Killers who don't kill you

I saw my first trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate last night, and I was reminded what makes a terminator such a scary killing machine.

When it gets in range of its target, it absolutely, positively kills that target.

Or whiffs while trying its damnedest, anyway.

It'd be quite a different story if the terminator had its target pinned in a corner, transformed the end of one of its arms into a very long knife, and then, inches from the face of its target, withdrew, saying "Not today, John Connor."

That's the biggest problem with Pennywise in the It movies. It's almost never "today."

I'd have to go back and count, but between the two movies, there can be no fewer than two dozen moments when Pennywise is within inches of one of the members of the Losers Club, but that loser escapes with his (or her) life. And it's not because the ceiling collapsed, or because one of them closed a door just before one of his appendages could slither through it.

No, it's because at the last minute, Pennywise said "Not today, Bill Denbrough."

Yes, Pennywise does kill Georgie Denbrough, or that poor girl under the bleachers, at his first opportunity to do so -- after toying with their fragile psychologies for a few minutes first, of course. He's certainly capable of converting a kill. But I don't buy the argument that his interactions with our main characters are just sadistic amuse bouches for himself before he plans to go in for the kill. Really, he just doesn't plan to go in for the kill -- not today, not tomorrow, and not next Thursday either.

It's really difficult to fear something that fritters away all its best opportunities, because you don't know when you should actually be scared. It's easy to draw the contrasts, as my colleague John Roebuck of ReelGood did in his It Chapter 2 review. The terminator is one, but so is this:

"Pennywise is successful in his murderous enthusiasm in some instances, when in others he is not, with few discernible differences between each scenario. When the capacity of a primary antagonist is uncertain, there's isn't a substantial foundation for fear of it. Think about the alien in Ridley Scott's Alien. The only reason a crew member aboard the Nostromo survived an encounter with it was through luck or ingenuity, not because the alien simply didn't kill them or because they ran to the next room."

That's actually John quoting his own review of the original It in his It 2 review, if we're trying to be as accurate as possible.

So this observation doesn't originate with me, nor does it probably originate with John. But it is a significant detriment to the effectiveness of not only this film, but other modern horror films as well, so I thought it was worth giving it my own particular spin.

The same issue exists in The Curse of La Llorona, which is just one recent case that exemplifies an entire trend in modern ghost story movies. La Llorona presents herself to our main characters a number of times, because you can't have an entire movie about a boogeyman (or boogeywoman) and only show her once or twice. (Not in the post-Jaws era, anyway.) But she of course doesn't kill those characters -- not on the first time, and not on any subsequent times either (spoiler alert). She does kill some other characters earlier on -- you have to establish her capabilities, of course -- but because The Curse of La Llorona opts for a low body count, it necessitates a number of set pieces that peter out inexplicably into non-fatal episodes.

Having said all this, I actually like the two It movies. I gave the first one four stars out of five, and was heading that way on the second after the first hour, ending up at the slightly lower 3.5. That might say more about my own generously skewed star rating system than the actual qualities of these movies, but that's a discussion for another time.

The thing I appreciate about these movies is the way Andy Muschietti stages Pennywise as a concept, not as an actual killer. Although I don't think this is what they were going for, I appreciate It and It Chapter 2 on the level of abstract art, on different ways to visualize an insane clown who might be capable of anything ... setting aside my concern that he's actual capable of nothing.

Some spoilers ahead for the set pieces in It 2.

When I think back to the very long experience of the second It movie, I think of isolated inspired ways to visualize Bill Sarsgaard's expertly conceived embodiment of evil. They're more like snapshots of possible terror than a memory of that terror converted into something tangible. I think of his glowing eyes on the banks of that river as he takes a bite out of the gay bashing victim. I think about the wall-eyed glee of the image above, which presages a further unfocusing of the eyes accompanied by a demented drool. I think of the way his expression goes blank as he starts to bash his head against the wall of glass that separates him from a potential victim. I think of that scene where he's talking to [I don't remember who] and says "Don't you want to play with the clown?" As he turns to look after the fleeing child or adult, his face starts to stretch and skew, as M.C. Escher might have painted him.

These things work for me, though I understand they don't work for everybody. The Filmspotting guys specifically mentioned how they were not taken with two of the more obviously digital scares in It 2, the scene where the fortune cookies turn into creepy crawlies and the scene where the nine-foot-tall naked old woman harasses Bev. I was, in fact, taken with these. I give credit to the vision of a visual stylist who can give me something just a little different from the things I've seen before, and do it with a certain panache, and I consider both of these to be examples of that. Some people don't, and that's fine.

But if you don't, I can see how It Chapter 2 really doesn't leave you much to savor at all.

In a way, watching Pennywise not kill people is a problem lessened if you've read the book. It's been 30 years since I've done that so I'd have to ask a more recent reader to be sure, but I believe Stephen King actually created the template Muschietti followed for the clown's sprees of not killing. King's book is also a book of set pieces, and since it's told largely from the perspective of our main characters, those episodes almost invariably have to be non-fatal in nature.

Knowing who's going to die and who isn't going to die is a contributing factor to a certain lack of fear as well. I remembered that one of the Losers Club was going to die, and approximately when it was going to happen in the story, so any close call before then was going to result in survival, unless Muschietti decided to deviate from the book (which I figured he wouldn't). This is not a problem unique to It, of course. Anyone who's read any book knows which characters are going to die when, and does not fear their deaths prior to that moment while watching the film adaptation. And as anyone who's read the book or seen It 2 knows (and again, spoilers), one of the Losers Club dies by his own hand in a non-Pennywise-related incident, further limiting the number of potential Pennywise-caused deaths.

This character kills himself due to the fear of Pennywise, which is a pretty powerful idea in the book. It just makes it a little harder for us, the viewers, when that fear is based on a number of interactions in which a clown went "Boogedy-boo!" and then left the room without further incident.

Ridley Scott and his stupid big head

You know how Donald Trump says stupid things and thinks he's so great?

Ridley Scott is like that, too.

The difference, other than a couple years in age, is that Ridley Scott is actually great sometimes.

But boy does he make it hard for us to acknowledge that.

The inspiration for this post has nothing to do with Scott's new movie, All the Money in the World, which I expect to see on Thursday night. It has to do with a new interview he granted to the Toronto Sun in promoting that movie, in which he got sidetracked talking about his most famous franchise and said the following patently ridiculous thing:

"There's no reason why Alien should now not be on the same level for fans as Star Trek and Star Wars. So I think the next step as to where we go is, do we sustain the Alien (series) with the evolution of the beast, or do we reinvent something else? I think you need to have an evolution of this famous beast because he's the best monster ever, really."

These comments come on the heels of Fox saying it wouldn't go ahead with a sequel to Alien: Covenant after it was a dismal box office failure. Making them all the more idiotic.

So let's recap:

1) Ridley Scott thinks that his franchise is on a par with arguably the two most beloved intellectual properties that exist. (Arguably. Some of the superheros, and maybe Harry Potter, might edge out Star Trek.)

2) Ridley Scott thinks that the star of his series is the "best monster ever." That includes monsters like Frankenstein's monster, the wolfman, the Kraaken, etc. All monsters that have ever existed.

3) Ridley Scott makes these claims on the heels of fans implicitly rejecting the Alien franchise, really in terms of their reaction to both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant when you come right down to it.

4) Ridley Scott thinks that even if you move away from the "best monster ever" and "reinvent something else," there's something intrinsic to the Alien universe -- perhaps his beloved androids -- that still makes it great. That still makes it viable.

Oh Ridley.

I wouldn't be slapping my forehead so violently if it weren't for comments he made a couple years ago, when Scott was asked his favorite science fiction movies of all time and listed not one, but two of his own movies: Alien and Blade Runner. (At least he had the good sense to bump them down to the three and four slots behind Star Wars and 2001. Given these recent comments drenched in franchise envy, one wonders if he'd be so courteous to Star Wars now.)

The funny thing is, I don't totally disagree with what he's saying. He's definitely in the neighborhood of that greatness. In a piece I wrote for ReelGood earlier this year, which talked about 2017 containing movies that are both direct sequels in Scott's two signature franchises (Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049) and possible ripoffs of those franchises (Life and Ghost in the Shell), I said the following:

"In spite of being a total wanker about his own creative output, it could be argued that Scott has contributed as much to science fiction popular mythology as George Lucas or Gene Rodenberry, Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke."

It's one thing me saying it. It's another thing saying it yourself. Let others sing your praises, Ridley. And if that praise dries up, then go away humbly and quietly.

If we're draining the swamp of sexual miscreants who use their positions of power to abuse young women and men, can we also drain the swamp of boastful idiots who have no awareness of the tone of their own comments?

Alien vs. Aliens: Finally, an informed opinion

It's one of those cinematic discussions that seems to keep on circling back around. Every couple years, like clockwork, I seem to be around people having the following debate:

Which is better, Alien or Aliens?

They seem to find this debate especially interesting because, as they are fond of pointing out, Ridley Scott's seminal 1978 film and James Cameron's phenomenally successful 1986 sequel exist in two different genres. Alien, they point out, is a horror movie, or even more specifically, a haunted house movie. Aliens, on the other hand, is an action movie, even a war movie.

I don't mean to belittle this debate or suggest that the people who have it are not creative. I've probably initiated this discussion myself on occasion. I'm just kind of surprised by the legs it's got. People just can't get enough of comparing and contrasting the first two Alien movies.

As much as I have been involved in this debate, though, I've tended to take on the role of the curious onlooker. I mean, I've suspected where my preferences lay, but having only ever seen Aliens once, in the 1980s -- and having seen Alien all three of the times I've seen it since then, including twice in the past five years -- I didn't know if I could confidently choose the original over the sequel, without giving Aliens its due via another viewing.

And as there have been more and more years that have passed since I've seen Aliens, its mythology has grown accordingly. Having already had a sense of its greatness as an action movie, I have since decided that it probably exceeds the sometimes limiting confines of that genre. I mean, just think about the mythical badass that Sigourney Weaver is in this movie.

Until Sunday night, though, when I finally sat down with Aliens again.

The first thing that struck me was the withered, old-fashioned look of the 20th Century Fox logo as it popped up at the beginning of the movie. That's what the logo looked like in 1986, but that made me realize I had this weird persistent idea of Aliens as "new." It's nearly 30 years old, Vance. Some age is going to show on it.

I had forgotten that the movie began with Ripley being rescued from years of hypersleep -- 57 years, as a matter of fact. That figure chilled me when Paul Reiser revealed it to a groggy Ripley. Aliens was interstellaring us years before Interstellar.

The setup is great. In an Aliens appreciation piece I read recently, the writer noted that nearly nothing that can be described as conventionally exciting happens in the first hour of the movie. I was rather staggered to hear this. You could never get away with something like that in 2015, as an action movie would be almost contractually obligated to begin with a ten-minute action set piece, even if it then proceeded into a half-hour plus of laying the groundwork for the second half of the movie (but it probably wouldn't actually deprive viewers of explosions or fisticuffs for any half-hour period of its running time). Yet the opening hour of Aliens works exquisitely, slowly building tension until the creatures are unleased on us in all their fury around the 55-minute mark.

A surprising thing happened then, though. I actually sort of became less interested for the next 45 minutes or so.

Although this is the part where the marines realize how terribly overmatched they are, and it also contains Bill Paxton's most quotable lines, I found both the alien kills and the marines' responses to them less clever than I expected them. This is probably also the part of the evening when I started to get really tired, having gotten a later start on the 137-minute movie than we would have otherwise liked.

Of course, once the cast is pared down basically to just Ripley, Newt and Bishop, the movie really grabbed my attention again. Perhaps it was seeing Aliens for the first time as a father, but I got damn near emotional when Ripley appears in the power loader and spits out her epic line: "Get away from her you bitch!" I love that her fight in the loader takes on an almost slow-mo quality because the loader is so very big and deliberate in its motions. Anyway, the ending felt incredibly satisfying.

I think it's kind of funny that both of these movies end with the alien being shot out of an airlock. Now I'm curious to go back to Alien to see how similar that end scene is. I imagine it's different enough, but it's funny to consider the similarity since these two movies are otherwise thought of as so different in their tone and intention.

So my first viewing of Aliens in about 25 years did in fact convince me of the superiority of the original, which ranges from a slight superiority to a more significant one. Both are obviously first-rate films.

And in case you were wondering, I won't be widening my net to revisit Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection any time soon ... even if the directors of both of those films have gone on to have very interesting careers, and it would be useful to see how these films fit into them in retrospect.

Now I'm looking ahead to what Neill Blomkamp will do with an Alien reboot/sequel ... and after watching Chappie last night, I feel even more encouraged about his maturation as a director and his ability to pull it off. Given the robotics and mech suits he's used in his movies, a reappearance of the power loader in the next Alien film is almost a guarantee.

The big kahuna

In addition to Miss March, I also saved watching Citizen Kane until my wife was out of town. See, she almost certainly would not want to sit through what's widely considered the best film of all time, even though she owns the DVD. (Pause for laughter.)

Actually, Citizen Kane had always been planned for one of the movies I was going to watch this week. Originally, I planned to watch a double feature on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights before leaving Friday night for Australia, where I'll spend the last two weeks of the year. The theme: Each double feature would contain one film I'd already seen, and one I hadn't.

But when I got a low-grade stomach flu on Tuesday, I managed only one movie: Ridley Scott's Alien. (Interesting choice of a film to watch when you've got stomach issues.) A true masterpiece that I didn't appreciate enough the first time I saw it. I love the little details that other sci-fi films take for granted, like the fact that landing a spaceship on the surface of a strange planet can itself be a harrowing experience.

A late workday and last-minute shopping killed any possibility of a double feature yesterday, as well, but I decided to stick to my resolve to watch Kane as planned. That's two nights in a row of movies I'd seen previously. Adding to my collection would have to wait. (Actually, it turns out I did "add" to my collection on Tuesday, as I discovered that Alien wasn't on my master list of films I'd seen. Inaccuracies in my list! Gasp! The horror!)

When I was coming of age as a film fan, I watched Citizen Kane at least twice in film classes, and saw it a third time on some other occasion. But it may have been as long as 15 years since my last viewing, so I was overdue.

And Citizen Kane has interested me especially in the past two-and-a-half months, as I've been accruing my Flickchart rankings. I knew it was time to find out the following:

Is Citizen Kane actually my favorite film of all time, or am I just going with the flow?

Few people under the age of 80 have seen Citizen Kane without first knowing it is considered the de facto greatest film of all time. I knew that years before I finally saw it. And that means it's hard to know how you would have reacted to it in a vacuum. Is it really the greatest, or do you just know it's supposed to be greatest?

It's a question I've carried around with me throughout my career as a film fan, and it got re-energized a few weeks ago, when I was listening to a podcast called Flick Fights. This podcast features a handful of film fans participating live in the day-to-day duels that comprise the Flickchart experience, then arguing about their opposing viewpoints. Citizen Kane came up against something clearly inferior, and though they all picked it to win, in the same breath they acknowledged that actually sitting down to watch it seemed like something of a chore.

I nodded imperceptibly. Could it be that this was my own feeling about it, yet the pressure of so much critical love has caused me to artificially inflate it in my own rankings?

I worried what would happen when Citizen Kane came up against some of the titans on my own list: Toy Story, Pulp Fiction and Donnie Darko, which are currently ranked #1 through #3. Any of those titles could be vulnerable. Though I love those three films, the fact that they're ranked the way they are is still only a function of the duels they've randomly participated in. At any old time, Citizen Kane (currently ranked #18) could come in and shake things up.

But should it? Or is it really "something of a chore?" That's what was to be determined last night.

Well, I'm glad to say that Citizen Kane is as good as I remembered it to be. Some of the techniques Orson Welles uses would still strike you as inventive if you saw them being used today, and this was 68 years ago. At the time he used them, they were completely unprecedented.

What's more, it's not a chore -- it's actually fun. In my mind I'd developed the idea that the movie was probably pushing two hours and 30 minutes, but no -- a mere 119 minutes, or just under two. Even those two hours went faster than I thought they would, full of humor and playfulness. The film moves along at a great clip, with great interweaving of time periods. What an interesting structure for a film -- the ten-minute newsreel at the start basically gives you the whole story of Charles Foster Kane, then Welles spends the rest of the time filling in the details of those broad brushstrokes. You watch it not to find out what happens, but how it happens. Oh, and to learn who or what Rosebud was. I won't spoil that for you here, ha ha.

But I don't need to spend too much time giving you my own analysis of Citizen Kane. Everything I could say has been published ad nauseum in other, more reputable locations.

What I do want to say is that if Citizen Kane ends up being my best film of all time, I'd be okay with it. I'll let Flickchart decide.

I guess it comes down to a distinction between the words "favorite" and "best." And who knows if there's an objective standard for what "favorite" means. The movie I've probably seen the most is National Lampoon's Animal House. But does that mean it's my favorite? Nope. It just means that in my freshman year of college, we watched it every week for three months in a row.

Is Citizen Kane the film I want to watch the most number of times? No. Is it the film I want to curl up with when I'm sick? No. Is it the one film I want to have on a desert island with me? Probably not.

But is it the best?

Yeah, I think it just may be.