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.
Clean space ultimate professional#
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.
Cinematographer Georges Lechaptois brilliantly captures these rarely glimpsed spaces in all their strangeness, banality and occasional dilapidation.