by John Constantine
I saw “Star Trek” last weekend, and I liked it. It wasn't the life-changing, holy-friggin-god-best-movie-EVAR experience that many of my friends claim it is, but yeah, good movie. Well-written characters, solid action, plenty of Nimoy. There was a problem though. Something was missing in JJ Abrams’ "Trek." The same thing that's been frequently absent in sci-fi -- hell, in blockbusters -- for far too long: awe. As the newbie crew shuttles into space, Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) gasps at the sight of the just-built U.S.S. Enterprise looming before him. All I could think was, yep, there’s another computer animated spaceship sitting in computer animated space.
It's a spectacular image, even awe-inspiring in its own way, but it also feels strangely hollow. I find myself continually amazed at how distancing digital effects can be, even as they continue to inch closer and closer to true photo-realism. Not nearly as effective as Ridley Scott’s "Alien," which turned thirty this past Monday. Originally released on May 25, 1979, to this day "Alien" remains a big, ghastly, shocking work of spectacle. In short: it inspires awe.
At first, Ridley Scott's titular alien isn’t even the star of the show. From crabby little facehugger to the towering head-for-a-tongue adult, the alien is an effective special effect precisely because you don’t get many clear looks at it. Even once you do, it’s a little ridiculous. The suit that Bolaji Badejo wears is fragile and cumbersome; he can barely move in it.
The real spectacle is to be found in "Alien's" marvelous settings. The commercial towing spaceship Nostromo is a terrifying creation, a spiked and bulbous mass of ridged metal floating in space. When it crawls over the screen at the beginning of the movie, it inspires more awe than the Star Destroyer that shocked the world at the beginning of the original "Star Wars."
The Nostromo looks like a real thing, larger than life and quietly menacing, like a haunted house. Its interior is grimy and broken. Every single dim hallway is the kind of place you’d rather not walk through, whether or not there's bloodthirsty alien waiting at the end of it. As the story's climax approaches, the alien practically becomes a function of the ship, as integral as the engines or life support to its operation, picking off crew members one by one as though it is a brutal living shadow. Quite a far cry from the giant floating iPod that is "Star Trek’s" Enterprise.
Of course, there is also the Nostromo’s monstrous evil twin: a derelict ship where the crew actually finds the alien eggs. From the first second you see H.R. Geiger’s design for the other ship, it is deeply unsettling. The dreadful image is made even more impressive by the fact that it isn’t even real. It’s a model and matte paintings. Even the ship's cavernous, slime-coated interior benefits from the added scale of matte paintings.
Three decades later, and there’s no question about "Alien's" merits as both a horror film and a human drama. The performances and direction have always been moving. It’s even more impressive that after all this time, in an era when filmmakers can show you pretty much anything they can dream up on the screen, that the things you see in “Alien” still seem so impossible and huge. You want spectacle? The Nostromo, the derelict, the dead planet — the word’s used too often nowadays, but they truly were and are awesome.
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