Random Thoughts: Alien Christmas

I am lucky enough to have a job that affords me the chance to take leave at Christmas. Well, I can take leave any time I want, but my job also provides three days off, so leave used around Christmas provides more for less—as it were.

My leave coincides with winter break for my university-age daughter and Christmas break for my high school-age daughter, and we are spending a lot of time together. Much of that is just being in the same room, and I can’t quite express how soothing it is to me to have the family all together—just being around each other.

That doesn’t mean we’re not doing stuff together, and yesterday it was a movie afternoon. My eldest is into the horror genre. I most certainly am not, but there are a few intersections between my action and speculative fiction focus and her interest in horror.

You might be thinking Alien or even Predator—maybe Event Horizon—but I went with Aliens.

I actually saw Aliens before I saw Alien. To be fair, Aliens sits far more centrally in my wheelhouse than Alien. Alien is a horror movie inside a science fiction setting, and horror generally isn’t my jam. To me, Aliens is really a sci-fi actioner with horror elements, and really has tension more than horror—though the xenomorphs remain creepy and mommy is just plain disgusting when we first meet her.

It is astounding that this movie came out almost 40 years ago (1986!). It really holds up. My daughters loved it. They usually watch movies while also on their phones, but I checked and once the marines reached the xenomorph lair tracking the colonists, they ignored their phones. That’s a testament to the movie’s storytelling if there is one. I get it, it starts slow (and we were watching the special edition from the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set—my wife’s Christmas gift to me from 2003—so it was even a slower start!). But my daughters hung on until it got good, something they couldn’t do when I tried to introduce them to Yojimbo (black and white? subtitles? very little context with a very slow start? nope). Granted, they were a few years younger back then . . . maybe I need to try again?

There is so much laudable in the storytelling. It’s amazing how defined each minor character is, even those—most of them—who don’t survive that first encounter. While some of this is the writing and directing—James Cameron, both—I think we also have to give credit to the cast. They did a lot with a little, and it is the traits that help define them. Dietrich is noticeably different than Ferro, and I think this was one of the reasons that even the first time I saw it, I was never confused about who was who. I might not have been able to name Dietrich or Ferro after the first watch, but one would be the serious medic and the other would be the acerbic pilot. That’s enough. That gives me enough of a hook to invest.

And another aspect of this was the camaraderie of the characters. We care about them because we already know them—to some degree—and then the reaction of others when they die, that reaction often encapsulated in the cry of loss from a teammate, shouting out their name. The biggest for me was Drake, and a lot of that was the respect and bond that I felt between him and Vasquez. And—of course—her reaction. This absolute badass who gave no fucks was suddenly really emotional. It was—I think—the most emotional we see her through the entire movie, even when she’s facing her own death. For me—even the first time I watched this movie—it landed. It had weight.

There was unanimous consent in the household that if we were there—and there’s a good chance none of us would be there, because our life choices would never lead us there—we would be reacting like Hudson. I loves me some Bill Paxton, and I think it all grows out of this. Yes, he’s a braggart, and yes, he’s panicky, but I feel it. I’m right there with him. And then, when the chips are down, in the xenomorph assault on operations, he does not hesitate. He does not shirk. He is there, in the front line, going down swinging.

Of course we love Ripley, we love Hicks, we love Bishop and Newt, but I think I would be Hudson. Hopefully not as whiney, but if I wasn’t saying it on the outside, I’d feel it on the inside.

And I would hope I would go down like he went down in a situation like that—protecting my friends and (found) family.