Herein is my spoiler free review of Alien Romulus

Here is my spoiler free review of Alien: Romulus.

First off, I really liked it. There was a lot of reference to previous films and there were some amazing visuals throughout the story. The musical score was a nice blend of what we heard on the older films kind of cutting in with this new iteration. And I was impressed in how Disney (which now owns 20th Century Fox) was able to thread this line of grossness and gore in a way that didn't seem "overwhelming." Alien at its most basic "boiled down" point, is a singular creation of H.R. Giger, who was an artist perhaps a little too obsessed...can I say that?...with body horror.

Where the movie might have failed (I think) is pacing. But this is a small nitpick. Events seemed rushed at certain points, and some of the horror didn't feel earned because it literally happened too quickly (in my opinion). For example, there were several times when I thought to myself: does the xenomorph grow that quickly? And maybe it does, but I just thought that it took longer in previous iterations of where we have seen the creature.

The world-building in the movie also took a leap forward as far as the Alien verse goes. We got introduced to another world whose atmosphere is so polluted and cloud covered that there is no daylight at all from the planet's sun. However, people toil on this world, mining things for Weyland-Yutani (which is the corporation of all things evil in the Alien-verse).

In Alien: Romulus, the theme was "dynastic decay." Allow me to elaborate. In the 2090's (Prometheus timeline), Weyland Corporation is an upscale organization that seems to consist mostly of white collar information workers researching cutting-edge technologies. Its ships are streamlined, shiny, and full of advanced equipment.

Fifty years later, Weyland-Yutani's revenue appears to come mostly from extractive industries, and most of its employees appear to be little more than slaves trapped on dead-end colony worlds. It's as if Apple morphed into Haliburton. Weyland (the man in Prometheus) wanted to find alien life in the hopes of discovering immortality. But his company mainly wants to use alien life to create new product lines. It ends up being an interesting commentary on the public's disenchantment with big tech.

I want to finish my observations by saying that the final act of the movie will put you on the edge of your seat. This is a big-budget blockbuster despite the fact that it came out so close to the end of August (where a lot of movies go to die from the summer release). Alien: Romulus was a delightful end to a lackluster movie season that (I think) started really strong with Dune but had that saggy middle that all novelists fear will happen to their magnum opus.

Alien: Romulus also gave me an insight to a previous scene in Prometheus that never made sense to me. For those of you who have seen Prometheus, do you remember that big room that had all of the jars containing the black goo all placed in rows in front of the huge stone face? I think that the stone face was the creator of the black goo...a statue of one of the engineers...and that room of cannisters was a testimony to that person's failure to find the correct formula that the engineers needed. Anyway...those are my thoughts on the Alien verse and its latest movie.

Tobler-9 from Alien (2022) is a downright nightmarish world.

For long time followers of my blog, y'all know I like the Alien franchise, which includes the prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This love also extends to comic books. I've been reading one in particular, which is a mini-series called Alien (2022), and it follows a group of elite colonial marines who are all synthetics (think of super-powered humans) being tasked to infiltrate a former human colony called Tobler-9. These are people who can jump fifty feet and lift bulldozers above their heads, etc.

That being said, this new world that was introduced into the alien mythology last year is pretty scary. In this timeline, humanity is dying and only rare biotechnology has even the slightest hope of being able to save us. The only trick is that humanity has to get this biotechnology from Tobler-9, which is a "paradise lost." They explain that nothing organic could possibly survive on its surface, prompting the United Systems to reach out to Steel Team (the synthetics I mentioned above) who are the only ones who have a shot at retrieving said biotechnology. As I've been reading the comic, the hostility of the planet is pretty crazy. But to Steel Team's surprise, they've encountered people alive on the planet, this despite some pretty badass alien drones and radioactive rain. Take a look at this panel:

So yeah...the whole planet has been irradiated by atomics causing the rain to be lethal. I haven't quite gotten to the point in the comics that explains how people have been able to live on this planet. However, they did explain that the radiation in the water should be enough to make their skin peel off. But this apparently isn't happening (the mystery deepens) even though they apparently have managed to survive by hiding in underground bunkers, and moving to other ones quickly if a hive of xenomorphs that they call the "Icarus strain" happens upon them. Here's a panel featuring one of the bunkers:

Anyway, the biologic that Steel Team needs is an egg from one of the Icarus strain monsters. It turns out that this new strain has the potential to help the human race survive in badly irradiated places. However, getting an egg is not going to be easy. Here's a panel from the comic that explains why:

The black lady (survivor) who has lived on Tobler-9 all this time and says "Human Hosts, Always" in the above panel is called "Melody." She goes on to say that there is "too much of us in them, if they were beasts before they are proper monsters now," which sounds like a really bad thing.

Anyway, it's been a fun read thus far and there are plot twists, tragedies, and back-stabbing betrayals that (of course) happen to our would-be heroes. It wouldn't be an "alien" story if that kind of thing didn't occur. The whole "alien apocalypse aesthetic" is something I like, and I think it is visually stunning whether it is on screen or in a comic panel. It's hard not to think of an apocalypse scenario as deeply interesting, especially when the overall reason for it happening in the first place seems derived from the dark side of human nature more than it just being an accidental occurrence. "We did it to ourselves!" It's hard not to really want to peel back the layers on that statement. And Tobler-9 is one hell of a nightmarish world to serve as the backdrop on this story.

Anyone else out there reading along in this comic? If so, what do you think?

I have thoughts on the Alien franchise that I want to share.

So, science fiction news broke this weekend about the Alien franchise that is now moving to a television series headed by Noah Hawley. I've very much liked Noah Hawley's takes (episodic television series and not movies) on Fargo and Legion. Heck, based on Legion alone, I think he will bring a really interesting creepiness to the Alien franchise. With the ability to expand outward in episode after episode, he won't be constrained by time. He won't have to resort to the idea that people are just trapped on a spaceship, or they are trapped on a planet, or they are trapped in one situation or another. This is how Alien movies have been done up until now. And I think this is a great opportunity to step away from the movies and tell a different story about the Engineers (visible in the Alien prequel of Prometheus), and the danger of corporate greed looking for a biological weapon to keep those who don't support their interests in line.

However, Ridley Scott is not a fan of the idea. He doesn't like that the story will be set on Earth. In Hawley's words he wants to explore the idea of "What happens if you can't contain it?" And then wants to follow up with (assumedly) the destruction of Earth, which I think could be incredible television. Ridley Scott (who coined the original idea of keeping the aliens away from Earth) says that "It'll never be as good as the first one." In the interview with The Independent Scott said that having the xenomorph creature at the center of the story is not what audiences want.

Okay...I think that Scott obviously knows his own creation better than anyone. But I want to put forth another idea. The thing that puts Alien in its best light is the mystery. It is the impending horror without showing a thing. It's very Lovecraftian in that way. If I was going to do something with H.P. Lovecraft's work (and I had the resources to do it well), I wouldn't show the Great Old Ones on the screen except in very rare instances to inspire awe. I believe the same thing could also work in an extended series...with the horrific elements of the xenomorph being talked about and shown in contrast to the actual creature itself. Of course, Aliens showed us that massive amounts of xenomorphs being slaughtered with futuristic weapons can also be nice, as it all felt very hopeless despite all that firepower.

Scott's take on Hawley's ability to play in the universe he created also feels really defensive. In other words, why would a show be measured against one of (arguably) the best horror movies ever made?" And whether or not you like any of the sequels, you have to admit that Alien by itself is a masterpiece. In my humble opinion, the plot is simple yet deviously smart, with subtle layers to it that one doesn't even realize until the film has played itself out. To explain further, I don't know if Hawley's Fargo is any better than the movie it's based on either. But it doesn't matter, because I enjoy them both.

Anyway, when I learned that this project is going forward, I felt a rush of endorphins. It will probably be coming out next year, and it will air on the FX network, which is also where Hawley's other series tend to land. I guess we will soon see if Alien can make the transition to television and obtain a whole new demographic of fans.

I really love this alternate Alien movie poster by the artist Gabz.

The website io9 recently talked about an art show that's happening at the Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, New York for the artist Gabz (real name Grzegorz Domaradzki), who created this piece below (and others for Star Wars) that have gathered fame for their ability to fool the eye into thinking it's a photograph. I think the term for this kind of art is "photo realism," and it's super hard to do.

What do I love about it? The details are great. Not only is the centerpiece instantly recognizable as belonging to Sigourney Weaver, but the font looks like an actual print job. The details of the xenomorphs on both sides of her face are clearly an homage to Giger in that they are rendered perfectly, just as he would have done with his famous airbrush. And there are swirls within swirls. Good Alien art has always been heavy on the details. That was a thing that Giger prided himself on: detailing even the smallest corner of a massive painting so that there were objects that caught the eye that were interesting and macabre. The only thing really missing from this piece is Jones the cat.

I also think there is some foreshadowing going on with this poster. There are four xenomorph heads that are directly in contact with Ripley's space suit, possibly hinting at Alien movies 1 through 4. Additionally, I love that she seems to be transforming into a xenomorph (or has xenomorph traits) as her long association with this franchise changes her physiology permanently by the movie Alien 4. You can see what I'm talking about with the appearance of the vein-like structures that touch both cheeks.

I wonder why Alien couldn't keep the train driving firmly on the rails after Aliens. It's so frustrating, as I've seen Bond movie after Bond movie come out, and most of them are entertaining. The same goes for the Fast & Furious movies. Why did those franchises work out so well, and Alien just bombed? Maybe it was the lack of anything new to do with the story, which forced writers to revisit horror after horror to try and provide more shock value with each telling. I mean, there's only so much a person can be shocked about, especially when the first movie pretty much gives the world a glimpse of a monster and a physical gestation cycle that was never seen before in books or in film.

So maybe the search for shock value is what ultimately made the Alien franchise movies fail beyond the first two. If that is true, at least there are artists who are continually inspired by the universe established by H.R. Giger to keep moving forward with works (such as the one above) inspired by one of the greatest fictional monsters ever imagined.

I get to introduce some kids to the Alien universe so let's all celebrate by feasting on some really great fan art.

Because my mind sometimes ruminates on dark thoughts, and also because I've gotten permission from the mom of the two teens that watch movies with me to introduce them to the Alien franchise, I'm posting some of my favorite fan art that has been created over the years to celebrate Alien. Enjoy.

by Rory Kurtz

By Mike Saputo

By Mark Englert

By Thomas Walker

By Louis Solis

Soundtrack artwork from Mondo

By Laurent Durleux

There are a lot of similarities between the Jurassic Park franchise and the Alien franchise.

There are spoilers in this post for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Regarding the title, it certainly wasn't intended that way, or at least that's what it seems like to me. Alien was this movie put together by a director (Ridley Scott) that wanted to tell a story of people coming across an alien ship marooned on a desolate planet, only to become pawns in a greater plot from a company that wanted to harvest the xenomorph in order to weaponize it. As far as science-fiction goes, this stuff is "bread and butter" for the genre and Alien really did do a great job of giving us some on screen running and screaming that has been duplicated over and over by copycats.

Later on, when Ridley Scott decided that he was going to add to the mythology with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, he gave us the doomed story of an advanced pre-human civilization dubbed "The Engineers" whose whole shtick was to mess with the genetic code in order to create weaponized life that they could do with as they choose. Of course we know that even advanced peoples apparently are not ready for this particular "Pandora's box" and what the movies show us to an exhausting degree is that no one is ready to deal with the monsters of genetically-engineered life.

Well the Jurassic Park franchise does exactly that too, and I want to point out that it also is based on the whole "people are running around and screaming." I would even go so far as to say that running from monsters and screaming the entire time is the backbone of the franchise. And back to my point...with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which I saw this weekend, the story of genetic engineering taken too far is unavoidable. It practically smacks you in the face. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the same story line as Prometheus, only instead of Alien xenomorphs we have dinosaurs that eat your face. But the same result is that humanity has to deal with a kind of animal that was engineered to wholly wreck an ecosystem that is incapable of dealing with its power.

For what it's worth, I like both franchises, i.e., Jurassic Park and Aliens. But I felt it was worth pointing out that I see a lot of similarities in these movies. Only the setting and the kind of monster are different, but I think the moral is still the same. Having settled this in my head now, I want to ask true die-hard fans of the Alien movies (I know a couple) if they are also die-hard fans of The Jurassic Park movies. I'm wondering if they even on a subconscious level understand that the movies and the stories are the same thing. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Oh and question for those who wish to leave a comment: did you like the movie? It made a whopping $700 million this weekend, so you know it's going to have another sequel. As far as I can tell, the cash machine that is Jurassic Park is the goose that laid the golden egg.

Dear H.R. Giger, may you find the peace in death that eluded you in life

To say H.R. Giger had his demons is an understatement. The man's life was fraught with troubles. He had a girlfriend commit suicide, a well-known rivalry with friend and fellow artist Salvadore Dalí, and had a mind filled with so many horrific images that I must admit, as much as I love staring at them I would not want to spend a minute in any one were they to become a reality. I think he was as brilliant as he was disturbing, and I think the world is somehow diminished now that he's gone. And it's important when viewing his art to try and see it through the lens of his own eye: Giger wasn't painting fantasy but showing us the modern world as he saw it. Disturbing right? Take a look at this image.

The creator of the Xenomorph (and the mythology that surrounded it) from the original Alien and Prometheus movies died as a result of injuries suffered when he fell down the stairs at his home. He was 74. My dad often tells me that "falls take out most old people." Ridley Scott and Giger had meltdowns that became legendary on the set of Alien, as the artist had a vision that didn't quite match up with the famed director's own and this led to much fighting and bickering and for Giger being labeled "Impossible to work with." Giger's work both graced and inspired aspects of Species, Poltergeist 2, Alejandro Jodorwsky's Dune, and Batman Forever (they should have used his Batmobile design).

By all accounts, he was a quiet and subdued individual. I'd love to take a stroll in his Swiss gallery some day. I think that his art will go on to escalate in price now that he's dead and become prized among collectors in the future (even moreso than it is now). When I watch Alien and Prometheus and see the derelict spacecraft, it makes me think that what I'm looking at is something so utterly inconceivable in a human mind that it has to come from another world. I don't ever get that watching Star Trek or Star Wars. There are traces of humanity in nearly all science fiction designs. Not so with Giger. He was one of a kind, able to scare the bejeezus out of me, and was able to tap into visceral, instinctual fears that was the stuff of nightmares.

Technology is hard to define and sometimes a little frightening

I don't even know what technology is anymore, and that's weird given that my career is being a Technical Support Specialist. I guess I should clarify my statement. I know an iPad is technology. I also know that a computer is technology. But I failed to recognize Tesla as a technology company. I thought it was a car company. I have been corrected on this though. Tesla is a "tech" stock and not an "auto" stock like Ford or GM. Who knew?

Tesla Model S cockpit. It's not a car. It's technology.

Then their's Under Armour. Under Armour is not an apparel stock like Nike, even though Nike is the one it gets compared to most often. Nope, Under Armor is also a "technology" stock.

So I guess I shouldn't be confused about biological technology either. I read in Nature (the international weekly journal of science) about a semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet. If you're confused, here's a quote from the article that you can locate HERE:

"Organisms are defined by the information encoded in their genomes, and since the origin of life this information has been encoded using a two-base-pair genetic alphabet (A–T and G–C). In vitro, the alphabet has been expanded to include several unnatural base pairs (UBPs). We have developed a class of UBPs formed between nucleotides bearing hydrophobic nucleobases, exemplified by the pair formed between d5SICS and dNaM (d5SICS–dNaM), which is efficiently PCR-amplified and transcribed in vitro, and whose unique mechanism of replication has been characterized. However, expansion of an organism’s genetic alphabet presents new and unprecedented challenges: the unnatural nucleoside triphosphates must be available inside the cell; endogenous polymerases must be able to use the unnatural triphosphates to faithfully replicate DNA containing the UBP within the complex cellular milieu; and finally, the UBP must be stable in the presence of pathways that maintain the integrity of DNA."

To make a long story short, scientists have taken a plasmid and given it three base pairs. In nature, there are only two base pairs made of adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). Let me make this clear: everything in the world...the entire "tree of life" that Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about on Cosmos...is born out of information encoded on differing arrangements of those "building block" bases. And science has just introduced two "new" bases and made pairs with them.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is technology. I seriously feel like quoting Steve Jobs right now. I know, I know, I've been on a Steve Jobs tear lately but the man had so many good things to say. So indulge me. Here's the quote: "Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?" but the boy asks, 'What can I do with it?"

I feel like an old man here because not only am I asking "what is it?" but I'm a little afraid of the answer. And there's no part of me that wants to ask, "What can I do with it?" These third base pairs don't have any information on them. They are a blank slate waiting for scientists to encode whatever they would like to encode on them. Sure, scientists claim that by expanding the genetic alphabet, more data can lead to the development of new drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines, and nanomaterials. And science fiction is replete with examples of fictional characters making claims like this. But from reading science fiction, we also know that something like this could also lead to weapons. Seriously, it's literally a tired old trope to have the military show up in some scientific lab and pose the question, "How can this be weaponized?"

I am reminded of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and man who is known as the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer speaking in a 1965 television broadcast about the moments following the Trinity atomic bomb test said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." You should watch this video because you can feel that he's not exactly happy about this. That's probably because he knew what he'd just done: ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

When the United States dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima on the morning of August 6th, 1945, the Japanese had no idea what had happened. All communication with that city just ended. The fate of Hiroshima was a complete mystery until they had someone fly over there in an airplane to look out a window and tell them what they saw. Remember Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park? "Yeah. Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

In an article on io9 about this invention, author George Dvorsky said that the unnatural DNA has a built-in safety mechanism; the modified plasmid can only survive if it's fed artificial nucleotides required to replicate the DNA. My skepticism rears its ugly head in this gif:

I admit that my knowledge of genetics is puny. But some kinds of technology scare me because I don't understand them. That (and to be honest) there's a part of me that's learned to distrust humanity in general. Best intentions often go awry, and the world does not have a shortage of psychopaths the last time I checked.

The Deacon alien from "Prometheus", a biologically engineered weapon.

Falling Skies emphasizes the importance of fathers

There may be some spoilers in this blog post. >,<

Three months of in-world time has passed between last season and the start of this one. First off, I love the alien invasion story of Falling Skies, and I was glued to my seat last night for the two-hour season two premiere. If you are a fan of dystopian apocalyptics, then you might want to give this science-fiction drama a try. It has all the elements. People overcoming huge obstacles to ban together to drive aliens who have already conquered Earth back into space, cute boys and girls (there are no fat people in this show and everyone is in shape despite the scarcity of food resources), and computer generated effects galore. The fact that everyone is gorgeous doesn't bother me. I'm pretty much used to it and have grown to accept/expect it in my television.

Drew Roy plays Hal Mason in Falling Skies.

But behind all the glitz of the show's significant budget, good writing, and eye candy, there are solid themes of fatherhood. Noah Wylie plays Tom and the most important thing to him in the world are his three sons. And it's just refreshing for me to see a single dad portrayed in such a good light. On top of that he's an exceptional former school teacher, so he's really smart, reads, and is constantly teaching his sons how to grow into good men with strong moral compasses. The other thing that I appreciate about the show is that it steers clear of religion for the most part. People are conquering their own fears and their insecurities through love, companionship, and dealing with the situations without resorting to on-screen prayer to alleviate despair.

Ben Mason teaching Matt Mason (his little brother) how to shoot skitters (aliens) so that he can defend
himself. I really like Ben Mason. He's probably the most interesting character right now outside of Tom. He's
kind of become a super warrior because he has alien DNA or something inside of him now. He can run
marathons without tiring, can hear and see things no one else can, and is really strong--like the kind
that can bench press a Toyota truck.

They've also borrowed a page from H.R. Geiger and the Alien franchise by using creepy body invasion. The alien conquerors control human children with biological harnesses and then last night, we saw the doctor pull a weird worm thing out of Tom's eye that later turned into a metal ball bearing and later still, a butterfly with teeth sharp enough to cut glass.

I really need to add this button to my sidebar. It's just too cool.

So if you are a fan of science-fiction, join the saga of the 2nd Mass (Second Massachusetts) as they resist the invaders from another world. It's on TNT on Sunday's this summer. I'm so glad I have a DVR so that I can record True Blood (which shows at the same time).

Questions I want answered this season:

1) What's up with Ben? Is he ever going to be truly safe from the aliens?

2) What did the aliens do to Tom? They really screwed him up. Did they put more of those worms in his body?

3) What does the flying butterfly worm thing do aside from cut glass?

4) Why did they let all the people go at th same time as Tom by just dropping them off in a field? Then they massacred them while Tom walked off? It's clear that they did not value the other humans at all, but put extreme value on Tom. I'm thinking it has something to do with his son Ben. It also seemed like they wanted Tom to see that they spared him.

Prometheus Review With Spoilers

This is a picture of Shaw's baby (the tentacled monster) taking out the lone
 space jockey on the planet that the crew awoke from a 2000 year-old hyper sleep.
 When the space jockey woke up, he was pissed and started killing everyone.
There was no explanation. He shares the same genetic code as a human, but
 clearly was very unhappy that humans had landed on the planet and had
 one thing in mind: pilot a ship filled with biological weapons to destroy Earth. Shaw
stopped him and basically opened a door that had the monster tentacled creature
 behind it that grabbed the space jockey that would have killed her. This was the biggest
face-hugger I have ever seen. It was really impressive.

Well I saw Prometheus at the midnight showing last Thursday, and I absolutely loved it. Here are the elements that fired my imagination:

1) The 3D was stunning. It wasn't too dark or too light, and it didn't feel like they were purposely going out of their way to make trick shots for a 3D audience. This is definitely a "big screen" film, and I feel that if you are a fan of these movies, you definitely want to invest the money to see it in IMAX if you can.

2) Michael Fassbender as David was the most interesting android ever. There are parts where he is on the spaceship, engaging in sports by himself to clearly wile away the time and then he also emulates Peter O'Toole's character in Lawrence of Arabia (by the way Fassbender looks a lot like a young Peter O'Toole, and I had previously not noticed this connection). Anyway, why would an android need to use old movies and sports to entertain himself unless he was bored? And this begs another question...can computers be bored? I have no idea. But it's an intriguing concept. Roger Ebert pointed out in his review that Peter Weyland referred to David as the "son I never had". Charlize Theron plays the daughter of Peter Weyland and there was definitely sibling rivalry there as well as a startling physical appearance (both blond, both tall, etc.). But Peter Weyland strips David of humanity by declaring him soulless. Is this statement true though? I don't know.

3) The concept of parents. David the android says in one scene that "all children secretly want their parents to die". I thought this was fascinating that someone would even say this. I for one don't want my parents to die. I kind of feel that having my parents die will be the thing that makes me really aware of my mortality--that I too can and will die. And I kind of wonder if David said this because he's essentially immortal and wants to know what it will feel like to die and doesn't believe he can do so UNLESS the ones who created him perish.

Additionally, in Prometheus, one of the characters named Shaw is obsessed with finding an explanation of "where do humans come from?" She's Christian in the movie, which suggests to me that she already has an answer. So why then is she doing all of this searching? Does she want proof? Is belief not enough for her? Maybe there is something to the statement "All fanatics hide a secret doubt". What do you think?

Basically, I see Shaw's quest as a search for parentage of some kind and when she finds it, the parents are not what she was expecting. In fact, they're pretty terrifying. Physically, the "space jockeys" look like the most muscular humans on earth, only half again as tall. Take the offspring of NFL superstars like Eli Manning and Tom Brady and couple that genetic code with really tall supermodels for about three hundred years and then smack that offspring with an ugly stick, and you'd probably end up with a space jockey. So really...not all that far-fetched.

And the gist of Prometheus is that this "super race" created humans (basically destroying all of her beliefs in one fell blow) and to top it off, they're jerks. They offer no explanation for what they did, and it looks like they changed their mind about humanity. In other words, the stuff on the world that the Prometheus visits is a biological weapon. The alien xenomorph is a creation manufactured in a lab somewhere and meant to deploy against the human race to wipe us out. But why?

4) The unanswered questions. The end of the show has Shaw zooming off in a space jockey ship with David along for the ride and she isn't going back to Earth. She's going for the Engineer's (space jockey) homeworld. But what does she hope to find there? They clearly wanted humans dead. However, it's been 2000 years since the engineers on this world were in touch with their core civilization. Did something happen to them? Did they get wiped out by their own biological weapons? Or maybe they were designing a weapon to take out their own parents (the ones that created them).

All in all, Prometheus is the magnificent film that I was hoping for, so I'm pleased. I just hope it makes enough money to warrant a sequel. I want answers that the film didn't provide. And I would also like to see how the first Alien movie and the events in Prometheus connect. Where did the derelict spacecraft on LV-426 come from as well as the huge cargo of eggs. The end of Prometheus showed the birth of a xenomorph, but that's basically a harmless lifeform as the planet had no indigenous population really (unless the alien could learn to pilot an empty ship).

Xenomorph

Because Prometheus is just around the corner (days are counting down) and I need to talk about something that begins with an "X", I'm choosing to write about the Alien xenomorph.

Most people who have seen the movie Alien find the xenomorph itself pretty disturbing. There is also something totally and undeniably horrifying about the derelict spacecraft in which the eggs are found. The details shown in the sketches of the book "Giger's Alien" imply that the spacecraft (that we see in the Prometheus trailer) has a design and function related to something unimaginably malignant by any human standard of the definition of "malignancy". Perhaps "malignancy" is not even the right word here. The derelict goes beyond that. It encompasses an entire system of systematic obliteration of life which goes beyond any human definition of evil. 

I think it's a good thing that this object (and creature) exists only in our fantasies. I think it would be disturbing to share the universe with a species as terrible and horrific as the one envisioned by H.R. Giger (the creator of the Xenomorph creature).

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As a writer of science-fiction, I've taken many cues from Mr. Giger in my own work. In "Slipstream" I have a god-like being who went insane when his personality split down the middle. The evil side of this god-like being wanted nothing to do with the good, law-abiding side. So much so, that it cut itself in half and replaced the human aspect of itself with machine. Horrific as that may sound, both sides of this avatar survive independently of one another. To know more, well, I hope you'll invest in my book.

Generally speaking, however, it's this sort of characteristic that's a trait of Giger's biomechanical style: I don't think there are many (intelligent) people who would like to see Giger's worlds being realized, because if such was the case, they would be in a heck of a lot of trouble. And the same goes for the dystopian world of Avalon in my book. It's been described as a dark fantasy filled with exciting and original monsters, if not a bit horrific.

But I bow to the master that is H.R. Giger. I wonder how this man (H.R. Giger) even sleeps at night, with the thoughts that must occupy his head.

H.R. Giger's Alien movie concept art revisited in Prometheus

H.R. Giger is in my opinion, a mad genius. I own a couple of his "coffee table" art books, and they are scary stuff. I own Biomechanics, H.R. Giger's Alien, and his Necronomicon. In reading about him, I discovered that within his lifetime he has rubbed elbows with just about every major artist in the world including Ridley Scott and Salvatore Dali. He's had a girlfriend that committed suicide, is the atypical primadonna with huge demands and uncompromising work ethic, and is notoriously difficult to work with.

But his art captures my imagination the same as artist Michael Whelan (if you don't know who this is, you could google his name). Or, you could just visit my post that I wrote on Michael Whelan HERE. I also talk about him extensively on a post on general cover art featuring books by Patrick Dilloway, Cindy Borgne, and Andrew Leon. You can find that post located HERE.

In my ever growing excitement for this summer's Prometheus, I revisited the afore-mentioned H.R. Giger's Alien, and it looks like to me, from the trailers that are now available for viewing online, that Ridley Scott is revisiting the ground-breaking artwork that this crazy guy created for 20th Century Fox (that was scrapped from the 1978 film). Here are my comparisons.

First off the Alien Pyramid concept in which H.R. Giger originally wanted 20th Century Fox to use on the planet LV-426 (NOTE: You can click on these to make the picture bigger for your viewing pleasure).

Contrast this image above with the one that I pulled from the Prometheus trailer below:

And then there is H.R. Giger's Alien Heiroglyphics which also got scrapped from the original 1978 film:

Compare this with the heiroglyphic sequence that I captured from the theatrical trailer in which Michael Fassbender utters "Tell me that you can read this..."

And of course, they are still going with the original design for the derelict spacecraft, the space jockey pilot, and the interior of the ship--all of which was designed by H.R. Giger. Since the derelict spacecraft features so prominently in the trailer, I'm not including screen captures of it. But it is identical to the drawings below. Note the odd shape of the portals that lead into the derelict spacecraft from the original Alien movie. They are intentionally shaped like a vagina because H.R. Giger uses a lot of phallic symbols and vaginas in his artwork (and I mean tons).

Interesting, eh?