alien
Open letter to Ridley Scott
Dear Mr. Scott,
You may already be aware of this but in case you’re not, someone has stolen your name. Yes, your name has been hijacked by some second rate movie maker who made a film called ‘Prometheus’ last year. Well, maybe you are aware of it as it was last year, but I just saw the film today and I was shocked that someone could get away with that.
Now, don’t feel too bad, it has happened before. Back in ’84 some elevator-music production team vomited out a song called ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’, then had the audacity to put the great Stevie Wonder’s name on it! Can you believe it?! The year before, the same Muzak group came up with a dirge called ‘Every Breath You Take’ and had the nerve to put The Police’s name on it! Unbelievable!
There was an ugly rumour going around that you had actually made ‘Prometheus’, but I don’t buy it for a second. After all, your career is so packed full of legendary story-telling, marrying the craft of filmmaking with a powerful narrative that was second to none. So there is no way you made this dreadful movie.
I use ‘Blade Runner’ as an example. You took an amazing novel by Philip K. Dick (adapted for screen by Fancher and Peoples) and made this into an even more amazing film – an all too rare occasion where the film version stands alongside the original novel/book as a contender for best adaptation of a story.
Another example is ‘The Grey’, adapted from the short story ‘Ghost Walker’ by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers. A powerful, compelling, and almost claustrophobic (even though its mainly outdoors, but it’s the weather that makes one feel like screaming “Get me outta here!”) telling of the story, again very authoritatively and heroically, as if you were actually Liam Neeson’s character Ottway. We (the viewing masses) felt for him, cheered for him, and cried for him – a connection that was absolutely nowhere to be found with any of the characters from ‘Prometheus’. We didn’t care one hoot about any of them. Ottway’s rugged, gritty 3-D-ness was in stark contrast to … (See?! I can’t even remember their names!) the 2-dimensional stiffs in ‘Prometheus’.
Which brings me to 1979’s ‘Alien’. Masterful storytelling on a low budget (again in stark contrast to the large budget ‘Prometheus’ must have had), such hunger and passion put into it that it has become legend. The (dare I use the term again) stark contrast between the awesomeness of Sigourney Weaver as the unbreakable Ripley, to what’s-her-name in ‘Prometheus’, who seemed to be trying to emulate, in a very one-dimensional way, a cartoon characterisation of said hero(ine), seemed to betray the failure of the entire movie. Where ‘Alien’ had shit-your-pants-horror-in-deep-space, ‘Prometheus’ had a pale imitation of all that had gone on before. Where ‘Alien’ had a tightly cast group of characters that we could get to know, identify with on their individual levels and peculiarities, and above all care about, ‘Prometheus’ had a disparate bunch of cardboard cutouts that seemed to swell in numbers at some points and then conveniently diminish, without an explanation or demonstration of where the hell they went, let alone a chance to get to know, and above all, care about what happened to them.
Look, it must be a simple explanation: Rupert Murdoch’s great nephew wanted to make a movie and got his best friend (also 12 years old) to write the plot. Or maybe some stoner über-fans of ‘Alien’ wanted to pay homage to it by writing some connecting scenes into a late-night-stoned-out-of-our-heads giggling/brain storming session involving a couple of pencils, a crayon, lots of pop-tarts, chocolate-flavoured rolling papers, some fine skunk and … where was I? Oh yeah, then a giant octopus alien gloops all over the human alien, and then we cut to the token black guy talking to the blond chick (why is she in this movie? She’s hot dude! Oh yeah…) … Then we’ll get Guy Pearce, who’s youngish, looks great, and we’ll cover his head in bad ‘old person’ makeup so it could be anyone under there, but it’s Guy Pearce! Dude! Where’s the lighter?!
Either way, they got several production companies and 20th Century Fox to get behind it and they put your name on it!
I sincerely hope it hasn’t damaged your respectable career, but then again Stevie Wonder and The Police both had huge commercial hits from the fraudulent, faux, dross that was released with their respective names attached, so you never know…
Anyway, just thought I’d let you know,
Kind regards,
Ian
Ian Kitney... 