Everybody loves the ALIEN April 24, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , trackbackI love ALIEN. I know its just a simple dumb ‘b’-movie sci-fi flick at heart, but I absolutely adore this film. As soon as it begins and that wonderful title sequence starts I’m lost in it’s dark, gothic world.
I actually think that ALIEN boasts perhaps the finest title sequence of all. It’s so subtle, so atmospheric- it’s just gorgeous, the ‘ALIEN’ logo slowly building on the screen as the credits roll, the screen a dark moody green as the camera passes over the planetoid, the music full of dread and forboding. Jerry Goldsmith hated using this music cue over the main titles (he composed a greatly different main title cue which was rejected), but I think he missed the point- ALIEN is all about mood, and the title music draws you in. It’s the perfect example of using main title graphics and music to set the tone of the film that follows. As soon as that credit sequence starts I’m gone. I recall a review at the time nailed it perfectly- it was as if instead of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods coming to Earth, we had gone to them. With Giger’s incredible creature designs looking like nothing on Earth (excepting perhaps the subtle pseudo-phallic tone of the imagery) the film was genuinely disturbing and remains so to this day, and no-one has equalled the film’s production design in a space movie.
When ALIENS arrived in 1986, I hated it. For me it seemed the Anti-ALIEN. Scotts film was slow, all about mood and tension, and the creature was an inhuman, indestructible killing machine. Camerons film was really a space-based Rambo movie that hijacked the Giger Alien. Incredibly tiresomegung-ho space marines against a horde of dumb soldier-aliens, Cameronintroduced the travesty of a Queen Alien that disposed of the alien-ness of the original, replacing it with a more familiar bee/ant-like Terran lifecycle. The original, even without the cocoon sequence, was unexplained, mysterious, beyond our understanding. . . Cameron’s movie was just too neat, explained too much. I detest the whole concept of the Alien Queen, all that mother/hive nonsense. It spoiled all the later films of the franchise and tainted the original. I still have a smouldering hatred of the film, and watch it very rarely. For me you could have subsituted the Alien for any other creature design and it would still be the same movie. I know many fans prefer ALIENS to the first film, but they are just plain wrong.
ALIEN 3 was a better effort. Much-maligned at the time, I really enjoyed the film even in its flawed original cinema version. There is much to admire here- that familiar sense of doom and dread, a return to the single, deadly Alien, brilliant production design and a simply magnificent score. The film would actually get improved by the eventual DVD recut (described as an’assembly cut’ while not officially a ‘directors cut’ as David Fincher pointedly kept his distance, still hurt by the making of and reaction to the film). This altered cut was more faithful to what Fincher originally envisaged, and was in my eyes a very superior version. ALIEN 3 in better circumstances could have been a classic but it was doomed from the start, as the making-of doc on the special edition DVD testifies.
Infact if the ALIEN 3 making-of doc is a lesson in how not to treat your franchise, describing how ALIEN 3 was doomed and suffered a painful gestation, then what happened after is a lesson in how to kill your franchise and trample it into the gutter. ALIEN RESURRECTION was a poorly conceived attempt to kickstart the franchise following the poorly received third film, and is really just a bloody mess that makes ALIENS look like a classic. The NewBorn Alien at the films’ end is perhaps the most ill-judged idea in the franchise, but that distinction is debatable considering the two ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR films that followed. When the first AVP was mooted I honestly thought it was a joke, I could not believe the series could fall to such a low (but then I hadn’t banked on AVP:REQUIEM, for which the reviews have been so universally damning I don’t think I can ever bring myself to watch it).
But we’ll always have the first film. It shines as brightly as ever, and indeed, seems to get better with age as the years pass and more inferior films in the series get released. Any hope that the franchise would return to the grandeur of the first film vanished some years ago, when Ridley Scott and James Cameron got together to make another ALIEN film. In a typically smart move 20th Century Fox ditched it in favour of AVP. You got to love Hollywood. What a madhouse.
Comments»
“Jerry Goldsmith hated using this music cue over the main titles (he composed a greatly different main title cue which was rejected), but I think he missed the point-”
Actually, I think *YOU* missed the point. If you were asked to compose a (brilliant) score for a movie and then had it messed about with by the director - who has since gone on to not muck about with the far less talented Hans Zimmer (who, unlike Goldsmith, has worked with Ridley Scott more than once) - chances are you’d be upset as well. See also Alex North and his experience with film music enemy Stanley “I love the temp track, me” Kubrick on “2001.”.
Sorry, my point was that while there was nothing wrong with Goldsmith’s intended main title music, it didn’t suit the film as well as the music Scott and editor Terry Rawlings ultimately chose to use. Goldsmith actually worked with Scott twice, and his music suffered an even worse fate the second time (LEGEND). In the case of ALIEN, if you play the cd of the original main title music over the start of the film, it is just awful. It’s a fine theme and as a piece of music the original score -recently released in it’s entirety on cd- is rewarding to listen to in its own right, but the original main title music is just plain wrong in the context of the movie.
Yes, Goldsmith and Scott just had completely different ideas about the tone of the film. Although, his score for Legend is absolutely beautiful and makes it a completely different experience to Tangerine Dream’s rather twee themes. I have no idea why they went with a different score for the American market (how does sticking a rushed synth score on it improve it?).
Since Scott has Goldsmith on his DC of Legend, one assumes it’s his preferred score.
LEGEND was a strange film- flawed but beautiful, I think the studio panicked at the screenings and at that late stage about the only thing they could change was the score. Which was dumb as the music was integral to the film, as demontrated by the DC. How many times do studios think that a film can be ‘fixed’ at such a late stage as audience previews? And how often does the ‘fix’ actually improve the film?