(Warning: This post might give away certain information about the Alien movie series and may ruin the fun for some of you if you haven't seen the movie yet.)
It’s been about a month now, since I have got obsessed with the movie “Alien”.
Actually it all started about 9-10 years ago. I was probably in school then. A much publicized movie “Aliens” (the sequel to the original movie “Alien”) was about to be shown on TV. I still remember how much we all were excited about it!
I saw that movie that night with my elder brother, saw it a few times later too, when it was shown again. I was so fascinated by the movie… That idea, the action, the creatures, the guns, the spaceships, everything…It was the thing of discussion for some time.
But yes, only for some time. Soon they showed its 1st and 3rd part also. Now these other movies were not as action-packed as the James Cameron directed 2nd part. So naturally we kids got bored of them, and soon this “Alien” topic faded away.
And it all suddenly came back around a month back. I happened to glance through a few scenes of Alien: 2 while switching channels (to avoid confusion: let’s call these movies as Alien: 1, 2, 3 or 4.) and all the childhood memories of that movie came back. I almost re-lived that span of time when we were all obsessed by the movie. And I said to myself: Man, now I have to watch it again!
But when it came to actually planning to watch it, I realized that I have now access to all four parts of it, now that I no longer am a school kid with the TV being the only source! So, why not start from the scratch and watch all four of them? I had heard a lot about the original Ridley Scott directed 1979 movie – the 1st part. I said lets give it a shot. Let’s see if I like it, now that I am exposed to a little wider range of movies over the years.
Weekend 1 : Alien: 1
So it happened. It was a perfect rainy Saturday, accompanied by a nice pizza and Thums Up. And by the time I finished watching it, I was so glad that I thought of giving this movie a try! As against an action-packed Alien:2, I found this to be a better movie from horror point of view. The movie gave a good background to what was going on. The director took good time to establish the plot. It was nice and slow – and quite some time too – till the Alien actually appeared, yet it was very interesting! And even whenever it did, it came and went off quickly, staying on screen for short durations. All this created a greater fear by inducing the mind to fear the unknown rather than showing the creature attacking the humans again and again. The entire movie went on quite smoothly, with the visual effects of year 1979 still looking amazingly good in the year 2010! Overall I felt the movie totally deserved the critical acclaim it had received, truly brilliant. (It was this time probably, when I had slowly started to fall in love with the character Ellen Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver. :)
Weekend 2: Alien: 2
Then came the second Saturday: - yes, another nice rainy weekend – a time to relive my school days of Alien fascination. Time to watch Alien: 2. No particular extra explanation needed other than the things I described in the beginning… Damn entertaining movie it was. A trademark James Cameron movie: great visual effects, kick-ass action, entertaining characters, lots n lots of aliens, space ships, futuristic rifles, nice twists-n-turns in the story and yes, my favorite Ellen Ripley once again! :)
Weekend 3: Alien: 3 & 4
Now comes this third weekend – believe it or not, a third rainy weekend in a row. (The Mother Nature really seems to have a thing going on for the Aliens, I believe!!) On Friday, after a nice little nap in the evening after coming from work, I start Alien: 3. I had heard that it wasn’t as great a movie critically as the first two were, but it was directed by David Fincher – the director of Fight Club: one of my all time favorite movies, hands down. But sadly, I have to say I was a little disappointed. The overall situation / surroundings where this movie takes place were kind of depressing for me. Moreover, I did not like the way Fincher has chosen to tell us this story. (No offense to the director, just that this was not the type of settings I generally like to watch in a movie. My personal interest, that’s all.) This old-factory-like-facility-turned-into-prison thing did not work for me at all. Plus, I thought the editing was quite poor, as the alien attacks seemed quite erratic and twisted the story far to often. The aspect most disappointing though, was the visual effects. Although not completely quatsch, they were nowhere closer to those of first two parts. All-in-all, it was not a bad movie, but one expects a lot more from a David Fincher movie, especially the one which has had such a great background of the earlier movies.
So finally here I was: two great movies, one ok movie and the last and 4th part of the series ahead of me. I have to admit, based on whatever my friend told me, or whatever reviews I had read earlier, I expected this 4th part “Alien: Resurrection” to be a rubbish movie, probably due to which I ended up liking it. (In the words of Raunak: When you expect minus, getting zero makes you happy! :) Now, it was not as great as the first two parts obviously, but it had some new thing going on about it, which I am not able to describe exactly. Well, of course, my favorite Ellen Ripley was back (Oh, yeah! :)). But this time her character was different. A hybrid of an alien and human, her character had some different shades, which were not present earlier. The new android was again a surprise, nicely portrayed by Winona Ryder. Some quite ridiculous – yet interesting – concepts about the alien-human hybrid, some good, some yucky-yet-innovative action sequences and some really funny (dark humor though) dialogues made this movie quite a fun watch for this nice lazy Saturday afternoon.
But by now I had started to miss one thing. Where is the fifth part? If you can stretch the story to the ridiculous extent of creating an alien-human hybrid, why can’t you make some fun movie when the spaceship is actually about to return to earth? Come on, some kinda Alien outbreak on earth, some good ol’ US Military attack to “preserve the humanity” stuff… come on, a whole13 year gap since Alien:4 and not a hint of 5th part yet?
But then I thought: it is O.K. May be Alien is not that kind of series. (I am ignoring those Alien vs Predator spin-off movies here.) May be they want to keep it a little different than other sci-fi movies as they did with the original Alien. And although they stretched it till 4th part, my favorite Ellen Ripley was still the same kick-ass yet graceful and lovely character as she was in the 1st part. And I am quite happy to move on with this!:)
