If nothing else, 2022 has so far been about nostalgia and revisiting the past, especially in terms of television and film. One thing I've learned is that my memories of films are often different from the reality or I forget huge swathes bookended by scenes that have stuck in my mind. I've always struggled to understand why people will watch films two or three times over the space of a year, preferring my tried and proven method of waiting at least 30 months before I watch a film again - and that's only a smaller percentage of all the films I watch, some films must never be watched again because there isn't enough time...
I have my classic films - many of which are others classics too - and I think the main thing about many of them is that if they're not of a specific era, they are timeless. They sit outside of the time they were made. In many ways, the reason I love Ridley Scott's Alien so much is because outside of the computers, this film could have been made at any point in the last 40 odd years. Plus, your mind excuses the silly monitors and computer 'graphics' because you know that it was made in 1979 and most people's ideas of computers were still a world away. I've probably seen it half a dozen times and I still find it as tense as the first time. Which brings us nicely to the subject of today's blog. It has been at least 25 years since the wife and I sat down and watched Aliens, James Cameron's blockbuster follow-up in 1986. So we watched it when it was on ITV4 the other day and this is what I think.
I've mentioned in previous blogs (about Marvel films) that I really don't know what the fuss about Sam Raimi is. The Evil Dead was an anomaly in many ways, even if it's largely a farcical horror mash-up, because it cemented him as an outstanding and innovative film director, even if every film he made after it wasn't very good. There's a tone to Raimi's films that I've failed to like - that said I haven't seen all of them because I'm not a huge fan - and I have some misgivings about Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness purely based on the fact he's going to be directing it and you can bet your life he manages to squeeze Bruce Campbell in somewhere.
So what's this got to do with Aliens? Nothing apart from the similarity in my thoughts about James Cameron and Sam Raimi. To me, they both fit into the same category and while they're different film makers, they're both living off the success of groundbreaking films in their freshman years. I've actually seen all of Cameron's films, apart from Titanic (and his first - Piranha 2) and he reminds me of the argument used about Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, that he is only successful because he manages the best teams and has the biggest budgets to spend on new player. Since Terminator, Cameron has demanded massive budgets to make a new feature film on average every 6 years and he's essentially Michael Bay with an Elon Musk-sized budget.
His films are loud, brash, bombastic and full of misplaced confidence; even Terminator, but the difference with that film was it was ahead of the game. Nothing about it should have worked, from Arnold's inability to act to the actual premise, except it did and largely down to the prolonged finale; it reminded people of Alien in that you were never sure when it was going to end and the 'oh yeah, I forgot about that bit that only proves why it is a classic film' feeling you get when you watch it. There is a timeless quality about Terminator because it is set in a specific time and the plot is relevant today.
Which is why Cameron seemed the obvious choice to make Aliens.
I remember loving Aliens; being heavily invested in it during the late 80s and 90s. It was a fitting sequel to a brilliant standalone film and that is a rare achievement. That's what I thought then, now however I view it with fresh eyes and many more years have passed since my last watch than had passed between then and when it was made.
The main problem with Aliens in 2022 is that unlike the first film, this has dated astronomically badly. Not just with things such as computers, but quite simply I can foresee no time in the future where the people of the world will want to return to 1980s fashion. It just wouldn't happen. It's all posing and posturing and soundbites and while it might have seemed forward thinking at the time of the release doesn't hold up to much now; even genuinely prescient things - such as exponential corporate greed - aren't handled in a 23rd century way.
The story is also really rather far-fetched. Why would Ripley need to go back to the planet they found the first alien on? What would her purpose be, especially in a future where remote interplanetary conversation would be more sensible. I mean, if she had to go, why couldn't she have stayed on the mothership and talked via coms? Big ship - small crew doesn't seem to sit right now. Newt's survival was something of a stretch, given where the face huggers could get into and talk about dreadful actors, the kid who played her had the personality of a house brick. But the thing that sits the worst with me is the fact it is essentially the first film remade with disco lights and a remixed soundtrack. The massacres were handled in a way that suggested the film was being made for a PG-13 audience and all the tension, suspense and horror of the first film is lost in a constant barrage of noise and flashes.
It's really quite a dreadful mess of a film now with a pacing that's bizarre in its stop/start fashion and it's resolutions, which almost felt like afterthoughts to the main action. There's an awful lot to like about the film, but there's much more to wince at; if this is the future, did none of these people watch sci-fi films from the 20th century?
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Ordinarily, I'd stop there, but just recently I found a box of old DVDs a few weeks ago; tucked away in a cupboard and forgotten about was the 2006 Man of Steel film Superman Returns directed by Bryan Singer - he of two out of the first three X-Men films. This was direct 'follow-up' to the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the late 70s and 80s...
Obviously we'd seen this film because I kind of remembered watching it... except when we did watch it absolutely nothing at all seemed familiar. Surely I would have remembered that Superman Returns was a (kind of) direct sequel to Superman IV: Quest for Peace? But, no. Brandon Routh's poor Christopher Reeve impression did not ring any bells and while it was good, he didn't make a particularly impressive Man of Steel, even if Kevin Spacey's rather excellent rendition of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor felt familiar. Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane made zero impression - I couldn't remember her or anything about her role. However grandiose and advanced the story seemed [wanted] to be, I think that maybe we had watched it and disliked it so much we erased it from our minds? Perhaps my late Mother-in-law - renowned for buying me presents I didn't want - bought it for me and I just hid it away? I don't really have an answer - not that one's needed. All I can safely say is whoever thought that making an homage/sequel to the four Reeve films of the 70s and 80s had a serious lapse of judgement. Maybe Singer sunk his film directing career after this as well.
The original Superman films were of a specific time and haven't aged at all well, so attempting to recreate the tone of those four films, in 2006, was utterly stupid. It has few, if any, redeeming qualities - mainly the special effects were now CGI and even that couldn't stop it from being a remarkably boring film. While 20 years had actually passed between IV and Returns it was only five in the film and for all of them Clark/Superman has been travelling the universe for anything Krypton related, but now he's back and ready to carry on where he left off. Luthor is still essentially a petty crook rather than the complicated and sophisticated villain he's been constantly reinvented as over the last 50 years in the comics and while Spacey is great, it's just a bit too pantomime and silly to be construed as a threat.
It led me to draw the conclusion that the 2000s were a very bad decade for comicbook adaptations, with very little that stands out, in my mind.
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