The Zone's Eye View:

By Jay Woelfel

Director: Ridley Scott

GREAT SCOTT?  IT’S ALIEN AGAIN!

Director Ridley Scott joins himself and other filmmakers in the not always great trend of recutting their “classic” films and getting them rereleased theatrically to be seen again or for the first time on the big screen.   This had become a rare thing in this age of cable television and DVD and video, but these re-releases have made money and when there is money to be made Hollywood will answer the call shamelessly.

Scott helped start this trend with his film Blade Runner that exists by the time of this writing in numerous forms including several “Director’s Cuts” and now Alien joins it and such redone rereleases as the first three Star Wars films and the mostly messed up The  Exorcist back up on the big screen.  (Yes, I have forgotten to mention the CG version of ET but can’t we all just agree to forget it on principal?)

While it’s great to have “old” films playing in theaters again and to large crowds it can be frustrating to see what you thought was a great film and find that now it’s a slightly different film which has had modern film cosmetic surgery done to it.  But there’s no sense in arguing about if directors should tamper with their films because they are doing it and making enough money doing it for studios to support it.

This new release of Alien is not the overlong CGI botch up job that The Exorcist was nor the watered down CGI re thinks of the Star Wars were or are (rumors has it that when those three films reach DVD and video they will contain even more tweaks from master over-tweaker George Lucas) and that is the good news.  In fact I don’t think there is any CGI in this new version and Scott deserves points for this.

This re-release does offer some unlucky viewers the chance to see it, as I did, projected digitally rather than on film.  I saw the film originally in 70mm and there is very little comparison to the decent but muddy and scan line infected digital version I saw this time to that original film experience.  Just remember that current digital projectors still do not have the resolution commonly used to actually create computer effects when they go to 35mm film, so what is the point?    Well if you really want and have the time you can go see it both ways and decide for yourself, which is better.

This version of Alien remains largely and luckily the same film as the original version.   Scott has wisely kept the running time nearly the same and most additions add to what little character development is in the script and make it a better overall movie.   There is also the inclusion of a scene that explains why two of the crew basically disappear from the film and still omits any views of the famous Alien monster itself that still deserve to be left to the “deleted scene” section on a DVD.   Scott also resists the urge to change the ending back to original one where the cat explodes at the end.   Come to think of it if Spielberg had had a cat explode in the new version of ET…

The new digital sound that I heard the film in did reveal more sounds in the detailed sound mix of the film and seemed to boost the levels of Jerry Goldsmith underused score in spots, but it does also flatten out the dynamic range of loud and soft passages that made some of the jump scares in the film not as effective.  Now it’s all busier and nosier so there is less impact.

Ridley Scott is currently considered to be one of the top directors around and his ascension to this spot begins with this film.  Credit and blame for this film’s strengths and weaknesses do not begin and end with him.  Sporadically great and terrible filmmaker Walter Hill is one of the producers (and importantly an unaccredited script writer on this film and on Alien 3) and the story and screenplay are very much the work of Dan O’ Bannon and Ron Shusett who, among other films, are responsible for Total Recall. 

Timed as it is now with Halloween Alien can and probably should be judged as a horror film.   Scott himself has said there is no ultimate point to the film but terror.  At the time of its original release it was a canny hybrid of the new science fiction outer space grunge look that had started with the original Star Wars and some of the most tired of horror film clichés.  Critics considered it to be groundbreaking combination of science fiction and horror. 

It was certainly a commercial break through of genre blending, though Hollywood still to this day frowns on films that mix genres.

In fact Alien, certainly the script, is a mix or stealing of elements from several B movies of the 1950s and 60’s.  Many of these, I’m sure unknown to most main stream critics at the time of the original films release, are now available on DVD and if you think Alien is the most original script ever go check them out.   The film is a virtual remake of It, The Terror from Beyond Space mixed with definite visual and a few story elements of Planet of the Vampires.

In fact the major addition to this director’s cut is a scene lifted from the movie The Beast From The Haunted Cave, though if you watch the Synapse release version on DVD the scene is now missing.

To be fair the other major influence on the script is the previous film Dark Star which was written by Dan O’ Bannon along with that film’s director, John Carpenter.

To really understand Alien, not that you have to, to enjoy it, you should see all of these films and see it for what it is:  a well arranged greatest hits collection of these previous films.

I suppose the point is is Alien better than the sum of its borrowed parts?  Yes, the parts are well put together and done with a budget that the previous filmmakers would have loved to have had.    But just as high brow critics give Quentin Tarantino undeserved brownie points for originality that isn’t there so did Alien when it came out.

The film, and I really should say the script, is loaded with characters wandering away from the group to be killed while walking around in spooky rooms without bothering to turn on a light and perhaps the longest set up to a “cat scare” in the history of the genre.

You’ll be surprised to find the hand held video camera suspense tricks later used and now owned by Blair Witch being used here as well.

The Freshest element to the film is really the design work by H.R. Giger whose steely and occasionally graphically industrial sexual artwork was widely unknown at the time and probably made the film work and keeps it working today.  Like many great science fiction films it’s hard to watch more than a few seconds of Alien and not know immediately what movie you are watching.  

Yes it’s the same old walk through the dark room scene, but wow what a room?  The space ship at times looks like, well, like sets from Scott’s movies that at the time were yet to be, like Blade Runner and Legend.   Some of the sets in Alien actually make more sense in those later films where they were also done with larger budgets and more attached perhaps to the story being told.

Since it was just Halloween you might also notice the bordering-on-silly use Alien makes of haunted attraction staple gimmicks:  smoke machines and flickering strobe lights.  Those are not Ridley Scott’s most inspired moments, though you –especially the high brow critics among you – can argue that he’s acknowledging just what he’s making, a thrill ride.

Does this also explain the blatant exploitation near the end of the film which suddenly finds us staring up down and sideways at Sigourney Weaver stripping down to, and then cavorting around in, super-tiny panties while we cutaway to the monster’s mouth growing phallic ally larger?

There are other sexual elements in the film chiefly, at the time, relatively new use of lots of slime and the vaginal like openings the astronauts climb through to enter the wrecked spacecraft.  There is also the ugly and out of place pseudo sexual assault scene on Weaver’s Ripley character by a very slimy robot.  I don’t think any of these add up to any coherent message or theme in the film as a whole, they just reflect the various and at times confused sexual interests/ problems of the films chief creative forces: Scott, O’ Bannon, and Giger.

The one real trick the film’s script has up its sleeve that it does pull off perfectly is the famous chest burster sequence.  It’s very graphic and works in part thanks to the actor, John Hurt’s great twitching and gagging.   The movie never really tops this moment and the moment itself comes after a fairly sluggish first act. 

The beginning of the film has aspirations of a deliberate 2001 slowness and features a pointlessly long landing sequence with a few weakish miniature shots.  The landing sequence is only saved from total pointlessness by Jerry Goldsmith’s dramatic music that stands alone as a self-contained concert piece.  (The best way to appreciate the score is on the isolated music tracks of the current DVD release of the original film.)

I suppose the intention of the chest burster scene is that it is this film’s Psycho shower scene.  In that you don’t expect it to happen and it is the most graphic thing in the movie and keeps the rest of the film going afterwards.  That’s the intention; to me upon first viewing the film years ago as a too graphic moment that the rest of the film failed to ever live up to.  Whatever the case, that was the scene that got people talking and made the word of mouth spread that made the film a big hit upon its first release.  It’s still a horrible to watch unforgettable moment.

As I mentioned this new cut makes better use of its characters, all played by actors better than the roles they are given.  Especially Tom Skerritt who remains virtual non-presence in the role of captain of the ship.  You can at least always tell them apart which is more than can be said of Scott’s choices in his more recent Black Hawk Down film.  The two women and Ian Holm come off best.   Weaver went on with the first sequel film Aliens to play “the” model female action hero that all female action heroes and actresses still try and almost always fail to match.  But it’s more than the writing and direction and something about Weaver in this role, a combination of acting and just her unique vibe that make the character memorable and turned her into a star.

Alien is not Ridley Scott’s best film, though it may be his most influential.   His talents help raise, what you might call, so so material here in the way that they did again in his comeback film Gladiator, while at the same time the same so so material in both cases can be said to keep Scott in line enough to use his visual talents to service a solid story in a way that connects with an audience and helped make him the hot and respected director he is today.

If you haven’t seen Alien: do.

If you want to debate which version is better then give this one a fair chance and see it in the theaters (on film not digitally) while you can.  Either way it is worth your time.