Aliens (1986)
‘This time its war’ – Cameron himself came up with that arresting tagline, and war it was, at least from a production standpoint. I’m not sure why the Alien films were so difficult to craft, Ridley Scott had legendary problems with the first movie and of course David Fincher has all but disowned the third due to the unforgivable executive meddling, I suspect it’s due to a combination of a unique tranche of perfectionist directors who were not prepared to acquiesce to the autocrats instructions without a fight, the general difficulty of making SF pictures with all the complications and additional pressures of unusual production design mechanics, the manufacture of scores of convincing creatures and beasts, the visual effects complexity where the boys are always attempting to surpass their peers efforts, the strenuous shooting schedules on inhospitable sets, the crafting of impossible and uncanny worlds. Cameron had expressed an interest in constructing a sequel to the 1979 smash-hit during a passing meeting with producer Gale Ann Hurd, a request she relayed to a nervous 20th Century Fox whom waited to see the performance of his recently completed picture The Terminator before handing the reigns to the sophomore director – let’s not forgot that in 1985 the only other film on Cameron’s CV was Piranha 2: Flying Killers – so when Ahnoldts rampaging mechanoid annihilated the 1984 Box Office records he quickly found himself on a flight to London.
I was too young to see Aliens at the cinema when it was first released and I surprisingly don’t have any memory of when I first saw it, I did however manage to attend a fantastic screening of the movie at Abbey Road studios (where the film was scored) in I think 2006 to celebrate its vicennial inception and I still have a moldering copy of the Special Collectors Edition© StarBurst style magazine loitering in hibernation somewhere, in the intervening years the films position as one of the finest, if not the finest SF/Action hybrid picture remains pretty much unsurpassed. As the second tranche of the Alien Quadrilogy Box-Set I’m happy to report that like Alien it’s another fantastic transfer, some purists complain about the removal of the grain in the images and the artificial ‘crispness’ of the digital corrected frames, in this instance the production team have successfully navigated the path of retaining its original claustrophobic, cerulean paranoia with a texture that still portrays a 25 year genealogy in that it still looks like it was made a quarter century ago, but not in a bad way. The version I selected was the lengthier directors cut with the additional footage on LV-426 that embeds more of a prologue to the kinetics, and of course some of the extra combat stylistics such as the chainguns and other war pron.
Aliens is quite a rare beast in comparison to the current moviemaking maelstrom I think, sure there are plenty of sequels around these days much to everyone’s disgust but at least Cameron and company tried to build on it’s
progenitors infrastructure, on its mythology and genetics to birth something different, a beast with a stricter emphasis on action, excitement and kinetics in tandem with a brooding, mysterious, horrific atmosphere of course – that’s the kind of director James Cameron is – but it still retains a fidelity to the original, it is reverent and respects its progeny whilst widening the margins of this future universe rather than simply rehashing the same plot elements and designs with a slightly more amplified spin. Yes it follows the same build-up, horrific sequence, running through klaxon blaring smoke shrouded corridors and double ending structure but the characters are defined, the world feels organic, the mystery and dread are intact and it’s just damn exciting even half a century later. Some of these fidelities spring from the likes of Ron Cobb being retained on the production staff whose ergonomic designs such as the caverns and tunnels of the settlements being exploded from the claustrophobic dread of the first film to encompass the pioneers environment with its higher volumes of vehicle and foot traffic, a simple example of the intrinsic details that Cameron and his team applied to all elements of the films mise-en-scene, down to the uniforms and colours, the weapons and support equipment, the vehicle and tank designs, the instrument and quarter designs – they all feel intrinsically part of the world building, an attention to detail that is relatively rare. You could call him something of a cinematic le corbusier if you were feeling particularly pretentious. Many of these designs were inspired by the visionary work of the great Syd Mead, the conceptual artist whose vivid images of a realistic, functional, convincng future world were moulded and modified into the final sets and locales that are captured on-screen. I’m surprised he hasn’t been more in demand in the film world given that impressive CV (well, let’s just overlook Timecop shall we?) but I think he got bigger paychecks for other corporate work he’s performed in industrial design and architectural work over the intervening years.
I’m not usually one to be particularly jingoistic but I am proud of the history of these films being shot in the UK, as per Alien much of Aliens was unleashed at Shepperton Studios with much of the final sequences being lensed in the nearby Acton gasworks, a tradition of the US bankrolling UK based productions which I have to reluctantly agree has been continued with the Harry Potter series keeping a roof over the heads of many of the industries lower tier craftsmen, artists and designers. Nevertheless I loathe those movies as much as I would abhor a week-long marine training course with all the relentless exercise and sleep deprivation, a process that the American recruits endured as part of their training regime for the movie. Sigourney Weaver, back in her caree
r defining role expands Ripley’s pathos to new levels that cemented her iconic position as a kick-ass conqueror, I’m happy to be corrected but surely she is the first SF action heroine? And no, Barbarella doesn’t count. Weaver was excluded from the training activity as she was finishing up her acting duties on Half Moon Street, a lucky coincidence that kept her from bonding with her colleagues which awarded her an ‘outsider’ status with the cast that correlates with Ripley’s experiences in the film. Due to the somewhat grumpy demeanor of the British crew toward the American upstarts – Cameron was not one to be entirely happy with our beloved trade union enforced series of tea breaks and general working practices – the American cast felt like they were operating in a hostile and foreign environment, again as a mirror to the films fiction, as Cameron’s now notorious reputation as a work driving tyrant was born. Joining Sigourney Weaver were a few faces now notorious amongst film fan circles, including Michael ‘Stay Frosty’ Biehn and Bill ‘Why don’t you put her in charge’ Paxton with their portrayals of the beloved genre figures of Hicks and Hudson, whilst Lance Henrikson plays somewhat against type as the phlegmatic android Bishop and Jenette Goldstein provoked more gender inversions in the franchise with her muscular, testosterone driven portrayal of the feisty Vasquez.
That supine antithesis is just one of the themes that echo from the original Alien within this sexually androgynous future world (note that there is not one moment of sexual affection in the entire franchise, at least from the humans perspective), Cameron seizing the baton established in the first film and running them through his own particular peccadilloes – notions of the surrogate, the maternal and the mother, empowered and physically robust females – just look at Terminator 2 or Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies, Avatar or even Rose in Titanic – it’s a central conceit in all his work. Aliens also emerges admidst a nest of 1980’s movies that exposed America’s PTSD inducing defeat in Indochina, where overwhelming firepower and technology was redundant in the face of a homogeneous and merciless foe, sandwiched between the likes of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill
, Bat 21, Rambo (which Cameron penned the screenplay for) and Good Morning Vietnam to name but a few, the film is classic SF metaphor of non-fictional concerns that can more subtlety penetrate and refract a nations national psyche. The aceldama that occurs on Acheron is a fine addition to the annals of SF cinema, a territory which is positively infested with swarms of radioactively mutated insects, those xenomorphs of the series obviously have an arthropod like quality which I’d argue is a manifestation of an unconscious awareness that these critters are the only species that could possibly survive a nuclear conflagration and would be destined to usurp the planet from our extinct stupidity. But, as they say, all of this is academic and the real charm of Aliens is in its galvanizing pace, its tense texture, the graphically realised future world and some unbeatable action sequences – the way the build-up is handled in the motion sensors sequence is exemplary.
James Horner’s chunky, throbbing action soundtrack is a favourite of mine which became adopted for the trailers of similarly minded action movie projects, presumably in a vain marketing effort to coat inferior material with a veneer of quality, that’s not bad for a 4 day effort that he wrote under duress as he and Cameron fundamentally locked horns on the aural composition and its integration with the visuals. The visual effects were masterfully crafted by Bob and Dennis Skotak, using the whole panoply of techniques available at the time – in camera beam splitters, instate perspective dupes, travelling mattes – all incorporated with a physically real Alien Queen puppet which is unveiled during the climax of the film. This regal beast was a real construction, operated by no less than 16 puppeteers, giving a real density, a real sense of horrific threat to proceedings. Sure, some of it looks a little clunky by 21st century standards but Cameron and his editors camouflage the beast and much of the other contractions of the film with an adept eye, maintaining a fine balance of sense perception that could break the spell, but these techniques are delivered at a pace which doesn’t dovetail into confusingly erratic, almost epileptic cutting nonsense that merely confuses and rejects the viewer – I think there are some very solid reasons why this film is still a favourite to many and this understanding, this knowledge of how an audience absorbs and internalizes a visual experience is a large part of the films classic status. Cameron seems to know exactly how many frames are required to suspend the disbelief – his and Jackson’s approaches to their new projects being shot at 48 fps is going to be quite an interesting ride, especially when one considers Godard’s adage that ‘cinema is truth at 24 frames per second’ then I guess they will be twice as authentic? As authentic as a medieval fantasy realm and foreign world can be eh? Anyway, next up, the inauguration of a certain Mr. David Fincher’s career….
The Terminator (1984)
Although I have been lucky enough to attend some of the events and special screenings surrounding the NFT’s Future Human season I did want to fit in a ‘straightforward’ screening, that is to say just a film, on its own, without any Q&A or interview to follow in an effort to do the season justice if that in any way makes sense. Considering my genre preferences selecting some SF film to go and see wasn’t going to be a particularly difficult task, I mused over the likes of Avalon which I haven’t seen and Soderbergh’s Solaris which I quite like, before deferring to James Cameron’s robust The Terminator, I figured after all the dense, philosophical SF stuff I’ve been watching over the past few weeks I really could with some stuff getting blown up, some judicious use of squibs and stunt-people, a film where the narrative obstacles are solved with explosives and shotgun blasts rather than erudite musings on the nature of mortality and infinity – in short, some fun.
Single, twenty-something Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is going to have a pretty bad day. Leading a somewhat sedentary lifestyle in early eighties Los Angeles Sarah’s life is turned upside down when she becomes the target of an unstoppable, homicidal time-travelling android – Ahnoldt in his star cementing role – who has been sent back from 2029, a post nuclear holocaust future where man is engaged in a desperate battle with the machines to prevent our extermination. Unbeknownst to Sarah she is destined to be the mother of the resistances one true hope, the charismatic leader John Connor – check out those initials – who represents future mankind’s only hope of salvation and victory over Skynet’s merciless automatons. Whist the meek Sarah is no match for the relentless terminator assassin she has one slim chance for survival, the future resistance have sent back one of their most skilled warriors, Kyle Reece (Michael Bien) to defend Sarah and ensure the birth of the prospective messiah.
I haven’t seen the film for a good few years and I was looking forward to seeing it on the big screen in all its blue-hued, techno fetishistic neo-noir glory, thankfully the print did not disappoint and this was terrific fun. It’s a remarkably compact picture, in Cameron’s trademark style it bounds along with a relentless enthusiasm and is a textbook exemplar of how you make a superlative Hollywood action picture, with just the right balance of back-story and plot, the requisite action pieces – although I doubt the remorseless execution of the cops by Ahnoldt in his assault on the station house would be sanctioned today – the contemporarily impressive SFX, the attention to detail on lighting and costumes, the modernist soundtrack, it all moves along so efficiently you don’t have time to question its pulpy origins. It would make a great double-bill with Michael Mann’s Thief as both premier examples of that period’s aesthetical designs, the fethisization of the urban and industry, those glowing pools of neon reflecting over the surfaces of cars and rain-sodden streets, all the flash-forward stuff to LA circa 2129 was clunky in places but still held together, you can see where every penny of the modest $8 million budget was spent.
One has to question whatever happened to Michael Biehn? I know he cropped up in Planet Terror a few years ago but after some starring roles in James Cameron’s next couple of films you have to wonder why he didn’t quite make it. It was amusing to see the psychiatrist Dr. Silberman whose appearance got a laugh and of course the obligatory Bill Paxton cameo. That’s pretty much it for me and Jim on the big-screen, with the exception of Piranha 2: Flying Killers which I can’t see getting a screening soon I’ve caught up with all his movies on the big screen, as long as you don’t count the documentaries. So that’s it, I’m going to try to keep things a little more succinct around here so I’ll just close with the charming news that we shouldn’t really be worrying about an imminent holocaust emanating from our machines, we seem to be doing a pretty good of job of it ourselves without any outside assistance. Sweet dreams…
Avatar
Ferngully with guns. Dances with Smurfs. A PS3 cut scene that lasts for two and a half hours – the knives were out for the biggest film in history(TM) whose budget seems to veer from $230 million dollars to £600 million quid depending on which article you read. Its been twelve years since the wince inducing, self proclaimed ‘king of the world‘ cannily welded a romantic weepie for the ladies with some state of the art SFX for the boys that resulted in the most profitable film of all time, in the twelve year hiatus Canada’s most famous tyrant has beavered away on a a project so visionary that the technology and equipment to realise his vision had to be invented – I think it’s fair to say that James Cameron is not man without ambitions. When I saw that first trailer I was initially unimpressed, given the tone and tenor of reports coming out from the set I was disappointed at seeing something so apparently conventional, the second trailer however was a vast improvement, especially when seen in full 1080p HD which revealed some of the intricacies and attention to detail that the new technology has captured. Anticipation has been mounting incrementally ever since and I confess to feeling like an eight year old on Christmas Eve when queuing at the Waterloo IMAX earlier today, suffice to say I simply can’t wait to see it again in a couple of days as it is unquestionably a magnificent achievement, it’s the ‘gamechanger’ we all hoped for and heralds a new benchmark in mainstream film-making. On a purely visceral, action orientated level it excels Aliens, the Terminators and True Lies combined. Are you excited yet?
Its 2154 and the human race is reliant on dwindling stocks of a magical mineral called (a little in joke) Unobtainium, fortunately the newly discovered lush, verdant jungle world of Pandorum is rife with the stuff. A military expedition is despatched to the planet in order to secure essential deposits of the material at all costs, a mission directed by the abrasive Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who cunningly launches the Avatar programme to infiltrate the planets indigenous ten foot tall, blue, feline-like race – the Nav’i – in order to assess his foes strengths, weaknesses and tactical predilections, not to mention ensure the survival of his agents in the planets poisonous atmosphere. Our hero Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic marine who is selected as one of the programmes test subjects due to the genetic code that he shares with his dead twin brother who has initially trained for the mission, his consciousness downloaded into the body of genetically cloned Na’vi simulacrum with the promise that he will get his legs back should he successfully complete his task. Seduced by the bewitching beauty of Pandorum Jake falls in love with the Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) who teaches him to live in harmony with nature, eventually with the assistance of his colleagues including the irascible Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and belligerent Vasquez Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodrequiz) leading her people in an insurrection against the military colonist invaders. There will be mild spoilers to follow so be warned…..
So let’s get the bad stuff out of the way so we can got on with the fun – the plot, in its entirety, can be gleaned from the trailer and there are no real surprises from a narrative perspective. Cameron has also absorbed some of the LOTR story beats which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does make for some standard issue ‘epic’ scenes in the final act, perhaps his choice of turning to WETA to provide the majority of the CGI pyrotechnics has had some subconscious input. As you’d imagine, the eco-hippie, gaia mother earth stuff is overdone and is faintly insufferable, Cameron serving up some mature slices of cheddar in the vein of the thumbs up from T2 and slushy romance of Titanic whilst the song that plays out over the final credits needs to have every copy on the planet collected together and hurled into the nearest active volcano. Then again, for my part this was all anticipated, this is an immensely expensive project (but not the most expensive film to date by the way) and as such has to appeal to the broadest possible demographic, alas for the film connoisseur this means choking down some McDonalds amongst the Beluga caviar and Kobe beef steaks, cinematically speaking. In terms of spectacle however, of a film event where the noise of a few hundred jaws hitting the floor is repeated again and again as we are incrementally drawn into an alien world it is unsurpassed. I quite literally could not believe what I was seeing when the film found its stride and the infiltration of this magical world began in earnest.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a functioning memory and are of a certain age then you might remember how exhilarated, how awed and dumbstruck you felt upon exiting the cinema after seeing The Empire Strikes Back – this movie equals and replicates that feeling. It is stunning, absolutely, devastatingly, utterly bewilderingly stunning on a visual level, as Ebert posited in his review Cameron may be one of the only contemporary Hollywood film makers where you can see all the money on screen in all its digitally mediated splendour. You are completely engulfed in the teeming, humid world of Pandorum and all its flora and fauna, the 3D is fully immersive – all those motion blur and ghosting worries are immediately dispelled – like Scullys on-screen transportation into an alien body the audience is simultaneously transported to an alien planet, into a fully realised and tangible realm quite unlike anything I’ve had the privilege to witness. Cameron has finally nailed that uncanny valley problem, the reaction to the images that prompts a ‘wow, that looks like a great piece of effects’, being surpassed and taken to the next level were the Na’vi and the world of Pandorum are a living, breathing entity. The motion capture breakthroughs lead to real characterisation, the eyes and facial textures are convincing, there is a soul and plausibility to the Na’vi and their Avatar kin which are immediately recognisable as incarnations of their human progenitors, an interesting meta-mirror to one of the films timely concerns – don’t get me started on how this is a film of its time not merely with its embrace of an ecological message but also the nods to a society that increasingly mediates its relations through artificial representation via MMORGS and numerous, electronic social media. It’s simply astonishing with the teeming planes of the image also evading that tiresome, forced visual pollution that poisoned the Star Wars revisions and their tiresome ilk – the bar has been indisputably raised and the likes of Spielberg, del Toro, Zemeckis and Jackson will be operating under its shadow for the next few years, Tintin leaves me cold but the gauntlet for The Hobbit has been well and truly thrown down.
The allusions are obvious – an indigenous species invaded and exploited by an aggressive force who desire to rape and pillage their natural resources, a protagonist of the military industrial complex changed by the exposure to a more holy, more (dare I say it) earthy ideology, Vietnam, Iraq and the genocide of the Native American Indians are all alluded and referenced to in an admittedly clumsy fashion at certain points – lines like ‘we will fight terror with terror’ and ‘we will commit a pre-emptive strike’ are perhaps just a little too obvious – but again this is Hollywood so I could sacrifice these shortcomings on the altar of pure, unadulterated entertainment. Personally I found the middle section of the movie the most immersive and affecting, that is where the film really expanded and aggregated its breakthroughs, demanding a second and possibility third viewing – we shall see. The final battle is executed with Cameron’s customary skill, the action sequences equaling the films progressive visual agility, climaxing on a set piece that explores the perils of sending an incapacitated hero into a tactically flawed war theatre that any reasonably acute film fan would anticipate yet enjoy for its inherent, dexterious possibilities. The movie is a step change equivalent to the 50’s and 60’s B Movies leading to 2001, the CGI expansion progressing the technological marvels of the likes of Beowulf and others as the decade expires. Treat yourself, leave your objections at the door and let yourself be overwhelmed by Pandorum. On the biggest screen possible. It’s history in the making.
Avatar Trailer
It’s not embeddable yet I don’t think so take a look here for the first offical glimpses of Cameron’s first narrative feature in twelve years. Better still it’s in HD over at Apple Trailers.
I think it looks terrific, as I said it reminds me of an old ‘Heavy Metal‘ magazine strip. I was going to save this for my actual review come December but here is Cameron’s first student film, I think it’s fair to say he’s come a looooong way. Roll on December….
Stan Winston RIP
Oh dear, some more bad news. At the risk of sounding selfish, I’m particularly sad about this as he actually came and did a NFT event a couple of years ago and I didn’t go figuring he’d come back at some point – just shows you eh? Carpe Diem and all that, it’s my birthday today so I’m feeling a bit maudlin, OK?. Still, 62 seems very young for a film creative who has given us some of the most memorable creature designs of the past thirty or so years. I was fortunate enough to see a print of ‘Aliens‘ at Abbey Road studios a couple of years ago as part of season of films that had been scored there and the film stands up very well against todays CGI saturated blockbusters.
Some bloggers have quite rightly pointed out that his job was especially difficult and his achievements all the more spectacular given his work in the SF, horror and fantasy film genres. Production designers working in other genres will have a whole host of reference and support materials to aid them in their vision when you think about it. If you have to construct a believable 1950’s Manhattan apartment for example then you have a number of architectural journals, fashion, design and periodical magazines, photographs, films and TV of the era for reference, inspiration and to assist with accuaracy. In Winston’s case you have to envisage, develop and build something that has never been, never existed (OK, apart from Dinosaurs but still) and make them convincing and breathe life into them on screen – no small task given the ratio of successful versus laughable designs that have littered the movies since ‘King Kong‘.
So finally here is a celebration of the great mans work which like many others have helped inform my cinematic childhood. Winston always was more of straight-forward fantasist rather than the splatter masters Rob Bottin and Tom Savini who are his foremost peers in my humble opinion. It’s also interesting to speculate on what his passing will have on one of the most eagerly anticipated projects of the last ten years which should hopefully, finally be with us next year.
Minty's Menagerie 
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