NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
This morning I was struck by the realization that Ive been going to movies for fifty years now; starting when I was eighteen months old, my mother would take me on a streetcar every Thursday togo shopping, have lunch, and go to a matinee and stage show at thePantages or the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles. Clearly I like movies and I usually find something enjoyable even about bad ones. I can hardly remember a time when I have seriously considered walking out of a film. But I considered it yesterday afternoon asI was watching Aliens 3; I was thinking it was the most unremittingly unpleasant film viewing experience I could remember.
This reaction has to be seen in the context of my own tastes and biases. Science fiction and horror films are my least favorite genres. I dont enjoy being frightened in the movies, as some people clearly do. Nonetheless, knowing that nearly every member the womens community in Tallahassee where I lived at the times wildly enthusiastic about Sigourney Weavers Ripley, I did bring myself to see Aliens the second film in this series, and Image to admit, I too, was entertained and pleased by the sight otis powerful female hero doing her Rambo number against what feminist theorist Lynda Zwinger called the uncanny alien bug mother.
Since Ripley's ongoing battles against this monster and against the greedy machinations of the Company back home, which wants to capture the monster and use it as a biological warfare weapon, have become sort of feminist cult films, I figured Id better be among the first to check out Aliens 3 and see what happened to Ripley and Newt (the little girl she rescued from the monster at the end Aliens). Well, theyve fallen on hard times. They crash lardner an island used as a prison for 25 of the hardest core criminals on earth murderers, rapists, etc. all of whom have become members of a kind of Christian fundamentalist cult that hasnt done a thing to temper their rampant misogyny. Everyone else on the space capsule bringing the sleeping survivors of the Nostromo back to earth has died except Ripley. Shes been asleep for 50 years or so and has been shaken up in the crash, so shes looking a little the worse for wear with a black eye and deathly pallor.
Furthermore in this latter day version of a medieval dungeon shes landed they dress her in convict gray and shave herded which makes her fit right in with the inmates. The only person there whos even remotely pleasant is the doctor, himself afore inmate, with whom Ripley asks to have sex (its been over 50 years, you know); while we dont see them in the act, the implication was it was purely the utilitarian satisfaction of andre, still Ripley has to pay the price for it later on. The whole visual milieu of the film is grim. The color spectrum is dark browns and blacks, dirty tans and grays, fiery, hellish yellows and reds. The only spots of other colors are a few pieces of turquoise blue stained glass in the doctors quarters, told you know he had some aesthetic sensibilities, I guess. The seti's something like an abandoned underground steel mill with miles of filthy, rotting, decaying tunnels.
The only organic matter we see blood and gore, the monster, and this wholly gruesome pack of convicts who do, out of terror and the notion they have nothing those, do come together under Ripley's leadership to try to kill teething with no weapons but the decaying prison itself to use. Aliens at least had some spots of humorous repartee. Aliens 3 has almost none. Its grim, grim, grim. And though Sigourney has a few heroic moments, shes sick and weak and not up to her previous standards. Though this time I think she finally does inthe alien bug mother and its children.
I hope so, I dont think the world can use yet another Alien movie.
Free research essays on topics related to: aliens, ripley, 50 years, monster, shes
Research essay sample on Alien Bug Mother Grim Grim Aliens
