Tell the truth or forever hold your peace

Rating: 5/10 (29 January 2018)

The producers, directors and writers cannot seem to comprehend that the camaraderie dynamics that made the first two alien movies so relatably simple do not exist in the same way 25 years later. In the first alien, Brett and Parker, in perfect 70's gestalt, were perfectly cast and written to embody the working class familiarity of that particular blue collar time period--think car wash blues by Jim Croce and you will get the sentiment. Their unforgivable mistake was trying to duplicate the zeitgeist of yore for now. It just doesn't exist anymore, and the character "Tennessee," in complete pathetic abandon, trying to be the African American actress on the movie, "The Abyss" (Kimberly Scott) is about the most fake and phony attempt at recapturing the authenticity of the original I can possibly imagine. That James Cameron was able to do this elucidates his savvy, or perhaps even his genius, for he knew the developmental process of the conceivers of the new alien series were as important as considering as the passage of time itself; if the gatekeepers were not self-aware, they would only repeat the past through the lens of their own relative, reminiscent memories. This is why George Lucas failed on every level with Star Wars. He didn't understand that while the same basic mythological narratives remained timelessly true, the contemporary context and dynamic of cultural change still had to be woven into it all. Many of us are perplexed by these new movies, whose predecessors we magically related to. In these new movies, we immediately have no intrinsic relatableness to any of the characters; they feel one-dimension and plastic, forced upon the scene like hungry ghosts of what once worked but what can never work again. This is how the lack of humility and ego of the original creators sin--they disparage the passion of the original for the bleached forgone longings of their own selfish and repressed nostalgia. It's like how the Republicans wish for Norman Rockwell. That time is over--and perhaps never even existed--and, in trying to repair the unrepairable, the wishful depraved child hopes to recreate the childhood he never had, but should have had. And worse, they have completely forgotten what made the first two movies so timelessly awesome, and that was their dedication and conviction to the human condition in the context of hypersleep and deep space travel--that human being are exceptionally fragile and vulnerable, and therefore, say, contagion protocols must be enforced as the highest priority. In Prometheus they gleefully take off their helmets and try to lovingly caress the alien appendage. In Covenant, they practically plaster their faces onto the alien spores. Stupid, stupid, stupid, and why Prometheus (three stars) is only a little bit worse than Covenant (5 stars). These idiots made the same mistake with "The Thing" remake. The original story of The Thing was about men, masculinity, isolation and paranoia of the other, a metaphor for the cold war and the fear even your best friend could be something other than what he reveals himself to be. It was like remaking Thelma and Louise with two men experiencing the travails of the metoo movement. STUPID! How about a remake of Mississippi Burning about the trials and tribulations of sensitive white artists living in South Dakota? Why, why are they so inept? It's so simple and obvious to me. The old Ripley isn't the new Ripley. Kurt Russell cannot be replaced by a woman, no matter how great of an actress or beautiful she is. This is not sexist, it's the intention of the original story. How about a sequel to Fried Green Tomatoes featuring a bunch of male facebook stock holders? I just don't get it, all those millions upon millions upon millions of dollars, only to make at best a ghostly bi-product of what made the original so glorious. Perhaps in the end it is pure cowardice. Those with untold millions just trying to crunch the numbers and follow a formula in order to create the best probability for a return, as though they were real estate agents. The thing is, they are not real estate agents--they are the gatekeepers of our culture, and sadly, like the massive foreign investors and one percenters eating up our precious neighborhoods with mini-apartments, lego like candyland dehumanizing structures and organizations and establishments catering to the hollow, empty soullessness of viral tech invaders, only let us all down. Perhaps this is a rambling diatribe--or perhaps it is an all too real warning. Where shall we be in twenty years? In Fifty? Shall the aristocracy reign supreme, as they have tried to do so, for timeless immorium, under the guise of conservitism?
Shall we let them continue to use PC as a fascist call for conformity and censorship? Or shall we, through the power of the arts, the power of the movies, stop the egregious affront before it's too late? Are you with me?