In a world verbed by noun

[gominokouhai]

Today I was accosted by a black-market delicatessen. Ratty-looking bloke pulls me aside as I'm leaving the supermarket, asks me if I'm looking forward to Christmas. (The answer, as ever, is no.) He offers me all manner of otherworldly festive delights. I am resistant. He suggests I might like to buy something for the Missis. While he's talking, a packet of corned beef falls out of his jacket.

You're selling me corned beef for Christmas? Happy Yuletide, Darling. I bought you this token of my affection from a dodgy man at the bus stop.

Vaguely related: yesterday in the Scotsman there was a letter complaining that the letters complaining that Christmas starts earlier every year are starting earlier every year. I am tempted to take this further opportunity to determine the depth of the Scotsman's call stack.

~

I've been trying to watch Alien³ over the last few evenings, mostly to find out just how bad it really is. It's a huge disappointment after the first two films, and it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Apparently Ripley dies at the end: I've not got that far yet, but it doesn't matter, because they massacred her character in the first five minutes, leaving me with a film entirely full of people I don't care about, an unknown woman who looks like Sigourney Weaver, and an alien that looks naff.

Our heroine aside, everyone in this film is a bluff working-class Northerner with a penchant for theatrical diction. I do like the concept of the entire cast of Brassed Off as Future Space Rapists on a prison planet. That must have been one hell of an elevator pitch.

(Ever the voice of reason, scotm informs me that Brassed Off wasn't made until four years after Alien³, so such an elevator pitch is unlikely. The solution is obvious: David Fincher travelled back in time after seeing Brassed Off to pitch Alien³ to Fox. The residual time-dilation effects are why the film runs so slowly.)

The dramatic possibilities of grimdark Brassed Off in space, with gore are legion, and were totally neglected in Alien³. I think it's time we explored this vision now.

Disaster strikes tightly-knit community of the mining planet of Sheffield-426. The colliery has been shut down because of the xenomorph attacks. Destitution is rife; also, eviscerated corpses are everywhere. There's a comic-relief mortuary worker who's the only person still in employment. Fortunately, the Space Miners rediscover their spirit—and perhaps even a little romance—when they find they can defeat the alien with the power of SONG! Pom, pom, parp.

It's scared of fire! Quickly, play the trumpet section from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown!

I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A Space Tuba, with over- and under-mounted thirty-millimeter trombones.

In Space, nobody can hear you do the glissando from the Wallace and Gromit theme.

I think I've figured out where Alien³ went wrong. In the first film, it crept around killing people. In the second film, it turned lights on and off, so it could operate simple machinery. The aliens were getting smarter. In the third film, the alien kills off all the characters in descending order of interestingness, leaving it a bloody mess full of insipid redshirts by the half-way point. Thus, the xenomorph provides literary critique on the script of the film itself. Presumably, by Alien Resurrection, the alien has become intelligent enough to write fart jokes into new episodes of Doctor Who.

Comments

[leynos]

Am I evil for saying that Alien³ is actually my favourite of the trilogy?

[scotm]

No. But you're definitely weird. :)

The film is a gigantic depression metaphor. Richard Curtis (Vincent and the Doctor) wasn't the first to use xenomorphs as such.

But, nicely understated rebuttal to the existence of Resurrection.

[gominokouhai]

> The film is a gigantic depression metaphor

You've mentioned this before and I'm not sure where you're getting it from. The film is depressing. That's not the same thing.