In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream…

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Before James Cameron ever thought of blue people that plugged into things to control them, or eve wrote the now famous line, “I’ll never let go, Jack, I’ll never let go…” and before Ridley Scott put two women, Thelma and Louise, into a 66 Thunderbird together, not to mention David Fincher and his beautifully made Curious Case of Benjamin button, all three of these directors had one thing in common:

All had directed a movie in The Alien Franchise.

Today, I shall be talking about one of the greatest sci-fi/fantasy series of this generation, Alien, Aliens and Alien 3. Years before James Cameron ever thought of blue people that plugged into trees or wrote the now

I have chosen only to talk about the first three films because to me, the fourth movie, Alien: Resurrection wasn’t all that great and seemed to try too hard to reboot a franchise I thought was done. I also will not be talking about the Alien VS Predator movies, as I have not seen them.

But, if you have seen the first three, or have not and are curious about them, then please continue to be the reading!

Alien

This move was released in 1979 and is set some years into the future in space, where terraforming other plants and mining on the outskirts of the skies was thriving. While on the way back to Earth, the crew of the ore mining ship, Nostromo receives an SOS coming from planted LV-426.

Being the awesome crew they are, they somewhat crash land on this alien planet and go in search of the distress call.

Though, once boarding a ship they find that the crew is long dead and an eerie patch of eggs has taken up part of the ship. Upon examining the egg, one of them begins to open and what is deemed in the franchise as a facehugger, latches onto the face of one of the Nostromo crew member Kane.

The medics soon try to remove the alien creature, but are unsuccessful. They do find out that its blood is like acid and can burn through pretty much everything. They decide the best course of action is to let the creature fall off on its own, which is does and Kane is seemingly unharmed.

Since their voyage back to Earth is going to take a while, they prepare themselves from statis, which is like a long term sleep. However, the crew never gets to enjoy their sleep.

It is soon discovered that Kane is absolutely not alright and during dinner, he beings to sputter and convulse. He is shown lying on this back with what looks like a small fist trying to punch out through his chest. The mass becomes larger, blood comes through and an alien bursts through his chest.

For the remainder of the film it is a battle to stay alive and to try and outsmart the alien life form, which they were eventually successful with and go into stasis until they reach Earth.

Now, I am not too sure when I saw this first movie, I know I was very young, probably around five or six which would place the year at around 1991-1992. I saw the first one, and the second one during this time and I remember wanting to see the third one, which came out in 1993, but my dad refused to let my mom take me to the theatres to watch it, so I had record the making of the third movie on HBO so I could have something to watch for it.

The second movie, Aliens which came out in 1986, to me wasn’t nearly as scary as the first, and I associate this because of Saturday Night Live and their parody called Alienses, in which Sigourney Weaver who plays the main lead Ripley in the series, hosted. This helped me realize that these movies were purely fictional.

Also, the second movie had Newt.

In this next installment, Ripley yet again finds herself  back on planet LV-426, only this time she has tons of marine and military backup. They go in for a rescue mission, but find that pretty much the entire place is gone.

Save for the little girl Newt, whom I fell in love with as she appeared to be about my age.

There they discover that the colonists had found the egg chamber and were attempting to learn more about the species and the possibility that they could be used as weapons.

They soon try to make it back to the mother ship, but the aircraft used for transport is brought down by stow away aliens, and the rest of the crew watch in horror as the craft  falls and crashes to the Earth.

Once again a battle ensues, military against alien.

Newt gets captured towards the end of the movie, and Ripley, being like a protective mother, goes and rescues her, also exploding and setting fire to most of the eggs the queen is making.

Which subsequently, pisses her off, and she detaches from her egg laying chamber and gives pursuit to Newt and Ripley.

In the end Ripley must battle the queen in a rather cool looking cargo loading suit and manages to blow it out of the air lock.

After all the fighting and badassery that happens in this movie, the remaining people all get cleaned up and prepare themselves from their stasis sleep.

I don’t know what it is about this movie, but it is my favorite one, perhaps I like this one so much because this was really the first movie I recall ever thinking someone cute. That someone was Hicks, who was also in Terminator 2. He was dishy. Or perhaps, I could relate to Newt. While I obviously had never seen my parents killed by aliens and have to fend for myself for weeks, maybe even months on end, there’s a certain trait about her, her strength that made me actually look up to her on some level.

The third movie in the series is Alien 3. This is probably my least favorite of the series, as it really didn’t have the same feel as the rest of them.

It’s been even longer than the last time between stasis and waking. The pod carrying the passengers from the end of Aliens crash lands on planet 161, a planet that houses the most vicious and sexual criminals.

They happen to also be all male.

So, when Ripley comes to, she finds out that the Newt and Hicks died in the crash. Something about this strikes odd to Ripley and she has them perform an autopsy on Newt because she thinks she’s carrying an alien embryo inside of her.

All the while, a facehugger who stowed away is around and it impregnates a dog, thus unleashing the alien life form on this planet. This is probably what makes me not like this movie much also, as I love dogs and seeing even the shadow cast on the wall of the alien coming through the poor dog…yeah, hated that part.

One by one the alien queen starts picking off the prisoners. But, when Ripley encounters the queen, she does not kill her. Rather the alien just sort of shrugs and walks away.

Ripley then realizes that she has an embryo inside of her and that there is a man who wants to harvest it from her, and turn them into obeying weapons.

They eventually kill off the queen and in order to stop the master plan of making an army of aliens, Ripley sacrifices herself for the greater cause and kills herself by jumping into a flaming pit on the planet used for cremations.

Overall, this movie was kind of a letdown, but it did end the series, for me anyways, nicely because you can only bring back people so many times and have the same things happen.

The Alien Franchise has been around for roughly thirty five years and it’s one of those series that will probably never fade by bringing out one movie a decade it would seem, whether it is a prequel like Alien VS Predator, or a continuation in the series like with Resurrection.

There are two planned prequels, not related to the Predator cross over, that I have discovered while researching for this blog. These could possibly bring the series back into the light for the next generation of sci fi geeks if they’re done correctly.

Personally, I would love to see prequels that are set in the “futuristic 2000’s” and how terraforming came out and the whys of it.

Now, if you have seen this series, share your thoughts below. If you have not, are you even remotely interested?

Until next time,

Charmaine.