The Desert

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2012)

This has been coming a long time now. To my knowledge, the earliest mention is in promotional interviews for the first Alien, with Scott explaining he would like to explore 'origins' in a possible next film. And again when he was contacted in the early stages for the third film, which he would only do if he could 'go back' to the Engineers. So, Scott had a lot of time to think about ways of messing this up, and by the time he finally secured the funds and go-ahead, enough clout as a movie man to do it his way.
His way is never really interesting. He is, like Kubrick whom he has modeled some of his best work after, someone who makes films by obsessively inch-by-inch controlling as he envisions, it never just springs - unlike Kubrick, he doesn't graft this in some bold narrative gambit. Because of this, he has made some epic but soulless films, or of artificial soul.
Alien was so powerful because it wasn't done his way. He had some control. He was as still is on occasion, a powerful cameraman. But, the fabric of the film was the product of visionaries other than whoever happened to be on studio payroll - Moebius, Giger, Foss, guys who designed in coherent damage. And he was open to the adventure of working with these guys, open to incorporate lights from a nearby rehearsal of a laser show by The Who, Texas Chainsaw in his visual arsenal -at the behest of O'Bannon- and so forth.
The result was something machine-controlled -reflected in the Mother-Ash controlled narrative- but injected with chaos from this journey of discovery. It had many kinds of logic, different walls and types of camera - wonderful stuff all-around, one of the best.
This is a failure in a number of ways. The frequent complaint is about the script, which incorporates ideas originally left out from O'Bannon's first script. The whole business with astral visitors for one, typical Von Dainiken crap. Tying this to religion in an obvious , non-intuitive way. Unimaginative 'xeno' creatures. All sorts of other things.
Mainly though, you will see why he gets it off in the replicant. He is our main anchor in the film - someone who is empty inside, so has capacity to be filled by anything he encounters.
We're shown clips of Lawrence of Arabia, which he watches on the long journey to discovery as everybody else sleeps in cryobeds, the only one awake among dreamers. Two quotes by Lawrence, both of them powerful stuff.
"There is nothing in the desert, and no man wants nothing" is the first - the desert of existential soul-searching, which is the main narrative thrust.
"The trick is not minding that it hurts" the second, even more resonant about the quest for answers and meaning.
The thing is, we didn't want to know about the Engineers, none of us. We only thought we did all these years, because as viewers we don't know how or why storytelling affects us deeply. We don't know that when you set us up for nothing, you rejuvenate our capacity to imagine and see unobstructed horizons. That this blank spot in the first Alien enhanced everything else.
We don't know that we incorporate this in our lives every time we surprise ourselves, by loving, by creative passion, by inexplicable inspiration. That we don't "mind" that these things often hurt, these intangible non-things. Deep down, that when we lose ourselves in something, this invigorates because we only lose the self that "minds" in the narrow limits of thought.
Scott should know. The main reason we come to see the more serious stuff is because the filmmaker knows better than we do, he can tune and play us in a new way. This closes portals, limits us as viewers.