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Geek Roundtable: Alien Franchise

A midnight theatre screening of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), and completely using it as an excuse to geek out over the entire Alien Franchise.

MFLuke: Sci-fi that was actually set in space prior to Alien was either rare or, quite simply, cheese.  (Silent Running is worth mentioning, but who’s seen that?)

Star Wars, amongst its other achievements, made sci-fi mainstream. (Who hasn’t seen Star Wars?) However, Star Wars had nothing to do with Earth or human beings.  And although sci-fi was popular now, subsequent sci-fi movies were more focussed on alien beings coming to Earth rather than man adventuring in space.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in November of 1977.  Then Superman came to our planet in December of 1978. And those pesky body snatchers invaded yet again in December of 1978 as well.

Then along came Alien. This is pure sci-fi. It’s a practical future. Space is big, so we have to hibernate to get around in it. Spaceships are made of metal and wires. There are protocols to follow in contacting alien beings. And the aliens were actually alien, not just humanoid (except for the limitations of special effects).

I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts…Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy.Dan O’Bannon describing his impetus for writing Alien

Despite the popularity of Alien, the sci-fi elements it introduced were quickly abandoned.

In space no one can hear you scream.

In space no one can hear you scream.

The Star Trek movies started and reintroduced fantastical science while encountering various types of humanoid “aliens”. Star Wars followed suit with Episodes V and VI. Superman continued to become more and more human in the second and third installments of his series.

E.T. presented a legitimate alien race, but the story was based entirely on Earth.  Blade Runner, though brilliant, is another Earth-based sci-fi tale.  Tron went completely away from outer space and into the inner space of computers.  Then The Right Stuff took practical sci-fi all the way back to its roots, chronicling the early days of the space program.

While science fiction was being dismantled or simply watered down, the action movie was making its rise to power.  Arnold (Commando and Conan) and Stallone (Rocky and Rambo series) were starting their stranglehold, sometimes quite literally.

Then along came James Cameron and his little student project turned blockbuster, The Terminator.  It was kind of its own animal in terms of sci-fi.  Time travel and robots abound, but there’s no mention of anything outside of planet Earth.  No matter. It was time to do a sequel to Alien.  Aliens is the child of 80s big budget movie-making at the start of the action movie boom.  With all that in mind, Aliens is exactly the film it should be.  And that’s why it is so highly regarded.  It’s a time marker of the movie industry more than anything else.  Whether you think it was the start of something great or the beginning of the end is up for debate.

aliens_2

Bryronic – I think the other important element to the Alien series, which we haven’t really touched on, is the horror aspect.  I can’t really recall any sci-fi/horror movies before this, unless you want to include stuff like Plan 9…, although the aforementioned Body Snatchers might fall into the sci-fi/horror milieux.  And there weren’t really any significant ones after this, in my mind until…Event Horizon?  (Killer Klowns from Outer Space doesn’t count.) Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Reznik – It may not have become its own genre of spacehorror, but it did help to establish sci-fi as ‘not just flashy laserbeams and space battles’ like StarWars and horror movies to be ‘not just scary guys with sharp weapons’. Helping to expand both genres, and validating other similar crossover works as well. Alien is a horror movie that just happens to be set in space. Although the exact opposite argument is equally valid.

Although pretty much every horror franchise has had a ’space chapter’ since, ie Jason X, or Hellraiser Bloodline.

MFLuke –  Don’t forget Leprechaun in Space.

Bryronic – Yeah, I was ignoring the horror franchises with chapters in space because they’re shit.

Bonbonfire – When it comes to the origins of sci-fi horror, though, I don’t think we should rule out the 1950s. The Thing, The Blob, the original Invasion, which is so good. Don’t even get me started on Quatermass–sadly, I’ve only seen one (Quatermass and the Pit), but it’s so crazy good. These were all sci-fi, all with a space angle (even though they take place on Earth), all meant to be pretty scary. And all of these, in spite of how they look now, had the subversive, under-the-radar undercurrents that sci-fi has always had.

Not saying Alien didn’t have a pivotal role in transitioning the genre–just saying it was doing what sci-fi horror had always done, but making it a little more credible. No?

hauntedalien

Reznik – Very true. It’s hard to maintain perspective, especially on horror, when what scares the bejeesus out of a past generation is cheeseball to the next. Perhaps it was the melding of mainstream sci-fi after the dawn of Lucas, and the beginnings of visceral horror with the rise of Romero, that combined to make Alien the right movie at the right time.

And it’s followed by Aliens, the definitive 80s action flick at the crest of the ‘big guns in outrageous situations’ trend of Hollywood throughout the decade. Once again, right movie at the right time.

Next Up: Alien 1979 and Aliens 1986

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  • Mynock33
    2001: A Space Odyssey - 1968
    Planet of the Apes - 1968

    Some other early sci-fi that helped break the mainstream barrier.
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