Piotr St. says: Pink Floyd - "Animals"

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2003)

On March 24, 1973, Pink Floyd blew the roof off the dump with their greatest album to date, "The Dark Side Of The Moon", one of the most inspiring, powerful and classic albums of the whole rock history. On September 15, 1975, they did something no one expected: they came with an album, being almost exact continuation of Dark Side..., but with a few changes in style (long, constructed compositions as opposed to short songs from TDSOTM) "Wish You Were Here", also considered as classical. However, nothing happens twice, and their successor, "Animals", presented to the audience on January 23, 1977, was a good, solid album, but didn't stand comparison to its precedessors.
OK, but what about Alien?
It's almost the same story. In 1979, "Alien" blasted everybody right into Space: incredibly challenging meteor, still standing incredibly fresh even now. In 1986, a continuation appeared, James Cameron's "Aliens". Once again, this was not a direct continuation (it couldn't be! NOW we all knew how Alien exactly look like, so the suspense of the first one was gone; now there were the only unknown thing - when, where and how aliens attack; and we had dozens of monsters instead of one and a bunch of marines instead of simply workers), but was also good as f**k.
But you can't have three masterpieces in a row, and Alien 3 simply couldn't outclass its precedessors, or even be equal to them. This might be caused by rather large changes the producers made to the original film (and mediocre level of "Animals" might be considered as a result of Roger Waters' autocratic domination on the Floyds). However, it stands pretty well, with its grimy, claustrophobic atmosphere and industrial settings. I have to admit I like this one, despite its faults (major bullshit: persons of YY chromosomes! An explanation: These are two types of human chromosomes, X and Y. Women have an XX combination, while men have XY. However, X chromosome is the only one that carries all features; Y doesn't carry anything, so the person having an YY couldn't exist because ovarium would ALWAYS give an X chromosome; and if even, by some very rare and strange mutation, such combination would appear, it would die immediately after conception).
7/10 (The Floyd-Alien similarities end here; the next Floydian slip, "The Wall", was a masterpiece; the next movie doesn't.)