Aliens: Fireteam - KENNER

Whenever there's a new Alien video game I always find myself crawling through the trailer, looking to upset myself by spotting the double-jointed, digitigrade, creatures churned out by lube specialists Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. Which interpretation (or more accurately which instalment) are the developers taking their cues from this time? Rather than try and jumble the film series' various, clashing, aesthetics - hopelessly trying to establish a consensus take on the xenomorph - Aliens: Fireteam's devs, Cold Iron Studios, are following the pick n' mix examples set by the various Alien³ home console adaptations or Konami's Aliens arcade cab. The dog-burster (or Bambi-burster if you're a workprint fan) looks to be a basic, swarming, mob while Alien's Big Chap seems to be a stomping, mini-boss level, encounter. There are even medium-sized monsters, with mutated crests, that could be patterned after either 1990s toy lines or the extended monarchy introduced in Dark Horse's tie-in comics. 

Aliens by Jeffrey Alan Love

Aliens (1990 Arcade Game) - Japan Set 1, Both Loops

I never realised the Japanese release of Konami's Aliens arcade game was so different from the versions released in other territories. As well as dropping the travelling APC levels, Japan lost all reference to the Newt character and Ripley's pressing need to rescue her. To compensate, the Japanese coin-op was easier with weaker (but less brightly coloured and therefore more movie accurate) enemies. MAME monster KIN takes us through both loops in the above clip.

The Blob (1988)

Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont hijack Irvin Yeaworth's red scare original, amping up the individualism and transforming it into a strange, outsider movie. As well as having a more politically dubious, terrestrial origin, The Blob systematically kills all the usual male leads until we arrive at the second-banana motorcycle enthusiast and a would-be distressed damsel. The film initially seems to be orbiting a young guy-next-door. Paul Taylor is set up as a Michael J Fox figure, he succeeds by accident in sports and has a friend that gets him into trouble with his prospective girlfriend's father.

Paul appears to be the engine, he has romantic potential and homespun guts. Unfortunately for him The Blob doesn't give a shit about the hero's journey. Next up there's the local Sheriff, initially an antagonistic presence who redeems himself by following logic rather than prejudice. He's killed as an afterthought, his half-digested body showing up as a soupy detail in his love interest's death. The government forces that turn up half-way through end up being completely compromised, leaving local pariah Brian Flagg and cheerleader Meg to take care of business.

Meg and Brian form a back-and-forth, post-Aliens action collective. A couple united through a desire to not be told what to do. While the rest of the town is being rounded up by Hazmat infantrymen - possibly for liquidation - Meg is breaking curfew to find her missing brother. Brian plays rebel by investigating the crash site and turning up a conspiracy. Aside from that, the duo spend the last act rescuing each other. Brian crashes a snow machine into the Blob and ends up rolled and trapped, Meg loots an M16 and lays down suppressing fire.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is James Cameron's attempt at realigning the collective male psyche after the excesses of the 1980s muscle killers. Maybe he was motivated by guilt? After all, this is a model of masculinity that Cameron himself had a hand in pioneering. His Terminator acted like a slasher villain and inadvertently became the gold standard for the remote action heroes of the Reagan period. Likewise, Cameron's screenplay for Rambo: First Blood Part II, as interpreted by Sylvester Stallone and George P Cosmatos, took a damaged Vietnam veteran and allowed him to 'win', transforming him into a poster boy for popped veins and steely, supplemented sinew. These men were isolated, emotionally distant and obsessed with automatic weaponry. Relationships, if they even registered, were usually just revenge prompts.

T2 wasn't the first time Cameron tried to steer movie manliness in a healthier direction. Michael Biehn's characters in The Terminator and Aliens were both professional soldiers able to comfortably co-operate with women. Sarah Connor and Ripley weren't considered prizes, they were partners in a capable, multi-disciplined collective. Crucially, their strength wasn't shown to undermine Reese or Hicks' masculinity, it informed it. In Cameron's films the heroes and heroines aren't islands, they're components in a greater whole. The group survives, the individual dies. Unfortunately, Biehn's lithe intensity never stuck. His confident, secure characters were either upstaged by monolithic co-stars or de-emphasised by plot machinations. To push the ideal further, Cameron needed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For this sequel, Cameron and co-screenwriter William Wisher Jr gradually deconstruct the idea of the Terminator. After a rock and roll introduction the character is slowly shorn of the kit associated with the first film's mechanical assassin. First he loses his sunglasses, smashed by an institute orderly's bandaged forearm. With his Persol Rattis junked, Schwarzenegger's key colour also changes. After the Pescadero chase the Terminator is no longer lit to be a waxy blue, now flesh tones are emphasised to match his emerging, artificial, humanity. Next, Terminator gives up his motorbike, the two-seater an impractical way to transport two adults and a child. Terminator ends up driving a string of shitty trucks and estate cars, most notably a wood panelled Ford station wagon.

This mundanity stresses Cameron and Wisher's core idea - fatherhood as a high ideal, positioned in opposition to shallow nonchalance. Schwarzenegger is no longer an impassive leather murderer, he's someone's dorky Dad, regurgitating slang he doesn't understand. He's an incredulous focal point for the child to bounce his personality off. This isn't commodity cool, Cameron isn't trying to sell a particular product. He's taking the constituent parts of the 1980s action hero and reorganising them into something mythic and immovable. If we agree, to our horror, that action movies are able to provide instructive behavioural models for little boys, then T2 is explicitly saying that emotional distance is a sham. Much better to engage, and allow yourself to be considered weak or compromised. Being a man isn't about expensive toys or mistreating women, it's about the ability to be a stable, invested presence in someone else's life.

Sci-Fi Revoltech #001 Alien and #016 Alien Warrior by Sabres21768

THIS TIME IT'S WAR

OTHERWORLDLY AWESOMENESS

Aliens: Colonial Marines was released today.

James Horner - Resolution and Hyperspace

Aliens Versus Predator by Mike Mignola

GOD OF ACTION (Guns N' Roses - You Could Be Mine)

Ripley by Robert Ball

This Time It's War

Aliens is 25 today. Happy Birthday Aliens! Like The Godfather Part II, Aliens is a follow-up that examines the characters and situations of its forebear, pulling them in directions antithetical to your usual repeat-em-up sequel think. Aliens is successful, in part, because it's interested in the character of Ellen Ripley. She hasn't been reset between pictures so she can endure the same expectation mandated arc. Instead her further adventure is informed by the past we've seen her experience; she's been mutated by it. Ripley is no longer a company stooge, she's an individual nursing a keen sense of personal responsibility. She doesn't wait for the alien to come to her, she seeks it out. She wants to destroy it. It doesn't hinder Aliens that it's also full of cool cool action beats and sweary space marines.

Sci-Fi Revoltech Alien Warrior

Kaiyodo's latest addition to the heavily articulated Sci-Fi Revoltech action figure series is the Aliens re-draft of the xenomorph design.

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