Garrett’s Grumblings (11/05/2014) Alien Franchise, Carpenter Scores
I figured for my very first official column with Binge Media, I would talk about an off shoot of a film franchise that is near and dear to my heart. That film franchise is the Alien franchise. Of course, like all franchises, some films are better than others. But as a series, I feel it lends itself to many interpretations as to what the horror going on in each installment really means, and what each creature from each film wants to accomplish. Well, I guess the xenomorphs in Aliens are pretty straight forward. But the biology and HR Giger implemented sexuality that the first film’s xenomorph contains has always fascinated horror and science fiction purists alike.
Semantics of the films aside, let me get to the forefront of this column. On top of the creature that Alien introduced, its at first in the background star who eventually became the heroine of the series also introduced a new element to Hollywood. The role of Ellen Ripley not only helped cement Sigourney Weaver’s established status as a great actress – she is a three time Academy Award nominee- it quite unusually combined the respect she earned in her field with the ass kicking of an action heroine. Ellen Ripley is a character that the series spent four films layering and by the time that fourth film ended, we were left looking at her (or was it her clone? I try to put Resurrection as far in the back of my mind as possible) standing with Winona Ryder wondering what was going to happen next.
Well, if 20th Century Fox had their way, she’d be teaming up with the Predator to kick more xenomorph ass in the ill-fated Alien vs Predator. While being interviewed for the Alien Quadrilogy DvD set, Weaver said that when approached with the idea of being involved with Alien vs Predator, she turned it down because she thought it was one of the most ridiculous ideas she ever heard. Now it is easy to look back at the two steaming piles of shit which were assembled off the Hollywood Assembly Line and applaud her for those very words. But let’s take a minute to think about a new scenario. What if Weaver was not in the position of power that she was, and no one else in Hollywood was calling? In other words, what if her career wasn’t going the way she expected and she decided to take a huge Fox paycheck in order to play Ripley at least one more time? Would the franchise have played out better?
Weaver is an individual who many directors would dream to have in their corner. When British film technicians were given the task of having to work with James Cameron on Aliens instead of the more ‘British-y’ Ridley Scott, they fought him every step of the way, and Weaver was the one statue that they would not budge. The infamous Alien 3 set was notoriously nasty, with executives putting one pressure after another on new director David Fincher’s still green shoulders. He has said in recent interviews that Weaver was a saint in these situations, and whether it was someone coming in with yet more new script pages or Charles Dutton once again disagreeing with his character’s motivations, she always fought alongside him, and he never felt better on that film set than when she did.
So how would Alien vs Predator director Paul WS Anderson have fared in this game? Would Weaver have turned Alien vs Predator on its heels by making someone with more credentials rewrite the script, and turn Anderson into a director one could respect, instead of the one who bangs Milla Jovavich and makes a hundred Resident Evil films? Then again, that doesn’t sound so bad.
One thing is for sure. In the two Alien vs Predator films, Anderson and the Strauss Brothers tried to place females in the same kick ass situations that Weaver was in and it just did not work. Reiko Aylesworth and Sanaa Lathan were nowhere close to the ass kicking and/or acting talent one-two punch that Weaver was, and it was a contribution to why those two films did not work. Well, one of MANY. In several ways, I feel having Weaver in the film and wanting to be there would have benefited the franchise greatly. But in the long run, I do not think it would have benefited her. I always thought the films in of themselves were poorly conceived to begin with, and having Ripley stand back to back with a Predator while Aliens attack just doesn’t scream good idea to me. One wonders what would have happened if she had said yes. But thankfully for us, she didn’t.
John Carpenter is Back!
Well, kind of. As someone who grew up in the 80s, there were only two names in the movie scoring field I knew. They were John Williams and John Carpenter. What made Carpenter an idol to me was not only did he create iconic characters like Jack Burton and Michael Myers. He also scored almost all of his films himself because, as he put it, he ‘was the fastest and cheapest composer’ he knew. All of us have heard his heavy on drum beats and synthesizer themes, humming them days & weeks after doing so.
This week, it was announced that on February 3rd, Sacred Bones Records, the same company which released David Lynch’s album last year, is going to release an album of unused Carpenter composed themes which were supposedly dreamed up for the album and not left over from previous films (as was previously rumored).
This is FANTASTIC! My big question when it comes to this news is why anyone didn’t think of it sooner. Carpenter has always had a different sound. But his themes resonate with you, and unlike Williams, he never relied on heavy crescendos to catch your ear. And to anyone who feels that maybe Carpenter has lost a stride in the music department with his advancing age, I point you to the sample track released, which is located here. In my mind, the man still has it.
The album comes out February 3rd 2015, making it three months before this ‘son of a bitch must pay’…..for music once again.