The new documentary MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN promises to tell the untold story of Ridley Scott's 1979 classic. Alas, for any Alien fan who has purchased the LaserDisc, Boxed Anthology on BluRay or even casually invested in the film's history, there are very few new treasures.
Filmmaker Alexander O. Phiippe created a film doc I loved called "78/52" detailing Hitchcock's classic "Psycho", but his inspiration seems to have failed and got mired in PC culture this time around.
We see a bit of new footage behind the scenes, plenty of history of the brilliantly twisted HR Giger and his hyper sexualized designs of the Alien, some great input from writer Dan O'Bannon and his widow, but little new.
The one completely new angle that Philippe adds is a boring, poorly conceived bookend scene of ancient Greek witches in a desperate attempt to explore the roots of Alien's story arc.
There's also some very 2019 psychological ramblings about the creators and how the Aliens depict a patriarchal society, blah blah,blah. Does every film from 40 years ago have to be forced through the tiny little minds of today's society police to be acceptable?
Alien fans don't give a crap about the politics of the film, anymore than Ridley Scott and his team had the myopic minds of today's acceptable standards in mind when they were making the sci-fi classic FOUR DECADES AGO. Ripley was a trailblazing female power role at the time, which seems lost on the eggheads droning on here.
I can only imagine how their little Millennial heads would burst examining the hyper-testosterone fueled James Cameron sequel "Aliens". I'm sure there would be tears involved.
With far too little Ridley, Sigourney and cast to be relevant, MEMORY only serves to waste 90 minutes that would be much better served going back to watch the original film in all its 4K brilliance today.
Where's a Xenomorph when you need one?
MEMORY is already forgotten and gets a D.
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