Text
if theres one thing to know about me, its that i LOVE crossovers. introducing one hyperfixation to the next, indulging in some absolutely off the wall wish fulfillment, shoving my oc from one media into the next. combine that with the isekai trope and. man man…. the confusion, the lifestyle differences, the meshing of culture, the finding home in somewhere so different than from where youre from. i love you crossovers, i love you isekai trope.
#.jesterspeaks#these two things are my ultimate guilty pleasures#its not everyones thing but i know for a fact its mine#theres just something so… clenches fist about it i cant put it into words#if im daydreaming you can bet your ass its about putting my ocs into scenarios with my fav blorbos#theyre over there bonding over their traumatic pasts together <3 thats another one i love#finding comraderie in people who have experienced similar horrors. the knowledge that youre not alone#im sane. im so so sane.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Alien Franchise Thoughts
This weekend I happened to catch and rewatch Alien: Covenant. Right after that I caught and rewatched Aliens. This was sheerly through channel surfing luck that I watched these movies in this order. But, in doing so I connected some dots and had some realizations that gave me a new appreciation for the prequel series.
A Bit of Background
I can’t remember if I saw Alien or The Terminator first, so Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor get equal billing for being “the first” female action heroes I ever encountered. Prior to them I’d seen Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis watching action films with my dad. So seeing not Tom Skerrit’s Captain Dallas or John Hurt’s Kane but Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley take on the role of Action Hero was essential to my development as an eleven-year-old girl. I’m not even exaggerating for the sake of drama. Watching Ripley in Alien was one of the first examples I saw in media of a woman in a role I’d only seen taken on by male characters before. For this reason alone, the original Alien holds a special place in my heart.
The Original Series
I have mixed feelings about the franchise as a whole. I loved Alien and Aliens to me was just as good and is one of the few sequels that measures up to the original. It lost me at Alien 3 when they killed off Newt and Hicks in the opening crash land. Forcing Ripley into the “sole survivor” role becomes formulaic here and… honestly I’ve had no desire to rewatch Alien 3 and completely forget the entire plot other than the fact that it takes place in a prison setting and Ripley had to shave her head. And they killed off Ripley! I remember being very upset all around at Alien 3 and I think I mentally disowned it.
Alien: Resurrection brought me back around because Ripley was back! And there was Winona Ryder! However, Ripley wasn’t the same Ripley we remembered. She was some clone or hybrid or… I don’t really know what they were going for there. But, I looked at this film as a standalone almost AU installment and I’m actually very okay with it. Not my favorite by a longshot, but a slight redemption from Alien 3’s mess.
Alien vs. Predator
No. Just no. Denied. Why? What even? WHY?!
I’ve seen a few of these movies and if you’re a fan of big monsters fighting one another with a bunch of random humans caught in the middle, these movies might be your jam. If you’re a Predator or an Alien fan, though, it kind of doesn’t fit in with either in my opinion.
The Prequels
When I watched Prometheus I hadn’t done any research on it at all, so I had no idea it had anything to do with the Alien franchise. I saw a space-themed action-horror film with Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Michael Fassbender involved and I was IN, man. Honorable mention to Logan Marshall-Green, who is also awesome but I didn't catch in the trailers. So he was a nice surprise.
The opening scene was unworldly and gorgeous, much like the opening of The Mists of Avalon, which is a weird comparison, I know. But I was enchanted by this opening scene much like I was as I watched Morgaine Le Fey float through the mist that served as a doorway to a magical world. We see an unknown being on an alien planet perform a mysterious ritual and then plummet into the water. The first clue was the title card, which even then I thought “Oh, cool! They did the Alien thing!” but hadn’t connected it as directly related. I’d just thought it was a subtle nod because of the Ridley Scott connection.
I loved Prometheus as a film. I had a very similar reaction to it that I had to the original Alien movie. We had an ensemble of characters, all with their own personalities and enough development to make us care. Noomi Rapace became the reluctant hero as opposed to the expected Charlize Theron, who had been in the Ripley role (“He’s not coming on my ship.”). As the Alien clues dropped, I picked them up and quickly (excitedly) realized the film was somehow connected – it had to be. For me, that was just the cherry on top of a fantastic film.
Alien: Covenant made me feel much like Alien 3 did. The ending of Prometheus had been hopeful, echoing both the endings of Alien and Aliens. Our hero Elizabeth Shaw had survived and would bring android David along to find the Engineers and get her answers. Ridley Scott himself spoke about a possible sequel involving Elizabeth and David trying to do just that.
And then we got Alien: Covenant. Elizabeth and David were nowhere to be found and instead we were (hastily) introduced to an entire new crew of characters whose development was severely lacking in the film. We don’t even know everyone’s paired up in romantic couples until people start dying. When David did finally appear to rescue everyone I was excited. Yes! Finally, a tie-in to Prometheus. And then we learn Elizabeth died suspiciously and the franchise is turned over to David. To say I was infuriated would be an understatement.
I was more excited about the project Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn spoke about at a comic-con panel that would’ve followed Alien and Aliens (and maybe retconned some stuff) than I was about whatever Ridley Scott did next (I still kind of am, if I’m honest). Why would someone take a franchise helmed by a powerhouse female action hero and then make its lead an insane android and his pet virus? Why would I want to follow this asshole instead of Shaw, Daniels, or even Vickers?
Final Analysis
Watching Aliens right on the heels of Alien: Covenant made it easier for me to make some connections and parallels. In Aliens, a group of marines attempts to travel to a space colony that lost contact to see what’s going on. Ripley is brought along (with Burke, that shit) as a consultant “just in case” (even though everyone treats her like she has a case of the vapors when she tells them about the xenomorphs). The premise makes little sense on the outset. However, when we later learn Burke’s true motivation it makes perfect sense. Burke believes Ripley, although he makes a show of the opposite. And he wants to bag an alien to bring home and sell to the highest bidder. When the soldiers start stomping carelessly around blowing holes in things with there big dumb weapons, it’s infuriating to the audience, knowing what we know. However, it’s also infuriating to Ripley and we’re reminded why she’s there. These are soldiers who, of course, have no idea what to do with an alien species and probably aren’t used to exploring alien environments.
This is very similar to what’s going on in Alien: Covenant. Not made clear in the film due to the character development scenes (such as “the last supper” prologue) being cut, this crew are explorers and colonists. They’re not astronauts or scientists. A few of the characters appear to be military escorts or officers. Of course they’re tromping around without a care in the world. They don’t know any better. Their captain, Jake Bronson, dies mid-journey and his second-in-command, Billy Crudup’s Oram, is super insecure about his new position. This is frequently shown in his interactions with Katherine Waterson’s No First Name Daniels, who was also Bronson’s wife. Daniels has a comradery and respect with the crew not present with Oram. So, when Oram has to start making decisions he’s acting more on his insecurity and his need to Do Something and be taken seriously than acting on the information and advice he’s given. Also, once we know the relationships between characters everyone’s bizarre anti-survival behavior makes a ton of sense. After a certain point in the film, everyone has lost a spouse and/or a ton of friends. Everyone is grieving, scared, and not at all trained to be doing what they’re doing, and they don’t have a Ripley on board to help guide them. “Game over, man! Game over!”
Yeah, Alien: Covenant is what happens when you make every character a Hudson.
Watching Ripley’s reaction to Bishop in Aliens reminded me how iffy Ash the A.I. was in Alien. You know, he got all murdery and everything.
Then I remembered – oh, yeah – Alien: Covenant is a prequel. This means David is an A.I. precursor of some kind to Ash… which means he’s a faulty A.I. Also, Ripley encountered creatures and situations no one had discovered before to our knowledge (due to everyone’s reaction to Ripley’s story in Aliens). This ultimately means no one can make it out of these prequels alive or it compromises Ripley’s established story.
David is a faulty A.I., which hasn’t yet been experienced by anyone living who has encountered androids in space exploration if we go by the example of Ash in Alien. Failsafes haven’t been given to androids yet to limit their emotional depths or put rules in place to prevent them from harming humans. He’s creating creatures that are new. No one knows they exist, so no one is prepared for them (just like the crew of the Nostromo wasn’t prepared for the xenomorphs in Alien). Even heavily trained soldiers, scientists, and astronauts will be encountering deadly things they don’t know are out there: a highly intelligent rogue A.I. capable of experiencing emotion and evolution, mutated weaponized creatures unlike anything they’ve ever seen before, and an alien virus that mutates its host and is undetectably ingested.
Guys, ain’t nobody emerging as the lone heroic survivor of anything in this franchise (except the fucking xenomorph).
Having digested and accepted that information, I am grimly awaiting what happens next, and I really hope with all my giddy little heart that theorized Aliens sequel Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn teased is going to happen. I’ll even take a video game version.
Hicks and Newt deserved better and I stand by that.
9 notes
·
View notes