Okay, that went well, so let’s continue alphabetically and go on to Alien. How does the movie get us to believe, care, and invest in Ripley?
Why she might be hard to care for:
Because they’re intentionally hiding the fact that she’s the hero! This movie wants to do a fake out and kill the person who seems to be the hero halfway through, so they’ve got to subtly build up Ripley to be a compelling back-up hero without us noticing. A very tricky proposition!
Believe
As sci-fi, the biggest trick is to get us believe in the existence of this weird world. They do this with how un-sci-fi it is: how dingy the ship is, the way the lights flicker on unsteadily, etc. There’s an odd little drinking-bird toy sitting out. The space traffic control base being in Antarctica is a good example of “Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.”
As for Ripley, she’s the only one who pets the cat. She says, “That’s not our system” in a sing-song-y voice. She tells Brett to fuck off. She’s wearing Converse All-Stars, which is always a likeable shoe. I’m stretching here.
Care
The others complain about being woken up early, but she doesn’t. Eventually we feel for her when she has to choose between the life of her crewmember and the safety of the rest of the crew ...and when she gets overruled, possibly because she’s a woman (though the part was written for a man.)
Invest
She’s the only one who’s willing to go from upstairs to downstairs to visit Parker and Brett. She seems to be the most careful about her job. She takes the initiative to decode the transmission and finds out it’s a warning, then asks to go warn the others.
Five Es
Eat: They all eat breakfast together right away.
Exercise: None whatsoever. It’s a very still movie.
Economic Activity: We begin with an onscreen title: “Commercial towing vehicle, ‘The Nostromo’ Refinery processing: 20,000,000 tons of mineral ore.” All they talk about is the company, what they owe it, and what it owes them. They act because of “Penalty of total forfeiture of shares.”
Enjoy: They enjoy breakfast and joke around right away: “I feel dead.” “Anybody every tell you you look dead?” They all laugh, even Ripley just slightly
Emulate: Not that I can see, but maybe James will point out something I missed again.
Rise above:
Not right away, but eventually. Ripley doesn’t rise above her economic circumstances until near the end of the movie, when she finally breaks with the company.
High five a black guy:
The first we see of her is when she laughs at the black guy’s joke. In this case, he’s a fully realized character, so it’s not an egregious example.
I’ll also go back through the Checklists, archive their posts, and update them to the current list. Again, this is a lot of work for me without as much benefit for you, but the whole point of the checklists is to create a robust data set that I can mine for all sorts of purposes, which means they all need to be the same version. We’re going back to one of the earliest checklists here, which means I had a lot fewer follow-up posts about each movie. I should go back and generate some more.
Morally Ascending in Alien (This is in reference to a question that’s no longer on the checklist, and I don’t really miss it, but it’s interesting to see what’s gone.)
Of course, the new checklist is a little shorter than the others (my book editor wanted to slim it down). For the most part, we cut out questions that weren’t providing good answers, but sometimes I’ll have to cut out good answers, like this one:
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Are
unrealistic genre-specific elements a big metaphor for a more common
experience (not how life really is, but how life really feels)?
Yes: the horror of
childbirth, the evil of corporations, the dangers of mining, etc.
I do kind of miss that question. Sorry buddy, that’s the price of progress!
My new big-deal manager gushed about how much he loved my horror-thriller in order to keep me from signing with another guy, but then as soon as he had locked me down, he told me that he wouldn’t actually send it out because, “Eh, at some point, the story all runs downhill.” Huh? What does that mean? But no clarification was forthcoming. I’ve tried to grasp his point ever since.
Here’s my best interpretation: the hero is fighting the villain, but neither one is really surprising us anymore. The story is locked onto a certain trajectory: there are still lots of exciting things going on, and near-death scrapes, and clever escapes, but these are all obstacles, they aren’t really conflicts. They’re hard to do, but not hard to want to do.
I’ve never stopped struggling with this. Surely, at some point, the hero can finally figure out what to do, right? I realize that the whole story can’t be a straightforward struggle of good vs. evil and still be interesting, but can’t we at least have the players sorted our properly in the final act?
As I’ve redone the 17 stand-alone-story checklists, I’ve focused in on one of the new questions: Does the hero have to face several smaller good-vs.-good or bad-vs.-bad decisions throughout your story. As I’ve been adding these up, I’ve thought about changing to the wording to “Does the hero face at least six tough good-vs.-good or bad-vs.-bad dilemmas spaced out throughout the story” (In screenplay terms, that would be about 15-20 pages.)
The audience wants to play along at home. To a certain extent, watching a hero overcome obstacles is like watching someone else play a videogame, which can be a dreadful experience. When you watch a hero overcome a physical challenge, you might think, “Ooh, I know what I what I would do in that situation,”, but there’s never a satisfying pay-off to that: Either they do what you would have done, and you’re mildly gratified, or they don’t, and you just get frustrated.
What the audience really wants to say is “Ooh, I don’t know what I what I would do in that situation!” Even better is when they follow that up with, “…and I don’t want to know.” That’s when they really start playing along at home.
Let’s look at Alien:
Answer the distress signal? (Risk our lives to help people we haven’t met?)
Break quarantine? (Risk all of our lives for one friend’s life?)
Remove the face-hugger or not? (Risk killing our friend in order to save him?)
Kill the alien or try to preserve it for the company? (Risk our ability to make a living for personal safety?)
Blow up the whole ship to kill it? (Destroy everything we’ve done for personal safety)
Go back for the cat? (Risk my life to save a small creature?)
The dilemmas just keep on coming, and they’re all questions that we wouldn’t want to answer ourselves. And they keep going right up to the end. What if we didn’t have that tough last-minute decision? What if the final act had all been a gung-ho woman-vs.-alien struggle without any more painful dilemmas? It would be inert.
I briefly posted and then postponed a version of this post a few days ago, but a commenter had already said that saving the cat always annoyed him, because it seemed to contribute to the deaths in future films. To me, that only shows the value of the dilemma: you can never be sure if it was worth it, even years later.
Next time, let’s look at what we can learn about genre structure from looking at the six impossible dilemmas.
I’ve updated the Checklist road test for Alien and you can check it out here. Now let’s look at one of the new answers in more depth:
On the one hand, the basic situation in Alien would seem to the typical “man up” story, of the type I complained about before:
There’s first contact with an enemy that is humanoid but seems to be devoid of feeling. When deaths ensue, there are those who are reluctant to kill their enemy because he’s a living creature, but the ones we agree with say, “Who cares? It’s clearly a monster so let’s just kill it.” Over the course of the story, those who wanted to maintain contact are proved to be wrong and hypocritical, and the “kill it with fire” side is vindicated. Our hero is a woman, who starts out unassertive and then become more assertive as she realizes that she has to kill the creature mercilessly.
But of course it’s far more complicated than that. The seemingly right-wing narrative above runs in tandem with a far more left-wing narrative:
The ship is run by an evil corporation, acting with complete impunity with no government in sight, and sacrifices its workers one by one in the interest of developing a new weapon. When the workers ask for better pay, their demands are dismissed with the same language that will later be used to justify sacrificing them to the alien.
The two narratives contrast nicely and counterbalance each other, keeping it from seeming overly-strident either way.
But let’s focus on Ripley’s arc. Even though the culmination of her arc is, “let’s just kill it and blow everything up,” it still feels like morally ascending, not descending. She starts out the movie as a drone, blandly defending standard procedure, but she becomes more human as the story progresses, and ironically, as she decides to kill the alien, she becomes a more compassionate person, endangering her life to literally “save the cat”.
Usually, coming to value one’s own survival over the values of one’s society is a moral descent, but in this case it’s an ascent: Serving the needs of her society is actually a terrible idea, because her society serves death, demanding its workers sacrifice their lives for company profits. In discovering that she values herself more than she’s allowed to, she becomes more fully human, and more empathetic towards others, as shown by her belated protectiveness towards the cat.
In this movie, and in many subsequent anti-corporate stories, we’ve exposed the hidden sub-basement of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, below self-preservation: profit. Moving from that level to cold-blooded self-preservation feels like a rise, not a fall.
This helps explains why journeys like Walt’s on “Breaking Bad” feel oddly uplifting despite the hero’s horrible actions. The twin evils that launch Walt’s quest, (a for-profit health care system and income disparity that pays a chemistry entrepreneur billions while paying a chemistry teacher less than a living wage) outrage us more than his crimes. Tellingly, it was only in the final season of that show, when Walt’s business finally became consistently profitable and he took on employees, that the audience started seriously rooting for his downfall.
Yesterday, we looked at thriller, mystery/conspiracy, and action movies. The horror movie has much in common with all three, but it’s fundamentally different. In horror, the audience has less identification with the hero than in any other type of story.
In action and conspiracy movies, we identify with the hero the whole time. Even when the heroes are kicking themselves in the third quarter for being overconfident in the second quarter, we fully identify, since we shared their adrenaline rush, and we, too, failed to see the disaster coming.
Thrillers are trickier. We share the thrill of transgression in the second quarter, but we do see the disaster coming, and we withhold some of our sympathy even then. In the third quarter, when the sinning hero suffers consequences, we switch to a judgmental attitude and look down on the same transgressions that we just vicariously enjoyed.
In horror, we always empathize with the heroes, in that we share their fear, but we rarely sympathize, because their suffering is usually somehow their fault. The transgression usually happens much earlier, in the first quarter or before the movie starts, and we take no joy from it. Instead, our joy comes from a mix of sharing the heroes’ fear and sharing the evil force’s desire to punish them. As the advantage keeps shifting between the two sides, we win either way.
Transgression / Denial and Dread of Unseen Consequences / Horror at Visible Consequences / Triumph or Succumb:
Frankenstein (transgression = creating life)
King Kong (transgression = fetishization of the exotic)
Rosemary’s Baby (punished for the ambition of her husband)
Halloween (Laurie is punished for the sexual transgressions of her friends)
Alien (transgression = defending company)
The Shining (transgression = drinking and abusing child, happened before movie)
Scream (transgression = lack of desensitization to horror combined with old-fashioned teen horniness)
Tellingly, even in movies where we don’t see any transgression, we’re so hard-wired to blame the victims that we spend the whole movie trying to figure out what the heroes might have done to deserve this, because they must have done something. You can see the audience dynamic in such movies as…
The Birds (Critics have twisted themselves into knots trying to figure out why the opening scenes justify the attack. I think Hitch’s true point is that people will always blame themselves for nature’s fury, even when they shouldn’t.)
Night of the Living Dead (“What did humanity do to deserve this?” is the implied question, which is ironically answered by the final scene)
The Exorcist (The priests keep asking why the devil would choose this girl)
Saw (Victims try to figure out what they did wrong)
28 Days Later (Again, “What did we do to deserve this?” is asked many times)
This movie somehow manages to be both an
edge-of-your-seat nail-biter and a quiet, almost meditative tone-poem.How does it pull that off?
Deviations: Our heroine is not volatile, not physically active,
not misunderstood, and her dialogue isn’t bouncy.
The
Potential Problem: Most viewers of
this movie don’t even realize that super-still, whisper-quiet Ripley is the
hero until halfway through when the male captain dies, leaving her in charge,
where she finally shows some badassery.One consequence is that the viewer doesn’t identify with Ripley until
very late.We’re not experiencing
the first half of the movie from her point-of-view…or anyone’s.Instead of identifying with any one
character, we’re floating in space, where no character can hear us scream. (This totally violates Monday’s rule: “All Events must be Character Events”)
Does the
Movie Get Away With It? Yes.The chilliness of the movie’s
point-of-view plays into the tone and theme. What makes it work is that we do eventually identify with Ripley because, on a subtle lever, she does have a full arc, it’s just very
muted: she’s the one who’s the most loyal to the company and to protocol—She
defends the company against the complaints of Brett and Lambert, she alone
tries to maintain quarantine, etc.She’s also the most adaptable: only she is equally at home in the bowels
of the ship and on deck.When she
realizes that the company, as represented by the cyborg Ash, is willing to sacrifice
them all, she’s the one who has to do something that’s hard to want to do: ignore protocol, blow up
the ship she’s in charge of, and shoot the company’s prized specimen into
space.(As for violating the “character
events” rule, I think Alien gets away
with that, barely, because it’s a movie, not TV, so it can be more
event-focused, rather than character-focused.)
Now updated to the sixth and final version of the checklist!
The crew of a deep space
freighter (Dallas, Ripley, Ash, Kane, Lambert, Parker and Brett) answer a
distress signal, discovering a crashed ship filled with eggs, one of which
latches itself onto Kane’s face. The others bring him back onboard the ship,
overruling Ripley’s attempt to maintain quarantine. The creature’s offspring soon pops out of his
chest and begins killing the crew off one by one. After Dallas is killed, Ripley discovers that
Ash is a robot serving the company, and he’s been keeping the alien alive for
them. Ripley kills Ash, blows up the
ship, and escapes in a shuttle, but the Alien escapes with her, leading to a
final confrontation.
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PART
#1: CONCEPT 17/19
The Pitch: Does this concept excite everyone who
hears about it?
Is the
one sentence description uniquely appealing?
The crewmembers of a space freighter are hunted down and
gutted one by one by an alien bio-engineered to be the ultimate killing
machine.
Does
the concept contain an intriguing ironic contradiction?
Sort of: answer a
distress signal, almost all of them get killed as a result.
Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto
a bigger canvas, with higher stakes?
Yes, it’s the
ultimate unsafe workplace.
Story Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a
strong story?
Is the
concept simple enough to spend more time on character than plot?
There’s not a lot of plot, but not a lot of character
either.Both are sacrificed in
favor of tone.
Is
there one character that the audience will choose to be their “hero”?
Not until very late, when we finally settle on Ripley once
she takes over.
Does
the story follow the progress of the hero’s problem, not the hero’s daily
life?
Yes.
Does
the story present a unique relationship?
Yes, bickering
working-class space crew.
Is at
least one actual human being opposed to what the hero is doing?
Yes, Ash.(Well, sort of human)
Does
this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or
an ironic answer to the hero’s question?
Ironic answer:
“Whatever happened to standard procedure?”She finds out the pros and cons of standard procedure.
Does
something inside the hero have a particularly volatile reaction to the
challenge?
Only slightly.She’s the most loyal to protocol and
the company, until she realizes that Ash isn’t worth being loyal to.
Does
this challenge become something that is the not just hard for the hero to do (an obstacle) but hard for the hero
to want to do (a conflict)?
Somewhat.Again, she’s the most loyal, so she’s
the most reluctant to admit that the company wants them dead and blow up the
ship.
In the
end, is the hero the only one who can solve the problem?
Yes, only she tries
to keep the ship quarantined, only she figures out what’s going with Ash,
only she survives. In the end, everyone else is dead.
Does
the hero permanently transform the situation and vice versa?
Yes, she
obliterates it.
The
Hook: Will this be marketable and generate word of mouth?
Does
the story satisfy the basic human urges that get people to buy and recommend
this genre?
Yes, lots of big scares and gory kills
Does
this story show us at least one image we haven’t seen before (that can be
used to promote the final product)?
Oh hell yes: eggs,
face huggers, the alien, etc…
Is
there at least one “Holy Crap!” scene (to create word of mouth)?
Oh hell yes: the
chest-bursting scene (and also later when the “hero” dies)
Does
the story contain a surprise that is not obvious from the beginning?
Yes, Ash is a
robot.
Is the
story marketable without revealing the surprise?
Yes.
Is the
conflict compelling and ironic both before and after the surprise?
Yes.
PART
#2: CHARACTER 20/22
Believe:
Do we recognize the hero as a human being?
Does
the hero have a moment of humanity early on? (A funny, or kind, or oddball,
or out-of-character, or comically vain, or unique-but-universal “I thought I
was the only one who did that!” moment?)
No, not at all.She doesn’t really stand out until
she refuses to let them back on the ship.We don’t realize that she’s the hero halfway through.
Is the
hero defined by ongoing actions and attitudes, not by backstory?
Entirely
Does
the hero have a well-defined public identity?
Yes, the chilly,
no-nonsense navigator.
Does
the surface characterization ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?
Not really.
Does
the hero have a consistent metaphor family (drawn from his or her job,
background, or developmental state)?
Yes, regulations.
Does
the hero have a default personality trait?
Yes.Resentful fuming.
Does
the hero have a default argument tactic?
Yes, cites the
rules.
Is the
hero’s primary motivation for tackling this challenge strong, simple, and
revealed early on?
Yes: company
loyalty, then self-preservation.
Care:
Do we feel for the hero?
Does
the hero start out with a shortsighted or wrongheaded philosophy (or accept a
false piece of advice early on)?
Yes, “Whatever
happened to standard procedure”
Does
the hero have a false or shortsighted goal in the first half?
Yes, defend the
company, follow protocol.
Does
the hero have an open fear or anxiety about his or her future, as well as a
hidden, private fear?
Open, fear of
breaking the rules. Hidden, an implied universal fear of childbirth.
Is the
hero physically and emotionally vulnerable?
Just slightly, in
both cases.Cracks in her tough
façade show through at the end.
Does
the hero have at least one untenable great flaw we empathize with? (but…)
Yes, the same good
instinct that led her to try to maintain quarantine causes her to be blind to
Ash’s treachery until it’s almost too late.
Invest:
Can we trust the hero to tackle this challenge?
…Is that great flaw (ironically) the natural
flip-side of a great strength we admire?
We don’t notice at
first, but we gradually realize that she has certain key strengths: from the
beginning, only she is equally at home on the bridge and in the hold and only
she tries to maintain quarantine.She’s the canny one.
Is the
hero curious?
Yes, but not
overly-so: only she is unwilling to bring it on board.
Is the
hero generally resourceful?
Yes, she does some clever things.
Does
the hero have rules he or she lives by (either stated or implied)?
Stick to procedure, do it myself, I
deserve respect.
Is the
hero surrounded by people who sorely lack his or her most valuable quality?
Yes, no one else
respects quarantine.Everyone
else loses it at some point.
…And
is the hero willing to let them know that, subtly or directly?
Sort of. She’s very hesitant to speak
up at first, to the degree that we don’t even guess she’s the ultimate hero.
She lets herself be steamrolled over when she tries to maintain quarantine,
for instance…but she gradually becomes more and more assertive as she grows
into her hero role.
Is the
hero already doing something active when we first meet him or her?
She’s trying to figure out where they
are.
Does
the hero have (or claim) decision-making authority?
She gets it after
Dallas dies, which is when she becomes our hero.
Does
the hero use pre-established special skills from his or her past to solve
problems (rather than doing what anybody would do)?
Yes, she knows the
ship and the rules better than anyone else, even the captain.
PART
#3: STRUCTURE (If the story is about the solving of a large problem) 20/21
1st
Quarter: Is the challenge laid out in the first quarter?
When
the story begins, is the hero becoming increasingly irritated about his or
her longstanding social problem (while still in denial about an internal
flaw)?
Slightly.She clearly feels she doesn’t get
enough respect, but she’s not going to say anything about it.
Does
this problem become undeniable due to a social humiliation at the beginning
of the story?
Yes, she tries to
keep the ship quarantined, but no one else lets her.
Does
the hero discover an intimidating opportunity to fix the problem?
Yes, when things
start going wrong, her status improves.
Does
the hero hesitate until the stakes are raised?
Yes, she hangs back
and doesn’t assert much authority as the problem grows.
Does the hero commit to pursuing the opportunity by the
end of the first quarter?
Only slightly, she
gingerly starts to assert herself, but waits until after the midpoint
disaster to assert herself.
2nd
Quarter: Does the hero try the easy way in the second quarter?
Does
the hero’s pursuit of the opportunity quickly lead to an unforeseen conflict
with another person?
Yes. Ash opposes
her throughout.
Does
the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?
Yes, at first they
try to keep the creature alive.
Does
the hero have a little fun and get excited about the possibility of success?
No, we in the audience enjoy the gory
deaths, the creeping dread and final reveal of the creature, so we’re having
fun, but she isn’t.This is
typical for horror movies.
Does the
easy way lead to a big crash around the midpoint, resulting in the loss of a
safe space and/or sheltering relationship?
Yes, the captain dies,
and they realize the whole ship is not safe.
3rd
Quarter: Does the hero try the hard way in the third quarter?
Does
the hero try the hard way from this point on?
Yes, they try to
kill it.
Does
the hero find out who his or her real friends and real enemies are?
Yes, she realizes
that the company is not her friend, Ash is evil.
Do the
stakes, pace, and motivation all escalate at this point?
Yes, they realize
they have to blow up the ship.
Does
the hero learn from mistakes in a painful way?
Yes, she almost
gets killed by Ash.
Does a
further setback lead to a spiritual crisis?
Somewhat.Decides to save the cat, showing that
she’s now more empathetic.
4th
Quarter: Does the challenge climax in the fourth quarter?
Does
the hero adopt a corrected philosophy after the spiritual crisis?
“We’ll blow it the fuck out into space. We have to stick
together.”
After
that crisis, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal, which
still seems far away?
Yes, blowing up the ship.
Before
the final quarter of the story begins, (if not long before) has your hero
switched to being proactive, instead of reactive?
Yes, she’s standing up to everybody
and trying to blow up the ship.
Despite
these proactive steps, is the timeline unexpectedly moved up, forcing the
hero to improvise for the finale?
Yes, the alien
attacks, ruining the plan.
Do all
strands of the story and most of the characters come together for the
climactic confrontation?
Everyone and
everything left alive, yes.
Does
the hero’s inner struggle climax shortly after (or possible at the same time
as) his or her outer struggle?
Pretty much.She has no time to process her
decision to break from the company until after she kills the thing.
Is
there an epilogue/ aftermath/ denouement in which the challenge is finally
resolved (or succumbed to), and we see how much the hero has changed
(possibly through reversible behavior)
Yes, she gives a
matter-of-fact unapologetic account of blowing up the ship, then goes to
sleep with the cat.
PART
#4: SCENEWORK 18/20 (Representative scene: After the deaths of the
Kane, Brett and Dallas, Ripley becomes captain, so she has a meeting with the
other survivors, Ash, Parker, Lambert, to decide what to do next.)
The
Set-Up: Does this scene begin with the essential elements it needs?
Were
tense and/or hopeful (and usually false) expectations for this interaction
established beforehand?
Yes, we saw briefly
how devastated they were by Dallas’s death…except for Ash. It also contrasts
with two earlier scenes where they met to decide what to do.
Does
the scene eliminate small talk and repeated beats by cutting out the
beginning (or possibly even the middle)?
Yes, it starts
late, in the heat of the conversation.
Is
this an intimidating setting that keeps characters active?
Somewhat: it’s a
meeting table, which doesn’t usually intimidate people or keep them active,
but it’s also now a war-room and it’s the first visit to the captain’s domain
since he died.
Is one
of the scene partners not planning to have this conversation (and quite
possibly has something better to do)?
No.
Is
there at least one non-plot element complicating the scene?
No.
Does
the scene establish its own mini-ticking-clock (if only through subconscious
anticipation)?
Only in that we
know the alien is hunting them.
The
Conflict: Do the conflicts play out in a lively manner?
Does this scene both advance the plot and reveal
character through emotional reactions?
It’s more of a plot
event, but character issues are bubbling up. Ripley finally gets
emotional as she gets fed up with Ash and Parker, for different reasons.
Does
the audience have (or develop) a rooting interest in this scene (which may
sometimes shift)?
Yes, for the first
time, we know that Ripley is clearly our hero.
Are
two agendas genuinely clashing (rather than merely two personalities)?
Yes, they come to
realize that Ash has a different agenda.
Does
the scene have both a surface conflict and a suppressed conflict (one of
which is the primary conflict in this scene)?
Yes: “how do we
kill it?” suppressed: “why are you protecting it, Ash?”
Is the
suppressed conflict (which may or may not come to the surface) implied
through subtext (and/or called out by the other character)?
At first, then
Ripley finally calls it out.
Are
the characters cagy (or in denial) about their own feelings?
Yes, Ash and Ripley
don’t directly confront each other.
Do
characters use verbal tricks and traps to get what they want, not just direct
confrontation?
They’re mostly in
direct confrontation mode, but Ripley is still trying to get the truth out of
Ash indirectly.
Is
there re-blocking, including literal push and pull between the scene partners
(often resulting in just one touch)?
Yes. Parker tries
to leave, Ripley stops him with her voice.Then Parker leaves, then Ash leaves. There’s one touch
when Parker puts a hand on Ash to keep him from coming with him.
Are
objects given or taken, representing larger values?
Parker slams down
Dallas’s flamethower to show that he’s dead.Later he goes to refill it, to show his decision.
The
Outcome: Does this scene change the story going forward?
As a
result of this scene, does at least one of the scene partners end up doing
something that he or she didn’t intend to do when the scene began?
Lambert is
convinced to join the plan, Parker is convinced to hear Ripley out.
Does
the outcome of the scene ironically reverse (and/or ironically fulfill) the
original intention?
Not really.
Are
previously-asked questions answered and new questions posed?
Previous:Who’s in charge now?New: Can they get away on the
shuttle?Why is Ash dragging his
heels?
Does
the scene cut out early, on a question (possibly to be answered instantly by
the circumstances of the next scene)?
Slightly early, on
her line “I’ve got access to mother now and I’ll get my own answers, thank
you.”
Is the
audience left with a growing hope and/or fear for what might happen next?
(Not just in the next scene, but generally)
We have a surging hope that Ripley is
finally going to kick some ass and solve the secondary mystery (What’s up
with Mother/Ash?) and a fear for what will happen to Parker when he goes off
alone.
PART
#5: DIALOGUE 14/16
Empathetic:
Is the dialogue true to human nature?
Does
the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?
Yes, everybody is
treated humanely, and gets to hold their own.
Does
each of the characters, including the hero, have a limited perspective?
Yes, it takes her a
while to catch on.
Do the
characters consciously and unconsciously prioritize their own wants, rather
than the wants of others?
Very much so.
Are
the characters resistant to openly admitting their feelings (to others and
even to themselves)?
Yes.
Do the
characters avoid saying things they wouldn’t say and doing things they
wouldn’t do?
Yes.
Do the
characters interrupt each other often?
Yes, they all keep
ignoring each other’s concerns.
Specific: Is the dialogue specific to this world
and each personality?
Does
the dialogue capture the jargon and tradecraft of the profession and/or
setting?
Yes, lots of
navigation and regulation talk.
Are
there additional characters with distinct metaphor families, default
personality traits, and default argument strategies from the hero’s?
Metaphor Family: Not really, the voices are all fairly similar and bland, which contributes
to the atmosphere of coldness. Personality
Traits: Ash: bland faux-deference, Parker: fiery, etc. Argument Strategies: Dallas: let’s
you talk, then tells you his previous decision.Ash: creates flimsy lies, Parker: artlessly segues into
his complaints.
Heightened:
Is the dialogue more pointed and dynamic than real talk?
Is the
dialogue more concise than real talk?
Yes, it’s very
slight and muttered.
Does
the dialogue have more personality than real talk?
No.There’s very little personality in this movie, except for
Parker.
Are
there minimal commas in the dialogue (the lines are not prefaced with Yes,
No, Well, Look, or the other character’s name)?
Yes.
Do
non-professor characters speak without dependent clauses, conditionals, or
parallel construction?
Yes, only Ash the
robot uses dependent clauses.
Are
the non-3-dimensional characters impartially polarized into head, heart and
gut?
Yes.Ripley and Ash are both head (good
head and bad head), Kane and Dallas are both (slightly) heart, Parker and
Brett are gut.
Strategic: Are certain dialogue scenes withheld
until necessary?
Does
the hero have at least one big “I understand you” moment with a love interest
or primary emotional partner?
No.
Is
exposition withheld until the hero and the audience are both demanding to
know it?
Yes.We get only scant details of the
situation: who these guys are, what they’re doing, who they work for, what
industry they’re in, what the alien is, where it came from, what was the deal
on that planet, etc., and we don’t mind at all.
Is
there one gutpunch scene, where the subtext falls away and the characters
really lay into each other?
Yes, literally,
with Ripley and Ash.
Part #6: Tone 10/10
Genre:
Does the story tap into pre-established expectations?
Is the
story limited to one genre (or multiple genres that are merged from the
beginning?)
It consistently and
successfully combines sci-fi and horror.
Is the
story limited to sub-genres that are compatible with each other, without
mixing metaphors?
Yes, the creature feature, the haunted
house movie and the “ten little Indians” thriller.
Does
the ending satisfy most of the expectations of the genre, and defy a few
others?
Yes, it fulfills
all except one: the male leader dies and a subordinate woman survives and
becomes the sole survivor.
Separate
from the genre, is a consistent mood (goofy, grim, ‘fairy tale’, etc.)
established early and maintained throughout?
Yes, chilly,
airless, distanced, cold, cool, creepy, etc. We begin with empty helmets
talking to each other: this is a dehumanized world in every sense. And the
ending is as hushed as the beginning.
Framing:
Does the story set, reset, upset and ultimately exceed its own expectations?
Is
there a dramatic question posed early on, which will establish in the
audience’s mind which moment will mark the end of the story?
Yes, when will they
kill the alien?
Does the story use framing devices to establish genre,
mood and expectations?
In-story onscreen
type describes the situation in an intentionally unclear, cold, formal,
corporate-speak way.
Are
there characters whose situations prefigure various fates that might await
the hero?
Yes, she’s afraid
of getting killed like the others, afraid of becoming Ash.
Does
foreshadowing create anticipation and suspense (and refocus the audience’s
attention on what’s important)?
Very much so.
Are
reversible behaviors used to foreshadow and then confirm change?
Yes, she dismisses
Parker and sides with Ash early one, and she shows little empathy with
others, but she’ll later go back to save the cat.
Is the
dramatic question answered at the very end of the story?
Yes, the alien is
killed at the very end.
PART
7: THEME 12/14
Difficult:
Is the meaning of the story derived from a fundamental moral dilemma?
Can
the overall theme be stated in the form of an irreconcilable good vs. good
(or evil vs. evil) dilemma?
Yes, loyalty vs.
self-preservation.
Is a
thematic question asked out loud (or clearly implied) in the first half, and
left open?
Yes, discussion
about whether or not they can re-negotiate their contracts.
Do the
characters consistently have to choose between goods, or between evils,
instead of choosing between good and evil?
Yes, break
quarantine to save Kane or not, for instance.
Grounded:
Do the stakes ring true to the world of the audience?
Does
the story reflect the way the world works?
Yes. It takes the
reality of extremely unsafe workplaces (such as actual non-unionized mines)
and amplifies it.
Does
the story have something authentic to say about this type of setting (Is it
based more on observations of this type of setting than ideas about it)?
Yes, it’s a very
believable freighter crew with real-world concerns.
Does
the story include twinges of real life national pain?
Yes, it’s quite
prescient about the rise of corporate sovereignty in the ‘80s.
Are
these issues and the overall dilemma addressed in a way that avoids moral
hypocrisy?
Yes.
Do all
of the actions have real consequences?
Yes. She isn’t able
to kill the alien without blowing up the ship.
Subtle: Is the theme interwoven throughout so
that it need not be discussed often?
Do
many small details throughout subtly and/or ironically tie into the thematic
dilemma?
Yes, every little
decision on the ship speaks to the larger dilemma.The metal-organic design of the ship on the planet and the
alien itself speak to the melding of human and industrial consciousness.Eggs are a recurring theme.They try to call “Antarctica traffic
control”: it’s a cold future.
Are
one or more objects representing larger ideas exchanged throughout the story,
growing in meaning each time?
Not really. The “mother” computer “changes hands”, I guess,
but it can’t actually be placed from hand to hand.
Untidy:
Is the dilemma ultimately irresolvable?
Does
the ending tip towards one side of the thematic dilemma without resolving it
entirely?
No, this movie resolves its moral
dilemma far more definitively than most movies: corporations are completely
evil, quarantine is totally sacrosanct, self-preservation is entirely better
than protecting new life-forms. Personal safety is entirely
better than job loyalty. This is fine: horror
movies are less ambiguous than most genres.
Does
the story’s outcome ironically contrast with the initial goal?
Yes, they kill the
object of their rescue mission, the most loyal one blows up the ship.
In the
end, is the plot not entirely tidy (some small plot threads left unresolved,
some answers left vague)?
Very much so.We know very little at the end about
what was really going on.If
only someone would do a prequel!
Do the
characters refuse (or fail) to synthesize the meaning of the story, forcing
the audience to do that?
Yes.She doesn’t say anything about the
evils of corporate sovereignty in her final recording.
