Aliens, savages and evil computers

My latest reviews up at Television Heaven include Alien: Earth, the best installment of the Alien franchise since 1986, and the last two serials of Doctor Who season three, The Savages and The War Machines. I should hopefully have more up before the month's out. 

Next on the blog itself I'm planning to review Strange New Worlds season three, and mabe get back onto the Lower Decks and Prodigy reviews when I have time.

REVIEW: Alien: Romulus

As either the seventh or ninth film in the franchise (depending on whether you count the Alien vs Predator crossovers), Alien: Romulus is up against a huge amount of nostalgia and expectation. It’s unlikely any new instalment will ever reach the heights of 1979’s Alien or 1986’s Aliens, yet the lukewarm reception of Ridley Scott’s return with his two prequel films means that Romulus is needed to revitalise the franchise.

Fortunately, it manages that, with a few caveats. Romulus is undoubtedly the best Alien film in years, balancing sci-fi and horror in a way the series hasn’t really managed since Aliens. It’s visceral, violent and unsettling, although less gorily over-the-top than I expected from Evil Dede Alverez. His script, with his regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues, is a decisive critique of the horrors of capitalism and unchecked growth. Setting the film between Alien and Aliens allows the writers to explore a largely unknown period in the series’ future history, giving us a story connected to Ripley’s without impacting it directly.

On the other hand, Romulus’ reliance on knowing references and slavish recreation of the past limits it originality. We have a new cast of characters to follow and root for, an effective updated design for the Alien (now officially named onscreen as Xenomorph XX-121) and a new corner of the universe to explore, yet we have an antagonist almost literally resurrected from Alien’s history and the repeated use of fan-pleasing old lines, regardless of whether it makes sense in context. Much of this is to be expected; we are, after all, living in the age of nostalgia. What I didn’t anticipate was the writers picking up a plot thread from Prometheus, unfortunately one that lacked much logic or coherence in the first place. This comes to the fore in the final act, derailing an otherwise impressive movie.

What can’t be faulted is the cast. While we have an uniformly young and beautiful set of protagonists – no room for the weird and wonderful in this future – they are all extremely impressive in what are solidly well-written roles. The characters are believable in a way we haven’t seen in this franchise for years, making mistakes and rash decisions that we could see ourselves making in the impossible situation in which they find themselves.

SPOILERS FROM HERE

REVIEW: Archer: 1999

Almost ten years after its pilot episode "Mole Hunt" was aired, the great Archer (probably) comes to an end with Archer: 1999, its space-themed tenth season. Of all the genre-themed settings we've had over the last few years, this is the one I've been looking forward to the most. It's not how I'd have done an Archer sci-fi series - I'd have gone for a full-on Star Trek parody - but it's a great celebration of sci-fi tropes and beloved cliches of the genre. In spite of the name, there's not really any Space: 1999 elements in there (not even a single moon is blown out of orbit to become a gigantic wandering base). The main inspirations are clearly Alien - always a source of referential moments in Archer - and Star Wars, with a mix of long haul space capitalism and swashbuckling space adventure.

Not that there are no Trek elements, though. The gladiator battle in episode two could have fit in the original series with no trouble, while the alien critter in episode three, "The Leftovers," is absolutely a Cardassian vole from DS9. There are plenty of other little nudges and secret ingredients, too - there's a certain Firefly-esque flavour to a lot of the proceedings, not least in the retooling of Adam Reed's character Ray Gillette as a space courtesan. He's basically the male version of Inara, only with less poetry and more cake.

The series is set aboard the starship MV Seamus, a space freighter that is somehow both clapped out and tremendously well-equipped, co-captained by Archer and Lana after their marriage ended and they won half the ship each in the divorce. Interestingly, some of the core characters have been brought back to be closer to their "real" versions than previous iterations like Danger Island and Dreamland. While Archer's always basically the same, Lana's role has varied a fair bit the last few years, and Archer has always been pursuing her in his fantasies. Here, their relationship is very much like how it is in the series' reality. Cyril has also been brought back in line after two seasons as a villain, now in a sort-of relationship with Lana (although it gets very little attention) and acting as the ship's first mate and "space accountant."

Cheryl/Carol is basically the same as ever (down to the glue-eating) but is now the ship's crackshot laser gunner, a job which she finds incredibly boring because she's so good at it, while Pam, in her greatest transformation yet, is a huge alien rock monster of indeterminate gender, not that it's affected her personality much. The brilliant Lucky Yates has finished his stint voicing a parrot as Krieger is back, now an Ash-style synthetic human, full of android milk and just as questionably committed to mad science as he ever was in human guise.

Giving the name "Mother" and the early hints as to the Alien-esque setting, I expected Mallory to be a computer, but instead she's a sort of holographic sentience who can appear as either a ball of light or Mallory's recognisable human form. Mysteriously, she seems to be Archer's literal mother in this reality, suggesting she's a recreation of a real human rather than an AI like Krieger. She's still an alcoholic.

Archer: 1999 works as a tongue-in-cheek space adventure, happily sending up the genre while making it clear that Reed and his co-writers love sci-fi and space opera. Some elements that might have translated well to the setting are surprisingly altered. Barry is back, for example, and despite being a cyborg in the main reality and therefore an easy drop into this environment, he's now the fully robotic Barry-6, an IG-88-like killer droid. Although he's a recurring villain, he's significantly less threatening than his nightmarish Dreamland incarnation, and becomes a laughing stock by the end, which might suggest Archer's subconscious slowly moving past his hatred of his archenemy. (On the subject of cyborgs, Ray was basically one by the middle of the main Archer run, so it's kind of surprising he's completely human here.)

The series has the same pros and cons as the previous couple of seasons, only more so. Dreamland worked well by not massively altering the format from where it had been for the previous year, but playing up the setting. Danger Island through itself into the setting, making big changes to story style and worked as an adventure series, but the comedy suffered. Archer: 1999 continues this trend, with the space adventure working brilliantly and looking truly fantastic for the most part but easily being the least funny of the seasons so far. Not that there aren't laughs along the way; episode five, "Mr. Deadly Goes to Town," starring Matt Berry as a sentient weapon of mass destruction, is a solid sci-fi adventure and pretty hilarious. On the whole, though, the reliance on running gags is becoming tired and serves mostly to remind the audience of when earlier seasons did it better. It's hard to disagree when Barry-6 calls it "derivative."

The final challenge for season ten is to tie up the three-year-long Archer-in-a-coma storyline, which intrudes into the penultimate episode before taking up most of the final one. Logic pretty much goes out the window here in favour of weird visuals and call-backs. There's some exploration of the psychological cost of Archer's mental battle as he falls apart, but there's no consequence, as he simply wakes up to see Mallory in his hospital room. Still, it's a nice final scene and strangely moving, albeit equally disturbing in its oedipal way. If this is the final season of Archer as has been stated, then it's a pretty anticlimactic ending. However, Reed has suggested an eleventh season might happen, in which case a final, back-to-basics approach could help round the series off more satisfyingly. Assuming, of course, that Archer really did wake up...

Crazy like a Fox

So, Fox has sold it's huge catalogue of creative properties to Disney, leaving it to focus on sport, news and other propaganda opportunities. This isn't particularly surprising, in some ways. Disney has been hoovering up properties over the last ten years, acquiring Marvel and LucasArts among others, making it the heavyweight in the tentpole blockbuster game. Fox's TV and film output has been increasingly at odds with its far right, conservative news output; The Orville is a good example of a show that doesn't always get it right but at least tries to show strong women, same-sex relationships, interracial relationships and gender fluidity in positive lights. Fox News, on the other hand, is world-famous as the most right-biased news network in the United States and a major factor in the proliferation of homophobic, transphobic, racist and misogynistic opinions held by the contemporary Republican party. There's a weird schism there.

Soon, 20th Century Fox will, bizarrely, no longer be owned by 21st Century Fox, but by the Walt Disney Company. Rupert Murdoch will be another fifty billion dollars richer and Disney's movie empire will stretch even wider. Unsurprisingly, it's genre fans who are talking about this aspect the most, seeing that many of the most popular fantasy franchises will now be owned by Disney. Having already acquired Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Disney now own the Alien and Predator franchises. Most notably for comicbook fans, Marvel studios now have access to all of the properties previously owned by Fox, including the X-Men and all associated characters such as Deadpool and Cable, plus the Fantastic Four and their associated cosmic beings.

Although Fox will be releasing its immediate output including Deadpool 2, New Mutants and X-Men: Dark  Phoenix, any further productions for these characters will involve Disney/Marvel, including around a dozen TV and film productions already in various stages of progress. Fox's plans for the FF have been in stasis since the dreadful 2015 movie, and presumably Marvel will be making the most of having their first family back in their creative hands. Marvel still don't own the screen rights to all their characters. Spider-Man is still owned by Sony and is used by Marvel Studios under agreement, with movies focusing on subsidiary characters, such as the finally-happening Venom movie, wholly under Sony's purview. Marvel will continue to use the Hulk as a supporting character, but a Hulk-focused movie won't happen unless Universal agree to a new deal on the character; currently, Universal hold the distribution rights on any Hulk film and will not let up on this, while Disney will never let another studio distribute one of their tentpole movies. There's been a long interest on both sides in making a movie for Namor, the Sub-Mariner, one of Marvel's oldest properties, but the rights situation there is complicated (and any Namor film now would look like it was ripping off Aquaman anyway). While Marvel own the Malibu comics rights, film rights to Men in Black, their only real hit, still rests with Malibu's former owners, and they're probably not letting them go, although it's easy to see how keen Disney would be to get their mitts on those.

One area of concern amongst fans is that Disney is not known for R-rated movies, but for more family-friendly affairs, which doesn't bode well for the future of the Alien and Predator franchises, nor the more adult-oriented direction that has made such a hit of Deadpool and Logan. This isn't something that I'm too worried about; Disney have already announced that they've no plans to take the R-rated franchises in the other direction, and they're canny enough to make the most of what works, for maximum exposure and profit. We just won't see "Walt Disney" splashed all over these films' posters.

I am, like most Marvel fans, hugely enthused that we might finally get the movie the Fantastic Four deserve. I actually quite like the first two films - they weren't good, by any stretch, but they were fun, goofy movies, and some risible miscasting aside, they were enjoyable. Still, the FF should be getting huge, cosmic crowd pleasers like Guardians of the Galaxy, not small, moody affairs like Fant4stic. No, what I'm not keen on is the idea of the X-Men coming into the MCU.

This might seem odd. This is what every Marvel fan has been dreaming of, right? Wolverine joining the Avengers! Spidey and Deadpool! Iron Man fighting Doctor Doom! The thing is, Marvel's comic universe is hugely overstuffed, with increasingly unwieldy crossover events involving every-single-bloody-title making any series hard to follow and franchise involvement overly expensive. I barely buy Marvel comics anymore because of this. The MCU is already reaching breaking point, and the announcement that the fourth Avengers movie will signal something of a cut-off point for the interconnected approach is no bad thing. The X-Men movie universe has been its own thing for the last seventeen years, playing fast and loose with its own continuity and trying new things. It messed it up as often as it got it right, but at least it's been interesting. Moreover, the X-Men mythos is rich enough and diverse enough to maintain its own universe. Bringing all this into the MCU, recasting most of it again, no doubt, making mutants just another group of super-people like they are in the comics will actually be creatively damaging for the franchise.

Still, it will probably keep Disney off Universal's back for a while

XENOREVIEW: Alien: Covenant

I was chatting about Covenant with a friend during the build up to its release, and one thing he said was inarguably true: there is no need for another Alien film. In fact, there hasn't been a need for an Alien since 1986, when Aliens took the intense, terrifyingly suspenseful original and spun it out into an adreneline-fulled military nightmare (and I say that as a fan of Alien3). However, we are in the era of the franchise and there will be more and more new Alien films until the money stops rolling in, and for all their flaws, they are still enjoyable sci-fi horrors.

Alien: Covenant sees Ridley Scott continue the story he began five years ago with Prometheus. That film was deeply flawed, but I nonetheless remain something of a Prometheus apologist, and feel that much of the film's poor reception was due to the huge hype built up around its status as a prequel to Scott's seminal Alien. The problem lie in the movie's weird existential status, with Scott and the writers seemingly unable to decide whether it was a prequel or a new story. On its own merits, it was a fun slice of sci-fi hokum, albeit one that thought it was far cleverer and more original than it really was. As a lead-in to Alien, it was wholly disappointing, and the film fell uncomfortably between two stools.

Covenant, with four writers helping create Scott's vision, is still unfocused, but it at least accepts its place as an Alien film wholeheartedly, as well as a sequel to Prometheus. In fact, it makes Prometheus a stronger film, making some of the weirder story choices a little more sensible in retrospect. The utterly bizarre alien life cycle from Prometheus is laid down as little more than a runaway experiment, one that the android David has continued, creating a new stage of alien evolution. This version, beginning as an airborne spore that invades the body, has some similarities with the hotchpotch of monsters in Prometheus, but is perhaps more akin to the infectious version of the Alien that was originally suggested for Alien3. It hasn't the visceral horror of the the facehugger, but the so-called neomorph makes its marks, erupting from its victims' bodies not through the chest, but through any available route. The design of the neomorph is something of a success, especially its scurrying nymph stage, which would doubtless been dubbed "Rat Alien" if Kenner had produced a figure. Of course, the neomorph is just a stepping stone to the ultimate life form, with the final result being the xenomorph we know and love.

Well, almost. When the classic Alien finally reveals itself, it's a slick CGI creation, that is both faster and less cunning than the creature that infiltrated the Nostromo. The original man-in-a-suit had an ungainly, unnatural quality to its movements that made it far more unsettling than the ferocious creature of the Covenant climax. Still, the shower scene has to stand up there as one of the creepiest and most chilling scenes of the Alien franchise.

We're getting ahead of ourselves, though. Before all that, there's the tragic events of the colony ship Covenant, which leaves the command crew decimated. There's a big difference to those we've seen in previous films. Alien gave us a bunch of jobbing space truckers; Aliens a hardened squad of space marines; Alien3 and Resurrection criminals and Prometheus some of the least intelligent scientists ever committed to film. The crew of the Covenant are specialists chosen for the mission for their technical skills, and are also all couples, a requisite for a colony mission that needs to maintain close ties and build up its numbers quickly. It adds a different dimension to the cast interactions and its a welcome change. However, it's a large crew, and in such a frenetically-paced story, many of them are lost as characters. Really, the film belongs to three actors: Katherine Waterston, Danny McBride and Michael Fassbender.

Waterston is extremely likeable as the strong, emotionally intense yet very human Daniels, who is thrown into the spotlight when her husband (James Franco in a role almost completely confined to a prequel short film) is killed in a space accident. She exists in the Ripley role, that of the powerful female character that holds the film together, just as Noomi Rapace was in Prometheus. Some may complain that this has become a trope of the Alien films (even Sanaa Lathan in AVP fills a similar role), but I think a strong central female lead is a good constant to have. Waterston centres the film in the same way Rapace centred Prometheus, and makes the overall ensemble work. Out of all the remaining crew, it's McBride who makes the most impact. Partly this is because his character, the pilot McBride, actually makes it through the film, but he also brings a lot of charm and guts to a rare straight role.

But this is Fassbender's movie, as the twin androids David and Walter. He dominates his screentime in both roles, making each of the machine people distinct. He does make some questionable accent choices, but otherwise he makes the most of his roles, and is clearly relishing the out-and-out villainy of David, who has now set himself up as the creator of the next dominant species of the universe. His place as a sort of otherwordly Doctor Moreau is a highlight of the film, his disturbing genetic laboratory and the fate of Rapace's character Shaw providing more scares than the monsters he's created. Walter, the supposedly more advanced redesign, has had the emotions stripped out to make him less uncomfortable for humans to work with (they're basically Lore and Data from Star trek TNG). Nonetheless, he has a deep connection to Daniels, with some fine chemistry between Fassbender and Waterston. Plus, of course, we have scenes with two Fasseys opposite each other, which is going to sell a film to me regardless (although the droid-on-droid kiss is definitely creepy rather than erotic). I like that David and Walter are named to reflect original Alien producers David Giler and Walter Hill, but I'm oddly put out by how it buggers up the alphabetical naming of the droids in the franchise (Ash, Bishop, Call, David... Walter).

The film ends on a predictable but effectively chilling note, and the future of the Alien is ensured. We're still some way from the Nostromo's encounter with LV-426, and the semmingly inexplicable discovery of the Engineer spacecraft riddled with xenomorph eggs. There is a ninth Alien film currently in the works which fill, presumably, bring the story right back up to the original film. On the strength of Covenant, it's unlikely we'll ever see an Alien film that matches the horror of the original or power of its sequel, but there should be plenty of entertainment to be had on the way.

Alien Explorations

With the sad death of the terrifyingly talented (and talentedly terrifying) H.R. Giger, perhaps this would be a good time to sing the praises of this excellent blog: Alien Explorations. It covers all seven Alien films, right up to Prometheus, investigating the inspiration and production of each film and their designs. There's a huge amount on Giger, his own influences, his work on the Alien creatures, and the designs that his work later inspired.

MOVIE REVIEW: Prometheus

Watching the Alien franchise, in its successive iterations with different writers and directors, is a strange and disjointed experience; each film is distinctly different in style, tone and quality. Ridley Scott’s Alien is rightly regarded as a classic of horror cinema (although it’s fascinating to read the less-than-glowing contemporary reviews from 1979), while James Cameron’s Aliens is equally as good, in a completely different way. It’s always been tempting to imagine though, what Scott would have done with a sequel. Now we have some idea; Prometheus is, in effect, Ridley Scott’s Aliens.

It’s a tough movie to review, since I’m loathe to give away the resolution to the film; that said, so many of the plot beats are predictable that it’s questionable that it could actually be ‘spoilered’ at all. This is due, in part, to the impressive viral video campaign that preceded the film’s release. The Weyland Corp. promotional videos give an impressive sense of reality to the universe in which the film is set, but have the drawback of making very little about the set-up seem in any way surprising. We pretty much know what we’re getting as we go in. Equally, though, the film’s storyline is simply not very original, treading well-worn ground familiar from many a science fiction film.

I fear I’ll damn this movie with faint praise. So much of it so is so very, very good, yet I left the cinema feeling strangely flat, and I wasn’t alone. The friends I went to see it with, which included both a proper film buff and someone who has never seen any of the Alien films, were all a little ambivalent about the movie. Still, it gave us all plenty to talk about, always a good achievement for a production, although the discussion was perhaps less philosophical than the creators of the film would have hoped.