LV-426 Day: Alien (1979)

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Alien to consider on LV-426 Day is that the Scott film does not seem to grow old in terms of its impact, even with the passage of time, even with the acute knowledge that some of its scares have become familiar ones in the pop culture firmament.  For Alien has been oft-imitated, and rarely equaled. 

Consider that Alien “indicts big business,” (Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, page 920)) and that viewpoint has never been more popular than it is today. 

Also, the 1979 film explodes our understanding of sex roles in the intelligent and unconventional presentation of its iconic survivor, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).  

Most importantly, perhaps, the film also creates a metaphor for the uncertainty America faced during the “crisis of confidence” 1970's.  

Here, the crew of the Nostromo is always battling the previous enemy, and never the next, dreadful iteration of the shape-shifting beast.

Whether one gazes at Alien as a simple “haunted house in space” movie, a social critique of Big Business’s callous disregard for workers, or as a trend-setter in terms of female roles, however, the film remains a masterpiece in both the horror and science fiction movie constellation.  The world it forges continues to feel real, vital and relevant, and its scares never cease to thrill and unsettle.

In deep space, the commercial starship Nostromo is diverted from its homeward route when the ship’s computer, Mother, detects a distress call in a nearby solar system.  Mother awakes the crew from suspended animation, and the non-military men and women must investigate the signal on planet LV-426 or forfeit their percentage of the mission’s profit. 

The Nostromo lands on the inhospitable world and an expedition consisting of Captain Dallas (Skerritt), Kane (Hurt) and Lambert (Cartwright) finds a strange alien derelict there.  

Inside the macabre wreckage, a cargo bay is filled with leathery egg-like organisms, and something alive bursts forward from one, and seems to strangle Kane.  Kane survives, but as the crew soon learns on their return journey to Earth, the being has laid some kind of embryo down his throat, in his gut.  

The embryo grows and bursts out of Kane’s stomach, eventually becoming a seven-foot tall alien whose physical strength is matched only by its hostility.  One-by-one, the crew-members are killed or secreted away by the alien, which is hiding in the ship’s vent system. 

Desperate, one of the last survivors, Ripley (Weaver) plots a strategy to self-destruct the ship and return to Earth in a shuttle.

The story of astronauts accidentally picking up a monster in space is an old one, yet just as Star Wars gave the old swashbuckling Flash Gordon template new life in 1977, so does Ridley Scott’s Alien breath much new life into the monster-on-a-spaceship story of It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), Planet of the Vampires (1965) or The Green Slime (1968). 

The director largely does so by pinpointing and focusing on the very quality that those films determinedly lack: a grounded sense of reality in terms of how human characters might behave while traveling on a spaceship in “the future.”  

So if George Lucas imagined a “lived in” universe for Star Wars, one that implied history, use, and even entropy, Ridley Scott carries that ball a yard or two further down the field.  He imagines and presents a blue-collar future, one where work-stations are trashed, where computer consoles make good coffee mug holders, where characters don sneakers and ball caps instead of snappy uniforms, where pornography is pinned-up on the personal cubbies of the personnel, and everyone sleeps in pods they call “freezers” rather than traveling at faster-than-light speed.

This daring visual aesthetic, termed “space truckers” felt new and unique in 1979, though Dark Star (1975), also written by Dan O’Bannon had put “slackers” in space and helped to begin the de-glamorization of life in outer space that Alien assiduously continues.  The effort to de-romanticize space makes life seem more immediate and real, and that’s the important thing here. 

In Alien, space travel is not a glorious calling or great mission to explore brave new worlds.  On the contrary, it is a monotonous and dull occupation.  Consider that in this future, corporations like Weyland-Yutani are still in charge, and the average astronaut is not a hero or a pioneer, but rather a guy (or gal) still trying to make a living wage and get his fair piece of the pie.  He makes it through the day on copious amounts of coffee, and swears like a sailor when shit starts falling apart. 

In the film, Brett (Stanton) and Parker (Kotto) make this dynamic especially clear.  They are not “miracle workers” like Star Trek’s Mr. Scott, but overworked repairmen, putting out one fire after another and not immune to the idea of a work slow-down if they feel they are being taken for granted or abused.  In fact, Alien features a kind of upstairs/downstairs dynamic regarding the Nostromo’s crew. The bridge crew-members are, at least barely, responsible and dutiful truckers, doing their jobs with a modicum of professionalism.  But Brett and Parker sweat it out in the boiler room, making mischief and slacking off wherever they can.

            

The terror in Alien emerges partially but not only from the revolutionary design and appearance of the monster (as envisioned by Giger), but in the conjunction of that frightening unknown with the very-well known world of these ruckers.  If the audience had to imagine “futuristic mankind” and his advanced, perfect technology, the very threat of the alien would surely be mitigated.  Instead, Scott depicts a world of ships, wardrobe, people and environs that we all immediately recognize and identify with.  Because Brett and Parker, Dallas, Kane and Ripley are all immediately believable, that factor makes the crew’s encounter with something truly unknown, something truly alien, all the more scintillating.

The contrast between us “now” (but in space) and the alien itself also forges a nice contrast.  One species is single-minded and brutally efficient.  The other is…not.

The other aspect of the film that viewers today may take for granted is the fact that in Alien, the monster is never seen in the same form twice until the last few scenes.  

After three alien sequels, two AVP movies, and the prequels people the world around can recite the Alien life-cycle from rote memory: egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, and adult or drone.  But in 1979, audiences had no way of knowing any of that, and so were unsettled because they could never be certain what the alien was going to “be” the next time they saw it.  

If the crew in Alien is recognizable as truckers in space or blue collar workers, the alien is utterly unrecognizable, even incomprehensible on first reckoning.  

So much tension arises in the film from the conflict between these two poles, of total recognition, and total lack of recognition. The alien’s constant shifting, its universal state of flux, seems to reflect the anxieties of a decade that witnessed three presidents in ten years, and upheavals in Vietnam, Iran, and on the home-front.  An overwhelming fear in the 1970s was that we didn’t know what, or from where, something else was going to hit the country as it was trying to get on its feet again.  

Would it be another oil crisis? Stagflation? Another political upheaval? A nuclear reactor meltdown? The indeterminate nature of the alien seems to point out, again and again, that the protagonists are falling behind, unable to catch-up with a problem that has spiraled out of control.

Today, we’ve seen so many aliens and so many shape-shifters at the movies that we’re inured to the concept and it no longer frightens us as it did in 1979, but Alien got it right, in revolutionary fashion. 

The fear wasn’t that the alien would be familiar the next time we saw it, the fear was that it would be unfamiliar, that all our learning, all our experience with it would ultimately prove useless.

I have written about Alien’s subtext before, notably in my book Horror Films FAQ (2013), and sometimes it is a bit uncomfortable.  

But on a very basic thematic level, Alien also concerns sex, and a “perfect” being  that can use human sexuality and reproductive drives against prey for its own breeding and survival purposes.  

There are moments in Scott's original that appear to involve homosexuality, sexual repression, and sexual stereotypes or roles. Again, this seems fitting considering the historical context. The end of the 1970s brought the disco era, and a new level of hedonism to the American public.  Americans had become more promiscuous, and the 1970s has become notorious, even, for its sense of sexual experimentation.  This idea has most often conveyed in films that focus on the decade’s “key” parties (The Ice Storm [1997[), wherein which married couples would swap partners for a night by randomly selecting car keys from a dish during a suburban party.  At the end of the 1970s, sex clubs such as Plato’s Retreat in New York had also become part of the new tapestry of the culture.

Given such a cultural background, it’s not entirely surprising that the monster in Alien should be a creature consumed with reproduction, and thus sex. To wit, John Hurt's character Kane becomes the first recipient of the alien's reproductive advances. British, whisper-thin and sexually ambiguous, Kane is depicted at one point in the film donning a white undergarment that appears to be a girdle; something that is distinctly "feminizing" to his appearance. 

In addition, Kane lives the most dangerous -- or is it promiscuous? -- lifestyle of anyone in the Nostromo crew. He awakes from the freezer first, he initiates the mission to the derelict, and he is the first to enter the derelict’s egg chamber. Kane is well-acquainted with danger as (stereotypically speaking...) one might expect of a sexually-active homosexual man circa 1979.  Again, we’re talking stereotypes here, not reality as we understand it in 2019.  

But Kane‘s daring is rewarded with alien impregnation. He is made unwillingly receptive to an oral penetration: the insertion of the face-hugger's "tube" down his throat...where it lays the chest-buster. What emerges from this encounter is "Kane's son" in Ash’s terminology. 

But essentially, the alien forces poor Kane -- possibly a coded/stereotypical homosexual male symbol -- to act in the role he may already be familiar with; that of being receptive to penetration.

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Consider also Ash (Ian Holm) and his sexual underpinnings. Ash is actually a robot, a creature presumably incapable of having sex. The film's subtext suggests that this inability, this repression of the sexual urge, has made him a monster too. 

When Ash attacks Ripley late in the film, he rolls up a pornographic magazine and attempts to jam it down the woman’s throat. It's his penis surrogate.  The implication of this particular act is that he can't do the same thing with his physical member, so Ash must use the magazine in its stead. 

And when Ash speaks of the alien life-form, he admits envy for it. One must wonder if this “envy” arises because the alien can sexually dominate others in a way that the disliked, often dismissed Ash cannot manage. 

It is also significant that when Ash is unable to satisfy his repressed sexual desire for Ripley, the pressure literally causes him to explode.  The android blood is a milky white, semen-like fluid in Alien. And it spurts. When confronted with his own sexuality and inability to express it...Ash can't hold his wad.

The most hyper-masculinized (again, stereotypically-so) character in Alien is undoubtedly Parker (Yaphet Kotto), an African-American man who brazenly discusses “eating pussy” during the scene leading up to the chest-burster revelation. 

Parker boasts an antagonistic, adversarial relationship with Ripley, one in which an interest in sex is clearly the undercurrent. Furthermore, the character is often-seen carrying an over-sized weapon (a flame thrower), another possible phallic symbol.

In another type of film, Parker might be the hero, the guy who saves the day.  But here he dies because of the stereotypical quality of male chivalry or machismo he exhibits. In particular, Parker won't turn the flame thrower on the alien while a woman (Lambert) is in the line of fire. The alien dispatches Parker quickly (mano e mano), perhaps realizing he will never co-opt an alpha male like Parker to be his "bitch;" at least not the way Kane was used.

As for Lambert, the most-traditionally (and -- bear with me again -- stereotypically) female character in the film -- she gets raped by the alien, presumably by the xenomorph's phallic tail. 

Once more, the alien has exploited a character's biological/reproductive nature and used it to meets its own destructive, perverse needs.   

The monster is able to understand and kill each creature, essentially, according to their assigned, pre-programmed sex role.  Kane’s daring and promiscuous life-style is what exposes him. Ash protects and envies the alien because he can’t perform sexually at all.  Parker dies in an act of (in vain) machismo. And Lambert is the traditional screaming victim, unable to do anything but get raped.

And then, at long last, we get to Alien’s sense of brilliant non-convention, the character that explodes all the pre-existing stereotypes I have diagrammed.  Meet Ripley: a character written in the screenplay for a man but played by a woman (Sigourney Weaver). She is the only survivor (along with Jones the Cat), of the alien's rampage on the Nostromo and there's a case that can be made that the alien cannot so easily "tag" Ripley as either male or female, and that's why she survives.

She is perfect, like the alien itself, an apparent blend of all “human” qualities.  

Ripley makes irrelevant traditional sex roles or sex stereotypes, and please recall that I have discussed all the crew in terms of the culture’s stereotypes.  That’s because they are prey, and the alien hunts them by those qualities.  It can’t get a handle on Ripley because she exists outside familiar sexual dynamics.  

All the other crew members are somehow limited by their sexuality, whereas Ripley is the only character who successfully balances common sense, heroism, and competence. She is both strong and weak, in the appropriate measure, both daring and prudent.  Given this uncommon mix of stereotypically male and female qualities, the alien is not quite sure how to either "read" or "use" Ripley for its own nefarious purposes.  This, perhaps, is one advantage of our species: it can outgrow biology, and not act as mere slave to it.

In the final moments of the film, the alien does make a decision vis-à-vis Ripley. It recognizes and catalogs her as the best of humanity whether male or female.  She is kindred; a survivor. So the alien rides in secret with her aboard the shuttle Narcissus as they escape the Nostromo. 

The alien could likely kill Ripley any time during that escape flight, but does not choose to do so. It knows it is in safe hands with her, at least for the time being. It uses her "competence," her skill (qualities of itself it recognizes in her?) to escape destruction...again establishing its perfection.

            

When viewed through the lens of human sexuality then, Alien is a film about the way that the reproductive or sex drive can subvert humanity.  

The film is a masterpiece in terms of visualization, in terms of how it approaches space travel and alien life, but more than it, it is a work of genius in describing what perfection might mean to an alien life-form.  It means not being easily tagged or cataloged as one thing or another.   The depiction of the alien itself recognizes the fact that it can be all things to all people.  The doorway to the alien derelict, for instance, is vaginal in appearance, and the alien skull itself resembles “the head of a penis,” (William Paul, Laughing Screaming, 1994).

So as the doors of sexual experimentation were swinging wide in the 1970's, Alien gave the world a monster to walk through that open portal…

Happy First Contact Day! (Star Trek: First Contact [1996])

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) is likely the finest of The Next Generation feature films.  In part, this is so because the film combines an extremely popular villain, the Borg, with an extremely popular idea in the franchise: time travel.  

In part, First Contact also thrives because the film is more action-oriented and visceral than some of the other entries in the canon. The screenplay, by Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore also goes through fewer contortions than Generations did to fashion its compelling tale.  Where Generations seemed confusing and contrived, First Contact feels stream-lined and sleek. 

Perhaps most importantly, Star Trek: First Contact – while occasionally gory and quite violent – remembers that the core of Star Trek’s appeal does not rest in warfare and hatred, but rather in the exploration of the “human adventure.”  

By ending on the high note of humanity’s first contact with the Vulcans, First Contact honors Star Trek’s important legacy of hope and promise.  This vision of a better tomorrow (and of a better humanity, to boot), differentiates the franchise from virtually all other space adventures, and makes the film a pleasure to watch, even fifteen years after its theatrical release.  An average Star Trek movie can excite you with space battles, certainly, but only a very good one can tap into the inspirational nature of Gene Roddenberry’s celebrated creation.

Accordingly, film critics approved of and admired the film, and First Contact remains one of the best-reviewed Star Trek films in the saga’s history.  Variety wrote: “Star Trek: First Contact" is a smashingly exciting sci-fi adventure that ranks among the very best in the long-running Paramount franchise. Better still, this is one TV spinoff that does not require ticket buyers to come equipped with an intimate knowledge of the small-screen original. Fans and non-fans alike will line up for this wild ride, and many will be repeat customers.”

Lloyd Rose at The Washington Post praised Jonathan Frakes’ direction, and opined “There are moments of visionary beauty in this film that rank with "Metropolis," with Josh Meador's interior vistas in "Forbidden Planet" and Irvin Kershner's and Ralph Quarrie's work in "The Empire Strikes Back" -- that is to say, with the best fantasy films ever made.”

As a reviewer and unapologetic Trek fan, I boast deeper reservations about First Contact than Rose apparently did, and feel that while the film is indeed the best of the Next Generation cinematic efforts, it still falls short of the cinematic majesty and scope of The Motion Picture (1979), or the sheer emotionality and humanity of The Wrath of Khan (1982).  

Part of the reason that Star Trek: First Contact doesn’t work on the same rarefied level as those aforementioned titles is that many of the earthbound scenes involving James Cromwell’s recalcitrant Zefram Cochrane boast no effective foil for the mischievous inventor of warp speed technology.  Riker, Troi and Geordi are beloved characters to be certain, but they are never really established effectively in the script as larger-than-life personalities with the heft to match Cochrane note-for-note and blow-for-blow.  As a result, the film’s pace lags badly every time First Contact returns to Earth and the Borg are shunted off-screen.

By contrast, the Borg themselves (itself?) are incredibly effective in design, concept and execution.  They are visually-inspired, dynamic villains, and First Contact benefits strongly from their presence, even if aspects of their culture (namely the Borg Queen) now seem contradictory and unnecessarily muddled.   As a longtime Star Trek fan, I was also disappointed with some of the shoddy continuity in the film, especially because in most cases the flaws were unnecessary and could have been easily rectified in post-production.

But such quibbles aside, Star Trek: First Contact remains a fun and involving science fiction adventure.  It’s an eminently sturdy entry in the long-lived franchise, and comes close to recapturing successfully the character chemistry that made Star Trek: the Next Generation so beloved an endeavor. 

“A group of cybernetic creatures from the future have traveled back through time to enslave the human race... and you're here to stop them?”

In the 24^th Century, the cybernetic Borg attempt a second invasion of Sector 001, the home of the human race.  Instead of warping to planet Earth to join the battle, however, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the U.S.S Enterprise-E are ordered to stay away.  Starfleet fears that Picard’s traumatic experience being assimilated by the Borg could make him an “unstable element” in the critical defense of Earth.

With his crew’s support, Captain Picard ignores Starfleet’s orders and assumes control of the fleet battling the Borg Cube.  Able to hear the Borg’s thoughts, Captain Picard pinpoints the cube’s weakness and destroys it, but not before a Borg escape craft opens a temporal anomaly and travels into Earth’s past.

Caught in the energetic wake of the escaping Borg sphere, the Enterprise crew can only watch as Earth of the past is assimilated by the cybernetic organisms.  The starship follows the Borg to the past, to April of 2063 in an effort to prevent the change.  There, they learn that the diabolical aliens plan to scuttle Earth’s “first contact” with alien life forms following the successful test flight of Zefram Cochrane’s (James Cromwell’s) experimental warp ship.  

Picard realizes he must preserve the timeline, or the human race will become…Borg.

Before long, the Enterprise herself is infested with Borg invaders.  Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) is captured by the Borg Queen (Alice Krige), who requires the information stored in his android brain if she wishes to access the ship’s computer and stop Cochrane’s historic flight.  

Meanwhile, on Earth’s surface below, Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) must convince Cochrane to make his historic flight…

“I am the beginning. The end. The one who is many. I am the Borg.”

The Borg are really no-brainers as movie antagonists.  The most beloved episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation remains the two-parter “The Best of Both Worlds,” concerning a Borg incursion into Federation space. The Borg are such popular villains because they promise a fate much worse than death.  

It’s one thing to be killed by drooling, murderous aliens; it’s another thing entirely to have your individuality wiped away and your intelligence sublimated into the Borg Collective.  In that state, your memories belong to the Borg.  Your physicality belongs to the Borg.  Your very soul…is theirs.  

Somewhere inside, you may want to struggle against the Collective or Hive, but you can’t succeed.  You must stand by and watch in a kind of living Hell as the Borg exploit your knowledge and exploit your body, perhaps even condemning your very loved ones to the nightmare of being “one” with the collective. It’s a horrid fate to imagine, let alone endure.  

The Borg threat also works remarkably well in the context of The Next Generation, a series that -- through the inclusion of half-Betazaoids, Klingons, androids, the blind and other colorful characters -- champions diversity as a worthwhile human ideal.

The Borg destroy diversity, making all life-forms conform to their vision of perfection, thus making them a perfect adversary for our colorful and very individual 24^th century heroes.

Assimilation into the Borg group consciousness is such a powerful, frightening notion that it would be nearly impossible to ruin the threat of the Borg in a two-hour motion picture.  And yet, First Contact almost achieves the impossible by giving the Borg a heretofore unseen new ruler, a single individual called the Borg Queen.  

Now, let me be plain: Alice Krige is remarkable as the Borg Queen here.  She gives a performance simultaneously terrifying and sensual.  Similarly, her appearance is both frightening and incredibly sexy.  And yet the very idea of a Borg Queen represents a terrible undermining of the original notion of the Borg: a collective life form. 

Now, suddenly – after several years of Next Generation episodes – we learn that that the Borg are ruled by an individual leader?  By the equivalent of a Queen Bee?  And worse, this Queen Bee is apparently seeking a human mate?  Here, it is plain she seeks not to make drones of protagonists Captain Picard or Data, but to make them her lovers and companions, co-rulers of the lower Borg caste. 

In one fell swoop, then, the terror and anonymity of assimilation is largely undone.  For one thing, the Borg can maintain individuality after assimilation, as the presence and personality of the Borg Queen prove.  For another, our heroes don’t face total erasure of individuality.  Instead, they get to hob-knob it with the sensual, if sadistic, Borg Queen.  There are some humans who may not consider that arrangement so terrible, frankly, given her overt sensuality… 

I understand the (flawed) thinking that individuals make a “better” enemy in a movie than a group of bad guys, but the popularity of the Borg as a collective in the Next Generation TV series proves the fallacy of such thinking.  First Contact invents a new character in the Borg Queen that -- while beautiful and menacing -- totally undercuts the terror of the Borg equation.

Her presence raises important questions too.  How does the Queen exist in multiple dimensions at once, since First Contact suggests that she was present on the Borg ship with Locutus, although though we never saw her there in “Best of Both Worlds?” 

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, how do the Borg survive (into episodes of Voyager) if their multi-dimensional Queen keeps getting destroyed?  How many Queens are there?  How does she die?  Does Star Trek now possess an un-killable character?   Also, because she can apparently be in more than one dimension at a time, why does the Queen have to bother with sending a message to the Borg of her time by sensor dish?  Why not just transition from one place to another, one time to another?

Another serious problem in First Contact again comes down to how writers Ronald Moore and Brannon Braga choose to highlight crew interaction.  Specifically, superficial “movie thinking” undercuts what could have been incredible scenes of conflict and drama between Enterprise team members.  

Here, Patrick Stewart delivers an incredibly well-written Moby Dick speech about the Borg, explaining in detail why he won’t fall back again, why he won’t let the Borg win.  Stewart does a terrific job with the material.  It’s the monologue of an obsessed, driven man, and it works quite effectively in terms of the character we love, even if it seems logical that he would have exorcised these Borg demons already, given the span of time between “Family” and First Contact.

But forget all that. Picard gets called on the carpet and called out for his obsession with Borg… by Lily (Alfre Woodard), a one-time guest star in the franchise.  She goes toe-to-toe with Picard and points out how his pursuit of the Borg doesn’t make sense.  She’s known him for maybe a few hours, when she makes the speech.

I’ll be blunt: this confrontation should have occurred between Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden).  She has known Captain Picard longer than anyone else aboard ship, she can speak from experience -- not hear say --  that his orders usually make sense, and she boasts the standing as chief medical officer of the Enterprise to stop Picard in his tracks if he is acting in a manner that is dangerous to the well-being of the starship’s crew.  

If this were an original cast Star Trek movie, do you have any doubt that it would have been McCoy calling Kirk on the carpet over his behavior, as he did, explicitly in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), to name just three incidents?  McCoy could do it because he was Kirk’s confidante, and because he had that standing as CMO to question a captain’s behavior.

Again, Crusher – who shares breakfast with Picard every day as we know from the series – is that person in The Next Generation universe.  Yes, Stewart and Woodard are powerful in the confrontation scene together, but it doesn’t resonate deeply in terms of Star Trek history, because Picard doesn’t get checked by one of his own, by one of his crew. These movies are supposed to be about how starship crews work together to resolve problems, right?  Shouldn't the person who actually knows Picard be the one to question him?  You may recall, I had a similar problem with how Generations used Crusher.  She should have been Picard's "Nexus" ideal, given their relationship there. And she should do her duty as CMO here, in First Contact. It's not that I have a thing for Crusher (though I like her just fine).  It's that as a member of the team, when there is an opportunity to use her character appropriately...she should be thus used.  And she never is.  In any Star Trek movie.  Even Chekov, Sulu and Uhura had moments in the sun in the original Star Trek films when there was opportunity.

I’ve always believed this a major flaw in the Next Generation movies: they give the supporting cast members little to do, and farm out the dramatic work to guest stars inside of established characters.  The Moby Dick scene would have been infinitely more powerful if Gates McFadden – whom we know and love as Crusher – had been given the opportunity to stand up to Captain Picard.  I wrote above how Riker, Geordi and Troi don’t seem equal to the task of countering Cochrane here.  The same is true of Crusher in First Contact: she’s written like a doormat.  She remains on the bridge, without questioning orders, while Lily enthusiastically performs her job as chief medical officer. 

This reveals -- as we see time and time again – that there’s definitely a pecking order in the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies:  the men get better roles than the women do, and Picard, Riker, Worf and Data get the lion’s share of the drama, while the rest of the characters are afforded only brief moments that play as the equivalent of shtick.  Troi gets to play drunk, for example.  In First Contact, Crusher not only shirks her duty to hold Picard’s feet to the fire over a bad decision, she actually loses a patient (Lily again…) who is under her protection.  That’s the best the writers could come up with for a character who raised a son, overcame the tragic death of her husband, commanded the Enterprise from time-to-time and even headed Starfleet Medical?

In short, for First Contact, the writers decided to go out and invent a woman tough enough to challenge Picard, when a woman already in the Next Generation stable could have done it just as well, and it would have resonated far more with the Trek fan base.  All they needed to do was to write Gates McFadden a decent part.

In the introduction to this piece, I wrote about some careless errors in the film.  Let me name just a few.  At one point, Picard tells Lily the Enterprise consists of 24 decks. Later, Worf’s security chief replacement reports that the Borg control "deck 26."  If we’re to believe Picard, that deck doesn’t exist.  By looping “24” over the “26” dialogue, this would error would not have occurred.  I just can’t believe that nobody was checking continuity on a major studio’s tent-pole franchise.

Other matters of concern include the origin of Zefram Cochrane.  He is a character from the original series episode “Metamorphosis,” and one with an entirely different look and origin (in terms of home planets, apparently) than what this movie establishes. But First Contact feels no obligation to explain the discrepancies in Cochrane’s biography.  

Also, since when can Captain Picard hear the voices of the Borg?  Is this a common side effect of those who have been separated from the Collective?  If so, did Hugh, the Borg refugees of “Descent” and Seven of Nine also hear Borg voices in their heads whenever they encountered them?

In spite of such problems, Star Trek: First Contact is a highly entertaining movie with many dramatic and visually-appealing high points.  

Prime among these is the zero-gravity sequence in which Picard, Worf and Hunt must battle the Borg on the exterior of the Enterprise hull, on the main deflector dish.  This scene is splendidly-directed, buttressed by incredible special effects, and it features an undercurrent of anxiety throughout, as the Borg – slowly becoming aware of Picard’s interference – begin to menace the crew as the team works to stop them.  

I remember, circa 1994 or so, I was deeply disenchanted with the Star Trek universe and consequently looking back at Space: 1999 (1975 -1977) with much appreciation, because I felt that the world of the Enterprise had become too safe and predictable.  Space adventuring was no longer dangerous.   Now it consisted of vacations on holodecks, endless resources and material wealth, courtesy of replicators, and even families living on the saucer section while exploring the final frontier.  I lamented the fact that not once in Star Trek: The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine up to that point, had any main character been seen in a space suit, actually reckoning with the actual environment of space.  The crew members of Starfleet seemed to me too insulated from danger.

So I was delighted that Star Trek: First Contact included this zero-g sequence and put my qualms to rest, at least momentarily.  The zero-gravity action scene in Star Trek: First Contact reminds us that these men and women are in a dangerous profession, and that even with all the comforts of “technology unchained” in the 24^th century, they must still sometimes go out into space with precious few resources to fight enemies, or attempt to repair their ship.   The zero-gravity fight scene is actually my favorite in the film because it is so tense, and because it features so many nice character touches, from Picard’s unconventional cleverness (blasting a Borg into space by shooting the deck of the ship…) to Worf’s “always be prepared” mentality, bringing a blade out into space with him.  It’s terrific stuff.

I also enjoy the climax of Star Trek: First Contact tremendously because it remembers that Star Trek isn’t always supposed to be about battling hostile aliens.  This is one of the reasons why I’m not all that impressed with Star Trek Online. It’s a game about going out to other worlds and fighting aliens, about firing phasers and engaging in battle. 

For me, that’s but one small aspect of Star Trek, and not, for me, the one with the most appeal.  Star Trek: First Contact features great battle sequences, but more than that, ends on the high note of first contact.  It shows us an important and inspiring scene in human history, our first, peaceful meeting with extra-terrestrials.  In this case, the humans who broach that contact are fatigued from war, and not “perfect” (like our 24^th century protagonists).  And yet they lead with trust and peace, and a wonderful, new era is opened up because of their willingness to go out on a limb.  Frankly, I find the final scenes of First Contact absolutely inspiring, reminding us of the better angels of our nature.  We can greet the unknown not with fear, paranoia and suspicion, but with hope and peace and trust. 

In ending the film on this high note, rather than the (admittedly-satisfying) defeat of the villainous Borg, First Contact remembers and honors the highest aspirations of Gene Roddenberry and the Star Trek saga.  Remember “the human adventure is just beginning?” the tag-line of Star Trek: The Motion Picture?  First Contact literalizes that motto, and shows us the wondrous beginnings of man’s odyssey to the stars, beginning with the first moments of brotherhood with another race.  It’s a fantastic and inspiring story-point.

I also appreciate the creativity involved in Data’s subplot in First Contact. I didn’t care for how Data was utilized in Generations…as a veritable bi-polar psychotic. Here, he seems more...balanced.  He faces temptation as the Borg perform an assimilation in reverse.  Usually, the Borg apply mechanical prosthetics to biological skin.  Here, they apply biological skin to a mechanical apparatus.  It’s an interesting idea, especially since Data suggests early on that he can’t be assimilated by the Borg.  The Queen proves him wrong, and in a diabolical fashion that tempts Data.  We never really believe he has turned to the dark side...but as Data suggests, a few seconds can feel like eternity when we're uncertain of his exact motivations. 

I understand that Star Trek fans are divided on the subject of Frakes as a director. He gets good performances from the cast here, and manages several action scenes nicely.  Judging by First Contact, he certainly seems up to the center seat...the director's chair. Between the zero-g action, the up-lifting last moments of first contact, and Data’s unique experience being Borgified, it’s largely futile to resist First Contact, a high-point for the Next Generation cast at the movies. 

Guest Post: Death on the Nile (2022)

Get a Clue. Death On The Nile Refuses To Invite Armchair Detectives To The Show

 

By Jonas Schwartz

 

Director Kenneth Branagh has adapted an Agatha Christie masterpiece for the second time, following his 2017 remake of Murder On The Orient Express. For Death On The Nile, he has pulled out all his filmic tricks to create a stunning tapestry of production design, costumes, and camera moves. He has assembled a stellar cast, who all perform at their top form. What he has NOT done is direct a murder mystery.  And if he's made that conscious decision, then WHY make a subpar version of a classic whodunit if you have no interest in the audience following the clues by choosing to exclude so many clues?

 

A young heiress (Gal Gadot) and her new husband (Armie Hammer) recruit master Belgian detective Hercules Poirot (Branagh) to protect them from a scorned past lover of his (Emma MacKey). But as the wealthy and beautiful Linnet Ridgeway travels down the Nile River during her honeymoon, she confides in Poirot that she fears for her life — not only from her friend whose fiancée she stole, but from most members of the wedding party. Poirot must dig through the secrets and lies to discover who has motive enough to kill before it's too late.

Branagh uses his team from Murder on the Orient — cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos and production designer Jim Clay — to transport the audience first to WWI trenches and then the opulence of '30s Egypt with its ornate 5-star hotels, extravagant river cruise boats, and the treasures along the Nile — The Temples of Abu Simbel, the Sphynx, and the Pyramid of Giza. The costumes by Paco Delgado and JobanJit Singh are gorgeous, particularly those worn by Gadot.

 

In a cast led by Branagh, Gadot, Hammer, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Annette Benning, the standout is Sophie Okonedo as a blues singer ala Mahalia Jackson. Commanding the screen whenever present, Okonedo plays a character very different from the Salome Otterbourne in the novel and in the '78 film, where Angela Lansbury was delightful as the dipsomaniac writer.  Here Otterbourne is an African American woman living in a CIS White Male world, who exudes dignity even when she's not respected as she deserves to be.

 

Salome is not the only character reevaluated in the new film. A host of characters are added and refocused, which gives some of the actors more to sink their teeth in, and leaves some with nothing to play. Scriptwriter Michael Green falls into the same traps he had with Orient Express. He turns the film into a character study, which is admirable, but inappropriate for an Agatha Christie mystery. He lifts vital clues, waters down the suspects motives, and even makes the audience care about the victim while removing much of the victim's culpabilities.

 

Branagh uses the film to pay homage to the great Orson Welles. His high and low angles, deep focuses, sepia photography mixed with one color item, are visually arresting. The opening, taking place on the war fields of Belgium, treats our protagonist with a backstory to fit Branagh's theme that Love is Nature, and Nature is Deadly — hammered home with different animals striking their prey throughout the film — but it does NOTHING for the story.  Welles didn't care about story. In the masterpiece Touch Of Evil, he didn't give a hoot who put a bomb in the old man's car. Touch Of Evil was a losing battle for the soul in one opulent man's body (played winningly by Welles). Alfred Hitchcock also didn't care about plot. He coined the phrase McGuffin, which is the item that the protagonists/antagonists fight for, but of which Hitchcock himself has brushed away as piffle. That's why Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock would never have adapted a Christie mystery.

 

You can't deconstruct Agatha Christie. The components of the plot are essential. That story is a tightly constructed machine. Branagh ripped it all apart and put it back together and many necessary pieces were swept under the rug. It's not a question of reverence to the source, it's that a mystery of this caliber must reveal enough to keep the audience intrigued.  The suspect list must be long, the hints must be truthful, and the audience should be distracted enough to NOT deduce the murderer but should have every clue that could have given them the opportunity to make that discovery themselves. Death On The Nile denies the audience that treat. Most suspects have grievances, not motives. The killer disappears for a good third of the second act. Branagh reveals clues at the conclusion that were not in evidence already, leaving the audience befuddled.

As a meticulously designed, lavish display of art, Death On The Nile is a feast. But as a mystery, Branagh's overindulgence is a detriment of the plot, turning it into Kenneth's folly.

John on the Gerry Anderson Podcast, Part III

 

John on the Gerry Anderson Podcast Part II

 

John on the Gerry Anderson Podcast, Part I

 

Guest Post: Scream (2022)

Scream – The Gang's All Here

By Jonas Schwartz

 

NOTE on spoilers, though I've kept all the secrets of Scream out of my review, I do allow anything that was revealed in the trailer, as well as any information given over the last 25 years of films. If you haven't seen the original Scream, Scream 2, or Scream 4, rent them immediately. The less said about Scream 3, the better. 

 

Though there are unfortunate problems plaguing the new re-quel (reboot/sequel) of the 1996 classic Scream, after 25 years, the teaming of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette still brings joy, like being reunited with your saviors. Campbell, specifically, brings such tenderness and empowerment to her legendary role of Sydney Prescott that your stomach drops when she arrives on the screen as if you have run into a loved one for the first time in decades. Neve Campbell has always been the franchise's secret weapon, but there was another component missing that cast a pall over the entire film. Though Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are ambitious directors, the Wes Craven touch would have brought this film together more smoothly.

 

Once again, a vicious killer in the iconic Ghostface mask is terrorizing the town of Woodsboro. A high school student (Jenna Ortega) reluctantly answers a landline setting off a string of brutal stabbings. Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) returns to town with a dark secret — one that she believes has led to these current crimes, one tracing back to the original murders. 

 

As in the past Scream movies, the film features a cast of young up-and-comers. From Ortega (Jane the Virgin) to Barrera (Showtime's Vida and HBO Max's In The Heights) as well as Mikey Madison (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood), Jack Quaid (Amazon's The Boys) and Dylan Minnette (13 Reasons Why). But as always, the cast is anchored by the three that came from the very beginning: Campbell, Cox, and Arquette. 

 

It's obvious that both the writers, James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick (Ready or Not). and their directors (who hit a bullseye with Ready or Not), have meticulously studied the four previous films. There are shots beautifully recaptured, sequences that mirror the original but just slightly askew, that make it clear these filmmakers revere the franchise. The writers humorously incorporate some of the fan theories over the last 25 years about past films. The creatives imbibe the film with nasty humor and mock the meta world both we and the films inhabit. They pay visual homage to other horror films like Psycho. They even comment on the actors' past career.  One character suffers the same fate as their previous character in another film, while it can't be a coincidence that Gail Weathers (Cox) now hosts a morning show, remarkably similar to her "Friend" Jennifer Aniston on the award-winning Apple+ drama, The Morning Show.  Also without mentioning the world's current pandemic, they joyfully have one character maimed due to hand sanitizer.  One character even suffers with a dark passenger ala Showtime's Dexter.  So these are not people winging it or phoning it in. 

 

However, Scream feels like an A+ thesis paper at film school, not a movie. And here's where Craven would have been able to save the day. Craven had a knack for taking the most outrageous situations and grounding them so the audience could identify and follow the characters through a journey. The original four (yes even the subpar Scream 3) work because the audience has someone to follow through the story and empathize.  Even the murderers have some distorted rationality to them.  But in this film, all the characters are mouthpieces, pronouncing every meta reference with a jackhammer, instead of functioning people. They just don’t resonate. And without giving the ending away, the crimes' reasoning is flimsy, and for such hideous and cruel butchering, rather flippant. 

 

The latest also tries to reinforce a fiction that Stab, the fictional movie being distributed during Scream 2, was filmic art. A film starring Tori Spelling. I never got the sense that Stab was more than campy schlock in Craven's mind. He was mocking the industry with Stab. But the current film puts it on a pedestal that never seemed part of Craven's vision.

 

I remember leaving a viewing of Scream 4 10+ years ago. Though a full decade had past, the 2011 film jolted you with such ingenuity, including that jaw-droppingly hilarious opening to a villain that took the film to a new level. The current Scream could make you think, could make you giggle, but at least for me, it won't make you feel anything.