Something Special

We’re all fans of this universe…obviously or you wouldn’t be reading and I, not writing…as for me…‘Alien’ culminates a life lived in love of the movies, more pictures than I could ever list from every era and genre. That picture though, that one, captured my mind ages ago, latched on as no film before or since has…..and that’s of particular note, considering I somehow managed to watch the trilogy, at that time a trilogy, in reverse—from end to beginning. ‘Alien 3’, ‘Aliens’ and finally……’Alien’. As with many of you, I was stunned, captivated, astonished and fascinated….in some ways, with what, I wasn’t exactly sure… …but as I’ve pondered over the years, [i]collated[/i], if you will, I’ve happened upon something simple...something rather special in what fascinates us…. What I speak of, it similarly repulses and yet, here we are, ready to consume the horror Ridley is preparing to feast upon our eager little sets of eyeballs. It is a concept that at first sounds ludicrous, yet gains momentum the more I consider it. If one were to ask who the star of ‘Alien’ is, well, anyone of us would lead with Ripley. That would seem obvious…but to me it’s a bit more muddled than that…and far more interesting. Honestly…Ripley isn’t clearly the lead until, roughly, the last half hour, forty minutes of the film…after Dallas’ disappearance when she takes command and rather commandingly, I must say. Prior to that, the film comes off as an ensemble piece with competing personalities, some more obvious than others. Which is why, as I poured over that film on countless viewings, I began to settle on something unconventional….the star or, better yet, the essence of ‘Alien’ isn’t Ripley, any one individual or even the alien itself….it’s the concept of “the alien” and I don’t mean the xenomorph...It’s the concept of that which lies outside human conception, that which is entirely foreign to human thinking, comprehension or configuration….what is Alien to us. And I am aware that Giger’s art is, of course, inspired of human imagination, but he somehow manages to produce what comes off as inconceivable. That is a tremendous accomplishment and talent of his. And, as a result, I believe he and ‘Alien’ give us what we’d never before seen in cinema… …never before had the alien been so completely alien, thus terrifying in a way that was itself new, peculiar, deeply troubling and entirely engrossing. And I take that last bit directly from pages 75-76 of Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of ‘Alien’ as Dallas considers the derelict as he and his shipmates survey its exterior. This excerpt describes in detail the aesthetic I speak of. Dallas thinks to himself: “It was exciting and Intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of nonhuman manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics. “That, he admitted to himself, was what troubled him most about the derelict. Had it conformed to the familiar in its outlines and composition, then its nonhuman origin would not have seemed so threatening. He did not put his feelings down to simple xenophobia. Basically, he hadn’t expected the alien to be so completely [i]alien[/i].” What makes ‘Alien’ so special to those of us consumed by it is what’s makes it so mysterious…that which is alien in this film is exactly that, alien or foreign to us in a way we find difficult to accept, in a way the mind has difficulty registering. What the human mind truly cannot grasp or understand, it fears in ways that grip the emotional and mental framework of its consciousness that can shake it and, ultimately, us to a point of total and complete collapse. What excites me for ‘Prometheus’ is that I believe one director in this entire franchise ever fully understood that….and he, of course, is Ridley Scott. Considering all of this…I have total faith in the artistic prowess of what we will see this summer….truly, something special to behold. Maybe all of that comes off as a rant, but I’m passionate about this idea and I hope it illuminates the way some of you look at both ‘Alien’ and ‘Prometheus’.