Alien

Went to see Ridley Scott's Alien last night in Westwood. It's a newly restored "Director's Cut" and the theater featured Digital Projection. DP is awesome, although I don't think it was especially necessary in this case since Alien was shot on film. It did look gorgeous though on the big screen.

I hadn't seen the film in a theater since it first came out in 1979 (is it that old?!) and I hadn't even seen it on video in at least 15 years. I was surprised, however, at how much of the dialogue and even the shots and sound effects that I remembered. I guess I must have watched it a lot when I was younger. It was fun to see it again.

The movie wasn't really scary to me because I knew exactly when the "boo" moments were coming, but I was impressed by the filmmaker's ability to create the suspense and "horror" without nearly as much gore and violence as we see in films today. In fact, the only really bloody scene is early on when Kane (the great John Hurt) starts choking at the dinner table and the alien pops out of his chest. That scene was really horrific. Otherwise, we never really see the alien killing anyone.

What an exciting sense of wonder and mystery this film has! It's been copied so many times that it seems old hat nowadays, but to relive it as audiences did almost 25 years ago, I was struck by its freshness and originality. Certainly it follows a tradition of monster movies and suspense thrillers, but the ingenuity of an alien lifeform that infects its host with its offspring, keeps the host alive until the offspring germinate, and the offspring "hatch" out the host's chest -- it's never been matched!

Ridley Scott is the best director for creating "a world" in which the characters live (he did this so well in Blade Runner). The production design, set dressing, and sound effects are truly outstanding. The special effects are somewhat dated (no computer animation back then, folks) but they are earnest and they seem more realistic than computer effects, which always look phony to me.

Best of all were the actors, some of the best in the business: Tom Skerritt (would you believe he just turned 70!), Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt (my favorite), Ian Holm (my second favorite), Harry Dean Stanton (my third fav-, ah forget it), and Veronica Cartwright. They were so real and genuine in their performances. I never saw any "sci-fi acting" on screen. Everybody played it totally straight and it worked. I had forgotten how much the characters hate each other -- they argue and fight all the time, just like children. It was funny.

Anyway, if you have the chance to see the new Alien, do it. You won't regret it. If you can't see the new one, watch the old one again. It's a good film.

By the way, the "director's cut" only includes a few seconds of extra footage when Ripley finds the remains of Dallas and Brett in the Alien's lair before the ship self-destructs. [I remember a comic book version of the film I had as a kid and it included this scene but I never saw it in the film. It must have been cut after a late preview screening or something and the comic book tie-in had already been finished.]

The sound has been remastered into 6.1 Digital surround, and I read in an interview with Ridley Scott that he also trimmed some of the longer expositional shots that he felt were a little too slow. So the pace of the film is a bit faster than the original. It would be fun to compare both versions.