Alien Week: Alien: Covenant (2017) Movie Trailer

Alien Week: They May Be Synthetic, But They're Not Stupid. The Androids of the Alien Saga

Now that we have Prometheus as our “small beginning” (!) to a “big thing” (the long-lived Alien franchise), there is an opportunity to gaze at the five films and chart new thematic or character connections.  Considering the critical role that David (Michael Fassbender) plays in Prometheus, Ridley Scott has given audiences and fans a wonderful opportunity to trace, specifically, the development of artificial life forms in the series. 

In fact, with a little imagination and analysis, can we actually track the full evolution of a sentient, android race in the Alien franchise films? And can we do so in the same manner we would trace the growth of an individual human being; from birth to maturity?

Prometheus’s David is the first or earliest android in the chronology, we now understand.  This, in a sense, makes him the first of his kind, or a newborn…a child.  Accordingly, we see in the film how David seeks out guidance -- and like a human son or daughter -- models himself on those around him…whether an adopted parent or a figure he sees in a movie he enjoys (like T.E. Lawrence). 

Also much like a young child, David seems to conform to no accepted rules of morality except those that are explicitly established for him by his Daddy, Weyland (Guy Pearce). 

And when David has the opportunity to test the limits or boundaries of his world – for instance, when he speaks something cryptic to the Engineers – he seems to do so without hesitation. 

So in David we witness a synthetic life form taking his first baby steps; reckoning with the world and attempting to determine his place in terms of a “family” and behavioral limitations.   In fact, David is the first android in any of the five films who is contextualized in terms of a standard, human family of origin, and here we meet not only patriarch Weyland, but David’s resentful “sibling,” Vickers.

In Prometheus, we also see David intentionally misbehave by opening a door in the temple when he shouldn’t, and by de-activating a camera feed to block his sister’s view. There seems to be something of the mischievous, capricious child in his demeanor.

Alien’s (1979) Ash (Ian Holm) is next in the chronology.  I’ve written about the intense sexual underpinnings of this Ridley Scott film before, but seen in the context of all the franchise androids, I now wonder if it’s possible to view Ash as the repressed teenager of the bunch. 

Ash is moody, difficult, sulky, and envious (of the alien and humans), and he’s apparently got an unhealthy obsession with Ripley.  Just watch that scene of enraged sexual aggression late in the film as he tries to jam a rolled up porno magazine into her open mouth.  He’s full of rage and, at the same time, unable to perform in the way he desires.  And then, of course, when Ash can’t succeed with Ripley, he shoots his wad, ejaculating white android fluid everywhere. 

Ash, clearly, is an android uncomfortable with his identity, and the way he fits in with the world around him.  He is frequently bullied by Parker and challenged by Ripley.  Nobody likes him, and indeed…he isn’t likable.  Sound like any thirteen year old kids you know?

No wonder Ash gazes at the alien with such wonder and awe.  The xenomorph is hostility personified, but also simplicity personified. It knows exactly where it fits in -- anywhere it wants to! -- and exactly how to co-opt other life forms to its (nefarious) ends.  Ash -- an adolescent seeking his place -- can’t say the same thing.

Bishop, portrayed by Lance Henriksen, appears in Aliens (1986) and Alien³ (1992).  Unlike his predecessors, this android seems to have accepted his role (and limits) in human society with grace.  This may be because Bishop is governed by new programming (not available for earlier models like David and Ash, ostensibly…) that prohibits him from acting in a way that allows human beings to be harmed.  Bishop is still child-like, much like David, but – importantly – is much more stable in temperament.    Again, part of the process of maturation in humans is observing limits and understanding that one fits in with a group, and can’t act on any and every impulse.

Thus Bishop seems like a young if still naïve man who has accepted the law of society (Asimov’s laws of robotics) and accepts that they protect everyone.  He may admire the alien, like Ash did, but Bishop’s adherence and acceptance of a law outside himself or a parent means that he can’t be swept up in this infatuation. 

Uniquely, Bishop also faces death with grace, realizing that it is better to die on Fury 161 then to linger in a state of half-life.   One of Alien ³’s greatest rhetorical reversals involves the Bishop character, and audience acceptance of him.  After two movies, our image of the kindly, even sweet Bishop android has erased the memory of the duplicitous and mad Ash.  So when the real Bishop – a flesh-and-blood human – appears to tempt Ripley with a life she can’t have, we want more than anything to trust him.  The android in the Alien series has thus gone from being a dangerous child and mad teen to a productive, trusted and beloved person…even in the eyes of humanity.

The last android we meet in the Alien series is Alien Resurrection’s Call (1997), played by Winona Ryder.  In a very significant way, she represents the final evolution of the android journey.  Not only is she stable like Bishop was, but she is able to look outward – beyond concern for herself or her immediate companions -- to the well-being of the universe at large.  Perhaps not coincidentally, Call is also the first female android we meet in the series, though the jury is still out on Vickers...  

For the first time in the series, an artificial person, Call, independently reaches the same eminently reasonable reckoning about the aliens that the human Ripley did immediately before her apotheosis on Fury 161: that they must be destroyed at any cost to assure the safety of all life forms. What we have here, then, is a synthetic being who sees life as worthwhile, and attempts to nurture and protect it. Is that one way to define maturity? Being able to see outside yourself, your desires, and even the law, and acknowledging some brand of connection among life forms?  Prioritizing life over selfish, financial, or military gain?

If we do get the much-anticipated sequel to Prometheus, it will be intriguing to see how David’s continuing journey fills in the rest of the gap, leading up to the fussy, fastidious, pent-up Ash.   Cannon, a reader here on the blog commented (with insight) yesterday that David is actually symbolic of the Prometheus myth himself.  Like Prometheus, he is neither man nor God (Engineer), but a Titan, and thus apart. 

The journey of the androids in the Alien series reflects that separation.  These synthetic beings start out (historically) as separate, disdained (David) and hostile (Ash), but become integrated into the human community and even trusted (Bishop), to the point that they finally -- at last (in Call) -- echo our finest values as a species.

Alien Week: Prometheus (2012)

Director Ridley Scott has  given the science fiction cinema two of its greatest and most cherished films: Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982).  His 2012 film, Prometheus brazenly grasps for the same zenith in terms of quality…and largely succeeds.  The film features twice the symbolic imagery of Blade Runner, and many, many times the implications of Alien.

In terms of visualization, Prometheus is nothing less than staggering. And in terms of narrative and meaning, Scott and his controversial writer Damon Lindelof have forged an intricate puzzle box, one which remains available to multiple interpretations and deep analysis.

This high-minded, symbolic approach to silver screen science fiction has not pleased some of the more literal-minded critics and audiences.  Indeed, there is a fine line between creating an open-ended, ambitious work of art that provokes discussion and crafting a movie that is so open-ended and impenetrable that the narrative itself seems muddled. 

Although I remain sensitive to those who insist that Prometheus is so confused and cryptic as to be  meaningless, I remain delighted that Ridley Scott has crafted an elaborate, complex film; one worthy of multiple viewings, and which can be best understood through careful dissection and consideration of the text’s symbols and multitudinous allusions.  A thorough understanding of the film is gleaned not necessarily by following the 1-2-3 steps of the plot, but rather through interpreting the deliberate nods to earlier films (such as Lawrence of Arabia [1962] or Blade Runner), and reckoning with a consistently-applied leitmotif that contextualizes all the players -- including the alien engineers -- in a specific manner.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have long been concerned with the way that the modern genre film has determinedly eschewed sub-text, and spoon-fed us obvious answers to  mysteries and puzzles.  Prometheus flouts this convention, and practically begs for an engaged, active, thoughtful viewership.  I would be a hypocrite if I complained both about the lack of ambiguity in most contemporary blockbusters and then shouted down Prometheus for its commendable surfeit of ambiguity.  If the film errs somewhat on the side of being inscrutable, so be it. 

In other words, this is precisely the kind of film I hoped Ridley Scott would give us.  Prometheus largely exceeds my own sky-high expectations because it is provocative, challenging, infuriating, dense, and daring.  Some of the specific questions that fans have hungered to have answered, like “what’s the exact life cycle of the creatures we see in the film?” are ultimately held subordinate to the committed exploration of Scott’s chosen thesis: that all parents -- God included -- in some manner hate their children, and that children, equally, despise those who gave them life.  This the film's thematic terrain, and once you accept it (even if you disagree with the premise...), the film opens up and becomes infinitely more accessible.  

By charting the dynamics of the parent/child dilemma, Prometheus thus emerges as the ultimate “Generation Gap” film. The underlying, subconscious reason for this reciprocal relationship of apparent hatred involves our very mortality, a topic that Ridley Scott also explored meaningfully in Blade Runner.  Parents want to live longer and hold onto their supremacy until the bitter end.  And children -- symbols of a future that parents won’t live to see -- want to usurp established authority and become dominant sooner rather than later.

The problem with the human condition, Prometheus suggests, is that we cannot see ourselves simultaneously as both children and parents, and that this tunnel-vision regarding our self image provokes resentment equally in those we raise, and those who raised us. This central running motif about parents/children actually resolves -- albeit obliquely -- many of the problems I’ve read that people have with the film. 

Why do the Engineers hate us?  Why does Holloway hate David? What does David feel for Weyland?

All the answers – or at least most of them – can be excavated by comprehending the particularities of the parent/child relationship in question. If we go in search of our Creator, Prometheus warns, we must understand that our Creator may not like, let alone love, his creation. After all, we possess something he does not: an unwritten future…one filled with potential and possibilities rather than an already-inscribed history of regrets and mistakes. 

If you view Scott’s Prometheus through this lens of parent/child relationships -- and consider the imagery and symbols that support this reading -- you may begin to view the 2012 film as a work of art that asks some very important and pointed questions about our nature.  This is worthy intellectual territory for an Alien-related movie to explore, since so much of that franchise mythos has been about the pain and horror associated with “birth.” 

Beyond that painful physical experience, Prometheus suggests, the real horror awaits.  Birth is just the beginning of the pain.  Try living up to God's expectations...

“A King has his reign, and then he dies.  It’s inevitable.”

In the distant past and presumably on Earth, a white-skinned humanoid – an Engineer – consumes a viscous black fluid and promptly begins to disintegrate. He tumbles into a roaring waterfall and his decomposing body fills the water with his DNA…the building blocks of life.

In 2089 AD on Earth, scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her lover, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) put together the final piece of a strange puzzle.  In a prehistoric cave on the Isle of Skye, they find the sixth pictograph showcasing a star map; one pointing towards mankind’s destiny in a distant solar system.

In 2093 AD, Shaw and Holloway awake from cryo-sleep aboard the space vessel Prometheus, a ship under the command of Captain Janek (Idris Alba). With the patronage of the Weyland Company -- represented by executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and a polite android named David (Michael Fassbender) -- the two scientists explain their theory of the star map to a skeptical crew. 

Shaw and Holloway believe that mankind was created by a race of alien engineers, and that the pictographs in the prehistoric caves represent an invitation to seek them out.  Prometheus is now near its destination: a life-supporting moon around a ringed planet, called LV-223.  Here Shaw hopes to find evidence of man’s beginnings.

On the moon’s surface, an exploratory team discovers an Engineer construction: a giant earthen temple that generates its own breathable atmosphere.  Inside the temple stands thousands of vases which contain a viscous black fluid…possibly a life form, possibly a bio-weapon. 

When the containers start to leak, a chain of events is set into motion that will threaten not only Shaw and Holloway, but all human life on Earth itself.

“Don’t all children want their parents to die?”

Gazing deeply into Prometheus’s DNA, one can detect how the parent-child relationship is expressed up-and-down in terms of the dramatis personae and the central narrative.  In terms of the latter, man goes out in search of his “beginnings” or parents, the alien Engineers.  And man’s child, the android David (Michael Fassbender), also embarks on the search for his own destiny or freedom -- beyond man -- at the same time.

In terms of the former, most of the important characters in the film are developed in ways that signify they are either children or parents…or both.

Take protagonist Elizabeth Shaw, for example.  We learn from an early flashback/dream sequence that she lost both of her parents when she was very young.  Furthermore, she is unable to bear children herself.  Because of the absence of parents in her life, and because of her own inability to become a parent, Shaw is a woman of deep “faith,” viewing the Christian God as parental source of wisdom, support, and comfort.   She has fashioned a "personal" parent in the western, New Testament God image.

In need of a benevolent father figure to replace the one she lost all those years ago, Shaw “chooses to believe” that the Engineers are mankind’s creators, and that they are good, loving, wise creatures awaiting her arrival -- or return? -- with outstretched arms.  Her assumptions -- forged in the heartbreaking absence of human parents -- prove utterly wrong, and Shaw grows vengeful and bitter in the course of the film, determined to hold the Engineers’ feet to the fire for failing to live up to her personal imaginings of them. 

Why do the Engineers hate their own children?  Shaw asserts that she “deserves answers” to this pressing riddle.  This is so because she has erected her entire life and self-image around the myth of a loving God, benevolent father to the human race.  As the film ends, Shaw doubles down on her belief that the Engineers must love their grown children, and heads off to their planet of origin to confirm the answer she seeks.  This pursuit of her Creators is not one based on facts, since we have seen with our own eyes that the Engineers are unremittingly hostile.  Rather, Shaw's zealous continuation of the journey is the result of a closed mind, one which won't accept new data and new facts.  And yes, her character -- while heroic -- is certainly a comment on epistemic closure in those of faith.  One wonders, perhaps, if Shaw views herself as the prodigal child, one who has committed some (unknown) sin, but who will ultimately be accepted upon her return.  If she (along with the human race)  represents the Engineers' prodigal child, then the xenomorphs may be our more dutiful siblings...

Meredith Vickers is also defined in Prometheus as a child.  She is the long-suffering daughter of tycoon, scientist and magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce).  Vickers has waited patiently throughout her adult life for her father to relinquish control of his multi-billion dollar company so that she can assume it herself; so that she can start constructing her own legacy. 

But Weyland is reluctant to let go.  So reluctant, in fact, that he finances a mission to LV-223 on the long shot chance of discovering the secret of immortality from the Engineers…from God.  Late in the film, Meredith rails against her father for his failure to observe the accepted way of things. Like Shaw she is angry and embittered by her experience with a parent.  He won't let her complete the process of transformation...of becoming.

It’s inevitable, Vickers tells Weyland, that a king has his reign…and then dies.  But Weyland steadfastly refuses to end his reign, landing Vickers in a kind of arrested state of not-quite maturity.   Trapped in that purgatory, she is not respected by others, and her authority inside the company is constantly questioned. Vickers is always heir to the throne, but never gets to sit on that throne.  She watches her father's death not with dread or pain, but with something akin to acceptance.  It was time for him to go, and his last act -- going to an alien to demand more life -- was pathetic and needy.

Weyland’s other child is David, the android or artificial life form that he created. Weyland serves as both God and father to David.  But he has created David not to be an independent entity or even an individual with a unique personality, but rather a living glorification of Weyland’s reputation as a genius.  

Accordingly, Weyland is routinely dismissive of David, noting in front of others that although David is immortal, he possesses “no soul.”  The uneasy nature of the David/Weyland relationship is best expressed in a sequence in the medical bay, during which David washes his father’s feet.

Foot washing is a Christian religious ritual.  In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of the Last Supper, his final night on Earth.  In this tradition -- unusually -- the superior washes the feet of the servants, or the apparent inferiors.   Jesus said: “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example…that you should do as I have done to you.”

What David’s act of foot washing signifies is not the love of a son for an elderly, infirm father, but rather a subtle warning to Weyland that he, perhaps, should be prepared to wash the feet (symbolically) of the Engineers rather than demand from these absent parents more life (fucker…to paraphrase Blade Runner). 

David’s act of foot washing looks like one of subordination and respect, but in the tradition of Jesus, it is actually not subordinate at all.  Rather, David informs his father -- in the deliberately symbolic terms of foot washing -- that he should act just as David has acted.  He should wash the feet of the others, to humble himself before the Engineers.  But David knows that Weyland is arrogant and prideful and will not follow his example.  This suits David, because he wishes his father dead so that he can chart his own path.  He no longer wishes to take orders from the Old Man.

Another child in Prometheus, of course, is the human race itself.  It is the (perhaps unwanted…) child of the Engineers.  And in typically childish fashion, this child goes before its parents and demands answers about life.  The Engineers -- as parents -- however, clearly fear the humans.  The humans – their children – have in two millennia escaped their playpen (Earth) and sought them out at Daddy’s work, on LV-223.  This act suggests, perhaps, that the child shall eventually overcome the father, and eclipse the father. 

This deep fear, I submit, is the source of resentment on the part of the Engineers: they have created something that they can’t control, but which may outlive them and out-achieve them.  Now, if you read the net with any regularity, there’s much talk about the film's deleted “Space Jesus” and the idea that the Engineers sent an emissary to Earth, Christ, who was killed by humans.  That is the specific reason, apparently, that the Engineers dislike us.  But that omitted explanation was also rejected by Scott as too “on the nose,” and does not mitigate or undo the explanation I supply here.

In fact, the idea of a parent being jealous or vengeful towards a child conforms beautifully with the Prometheus myth, which the film evokes.  In Greek Myth, Prometheus is a God-like creature, a Titan, who created man from clay and then stole fire for mankind so that the child could stand on equal footing with his progenitor.  Prometheus’s punishment from his fellow Gods was everlasting torment.  Implicit in this story is the belief that the Gods -- the ultimate parent figures -- don't want competitors.  They fear that Prometheus's gift will make man an equal, just as many parents fear that their children, once grown up, will be equals...or betters.

One interpretation of Prometheus suggests that the Engineer seen in the prologue is either a Prometheus-like renegade or heretic who similarly gives the “magic of life” – his very DNA – to create man, perhaps over the ardent objections of the other Engineers.  Why does he do so?  We can’t know, of course, but perhaps this Engineer wanted to create something that was “good” instead of something destructive, like the black ooze biological weapon which – no matter which way you cut it, or what life form you utilize as intermediary – always ends up as vicious population control: a nasty, saliva-dripping xenomorph.

In this reading of the film, an “unwanted” child, the human race, is created by an unsanctioned renegade, and the rest of the Engineers realize they must destroy it before the child threatens them and eclipses them. 

Another possible reading: the Engineer in the prologue creates man simply because he can.  This is a deliberate mirror of Holloway’s explanation for David in the film’s dialogue.  Holloway tells David that mankind gave birth to an artificial life form only to prove that it could create life, not out of love, not out of responsibility, and not out of any deeper meaning or emotional truth.

By extension, perhaps this explanation applies to the Engineers and the human race too.  The Engineers conducted a test (they seem to be experimenters...)…and humans were the (fearsome) and unexpected result.  Not all parents intend to be parents in the first place, after all.  For some, parenthood is an unexpected and unwanted burden.  This is the existentialist, nihilist interpretation of the film.  Man goes out into space in search of the meaning of life, only to get the answer that his life -- his very existence -- is meaningless. How does he know?  Because the Bible (er, God...) tells him so.

I have read in many venues since Prometheus’s premiere how much genre audiences apparently dislike the character of Charlie Holloway, and how critics and viewers have grappled with what a “shithead” he is.  Why is he so mean and condescending to David? 

The answer, again, determinedly concerns parents and children.  As the Engineers view their creation with disdain, so does Holloway view mankind’s creation, David, with disdain.  But it’s not merely disdain…it is casual disdain. 

This rude and condescending behavior expresses Charlie’s hypocrisy, and his absolute inability to see himself as both a father and a son.  He goes to space to find his genetic father, while belittling and destroying mankind’s son...a miracle who stands right there in front of him.  Can’t he see that he is treating David in a way he would not want to be treated by his father or God?

I submit Holloway is actually a pretty intriguing character because of this casual, reflexive, unthinking rejection of David as a “lesser” being.  This is racism in its worst form, a thoughtless denigration of one of God’s creations.  And sometimes, this kind of racism exists in even the most enlightened individuals.  The point is that men – even great men like Charlie Holloway – can’t always see their own hypocrisy, or their own blind spots.  Charlie never gives voice to a specific reason for his hatred of David, he just blindly considers him inferior because David is artificial...just as generations have blindly considered African-Americans inferior because of skin color, or gay people inferior because of sexual identity.   

Does this racist behavior make Charlie a shithead?  I don’t know.  It certainly makes him a genuinely complicated character.  He seeks a God who loves him, like Shaw, one that he wishes to “talk to,” but yet he steadfastly denies that very love to David, a being created by man.  It’s a very elegant dynamic and point of comparison, and one that reveals how so many people of faith wear blinders in the face of their own foibles.   Charlie can position himself only as a child, shirking his responsibilities as father.

Weyland’s trajectory is similar to Charlie’s.  He has played God, but is not kind or good to his creation, David.  Yet Weyland wholly expects his God to honor a personal demand for immortality.  The Engineers have no reason to grant Weyland this prize, and in fact the brazen nature of the request only seems to confirm the Engineers’ apparent belief that man will eclipse them and threaten them if left unchecked.  Human appetites are boundless.  As Weyland dies at the end of the film, he warns David that there is only “nothing” (a reference to the desert, and Lawrence of Arabia).  What he means, however, is that -- going back to the existentialist interpretation of Prometheus -- God has no answers to give.  This is important information for David. Weyland has no answers to give, either.

Given the importance of the parent/child dynamic in Prometheus, the significance of the black ooze may just be that it violently makes parents of even the most unwilling organisms.  It usurps the normal life process and co-opts life for its own agenda.  And again, that may qualify as a cynical definition of “children,” at least according to some.  Children are a demand on time and resources, and the grisly bio-weapon of the Engineers forces unwanted parenthood on one and all. But the children of the black ooze are literally monsters, slavering beasts dedicated to murder, and therefore true weapons of mass destruction.  And yes, if the Engineers did create the black ooze, that makes the black ooze -- and by extension the xenomorphs -- our "brothers."

Now, of course, I don’t feel this way about children and parents.  I’m a happy parent of a delightful and wonderful five year old boy…who happily plays with Kenner Alien toys, incidentally.  But Prometheus gazes deeply at the reasons why parents and children sometimes gaze at one another across a gulf of suspicion and dislike.  Parents and children vie for resources and time in the quest to achieve dominance and immortality.  “Don’t all children want their parents to die?” David asks late in the film, and Shaw rebuts him, stating emphatically that the answer is negative.

But judging by the interactions between parents and children in the film, and taking into account the Prometheus myth, the film makes a case that David is right.  Parents fear children because the ascent of their offspring in some way portends the death of the creator.  And there's nothing more frightening -- even to Gods, apparently -- than facing annihilation and oblivion.  And children fear and hate parents because parents control them and hold onto precious life to the bitter end.

This is a rich, consistently-applied theme, diagrammed in character after character, and literally hard-written into the structure of Prometheus itself.  Of course, some will ask, if the Engineers despise their children so much, why give them an invitation to come visit?

The simple answer is that it’s a trick invitation.  Notice that the children are invited not to a home world, but to a dangerous weapons facility.  If the children come, they’ll more than likely be destroyed.  If you've ever been ambushed at a family gathering, you kind of get the point.  An invitation to "come home" isn't necessarily or automatically benign, is it?

 

“It looks insubordinate, but it isn’t really:” David the Android, and the Lawrence of Arabia (1962) connection.

One of the key characters in Prometheus is Michael Fassbender’s effete android, David.  As we witness early in the film, David has adopted as his human role model the character of T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia.  Specifically, he models his hair to resemble Peter O’Toole’s cut in that film.  One also wonders if he is  named David after that film’s director: David Lean.

By remembering some of the details and dialogue of Lawrence of Arabia, we begin to unlock the puzzle of David’s behavior and motivations.  Other critics have already pointed out, accurately, that dialogue in Prometheus deliberately and explicitly references Lawrence of Arabia on three occasions. 

These are when David notes “Big things have small beginnings,” when Weyland notes that the “key” to doing risky things is “not minding that it hurts,” and the commentary, finally, that “there is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.”

Yet such references are only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. 

In ways important and complex, David clearly models his very behavior and actions after his cinematic hero.  For instance, T.E. Lawrence tells General Murray (David Wolfsit) in the Lean film that his manner looks insubordinate “but it isn’t really.” 

This is precisely David’s manner. He operates by an agenda that is seems insubordinate, but is not. Over and over, David ignores the orders of his superiors. Specifically, he opens the door to the temple vase room over Holloway and Shaw’s objections, and then de-activates the live feed showing his progress to the ship’s bridge, irking Vickers.  By and large, David -- like Lawrence -- “pretends” to be insubordinate, when this is not the case.  He is secretly operating by Weyland's command.  In other words, he is perfectly subordinate...at least until he can be free of his "father."

Also harking back to the filmic T.E. Lawrence, David recognizes his isolation and also independence from those surrounding him.  He is neither human, nor alien engineer.  He is singular in his nature. In Lean’s film, Lawrence describes himself as similarly possessing “no tribe,” and believes that this lack of specific membership makes him the perfect person to “execute the law,” as he tells Aida Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn). 

Again, consider David’s behavior in Prometheus: It reveals no allegiance to any particular group, but rather a consideration only for David’s “law,” his personal quest, I believe, to “kill” his parents (Weyland and the other humans) and become, essentially, for the first time, a free man instead of a slave. 

When David suggests to Shaw that she rescue him from the alien bridge and return to the engineer spacecraft, he is essentially operating according his own agenda.  When he “views” Shaw’s dreams, similarly, we are led to believe that this is not something that was part of David’s recognized duty, since Shaw registers surprise.  David also lies to Vickers about Weyland and seems to suggest, to Shaw, that he would like to see Weyland – his “father” – dead.  Everything David says and does in the film is -- on some fundamental level -- related to his own desires and needs.  If those needs conform with Vickers’s, Shaw’s, Holloway’s or Weyland’s, that’s fine.  But if they don’t, David doesn't hesitate to take the path that seems to most benefit him.

Finally, David, like his cinematic mentor, seems to recognize the fact that he is virtually indestructible, or at least hard to kill.  He observes safety protocol and rituals, such as adorning a spacesuit and helmet, but these are affectations for the comfort of the nearby humans. David can touch biological black ooze without worrying for his survival, for instance.  And even when his head is severed from his body, he continues to thrive.

As T.E. Lawrence joked with Colonel Brighton (Anthony Quayle) in Lawrence of Arabia: “They can only kill me with a golden bullet.”  Very clearly, the same assessment could be made of David.  He expects to be immortal, sans a nasty encounter or two with an angry Engineer.

The point of all these allusions is simple.  T.E. Lawrence suggests in Lean’s film that his allegiance is to “England…and other things,” a comment which cements his status as a man of uncertain or conflicted loyalties.  David could very well describe his sense of allegiance as being to “Weyland…and other things.”  He has thus learned from viewing Lawrence of Arabia how to successfully navigate conflicts and still achieve a goal he desires.  The Lean film is our visual cue to understanding David’s “nature,” and there are even scenes in both films where the David/T.E. Lawrence make mention of their emotional or unemotional state of “fear.”

The Lawrence of Arabia comparison is important in another way.  Specifically, in context of the parent/child dynamic the film explores so assiduously, T.E. Lawrence grants David the advice and wisdom of a mentor he actually likes, an important alternative to the cruel Weyland.  Similarly, the film itself is considered one of the greatest works of film art in history.  This is a status Prometheus hopes to achieve, only as a science fiction masterwork. 

In other words, David longs to be T.E. Lawrence, and Prometheus longs to be David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, metaphorically-speaking.  A key to understanding Prometheus is to understand what the text of Lawrence of Arabia means to both David and to Ridley Scott.  If you aren’t familiar with the classic film, you’re missing a whole avenue of interpretation and symbolism.

The Alien (1979) Connection: Too Much or Not Enough?

Prometheus depicts the story of the space jockey – an alien engineer – and reveals to audiences more of that famous alien’s technology and history.  As you can see from the Alien Movie Matrix that I printed below this post this morning, Prometheus also knowingly conforms to many of the tropes established in the Alien series.  There are familiar character types, including an android, a company man (or woman in this case), and comic relief.  In terms of plot situations, we get another pregnancy, plus new alien life forms, a heroic self-sacrifice (Janek), and a failed mission (Weyland’s quest for immortality).  So for those who wonder if Prometheus is truly an Alien film, the component parts – the DNA – answer in the affirmative.  A xenomorph may not hold center stage, but the conventions of the franchise play out all over again, in recognizable but adapted form.  Using all the paints and ingredients of Alien, Scott has created a new masterpiece in the same vein.

The connection to Alien established, Ridley Scott is also creative the father here, and so we can also recognize his career DNA in Prometheus.

Specifically, the director has imported Roy Batty’s quest from Blade Runner to serve as an important motivating factor here.  Weyland, much like Rutger Hauer’s famous Replicant, is facing a built-in expiration date, the impending end of his life.  As Batty went to visit his God, Tyrell for answers about immortality, so does Weyland petition his God, the Engineer in this matter.  In both situations, the quest ends…badly.  But the connection between Prometheus and Blade Runner is made explicit in visual terms during Weyland’s holographic presentation.  Weyland’s office closely resembles Tyrell’s sun-drenched sky-rise paradise, right down to the majestic columns bracketing the frame.  Weyland is thus – interestingly -- both petitioner and petitioned in this film, both a Creator and a child; both Tyrell and Batty, essentially. But Weyland picks up the quest for immortality where Batty left off.

In terms of Alien, Prometheus certainly continues Scott’s penchant for showcasing grisly, unexpected births.  Here, Shaw’s alien “baby” turns into a protean, giant face-hugger-like creation, and uses the Engineer’s body to incubate a monstrous, vaguely familiar xenomorph. 

Again, I realize that many fans of the Alien series have been upset with Prometheus for not more directly creating a definable life-cycle for the creatures in this film.  However there’s an easy and simple enough way to understand the monsters: Every road that the black goo embarks upon leads to one destination, eventually: the xenomorph.

Sometimes the route is direct, sometimes not.  It depends, I suppose, on the host DNA and the amount of black goo utilized.  But in the end, the weapon acts as just that, a weapon, and always creates a near-indestructible “beast.”  It’s a clear enough dynamic: whatever intermediary medium is used, you start with black goo and end up with a monster that eliminates, hopefully, your enemies.  I can see, however, why this kind of amorphous process rubs Alien fans the wrong way.  It’s a big change from what we have seen before, and change is always difficult to reckon with, at least initially.  Over time, as audiences come to accept Prometheus, I believe this concern will dissipate and people will start to recognize the film as, indeed, a genre masterpiece.

That sense of mastery rests in Scott's sense of composition, in the visuals he so carefully crafts to allude to other, great stories.  The film's opening -- an aerial tracking shot across a primordial planet surface -- is incredibly beautiful, and reminds one (intentionally, we must assume) of the Dawn of Man passage in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  As the camera move over roiling river rapids (a UFO hovering above), we intuit the sense of the swirling, turbid forces that give rise to life.  Sequences later in the film, overtly Lovecraftian in nature, fill us with anticipatory dread.  The temple of the Engineers -- a veritable necropolis -- is a vision inspired by Milton.  Again, this is an appropriate allusion.  The crew of Prometheus goes out in search of God and finds, instead, the devil.  In Paradise Lost, man was tempted by the devil (and by the fruit of the tree of knowledge) to leave innocence and paradise behind.  That loss of faith and innocence seems reflected in the film in Shaw's spiritual journey and loss of faith.

Clearly, I’ve written a lengthy piece here, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of Prometheus, its symbols, and hidden meaning. I think it's a wonderful thing to be given a film so rich in meaning, motif, and allusion that it can’t easily be digested or parsed in one 250-word review.  Before I close, I just want to comment, finally, on the canny design of the Engineers.  With their alabaster skin and haunting black eyes, they resemble – to me anyway – humanoid sharks.  There’s something fearsome and predatory about them, and by coincidence, no doubt, here’s a recent news story on the net suggesting that sharks and humans share a common ancestor.   Engineer DNA?

That’s a nice bit of serendipity that works in Prometheus’s favor, I think. But at least on a subconscious level, when we view the Engineers, we are viewing things that we already judge fearsome....human and shark natures. That's important to the success of the film's final act.  For here, the terror rests not on slimy shape-shifting aliens, but on a reckoning with these twisted, over-sized reflection of ourselves.  That fact fits in with the theme of parents and children too.  The Engineers are a mirror for human life, only with an overtly wicked visual twist.

It will be fascinating to see how Scott continues the story of Prometheus in Alien: Covenant, premiering today...

Alien Week: Prometheus (2012) Movie Trailer

Alien Week: AVP: Requiem (2007)

SYNOPSIS:  The Pred-Alien and other xenomorphs crash on Earth in a small Colorado town. A bunch of face-huggers get loose in the woods, thus spawning more aliens, and the Predators send one of their own from their home planetnto clean up the mess. Caught in the middle of this war are a bunch of horny teenagers, a former juvenile delinquent named Dallas and sexy, and as a tough-as-nails Iraq War vet (Aylesworth). They all attempt to escape the sleepy burg of Gunnison, while the U.S. Government puts a fatal strategy into effect, one that it hopes will will contain the spread of the alien forces.

COMMENTARY: Long ago -- and according to legend -- the great Sigourney Weaver put down the Ripley role because 20^th Century Fox envisioned a new direction for the Alien series. What was that new direction? Aliens vs. Predators.  Perhaps apocryphally, perhaps truthfully, Weaver noted that she believed aliens belonged in the darkest, most isolated corners of deep space, not jumping out from behind haystacks on Earth.

Aliens vs. Predator Requiem (2007) is the movie she had the foresight to imagine. It’s the aliens-jumping-out-of-haystacks film. And it is no exaggeration to note that Requiem is godawful. It represents franchise-scuttling at a heretofore unimaginable, apocalyptic level. The movie is incompetently lit, making important details impossible to determine, but its worst sin is that the narrative is incoherent and contradictory The film never bothers to build towards anything significant, and scenes start and stop without rhyme or reason.

Perhaps the most trenchant commentary about this sequel's quality is that AVPR is the first film in either classic horror franchise that feels it necessary to spotlight teenagers skinny-dipping in a high school pool after hours. And yep, these horny teens are attacked by swimming aliens there. Once upon a time, neither franchise required stripping high-schoolers to draw enthusiastic audiences. Once upon a time, both franchises were intelligent, beautifully-designed meditations on the darker angels of human nature.  But now -- all the sudden -- we’re asked to sympathize with the angst and ennui of a pizza delivery boy who wants to date a girl he’s always liked.

Because that’s the reason audiences go to see Alien and Predator films.

There have been controversial films before, in both franchises. Alien ³ (1992) was about the fact that survival isn't always a "win." One could also gaze at Aliens (1986) as a metaphor for American arrogance during the Vietnam War. And the original Alien (1979) was about, in some subconscious sense, human sexuality co-opted by a nasty xenomorph. Even 1997's Alien Resurrection -- for all of its problems -- offered some worthwhile commentary on the morality of human cloning, and the way that man had unwittingly become more like the xenomorphs by corrupting the life-cycle of other beings. But the best that AVPR can muster is to steal a page from the 1980s slasher film formula: vice (sex) precedes slice-and-dice or in this case, attack by alien. That's right, the Rolls Royce and Cadillac of horror franchises settle for Friday the 13th-style scenarios that are so hackneyed they were being mocked by Scream  a decade earlier. Now the “Dead teenager” formula absolutely has a purpose and a validity in appropriate circumstances.  But one nonetheless hates to see Alien lobotomized into the equivalent of a bad slasher flick.  Especially one that so readily dispenses with series continuity.

On that front, consider the modifications presented by the Pred-Alien. It has developed, genetically-speaking to eschew the egg and face-hugger stages of development. Now it simply kisses its prey and pumps embryos into the throat, leading right to the chest-burster stage. This unnecessary alteration is emblematic of the film’s lack of patience. AVPR isn’t willing to take its time, make its characters sympathetic, or generate real feelings of terror and unease. Instead, it just wants to barrel away, skipping the things that would have made the film more than an extended wrestling match. AVPR never bothers to explain how an infusion of Predator DNA permits this change in the alien’s nature.  Since the answer is never given, one might reasonably suspect that the filmmakers decided to do something “cool” rather than something faithful or dramatically motivated.  Here, we get a scene where a few chest-bursters erupt out of a pregnant woman in labor, and that, one spouses they believed that fulfills “the cool factor.”

Another question: why does Predator technology -- and even the spaceship interior – suddenly look completely different than how it looked at the end of Alien vs. Predator?

AVPR also puts the final nail in the long-erosion of the "un-killable alien" meme first realized by Ridley Scott in 1979. In his original film, the alien couldn't be killed, and couldn't even be stopped. Its quarry could only get away from it, to leave it behind floating in space. Yet here teenagers with hand-guns literally blow aliens away left and right. Twenty-first century weaponry is more than efficacious blowing up these once unstoppable beasts. The trademark xenomorph -- once a genuine Terror from the Id -- is now just a big "bug" to be swatted with our state-of-the-art hardware. Forget the fact that it took advanced, futuristic hardware like smart guns and pulse rifles in Aliens to do the same job. Nope, now kids can do it with good old-fashioned, conventional shotguns and pistols.  Among other problems, this fact dishonors Ripley’s four-movie journey. She fought the alien without weapons. She fought the alien with weapons too.  She even laid down her life to prevent the aliens from reaching Earth, and impacting innocent families. Why? The xenomorphs were so dangerous that they could destroy everything, imperil all life.  They were a perfect (and perfectly hostile) life-form, and if they reached our cities…it was game over. AVPR undercuts Ripley’s meaningful sacrifice by putting aliens on Earth -- and making them containable -- before Ripley was even born.  This “sequel” film fails egregiously because it rewrites the saga in a way that makes Ripley’s choice to die rather than birth a queen seem inconsequential. If aliens can be put down by shot-guns, what’s the big deal?

Another complaint: watch how the aliens move in this film. They are almost universally seen on all-fours, as though they are banana-headed dogs, rather than the upright drones of the earlier films. The Predator fares slightly better in the film, though he operates by no sense of logic that is discernible. This Predator arrives on Earth with the mission to "clean up" the mess. Audiences periodically see him spilling glowing blue acid on the corpses so as to cover the tracks of both the aliens and his own kind. It's his mission, we presume -- from this act of destroying the evidence -- to hide the incursion of extra-terrestrials on Earth. Given this task, the fact that the predator skins a police deputy and hangs his corpse from a tree --- to be found by the sheriff -- doesn't make a lot of sense. Why go out of your way to destroy all evidence of your presence, and then leave behind a bloody, hanging corpse in a tree, That's just one incredible gap in situational logic, but there are bigger fish to fry here.

When the movie was first released, there were a number of online reviews from unhappy fans indicating that the film was poorly shot: that it was too dark. This is not just fan griping. This author know of no modern-day corollaries for this overt failure in a major, big-budget production. But for some reason, AVPR is terribly, terribly under-lit throughout. Even the daylight scenes are hard to see. Viewers spend the entire movie squinting, trying to make-out the crappy action.  This is a movie that actually hurts to watch. In scene after scene, dark, indistinguishable figures clash with other dark, indistinguishable figures, all to the sound of squealing, gunfire and grunting. Rain falls, and audiences finally get the illumination they desire and need from brief instances of gunpowder flare and lightning strikes. Perhaps the film was darkened post-production because the monster suits weren’t up to scrutiny? Regadless, the film is inarguably a visual disaster.

In the final analysis, AVPR isn't merely an insult to the intelligence, it's an insult to the great tradition and lineage of Alien and Predator films. A requiem, by the way, is a hymn for the dead; a musical composition for the expired. In this case, the "requiem" sung by AVPR is the death knell of not one, but two classic sci-fi film franchises.

Alien Week: AVPR (2007) Trailer

Alien Week: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

SYNOPSIS: In October of 2004, a satellite belonging to robotics genius Charles Bishop Weyland  (Henriksen) detects a heat signature 2,000 feet below the ice of Antarctica. Soon, satellite imagery makes out a subterranean pyramid of unknown origin. Bishop quickly assembles a team, including guide Alexa Woods (Lathan), archaeologist De Rosa (Bouva), chemical engineer Grame Miller (Bremner), and mercenaries Verheiden (Flanagan), Quinn Norgaard) and Adele Rousseau (De La Boulene) to investigate the pyramid. When the team arrives at remote Bouvetøya Island, it discovers that someone else has already drilled down to the vast pyramid.  Alexa leads the way down, though she boasts reservations about Bishop, who is dying of lung cancer, participating on the mission. n the subterranean cave far below, Bishop, Alexa and the other humans discover that they have walked into a trap; a trap sprung by beings called Predators who were once revered as Gods by primitive man.   Now, the human beings are to be "fodder" for another alien race: fierce serpents who gestate inside living human hosts.  Alexa attempts to survive, even as the two alien species go to war.

COMMENTARY: There’s a moment that feels like authentic cinematic destiny in Alien vs. Predator (2004), or rather, AVP.   From opposite corners -- left and right -- two classic movie monsters enter the same frame, and cast wary eyes on one another for the first time. The battle is joined. The moment may work in a manner other than that as well, and perhaps in a way not entirely intended. A fruition of fan boy dreams and fantasy, this meeting of the monstrous minds may also represent the first time in either franchise’s history that geek or fan desires are, well, pretty much the point of the whole enterprise.  Matters such as story, character, theme and humanity are given short shrift so that two of the greatest silver screen monsters in history can duke it out. Again and again.  In short, the movie is its title. Audiences here get exactly what the words Alien vs. Predator promise: a wrestling match between two extra-terrestrial menaces of different characteristics, but equal power or strength.

When the film premiered, in 2004, it was advertised with the tag-line “whoever wins…we lose,” and many critics ran with that self-inflicted wound, noting the veracity of the studio advertisement.  “We lose” was a symbol, in fact, of any audience unlucky enough to sit through the film. Still, this could have been a lot worse. If you desire to see two of the greatest horror movie monsters treated in genuinely shabby fashion, just spend ninety or so minutes with Alien vs. Predator Requiem (2007). That movie illustrates by example just how much Alien vs. Predator actually gets right.  Certainly, the underlying notion of AVP feels very 2000's.  Viewers are offered a choice to side with either the Predator or the Alien. Any reasonable human being would chose as Alexa does in the film, to ally with the predator. Like her, it wishes to survive. Like her, it possesses a kind of human intelligence. Like her, it knows how to fashion and utilize weapons.  But again, the dynamic of evil fighting evil was a near-constant in the 2000's, from Pitch Black (2000), to Freddy vs. Jason (2003), to AVP (2004) and beyond. This was a decade in which it seemed the best choice was the lesser of two evils, even if not everyone could agree on which "monster" that happened to be.

But moving beyond invidious comparisons to the worst film in either monster line, Alien vs. Predator possesses some merit on its own terms.  First, the 2004 grudge-match features some remarkable and imaginative visualizations, particularly in terms of its flashback sequences.  And secondly, two characters seen in the film manage to make the enterprise feel like more than just a by-the-number monster-on-monster contest.

AVP’s biggest deficits, by contrast, involve the nature of the action -- which is toothless -- and the depiction of the vast majority of human characters. Other than Henrikesen and Lanaa's characters, the majority of the people in the movie are -- as the script describes them -- literally cattle to be manipulated by one “monster” side or the other.

Whatever its flaws, Alien vs. Predator’s flashback imagery -- of Predator strutting atop pyramids, hovering spaceships behind them -- remains powerful stuff. The script is clever in the way it accounts for the disappearance of Mayan culture, a hunt gone wrong, and the deployment of a Predator self-destruct mechanism n terms of franchise history. Similarly, human sacrifices are re-purposed to involve the aliens in a way that is imaginative, and yet doesn’t seem like a stretch. The best imagery in the film, in fact, involves the Predators and humans battling teeming aliens, defending Earth territory from the “serpents” before that apocalypse occurs. The imagery is spectacular, and it suggests that aliens and predators have always been with us, we just didn’t know it. In fact, a truly bold AVP film might have been set during that encounter, in that civilization, with man playing an even more peripheral role.  Critics couldn't very well complain about paper-thin characters and characterizations, if no one spoke English, and the main characters were Predator "Gods" in an Aztec or Mayan city.

Another powerful image in the film involves Alexa Woods and the weapons a predator, Scar, gives to her.  She receives an alien tail as a spear, and an alien head as a kind of glove/shield/armor that stretches up her arm.   This imagery reveals a lot about how the Predators regard their prey, and -- even more than that -- acts as a pointed call-back to both the flashback scenes, and the finale of Predator (1987).  In the latter case, Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) had to go “primitive” and prehistoric to fight off an alien threat.  In this case, Alexa does the same thing. She uses the resources available to stand in battle beside the Predator. The impression, overall, is that we are seeing a timeless partnership replayed in the present for our own eyes. But a human wielding an alien head as a weapon is an unforgettable visual, 

Instead of featuring more moments like that one, Paul W.S. Anderson relies on clichés -- both visual and written -- for much of the film.  There’s the dreadful moment that you will recognize from all action movies of the 2000s, in which Scar and Alex, for example, outrun a giant fireball. It’s such a hackneyed visual at this juncture, and could be piped in from any number of insipid buddy movies. This is a disappointment, since Anderson crafted a great horror film, Event Horizon (1997). But facts are facts. The director crafts Alien vs. Predator with absolutely no sense of suspense of tension.  There is no build-up to the action...it just happens. The film opens in Antarctica on October 10, 1904, for example, and we follow a person being pursued by something, or some things, specifically an alien and a predator. The scene is so rudimentary and by-the-numbers that it makes us feel nothing. The scene’s final jolt doesn’t even provide a good jump scare.  When one considers the level of suspense and terror in Alien (1979), or even in Predator (1987), AVP does not "feel" faithful to what has come before. The filmmakers demonstrate no patience, and do nothing to establish the setting or mood before leaping into the horror moments.

Again and again, the action scenes play out in this fashion with no real tension or suspense underlying them.  Most grievously, the final battle on the surface with the Alien Queen plays out this way too.  The special effects are fine -- extraordinary even -- but there’s no real sense of danger or surprise in the unfolding of the climax.  The movie just hums along, oblivious to the notion that its horror isn’t sticking the landing. We never feel scared or tense; we never feel the pure terror of these warring goliaths. It would be something if the scare-less movie could make-up for its lack of suspense and tension with a sense of the visually grotesque. Alien and Predator, after all, are both R rated franchises, noted for their violence and gore. But in an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience, Alien vs. Predator is PG-13, meaning that almost no real, dynamic or memorable violence is depicted. Every time there is a promise of blood or gore, or even violent impact, the film simply cuts away to another scene, or to a post-impact shot that reveals nothing in terms of damage to body parts.  No real suspense plus no real gore makes Alien vs. Predator a dull boy, or at least a very bland, generic one.

The characters are mostly fodder, too, for poorly-executed, poorly-shot death scenes. Few characters register here in the way that Hudson does in Aliens (1986), for example, or even the way Johner (Ron Perlman) does in Alien Resurrection. There’s just nobody that distinctive or memorable, overall. With two important exceptions. First, what sense of humanity Alien vs. Predator possesses arises largely from Lance Henriksen.  This is his third franchise appearance, and his third variation on the Bishop role. We’ve seen the innocent child/android (in Aliens), the malevolent tempter (Alien³) and now the ambitious, determined man behind all that futuristic technology, Charles Bishop. Henriksen brings his trademark humanity to the role, and shows us Bishop the climber (willing to go anywhere to achieve his goal), and Bishop the sick man, facing his own mortality.  Henriksen gets a great scene with Sanaa Lathan in the film; one where he describes how climbing to a new summit is worth the risk, even if death is the result of the journey. The dialogue is good, but Henriksen makes it soar, and grants the audience a thorough understanding of this flawed but admirable human being. He also gets a great  death scene. Refusing to be ignored as harmless (and therefore unimportant) by the Predator, Bishop strikes the hunter with a flame, showing it his teeth. The Predator stops in its track, and gives Bishop the death he has earned, the death of a warrior.  It’s a fantastic scene, and in many ways, the highlight of the film's action. Bishop didn’t get to his position of power by being ignored, by being written off as sick.   And if he has to die, he’s going to go out the same way as he lived: noticed and notable.

Secondly, Sanaa Lathan is a solid, promising lead as Alexa Woods. She’s not Ripley, and yet she displays a similar ability to survive by adaptation. Alexa thinks on her feet, and the audience can see her thinking things through.  That quality makes it easy to identify with her, especially since Alexa has to do a lot of catch-up learning about her enemies in the course of the film’s action.  Specifically, one must admire Lathan’s tendency not to over-emote, or play things for melodrama. Instead, she keeps just the right amount of distance from the material. There’s one moment in which Scar takes a bloody alien stump to her face, to mark Alexa as a survivor or hunter.  She endures it without complaint or drama, but you can see her in her eyes that she is girding herself.  No, she probably doesn’t want an acid scar on her face. But are you gonna stop a Predator in his tracks when he is, in his own fashion, honoring you for bravery? In short, Lathan takes the character and material seriously, but doesn’t fall into the actor’s trap of overplaying scenes that, if exaggerated, could transmit as silly.

This author has read a lot of reviews that claim the fight scenes in Alien vs. Predator are too dark, but -- having seen Requiem -- can’t make the same observation. Basically, the details of each fight in the film  are clear and viewable. The biggest complaint with the monsters in Alien vs. Predator is that all the Predators are squat and chunky. They look more like over-fed professional wrestlers, than the lean giant hunters we saw in Predator and Predator 2 (1990). A couple of times, this author was taken out of the film’s reality by the short, steroidal stature of the Predators here. They resemble muscle-men in costumes more than ever before in franchise history.

There are qualities to admire in Alien vs. Predator, as I hope I’ve enumerated in this review. So why not applaud it more? Perhaps because the pedigree of both franchises is so strong. The Alien films are mostly great.  Same thing with the Predator franchise.   So you put the two monsters together and get a film that is merely serviceable?  It is difficult to say that an average entry like this one really serves either franchise in the long run.

But I suppose it did: the film was very profitable. Still, the film feels more like a high-concept gimmick than a fully developed, fully coherent narrative at times. Indeed, there are points throughout where one may sense the writer and director struggling for some meaty hook that will carry the movie across the finish line.  One such idea: the pyramid is like a prison! The aliens are escaped inmates, and the guards -- the Predators -- need their guns.  Another idea: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And finally, the script sees bound and determined to feature endless variations of the joke “you are one ugly…fill in the blank.” 

So Alien vs. Predator? Those who choose, may enter. But you do so at your own risk. And again, Alien vs. Predator is masterful, accomplished filmmaking in comparison to the follow-up  effort: Requiem.