With Alien: Romulus hitting our screens soon, it is as good a time as any to cast a discerning eye over the history of this at times breath-taking and always fascinating franchise and remind ourselves of some of the best scenes that it has given us.
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In the interests of those important tenets of equity and inclusion, we’ll have one from each film….
Alien
The original, and still considered by many to be the high water mark of the franchise. A phenomenal “haunted house in space” nerve-jangler, Alien has enough iconic scenes to fill this article and many more. As obvious a choice as it might be, we are of course going with the chest-burster scene.
John Hurt’s Kane, awake from a face-hugger induced coma, is merrily stuffing his face in the mess hall, until what initially looks like a case of indigestion winds up doing considerably more long-lasting damage to his gastro-intestinal tract.
We know now that Veronica Cartwright wasn’t expecting that much blood, and so much of her surprise and horror was genuine, we know that Spaceballs did a brilliant riff on this sequence a few years later, and we know that this scene remains nightmare fuel for all who have seen it.
It was arguably here that Ridley Scott announced himself as a director for the ages, and the xenomorph became an all-time sci-fi/horror (pick your poison) antagonist.
Aliens
Full disclosure – this one is my personal favourite. The scale, the subtext, the action, the set-pieces – it is everything a film, a sequel, should be.
As with the first film, picking one scene feels impossible. The initial attack by the xenomorphs on the Colonial Marines, Ripley & Newt locked in the lab with the face-huggers, the “they’re in the room” scene, take your pick. But after much deliberating and soul-searching, we have to go with the power loader fight with the Alien Queen.
Woman to Woman, Mother to Mother (not Muthur), Ripley harnessed to the power loader that had been subtly and wittily foreshadowed earlier on, and of course the all-time line, “Get away from her you bitch!”. A triumph of practical effects and top-drawer directing of physical action, after the destruction of the Queen’s eggs by Ripley, and Ripley’s own realisation that her prolonged time in stasis meant her own daughter had died of old age, it’s all about maternal instincts in a fight to the death for the ages.
The franchise has yet to return to these sorts of dizzying heights – we’ll see what the next instalment can do.
Alien 3
Much has been written and said about the trials and tribulations of this threequel. David Fincher’s directorial debut, the studio’s own ideas of where the franchise should be headed, a seeming reversion to the leaner, stripped back aesthetic of the first film after the more bombastic action-oriented approach of Cameron’s sequel, the summary dispatching of Hicks and Newt – there is a lot that most would say did not go right with Alien 3.
Yet, it has its moments. The idea of a prison colony, no weapons, a weird but oddly compelling societal structure with quasi-monastic overtones, the revelation that Ripley (spoilers….) is impregnated with a chest-burster – it is no masterpiece, but rather a flawed, but intriguing curio.
With nothing like the list of potential scenes that the previous two entries have, we wind up here – with a highly effective xenomorph POV chase, culminating in a good old-fashioned jump scare.
You could also make a case for Ripley’s sacrifice at the end, especially as it sets up the mingled-DNA clone storyline for Resurrection, but for the sake of the POV shot, let’s go with this.
Alien: Resurrection
After the relative disappointment of Alien 3, it certainly felt like (if nothing else) an interesting step to entrust the next franchise entry to French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Stylistically, he had set out his stall with Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, and there was a definite, appealing production design to Resurrection that makes it instantly recognisable. Arguably, Jeunet did a better job than Fincher before him of putting his own stamp on the franchise, and even though the finale got *really* weird, there is a lot to enjoy here.
As for the most memorable or iconic scene? It must be something we hadn’t seen before (no, not Ripley playing basketball) – xenomorphs underwater!
Taking advantage of the ongoing development and refinement of digital effects, this sequence proved hugely effective (although it must be noted that having Ron Perlman in your film is always going to help).
Prometheus
Ridley Scott returned to the franchise for the next two entries, after the longest gap in the franchise to date. Prometheus came out of the blocks with a teaser trailer that remains hugely effective, and although the initial critical reception was tepid, Prometheus seems to have aged well and is generally much better regarded now (especially after Covenant, on which more shortly).
By taking the franchise back to before the Nostromo, rather than further and further into the future, Prometheus sought to tell us more about where the xenomorphs came from (as well as something about where we came from). Even if there is considerable frustration to be had in watching the otherwise impressive supporting cast being wildly incautious about life forms they have never before encountered, there is a pleasingly effective and at times downright nasty vein of body horror running through Prometheus, with the cast sequentially meeting their demises in inventively unpleasant ways.
Which leads us to our scene of choice from Prometheus.
Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw has worked out that something is very, very wrong. In the words of Labi Siffre, something inside so strong. An inconsiderately uncooperative computer (where have we seen that before?) and the incredibly urgent need to get this thing out of her. It is so tense, so grim and provided ample evidence that our man Ridley Scott had not lost his touch.
Alien: Covenant
Scott then returned to the well once again, to follow a new ship, a new crew, but also pick back up with David (Michael Fassbender’s android character from Prometheus) and see what he and Shaw had been up to.
It turns out, lots of very, very bad things. Genetic engineering, developing and refining face huggers and eggs – generally building towards civilisation-destroying levels of tampering with nature.
Like many of the entries in this franchise (after the heyday of the first two), there is lots to enjoy here, without the whole necessarily hanging together into a cohesive and wholly satisfying film. The neomorph attack, David & Michael sharing a flute lesson, a “back burster” scene, the devastating final scene reveal – lots of this is effective and well made, but other sequences don’t work anywhere near as well as they need to.
But that “neomorph” attack scene is definitely worthy of mention. Gruesome, tense, chaotic – everything we want and expect from this franchise. Even if much of the rest of the film winds up tying itself in knots trying to mesh with the established mythology of the first film, this scene remains a triumph.
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