Archive for Alien vs. Predator: The Musical

Alien vs. Predator: The Musical – Update: Adrien Brody, Bertolt Brecht & Box Office Poison

Posted in Alien vs. Predator: The Musical, Arts & Culture, Film Criticism with tags , , , , on October 12, 2009 by cactusshadowkid

hamlet

This post hopes to justify the “M” variable in the acronym AVP:TM.  But first!

Updates in Franchisicide:

Adrien Brody to star in Predator sequel.  That’s right, Roman Polanski’s guy-Friday will be assuming the position of Arnold Schwarzenegger in what is sure to be an awkwardly heartfelt performance. I’m guessing immediately after agreeing to the project, Brody Googled “Predator” to find out what it was.

Followers of the AVP:TM project will recognize that casting such a gaunt chap runs the risk of mass disappointment by potentially violating the franchise’s sub-textual examination of competing male identities.  Duh, don’t film producers read my blog?  Perhaps it can work, but it’s a gamble.  What do you think?  Feel free to comment on why you think Brody was picked for Predators.

To clean the pallet of that news please enjoy:

Wikipedia vs. Predator a link care of Claire &
Alien Loves Predator a comic we can all be jealous of.

Why a Musical?

This question is a just one posed by AVP:TM supporter Ashley.  In an attempt at the answer, the following will bludgeon you with a number of winding non-sequiturs about Bertolt Brecht until you ultimately conceit to my flawed logic.  Enjoy!

Brecht pioneered throughout his career an approach to drama called “epic theatre.” To understand what epic theatre is  it helps to know that it was in part a reaction to the most dominant dramatic form of the time, “naturalism.”  Naturalism was popularly advocated for by the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavaski and held as its primary goal the seamless illusion of reality.  Under naturalism the acting, set design and writing of every production should strive for as authentic and accurate a portrayal of real life as possible. This is a noble enough artistic goal.  Sort of the theatrical equivalent of renaissance-era figure paintings.  However, the way in which naturalism captured European theatre at the time, establishing itself as a rubric for the success pushed this esthetic to a mandate.  A large problem with naturalism, for Brecht, was that it shows an audience a contained and compartmentalized bubble of life that can either be accepted as true or rejected as false.  You can say, “Yup that’s how it is, it might suck but there’s not much we can do about it,” or, “That woman was way too old to play his daughter.”  Bertolt didn’t like this. The main thrust of his criticism revolved around the conceit that the theatre of naturalism placed a limitation on the powerful quality of the stage to express ideas, initiate debate and ultimately inspire action.  Brecht saw the stage as a platform for communication where a play’s message could continue outside of the playhouse.  Yes, Bert was (as my father would say) a “pinko” but in 1930’s Germany being a commie meant that you weren’t a Nazi.  Brecht actually was a regularly placed a thorn in Hitler’s side before his own voluntary exile.

What epic theatre does to break the spell of naturalism is present elements that tell the audience that what they are watching is an intended imitation of life, and not life itself.  Strategies include addressing the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and a structure where each scene possesses a narrative sovereignty that neither suggests what came before or what will come after.  However, most important of all, sometimes people break into song!  Musicals!  I bet you thought I wasn’t going to get back to that, did you?  Also Brecht—Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra fans will note—wrote “Mack the Knife” for his musical “The Threepenny Opera” (Just another reason Cyndi Lauper is better than Madonna, see also Goonies soundtrack).

If Alien vs. Predator is about the issues and conflicts that I believe it is, it must be presented like epic theatre. Film, more often than not, is preoccupied with the same ideas of plausibility as naturalism. By making something into a film you ride on the subliminal presupposition that this can happen, and the movie’s structure is almost completely occupied in convincing you that the movie you’re watching could take place in the real world. Robots from space that turn into semi-trucks really could wage an intergalactic battle on Earth.  Nicolas Cage really could find treasure in Washington’s nose on Mount Rushmore.  The Garbage Pail Kids really could be runway fashion savants.

Not to mention how a 30ft Queen Alien puppet on a screen looks big and scary, but to really understand what 30ft  is to see it on stage.  Nothing breaks that bubble of naturalism like having an alien scurry down the aisle next to you, or a predator swoop in from the rafters.  And let’s not forget that two films have already failed to express the project’s understated complexity.  A third movie now would be box office poison.

How do I know all of this?  What’d you think I was born with these student loans?  Site me in your term paper.  No really, I don’t mind talking to the grad TA that teaches your class, I’m not afraid.

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Alien vs. Predator: The Musical – Update: Poetry and Predators

Posted in Alien vs. Predator: The Musical, Arts & Culture, Cultural Criticism, Film Criticism, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on September 1, 2009 by cactusshadowkid

Poet Predator

First off, an addendum to the argument for the cultural necessity of Alien vs. Predator: The Musical as proposed in Alien vs. Predator: Gender Politics.

At least two poems have been featured prominently enough entitled Alien vs. Predator to be considered as having literary merit.

The more widely known and, perhaps undeservedly, applauded is by Michael Robbins and can be found in The New Yorker. This poem tends to draw nothing from its title but novelty and kitsch to jazz up a relatively unexceptional poem.

The other poem is by Christopher Monks and can be found on the McSweeney’s online. A poem, though smaller in scope, more interestingly plays with the spectrum of conflict and competition. I prefer this poem since tries to engage with the rich energy of the rich energy of the Alien vis-à-vis Predator franchise rather than selfishly try to capitalize on it.

IN FILM NEWS: Variety reports that some Nimrod is now set to direct the upcoming Predators set for release in 2010. “If it can live up to AnaconDAS, I’m all for it,” said Aaron Neber when reached for comment. He continued, “Technically it’s Anacondas: Search for the Blood Orchid, but colloquially known as Anacondas.”

Nimrod Atal is the director of the upcoming Armored, and the Luke Wilson vehicle Vacancy. I haven’t seen Vacancy but it’s a hotel horror film so I’m guessing it goes like this. Robert Rodriguez, director of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D, and The Faculty, will be the producer and will help write the screenplay.

What’s this mean for AVP:TM fans out there? Basically the band is breaking up. Not unlike when George Michael left Wham, but this isn’t over, far from it. The “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” reunion tour can still happen. Predator will come back, licking his badly rendered, CGI wounds. This to we shall overcome.

Also, this is fun.

An Update UPDATE: Looks like Alien is also considering going solo. This is good, now it’s more like when Outcast put out separate albums.

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Alien vs. Predator: Gender Politics

Posted in Alien vs. Predator: The Musical, Art/Comics, Arts & Culture, Bric-a-brac, Comics, Cultural Criticism with tags , , , , , , , on August 16, 2009 by cactusshadowkid

Alien-vs-Predator-Sex
I recognize that there are still skeptics out there who question the cultural relevance of Alien vs. Predator: The Musical.  Maybe you feel it is too low-brow for you, or that the entire endeavor is silly.  This is a naïve assertion. Like all great art Alien vs. Predator holds up a profound and important mirror to our society.  I’ll explain.

A few years ago I was still hung up on how the Alien and Predator combination felt so appropriate, so apt.  You can’t just throw any two film franchises together and make them stick in such an iconic way.  Seriously, I’ve tried: the Little Mermaid vs. the Terminator, Bill and Ted vs. the Care Bears, the Gremlins vs. Bridget Jones.  It’s hard work!

After all this pondering and pondering I finally had what may be the only epiphany of my life, Alien vs. Predator works because it is about the endless and irresolvable battle of the sexes!  That’s the secret.  At its core Alien vs. Predator is a slightly more violent Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. 

Female to Female Competition
You have the Alien beings, which are based on ant and bee colonies in which every worker and drone is default female working towards the greater good of the colony.  This typically meaning aiding and protecting the egg-laying Queen, i.e. matriarchal.  The Alien specie is not only female but their life cycle is almost completely based around the complex physical act of reproduction in the most visceral and violent way possible.  The Alien creature is so extremely female that it makes other beings even males, like John Hurt’s character in the first Alien film, endure the painful act of childbirth for them. 

It may be personal opinion, and I doubt it is, but I feel that the most successful film in the Alien series is the second installment Aliens.  This was where James Cameron introduced the society and habits of an Alien colony and the Queen herself.  Aliens is perhaps the first action film franchise to have a female hero.  The film Aliens is, on a subtextual level, about a number of things, the director himself drew a parallel to the difficulties faced by American forces in Vietnam and their inability to defeat a technologically inferior adversary.  I would like to add to this that the film is also about female-to-female competition.  Sigourney Weaver’s character represents a woman who is modern in her nature and circumstance.  She has been traumatized by her encounter in the first film and is forced to face it.  Throughout the movie you see her become self-actualized and rise above the victimization she experienced.  She is commonly presented as competent, professional, and ultimately more capable than her male counterparts.  This modern woman is set against what I will be calling the primal woman, personified by the Queen Alien.  The Queen represents many negative qualities associated with women.  First, she is mute which symbolically implies that she, as a being, is unintelligent or “dumb”.  Second, she as mentioned before, is preoccupied with reproduction solely.  She is unreasonable, ruthless and violent.  You’ll notice that these negative characteristics being assigned to women are not, as one might expect, the traditionally dismissive collection of passive traits like being weak, emotional, or naïve.  The Queen instead is an example of what, more often than not, is characterized as “a bitch.”  Weaver’s character herself even famously calls her a bitch.  This is important because the plot is presenting two examples of powerful women.  In the end Weaver’s character wins out, promoting her characters values as superior.

Male to Male Competition
If Aliens is about female to female competition, Predator is very much about male-to-male competition.  In this case you have competing ideas of the masculine capacity for violence and what is the merit strength, which is synonymous in this case with power as well.  The character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is a very successful soldier, he is shown able to kill more efficiently than anyone else, and he and his team are recognized within the film as “the best.”  Arnold’s character, however, is very much bound to his own morality.  At the start of the movie he is asked to complete an assignment that he only accepts because it is a mission to rescue captured soldiers.  Later it is discovered that he has been deceived and the mission was entirely politically motivated (oh that sneaky Carl Weathers).  Needless to say, Arnold’s character is none too pleased. 

When the Predator arrives, the conflict is presented between the idea of the noble killer, who kills out of necessity or obligation to an ideal, set in opposition to the trophy killer that will kill out of sport or whim.  The culminating conflict is about survival, revenge and honor (or idealism) for the Arnold character, very male justifications for physical violence.  The Predator then represents the violent use of power for greed, spite or entertainment.  In the end Arnold wins, even after the Predator attempts to cheat by blowing himself up.

It has been a very long time since I’ve seen Predator 2 with the charming and talented Danny Glover.  From what I remember, and I was 12 so bear with me, it was not quite as resonate as the first.  It was a good effort but it lacked that larger sub-textual tensions of might and morality found the original, probably because Danny Glover just isn’t ripped enough.

Female to Male Competition
Here at last we get to Alien vs. Predator.  Primal and ethically corrupt examples of both gender set in a conflict made starker and dramatized and the differences are made more pronounced by shifting those basic gender differences to differences of species.  There battle in script must be characteristic and symbolic of the difficulties experienced by the genders.

In Alien vs. Predator: Box Office Poison I’ll talk about how this thematic understanding is one reason that the movies fail (again I haven’t seen Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, I’ll NetFlix it soon, but this website leads me to believe that they haven’t seen the same social undercurrents).  The idea of balance and conflict must be simultaneously depicted in the creatures and mimetic of the conflict of the plots human counter parts. 

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Alien vs. Predator: The Musical

Posted in Alien vs. Predator: The Musical, Art/Comics, Arts & Culture, Bric-a-brac, Cultural Criticism, Film, Film Criticism with tags , , , , , , , on August 6, 2009 by cactusshadowkid

Alien-vs-Predator1

The Mission
This is not a joke.  I have for the past several years dreamed of mounting a full-scale, Times Square quality musical production of Alien vs. Predator.  Ask around, people know this about me.  I’m talking full costumes, giant puppets, singing, dancing, the works!  The difficulty being I don’t have the resources or the connections to make this happen.  However, I just watched Julie & Julia the other night, so I figure if some gal (played by Amy Adams) can capture the hearts and minds of middle America’s amateur blog enthusiasts, then tarnation why can’t I?  Not to mention that I also recently meditated on a Julia vs. Predator spin off where Julia Childs (played by Meryl Streep) dons jungle camo and apron to match wits and culinary skills against outer space’s most dangerous hunter, but first things first.

Here is the pitch people of the world, I will periodically post on this blog details of why Alien vs. Predator is uniquely adapted for musical theater.  I believe that over time I can convince you that not only would such a project be relevant entertainment (probably even profitable *wink*), but also how our culture as a whole could be enriched by the endeavor. 

Then, you the public, if convinced, can offer support in whatever way you can.  This could be as small as an encouraging comment and telling a friend about the project, or as large as committing money or time to making this a reality.

I know you’re skeptical, but I also know I can sway you.  Inside my floppy head is a majestic vision, the details of which can lead to—with your help—the most spectacular science fiction musical epic since Cats!

The focus of this first post will be to convince any naysayers of my passion and commitment.  A project of this scale succeeds or fails on the conviction of its leader.

My Personal History with Alien vs. Predator
I have been a relatively unapologetic fan of the Alien vs. Predator franchise since I first played the 1994 Capcom arcade game.  There was something inexplicably magic about the combination of the Alien and Predator creatures.  They seemed to have a shared energy that made their union undeniably appropriate (more on this later in Alien vs. Predator: Gender Politics). My hometown didn’t have a video game arcade, but on occasion my mother would drive almost two hours to the nearest mall, you know for mall-things like novelty t-shirts at Spencer’s Gifts, or some Panda Express.  I would sneak off to the mall’s arcade because it was dark in there and I looked like this as a kid.  If I was lucky, we would be there for the Lens Crafters to update my glasses prescription.  On these ventures I could easily spend over $20 in quarters on the game in that hour it took to make the lenses.  The whole time they had the game, I played it almost exclusively, the day that they replaced it with some Tekken game, I was pretty distraught.  Though ultimately it was probably for the best since staring at a flashing lit up screen for that much time was only going to make my Lens Crafters appointments more frequent.

The game, if you haven’t played it, is what I understand is referred to as a “brawler” style game.  You beat up a bunch of Aliens then some more come and you beat them up, and that continues until you’re broke, it was so great I really wish I could play it right now.  You could be one of the two human marines, though I can’t imagine why, or one of two Predator characters. Click here if you want to watch some guy play it for an hour.

Another thing my hometown didn’t have was a comic book store.  “The Safeway” (for east coasters, that is like “Stop & Shop;” for west coasters, yes, they really have a grocery store called “Stop & Shop”) did offer an inconsistent collection of comic books among the fashion mags.  By fate or by luck they did end up carrying the Alien vs. Predator comic book, or at least three of a five comic series and not exactly in order.  I bought them thought they were genius.  A loyalist, I have refused to return and re-read the original comics and risk changing my mind as to their quality.  Through some wheeling and dealing (in a time when buying stuff off the internet was still considered a little lewd) I got some trade paperbacks of Alien vs. Predator: War and Alien vs. Predator: The Deadliest of Species (a strangely post-modern meditation on issues of identity, who knew).  Not completely understanding what gave comic books worth, I read both books wearing rubber gloves and turning the pages with tweezers, I’m not kidding.  So certain was I that I had discovered something genius and precious with Alien vis-à-vis Predator that I had no doubt that these books could only accrue more and more wealth.  I could retire on these things.  That was why I forced my parents to store them in their fireproof safe next to the firearms, also true.

In these ways and others, the Alien/Predator franchise enriched my adolescent life.  In a later post, Alien vs. Predator: Box Office Poison, I’ll touch on how attempts to take the franchise to the big screen butchered my memories and made my inner 11-year-old cry with shame for ever liking that stupid video game.  It’s been a long road to recovery; I need this musical to be whole again.

Long story short, don’t you want to help that far-sighted, uncomfortable pre-teen boy inside all of us conquer his demons and overcome his social alienation with the one thing every little boy needs, a high budget musical production?  It’s time to heal.

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