Films & Fiction Weekly #1

Are movie characters getting dumber? When you look at films like Alien, most of the characters react to the presence of an unknown life form in a pretty intelligent way. None of them are trained for such a situation, but they do their best. Ripley won’t allow Kane onboard with the facehugger attached; they’re horrified when it bursts from his chest but immediately start making plans to catch it, thinking it’s still small; when that fails they bring out the flamethrowers; finally Ripley gives the order to abandon ship and set the self-destruct.

The leaders actually do their best to lead. Some of them just follow orders. It’s true that Lambert starts to crack, but that’s not unreasonable and it takes time.

It’s similar in The Thing. Everyone tries their best to take out this creature, and it’s not because of their stupidity that they fail, but rather because the Thing is so advanced that it is always one step ahead of them. By the time both audience and characters realise just what it’s capable of, it’s too late.

Contrast this with the recent Alien movies, and things like Jurassic World: Rebirth, which rely almost entirely on stupid characters making stupid decisions so their convoluted plots can work.

Why is this? Is it because these tired franchises are running out of ideas and become more ridiculous as a result. Or is it because the writers have never experienced competent leadership and rational responses to crisis themselves, so don’t know how to write it?

Obi-Wan, Ahsoka 2

Will Obi-Wan be making his return to Star Wars? I don’t know, and no one else does. At a recent appearance at Fan Expo Boston, Ewan McGregor appeared to say he was going to film some scenes soon for Ahsoka, as reported by Nexus Point News, who later made a correction.

The thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Obi-Wan did appear in the second season of the show. Season one was very heavy on the cameos, both from Rebels and from earlier Star Wars, with both Captain Rex and Anakin Skywalker making an appearance. It focuses a lot on nostalgia and those “oh, look!” moments to get fans hyped, so another appearance from Ewan McGregor would give it a big boost.

Alien: Earth

Speaking of Alien, wonder why the franchise has tried to become more thoughtful recently? It was never really about that to begin with, but since Prometheus it’s had this glaze of pseudo-philosophy covering it. The new Hulu show Alien: Earth also has this, as it tries to ask the question of what it means to be human with a boatload of Peter Pan references.

This is because one of the main characters is a young girl who had her consciousness transferred into the body of an adult android. Never mind how that could be accomplished in the time period before the first Alien movie, or why these childlike beings are sent on a mission to secure the escaped alien life forms, it just doesn’t work here. Maybe it could have been a good story on its own, but I’m not sure why it’s attached to this franchise. It just slows everything down.

Take Supergunn home!

Superman is now available on digital, this is just five weeks after it premiered in theaters (apparently because you need to see it before Peacemaker S2), and still the problem of declining box office revenue stumps Hollywood. I think it’s clear that studios do this partly to get on the hype train while a movie’s still hot and being talked about, but also that they want to keep as much money for themselves as they can. It’s similar to what they did with streaming. Studios used to have big hits on networks and Netflix, but they wanted to bring it all in-house so set up their own platforms. That hasn’t worked out so well.

I’m sure studios keep a lot more profit from digital sales, whereas box office is split roughly 50-50 with cinemas, but this will work against them in the long-term. Once this becomes the norm and everyone expects to see a movie on Amazon within a month or so, then what’s the point of going to the cinema unless it’s something you’re really excited for? So opening weekends decline, Hollywood doubles down and cinema suffers even more.

If studios really want to get back to where they were in 2018/19, they should stop treating cinemas and cinemagoers like enemies and realise it’s all symbiotic. If they win, you win; if they fail, you fail. Otherwise we’ll all be stuck watching streaming movies like Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds forever.

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This is the first in a new series of weekly posts where I look back at some of the big releases and entertainment news from the last week. If that interests you then please subscribe below so you never miss a post!