For Halloween, I decided to go back to one post every weekday. I further considered padding things out with the Evil Possum, Sidekick Carl and other fiction, which offered enough existing and potential material for the spots between the movie reviews. I decided, however, that I had other material I wanted to cover within the holiday timeline, and the first and foremost is the present lineup. Lately, I've actually had time to read, so I've squandered the opportunity rereading novels from the tie-in Aliens line. Here's another pic of the back covers.
The literal centerpiece of this lineup is the official novelization of Aliens, from arch offender Alan Dean Foster. Ironically, the publisher's marks show that it was published by Warner Books, which I confirmed is indeed part of the Warner Bros media mega-conglomerate. Another amusing bit of context is that James Cameron went off on a rant in the novelization of The Abyss, in which he described movie novelizations, including "certain" adaptations of his films, as "cursory, mediocre, often inaccurate, and sometimes downright reprehensible". What I have found striking is that the only Cameron novelizations up to that point were this one and the extremely rare and obscure novelization of the original Terminator by Randall Frakes (who was in fact allowed to write the novelization of the sequel as well). We must therefore take Cameron's complaint as a dig specifically against Foster, and it's a curious one since this isn't by any means bad.
Moving on to the details, the novel is a lot of fun just for the franchise lore. The scenes that were restored for the special edition were all here all along. There's even a cross reference to the cut cocoon scene from the first movie. It also includes some famous scenes that didn't make either cut, particularly the infection of Burke and an attack on Bishop when he's solo. To my further recollection, I was personally confused by the scene with the sentry guns, which I never found compatible with the aliens' posited intelligence. (If I have to accept it, my "head canon" is that the drones figured out they could just throw things at the guns.) I must have seen it in one of the televised versions of the film, and I'm almost certain I read it here before I finally saw the special edition in full.
What's even more intriguing is the detail. There's minor differences, mostly in the order of casualties in the nest shootout. Then there's details of the tech that must have been omitted or simplified for the film, such as a comment that the colonists' trackers are powered by their own bioelectricity (see, of all things, my microchip conspiracy post), and another revelation that the atmosphere processing station is just one of many on the planet. In an extra wonky touch, several lines are bowdlerized, I suspect so school libraries would stock the book. More subtle but most telling are the shifts in the characters. The bonding between Ripley and Newt is played up more, perhaps a bit too much. There's more detail given of Burke's intrigues and possible motivations. Most intriguingly, there's a quite different picture given of Hudson, who in the novel is explicitly a technician more than a fighter, despite his bravado. It is surely an indication how much Bill Paxton ran away with his role, and just how much the finished film was improved as a result.
Moving on, the other two are from a line by Bantam Spectra (also responsible for the first phase of the Star Wars "Expanded Universe"), based on the Darkhorse comics. What has always intrigued me most is why they went to the trouble of adapting material that was already in printed form, even if it was "just" comics. In any case, it worked better than might be expected, and these two are definitely among the best of the odd experiment. Most noteworthy is the first novel of the line by Steve Perry, based on a series published from 1989 to 1990 (see my Alien Contamination review for a little further commentary). The novels and later reprints of the comics infamously replaced Hicks and Newt with renamed characters who happened to have very similar backstories. The book at least fleshes out the conceit by giving more detail of the Newt analog's backstory. Unfortunately, it also makes some pointless revisions that undermine the emotional weight of the comic, particularly replacing the sleazy but explicitly human villains with reprogrammed androids. The "trilogy" was continued with the possibly better novelization of Nightmare Asylum, before hopeless efforts to harmonize with the movies reduced the final book to a muddled mess.
Last and perhaps least, but still by no means bad, is Aliens Berserker from Stephani Perry, who wrote several books in the series either solo or with the elder Perry. It's based on one of the most ambitious of the comics, centered on a squad of convicts who are given the near-suicidal task of locating and infiltrating alien nests. It's all to locate targets for the real firepower, an enormous exosuit that is fused with more than controlled by a psychotic human pilot. All of this gets satisfyingly developed without any major departure from the comic. The arguable exception is a semi-explicit romance between the heroine and the leader of the crew. In the comic, there's unquestioned sympathy for both characters, at least until the usual corporate machinations put them at odds. Here, with the story tellingly retold from a woman's perspective, the romance is a one-time hookup that the lady is already regretting, while the guy is rapidly getting creepy long before the end.
That gets through the post. The one thing I have to add is that this is a front-and-center example of why I don't like the whole idea of "canon", something I previously commented/ ranted on in my Ewoks review. Star Wars was the definitive case and point, since it was supposed to be modeled on folklore and mythology. In many ways, it applies even more with the Alien franchise, especially in light of the controversy and unpopularity of the installments after Aliens. At times, I've been tempting to go with the conceit of replacing Alien 3 with the comics. In reality, "canon" fits the comics even less than the movies, especially in the face of the later stories, which quite routinely contradicted each other with bizarre concepts. What I like and in a sense prefer is that the Dark Horse treatments were never intended to form a consistent "history", which after all is hard enough to achieve in the real world without dispute or debate. It was about taking the movies' characters and premises and telling your own story, and the films themselves could have faired a lot better if they had proceeded in the same spirit. The final irony is that in today's reboot-heavy environment, this is pretty close to status quo, or would be if the studio types would learn not to take themselves too seriously. And with that, I wrap this up. As always, more to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment