Like many, I am a huge fan of the original Alien franchise, which was part of my childhood. So naturally, I was going to watch the latest instalment, as disappointed as I was with many of the previous instalments.
By Emad Aysha
The story of watching this movie is almost as arduous as the movie itself. That being said, I did come out of the movie theatre fairly impressed and satisfied, and I wished good things for the cast and crew and the franchise!
First things first, the premise of the movie is ridiculous. It's almost as absurd as what you see in The Rise of Skywalker. You have a probe sent out by Wayland-Yutani to the debris of the Nostromo, and they retrieve the body of the xenomorph. That’s like the portion of the Death Star surviving total annihilation in Return of the Jedi.
The creature is alive, and they do tests on it at a faraway space station around the mining colony of Jackson's Star and, as dumb luck would have it, some youthful workers go to the derelict station to salvage cryosleep pods for an illicit journey to a new colony, bumping into you-know-what while they’re there.
EYE-CONTACT: David Jonsson, classic theatre man turned android bro from heaven.
This is hard to believe in itself. If the experiments went wrong and the place got infested, why did the company not just nuke it from a safe distance? Or send a salvage team to get the best of the worst? The other big problem from the movie, apart from the fact that it reeks of nostalgia, is the long list of nonentities they have as characters.
When Bjorn (Spike Fearn) gets killed, through his own stupidity, and in the most horrible way, you don’t feel a damn thing. The same goes for Navarro (Aileen Wu), Kay (Isabela Merced) and even Tyler (Archie Renaux), the only one who isn’t a wuss, jerk or advocate of every man for himself.
The real stars of the movie, and the most refreshing aspect of it, are the duo of Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (talented theatre actor David Jonsson). Rain considers him her brother when he’s a decommissioned android from the mines that her father salvaged to take care of her after he died from lung disease (hint, hint).
The two actors are comfortable around each other, and you ultimately believe they are the best bros. He’s almost an invalid, a face full of innocence and pain. He tries to be human by telling bad science jokes, and she constantly has to look out for him.
She makes a compromise to have him decommissioned once they get to their final destination – no robots allowed – but realises her mistake and saves his life even after he’s reprogrammed by a company android (deepfake Ash/Ian Holm) to be ruthless and sacrifice humans.
It’s the moral highpoint of the movie, and you feel the hurt and guilt in her. It’s the thematic core of the film, too. When they’re on the space station, named after the Roman creation myth of Romulus and Remus, you see a horrid painting of dead people (I presume from the plague) with a baby suckling from its dead mother. Again, every man for himself, which is what gets everybody killed in the end – except for Rain and Andy.
This painting is referenced again when Kay's yucky offspring, a product of the black goo they extracted and replicated in the experiments, nests on her chest like a child needing its mother, only to sap the life out of her like a vampire afterwards.
If she hadn’t been so ruthless and self-centred, her human fetus wouldn’t have mutated into this abomination of a human – it looks like an engineer from Prometheus. (The goo is meant to help man adapt to all alien environments; what’s killing so many colonists).
Isabela Merced is actually a good actress and gives a very attractive and natural performance in Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018), which is practically the only good thing in that dilapidated mess of a movie. Unfortunately, she’s wasted here.
MONSTER CHOW: Isabela Merced, her flowery role in 'Sicario' gone but not forgotten here.
The other strong points of the movie are its aesthetics. It feels wonderfully Indie, small-scale but detailed and charming, and has gorgeous exterior shots. The production design is proper to the original Alien (1979) and even has a Max Headroom feel.
Action and thriller-wise, it’s pretty good. The Uruguayan Fede Álvarez is a new but experienced horror director who knows how to create claustrophobic atmospheres and utilise practical effects while sprucing them up digitally.
If you ask, they should have got him to do Blade Runner 2049. He knows how to balance rust and grime with interstellar excellence. The scene with the rings around Jackson’s world eating away the space station will live in cinematic history.
The music is good. It's not as haunting and nautical as the original, but creepy and action-packed and sensitive enough when it’s called for. You are on the edge of your seat in many sequences in the movie – the elevator shaft, the floating acid, the space helmet cracking – and the music is part and parcel of this.
I especially liked the scene where they see the sun for the first time, signifying that they are coming out of the dark beyond the company’s veil of lies and control.
MOUTH FULL: The premise may be silly but the practical effects save the day.
So, all in all, the movie was worth the two-hour screen time, and it may just do the trick to get the franchise back on track. It did have a happy ending.
Now for my story. It took me four hours to get into the theatre, and I had to watch another movie first – they sent me to the wrong hall on purpose.
Getting home was agony, too, with all the trucks and crates in the way. I thought to myself, it was less crowded and less dangerous onboard the derelict space station.
That’s what downtown Cairo is now – a freak show!!
