.
@@mechinate lol, Giler did an excellent job. O'Bannon brought Giger onboard and was working with him since the beginning, he came up with the stowaway alien slasher, the egg with the face hugger and Shusett came up with the chest burster, many talents worked for Alien.
I begged my dad to let me watch Alien as a kid, which he had on VHS. He finally said I could watch the first ten minutes. Even THAT gave me nightmares! The atmosphere was so full of dread, I picked up on it right away. Great memory 😂
I wondered the same thing, and I finally found a reply he made. Apparently in his comic book he has a character named Asher and accidentally kept calling Ash that because of habit. So that is why.
In the series Spartacus there is a character called Asher. He's a lot like Ash in the film. Duplicitous, conniving, and treacherous. Almost pathologically so.
Alien had some very innovative cinematography that always struck me. Like, even in the 90's as a kid, movies from the 70's were like old, grainy, bad acting, just unattractive... Even Star Wars has a definite 70's feel, but Alien really felt more like a late 80's early 90's movie and i loved it.
You are exactly right. Voicing my opinions over and over. Mystery. I saw Alien and Aliens very young and was terrified and fascinated equally. Especially by the Space Jockey. I remember trying to draw it from memory and constantly wondering what it could be. How old was it? Was it the pilot of the ship? Why was it melded to the structure? Did it have legs in there? How did it get face hugged? What I didn't realise at the time was it was that mystery that made it so brilliant. The unknowable. I literally teared up at the engineers when I first saw Prometheus. All wrong and also not to the scale of the Space Jockey. Man that film hurt.
The establishing shot makes this confusing by labeling the whole thing the Nostromo. Someone explained this to me in the original version of this video and it clicked.
Parker tells Lambert not to "get away" so he can "throw himself at the alien" - he wants to use his flamethrower. He only attempts to go mano a mano when it becomes clear Lambert is frozen by fear.
Yeah, instead of the whole Engineer concept, it would've been better if The Derelict had just been an extraterrestrial ship that crash landed on a moon and somehow unearthed a dormant nest of Alien eggs.
Someone commented that the compartment Kane goes down is actually a cave not connected to the ship, but I haven't gone back and confirmed Kane calls it that. Still, Ridley Scott was huffing Ancient Alien juice when he made Prometheus and crapped all over Dan O'Bannon and co's work.
Nah, you're fine. I'm sure it won't be the last comment about this. lol I got a lot of comments about this in the original upload (that got age-gated cause TH-cam). It's kind of a great example of how unreliable human memory is. If you know anything about the "Mandela Effect" conspiracy theory, it all comes from people basically misremembering quotes from movies. For example, "Luke, I am your father" is actually, "No, I am your father." It probably doesn't help that I've got a character named Asher in my Suleniar's Engima book series. lol Now though, I double and triple check names to make sure I'm not misremembering them, cause I can't trust my ADHD ass.
@@randallbesch2424 ehhh, I would say that the Mandela Effect could be a memory problem, except I personally experienced the Apollo 13 movie switch. Started with somebody saying that people misremembered the line "Houston, we've had a problem", thinking they said "Houston, we have a problem". I thought for sure it was always "Houston, we have a problem", but, watching a clip on youtube, it did, indeed, say "Houston, we've had a problem." I had a hard time believing it was always "we've had a problem" but was willing to think, somehow, I had gotten that wrong. Don't know how, but, I guess I did. Well, as it turns out, somebody said it changed BACK to "we have a problem", and, sure enough, it did. I know the ORIGINAL quote from the actual mission was "We've had a problem", but in the clip it was definitely saying "We've had a problem".... until it didn't, instead saying "we have a problem". I know 100% that this happened, for sure. It wasn't a delusion. I will never change my mind on this happening. Same thing happened with "Froot Loops". Somebody said it was now "Fruit Loops", and, again, sure enough, pictures showed it was, again, had always been, "Fruit Loops". Thought, no, I know for sure it was "Froot Loops", but, pictures showed it was "Fruit Loops". Changed back, too. This one could have been faked, I guess, because I never actually went and checked the physical box myself, but I saw a lot of sources showing boxes with the "Fruit Loops" spelling. I'm willing to admit I could be wrong on this one. Same with Flintstones being Flinstones for awhile. Again, could be wrong on this one, because I never actually verified it for myself, but saw multiple sources talking about it. Berenstain bears has never changed from Berenstain, though I do think I remember it being Berenstein. I'm willing to believe I just got that one wrong. At this point, though, I have no idea what is true, lol. I know it sounds stupid and insane, but these things did happen. I have ZERO freaking clue how this stuff happened, or why. I really don't know what to make of it. It's just so weird, but it does prove, to me, that reality is just freaking weird and I have no real idea of what it is. Didn't mean to write a long reply on something stupid like this, but it was a real mind **** when it happened. Feel like I'm wasting time actually posting this, but it sure was, and is, weird.
I really enjoyed this video, thank you for the re-edit, as much of a pain as it must have been. I listened to it at work and i can’t use my youtube account to watch so anything age restricted is a no go for me. Cosmic horror has always gone over my head, both with Aliens and other films series like the terminator, and i like seeing the monster as it were. But I don’t like the idea of the xenomorph species being a bio engineered creature. I’ve always liked the idea of them just being a product of alien evolution, a reminder that nature is impressive and that it hates you. I’ve been pinging some idea round my head for what i would like to have seen in an Alien sequel post Aliens and I would have like to have seen an Alien infestation happen to a large population center, like the planet at the start of Romulus or my preferred setting, a mining ship. Im not talking like the tug boat in Alien, i mean something like the size of the Red Dwarf, a floating city, with the grim hierarchy of life. From lowly bottom fo the ladder maintenance personnel to over worked and over stressed officers, over seeing the break down of asteroids and space debris, balancing the cost of resources, lives included in the calculations, against how much they can harvest and for how long. Humanity crammed into a massive tin can and told to get on with it. I think it would be interesting to see examples of how different groups of survivors deal with a Xenomorph infestation, picked up from a mined asteroid, some sacrificing themselves to save other groups while others do horrible acts for the “greater good” such as opening up other locations to draw the Aliens to “lesser crew” to save their members as they hunt for supplies or escape. I would like to see the idea played out as the human crew number’s drop, the Alien numbers grow and as more of them take over larger parts of the ship, the lights start to go out, air isn’t being cycled as much and the heat increases. Leading to the suffocating conclusion that the Aliens are turning the mining ship into a “hive ship”. Cosmic horror goes over my head, but how awful or noble people can be in a crisis, I think that would be worth showing in an Alien story.
Good video essay! It pretty well sums up things I've been ruminating slowly for years, particularly after seeing Prometheus in theater and being disappointed. However, I wish you had mentioned something about nature of sequels in general, no matter what genre, cosmic horror or not, the whole concept of sequels of themselves are very problematic in itself as W. Adorno wrote. I just wish you had thrown some quotes from his text regarding movie sequels. I don't completely oppose doing sequels as he did, but regardless he had very good points how the American culture particularly cultivates this idea of sequels and the audience is much more comfortable with the sequels exactly because there is less new, less unknown - less art. More you think cinema as an art form more difficult it becomes as the movies suppose to gain audience and make profit. Film studios nowadays seem to allow writers and directors less and less opportunities to take risks that are necessary to produce phenomenal, excellent cinematic art.
"...and they still bleed acid, so you don't want to kill them on a spaceship because IMPLOSION is a bad way to die..." There wouldn't be any " implosion". That would require a HIGHER pressure outside the ship, as opposed to the ( near) perfect vacuum of space. What you would get is decompression, or, much less likely, an explosive decompression. Never an "implosion".
When I first read the Gibson script some 10 years ago, my first thought (after how masterfully it was structured and how good the dialogues were) was: a freaking *virus* now? No, that's too far, it's meddling with the alien we know and love. To me, the virus idea denies the visceral, meaty picture of alien as a predator. Intelligent, adaptable creature, but still one that's based in eggs and slime, and meat, and chitin, and acid, and guts (our guts); virus story, to me, would be a completely different "biohazard" movie with a different atmosphere and kinds of dangers, closer to "Contagion" etc. than the original Alien.
I just discovered your channel. This was an excellent video essay! It'd be interesting if you made a video detailing a hypothetical plot or plots for an Alien sequel that returns to the cosmic horror roots of the franchise.
Thanks for a very insightful and personal video. I agree totally, the first movie will always be the best. The derelict ship and the Space Jockey were the stuff of nightmares and so many questions. Nowadays I often stop the DVD at that point, I don't need the bloody alien lol.
At this point I have given up on the franchise and just stick to the ones I like, ignoring the existence of the explanations for basically everything. I rewatched Pandorum for the first time since 2009 and it was a breath of fresh air, not least because all of my questions from 15 years ago haven't been ruined by prequels/ sequels.
Pandorum's on my list for a rewatch, since I haven't seen it since it came out. :) But, I agree for the most part. Part of me is always going to want that "dream Alien movie" that exists in my head, but we can ultimately learn important lessons from the failure of these films and create better stories in the future.
I always use the steam engine as my example of resurrected technology. The steam engine was invented in the Roman era, but didn't see commercial use until some madman said, "lets make it 100x bigger and strap it to some iron wheels. How do we steer it? More iron!"
With regards the travel time, is it 10 months from their perspective, or from Earth's? From your perspective, you can get anywhere in the universe near instantly if you go fast enough. But if it takes a hundred years from Earth's perspective then I guess it probably wouldn't even be worth the trip.
Personally I never got past how the timeline was fucked over. With it went the main reason people have loved the original movies(s) for forty years. Alien = fossilized space jockey having been killed by a chest burster = both the space jockey and the xenomorphs are at least 20 000 years old, according to Wikipedia's entry on fossils. That's why Tom Skeritt delivered this line as Dallas; to let us know that they were ancient. I miss when people knew how to tell stories and make good movies... Prometheus&Covenant = the xenomorphs were created by David the Paranoid Android using maguffin goo 17 years before the events of Alien because he hated people. He also used the same goo to assassinate all the engineers, travelled back in time, presumably using the time machine he also evidently made, in order to carve ancient drawings of xenomorphs in Antarctic pyramids including a helpful map to his location in a Scottish cave, both to be unearthed at a later date by intrepid, gun toting women, before finally (?) setting up a clever, time traveling trap on LV426 for a mining ship he knew would pass that way 17 and 20 000+ years later. Oh and also making a fake fossil of an engineer having been killed by a chest bursting xenomorph. Gotta use good props, you know! Those future space miners we're baiting over here won't be fooled easily, probably! So this door for ancient alien mystery, or this shiny new bullshit door we just made over here for some unconvincing theology, vapid transhumanist lectures, extra idiotic horror flesh and basically Blade Runner in Space without the intelligence of either Alien or Blade Runner. Now choose...
Great video and breakdown. I agree with pretty much everything except for the xenomorphs in Aliens. I find them far more terrifying in the sequel than the original and frankly, one of the things about Alien that struggle with is how it looks on some shots as it comes across as a bit silly to me.
The only thing I would debate from the opening 90 seconds is the idea that every horror franchise has diminishing returns. NoES3 is the best Freddy movie And yes, I know you were just generalizing. And we could compile a list of decent horror sequels if we tried. But, ya know. The internet. Opinions and engagement and whatnot
Yeah, it's not true across the board. Evil Dead is a great example, as while I don't enjoy the reboots as much there probably isn't a bad film in the series.
The whole engineer origin was really dumb and shouldn’t have been tied to the Space Jockey (Prometheus could have been a separate franchise not tied to Alien). Before that movie came out, it had always made sense to me that the Space Jockey was infected with the Queen we see in Aliens and she laid all the eggs on the ship. It didn’t need to be more complicated than that and I didn’t need to know any more about this mysterious pilot.
It’s just occurred to me that if the trope of overcoming space travel for humans is hyper/cryosleep, then surely that technology could be used for anyone on the base planet to which said travellers plan to return. If synchronised, this would negate variable ageing rates and avoid subsequent drama and conflict of missing out on familial milestones, such as birthdays, graduations weddings or extinctions. Or is that pure science fiction ? Or is extended mortality the preserve of cosmic hauliers alone? Just saying
That’s a good idea! Another idea I caught from an Alien/The Thing-esque 80’s anime OVA called Lily Cat is the concept of criminals going into hibernation for years or decades on the downlow to avoid persecution & wake up later after they’ve been presumed dead or missing. And the OVA goes nowhere with that idea. That and your idea are really clever ways of thinking of that kind of technology & how people could & would use/abuse it in that universe.
In the alien universe, mammalian beings not in hypersleep pods when undergoing ftl drive tend to develop psychotic tendencies. And you could argue how close daivid is to humans mentally this is why he too could be changed during the travel to lv-223
Would have loved to have actually SEEN that in one of the films. Imagine if the reason why going to FTL speeds does this is because it forces humans to bear witness to the cosmic terror hidden behind the veil of the universe, something akin to Yog Sothoth.
@@storyrant it has something to do with the type of ftl jump drive mechanics and the way that the energy waves and time dilation affects the brain. I only learned the why of the hyper sleep pods due to also being a ttrpg buff and reading the alien rpg books recently put out
@@storyrant I guess you could say that there may be several movies intertwined, blade runner is tied to the aliens universe, why not others which have developed a kind of cosmic horror to their ftl drives.
@@storyrant yeah I downloaded it because I got nobody to play with but it has a lot of information (sort of ignoring 3, and resurrection). They are releasing a 2nd edition soon I have heard
at 36 minutes getting ready to be angry for comments against resurrection EDIT Angry I think AR purposely set itself in the future because the intention was to have a different tone. The acting, the scientists being goofy, are an element of French film making, and Jean PJ is a master of the black comedy. City of Lost Children and the Delicatessen are the ancestors of the AR, as much as Alien and Aliens. The film is not trying to be a next step, partly as Alien 3 tone was so different there was nothing to step from. Visually the film is beautiful, with Marc Caro doing a great job as he did with the previous JPJ. This is in fact, very Cyber Punk and intentionally ... it is a stylistic film focusing on Marc Caro's visuals and supported by Joss Wheedon (I think reimagined) script (banter, fast fire dialoguie and humour which was his trademark), flavoured with Jean PP use of comedy from the bleakest of moments. I think if you judge it as part of an Alien Quadrilogy (is that a word) it misses its raison d'etre... its something new, based in the world but not a continuation of the story ... Personally I agree with some of the massive flaws, the Alien Child (which seems to be Jean PJ looking at motherhood, with Ripley being maternal to it and Call.. this seems to be a clear theme) is odd, and doesn't make sense (although it doesn't need to have evolutionary advantage, its a mistake because the Queen has Ripley's human DNA in a way its not meant to.. uncontrolled, unexpected, as a result of the cloning. The hybrid for me was Ripley's desire for her daughter/newt was transferred to the queen, who desired/adapted to have a child. This is why it is shocking that the child turns on the mother... recognizing because of the face that Ripley is the mother - and maybe scent - leaving the Queen abandoned). One point of Joss Wheedon, whilst he did a GREAT job of firefly and Serenity ... you can read it as an amalgam of Alien Resurrection and Starhunter Redox.. and a Western show like Wagon Train
@@GuineaPigExpress Right, Aliens is goofy because of one line but Resurrection gets a pass, even though the whole movie is cringe. What a brilliant argument, you've convinced me. Go watch your french slop buddy. You and Resurrection deserve each other haha
when you speaking of alien being cyberpunk i was surprised you didn't mention it has been confirmed that Alien and Bladerunner both exist within the same universe.
I think the path back to a more cosmic horror flavored take on Alien was completely closed by Covenant, but it's been closing steadily even from Aliens, especially by the novels and comics, despite their non-canon status. We know way too much about them now, and have seen them stand in as generic sci-fi monsters too many times. I don't think even a full reboot would help at this point with how Covenant has colored our perception of the Xenomorph as having somewhat mundane origins.
19:16 Given how Del Toro 'adapted' Shadows Over Innsmouth to make Shape of Water, it might actually be a good thing because it's clear he doesn't grasp the innate horror aspects of H.P. Lovecraft's work (cosmic or not).
The black goo, makes only sense IF the facehuggers produce it in small amounts and this is what allows the Xenomorphs to adapt to any host. The engineers saw the potential in it and used as base for they tech which is based on gen editing, thats why everything is such a giger like organic design, because it is ogranic machines. Now Wayland-Yutani wants this stuff, because unlimited gen-editing capabilities. This makes sense. You can even tie humans and engineers together, because they created us to be the perfect host for the Xenomorph. EVERYTHING ELSE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. David creating aliens, this strange mutations. David killing everything on the planet. The stupidity of the people and Romolus ooooh boy, dont get me started.
the funny thing is that after the first 2 alien and first 2 predator movies the lore is largely contained in the comic books which ironically the new movie gets some of it's story from along with the first avp movie in the arctic
Yeah, I have a character named Asher and got confused. The names in Alien aren't given a whole lot of importance, and are often a little confusing because of the focus on surnames.
I disagree, names are important. Ash is the name of the android, while Asher is not. If you want to gain credibility, getting the names of the characters is important. Mistakes happen though I guess.
Disagree on Alien Resurrection (but totally agree on Alien 3)- it is a visual masterpieces, but the lack of action scenes, the too soon death of the best secondary characters, downscaled settings (lacks the grandeur of the first 2) and lacks the Whedon original last 4th act (but without the “winged” alien). Other than that- an amazing commercial Alien. Because art-house doesn’t have to be the staple of the better movies.
What is creepier than Ash sitting next to Ripley is how the hell he got into the room without her or us noticing. In the womb room ,the door closes right after you enter and sit. Now maybe she was really zoned out into the Exchange with Mother..Even the air changes like a vacuum when the door opens like pressure..Its bothered me how ,but not nearly as much as its effectiveness as a scary moment..Ash is a Sidler. I wonder if she gave Bishop a case of Tic Tacs 57 yrs. later to assure not getting creeped up on? 🤔 hmm
@@storyrant well yeah, Scott is a self absorbed egotistical asshole who threatens, belittles and bullies people so he can get his way even when he is clearly wrong and trying to do way too many things without having clear definitions of what those things are.
Yeah, the silver lining though is that we can learn from these mistakes to make better stories, especially in the fairly unexplored Cthulhupunk genre (cyberpunk + cosmic horror). There's so much potential for great stories that can fill the void.
Have you read the book trilogy Aliens: Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum and Female War? They're really good and, in my opinion, capture the essence of the first two movies well.
I may add those to my TBR. I've been trying to figure out what books from the extended canon to read and potentially do videos on them, but I have zero clue where to start.
Imo there is a single scene that catapults Alien into god tier quality, and that's the scene where Dallas and Kane are assessing the planet the signal is coming from, and Lambert is close by smoking. At this point a careful observer would of picked up on the subtle signifiers in regards to Lambert's personal, emotional feelings towards Kane and Dallas. We've seen her responses when they both speak, seen her glances and reactions, we should have a clear idea that there is attraction to both men, but most importantly that the attraction is different. Again imo it feels like a sexual attraction to Kane, and a leadership attraction to Dallas. There is a deep respect there for Dallas, a rigid sense of attention when he speaks or 'leads' a scene, where as there is more of a shy, looking but not looking type behavior towards Kane. So back to the scene, we have Kane and Dallas poring over the details coming through, exited and deep into their curiosity, we have Kane's sedated but obvious exuberance and Dallas' more clinical, measured response. But in the background we see Lambert smoking, clearly agitated, all nervous tension. I implore people to watch her carefully, watch her responses to each of them speaking. She jumps when Kane exerts excitedly that he'll volunteer for a ground reconnaissance, in what looks to be fear for someone she cares about. When very soon after Dallas states that Lambert will join them we don't see relief that she will be with this person she cares about, we see an introspective, deep, very deep fear. This performance imo is not just on the level of Pacinos famous scene in The Godfather, where Michael finds within himself the ability to do the most vile of things, I think this performance is better. Also watching Ash, and only Ash, in every scene he is in, is a literal acting lesson. Edit- also I'm not convinced that The Big Chap in Alien has acid for blood, and am personally one of the small contingent of fans that love Aliens, but believe that Cameron completely ruined the Alien as an organism. The facehugger having acid as a protection system makes sense, but there doesn't seem to be much biological sense for the bigger, evolved xenomorph to use acid as a protection system. But that's been argued to death but people far more knowledgeable and dedicated than me lol.
Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head here. The performances in Alien are seriously next level. Everything from Ash's creepy ass leers, Lambert's relationships with the other crew members, Brett and Parker's relationship, it's all so wonderfully subtle. It seriously needs to be talked about more.
My theory is the xenomorph realized it was isolated due to how Queens communicate with drones so it became Big Chap. cocooning people was a fruitless instinct.
Without queens the xenos can still create eggs but slowly. The creation of queens added to the disaster of the black strain Xenomorphs when the first queens were created with their royal jelly infusions.
I hate when people complain about lambert, like, how would you react if that 2 and a half meters thing apears and you know it will kill you. Even lets bring the situation to eath, imagine the movie is about a group of people traped in a zoo with a hungry tiger and then you see the tiger is there in the same room, looking at you. there is NO WAY you can act smartly and no way you just dont get paralized by fear because you know there is nothing you can do to survive.
Having had to handle critical situations like saving my grandfather's life and patroling the house for intruders, I have to say I am please finding out how I handle horrible situations. Typically better than mundane sitatuons tbh. So yes, it is frustrating for me to watch them make such stupid decisions. 🤣 But what frustrated me so much about that scene wasn't Lambert's psychotic breakdown. She clearly wasn't able to hold it together in the face of the monster that ripped apart her crewmates, and that's something that actually happens to people. Probably a lot more people when faced with a super predator with acid blood that grew to full size in like 12 hours. No, what frustrated me about it was Parker not using the flamethrower. Yes, it probably would've killed Lambert, and that's probably why he didn't do it. But in not frying the alien and Lambert, he doomed not just her but himself as well, and probably Ripley from his perspective. Now, I'm a bit of a special case. I have diagnosed OCD, with a death fixation/phobia. Placed in that position I would've fried Lambert in a heartbeat, and I say that with confidence. My brain would literally consider it the only option, giving her a second to escape but as soon as she refused there would be fire. I GET why he didn't do it. But it's still super frustrating. Which tbf may have been the point.
Asher? Really? 😏 Someone put into a single video what I've been saying for years. Thank you. The genius (for me) of Terminator 2, & Aliens is uncovering more of that "iceberg" & NOT remaking the same movie. They felt fresh, but at the same time they still follow the same formula: Both Alien & Aliens feature: a mystery that lures them to a dangerous planet, Ripley's being ignored, the crew encountering a hostile alien species that decimates their numbers, there's corporate betrayal, tension through atmospheric claustrophobia in confined spaces, a dramatic escape from an impending explosion, a fake-out ending with the alien returning when thought defeated, Ripley ejecting the big alien into space through an airlock. T1 & T2 revolve around a Terminator sent to kill a key target, an underdog sent to protect them, intense chases, relentless pursuit, and climactic battles in industrial settings. Both films feature a fake-out moment where the Terminator seems defeated but returns for one final attack, & both end with the destruction of the villainous Terminator, conviently with the one thing around that can destroy it. Another example is Nightmare 3: The Dream Warriors where they're trying to use dream powers to defeat Freddy. Same tropes, same rules, but they feel very different. Like poetry, they rhyme. Different, but same same. People want the sequels to be more like the original. But then, it's just remaking the same movie. This is how you get Jaws 2, Predator 2, Ghostbusters 2, Hangover 2, Home Alone 2, Taken 2, etc. They maybe fine but they're never as good as the original. And writers of sequels. If we're attached to characters don't fucking kill them off in the first moments of your sequel! Everybody who survived Aliens dies. It was a slap to the face. 30+ years later I am still mad about it. Girl too old? Recast. It's a big part why I can't stand Alien³. Terminator: Dark Fate unceremoniously killed John Connor just to replace him with another John Connor (this time with boobs). Alien³ killed everything I loved about Aliens. Alien Resurrection introduced a lamer alien. Prometheus turned the mysterious Space Jockeys into albino Gym bros & suggested they're mad because we killed their space Jesus. Covenant made the Alien, not an alien. Our creation made them. They're just our grandkids now. Sorry for the novel. They just irritate the hell out of me.
Ridley Scott completely ruined the mystique and enigma of the “space jockey” figure in Prometheus by reducing it to a mere unconventional space suit, when in reality it was suppose to be fused with the ship serving as its brain, contrasting how the humans had to sit in that central control room with all the lights and separate from the ship. The face hugger escapes and impregnates the biomechanic being this creating a new entity that almost shares a resemblance with the shop itself. Much much deeper than just a dumb space suit.
After watching Romulus, I have a new found respect for Resurrection, but I always liked Alien 3, I felt it was a really good send off for the franchise, the bleakness fits the Alien tone and you get some good movie quotes, Alien 3 tries to be about the characters redeeming themselves, it comes across more of a Jacob's Ladder scenario where Ripley is in purgatory. The main theme for Alien 3 being - Sacrifice. In the Novelization for Alien Resurrection the Aliens are suffering from 'Individuality', which from the perspective of the Aliens confuses the F out them, it is also why the Alien would not 'Sacrifice itself for the good of the Hive', I think they are meant to be talking but it does come across as barking. I also will always suggest Out of the Shadows, River of Pain and Sea of Sorrows to any Alien fan.
Implosion isn't such a bad way to go since it's pretty instantaneous. However spaceships don't implode since that would require external pressure and in a vacuum there is no external pressure.
Here's the thing about Prometheus and Covenant. Neither is even close to being cosmic horror. Prometheus is all about faith and/or the search for the holy grail, or God, or to touch God, or renew their faith, choose one or all of those options because it doesn't really matter. We find out that the Space Jockeys, this race of strange unknowable aliens, were actually these tall pale bald human aliens with funky suits now dubbed "the Engineers". That all life on Earth was just a failed experiment by the extra-terrestrial body builders. And that the creatures known as xenomorphs by the public, were created entirely by a sociopathic robot with daddy issues. That last part really strips the fear of the alien from you when you realize it's just the product of an angry child trying to get back at his father.
Who the hell is Asher?! You claim to have seen alien a number of times. Yet you don't know the name of the android who is referred to in the movie as ash.
I think the people who love Alien 3 (best viewed with the Special Edition, not the Assembly Cut) understand implicitly or explicitly that Alien 1, 2 and 3 are not about the "alien," but about Ripley and her fight against a nihilistic universe. Yes, I know "alien" is in the title, but "Gone with the Wind" wasn't about meteroology. I simulataneously loved and hated Prometheus when it came out. Fan-edits lean me much further to loving it. IMO, Alien is a stand-alone film. Regardless of how good Aliens and Alien 3 are (and I think they're great), I think they lessen Alien's stature by continuing a story that doesn't need to be continued by commoditizing it. For people who say that Alien doesn't need prequels (or sequels) on principle, I understand. So, don't watch them. I don't me that facetiously, as I considered it myself. Prometheus and Covenent taught me that Ridley Scott is a great director who has no clue how to make characters the audiences will be sympathetic to, whether they are likeable or not. If it's not in the script (as it was in Alien), Scott certainly won't get it put there or shape the characters in direction or editing.
The original Alien was a very compact, efficient package. You got "details" about the alien the way the crew did. Much was unexplained but there was no sense of writers painting themselves into corners and losing the through-line. And the way the alien attacked and killed was such a PERFECT tweaking of deep-seated psychological fears, particularly those of white men in 1970s America, as brilliantly explained by Novum on here. One of the deleted scenes showed the abducted members of the crew being turned into alien eggs; I heard it was deleted for pacing, but it also indicates that Scott et al knew not to get too bogged down with those kinds of details. We didn't need to know where the eggs came from. AlienS riffed on that premise for purposes of making a dumb 80s action movie. Audiences knew the basic "mechanics" of how the alien attacked, so the writers just relied on LOTS of aliens and finally a great big alien queen to provide the kick. But all the psychological horror was already drained out of it. When you first see a chest-bursting with the "kill me" chick, it's like they're trotting out a greatest hit because that's what you came to see. You can never relive the dinner scene. After that, you just had different creative teams putting different spins on the same concepts and premises, trying to find new ways to gross and freak us out with new "abominations that shouldn't be" - but that only reinforces that familiarity breeds contempt even of the horrific, and that merely adding tendrils and bulk and gore to a known monster is like adding whips and handcuffs in the bedroom when you're really just tired of your partner.
For decades we called this movie space Truckers in space stuck in a haunted house. Yet here we are, seeing the film Alien fall underneath the Magnificent Banner and ever stretching definition of cosmic horror. Frankly I think it is an overused and Bloated definition. We are to the point where anything extraterrestrial with a hint of Mystery is shoved underneath this banner. I guess that's my long-winded version of, no you're wrong. It's A Haunted House movie in space.
And another thing; yes people make poor decisions when they are scared. The problem in this specific case is that the Nostromo crew doesn't do stupid things before there is a reason to be scared. Only then do judgements collapse, particularly in the case of Lambert, but also I'd argue Dallas and Brett. The only exception to this is Kane, who gets rewarded for his preemptive stupidity/carelessness by dying first. They made several scenes to try and explain this stupidity on his part in an elegant way, and the book has an entire chapter devoted to explaining it. The answer there was that he was a glory hunter and greedy at the same time. Meanwhile the clownish stupidity in Prometheus and Covernant starts immediately and never stops, even when there is nothing to fear. At least as far as they know. The characters start out as smug, blithering idiots, and they end up as smug, blithering idiots. This is not, you know, good character development. Go ask anyone at all who knows a thing about astronomy and how even hypothetical space travel works how possible it is, for example, to reroute a space colonization ship midway because you hear a John Denver song on the radio. Of course, unless you for some reason brought along twice as much fuel as you'd need for your original mission it isn't even remotely possible, yet this is the first action taken by the space idiots. You'd think they'd know this was impossible and so would be disinclined to try it and thereby certainly getting themselves stranded in outer space due to running out of fuel. And famously it only went downhill from there... The stupidity is well-placed and understandable in Alien, except in the case of Kane. it is ubiquitous, layered and complex in Prometheus and particularly Covernant, and stupidity is all there is. Because one story was written by intelligent people, the other no doubt by a committee of morons passing yellow post-it notes to each other.
Found you on bio and goegraphics.. work on your lighting please.. the contrast between the "movie theatre" and jumping to you in your overlit room kind of ruins the video.. great speculation though
@randallbesch2424, It's one of my favorite movies. It's not really important, but kinda matters to me. If you're gonna talk about something critically, ya kinda, sorta should get the basics right.
I'm glad you enjoy it. I just couldn't get past the issues with it in my last re-watch. That could change again in the future, you never know, but for now, I dislike it.
Lovecrafts quote explains why I never felt as positive about ‘Aliens”as I did the original. Been there, done that, let’s shoot them. The prequels’ Engineers were a terrible disappointment as they represented a major element that helped create the initial dread we felt during the original but then ignored their actual appearance. The message in the original is clear. There is a huge universe out there full of the unknown and the Zeno in all of its forms was just one very nasty part of it. So the engineers ended up being portrayed as pale body builders who could kill old men and chase women. Whoop de doo. Where’d the mystery go?
I disagree with some of the arguments put forward. The Xeno isn't a metaphor for the megacorp eating the crew alive it's clearly meant as the magicians apprentice technology that was let out and can't be put back in. The horror we are witnessing is that the mega corp is insane enough to try to acquire that "technology" with zero regard for the crew. This theme was made more clear and refined in Prometheus where the "technology" is likened to the fire of the gods
Notice I said, "You could make the argument" before saying that. Because in media analysis, any take you can justify soundly is valid. And from the cyberpunk theme lens, that take does work. It's almost as if this is all fiction and a lot of it largely comes down to individual interpretation? I'm not saying that's a take I'd die on a hill promoting. You are right about the mega corp being insane enough to acquire the Xeno, but this is something that is incredibly obvious and there are several mythological parallels, like Pandora's Box. But this video is primarily about the cosmic horror themes behind the movie.
I read a study that suggested that the advantage of tape as a storage medium is that it a) has fewer moving parts, so knocking a tape drive off a desk won't ruin all of the data inside the drive (which has happened to me before), b) lasts longer than HDD tech and also doesn't suffer the same kind of data quality deterioration, and c) they have generally higher temperature tolerances than HDDs. Mind you, unless there's a massive breakthrough in tape technology writing speeds and storage capacity, then it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see it become a popular media.
I'm 16 mins into this video and the only thing related to the title was one small part when he talked about horror being more effective when you don't explain things. The rest is just a review of Alien. This video needed more focus, we all know Alien, we all know why it's great.
Not everyone knows why the film is great. Especially with it being as old as it is, there are probably plenty of people out there who have not seen it and I like to have a base of comparison when talking about the other films so I can call back to specific points I make about individual scenes or acts of the film. Or did you miss the whole section on the Space Jockey sequence and its similarities to At the Mountains of Madness? Because I certainly reference this tone and mood later on when discussing Prometheus.
Since TH-cam age-gated this video, I've since re-edited it to ensure it won't get flagged. Please drop your likes and share this video around! :)
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I don't think you understood Aliens, though. It wasn't about the alien(s). We had already seen the alien's life cycle, etc. None of that was going to be a surprise anymore after Alien. Aliens is about Ripley, her trauma, facing her nightmares, and having a second chance to be a mother after losing her daughter. That's the genius of Cameron, taking the story in a very different direction without disrespecting or contracting the original. Trying to replicate Alien would have been a disaster.
In fact, you can't even rewatch Alien and replicate the experience, because the mystery is gone. You already know Kane is going to be facehugged and chestbursted, you already know Ash is an android, etc. It's like hearing a joke again after knowing the punchline. You may enjoy the retelling of the joke or the story, but the power of that first experience is gone forever.
3 is a disaster in many ways. Mainly, breaking continuity with that stupid magic egg on the Sulaco, and killing Hicks and Newt in the opening credits, making the first two movies pointless. And then Ripley dies. The opposite of what the first two movies were about: Surviving seemingly impossible odds by being resourceful and brave.
4 is a cartoonish parody of itself, but not a huge middle finger like 3.
Oh, I understand all that about Aliens, but that discussion really isn't part of the scope of this video, which is why it's really just a foot-note here and frankly does not have to be said because it's blatantly obvious. There's a lot more to the original Alien than just the life cycle of the creature, though. Many people look at Alien and don't really think about what the alien actually represents thematically, and that's a general problem with media analysis online. The first film's ending is also extremely bleak. Ripley does survive, but that survival may as well be a death sentence out in the black of space where it is extremely unlikely she'll be rescued. It's not necessarily about surviving against all odds. 3 and 4 fail because they fail to understand the cosmic horror themes of the first film. 3 tries to recapture the original's bleak atmosphere without understanding those inner, thematic workings, and becomes nothing more than a simple creature feature. And I agree about the 4th film entirely, it's a campy mess.
Our alien is called a Xenomorph, the name meaning 'foreign form', because it doesn't have one single form, it accentuates the hostile features of its host with a robust, incredibly energy efficient biomechanical structure with a very hostile ant-like hive behaviour.
I always thought it was called the perfect organism not because it could be super sneaky or kill easily, but because it could invade any ecosystem, impregnate the dominant life form on that planet taking all it's traits that have perfectly adapted it to that environment, dialing up it's offensive and defencive abilities and overnight replacing it as the new dominant life form, with it's hive-like mentality making every creature it spawns work together for the sole purpose of domination of that environment. No deliberation, no morality, no fanfare.
This was not taken advantage of at all in the movies. We only ever see it use a dog as a host, and even then it looked far too much like the human spawned xenomorph, trading their imagination for recognition.
There's a lot of questions that the films raised that I'm sure everyone has their own head canon for.
They're obviosuly not naturally evolved creatures, so who made them?
What purpose?
What is the space Jockey, and Is it a biological componant of the machinary or a species that naturally evolved?
Why were they carrying eggs?
Where were they going and where from?
Why haven't humans seen the space jokeys before.. Or have we.. Where are they now?
How many other space fairing intelligent species are out there, do they interact, are they at war, are they long gone and how?
How did Wayland Yutani know about the xenomorph?
And so many more questions. The biggest problem with these movies (ignoring the poor writing/characters) (Prometheus, Covenant) in my opinion isn't that they tried to answer them, but that the answers they gave lack creativity, they're bland.. Not knowing was more exciting than the answers we were given.
The space jockeys? Albino body builders who also created you using black goo
Every question you have about the xenomorph? Black goo..
Who created the xenomorph and why? A delusional android that went from experimenting with black goo with the motivation to be a better creator than his own, to wanting to create the perfect weaponized organism to destroy his creators and the engineers (Fuck I hate that they're called that).
The black goo was used as a cheap tool by the writer to try to create different flavours of the xeno we know and love that might as bloody well be magic, it was used to give the delusional android its' power and will never be explained, because it can't be... You can't even use your imagination to answer what it is, because after seeing its' inconsistent directional effects, you'll always be wrong. The fact is, it is and always will be whatever the writer wants it to be and do. And that's pathetic.
To further that, Romulus just tries to recreate the first movie, they don't just lack creativity, they put a torch to it.
While typing this, I was struggling not to type up better ideas/answers I just came up with on the spot lol.
The black strain xenomorphs are Engineers' products as a new form of labor. Ones built so well they rebelled the ultimate workers became renegade. And what do some humans do? They play up the worst elements of the xenomorphs. The failures they see as ideal for their limited view of them as mere weapons.
If I remember, Scott threw out all those questions as uninteresting and not what the fans want. People want bigger issues. Like God. Scott has gone religious on us, see?
The Engineers outdid themselves in creating the optimum slave organism to work in a wide variety of climates including outer space. What the synthetic brains call "perfect" as optimal function in any environment and not even alive in a true organic sense. Think living robots that can reproduce and are dangerous when they turn renegade. They can double as weapons but only less advanced define differences between weapons and tools for other jobs. Unfortunately like their creators the Qin'Qangs (star-heads) did the same with their black protean slaves the Shoggoths. The pilots are not independent beings being literally integrated to the ships they fly. Organic to machine interface.
It's not called that at all. It was only ever a generic term for any alien species. Gorman used the word, to show the audience that he's an educated officer school graduate and not raised from the ranks. The species has never been given a name. And if it had at the time Aliens was written, Gorman simply would not know it. It's only in bullshit non-canon crap like comics and games, where they mistakenly used the word xenomorph for that particular species, and that's because the people writing those don't necessarily know squat about the source material. They watch it once, hear Gorman use that word, and then they're like: "Oh, they're called xenomorphs", even though it's clear from the context in which it's used, that they are not.
@@ashscott6068 The point I think you're missing is that calling it "Xenomorph" is just a corporate-speak version of just calling it "The Alien." Hell, if it really matters that much just say Giger's Alien.
I spent decades thinking that the alien pilot was from a race evolved from an elephantine background! Finding out, years later, what the Engineers actually looked like was one of life's disappointments!
I didn't think of it as an elephant. I assumed it was cybernetic (or biomechanical as Giger said). It seemed to be fused to the chair, like it was grown for a specific function. The tube entering its head looks like some kind of life support system.
Can't say for sure without DNA test
you thought it was elephant related because dark horse puked out mostly bad Alien/Aliens comics in the 80's and 90's, and one of their writers created that and it went viral - unfortunately. Anyway, we are meant to think it biomechanical and fused/growing from its chair - we know this because Dallas says this, but also, a space suit of normal means of ANY kind would not fossilize like bone and sometimes flesh does. the entire thing sticking out of the chair is biologic - there is no distinction between living and mechanical at that point.
Either a child who doesn't really understand the context, or an adult who is dumber than any child and got to write about it, is why you or anyone thinks of elephants.
I guess its subjective - but a society where pilots of ships grow out their chairs or are otherwise fused with their ships, its way bigger nightmare fuel than large humanoid elephants.
They actually look that way in the Dark Horse comics which are way better than these shite movies
The engineers don't even scale the same as the Space Jockey - hate any of the Alien movies with the 'engineers' & the black goo nonsense that can do anything the plot dictates. They don't even sync with the originals.
Yep. I was really enjoying Romulus until they mentioned the goo. If they were going to use black goo, it should have been like William Gibson intended, by having them evolve this viral capability to spread via viral load. Would have been terrifying.
@@storyrant Another thing I hated about Romulus was the Rook/Ash thing. At this point am sick & tired of this digital Weekend at Bernies sh!te, attempting to resurrect dead actors who can no longer have any input or say in their characters performance, what was the point of him being based on Ian Holm anyway, it could've been anyone - except for MEMBERBERRIES! Hell if it was Ridley crowbarring in the goo & engineers stuff, he might as well just get Fassbender back in instead to really gel it to his prequel nonsense.
@@storyrant Romulus at least fixed the Goo and Xenomorph origin
The engineers didn't make it, They just harvested it from the Xenomorph
I've only seen Romulus once. I may have missed that part. I'm probably going to revisit the movie when it comes out on Blue Ray.
@@storyrant It's in the scene where the Android is explaining the goo, They only refined it, It's the substance that Facehuggers use to implant the chesturburster (it doesn't implant an embryo, it implants the substance wich develops into a xenomorph with dna from the host)
this is a problem with sequels that come out decades later. a lot of the original collaborative talent have left the industry or life itself.
Space Jockey was terrifying and mysterious, because your mind kept throwing things in. What they were? And from where?
And what happened in Prometheus was disecting all that to kitty litter.
I have seen Alien like few trillion times. First time as a kid during 80's. And yes, it gave me nightmares.
YES!
What is also so sad is that in the first 2 Alien films they made such effort to try to hide the fact that it was a guy in a suit (even if in some moments it was impossible to hide the fact). And, even if we jump from Xeno to Engineer, what did the Spacejockey end up being, in the very plot itself? A guy in a suit! Talk about going against all original movie making logic when even the plot openly shows what they behind the scenes desperately were trying to hide. It shows just how much the mind-set of the actual production of making an Alien film has changed fundamentally.
Go check out CM Kosemen’s breakdown of the derelict and space jockey. It’s really, really good, and will transport both you blokes back to 1979. I promise you.
@@storyrant I never had nightmares though I was 22 at that time. the lunch birth did shock me. Though I recognized the natural analog among certain wasps and what they use them for.
You yourself are asking exactly the questions they started to answer. If they didnt people would be complain that there wasnt any answers. Which is it now?
Side note: I could never enjoy Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins bc he will forever be seared into my head as Ashe 😅
He's another one of those chameleon actors who physically transforms for every one of his roles. For years, I never made the connection that Bilbo and Ash were the same guy.
My personal beef with the prequels is more than anything that they messed with the origin of the alien. Sure,in later movies we saw that David did not create the Aliens, but Prometheus really made it seem that way. In later installements it was made to be still artificially created by the engineers, which brings me to my main point:
What I personally found so terrifying was that the alien was an animal and not a bio weapon. Hear me out on this: For once, you have the unknown factor and you can take some aspects of our own planet's fauna and play around with. Then, imagine what kind of ecosystem out there is so messed up that this kind of creature evolved? What are other parts of that ecosystem? And, if this is just one random species, what other worlds out there hide millions of the same level of terrifying creatures out there? This is what frightened and enamoured me to this series back then.
You could argue that a species intelligent enough out there to create such a terrifying bio weapon is way more scary, but honestly, seeing the kind of evil that mankind created with way lesser technology makes a killer organism kind of not stand out.
@@voopu The reason why the bio-weapon angle doesn't bother me has everything to do with my love of Shoggoths in Lovecraftian horror. But I absolutely can see it the other way too. Maybe it would have worked better if they EVOLVED the viral reproductive ability in Gibson's drafts?
Well done !
I had similar thoguhts. One of the thing i was told when i was younger about humans compared to most other if not all other animals on this planet is that we make the einviroment adapt to us, not the other way round. I liek the idea that the Aliens do somthing similar, turning any world the end up on into a massive hive, consuming and convering all other viable life forms, redcuing the planet to nothing, waiting for another chance to spread across the galaxy.
It's from was too biomechanical, too "perfect" to be natural. Sorry but it's lore is consistent. It was found like cargo in a giant biomech spaceship. Onin aliens the sequel did it start to be more animal like. And "natural"
I liken them to Shoggoths in the Cthulhu Mythos. Though they were created by the Elder Things, they are extremely dangerous and are pretty unpredictable. If Xenos took a page out of some of the more horrific and creative things done with Shoggoths then they would be truly terrifying.
Why there are still ridley scott fanboys who defend Covenant is something ill never understand
I'm guessing they've never heard of Dan O'Bannon or HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness? It's very strange.
It used lots of big words and philosophy mumbo jumbo so they feel smart
And yet failed to do any lick of research into the science of things. "Half a billion miles." lmfao
I'd say David Gyler had more of an impact on the world we see in Alien and Aliens than Dan O'Bannon.
@@mechinate lol, Giler did an excellent job. O'Bannon brought Giger onboard and was working with him since the beginning, he came up with the stowaway alien slasher, the egg with the face hugger and Shusett came up with the chest burster, many talents worked for Alien.
I begged my dad to let me watch Alien as a kid, which he had on VHS. He finally said I could watch the first ten minutes. Even THAT gave me nightmares! The atmosphere was so full of dread, I picked up on it right away. Great memory 😂
Why does he keep calling Ian Holm's character " Asher"?
I cannot find a single source calling the character anything other than " Ash".
I wondered the same thing, and I finally found a reply he made. Apparently in his comic book he has a character named Asher and accidentally kept calling Ash that because of habit. So that is why.
@@GBDupree
Yes. Long discussion with him on other comment .
In the series Spartacus there is a character called Asher. He's a lot like Ash in the film. Duplicitous, conniving, and treacherous. Almost pathologically so.
@@trajan74Jewish name 🤔
Alien had some very innovative cinematography that always struck me. Like, even in the 90's as a kid, movies from the 70's were like old, grainy, bad acting, just unattractive... Even Star Wars has a definite 70's feel, but Alien really felt more like a late 80's early 90's movie and i loved it.
Alien is still probably the best shot movie in the franchise.
Mat Paintings are amazing. I wish we brought them back
YES. :)
People don't even realize they're being used when they're done well most of the time. Old school movie magic.
You are exactly right. Voicing my opinions over and over. Mystery. I saw Alien and Aliens very young and was terrified and fascinated equally. Especially by the Space Jockey. I remember trying to draw it from memory and constantly wondering what it could be. How old was it? Was it the pilot of the ship? Why was it melded to the structure? Did it have legs in there? How did it get face hugged? What I didn't realise at the time was it was that mystery that made it so brilliant. The unknowable. I literally teared up at the engineers when I first saw Prometheus. All wrong and also not to the scale of the Space Jockey. Man that film hurt.
Why do people still think the refinery is part of the Nostromo ? Its the cargo its towing . The Nostromo is what lands on the planet .
The establishing shot makes this confusing by labeling the whole thing the Nostromo. Someone explained this to me in the original version of this video and it clicked.
Fyfield isn't a biologist in Prometheus. He's a geologist. Not that it matters, it's an embarrassing movie from a senile director.
That's the stoner, though, right? His buddy's the biologist I think.
Yes, although Fyfield is the one freaked out by the "engineer's" body.@@storyrant
I'm sorry. I don't understand your comment. @@treborkroy5280
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? I can barely decipher that sentence.
@@storyrant Well you could understand it the last time you replied to it a month ago. Oh did you mean to reply to @treborkroy5280 ?
Parker tells Lambert not to "get away" so he can "throw himself at the alien" - he wants to use his flamethrower. He only attempts to go mano a mano when it becomes clear Lambert is frozen by fear.
Huh? He tells her to get OUT of the way, so he can use the flamethrower.
When I say "throw himself at it" it's meant to be more metaphorical, because he's actively putting himself in danger, risking his skin.
Yeah, instead of the whole Engineer concept, it would've been better if The Derelict had just been an extraterrestrial ship that crash landed on a moon and somehow unearthed a dormant nest of Alien eggs.
Someone commented that the compartment Kane goes down is actually a cave not connected to the ship, but I haven't gone back and confirmed Kane calls it that. Still, Ridley Scott was huffing Ancient Alien juice when he made Prometheus and crapped all over Dan O'Bannon and co's work.
@@storyrant Kane says he's in "A cave of some sort".
There is nothing explained in Prometheus. What was "learned" that changed anything we already knew or know in the first film?
For the love of God, it's Ash not Asher 😂
I know. The text is up there as a correction. For some reason I misremembered it and no one caught it.
@@storyrant ohh ok, sorry I'm listening to it vs watching the vid. Lol
Nah, you're fine. I'm sure it won't be the last comment about this. lol I got a lot of comments about this in the original upload (that got age-gated cause TH-cam). It's kind of a great example of how unreliable human memory is. If you know anything about the "Mandela Effect" conspiracy theory, it all comes from people basically misremembering quotes from movies. For example, "Luke, I am your father" is actually, "No, I am your father." It probably doesn't help that I've got a character named Asher in my Suleniar's Engima book series. lol Now though, I double and triple check names to make sure I'm not misremembering them, cause I can't trust my ADHD ass.
@@storyrant Mandela effect is a memory problem.
@@randallbesch2424 ehhh, I would say that the Mandela Effect could be a memory problem, except I personally experienced the Apollo 13 movie switch. Started with somebody saying that people misremembered the line "Houston, we've had a problem", thinking they said "Houston, we have a problem". I thought for sure it was always "Houston, we have a problem", but, watching a clip on youtube, it did, indeed, say "Houston, we've had a problem." I had a hard time believing it was always "we've had a problem" but was willing to think, somehow, I had gotten that wrong. Don't know how, but, I guess I did. Well, as it turns out, somebody said it changed BACK to "we have a problem", and, sure enough, it did. I know the ORIGINAL quote from the actual mission was "We've had a problem", but in the clip it was definitely saying "We've had a problem".... until it didn't, instead saying "we have a problem". I know 100% that this happened, for sure. It wasn't a delusion. I will never change my mind on this happening.
Same thing happened with "Froot Loops". Somebody said it was now "Fruit Loops", and, again, sure enough, pictures showed it was, again, had always been, "Fruit Loops". Thought, no, I know for sure it was "Froot Loops", but, pictures showed it was "Fruit Loops". Changed back, too. This one could have been faked, I guess, because I never actually went and checked the physical box myself, but I saw a lot of sources showing boxes with the "Fruit Loops" spelling. I'm willing to admit I could be wrong on this one.
Same with Flintstones being Flinstones for awhile. Again, could be wrong on this one, because I never actually verified it for myself, but saw multiple sources talking about it.
Berenstain bears has never changed from Berenstain, though I do think I remember it being Berenstein. I'm willing to believe I just got that one wrong. At this point, though, I have no idea what is true, lol.
I know it sounds stupid and insane, but these things did happen. I have ZERO freaking clue how this stuff happened, or why. I really don't know what to make of it. It's just so weird, but it does prove, to me, that reality is just freaking weird and I have no real idea of what it is. Didn't mean to write a long reply on something stupid like this, but it was a real mind **** when it happened. Feel like I'm wasting time actually posting this, but it sure was, and is, weird.
I follow the Alien vs Predator canon. The new movies are just a separate canon that I prefer to put aside
AvP isn't canon.
@ it’s a separate canon to the main Alien movies
I just noticed and realised how weird the marines look when walking around the planet without spacesuits on.
Atmosphere processors for 20 years...should have clued you in.
I really enjoyed this video, thank you for the re-edit, as much of a pain as it must have been. I listened to it at work and i can’t use my youtube account to watch so anything age restricted is a no go for me.
Cosmic horror has always gone over my head, both with Aliens and other films series like the terminator, and i like seeing the monster as it were. But I don’t like the idea of the xenomorph species being a bio engineered creature. I’ve always liked the idea of them just being a product of alien evolution, a reminder that nature is impressive and that it hates you. I’ve been pinging some idea round my head for what i would like to have seen in an Alien sequel post Aliens and I would have like to have seen an Alien infestation happen to a large population center, like the planet at the start of Romulus or my preferred setting, a mining ship.
Im not talking like the tug boat in Alien, i mean something like the size of the Red Dwarf, a floating city, with the grim hierarchy of life. From lowly bottom fo the ladder maintenance personnel to over worked and over stressed officers, over seeing the break down of asteroids and space debris, balancing the cost of resources, lives included in the calculations, against how much they can harvest and for how long. Humanity crammed into a massive tin can and told to get on with it. I think it would be interesting to see examples of how different groups of survivors deal with a Xenomorph infestation, picked up from a mined asteroid, some sacrificing themselves to save other groups while others do horrible acts for the “greater good” such as opening up other locations to draw the Aliens to “lesser crew” to save their members as they hunt for supplies or escape.
I would like to see the idea played out as the human crew number’s drop, the Alien numbers grow and as more of them take over larger parts of the ship, the lights start to go out, air isn’t being cycled as much and the heat increases. Leading to the suffocating conclusion that the Aliens are turning the mining ship into a “hive ship”.
Cosmic horror goes over my head, but how awful or noble people can be in a crisis, I think that would be worth showing in an Alien story.
Handsome Squidward can work as the space jockey. It's just the way it was handled which I don't like.
"Mm free goo" - Homer Simpson and also that Engineer
Good video essay! It pretty well sums up things I've been ruminating slowly for years, particularly after seeing Prometheus in theater and being disappointed. However, I wish you had mentioned something about nature of sequels in general, no matter what genre, cosmic horror or not, the whole concept of sequels of themselves are very problematic in itself as W. Adorno wrote. I just wish you had thrown some quotes from his text regarding movie sequels. I don't completely oppose doing sequels as he did, but regardless he had very good points how the American culture particularly cultivates this idea of sequels and the audience is much more comfortable with the sequels exactly because there is less new, less unknown - less art. More you think cinema as an art form more difficult it becomes as the movies suppose to gain audience and make profit. Film studios nowadays seem to allow writers and directors less and less opportunities to take risks that are necessary to produce phenomenal, excellent cinematic art.
The alien touched the button with its mouth to sample scent/taste of the humans
And a hole in a spaceship does not mean "implosion". It's the opposite.
I know. I made a mistake.
"...and they still bleed acid, so you don't want to kill them on a spaceship because IMPLOSION is a bad way to die..."
There wouldn't be any " implosion".
That would require a HIGHER pressure outside the ship, as opposed to the ( near) perfect vacuum of space.
What you would get is decompression, or, much less likely, an explosive decompression.
Never an "implosion".
This guy physics
When I first read the Gibson script some 10 years ago, my first thought (after how masterfully it was structured and how good the dialogues were) was: a freaking *virus* now? No, that's too far, it's meddling with the alien we know and love. To me, the virus idea denies the visceral, meaty picture of alien as a predator. Intelligent, adaptable creature, but still one that's based in eggs and slime, and meat, and chitin, and acid, and guts (our guts); virus story, to me, would be a completely different "biohazard" movie with a different atmosphere and kinds of dangers, closer to "Contagion" etc. than the original Alien.
Though it is silicon based and mostly metal and other materials not organic.
I like alien resurrection 🤷♂️🤷🫄
I just discovered your channel. This was an excellent video essay! It'd be interesting if you made a video detailing a hypothetical plot or plots for an Alien sequel that returns to the cosmic horror roots of the franchise.
I'm working on one, but it's gonna require some custom art. :D
@32:48 veteran here! No, they're not. They're an 80s action cliche. In my experience, very few films ever capture what it's like in the service.
Have any films captured that?
Humans can be irrational. They can also be bad writers.
Thanks for a very insightful and personal video. I agree totally, the first movie will always be the best. The derelict ship and the Space Jockey were the stuff of nightmares and so many questions. Nowadays I often stop the DVD at that point, I don't need the bloody alien lol.
I totally get what you mean. I mean, the alien is awesome, but that sequence is where it's at.
At this point I have given up on the franchise and just stick to the ones I like, ignoring the existence of the explanations for basically everything.
I rewatched Pandorum for the first time since 2009 and it was a breath of fresh air, not least because all of my questions from 15 years ago haven't been ruined by prequels/ sequels.
Pandorum's on my list for a rewatch, since I haven't seen it since it came out. :) But, I agree for the most part. Part of me is always going to want that "dream Alien movie" that exists in my head, but we can ultimately learn important lessons from the failure of these films and create better stories in the future.
I always use the steam engine as my example of resurrected technology.
The steam engine was invented in the Roman era, but didn't see commercial use until some madman said, "lets make it 100x bigger and strap it to some iron wheels. How do we steer it? More iron!"
With regards the travel time, is it 10 months from their perspective, or from Earth's? From your perspective, you can get anywhere in the universe near instantly if you go fast enough. But if it takes a hundred years from Earth's perspective then I guess it probably wouldn't even be worth the trip.
If they have FTL, they wouldn't need to worry about time dilation, so it'd be 10 months for everyone.
Personally I never got past how the timeline was fucked over. With it went the main reason people have loved the original movies(s) for forty years.
Alien = fossilized space jockey having been killed by a chest burster = both the space jockey and the xenomorphs are at least 20 000 years old, according to Wikipedia's entry on fossils. That's why Tom Skeritt delivered this line as Dallas; to let us know that they were ancient. I miss when people knew how to tell stories and make good movies...
Prometheus&Covenant = the xenomorphs were created by David the Paranoid Android using maguffin goo 17 years before the events of Alien because he hated people. He also used the same goo to assassinate all the engineers, travelled back in time, presumably using the time machine he also evidently made, in order to carve ancient drawings of xenomorphs in Antarctic pyramids including a helpful map to his location in a Scottish cave, both to be unearthed at a later date by intrepid, gun toting women, before finally (?) setting up a clever, time traveling trap on LV426 for a mining ship he knew would pass that way 17 and 20 000+ years later. Oh and also making a fake fossil of an engineer having been killed by a chest bursting xenomorph. Gotta use good props, you know! Those future space miners we're baiting over here won't be fooled easily, probably!
So this door for ancient alien mystery, or this shiny new bullshit door we just made over here for some unconvincing theology, vapid transhumanist lectures, extra idiotic horror flesh and basically Blade Runner in Space without the intelligence of either Alien or Blade Runner. Now choose...
Dallas said they were only halfway there. They must have been in hypersleep for 10 months
Well, if they're halfway there and it's been 10 months, it probably means it'll take another 10 months in hypersleep before they get home.
Great video and breakdown. I agree with pretty much everything except for the xenomorphs in Aliens. I find them far more terrifying in the sequel than the original and frankly, one of the things about Alien that struggle with is how it looks on some shots as it comes across as a bit silly to me.
The only thing I would debate from the opening 90 seconds is the idea that every horror franchise has diminishing returns. NoES3 is the best Freddy movie
And yes, I know you were just generalizing. And we could compile a list of decent horror sequels if we tried. But, ya know. The internet. Opinions and engagement and whatnot
Yeah, it's not true across the board. Evil Dead is a great example, as while I don't enjoy the reboots as much there probably isn't a bad film in the series.
@@storyrant Evil Dead is another great example
I'm thinking about doing an Evil Dead 2 essay.
The whole engineer origin was really dumb and shouldn’t have been tied to the Space Jockey (Prometheus could have been a separate franchise not tied to Alien). Before that movie came out, it had always made sense to me that the Space Jockey was infected with the Queen we see in Aliens and she laid all the eggs on the ship. It didn’t need to be more complicated than that and I didn’t need to know any more about this mysterious pilot.
It’s just occurred to me that if the trope of overcoming space travel for humans is hyper/cryosleep, then surely that technology could be used for anyone on the base planet to which said travellers plan to return. If synchronised, this would negate variable ageing rates and avoid subsequent drama and conflict of missing out on familial milestones, such as birthdays, graduations weddings or extinctions. Or is that pure science fiction ? Or is extended mortality the preserve of cosmic hauliers alone? Just saying
That’s a good idea! Another idea I caught from an Alien/The Thing-esque 80’s anime OVA called Lily Cat is the concept of criminals going into hibernation for years or decades on the downlow to avoid persecution & wake up later after they’ve been presumed dead or missing. And the OVA goes nowhere with that idea. That and your idea are really clever ways of thinking of that kind of technology & how people could & would use/abuse it in that universe.
You could have made this longer imo. I love stuff like this playing in the background for walks etc. keep up the good work
I'm working on more.
In the alien universe, mammalian beings not in hypersleep pods when undergoing ftl drive tend to develop psychotic tendencies. And you could argue how close daivid is to humans mentally this is why he too could be changed during the travel to lv-223
Would have loved to have actually SEEN that in one of the films. Imagine if the reason why going to FTL speeds does this is because it forces humans to bear witness to the cosmic terror hidden behind the veil of the universe, something akin to Yog Sothoth.
@@storyrant it has something to do with the type of ftl jump drive mechanics and the way that the energy waves and time dilation affects the brain. I only learned the why of the hyper sleep pods due to also being a ttrpg buff and reading the alien rpg books recently put out
Oooh, you mean the one from Free League? Is it good? I've been wanting to give it a go.
@@storyrant I guess you could say that there may be several movies intertwined, blade runner is tied to the aliens universe, why not others which have developed a kind of cosmic horror to their ftl drives.
@@storyrant yeah I downloaded it because I got nobody to play with but it has a lot of information (sort of ignoring 3, and resurrection). They are releasing a 2nd edition soon I have heard
at 36 minutes getting ready to be angry for comments against resurrection
EDIT
Angry
I think AR purposely set itself in the future because the intention was to have a different tone. The acting, the scientists being goofy, are an element of French film making, and Jean PJ is a master of the black comedy. City of Lost Children and the Delicatessen are the ancestors of the AR, as much as Alien and Aliens.
The film is not trying to be a next step, partly as Alien 3 tone was so different there was nothing to step from.
Visually the film is beautiful, with Marc Caro doing a great job as he did with the previous JPJ. This is in fact, very Cyber Punk and intentionally ... it is a stylistic film focusing on Marc Caro's visuals and supported by Joss Wheedon (I think reimagined) script (banter, fast fire dialoguie and humour which was his trademark), flavoured with Jean PP use of comedy from the bleakest of moments.
I think if you judge it as part of an Alien Quadrilogy (is that a word) it misses its raison d'etre... its something new, based in the world but not a continuation of the story ...
Personally I agree with some of the massive flaws, the Alien Child (which seems to be Jean PJ looking at motherhood, with Ripley being maternal to it and Call.. this seems to be a clear theme) is odd, and doesn't make sense (although it doesn't need to have evolutionary advantage, its a mistake because the Queen has Ripley's human DNA in a way its not meant to.. uncontrolled, unexpected, as a result of the cloning. The hybrid for me was Ripley's desire for her daughter/newt was transferred to the queen, who desired/adapted to have a child. This is why it is shocking that the child turns on the mother... recognizing because of the face that Ripley is the mother - and maybe scent - leaving the Queen abandoned).
One point of Joss Wheedon, whilst he did a GREAT job of firefly and Serenity ... you can read it as an amalgam of Alien Resurrection and Starhunter Redox.. and a Western show like Wagon Train
AR is a goofy french fanfic nothing more
@crabhater9373 citation needed
@@GuineaPigExpress I cite the entire Alien Resurrection movie. It would be easier to cite scenes where the film isn't goofy if it had any.
@crabhater9373 but you have contradicted yourself.
And you don't think Aliens is goofy??
Game over man, game over
@@GuineaPigExpress Right, Aliens is goofy because of one line but Resurrection gets a pass, even though the whole movie is cringe. What a brilliant argument, you've convinced me. Go watch your french slop buddy. You and Resurrection deserve each other haha
when you speaking of alien being cyberpunk i was surprised you didn't mention it has been confirmed that Alien and Bladerunner both exist within the same universe.
I think the path back to a more cosmic horror flavored take on Alien was completely closed by Covenant, but it's been closing steadily even from Aliens, especially by the novels and comics, despite their non-canon status.
We know way too much about them now, and have seen them stand in as generic sci-fi monsters too many times.
I don't think even a full reboot would help at this point with how Covenant has colored our perception of the Xenomorph as having somewhat mundane origins.
He wants Lambert to get out of the way because he’s holding the damn Flamethrower, not because he wants to “run at it” - deeerrrrr.
Excellent analysis I found it refreshing.
19:16 Given how Del Toro 'adapted' Shadows Over Innsmouth to make Shape of Water, it might actually be a good thing because it's clear he doesn't grasp the innate horror aspects of H.P. Lovecraft's work (cosmic or not).
The black goo, makes only sense IF the facehuggers produce it in small amounts and this is what allows the Xenomorphs to adapt to any host. The engineers saw the potential in it and used as base for they tech which is based on gen editing, thats why everything is such a giger like organic design, because it is ogranic machines.
Now Wayland-Yutani wants this stuff, because unlimited gen-editing capabilities. This makes sense.
You can even tie humans and engineers together, because they created us to be the perfect host for the Xenomorph.
EVERYTHING ELSE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. David creating aliens, this strange mutations. David killing everything on the planet. The stupidity of the people and Romolus ooooh boy, dont get me started.
The xenos are inorganic life-forms barely read as anything other than machines.
It's the black goo that the face huggers are inserting into their prey.
The failure of the perfect beings in that they can use human and Manu bodies. No the Manu has nothing to do with us.
I never turn down free goo
@@voidwalker7774 David didn't create them.
the funny thing is that after the first 2 alien and first 2 predator movies the lore is largely contained in the comic books which ironically the new movie gets some of it's story from along with the first avp movie in the arctic
Antarctic not artic.
Dropping a like and a comment for the excellent kitty.
Kitty!
An artificial planet for an Alien movie would have been kickass
Are you calling Ash, Asher? Driving me crazy…
Yeah, I have a character named Asher and got confused. The names in Alien aren't given a whole lot of importance, and are often a little confusing because of the focus on surnames.
I disagree, names are important. Ash is the name of the android, while Asher is not. If you want to gain credibility, getting the names of the characters is important. Mistakes happen though I guess.
I asked the same thing.
Even checked IMDB and my old copy of the novel to see.
@@daverobson3084 And there are several answers as to why.
@@storyrant
I saw the " other character " one.
What are the others?
Disagree on Alien Resurrection (but totally agree on Alien 3)- it is a visual masterpieces, but the lack of action scenes, the too soon death of the best secondary characters, downscaled settings (lacks the grandeur of the first 2) and lacks the Whedon original last 4th act (but without the “winged” alien).
Other than that- an amazing commercial Alien. Because art-house doesn’t have to be the staple of the better movies.
It's an awesome comic book in film kinda movie.
The nostromo was designed to look like a haunted castle in space
What is creepier than Ash sitting next to Ripley is how the hell he got into the room without her or us noticing. In the womb room ,the door closes right after you enter and sit. Now maybe she was really zoned out into the Exchange with Mother..Even the air changes like a vacuum when the door opens like pressure..Its bothered me how ,but not nearly as much as its effectiveness as a scary moment..Ash is a Sidler. I wonder if she gave Bishop a case of Tic Tacs 57 yrs. later to assure not getting creeped up on? 🤔 hmm
Giger was a consultant on Prometheus and there is bts video of him and Scott going over designs.
He provided an alleged 30 illustrations. Whether or not they were used in the final product is up to speculation. In any case. The film is garbage.
@@storyrant well yeah, Scott is a self absorbed egotistical asshole who threatens, belittles and bullies people so he can get his way even when he is clearly wrong and trying to do way too many things without having clear definitions of what those things are.
Yeah, the more I learn about him the less I like him.
This is a great analysis man. Agree with pretty much all of it. Real shame hoe much has been fucked up since the original
Yeah, the silver lining though is that we can learn from these mistakes to make better stories, especially in the fairly unexplored Cthulhupunk genre (cyberpunk + cosmic horror). There's so much potential for great stories that can fill the void.
@@storyrant unfortunately Holywood never learns from its mistakes .
I mean, you're not wrong there. Execs are duuuumb.
The Prometheus and Covenant movies aren't canon in my mind
More trash by Diddly Squat
Have you read the book trilogy Aliens: Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum and Female War? They're really good and, in my opinion, capture the essence of the first two movies well.
I may add those to my TBR. I've been trying to figure out what books from the extended canon to read and potentially do videos on them, but I have zero clue where to start.
Imo there is a single scene that catapults Alien into god tier quality, and that's the scene where Dallas and Kane are assessing the planet the signal is coming from, and Lambert is close by smoking.
At this point a careful observer would of picked up on the subtle signifiers in regards to Lambert's personal, emotional feelings towards Kane and Dallas. We've seen her responses when they both speak, seen her glances and reactions, we should have a clear idea that there is attraction to both men, but most importantly that the attraction is different. Again imo it feels like a sexual attraction to Kane, and a leadership attraction to Dallas. There is a deep respect there for Dallas, a rigid sense of attention when he speaks or 'leads' a scene, where as there is more of a shy, looking but not looking type behavior towards Kane.
So back to the scene, we have Kane and Dallas poring over the details coming through, exited and deep into their curiosity, we have Kane's sedated but obvious exuberance and Dallas' more clinical, measured response. But in the background we see Lambert smoking, clearly agitated, all nervous tension. I implore people to watch her carefully, watch her responses to each of them speaking. She jumps when Kane exerts excitedly that he'll volunteer for a ground reconnaissance, in what looks to be fear for someone she cares about. When very soon after Dallas states that Lambert will join them we don't see relief that she will be with this person she cares about, we see an introspective, deep, very deep fear.
This performance imo is not just on the level of Pacinos famous scene in The Godfather, where Michael finds within himself the ability to do the most vile of things, I think this performance is better.
Also watching Ash, and only Ash, in every scene he is in, is a literal acting lesson.
Edit- also I'm not convinced that The Big Chap in Alien has acid for blood, and am personally one of the small contingent of fans that love Aliens, but believe that Cameron completely ruined the Alien as an organism. The facehugger having acid as a protection system makes sense, but there doesn't seem to be much biological sense for the bigger, evolved xenomorph to use acid as a protection system. But that's been argued to death but people far more knowledgeable and dedicated than me lol.
Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head here. The performances in Alien are seriously next level. Everything from Ash's creepy ass leers, Lambert's relationships with the other crew members, Brett and Parker's relationship, it's all so wonderfully subtle. It seriously needs to be talked about more.
Great essay!
My theory is the xenomorph realized it was isolated due to how Queens communicate with drones so it became Big Chap. cocooning people was a fruitless instinct.
But that requires Aliens to have already been conceived. There was no concept of a queen or hive behavior in the original film.
Without queens the xenos can still create eggs but slowly. The creation of queens added to the disaster of the black strain Xenomorphs when the first queens were created with their royal jelly infusions.
I hate when people complain about lambert, like, how would you react if that 2 and a half meters thing apears and you know it will kill you. Even lets bring the situation to eath, imagine the movie is about a group of people traped in a zoo with a hungry tiger and then you see the tiger is there in the same room, looking at you. there is NO WAY you can act smartly and no way you just dont get paralized by fear because you know there is nothing you can do to survive.
Having had to handle critical situations like saving my grandfather's life and patroling the house for intruders, I have to say I am please finding out how I handle horrible situations. Typically better than mundane sitatuons tbh. So yes, it is frustrating for me to watch them make such stupid decisions. 🤣
But what frustrated me so much about that scene wasn't Lambert's psychotic breakdown. She clearly wasn't able to hold it together in the face of the monster that ripped apart her crewmates, and that's something that actually happens to people. Probably a lot more people when faced with a super predator with acid blood that grew to full size in like 12 hours.
No, what frustrated me about it was Parker not using the flamethrower. Yes, it probably would've killed Lambert, and that's probably why he didn't do it. But in not frying the alien and Lambert, he doomed not just her but himself as well, and probably Ripley from his perspective.
Now, I'm a bit of a special case. I have diagnosed OCD, with a death fixation/phobia. Placed in that position I would've fried Lambert in a heartbeat, and I say that with confidence. My brain would literally consider it the only option, giving her a second to escape but as soon as she refused there would be fire.
I GET why he didn't do it. But it's still super frustrating. Which tbf may have been the point.
Asher? Really? 😏 Someone put into a single video what I've been saying for years. Thank you. The genius (for me) of Terminator 2, & Aliens is uncovering more of that "iceberg" & NOT remaking the same movie. They felt fresh, but at the same time they still follow the same formula:
Both Alien & Aliens feature: a mystery that lures them to a dangerous planet, Ripley's being ignored, the crew encountering a hostile alien species that decimates their numbers, there's corporate betrayal, tension through atmospheric claustrophobia in confined spaces, a dramatic escape from an impending explosion, a fake-out ending with the alien returning when thought defeated, Ripley ejecting the big alien into space through an airlock.
T1 & T2 revolve around a Terminator sent to kill a key target, an underdog sent to protect them, intense chases, relentless pursuit, and climactic battles in industrial settings. Both films feature a fake-out moment where the Terminator seems defeated but returns for one final attack, & both end with the destruction of the villainous Terminator, conviently with the one thing around that can destroy it.
Another example is Nightmare 3: The Dream Warriors where they're trying to use dream powers to defeat Freddy.
Same tropes, same rules, but they feel very different. Like poetry, they rhyme. Different, but same same.
People want the sequels to be more like the original. But then, it's just remaking the same movie. This is how you get Jaws 2, Predator 2, Ghostbusters 2, Hangover 2, Home Alone 2, Taken 2, etc. They maybe fine but they're never as good as the original.
And writers of sequels. If we're attached to characters don't fucking kill them off in the first moments of your sequel! Everybody who survived Aliens dies. It was a slap to the face. 30+ years later I am still mad about it. Girl too old? Recast. It's a big part why I can't stand Alien³. Terminator: Dark Fate unceremoniously killed John Connor just to replace him with another John Connor (this time with boobs).
Alien³ killed everything I loved about Aliens.
Alien Resurrection introduced a lamer alien.
Prometheus turned the mysterious Space Jockeys into albino Gym bros & suggested they're mad because we killed their space Jesus.
Covenant made the Alien, not an alien. Our creation made them. They're just our grandkids now.
Sorry for the novel. They just irritate the hell out of me.
Ok
Ridley Scott completely ruined the mystique and enigma of the “space jockey” figure in Prometheus by reducing it to a mere unconventional space suit, when in reality it was suppose to be fused with the ship serving as its brain, contrasting how the humans had to sit in that central control room with all the lights and separate from the ship. The face hugger escapes and impregnates the biomechanic being this creating a new entity that almost shares a resemblance with the shop itself. Much much deeper than just a dumb space suit.
Right since it is a living being grown into its chair.
The 3 best alien media, are Alien, Aliens, and Alien Isolation, all 3 are incredible
Oh. I luckily can not agree with your feelings about Alien 3. I love that movie, both versions.
Resurrection is a guilty pleasure for me 😅
Totally cool. Glad that you enjoy them. I used to like 3 more, but on re-watch I just felt it didn't hold up.
After watching Romulus, I have a new found respect for Resurrection, but I always liked Alien 3, I felt it was a really good send off for the franchise, the bleakness fits the Alien tone and you get some good movie quotes, Alien 3 tries to be about the characters redeeming themselves, it comes across more of a Jacob's Ladder scenario where Ripley is in purgatory. The main theme for Alien 3 being - Sacrifice.
In the Novelization for Alien Resurrection the Aliens are suffering from 'Individuality', which from the perspective of the Aliens confuses the F out them, it is also why the Alien would not 'Sacrifice itself for the good of the Hive', I think they are meant to be talking but it does come across as barking.
I also will always suggest Out of the Shadows, River of Pain and Sea of Sorrows to any Alien fan.
Implosion isn't such a bad way to go since it's pretty instantaneous. However spaceships don't implode since that would require external pressure and in a vacuum there is no external pressure.
Yeah, my bad. Got that one wrong.
@@storyrant No problem, I may be a bit on the spectrum and thus nitpicky about such things...
@@storyrant in Leviathan the threat of implosion is real.
Here's the thing about Prometheus and Covenant. Neither is even close to being cosmic horror. Prometheus is all about faith and/or the search for the holy grail, or God, or to touch God, or renew their faith, choose one or all of those options because it doesn't really matter. We find out that the Space Jockeys, this race of strange unknowable aliens, were actually these tall pale bald human aliens with funky suits now dubbed "the Engineers". That all life on Earth was just a failed experiment by the extra-terrestrial body builders. And that the creatures known as xenomorphs by the public, were created entirely by a sociopathic robot with daddy issues. That last part really strips the fear of the alien from you when you realize it's just the product of an angry child trying to get back at his father.
Who the hell is Asher?! You claim to have seen alien a number of times. Yet you don't know the name of the android who is referred to in the movie as ash.
Are you listening only, because I have the correction on screen. I have a character named Asher, so it got stuck in my head.
@@storyrant And that is how things can go wonky. Confusion.
He’s using the British pronunciation
Yeah, it’s irritating as f. and could easily have been overdubbed in a few minutes if care and professionalism had won out.
@@dernvader6876well he was drinking whisky in the video
I think the people who love Alien 3 (best viewed with the Special Edition, not the Assembly Cut) understand implicitly or explicitly that Alien 1, 2 and 3 are not about the "alien," but about Ripley and her fight against a nihilistic universe. Yes, I know "alien" is in the title, but "Gone with the Wind" wasn't about meteroology.
I simulataneously loved and hated Prometheus when it came out. Fan-edits lean me much further to loving it. IMO, Alien is a stand-alone film. Regardless of how good Aliens and Alien 3 are (and I think they're great), I think they lessen Alien's stature by continuing a story that doesn't need to be continued by commoditizing it. For people who say that Alien doesn't need prequels (or sequels) on principle, I understand. So, don't watch them. I don't me that facetiously, as I considered it myself.
Prometheus and Covenent taught me that Ridley Scott is a great director who has no clue how to make characters the audiences will be sympathetic to, whether they are likeable or not. If it's not in the script (as it was in Alien), Scott certainly won't get it put there or shape the characters in direction or editing.
The original Alien was a very compact, efficient package. You got "details" about the alien the way the crew did. Much was unexplained but there was no sense of writers painting themselves into corners and losing the through-line. And the way the alien attacked and killed was such a PERFECT tweaking of deep-seated psychological fears, particularly those of white men in 1970s America, as brilliantly explained by Novum on here. One of the deleted scenes showed the abducted members of the crew being turned into alien eggs; I heard it was deleted for pacing, but it also indicates that Scott et al knew not to get too bogged down with those kinds of details. We didn't need to know where the eggs came from.
AlienS riffed on that premise for purposes of making a dumb 80s action movie. Audiences knew the basic "mechanics" of how the alien attacked, so the writers just relied on LOTS of aliens and finally a great big alien queen to provide the kick. But all the psychological horror was already drained out of it. When you first see a chest-bursting with the "kill me" chick, it's like they're trotting out a greatest hit because that's what you came to see. You can never relive the dinner scene.
After that, you just had different creative teams putting different spins on the same concepts and premises, trying to find new ways to gross and freak us out with new "abominations that shouldn't be" - but that only reinforces that familiarity breeds contempt even of the horrific, and that merely adding tendrils and bulk and gore to a known monster is like adding whips and handcuffs in the bedroom when you're really just tired of your partner.
Dude excellent video.
Glad you liked it!
For decades we called this movie space Truckers in space stuck in a haunted house. Yet here we are, seeing the film Alien fall underneath the Magnificent Banner and ever stretching definition of cosmic horror. Frankly I think it is an overused and Bloated definition. We are to the point where anything extraterrestrial with a hint of Mystery is shoved underneath this banner. I guess that's my long-winded version of, no you're wrong. It's A Haunted House movie in space.
And another thing; yes people make poor decisions when they are scared. The problem in this specific case is that the Nostromo crew doesn't do stupid things before there is a reason to be scared. Only then do judgements collapse, particularly in the case of Lambert, but also I'd argue Dallas and Brett. The only exception to this is Kane, who gets rewarded for his preemptive stupidity/carelessness by dying first. They made several scenes to try and explain this stupidity on his part in an elegant way, and the book has an entire chapter devoted to explaining it. The answer there was that he was a glory hunter and greedy at the same time.
Meanwhile the clownish stupidity in Prometheus and Covernant starts immediately and never stops, even when there is nothing to fear. At least as far as they know. The characters start out as smug, blithering idiots, and they end up as smug, blithering idiots. This is not, you know, good character development. Go ask anyone at all who knows a thing about astronomy and how even hypothetical space travel works how possible it is, for example, to reroute a space colonization ship midway because you hear a John Denver song on the radio. Of course, unless you for some reason brought along twice as much fuel as you'd need for your original mission it isn't even remotely possible, yet this is the first action taken by the space idiots. You'd think they'd know this was impossible and so would be disinclined to try it and thereby certainly getting themselves stranded in outer space due to running out of fuel. And famously it only went downhill from there...
The stupidity is well-placed and understandable in Alien, except in the case of Kane. it is ubiquitous, layered and complex in Prometheus and particularly Covernant, and stupidity is all there is. Because one story was written by intelligent people, the other no doubt by a committee of morons passing yellow post-it notes to each other.
Ash/Asher/Ashes
Ashly. Ashley. Shop smart. Shop S Mart.
@@storyrantPetsmart or Pet Smart?
Found you on bio and goegraphics.. work on your lighting please.. the contrast between the "movie theatre" and jumping to you in your overlit room kind of ruins the video.. great speculation though
Gravity is faster than light...a gravity propulsion drive might be possible.
No Dan O'Bannon. Somehow people think that Alien was all Riddley Scott. In reality, it was 99% Dan's work.
I talk a lot about Dan O'Bannon in the other videos in this series. :)
Every time you say "Asher" instead of "Ash," my head wants to explode.
Don't let that bother you.
@randallbesch2424, It's one of my favorite movies. It's not really important, but kinda matters to me. If you're gonna talk about something critically, ya kinda, sorta should get the basics right.
Idc what anyone says Alien 3 (especially Director’s Cut) isn’t as bad as people make it out to be.
I'm glad you enjoy it. I just couldn't get past the issues with it in my last re-watch. That could change again in the future, you never know, but for now, I dislike it.
No, it's worse.
It’s solid
@@randyphillips6506 A solid turd.
There is no such thing as 'Alien 3 Director's Cut'. Its director disowned it.
Lovecrafts quote explains why I never felt as positive about ‘Aliens”as I did the original. Been there, done that, let’s shoot them. The prequels’ Engineers were a terrible disappointment as they represented a major element that helped create the initial dread we felt during the original but then ignored their actual appearance. The message in the original is clear. There is a huge universe out there full of the unknown and the Zeno in all of its forms was just one very nasty part of it. So the engineers ended up being portrayed as pale body builders who could kill old men and chase women. Whoop de doo. Where’d the mystery go?
It's not GUYGER, it's GIGER
So it's pronounced Zhee zhay?
Blud yappin, solid video tho 👍
What's blud yappin?
@@storyranthe's saying you're basically rambling. Newer vernacular that correlates with shorter attention span
For my money, Aliens is not only the best movie in the franchise (by far), but it is also one of the best movies ever.
Good analysis, but…who is Ash-er? 😂
My brian short circulating in my old age.
@@storyrant I can relate 😅
@@Apocalypso-w3i It's also why I double-checked and triple checked the names while writing the first part of my Uzumaki video essay.
Jonner(Ron Pearlman) was absolutely hilarious!!
I disagree with some of the arguments put forward. The Xeno isn't a metaphor for the megacorp eating the crew alive it's clearly meant as the magicians apprentice technology that was let out and can't be put back in. The horror we are witnessing is that the mega corp is insane enough to try to acquire that "technology" with zero regard for the crew. This theme was made more clear and refined in Prometheus where the "technology" is likened to the fire of the gods
Notice I said, "You could make the argument" before saying that. Because in media analysis, any take you can justify soundly is valid. And from the cyberpunk theme lens, that take does work. It's almost as if this is all fiction and a lot of it largely comes down to individual interpretation? I'm not saying that's a take I'd die on a hill promoting. You are right about the mega corp being insane enough to acquire the Xeno, but this is something that is incredibly obvious and there are several mythological parallels, like Pandora's Box. But this video is primarily about the cosmic horror themes behind the movie.
@@storyrant Pandoras myth has kinda similar implications but isn't the parallel used in Prometheus. Context and nuance matter
I wasn't talking about Prometheus, though? Did you even read my reply?
I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT PROMETHEUS, you absolute fool.
I hate to side with the... overdog? But tape is not more reliable than hard drives.
I read a study that suggested that the advantage of tape as a storage medium is that it a) has fewer moving parts, so knocking a tape drive off a desk won't ruin all of the data inside the drive (which has happened to me before), b) lasts longer than HDD tech and also doesn't suffer the same kind of data quality deterioration, and c) they have generally higher temperature tolerances than HDDs. Mind you, unless there's a massive breakthrough in tape technology writing speeds and storage capacity, then it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see it become a popular media.
@@storyrant tape now dries out and falls apart.
I will watch it again dont worry
Excellent. :) Thank you for the support! Octal is hard at work on the next essay in this series (it's over an hour long).
Great work
Thank you.
3:00 or, y’know, an ORE refinery
I'm 16 mins into this video and the only thing related to the title was one small part when he talked about horror being more effective when you don't explain things. The rest is just a review of Alien.
This video needed more focus, we all know Alien, we all know why it's great.
Not everyone knows why the film is great. Especially with it being as old as it is, there are probably plenty of people out there who have not seen it and I like to have a base of comparison when talking about the other films so I can call back to specific points I make about individual scenes or acts of the film. Or did you miss the whole section on the Space Jockey sequence and its similarities to At the Mountains of Madness? Because I certainly reference this tone and mood later on when discussing Prometheus.
@@storyrant fair enough
Brohan Sebastian Bach here skipped right over Alien Versus Predator