![]() While Kubrick, a student of human nature, director of searing and discomforting films like Paths of Glory and Lolita, mined Japanese sci-fi movies for special effects, Clarke, a communications satellite pioneer as well as a writer, worked up a script centred on what he later dubbed “the God concept”.Įncompassing everything from the dawn of man, the space race, artificial intelligence, space exploration and trans-dimensional travel, 2001 centres on the duel between David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and the inadvertently-designed-to-be-murderous HAL, a computer that is guiding his ship to Jupiter. A film about the triumph of science and technology? Or a film about the timeless yearnings of the human spirit? The question – which the two never really resolved – was which really good movie to make. “The ‘really good’ science-fiction movie is a great many years overdue,” he wrote. When Stanley Kubrick suggested a movie idea to British writer Arthur Clarke, Clarke responded enthusiastically. But if you want to know how it must have made its original readers feel – go watch Alien. ![]() If you want to know what Darwin said, read On the Origin of Species. (Where the aquatic aliens of Alien: Resurrection (1997) spring from is anyone’s guess.) A hugged human brings forth a humanoid alien. The clumsily named “xenomorph” of the Alien movies has an infamous life cycle, loosely based on those of certain parasitic wasps, but with the added ingredient of plasticity. It reminds us that living processes are predatory – that life is about tearing living things apart to get at their raw material. It locates us in the middle of things, not without resources but most definitely not at the top of a food chain. Alien reminds us of what the natural world is really like. We have been an apex predator for so long, we have forgotten the specialness of our privilege. It also, for some of us who caught it at the right age, changed how we thought about biology. Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, member of a sensible and resourceful space-going cargo crew whose capabilities are going to prove of no use whatsoever as they confront a predatory, stowaway alien.Ĭritics loved Alien: they said it would change how we thought about science fiction. The solution is there but it’s going to be hard to forge, and Green’s performance is heart-rending. ![]() Green conveys wonderfully Sarah’s conflicted state of both wanting to go to space but not wanting to be separated from her daughter. Plaudits also to Eva Green for her portrayal of Sarah Loreau, a single mother given a last-minute opportunity to join a mission to the International Space Station. One can’t help but think, watching this, that being an astronaut must be like being a professional athlete – one’s glamorous career being conducted, for the most part, in smelly changing rooms. When the crew members slip into their little space pods for a night of shut-eye, the unknowability of the galaxy becomes a cozy whisper.Cinematographer Georges Lechaptois brilliantly captures these rarely glimpsed spaces in all their strangeness, banality and occasional dilapidation. The station is a nest of corridors rendered in soothing pearl-gray tones. (Although he does toss in a few of those.) Part of what makes Life so unsettling is how eerily calming much of it is. What matters more is how Espinosa ( Safe House, Child 44) shuffles and recombines familiar elements, more often stoking slow-burning terror than goosing us with jump scares. And like so many movie creatures these days, our little protozoan turned predator owes a debt to Swiss artist–and Alien critter creator–H.R. There probably isn’t a single element of Life that you haven’t seen before. Meanwhile, those of us who have seen a sci-fi horror movie in the past 40 years–or, for that matter, ever–are shrinking in our seats. “Its curiosity outweighs its fear!” he exclaims. Before long it grows into an iridescent tadpole-orchid hybrid that grabs on to Hugh’s gloved finger adorably. Earth children, in contact with the space station via satellite, name it Calvin. At first all he sees is a harmless-looking blob, a microscopic single-cell organism sporting a couple of whiskery flagella.
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