Ridley Scott's 'Alien': It’s all about the Cat

*** Warning: Contains Spoilers for Alien, and the sequel Aliens***

Well, actually, 'Alien' is all about the suspense. We’ll come to the cat later.

Much of the appeal of the first film comes from not even knowing what the ‘Alien’ of the title refers to – although it’s easy to lose sight of that fact with the endless sequels and spin-offs that have been spawned over the years, and have made us very familiar with the look (and modus operandi) of the ‘Alien’.

So it takes half the film before we actually catch a glimpse of the Alien, and understand that it’s intending to destroy the whole crew.... a lesson that James Cameron’s Aliens sequel employs to similar effect when he delays the first big on-screen encounter with the aliens until halfway through the film

The opening sequence of 'Alien' makes clear that a danger or threat exists, but without defining the precise nature of that threat. In the first minute or so the camera pans through a seemingly empty (and enormous) spacecraft, and the unsettling music makes it clear that something isn’t quite right. Blinking monitors reflect on the visors of two space suit helmets (is someone inside that suit, we wonder, and if so, why are they not moving – are they dead?), and the ship appears to be running itself seemingly without anyone being on board - a bit like the Marie Celeste. First-time viewers are also presumably wondering whether this is, in fact, the ‘after’ of the story, and whether the rest of the story will be told in flashback.

To boldly go ...

For the first half of the film, I think interest is created partly by the understanding that ‘something is going to happen’ - this film is called ‘Alien’ after all! But also, quite simply, by the re-imagining of space travel. This isn’t pioneer space exploration as we’ve experienced in Star Trek; the crew of the Nostromo are simply doing a job moving cargo through space. The characters on board express no wonder at the technology around them, or at being out in space, or at coming out of a hibernated sleep. I like the way almost every early scene has someone clutching a coffee mug, or eating, or smoking which gives an informality to these scenes. Perhaps the fact these characters are entirely at ease with their space surroundings and each other makes us feel the opposite, and that this is all rather “alien” to us. Even the names of the characters are odd and therefore suggestively futuristic – Ripley, Ash, Kane.

I liked the way we experience the characters as a team at the beginning – to the extent that it’s difficult to keep track of all the different people and what their role is on the ship. It’s certainly not clear that any one of these people is destined to survive and become the hero /heroine of a 4-film franchise!

I always knew Bilbo was an android....

Of course, there are some pointers to the fact that Ripley is likely to survive – or indeed, that she has earned the right to survive. It’s clear that at crucial stages of the drama, Ripley stands firm and makes the correct call when others senior to her do not, and also that she thinks for herself. It’s Ripley who translates the distress signal, and realizes it is, in fact, a warning. It’s Ripley alone who refuses to let the alien on board – a decision that Ash overrides with calamitous results. It’s Ripley who decides they should leave the ship and blow it up, and it’s Ripley who keeps her head, and tries to stop the self-destruct when she realizes the alien is blocking her route to the escape shuttle. But, crucial to maintaining suspense, Ripley’s inevitable survival is only clear in retrospect. Once it’s clear the alien will pick them off one by one, it’s not certain who or how many of the crew will survive.

Which brings us to the cat, Jonesy.

New Alien franchise: Alien versus Jonesy the cat??

The cat performs a number of roles in the story. He’s used as a diversion in an early ‘false alarm’ scene. Ripley and Parker detect motion on their gizmo, only to find it’s Jonesy. When the cat runs off, Brett follows it, thereby separating himself from the group – and inevitably it’s at this point he’s killed by the alien. When Jonesy hisses, initially we think he’s reacting to Brett, when of course he’s reacting to the alien behind him. So, the cat acts as a cipher to the killing.

Jonesy is also used as a plot device at the denouement – Ripley risks her life by going back to fetch him, then runs into the ‘alien’, drops the cat cage, and runs back to try and stop the self-destruct countdown.

But I’d say the cat performs a role that’s central to the emotional journey of the film. Imagine the very last scene, when Ripley has destroyed the alien, but without the cat being there. The emphasis of the scene would then be on the fact all of Ripley’s colleagues and friends are dead, and she is left alone – which might feel like a kind of defeat. But the way the it's actually written, Ripley isn’t alone – she has the cat who, like herself, has survived against the odds. I think of the cat as being a bit like the crew’s mascot, and that therefore for the cat to survive means that Ripley has truly defeated the alien because something of the crew has survived.

And the writers have clearly invested some importance in the animal surviving. When Ripley drops the cat cage and runs off, there’s a great camera shot of the alien turning to the cat and baring its teeth in a grin. The implication is that it’s about to kill the cat too, and so it’s quite satisfying from a plot structure point of view when it turns out that this is not the case, and the animal has, surprisingly, survived.

Not a cat

Enough about the cat!

Ok – so the film might well have worked without having a cat in it. In fact, when I re-watched Alien recently, I realised I’d completely forgotten there’d even been one in it!

But I’d argue that the character of ‘Newt’ in Aliens performs a similar role – much of the drama and emotional impetus is derived from Ripley’s protection and defence of this 11-year old girl (a situation made all the more emotive due to the fact Ripley’s own 11-year old daughter is dead). Again, imagine 'Aliens' without the girl’s character. It would become a much flatter story, and reduce the action to something more like ‘Return of the Living Dead’ where characters are picked off one by one. If you were being cynical, you might suggest these ‘cypher’ characters /cats are introduced simply to simulate an emotional depth that would otherwise be lacking.

But I think the reason why Alien works better than its sequels is partly because there is in fact more emotional depth to the story. Ripley is a character who thinks first about others. She acts in the crew’s interest by challenging Ash’s conclusions about the distress signal; she goes back to rescue the cat at the end; and when she assumes command of the ship, her priority is to make sure the alien is killed and the remaining crew members escape.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that they ‘break contract’ with the audience at the beginning of Alien 3, by killing the entire crew who survived Aliens, just to extend the action to another sequel.

The Killing: Getting away with Murder?

***Spoiler alert: plot and identity of murderer revealed***

The annual Danish 'Who can look the moodiest' competition 

The Killing is such a good piece of TV, if you haven’t watched it already, I would really recommend you read no further.

Twenty hour-long episodes is a long time to keep interest going. So, how do the writers keep us watching and tuning in for next time (or reaching for the next DVD in the box set)?

One obvious technique they use is that they have multiple prime suspects. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that if you’ve watched it! We lose count of the number of times the murderer’s identity seems clear and the crime solved, only for Lund to work out some new angle which casts her previous assumptions into doubt.

We suspect first Nanna's teacher, then Troels Hartman, then the other politician, Jens, then Vagn, then the taxi driver character, and finally Vagn again. And those are just the main suspects.

Crucially both the teacher and Troels remain prime suspects much longer than they need because both have alibis they are unwilling to reveal – indeed, it seems they would prefer to be suspected of the murder, or even arrested, to protect their secret. Subsequently it’s revealed that the teacher was helping someone escape from an arranged marriage, and that Troels had actually attempted suicide on the night in question, and that both men respectively wanted to keep these facts a secret. Neither of these alibis fully account for their reluctance to reveal all. In real life, of course, each suspect would give their alibis much earlier – but then this is just a story, and there would be much less dramatic interest in everyone being up front and honest.

The writers create further dramatic interest with the situations that develop around the respective prime suspects. For instance, Lund being alone with Troels and looking through his diary when he might come back into the room at any second.  Or by having Troels arrested right in the middle of an all-important Council meeting. Or by having the teacher go in to school and being spat at by his pupils. Or when he’s beaten up by the father, egged on by Vagn when we know he’s innocent.

In which I make a spurious reference to a much loved 1980s icon ..... 

The writing is very clever in that it never definitively commits to anything. The writers get away with having their cake and eating it. Someone you felt was beyond suspicion could become the prime suspect; someone who had previously been cleared could be back in the frame. Watching the series reminded me of a Rubiks cube. I felt the writers could take the story this way, or they could just as easily take it that way. The different combinations and sequences of combinations were almost limitless. Is the Police chief hiding something? Is Lund taken off the case because there is some wider conspiracy at work? Is Troels’s girlfriend Rie playing him?

Because a Rubiks cube would have been just too obvious...

No character ever seems to be able to definitively rule themselves out, even though you'd imagine this would be perfectly straightforward for them to do. For instance, Jens does a very good job of behaving like a serial killer when he ties Lund up, and plays games with her – he even ties Lund up using the same material that the murderer used on the victim. Is this really how someone would react when their involvement in a hit and run has been discovered? Just before he’s killed he says something helpfully ambiguous – not ‘I didn’t kill her’ but something like ‘I could never have killed her’.

'What's my motivation again?'

And that’s a key point.At least three of the characters die before the police can get the complete story. Jens is killed before he can be brought in for questionning, the taxi driver character hangs himself, and Vagn is killed after confessing to Theis.  I would argue that it is necessary for the writers to kill off these characters before they’re able to give the police the full story – because this smooths over inconsistencies and implausibility about the details of the story which would come to light in any lengthy confession to the Police.

My reading of the murder is that it was carried out on the spur of the moment for racist reasons. But throughout the series, we were led to believe the murderer was a serial killer. So, we have a serial killer murdering on the spur of the moment acting from a racist motivation – when none of his previous crimes had anything whatsoever to do with race. Hmm… doesn’t quite add up to me.

I would argue that The Killing is best appreciated as a game or as a diversion rather than as a representation of ‘reality’. It’s a game where there are certain rules. The main rule is that the murderer should be someone obvious but not someone we’ve seriously suspected – a difficult combination to pull off. In fact they do this very cleverly with Vagn. The scene where he’s arrested for the murder is directed to make it seem like the police have got the wrong man, as the taxi driver character is busy hiding in the corner looking guilty.  When Vagn is released, the writers create more of a smokescreen by having Pernille and Theis effectively throw him out the house. This engages our sympathies for Vagn in a way that stops us thinking any more about his potential guilt. There’s no better way of diverting the viewer’s suspicions than by having a character arrested, particularly when the arrest happens a few episodes before the end. Besides, this is Vagn! Dopey, reliable, simple Vagn!

Spurious reference to Bill Hicks coming up...

A final thought - it's just a ride..... 

I would argue that The Killing is very good at creating tension and keeping us guessing about what's really going on.  But the feverish excitement generated is never fully matched – can never possibly be matched – by the eventual revelation of the killer’s identity. Then again, I think The Killing should be watched to enjoy the ride, rather than to get to the destination.

Superhero movies: Hit or myth?

The story so far...

Last time I talked about the proliferation of Superhero movies over the last two or three decades, and I suggested that the number of different versions and the number of different actors playing the heroes (and villains) had the unintended effect of creating a modern myth. By regularly re-making the same Superhero films in different styles, and using different directors and different actors, by willfully ignoring events in previous films, a particular story or franchise becomes bigger than any one of its constituent parts – actors, directors or storylines. Batman as we know him isn’t just the latest version, directed by Christopher Nolan. It’s all of the versions (Tim Burton and Michael Keaton; Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer).  Compare this with, for instance, the Mission Impossible franchise. Rightly or wrongly, this franchise is now wedded to Tom Cruise’s character of Ethan Hunt, and the limitations that brings.

 Last time, I was careful to say that I mean myth in inverted commas, and today I’ll be exploring the limitations Superhero films have when compared with other stories, mythic or otherwise.

Same old, same old

In some ways it’s curious that, on the one hand, there are so many superhero sequels, and on the other hand, relatively few of them are able to develop and continue the preceding themes and stories. It seems we’d rather have the same battles played out again and again between Batman and The Joker, or Superman and Lex Luther rather than have our hero come up against anyone new.

How to make your own Superhero movie ...

Superhero franchises follow a familiar pattern. The first movie is all about tracing the origins of the character – what I would call the ‘origin story’. Actually it’s quite difficult to get this one wrong.  The director spends half the film explaining how Batman became Batman, and pits him against a character we would recognise as his chief nemesis. So, films like (Tim Burton’s) Batman, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 1 all tend to be strong films (the same applies to non-Superhero 'first' movies like Star Trek and Casino Royale).

The second movie in the franchise is generally a ‘now we’ve got started’ -type film, and is often (though not always) the strongest movie of the franchise – films like Batman Returns, The Dark Knight, Spiderman 2 fall into this category. Why are these stronger? Possibly because the studios often use the same director again. Consequently, these directors have learnt their mistakes in the first film, they have another chance to get it right, and have a clearer idea of where they want to go with the franchise. Also, I’d suggest that it’s the villains who make the more interesting characters, not the hero. And we’ve just spent the first film establishing the hero’s origins – so if the sequel is more about the origins of the villain, it would stand to reason it would make for a more interesting film.

The third movie in a franchise is often more problematic. You’ve used up your strongest villain in the first movie (Joker, The Green Goblin); you’ve then moved on to the other strong villains (Catwoman and Penguin, Doctor Octopus); you’re now left with the secondary villain characters for the third film. My own feeling is that film-makers often make up for the lack of ‘quality’ by having a larger number of these slightly less interesting villains.  So, where The Dark Knight had a single villain in The Joker, The Dark Knight Rises has a plethora of villains.

Going over to the Dark Side

The other interesting feature of the third superhero movie is there’s often a dark version of the hero.  Think of Superman 3 where Kent fights the ‘bad’ Superman; and also Spiderman 3 when Spiderman is covered with the black slime that temporarily turns him into ‘bad’ Spiderman. The slime is transferred to another character, who in turn becomes a sort of ‘bad’ Spiderman in the character of Venom.

In Batman Returns (admittedly only the second of the Burton Batman films), there’s one point when Catwoman describes a plan to turn Batman into what he hates the most – ‘us’ (meaning turn him into a villain).  So, after establishing the origins of the hero, after pitting him against his most evil foe, the next stage in the development would appear to involve the superhero fighting (or resisting turning into) a ‘bad’ version of himself.

What I’m describing here is, in fact, a fairly limited arc. A superhero gets created, fights his nemesis, then fights a dark version of himself. What happens next? Where else is there left to go? Nowhere, perhaps, except to repeat the whole cycle all over again. It’s the ‘Reboot’ phenomenon we discussed last time.

I’m not an expert on the original comics and graphic novels, but I gather that (for example) in the Spiderman comics, Aunt Polly and Mary Jane have been killed off and resurrected numerous times. You’ll probably remember in the 1990s when they ‘killed off’ Superman for good, only to resurrect him once again. So even the comics had to keep generating interest by killing off and resurrecting the different characters.

Movies versus TV

I’d argue that the limitations of the superhero movie have a lot to do with the actual movie format.  Something has to happen. There has to be a beginning, a middle and an end, and audiences have to leave the cinema feeling they’ve got their money’s worth. You can’t introduce a villain and have him /her survive at the end of the film. In the comics, you can have The Joker or The Green Goblin defeated countless numbers of times and re-appear in the next issue. In the film you’d feel cheated if there wasn’t a final climactic showdown at the end of the film. Any suggestion that The Joker survived to another day would seem a blatant gambit by the film-makers to keep their options open for potential sequels.

A big budget movie tends to have a particular structure where the hero and villain lock horns initially, and then climactically as the centerpiece of the movie. When you think about it, this is a very restrictive strait-jacket to fit the characters into. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (though not a superhero film) can’t introduce Moriarty without killing him off at the end. Effectively this reduces one of crime fiction’s greatest characters to two or three set piece scenes.

By contrast, TV excels in continuity. The very fact a story has to be followed over a number of episodes (often many hours of viewing) to my mind makes it often a more satisfying experience. Think of series like 24, The Wire, The Killing, Law and Order, ER. There is massive potential to have any number of cliff-hangers, red herrings, and climaxes that simply aren’t possible in the world of the movie. It’s funny that, having started to watch a series like The Killing, we often end up being more and more gripped and wanting to know what happens next. Compare this with cinema, where we often feel less and less motivated the more sequels come out.

And finally....

I think part of the reason we watch superhero movies is because we enjoy these mythic good versus evil encounters. Why? Because it makes the world a simpler place.  We know who the good guys are and we know who the bad guys are.

I think superhero films touch on our ideas about good versus evil ‘archetypes’ in a way that other more ‘realistic’ movies don’t.

But while I love watching popcorn movies as much as the next person, I invariably leave the cinema feeling slightly cheated, as if the movie wasn’t quite able to deliver what it promised.

But the reasons for that, and what all of this has to do with myth-making, will have to wait until another day and another blog.