Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Written at the time of the film's release...

Bullet-Time
or
"Forewarned is Fore-armed (and Don't Call Me 'Shirley')"

"'Well, well,' said he, at last. 'It seems a pity, but I have done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can do nothing before Monday. It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.'

"'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,' said I. 'Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.'

"The Final Problem" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the inevitable (and one should say quick-on-its-heels) follow-up to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, and as an adaptation of Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," It has as much source-relationship as the later Bond films have to Fleming—the bare-bones structure is there, but it's pumped, plumped, and trumped-up to fulfill the needs of action, humor and modern audience identification.

Really, "The Final Problem" is enough, we don't need the world-conquering machinations of Professor Moriarty (The Napoleon of Crime, the Scourge of London, and Holmes' best match) to make him a worthy adversary. He merely needs to be omnipresent by means of his web of chicanery, rather than an omniscient history-maker. In fact, Conan Doyle's Moriarty would rather his bad work went undetected, as opposed to this movie's version producing a shattering World War. Here, in the words of Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes, the plot is "so overt, it's covert," involving twins who aren't twins, TB, the Romany, anarchists, darts for various purposes, intricate explosive devices and not-so-intricate shell-firing ones, countries that can't be named ("although they speak French and German"), and the prospect of "war on an industrial scale."

20/20 hindsight always looks like genius when set in the past.

Actually, it's pretty clever how the doom-laden inevitability of "The Final Problem" is translated into the fore-shadowing of the war-torn 20th Century (the screen-writers are the wife-husband team Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney*), and its focus on large artillery and semi-automatic "machine-pistols" has a nice hard edge as opposed to the original film's emphasis on the psuedo-occult. 

But, director Ritchie seems to have lost of his edge somewhat, as the fight-sequences (and there are many) are nicely fore-shadowed with flash-cut Holmsian cognitive pre-functioning, but when the fisticuffs and baritsu moves start flying, the action is hard to follow, even when the action is slowed to a crawl—there is far too much ramp-editing and Matrix-y "bullet-time" FX in the film for no good purpose other than to slow down the practical and digital effects and give us the illusion of "wow, that was close." (Thanks, we assume that fire-fights and shellings are dangerous things). However fast the editor can manipulate images, one still gets the impression of the film being a bit too "fussy" for its own good, delaying information or simply obfuscating it for a later time, giving one the impression that one is seeing a lot of the movie twice. Efficient, it ain't, even if the titular character is supposed to be the height of it.

Also, although the first of Downey's adventurings could be seen as being a nicely nuanced (if scruffy) interpretation of The Great Detective, here the character is allowed to go a little more broad, dressing in comedic drag ("I admit, it's not my best disguise") and another, which is actually taken from The Pink Panther series (mind you, Steve Martin's "Pink Panther" series), the comedy is played up and not necessarily in character, and Holmes is seen to be practically infallible—even his getting seriously hurt is all part of his plan.

Downey, Jr. is great at playing this, even if it's a more absurd version of Holmes, and Jude Law again plays Dr. Watson (now with a severe limp and who is only now about to be married to Mary Morston, again played by Kelly Reilly) and it's one of Law's best performances, quick as Downey and capable of the slowest of "burns." Law's role is expanded somewhat and he makes the most of it. The two are joined (briefly) by Rachel McAdams, reprising her role as "the woman" Irene Adler, but is soon replaced by Noomi Rapace's gypsy princess Simza. Aiding and abetting is Stephen Fry, as Holmes' smarter, drier brother Mycroft (it might actually be considered type-casting), with Jared Harris as the coolest of Moriarty's (Brad Pitt was initially considered for the role), as well as being one of the youngest.

As fun as it is, one can't help but look at it as a step down—the filmmakers are getting further afield of the Holmes characterization, and it's only a matter of time before the Downey, Jr. version is locked into buffoonery and slapstick, and it comes perilously close to teetering off the edge here. As it is, this plot is more reminiscent of the Basil Rathbone films set during WWII—entertaining if anachronistic fluff.

Paget's Strand Magazine illustration of the first of two Holmes-Moriarty encounters.

* Kieran is the brother of Dermot Mulroney, husband of Michele, and you may best remember him from "Seinfeld" as the fellow who gets bent out of shape at a funeral reception when he see George Costanza double-dipping a chip.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Written at the time of the film's release in America.

"Staten Kontra Lisbeth Salander"
or
"The Girl with the Dragon Tat 3"

The final film of the Swedish versions of the "Millennium" series satisfies, but in the same way that most final films in a trilogy satisfy: loose ends get tied up, the story concludes, we get to say good-bye and leave.

But The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (aka Luftslottet som sprängdes or "The Air-Castle that Blew Up"*) is the least of these films (the last two directed by Daniel Alfredson, the first more atmospheric one directed by Niels Arden Oplev), partially because the source novel by the late Stieg Larsson is full of detail and waiting for an outcome, and not much else. Also, its lead character starts this one (its story begins mere moments after the last entry's finish) suffering from the horrors she endured in the last quarter of The Girl Who Played with Fire.  With a bullet in the brain and the long recovery that entails, the audience is left in the waiting room, for its star attraction to do the voodoo she does so well. But the fine-grinding gears of the plot, and all the complications the series has set up, tends to gum up the works and makes it all seem like a slow-moving version of "Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit." 

It is what the novel is, but the book has the advantage of throwing surprises at you all the time, keeping you busy thumbing back through it to keep the details straight. The movie plods along with everyone talking about the one thing that has made the series shine, but is kept somewhat off-stage with only tantalizing glimpses now and then: goth-girl/hyper-hypenate Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace).

That character (and the way Rapace plays her) is what the audience cares about. It's why the "Millennium" series, when it was published in America, replaced the oblique Swedish book-titles (like the first's, which translates aptly as "Men Who Hate Women") to focus on "the girl with the dragon tattoo." It is also why Rapace (though it isn't evident from posters and IMDB listings) is top-billed in the film over her more accomplished co-star Michael Nyqvist. She's the ace in the hole, but the film keeps her comatose, cloistered, incarcerated, and quiet for 3/4 of its length. As Rapace 's performance is so interior anyway, one is focused on every twitch of her lips, fashion statement, or flicker of an eye to sustain interest.  

Meanwhile the rest of the world is running around, dealing with conspiracies, death-threats, assassinations, dances with automatic weapons, car-chases, and cartoonish muscle-men in an unsuccessful attempt to compete with the smallest Salander reaction. After two movies watching her running rough-shod out of those who get in her way, the film-makers should have known they couldn't fight their own creation. Only a Final Heat with a Loose End gives the audience its requisite amount of brutal grrrl-action.

Worth seeing, if, like me, you got hooked on the sordid Swedish underpinnings of the story, but don't be surprised if you want to see more when it's done.

* We'll get into these translations later, but if that title confuses you Englishers, substitute "The Ivory Tower" for "Air Castle" and you'll get the idea.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)

Written at the time of the film's American release....

"If You're Going to Have a Nasty Habit, You Might As Well Do It in Style"

It has been a year since Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the multi-hyphenated* titular anti-hero of the "Millennium" series (or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) skipped off with a fortune to travel the world on the run from the slugs of Swedish officialdom who might exact revenge.

As if...

Now, she is pulled back to Sweden, against her better judgement, moving in relative obscurity; her only connection to her partner-in-investigating Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) is virtual, connected to his computer hard-drive. Though she continually scours what he's investigating and reads his columns, there hasn't been contact, e-mail, text, or ping between them in that entire year.

She's been busy enough, though.  The events of the first film perpetrated by The Girl Who Played With Fire are coming back to haunt her, as she is evidentially linked to the murders of a "Millennium" journalist (Hans Christian Thulin) and his girlfriend, who have been working on exposing Swedish sex-traffickers with some highly placed officials as customers. That those homicides also lead to the murder of Salander's former "guardian" (in name only) Nils Erik Burman (Peter Andersson), on whom Salander exacted a brutally appropriate revenge in the last film, only make the hunt for her more intense.

This time it's personal (as they say in the trailers). And the fascinating Salander becomes the focus of this story that has her confronting her demons while tangentially attempting to clear her name. In the center of the story, while simultaneously watching from the sidelines, Blomqvist can only dog the elusive hacker's trail, learning more about his enigmatic co-hort/lover and what stokes the fire in her belly, a fire that actually turns the calm, collected Blomqvist into one very angry man, staunchly defending her, while coming to grips with the reasons she "despises men who hate women."

The Girl Who Played with Fire (directed by Daniel Alfredson) is not as good a film, or as fine a mystery as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, being much less convoluted (and thus intriguing) and a little more by-the-numbers as far as plotting. There's no real mystery here, as opposed to the first film (and book), but it focuses on what fascinated—and made one vaguely uncomfortable—about the first part of what will ultimately be a trilogy: Salander's burning desire to not just see justice done, but to exact her personal revenge—coldly, clinically, savagely. That it has a feminist slant (and one winces at using the word—these are crimes against human beings, sexually and power-abuse based, that just happen to be women) of turning the tables gives it a certain satisfaction, but I've seen too many Eastwood-directed movies (...heh...) to be entirely comfortable with the vigilante justice angle. 

What makes it work, finally, are the lead characters, especially the unconventional renegade that is Salander. Her heart's in the right place, even though her soul is damaged, and the mandarin restraint that Rapace brings her is only betrayed a notch here, but even that still ends up breaking your heart.  You can't help but root for her, despite the kindling she leaves in her wake.

And she does leave kindling. The violence that made one queasy about the first film is only slightly muted here, and concentrated to the back-end of the story—a set-piece of violence and tension that contains no catharsis but merely stops, unresolved, leaving the fate of Salander up in the air.

Not to worry, though.  The last book, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" rides the top of the New York Times Best Seller List and looks to be there for quite awhile. 

* In my review of the first film I described her thus: "a 22 year old full-time goth-punk chain-smoking, bi-sexual, PTSD'd borderline-schizophrenic, sociopathic, fire-fixated security-investigator-computer-hacker...and part-time judge, jury and executioner.  Add to that Blomqvist's inadequate (and slightly hilarious) description of her as "...a very private person."

The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)(2015)

Written at the times of the films' releases...

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier...Spy"

Investigative reporter Mikael Blomqvist (a nom de plume purloined from the fictional detective Kalle Blomqvist) has just been found guilty of libel for an article he wrote about a powerful Swiss industrialist. In six months he's set for the barry hotel, but in the meantime, he has down-time. He gets an invitation for a job—the coldest of cases, literally and metaphorically—on the remote wintry island that serves as a compound for the Vanger family.

The Vangers are the Swiss cousins of all the encrusted old-money families of British and American detective fiction. Be they Baskervilles or Armstrongs or Sternwoods, the "storied" elite families stood in for the Rothschilds and Lindberghs and Morgans and Rockefellers in a literary class warfare that assured the punters that bad things happened to the rich, as well. In fact, it was more than likely to happen to them as money is the root of all things evil. Perhaps.

Money was on the family's mind that Children's Day weekend on the Island, as a family board meeting was taking place, when one of the daughters disappeared, and her father drowned in a boating accident. One of the patriarchs wants to know, finally, forty years after the fact, what happened to the girl, who killed her, and charges Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) with the task. 

For the disgraced newsie, it's a case of interviews and solitary visits to the caked-in-dust morgues of newspaper offices and libraries. But, though isolated on the Island, he's being watched, not only by the family, but by a security investigator who's hacked his computer.

She's Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,* a 22 year old full-time goth-punk chain-smoking, bisexual, PTSD'd borderline schizophrenic, sociopathic, fire-fixated security-investigator-computer-hacker...and part-time judge, jury and executioner. And where Mikael is dusting off old store-rooms, she's mining hard-drives through the back-door for any information that might be useful, like, say, on the creep who's been appointed her guardian. Life has rumpled Mikael, but it's deeply scarred Lisbeth, and the two tarnished angels are linked by more than cyberspace in a mutual interest making peoples' forgotten pasts their field of play.

They were made for each other, and, as both are incapable of seeing a mystery without inserting themselves, fated to team up to solve the question, if it is to be solved.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one of those whodunnit's much in love with every squeaking trope, and dangling aringarosa of the detective literary genre, and the puzzle is of the classic "Closed Room" variety—a traffic accident cut off the one exit to the bridge when the skull-duggery happened, so the scope of the search is limited to who might have been on that island to perpetrate it. The clues are varied in sources and nature, an old diary the girl kept with no entries that might lend suspicion, the few photographs taken that week-end...and Blomkvist's own memories—the girl was his nanny on Island holidays—provide nagging evidence, as does a single portrait that haunts him, like the Mona Lisa.

There are so many referrals to past films noir and sleuth-cinema that one could get lost in many a blind-alley (not that there are many on a rural Swedish island), but there are more than enough cousins and butlers and drawing rooms to go around—as with the best mysteries, no one is a suspect, but everyone is.

It is violent—there are two upsetting rape scenes that are essential to the plot, ultimately—but there is a cross-running sub-theme of sexual tyranny equating male sexism and domination as a form of fascism (it's an in-bred cousin to the feminism issues that made The Silence of the Lambs more important than a "boogey-man" story) that makes the film interesting philosophically in the genre. Director Niels Arden Oplev stages those scenes in a brutal manner that divorces them from any sexual act and makes them sadistic acts of violence, but one should be warned that there is rough stuff, far beyond cloak-room murders and high tea. The film is unrated, but consider it a hard "R." 

It's a cracking pastiche, with the best thing about it being the (English version's) titular character. A product of the very brutality embodied by the mystery itself, the stakes are personal for Salander (and Blomkvist, certainly), but, like the Hannibal Lecter character in Silence of the Lambs, she is such a wild-cannon on deck during the proceedings that her motivations keep your thinking cap distracted from the mystery at hand. As played by Rapace, she is a kabuki-like presence than can turn ninja on a dime, a literal smoking gun, who can make things better or worse, depending on her buried mood, making the film categorical as "Suspense" as well as "Mystery."

The other films in the trilogy will be released later in the year. Then, an American remake is planned...at this writing starring Brad Pitt and Carey Mulligan.

(Yeah, well, not so much...see below)

* That's what it is known as in English-speaking publishing circles where mysteries series need a unifying "hook" like John D. McDonald's colorful titles for the Travis McGee novels, or "Cat" series of Lilian Jackson Braun. In its native Sweden, the title—"Män som hatar kvinnor "— translates to the more straight-forward and to-the-point, "Men Who Hate Women." The popular series of novels, dubbed the "Millennium Trilogy" (for the publication Blomqvist works for) stopped at three due to the untimely death of its reporter/author Stieg Larsson of a heart attack at age 50, before the first could be published.

Michael Nykvist, who starred in the Swedish films, died June 27, 2017

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"The Girl With the Dragon, Take Two"
or
"Once More...with Feeling"

"We come from the land of the ice and snow
from the midnight sun where the hot springs FLOW
How soft your fields so green,
can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore."

"Immigrant Song"  Led Zeppelin

The American production of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo advertised itself (amusingly) with the tag-line "The Feel Bad Movie for Christmas."  Compared to the Swedish-TV version (with Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace), it's actually, if one can believe it given the subject matter, a "kinder, gentler" version.

So, what's different?  For those familiar with the first version, many of the locations reveal themselves to be the same. Resolutions are slightly different. The casting certainly is (and more on that later). Editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall keep things moving very fast, sometimes abruptly, and scripter Steven Zaillian delivers punchy dialogue dripping with icyclic irony, while keeping the circumstances equally savage and shocking (what else can you expect from from a murder mystery involving in-bred families crusty with krona, corruption, Nazi affiliations, serial killers, sexual violence and "men who hate women"—the original title of the book when published in Sweden?). 

It's how director David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network) approaches the tone that's slightly different, and though still mordantly frigid, this version is a bit more clever in presentation, adding a darkly humorous slant. Sure, the violence is still sickening, but blunted, even handled at times more discretely, making the impact contrarily even more squeamy, while, at the same time, counter-pointing with sly musical choices.*

But, it's the casting where the main differences occur. Daniel Craig, no less intense, but muted and reduced to human scale with a world-weary familiarity, plays Mikael Blomqvist, co-publisher and chief reporter for an investigative magazine, Millennium. Disgraced by a libel suit gone against him and to shake off the publicity and the hit to his reputation and bank account, he takes on a murder investigation for the patriarch of the industrialist Wanger family (Christopher Plummer)—a literal cold case of the forty year old disappearance of the elder Wanger's granddaughter, although distinctive clues point to her either being alive, or the killer is cleverly taunting the old man.

It's soon clear that Blomqvist may be over his head and he calls on an "assistant"—the same background investigator who cleared him for the job for the Wangers. She's the titular "girl with the dragon tattoo"—Elisabeth Salander and "she's different."  "In what way?" asks Wanger's lawyer, Frode (Steven Berkoff).

"In every way," says her employer.

Too true, not only in terms of Society, but also from the actress who previously took the role (Noomi Rapace, currently starring in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).  She's still the same Salander, the goth-punk, vegan, pierced, bi-sexual hacker-savant who becomes the focus of the series, zipping around the bleak Swedish countryside on her black-on-black motorcycle, but this movies version, in the form of Rooney Mara, is slight (she had to be starring opposite the 5'10" Craig), tiny and even more startling in appearance than Rapace.

There's still the same shock of hair, but with her elfin face, shaved eyebrows and eyes sunk deep into her face, she has the appearance of the walking dead, her head looking often like a skull, and speaking in a dull, listless monotone.  Rapace looked like she could kick serious ass (and did in the Swedish productions), but Mara is deceptively tiny, even looking sickly frail, so when she goes on the attack, it's doubly alarming. 

We learn more about the little spit-fire in the second and third books of the series (hopefully they'll have their own versions with this cast—as with the Swedish films—because this cast is too good to waste, but the film's poor box-office showing—"The Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas," remember?—may make that unlikely), but Mara's dead-inside interpretation, that only slightly blossoms through the film, is an interesting take, doubly tragic, keenly felt and puts both her character and Blomqvist's into an interesting perspective.

I actually like this version better than the first.

The main title with the Trent Reznor/Karen O version of the Led Zep song.

* The best being what was used in the initial trailers—Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," subtly adapted by producer-composer Trent Reznor (the perfect guy to score this film) for female vocal, while keeping the brutal orchestrations of the original intact.  The Main Title sequence accompanying it, is visually arresting, suggestive and creepy, almost a mission statement in tone—black and white, reflecting the film's dark muted color scheme—while suggesting minds, trapped, tortured and squirming like toads. 

Alien: Covenant

The Horrifying Hybrid
or
I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
The what?
The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Whose side are you on, son?

Ridley Scott is a really frustrating director (for me, one should reiterate). He is a master of the image. Think of a movie of his and some image will pop into your mind that is so beyond the norm of what has gone before that it takes your breath away. Below are a bunch of screen-captures of various Scott movies.* None of them have movie-star's faces in them, they're scattered throughout Scott's filmography (and thus, were achieved either photo-chemically or by CGI and, amazingly, it doesn't make a difference), but if you've seen these films, you can identify which of Scott's films they are from, just from the indelibility of the image. 

Take a look:

Beautiful. Amazingly composed, with a painterly color pallette, and exquisite in its detail. Artistic.

It's just too bad some of them are really bad movies. Gorgeous, sure. But bad.

And you're never sure what you're going to get with a Ridley Scott movie; it might be beautiful to look at, but also completely lunk-headed, insufferable, or botched, whether by studio interference (Blade Runner and Legend) or by Scott's way of over- or under-thinking his movies, so that he forgets what they're actually about in the process. It's why Ridley Scott is a well-regarded director, but he's not in the pantheon of innovators or "great" directors. He may make great looking art, but is not considered an artist pushing the art-form forward, sort of a Thomas Kincade of directors.

So, here's Alien: Covenant, Scott's second sequel to his 1979 Alien, his sequel (of a sorts) to 2012's Prometheus, and a return to form of what the series is—not speculative fiction as Prometheus lurched towards, but back to horror, as in the original.**  

After a brief scene between the android David (Michael Fassbender again) and his manufacturer's CEO Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce again) where they discuss "the big question" (where do we come from?), we jump forward in time (past Prometheus, time-wise, by ten years, to 2104) to the good ship Covenant, a colony spaceship tasked with establishing an outpost on a distant planet that has been surveyed from Earth, Origae-6. The ship is tended by its onboard computer, "Mother" and a lone android, Walter (Michael Fassbender...again), who oversees the automated systems*** keeping the cryo-sleeping crew and colonists, as well as a couple thousand embryo's to, I don't know, "seed" the planet (first thing they need to build on this planet is an orphanage!).

The crew of The Covenant: don't get too attached to any of them...

The ship is damaged in an ion storm (caused, presumably, by the meteor shower that damaged the Avalon from Passengers, six months earlier)**** which wakes up the crew before their appointed time. The captain of the vessel, Branson (an unbilled and only briefly seen James Franco) is killed in the resuscitation, leaving the ill-prepared First Mate Oram (Billy Crudup) as captain, and Branson's widow, terraforming expert Daniels (Katherine Waterston) grieving and alone. After making repairs to the ship, the pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride*****) receives a weird ghostly transmission in his helmet communicator that interferes with him getting back to the ship. Analysis of the signal shows it coming from a relatively nearby planet with Earth-like conditions. In a weird moment of "the-only-reason-to-do-this-is-to-keep-the-movie-going," the usually careful captain decides to check it out, rather than continue on the prescribed mission to the original destination.

Once in orbit, a landing party descends to the surface and they find an idyllic, if dramatic landscape of flora, but no fauna. Daniels remarks that there is no sound—no birds, no animals, nothing. To any rational person that would make one think that maybe, because they're the only life detectable on the planet, they should maybe get those thrusters warmed up and get out of there, but, no.

Recently, I heard some wag say that it doesn't matter what the first thing you say is important, but it will get really interesting if the second thing you say is  "...and then people began to die." Well, after some exploration of the planet and tromping around as humans do so delicately, that's exactly what happens—people begin to die. And they die in spectacular fashion, hatching those critters that we've come to expect. And then, because it needs to, their lander blows up.

So, after everybody's trapped on the surface with a couple rampaging beasties skittering through the high grass and their communication cut off from the main ship, they're rescued by a familiar face—it's the android David, who's been living on the planet for ten years after the crashing of the ship from Prometheus carrying him and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in their quest to find the planet of the Engineers, whose little weapons experiment facility they found in the previous movie. David takes them to his hideout, while they figure out how to contact the Covenant and get out of there.

Really, that's all you need to know if you want a spoiler-free review, but, any viewing of the previous Alien films tells you exactly what will probably happen. It's familiar killing grounds in Alien: Covenant, it's just the way that they occur that makes them unique. Then, there's the added wrinkle that we have two androids in the series, David and Walter (Fassbenders, both) who are interacting with each other: David, with his Lawrence of Arabia fetish and genteel British accent and perverse curiosity, and Walter, whose accent is very American and is a bit of a neophyte...for an android, that is.

So, expect a lot of the expected in Alien: Covenant. That Scott abandoned the "Paradise Lost" project (albeit mentioning events briefly in flashback) and went back to "formula" is a bit of a disappointment. That he has made a hybrid film, borrowing liberally from the James Cameron episode and from his own Blade Runner (even to the admiration, even preference, that he showed for the synthetics rather than the humans involved) is also a bit of a downer, calling back elements from those films rather than offering something more challenging to the audience. One wishes there were some hope for the series going on (Scott is saying that he'll make two, no, three more sequels before we get to the original's time-line), but, really, there's no place for the series to go except to endlessly re-generate the same scenario in a nihilistic fashion.

That leaves me rather bugged.


* They are (in order): Alien (1979), The Counselor (2013), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), The Duellists (1977), Gladiator (2000), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), White Squall (1996), The Duellists, Prometheus (2012), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Gladiator, The Martian (2015), Blade Runner, The Duellists, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Legend, Gladiator.

** Scott originally wanted this to be a direct sequel to Prometheus, entitled "Alien: Paradise Lost", but when Prometheus proved divisive among the populace, he chucked that notion, handling the plot components in flash-backs (and internet-only sneak-peeks), and went with something a bit more like the original. Why Scott came back to Alien is a question in itself. The man's 80 years old now and perhaps he tired of working on things like The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings that flop at the box-office and went the George Lucas route of going with "what works."

*** There would appear to be gravity and life-support on a ship where everybody human is in cryo-sleep, presumably to protect the very resources that are being squandered on one non-breathing android. Why?

**** And that wouldn't be as far-fetched a coincidence as some of the ones in the Alien series where the tag-line should be "In space, everybody runs into each other..."

***** I have to confess: while one shouldn't walk into movies with prior expectations, I was really looking forward to a scene where Danny McBride gets offed by one of the xenomorphs—I rarely have seen McBride in anything where I found him with an ounce of talent or charm, he's one of those few actors I actively don't like. But, here, he's terrific, taking an under-written part and bringing a lot of good choices and subtle nuances to the role. I'm now a fan.