In Space, No One Can Hear You Celebrate The 40th Anniversary Of ALIEN

Happy 40th Anniversary to Ridley Scott's awesome sci-fi/horror masterpiece, ALIEN. 

Forty years? That can't possibly be right. I can clearly remember going to see it in the theater twenty years ago at most. Something's seriously wrong with the space-time continuum lately. 

ALIEN took a B-movie script and filmed it with an A-movie budget. It's very similar to 1958's It! The Terror From Beyond Space, which featured a crew of astronauts battling a monster that's stowed away on their ship. 

Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon wasn't shy about this similarity, saying, "I didn't steal ALIEN from anybody. I stole it from everybody!" O'Bannon cites The Thing from Another World,  Forbidden Planet and Planet of the Vampires as influences on his script. 

ALIEN also took a page from Star Wars, giving us a spaceship that looked run-down, dirty and most importantly, lived in. Gone were the pristine corridors of Star Trek's star ship Enterprise, replaced instead with grease-stained tech and steam-spewing machinery.

It was also populated with a cast of characters who were more like space truckers rather than officers and astronauts.

The titular creature was designed by Swiss artist HR Giger, who created a realistic and frighteningly plausible monster, one with a disturbing and nightmarish life cycle. Chest Burster, anyone?

ALIEN was a massive hit, grossing an astonishing $101 million dollars worldwide (in 1979 dollars) against its minuscule $11 million budget! You know what that means! Imitators! It didn't take long before dozens of copycat films littered the cineplex. Of course few if any had the success of the original.

I like ALIEN quite a bit, and it had a huge influence on my young mind. I live James Cameron's sequel— the imaginatively titled ALIENS— even more. It's really too bad those two films are the only ones in the franchise (wink wink). 

R.I.P. Al Matthews, AKA Sgt. Apone

R.I.P. Al Matthews, who had a small but memorable role as Sgt. Apone in one of my all-time favorite movies, ALIENS.

Matthews was a Sargent in real life as well, and served in the Vietmam War.

"Another glorious day in the corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I love the corps!"

It Came From The Cineplex: ALIEN: Covenant

ALIEN: Covenant was written by John Logan and Dante Harper, with "story by" credit by Jack Paglen and Michael Green. It was directed by Ridley Scott.

Logan is a VERY uneven screenwriter, who previously wrote Bats, Any Given Sunday, Gladiator, The Time Machine, Star Trek: Nemesis, Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas, The Last Samurai, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, Rango, Coriolanus, Hugo, Skyfall, Spectre and Genius. Whew!

Harper has worked extensively in Hollywood as a production manager, and has exactly one writing credit under his belt— this one!

Paglen previously wrote Transcendence, and that's about it. Green has worked mostly in TV, but also wrote Green Lantern and Logan. Talk about a checkered career!

Ridley Scott is of course a prolific and VERY esoteric director, who previously helmed The Duelists, ALIEN, Blade Runner, Legend, Someone To Watch Over Me, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, 1482: Conquest Of Paradise, White Squall, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, Kingdom Of Heaven, A Good Year, American Gangster, Body Of Lies, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counselor, Exodus: Gods And Kings and The Martian.

ALIEN: Covenant is of course a sequel to Prometheus, and yet another prequel to the ALIEN Quadrology.

I have an odd love/hate relationship with this franchise. I like ALIEN a lot, and I absolutely love ALIENS. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, and I've probably seen it fifty times. 

After that things take a turn for the worse. I've never watched ALIEN 3 and never will, due to the shoddy way it disposed of Newt, Hicks and Bishop. I strongly feel the characters deserved a better fate than to be killed— offscreen and in their sleep, yet— before the movie even began. I wasn't thrilled with ALIEN: Resurrection either, and absolutely hated Prometheus (even though I gave it a B in my review of it several years ago— I'm working toward being harder on mediocre movies). Sadly, ALIEN: Covenant hasn't changed my attitude toward the series. In my mind the first ALIEN and ALIENS are the only two films in the franchise. All the other movies are nothing more than elaborate, non-canon fan fiction.

Despite the fact that I didn't care for Prometheus, I recently rewatched it to refresh my memory before seeing the new film. Oddly enough I didn't hate it quite as much on second viewing. I still don't particularly like it, but I kind of see what Scott was going for, and I appreciate the fact that he at least tried something different with the film instead of simply rehashing ALIEN for a fourth time.

Unfortunately, that "trying something different" is what made Prometheus so divisive among fans. Half of them liked the bold new direction, while the other half loudly complained that it didn't look and feel like an ALIEN movie. Both camps had a point!

If Scott had simply made a brand new sci-fi story about the extraterrestrial Engineers and the origins of man that had no ties to the ALIEN universe, Prometheus would have been much more successful, and viewers wouldn't have sat there complaining, "Yeah, yeah, this is all very interesting, but when are we gonna see some xenomorphs?"

I'm convinced that Scott took all the Prometheus criticism to heart and attempted a course correction with ALIEN: Covenant. Heck, all you have to do is look at the title for proof of that! Gone are the lofty questions about the origins of man, the nature of life and the search for answers, replaced instead with safe, familiar tropes like deadly aliens and lots of running through dark spaceship corridors.

This dumbed-down, rehashed approach is the most annoying and infuriating thing about Covenant, as it renders Prometheus completely moot. Seriously, there's now absolutely no point in ever watching Prometheus again!

OK, to recap for those of you who've forgotten or never seen the film, Prometheus tells us that millions of years ago, a race of giant blue aliens called Engineers came to Earth and jumpstarted all life here.

Cut to the near future, where Dr. Elizabeth Shaw discovers cave paintings featuring a map to the an Engineer planet, which she sees as an invitation to come pay them a visit when we're able.

Shaw convinces trillionaire Peter Weyland to mount an expedition to the planet, called LV-223. There they find a large structure filled with containers full of black goo. This goo infects several crew members, causing deadly lifeforms to erupt from their bodies. 

Shaw and David the android discover an Engineer who's still alive, who plans to take a ship full of goo back to Earth to wipe out humanity. Fortunately she and David are able to stop him and save the day. At the end of the film, the two of them take off in search of the Engineer Homeworld, to personally ask them why they created and then tried to kill us.

Thanks to Covenant, that "Search For Answers" plotline in Prometheus is now a dead end, which will never explored or resolved. Even worse, Elizabeth Shaw was apparently killed offscreen prior to the new film. So we all sat through Prometheus for absolutely nothing. Thanks, Ridley Scott!
Structurally, Covenant is a mess. It shares the same problem as all prequels— there's no reason for it to exist (other than money), as it over-explains things that didn't need explaining, and de-mystifies the mythology. The xenomorph in ALIEN was legitimately terrifying. Unfortunately the The more we find out about them and their backstory, the less frightening they are. It's called fear of the unknown.

Apart from the android twins David and Walter, there's not a single interesting or compelling character in the film. The only one that comes close to standing out at all is Daniels, who comes off as a Ripley 2.0 (or I guess 1.0, since this is a prequel). But even in her case, we find out precious little about her, other than that she's a badass.

The rest of the cast are completely forgettable ciphers, existing only so they can be killed. In fact I wonder why the screenwriters bothered to give them names. They might as well be called Victim #1, Meatbag #3 and so on.

Covenant is not a movie so much as it's a highlight reel of the previous films. It's ALIEN'S Greatest Hits. It freely and shamelessly borrows the best bits from all over the franchise, cobbling them together into a Franken-film. It even liberally borrows elements from Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score from ALIEN! I'm not making that up either, as it's confirmed in the end credits.

Unfortunately it seems (for now) to step on previously established continuity, and raises more questions than it answers. This is just going to end up pissing off fans of the earlier films, like myself.

Please, for the love of god, somebody stop Ridley Scott before he directs again. He's flushing the ALIEN franchise right down the crapper, with no end in sight. In fact, earlier this year in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Scott claims he has ideas for SIX more ALIEN prequels after this one! SIX! That would put the total number of prequels to the original film at eight! That's insane.

This situation reminds me of "the talk" that all adult children eventually have to have with their elderly parents. You know, the one in which they have to take away their car keys and tell them they can no longer drive. Ridley Scott's kids need to take his director's megaphone away from him, and tell him it's time to stop ruining the ALIEN movies.

So far the film's underperforming here in the States, grossing just $71 million against its $97 million budget. It's done a bit better overseas, where it's raked in $110 million, for a total of $181 million. That's about the break even point, but I honestly don't see it making much more than that, especially with a dozen more summer blockbusters waiting in the wings.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
We begin with a pre-Prometheus prologue, in which Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce), trillionaire founder of the Weyland/Yutani Corporation, activates the newly created android David (played by Michael Fassbender). This is the same David that will eventually wreak havoc in Prometheus, the previous film. Weyland says that one day he and David will search the stars to find mankind's creator. David wonders why he has to defer to puny humans, since he's immortal and they're not (uh-oh). He begins thinking he should serve whoever or whatever created mankind. Weyland angrily tries to shut down this dangerous line of thinking.

Years later in 2104, the USCSS Covenant is heading for the planet Origae-6 to start a colony there. The ship has a crew of fifteen, all of whom are in hypersleep. Also on board are two thousand frozen colonists, along with several thousand freeze-dried embryos which will be grown once they reach their destination. They're all cared for by Walter, an android of the same series as David, who looks exactly like him (Plot Point!).

Walter quietly tends to the ship and dormant crew for seven years, with the help of MU.TH.UR., aka "MOTHER," the ship's computer. Suddenly the Convenant's hit by a violent neutrino burst from a nearby star, causing major damage. Walter wakes the crew from hypersleep to help deal with the crisis. Unfortunately Captain Branson's cryotube is damaged and bursts into flames. He roasts alive inside the tube (!), much to the horror of his wife and second in command, Daniels (played by Katherine Waterston). The crew gets the ship back under control, but are saddened that forty seven of the frozen colonists were killed in the accident.

Command then falls to First Officer Oram (played by Billy Crudup), a highly religious, yet extremely unsure man. The crew has a short funeral for Branson before shooting his body into outer space. This irritates Oram, who for some reason forbid the crew from holding a service. The grieving Daniels confides in Walter, telling him that she and Branson planned to build a log cabin together when they got to Origae-6 (Another Plot Point!). She takes a nail they planned to use to build the cabin and makes a pendant out of it (which makes this Chekov's Nail).

Oram and Tennessee (played by Danny McBride), the ship's pilot, go on a spacewalk to repair the exterior damage. Tennessee picks up a faint distress signal, recognizing it as a human voice singing John Denver's Country Road. They trace the signal to a nearby planet, which scans indicate may be more hospitable than their actual destination (?). 

Against all logic and reason, Oram makes the incredibly reckess decision to divert the colony ship from its predetermined route and investigate the planet. Daniels protests (and rightly so), but is overruled, as no one wants to get back in the cryochambers and risk getting fried like Branson (!).

The ship arrives at the uncharted planet a few weeks later. Tennessee, Ricks and Upworth (don't bother trying to remember the names of these barely introduced characters) stay in orbit on the Covenant while the rest of the crew takes the one and only dropship down to the planet. They stupidly waltz off the ship without any protective gear whatsoever. As they walk through a lush field, they notice it's filled with wheat plants from Earth, and wonder how such a thing's possible. Daniel's points out that the planet's eerily quiet, as there are no animal or insect lifeforms to be found anywhere.

As they continue exploring, Ledward, a member of the security team, steps on a cluster of mushroom-like plants, causing alien spores to spew into the air. They fly around like cartoon bees and zoom right into his ear, infecting him. He stays behind to guard Oram's wife Karine, who takes samples of the local flora.

The crew then spots a crashed, horseshoe-shaped Engineer spaceship at the top of a mountain. They climb up to the ship and enter through a hole punched in the hull. As they wander around the interior of the ship, Daniels finds a set of dog tags labelled Dr. E. Shaw (the heroine of Prometheus). They also find her automatic distress signal and shut it off. Hallet is infected by additional spores that fly up his nose. Too bad these people didn't have some kind of... oh, I dunno... spacesuits to protect them from this sort of thing.

Ledward becomes violently ill from his spore infection, and Karine rushes him back to the dropship. She takes him to the medbay (that is one well-equipped dropship) for treatment. He becomes increasingly worse, until utimately a neomorph bursts from his back. Faris sees this and immediately seals the medbay, locking Karine inside with the creature. Karine pleads with Faris to let her out, but she refuses. The neomorph attacks Karine, and she fights it off for a while before it overpowers and kills her.

The neomorph easily breaks out of the medbay and starts scuttling all over the ship. Faris grabs a gun and shoots at it, accidentally hitting a rack of flammable tanks. The tanks explode, killing her and completely destroying the dropship (!). Somehow the neomorph escapes. The rest of the crew return just in time to see their ride go up in flames. Suddenly another neomorph explodes from Hallet's throat and disappears into the brush.

The two neomorphs grow up fast, and begin attacking the surviving crew. Ankor is killed, and Walter saves Daniels by jamming his left hand down a neomorph's throat. Unfortunately its acid blood burns off his left hand. The crew manages to kill one of the neomorphs, while the other's scared away by Obi-Wan Kenobi, er, I mean a mysterious, hooded figure. Gosh, I wonder who it could be?

Having no other choice— since amazingly there was only one dropship on the Convenant— the survivors follow the hooded figure. He leads them through a ruined city littered with hundreds of Engineer corpses. They enter a temple and the figure removes its hood. To absolutely no one's surprise, it turns out to be David, whose head was apparently reattached to his body sometime after the events of Prometheus. He assures them they're safe inside the temple.

Daniels asks David what happened to the city. He explains that he and Elizabeth Shaw arrived on the planet ten years ago in their borrowed Engineer horseshoe ship. Unfortunately the ship's cargo of black goo was somehow "accidentally" released over the city, destroying the populace. For some reason, the ship then crashed on the mountaintop, killing Shaw and leaving David the only inhabitant of the planet. Sure, sounds believable to me.

Daniels radios the Covenant, but they can't land the ship due to a massive and intense storm in the area (which we inexplicably never see on the surface). In the temple, David chats with Walter, who's sort of his descendent. David's surprised and upset that Walter isn't programmed with an imagination. Walter says that humans were freaked out by the David series' capacity for creative thought and removed it in subsequent models like himself. David then tries to teach Walter to play the flute, which isn't the least bit sexually suggestive at all.

Rosenthal is separated from the group and decapitated by the surviving neomorph. David discovers her body, and tries communicating with the alien. Oram walks in, sees what's going on and kills the neomorph, angering David. Oram demands to know what's really going on, and David reveals that for the past ten years he's been experimenting with the black goo, attempting to genetically engineer a perfect new species— the xenomorphs.

He takes Oram down to an underground chamber, filled with the familiar eggs from ALIEN. One of the eggs opens, and Oram stupidly sticks his head right over it, as a facehugger flies out and implants an embryo in him. A chestburster erupts from his body a few minutes later.

David tries to turn Walter to his side, telling them that humanity is an inferior species that should be wiped out. When Walter disagrees, David violently stabs him in the neck with his flute, causing him to spew milky white fluid from his wound, which, once again isn't the least bit sexually suggestive at all. Walter seemingly "dies," and David leaves. A closeup reveals Walter's neck wound slowly healing itself...

The security team comes to investigate Oram's disappearance, and Lope is attacked by another facehugger. Cole cuts it off him, but its acid blood severely burns Lope's face in the process. Cole's killed by a now full-sized xenomorph (that apparently grew to adulthood in a matter of two minutes), as Lope limps the hell out of there.

Meanwhile, Tennessee's wringing his hands back the Covenant, worried about his wife Faris (who he doesn't know is dead) and the rest of the crew. He overrides MOTHER's safety protocols and takes the ship down into the storm in an effort to reestablish communications.

Daniels wanders into David's chamber of horrors, and sees drawings he made of Shaw's disemboweled body. She realizes Shaw didn't die in the crash after all, and David killed her. She confronts him, and he admits he experimented on Shaw's body. David attacks Daniels, who stabs him in the throat with her nail pendant. David shrugs off the injury and pulls out the nail. He attacks Daniels again, but she's saved by the timely appearance of Walter, who, being a more advanced model of android, managed to heal himself.

Walter and David have a brutal battle, as Daniels flees the temple. She and the injured Lope manage to contact the Covenant, which is being buffeted by the dangerous storm (that we still can't see on the surface). Tennessee doesn't dare lower the ship any farther, but Daniels suggests flying the sturdy cargo sled down to the surface.

Daniels and Lope rush out to the landing area to wait for rescue. They're joined by Walter, who apparently "killed" David while we weren't looking. Never mind that no director with an ounce of sanity would ever allow a villain to be killed offscreen— this is really Walter! He's missing his left hand and everything!

Tennessee flies the sled down to the surface, and the three leap onto it. As it's about to take off, a xenomoprh climbs on as well. It tries to smash its head through the sled's cockpit to get to Tennessee, but Daniels manages to grab it with the claws of a crane (cough power loader cough), perfectly recreating the "Get away from her you BITCH" moment from ALIENS. She manages to crush the xenomorph and fling it into the air, as the sled rockets back into space.

Back on the Covenant, the survivors recover and prepare to resume course to Origae-6. Unfortunately they find Lope's been killed by a chestburster, meaning there's now an adult xenomorph on board. The creature kills Ricks and Upworth while they're in the shower, as the movie decides to try and remake ALIEN in its final fifteen minutes. Daniels and Tennessee lure it into the terraforming bay. Daniels locks it inside a large utility vehicle, which she then jettisons out the airlock (Wow, blasting a xenomorph into space? Never seen that before!).

The crisis averted, Daniels and Tennessee (the only surviving members of the crew) climb into their cryochambers. As Walter's tucking Daniels in, she mentions the cabin she and her late husband planned to build on Origae-6. Walter doesn't know what she's talking about, and Daniels realizes he's actually David, in the LEAST surprising plot twist of all time. She's horrified when she realizes what David will do to the two thousand frozen colonists on board, and begins shrieking and pounding on the cryochamber lid before it puts her back to sleep.

David goes to the hypersleep bay and observes his new frozen test subjects. He vomits up two facehugger embryos (?) and places them into cold storage. He (as Walter) makes a log entry, noting that all crew members except Daniels and Tennessee were killed in the neutrino blast (??).

Thoughts:
• As long-time readers of Bob Canada's BlogWorld all know by now, I hate it when a "futuristic" movie is filled with all sorts of high-tech gadgetry and is set in a society radically different from out own— and then takes place in the far off year of 2030.

ALIEN: Covenant is one to these films, as it's set just eighty seven short years from now. I ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE you there's no way in hell we'll have terraforming, colony ships, warp drives or androids indistinguishable from humans by that point. Hell, even if they started today, it would take NASA twenty years or more to send a manned ship back to our own Moon. And a Mars mission is even farther away.

Would it have killed them to have set the story three or four hundred years from now?

• James Franco has an uncredited role as Captain Branson, who dies in a horrific fire inside a cryotube within the first five minutes of the film. Actually it's impossible to tell it's Franco or anyone else during the death scene.

He shows up briefly again a bit later, as Daniels watches a video of him mountain climbing.

So why would the producers go to the trouble of casting a recognizable actor for such a short and distracting cameo? Welp, it's because Franco's role was originally a bit bigger, but was cut for time. You can see more of him in an online-only "prologue" called Last Supper.

By the way, when Daniels watches the video of Branson mountain climbing, it's impossible not to think of Franco in 124 Hours.

• Speaking of the cryotubes, why is it even possible to be incinerated inside one? Aren't they supposed to freeze you? Why's there anything incendiary in there?

• The movie goes out of its way to point out that Oram is an "extremely religious" man, implying this is a rarity in the future. Yet when the crew wants to hold a short memorial service for Captain Branson, Oram forbids it, saying there are more important duties to perform.

If he's so damned religious, why would he object to a funeral service? You'd think he'd have been the first one to suggest it, so he could get out his Bible and start thumping it!

• As everyone knows by now, every movie in the ALIEN franchise tells the exact same story over and over— people find aliens, aliens kill people, lady kills alien and survives. In an effort to lessen this repetition a bit, each film has featured a different group of victims, er, I mean characters.

ALIEN: Space Truckers
ALIENS: Space Marines
ALIEN 3: Prisoners
ALIEN Resurrection: Mercenaries
Prometheus: Scientists
ALIEN: Covenant: Colonists

Not a nitpick, just an observation.

• It's kind of disheartening to see people smoking in this movie. Surely by 2104 humanity will have wised up and kicked that filthy habit? On the other hand, smoking was still rampant in ALIENS as well, which was set in 2179. I guess people never learn.

• The crew picks up Shaw's automated distress signal, and discovers it's coming from a relatively nearby planet. After scanning the planet, Oram says it looks more promising than their destination of Origae-6, and wants to divert the ship there.

No. NO! Absolutely not! Bad movie! BAD! Go to your room, Ridley Scott, and don't come out until you're ready to direct something that's not so stupid.

The Covenant's mission is not something that was slapped together overnight. It no doubt required years of planning and research. Scientists studied hundreds, maybe thousands of planets, and designated Origae-6 as the best possible candidate for colonization. A crew was then chosen and trained for months, maybe years to prepare them for the conditions they'd encounter on that particular planet. Equipment was selected and loaded, based on the conditions they'd encounter on their new world. Then there's the fuel situation. We don't know exactly what powers the Covenant, but it's entirely possible it has just enough fuel to make it to Origae-6 and no farther.

And then Oram casually throws all that careful planning out the window by saying, "Hey guys, let's check out that completely unknown planet over there!"

This is something that would NEVER, EVER happen on any kind of expedition, and it was so monumentally stupid it actually made me angry there in my theater seat. Daniels should have declared him unfit for duty and assumed command right then and there.

• Why the hell is there only one dropship on the Covenant? That just seems like poor planning. They're millions of light years from Earth. If something happens to it, as it does here, they don't have a backup and there ain't anywhere to go for a replacement.

• I pointed this out several times in the plot, but it bears repeating. Over and over during the movie, we're told that the Covenant can't land on the planet's surface because there's a violent storm blanketing the area.

Yet whenever we cut to the surface of the planet, there's absolutely NO evidence of this. No wind, no thunder or lighting, no ominous clouds. Not even a single drop of rain. Chalk it up to bizarre alien weather that's invisible from the ground, I guess.

• Everyone and their dog has already pointed this out, but it bears repeating— after the dropship lands, the colonists all stupidly walk out and casually stroll around the planet with absolutely NO protective gear whatsoever. Not even so much as a cotton face mask. Wait, wait, strike that. They DO wear fetching little hats with a protective flap in back, so there you go. Safety first!

No one thinks to run any checks for hostile lifeforms, dangerous bacteria or harmful radiation. Naturally it isn't long before one of the crew members becomes infected by alien spores.

The crew in Prometheus acted like idiots as well, trying to pet alien cobra things and bringing potentially harmful organisms onboard their ship. Even so, they look like geniuses next to the Covenant staff.

To make matters even worse, we see they have a little wheeled drone that trundles down the ramp AFTER everyone's already disembarked. They could have easily sent this drone out in advance to have it test the air and see if protective gear was necessary or not. The thing's right there on the ship— why not use it?

Look, I get it. If they'd have used the drone, it would have detected the spores, they'd have said, "Let's get the hell out of here" and then the movie would have been over (if only). But surely there was a less clumsy and obvious way to jumpstart the plot.

• When Ledward steps on the extraterrestrial puffball, he releases a swarm of spores that form various geometric shapes as they fly through the air, before making a beeline for his nearest open orifice.

As they do so, it's impossible not to think of old cartoons featuring swarms of bees that form weapons and such.

• After Ledward's infected, an alien creature bursts from his back, rather than his chest, as is traditional in this films. SEE, GUYS? This movie's COMPLETELY different from ALIEN! It's got backbursters!

• How are the xenomorphs growing to adulthood so fast in this movie? Granted, the previous films have never given us a timetable for their life cycle, but it seems like it took a few hours at least to go from facehugger to chestburster to adult. In Covenant it seems like they're growing to full size in literally minutes.

• Credit where credits's due, ALIEN: Covenant looks amazing, as all of Ridley Scott's films do. The David/Walter "twin" effects in particular were very well done. I just wish Scott put as much time into the story as he does his effects.

• David brags that he has the ability to imagine and create, which is something Walter doesn't have the capability to do. Walter explains that androids from the David series were a little too human, and made people uncomfortable. So the Walter series was deliberately designed to be more robot-like to avoid the "uncanny valley" effect.

This is the exact same plotline that was featured in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Datalore. In that episode, Data the android finds out he has an"older brother" named Lore, who acts much more naturally and can even experience emotions. Lore made the humans around him uncomfortable, so he was deactivated and the less-realistic Data was created as a substitute.

There's no doubt in my mind that Covenant stole this idea from Star Trek. It's so blatant it's actually shocking.

• After finding out that Walter isn't programmed with creativity, David attempts to teach him how to play the flute. As the lesson progresses, David slowly moves in closer and closer, gently guiding Walter's hand over the holes in the flute. Subtle!

This had to be the most obvious and downright WEIRD sex scene in cinema history. Flagrant doesn't even begin to describe it. If you've ever wanted to see Michael Fassbender shamelessly flirt with himself, this is the movie for you.

• At one point David takes Oram into his xenomorph birthing room, and shows him an alien egg. The top of the egg opens up, and Oram literally sticks his head down into it to get himself a better look at what's inside. Naturally a second later a facehugger springs out and wraps itself around his head (though it didn't have very far to spring).

This may have been the stupidest and most laughable scene in the entire franchise. I hope actor Billy Crudup was embarrassed at having to film it.

• At the end of the film, it's revealed that David actually switched places with Walter, in one of the most telegraphed "plot twists" I've ever seen.

Seriously, is there anyone who DIDN'T see this switch coming? The second that Walter got his hand burned off, I knew that would become a plot point, as it was an obvious way of identifying the identical androids from one another. Why hobble a character that way unless it was going to pay off somehow later on?

Later on David and Walter have an epic android on android battle. The movie turns its attention away from them for a bit, and then suddenly Walter appears, saying he "killed" David offscreen. It seems odd for a major character to die offscreen, but it must be true, as this is definitely Walter. After, all, he's missing his left hand! Eh? EH?

Then at the very end we find out that Walter is really David after all. To absolutely no one's surprise, he apparently burned off his own hand to imitate Walter so he could infiltrate the Convenant and continue his weirdo xenomorph experiments.

It was all so obvious. The movie has two identical characters, one good and one evil. Suddenly one disappears, and we're told he died offscreen. No movie would EVER do that, unless it was trying to set up a twist ending. It's Screenwriting 101. The most frustrating thing about it was how long it went on, to the point where the audience was practically yelling at the screen for the movie to reveal the twist already.

• By the way, it's established earlier in the film that David can't heal injuries, but Walter, being a later and more advanced model, can. Unless his hand gets burned off. I guess that's too big an injury for him to heal.

When David attacks Daniels, she stabs him in the chin with a nail. Later on when he's impersonating Walter, the chin wound is inexplicably gone.  Did David fill in the hole with putty?

• As I said earlier, ALIEN: Covenant plays out like the Greatest Hits of the franchise, borrowing elements from almost all the previous films. Amazingly, it even cribs a few things from Blade Runner, which was also directed by Ridley Scott.

The first third of the film, in which the crew lands on the planet, finds an alien ship and explores it, is practically a scene for scene remake of Prometheus.

The final fifteen or twenty minutes of the film are a condensed version of ALIEN, as a xenomorph gets loose on the ship. It kills several crew members before it's herded into a cargo bay and blasted into space.

The galley and dimly-lit corridors of the Covenant look amazingly like those of the Nostromo in ALIEN.

When the cargo sled lands, Daniels, Lope and Walter jump onto it. Unfortunately, so does a xenomorph. Daniels uses an industrial crane attached to the sled to fight the alien, ultimately grabbing it with a giant mechanical claw. This entire scene is lifted wholesale from the end of ALIENS.

This movie contains a scene where a toy bird drinking water is visable. In the opening scene of the original ALIEN (1979) there is another toy bird shown.

We see the xenomorph's point of view here, getting a glimpse of how they somehow see the world even though they don't have any visible eyes. This Alien POV is something that first appeared in ALIEN 3.

David tells Oram that the xenomorphs are the "perfect organism." This is exactly what the evil android Ash said about them in ALIEN.

David gives Walter a gentle kiss right before he stabs him. Roy Batty does the exact same thing to his creator Dr. Tyrell, right before he crushes his head in Blade Runner.

When David attacks Daniels, she stabs him in the throat with a large nail. David shrugs off the injury and says, "That's the spirit!" to her. This is the same line Roy Batty said during his fight with Deckard in Blade Runner.

• Sadly, ALIEN: Covenant raises far more questions than it bothers to answer. It's unclear at this point whether Ridley Scott just doesn't know the answers, or if he's saving them for the next film. Here are a few of the questions that came to mind while watching:

David arrives on the Engineer planet in his stolen horseshoe-shaped ship. For some reason, he then releases canisters of black goo onto the capital (and only?) city, which kills the entire population of Engineers. Why does he kill them? Your guess is as good as mine.

Supposedly David is the one who single-handedly created the xenomorph species we all know and love by experimenting and cross-breeding the neomorphs. Just one question— where'd he get his test subjects? The species reproduces by infecting a host, much like a giant virus. David killed all the Engineers, so there were no hosts left. Did he somehow cross the neomorphs with each other?

Where does the xenomorph queen fit into all this? In ALIENS we saw that the queen is the one who lays the eggs. In Covenant, David somehow has an entire room full of eggs, but there's no queen to be seen anywhere. The queen wasn't in the original ALIEN, which was directed by Ridley Scott— she was invented for ALIENS by James Cameron and Stan Winston. Is Scott deliberately ignoring the queen?

One would assume the Covenant has various access codes and other security measures onboard. How's David gonna deal with those when he's impersonating Walter? Did he somehow upload Walter's codes before he killed him?

Back on board the Covenant, David puts Daniels and Tennessee into their cyrochambers. This makes sense, as he no doubt wants to use them as test subjects in his xenomorph experiments. But then he makes a log entry (as Walter) saying everyone but Daniels and Tennessee was killed in the neutrino blast. Why not say ALL the crew was killed? Does he think it would look suspicious if he said they all died? Plus, Daniels knows that David isn't really Walter now, so I can't imagine he'd let her live.

At the end of the film, David regurgitates two tiny facehugger embryos and places them in a freeze chamber for later experiments. Um... don't the facehuggers hatch from eggs? Did he break open a couple of eggs & swallow what was inside?

Since this is a prequel, the events of ALIEN haven't yet happened. Despite the fact that we just saw David seemingly wipe out the Engineer race, at some point in the future one of them HAS to crash a ship full of xenomorph eggs on LV-426, for the crew of the Nostromo to find. But if David is the one who created the eggs, where does the Engineer get a cargo hold full of them?

I'm told that the novelization and online articles clear up some of these nagging questions. I don't care. I shouldn't have to do homework in order to understand a goddamned movie. If the answers can't be found on the screen, then the director failed at his job.

ALIEN: Covenant is yet another of Ridley Scott's seemingly interminable prequels to the ALIEN franchise. Unfortunately, it completely torpedoes the lofty questions raised by its predecessor Prometheus, as it forgoes intellectualism for action. It's less a movie as it is a Greatest Hits reel of the entire series, and raises far more questions than it answers. Skip it and watch ALIEN or ALIENS instead. I give it a C+.

ALIEN: Overload

DATELINE: LONDON, ENGLAND— 

This week Sir Ridley Scott, director of the upcoming film ALIEN: Covenant, stated that he's nowhere near finished with the popular sci-fi franchise.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, the seventy nine year old director claimed he has plans for another SIX prequels to the original 1979 film ALIEN. That's in addition to ALIEN: Covenant, by the way.

Scott's plan would bring the total number of films in the series to twelve, EIGHT of which would be prequels. 

The 2012 prequel Prometheus delved into the origin of the alien Xenomorph species, who were the antagonists in the first four films (ALIEN, ALIENS, ALIEN 3 and ALIEN: Resurrection). 

It's unclear at this point just how there could be enough additional material regarding the species' origin left to fill another six films. As with all good movie monsters, the less the audience knows about them, the more terrifying they are. Scott's plans would definitely eliminate any remaining possible mystery surrounding the Xenomorphs, examining them in minute detail.

“If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six," Scott told the Herald. "I’m not going to close it down again. No way.”

The interview was cut short when Scott's nurse entered his room and announced that visiting hours were over. She then gave him a cup of pills to swallow, and led the pajama-clad director into the ward's common room, for his daily socialization period. 

1986: Another Great Year For Blockbusters

1986. One of the greatest blockbuster seasons ever at the cineplex. There were an amazing number of big budget, high grossing films released during that period, many of which have gone on to classic or cult film status. Influential films we're still watching and talking about today.

Some of the most important directors of our time released their best work during this incredible period. Whether it was a fortuitous alignment of stars in the cosmos or just a random confluence of studio schedules, the Summer of 1986 was a great time to be a movie lover!

It just doesn't seem possible that it's been a whopping THIRTY years since these films were released.

By 1986 the Golden Age Of Videotape was in full swing, so I saw the vast majority of these films at home on our trusty VCR rather than in the theater. Whether I'd have enjoyed them more on the big screen, I can't say.

Note that of all the films on this list, five are sequels and there's only one remake. You hear that Hollywood? Audiences like new ideas and stories.

It seems silly to issue a Spoiler Warning for a bunch of three decade old movies, but... consider yourself warned!

ALIENS

Released July 18, 1986
Budget: $17,000,000
Grossed: $131,000,000

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Paul Reiser (!).

The Plot:
Decades after the events of the first film, Ellen Ripley is found in suspended animation. She joins a platoon of Space Marines and returns to LV-426 to wipe out the aliens who've overrun the colony there.

Thoughts:
• Sigourney Weaver was hesitant to reprise her role as Ripley, fearing a sequel would be subpar and poorly written. When she finally read writer/director James Cameron's script, Weaver was pleased with the way Ripley was handled, especially the mother/daughter bond with Newt, and finally agreed to do the film.

• Actor Bill Paxton improvised most of his lines, such as the iconic, "Game over, man. Game over!"

• Bishop the android says he's incapable of hurting a person or letting anyone come to harm. This is a paraphrase of Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws Of Robotics (1: A robot may not injure a human nor allow a human to come to harm, 2: A robot must obey orders given by a human except where it would conflict with the First Law, 3: A robot must protect its own existence except where it would conflict with the First and Second Laws).

• Hicks was originally played by actor James Remar, who was fired a few days after shooting began and replaced by Michael Biehn. Remar says he was fired due to the debilitating drug habit he had in those days.

Remar can still be seen (from behind) in the finished film, when the marines first enter the alien nest.

Biehn says he received a call from his agent on a Friday, and was in London shooting the film the following Monday.

• ALIENS was the only film that actress Carrie Henn, aka Newt, ever starred in. She grew up to become a teacher. She occasionally does sci-fi and comic conventions, where she no doubt gets sick of people coming up to her and saying, "They mowstly come out at night. Mowstly."

• Steven Lang auditioned for the role of Carter Burke, which eventually went to Paul Reiser. Lang went on to star as Colonel Miles Quaritch in director James Cameron's Avatar.

• After the film premiered, many businesses inquired about buying Power Loaders to use as forklifts. They were disappointed to find out that the Power Loader was just a special effect, and sadly not a real piece of equipment.

• Even though I'm a big fan of ALIENS, somehow I never managed to see it in the theater. I saw it on home video about a year after the film was released.

Despite the fact that I watched it on a tiny thirteen inch TV with a single tinny speaker, I was still on the edge of my seat all through the third act. That's how awesome the movie is!

Big Trouble In Little China
Released July 1, 1986
Budget: $20,000,000
Grossed: $11,000,000

Starring Kurt Russell, Kim Catrall, Victor Wong and James Hong.

The Plot:
An American truck driver is drawn into a dangerous and mysterious world inside Chinatown, which is ruled by an immortal wizard.

Thoughts:
• Director John Carpenter and star Kurt Russell expected the film to be a huge success, but due to a lack of promotion on the part of 20th Century Fox, it was a box office bomb. ALIENS stole a lot of its grosses as well. Fortunately it became a cult hit through the power of home video.

• Carpenter said the movie was originally supposed to be a Western, but that concept was scrapped and it was set in the present day (present being 1986, of course).

• John Carpenter and Kurt Russell worked together on four other movies: Elvis, Escape From New York, The Thing, and Escape From L.A.

• Kurt Russell was Carpenter's first choice to play Jack Burton. 20th Century Fox wanted either Jack Nicholson (!) or Clint Eastwood (!!) for the part, proving that studio executives have always been morons.

Russell turned down the lead role in Highlander to appear in this film.

• In the film, the Brides of Lo Pan must all have green eyes. Actresses Kim Catrall and Suzee Pai both have brown eyes in real life, so they wore very obvious green contact lenses in the movie.

• The film was originally going to be a sequel to 1984's Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, but was heavily rewritten to be a standalone story.

• If you watch the film closely, it becomes obvious that Jack Burton is a bumbling clod, and his pal Wang Chi is actually the hero. I freely admit this flew completely over my head when I first saw the film in the theater in 1986. Hey, what can I say, I was a stupid kid.

Crocodile Dundee

Released September 26, 1986
Budget: $8,000,000
Grossed: $174,000,000

Starring Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski.

The Plot:
A reporter meets a colorful bushman in the Australian Outback, and introduces him to New York society.

Thoughts:
• The second highest grossing film of 1986.

• The American poster features quotation marks around "Crocodile," because the studio feared audiences would think the movie was a kids' film about an actual crocodile (!).

• Paul Hogan insisted that the character of Crocodile Dundee was his own creation. Later it was discovered the character was based on real-life Australian bushman Rod Ansell. Ansell became famous down under when his boat capsized on a solo hunting trip, forcing him to spend two months in the outback before reaching civilization.

Unfortunately Ansell never saw a cent from the movie based on his life. His life took a tragic turn when his wife left him, he developed a drug habit and was involved in a police shootout. Some believe his exclusion from the film's profits drove him to his erratic behavior. And that's one to grow on!

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Released June 11 1986
Budget: $5,800,000
Grossed: $70,000,000

Starring Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck and Jeffrey Jones.

The Plot:
A high school student skips school, and he and his friends experience an adventure-filled day in Chicago.

Thoughts:
• Rob Lowe, John Cusack, Jim Carrey (!), Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr. and Michael J. Fox were all considered for the role of Ferris.

Anthony Michael Hall turned down the role because he didn't want to be typecast as a perennial teen.

Amazingly, John Candy auditioned for the role of Cameron Frye, but was turned down because the producers thought he was too old (at thirty six!) to play a teenager. Oddly enough, Alan Ruck, who ended up playing Cameron, was actually twenty nine (but somehow looked eighteen)!

• The first cut of the film clocked in at two hours and forty five minutes. That seems to be typical of John Hughes movies, as the first cut of Planes, Trains And Automobiles was reportedly around three hours long!

• Actor Charlie Sheen supposedly stayed up for forty eight hours straight to achieve his character's drugged-out look. Riiiiight. He "stayed up" to look like he was on drugs.

• Apparently there was a lot of romance on the set of Ferris Bueller. Cindy Picket and Lyman Ward, who played Ferris' parents, married in real life shortly after filming. Unfortunately they divorced in 1992.

Mathew Broderick and Jennifer Grey also became engaged after shooting the movie (despite the fact they play siblings!). Sadly, a year later Broderick and Grey were involved in a car crash in Ireland, which killed a mother and daughter.

• During the parade scene, Ferris passes a theater playing Godzilla 1985. Years later in 1998, Matthew Broderick starred in the American version of Godzilla.

• There've been many attempts at a sequel, but star Matthew Broderick says the film's perfect as is and doesn't need a follow-up.

• There's a fan theory rattling around the interwebs that suggests Ferris Bueller doesn't actually exist, and is a figment of Cameron's imagination, sort of an idealized, outgoing version of himself. Sort of like Fight Club. It's an interesting theory, I guess, but I know darned good and well that's not what writer/director John Hughes had in mind.

• Full disclosure: I never saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off until 2016 (!!!), so it hasn't resonated with me over the years the way it has with the rest of the population. Nothing against the film, mind you– I wasn't actively avoiding it, it's just one of those movies that I never got around to seeing until way, way after everyone else did.

Flight Of The Navigator

Released August 1, 1986
Budget: $9,000,000
Grossed: $18,000,000

Starring Joey Cramer, Paul Reubens, Cliff DeYoung, Veronica Cartwright, Sarah Jessica Parker and Howard Hesseman.

The Plot:
A young boy is abducted by an alien ship in 1978 and returned, un-aged, to Earth in 1986. When it's discovered his mind is full of alien info and he can control an advanced spaceship, the military wants to capture him for study.

Thoughts:
• As you're no doubt aware, Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman, was the voice of MAX the alien spaceship (although he's credited as "Paul Mall").

• This is the second ever Disney film to contain profanity. The word "shit" is used twice, and Mr. Freeman calls Dr. Faraday a bastard.

The Fly

Released August 15, 1986
Budget: $9,000,000
Grossed: $60,000,000

Starring Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum.

The Plot:
A scientist invents a transporter and tests it on himself with unfortunate and gruesome results.

Thoughts:
• Michael Keaton and John Lithgow auditioned for the lead role of Seth Brundle.

• Mel Brooks (yep, that Mel Brooks) was one of the film's producers. He kept this fact a secret though, fearing the public would think it was a comedy if they saw his name attached to the film.

Brooks came up with the film's tag line: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

• When the film premiered, Jeff Goldblum wrote a letter to actor Vincent Price (who starred in the 1958 version of The Fly), saying, "I hope you like it as much as I liked yours." No kidding, Vincent!

Highlander

Released March 7, 1986
Budget: $19,000,000
Grossed: $12,000,000

Starring Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown and Sean Connery.

The Plot:
An immortal swordsman living in New York City is being hunted down by another of his kind. "There can be only ONE!"

Thoughts:
• Highlander's another film that wasn't a big hit at the time, but has gone on to cult status.

• Kurt Russell was originally cast as lead character Connor MacLeod, but dropped out to star in Big Trouble In Little China.

Marc Singer, Michael Douglas (!), Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Michael Nouri, Peter Weller, Ron Perlman, Liam Neeson (!!), Christopher Reeve, Kevin Costner, Sting (!!!), Mickey Rourke, Ed Harris and Mel Gibson were also considered for the role.

• Christopher Lambert barely spoke English when he landed the role of Connor MacLeod. His only other English-speaking film at that point was Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes, in which he uttered just a few words.

• Due to scheduling problems, all of Sean Connery's scenes had to be filmed in one week.

• Full disclosure again: This is another film I didn't see until many, many years after the fact. Again, I wasn't avoiding it, it's just one I somehow never got around to watching. Naturally, thirty years of hype couldn't help but set me up for disappointment, as I thought the film was just OK.

Howard The Duck

Released August 1, 1986
Budget: $37,000,000
Grossed: $38,000,000

Starring Lea Thompson, Tim Robbins and Jeffrey Jones.

The Plot:
A sentient, talking duck from another dimension is accidentally brought to Earth, where he has to cope with our society.

Thoughts:
• Believe it or not, Howard The Duck was the first major motion picture based on a Marvel comic! My, how times have changed.

It's widely considered to be one of the worst movies ever made. Eh, it's by no means great, but believe me, I've seen far, far worse (heck, I've seen worse films this year!).

• Jay Leno was considered for the role of Phil Blumburtt before it ultimately went to Tim Robbins. Man, the world dodged a bullet that day. 

Amazingly there was a time in the 1980s when Jay Leno was being groomed as a film actor (!).

• In 1986, George Lucas was heavily in debt after constructing his $50 million Skywalker Ranch film studio. Lucas produced Howard The Duck, hoping the film would be a huge box office hit and get him out of debt.

When that didn't happen, he began selling off Lucasfilm assets, including his newly formed CGI animation division. Steve Jobs bought Lucas' animation department, which later morphed into a little business called Pixar!

• The Howard suit cost a reported $2 million ($4.5 million today!). There were eight different actors who portrayed Howard in various scenes. Ed Gale was the one used most often, and the only one who received a film credit.

• Lea Thompson actually did all her own singing in the movie.

• The movie was such a flop that Frank Price, head of Universal Studios, quit his job shortly after it premiered. The next day the Variety headline read, "Duck Cooks Price's Goose."

The Karate Kid Part II
Released June 20, 1986
Budget: $13,000,000
Grossed: $115,000,000

Starring Ralph Macchi and Noriyuki Pat Morita.

The Plot:
Daniel LaRusso and his pal Mr. Miyagi travel to Okinawa, where they struggle to save a local village from evil land developers.

Thoughts:
• The movie started filming just ten days after the release of The Karate Kid.

• Although much of the movie's set in Okinawa, it was actually filmed in Hawaii, due to the similar landscape and the ease of filming on U.S. soil.

• The Karate Kid Part II earned more than the original film— $115 million vs. $90 million.

• After filming The Karate Kid, actress Elisabeth Shue (who played Daniel's girlfriend Ali) enrolled at Harvard. She was supposed to have a minor role in Part II, in which she and Daniel break up. However, the writers scrapped this plan, and Daniel makes a brief mention of her and then she's never seen or heard from again.

Labyrinth

Released June 27, 1986
Budget: $25,000,000
Grossed: $13,000,000

Starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

The Plot:
Have you seen The Wizard Of Oz? It's pretty much that, but with more creepy sexual undertones.

Thoughts:
• Mick Jagger, Prince (!), Sting and Michael Jackson (!!) were all considered for the role of Jareth, before the producers decided on David Bowie.

• One of the film's choreographers is Cheryl McFadden. You may know here better as Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

• All through the film, Jareth juggles a set of crystal balls. The juggling scenes were one hundred percent real, with no camera tricks or special effects used. Michael Moschen performed all the juggling by crouching behind David Bowie and sticking his arms out in front of him. As a result he couldn't see what he was doing and had to juggle blind.

• The sources of most of the characters Sarah meets inside the Labyrinth can be found in her room in the real world (very much like the way Dorothy incorporated things from her world into Oz). She has a stuffed animals that look like Sir Didymus and Ludo on her shelves, a doll that resembles Hoggle, and even a figure that looks a lot like Jareth on her dresser.

She also has a music box containing a figure wearing a dress identical to the one she wears in the ballroom scene. There's even a wooden maze on her dresser that looks suspiciously labyrinth-like.

There's also an M.C. Escher print on her wall, which is very much like the "crazy perspective" environment in which she confronts Jareth.

Little Shop Of Horrors

Released December 19, 1986
Budget: $25,000,000
Grossed: $34,000,000

Starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, James Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest and Bill Murray.

The Plot:
A nerdy florist discovers a talking, man-eating plant that threatens to take over the world.

Thoughts:
• Little Shop Of Horrors was directed by Frank Oz, who's best known as the voice and puppeteer of Yoda in the original Star Wars films.

Although Oz is primarily a puppeteer and voice artists, he's had a decent career as a director. He helmed The Dark Crystal (with Jim Henson), The Muppets Take Manhattan, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, The Indian In The Cupboard, In & Out, Bowfinger, The Stepford Wives (2004) and Death At A Funeral.

By the way, Oz's real name is Frank Oznowicz.

• Ellen Greene, who plays Audrey, is the only member of the off-Broadway cast to appear in the film.

The role of Audrey was originally offered to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna (!!!). Yikes.

• When I first saw the film, I was impressed with the articulation of the massive Audrey puppet's gigantic mouth, and wondered how they got it to move so fast.

Turns out they undercranked the camera, and then played the footage at the normal twenty four frames per second, which sped up Audrey's movements considerably. Of course this meant that the actors had to move and lip sync slower than normal as well.

• The film originally ended with Seymour and Audrey being eaten by Audrey II. Director Frank Oz reluctantly changed it after negative reaction from test audiences. This is why we can't have nice things.

Platoon

Released December 19, 1986
Budget: $6,000,000
Grossed: $138,000,000

Starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, John C. McGinley, Keith David, Forest Whitaker, Tony Todd and Johnny Depp.

The Plot:
A young man drops out of college and joins the Army during the Vietnam War, where he experiences the horrors of combat.

Thoughts:
• Oliver Stone was the first Vietnam veteran to direct a movie about the Vietnam War. Many events in the film were drawn from Stone's personal experiences in the war.

• Platoon took a long time to make it to the big screen, as Stone wrote the first draft back in 1971.

• Stone sent a copy of the script to Jim Morrison of The Doors in 1971, hoping to get him to play Chris (the part ultimately went to Charlie Sheen). Morrison reportedly had a copy of the script with him when he was found dead in Paris a few weeks later.

• Stone deliberately cast his two main actors against type. Tom Berenger was famous for playing good guys, but was cast as the sadistic Sgt. Barnes in Platoon. Willem Dafoe had mostly played villains up to that point, but was cast as the heroic Sgt. Elias.

Apparently the tactic worked, as both actors received Oscar nominations for the film.

• Charlie Sheen narrates the movie, which echoes his father Martin Sheen, who narrated Apocalypse Now, an earlier Vietnamese War movie.

Pretty In Pink

Released February 28, 1986
Budget: $9,000,000
Grossed: $40,000,000

Starring Molly Ringwald, Harry Dean Stanton, Jon Cryer, Annie Potts, James Spader and Andrew McCarthy.

The Plot:
A working class girl and a rich guy fall in love and try to date, but their various social circles get in the way of their happiness.

Thoughts:
• Supposedly the film came about when actress Molly Ringwald asked director John Hughes to write a film based on the song Pretty In Pink by The Psychedelic Furs (and yes, the song appears in the movie).

• Jon Cryer, who plays Ducky, claims that despite what it looks like onscreen, both Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy thought he was "irritating."

Have you ever seen Cryer on Two And A Half Men? Who could blame them?

Short Circuit

Released May 9, 1986
Budget: $9,000,000
Grossed: $40,000,000

Starring Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton and G.W. Bailey.

The Plot:
A military robot is hit by lightning and becomes sentient, deciding it would rather learn and explore the world rather than kill.

Thoughts:
• Sign of the times: Fisher Stevens plays Ben in the film, an Indian character with a broad, exaggerated Hindu accent. Just one thing— Stevens isn't Indian. There's no way in hell something like that would ever be allowed today.

Stand By Me

Released August 8, 1986
Budget: $8,000,000
Grossed: $52,000,000

Starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell and Kiefer Sutherland.

The Plot:
In 1959, four young boys explore the local woods to try and find the body of a missing teen.

Thoughts:
• Based on the short story The Body, part of the anthology book Different Seasons by Stephen King. The Shawshank Redemption (under the name Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption) and Apt Pupil are also in the book, and were both turned into film as well.

That must be some book!

• Columbia Pictures was concerned that the story's original title The Body was misleading, thinking it sounded too much like a horror film. Director Rob Reiner came up with Stand By Me, from the Ben E. King song of the same name.

After the film premiered, there was renewed interest in the song, and the Stand By Me soundtrack made the Top Ten in 1986.

• King claims the "leech incident" in the story and film (you'll now it if you've seen the film) actually happened to him as a child.

• Actor Corey Feldman, who plays Teddy, claims the character was very close to his actual personality and personal life at the time. Yikes!

• Actor Jerry O'Connell was eleven during filming, and was amazed that he was allowed to swear in the movie.

• The scene in which the train bears down on Gordie and Vern on the bridge was filmed with old fashioned movie magic. The train was actually several hundred feet away, but the scene was shot head on with a telephoto lens, that compressed the image, making it look like the train was right behind them.

Hey, we didn't have fancy CGI in the 80s!

• When the boys pool their money, it adds up to $2.37. The number 237 appears in many Stephen King stories (such as Room 237 in The Shining).

• Art imitating life: In the film, the character of Chris, who's played by River Phoenix, is said to have died relatively young while trying to break up a fight. In reality, River Phoenix died young (from a drug overdose in 1993), while the other three main actors are still alive and working.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Released November 26, 1986
Budget: $21,000,000
Grossed: $133,000,000

Starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Robin Curtis and Catherine Hicks.

The Plot:
When an alien probe threatens Earth, the crew of the Enterprise goes back in time to retrieve two humpback whales in order to communicate with it.

Thoughts:
• In the opening scene showing the shrieking alien probe approaching Earth, there were originally subtitles explaining what it was supposed to be saying. Things like, "Where are you?" and "Can you hear us?"

Thankfully director Leonard Nimoy came to his senses and dropped the subtitles from the final cut.

• Ever wonder why Lt. Saavik stays on Vulcan and doesn't accompany the crew on their little romp? Supposedly there's a deleted scene that explains she became pregnant while helping Young Spock through his pon far (it's a Star Trek thing) in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.

I'm not sure I care for that explanation, but at least it's better than the big fat non-reason we got in the final film.

• This film contains the one and ONLY instance in any movie or TV episode in which Kirk actually says, "Scotty, beam me up.

• Many underwater shots of the humpback whales were filmed with four foot long animatronic models. Apparently they were pretty convincing, because many animal rights groups criticized the film for getting too close to whales in the wild and pestering them just for a film!

• The movie was originally going to feature Eddie Murphy (!!!) as a UFO buff who spots the crew's Klingon Bird Of Prey decloaking at the Super Bowl. Everyone else in the audience thinks it's a special effect, but Murphy's character is convinced it's real, and he eventually discovers Kirk and his crew.

This storyline was fortunately scrapped when Murphy chose to star in The Golden Child instead. Praise the Movie Gods!

What can I say? It was the 80s, and the cocaine flowed thick and freely.

• There's another subplot that never made it into the film. After the crew travels back to 1986 San Francisco, Sulu wanders into Chinatown. He runs into a young boy named Hikaru, who he realizes is his great-great-great (and so on) grandfather).

Supposedly the kid they hired for the part started crying and wouldn't stop, and the scene was ultimately dumped. Oh myyyyyyyyyyy!

• James Doohan, who played Scotty, was a war hero in real life and lost the middle finger on his right hand in battle. He was pretty good at hiding his missing digit on the TV show and the previous films, but you can see it here in the scene where he picks up the computer mouse and tries talking into it.

• During the probe's attack, a technician lists the various cities that are being affected, including Leningrad. Whoops! Leningrad changed its name to St. Petersberg in 1991, five years after this movie premiered (maybe they changed it back again in the 23rd Century?).

• After time traveling to 1986, Kirk and Spock ride a bus through San Francisco. A punk rocker angrily blares his boom box at them, until Spock casually reaches over and knocks him out with the Vulcan neck pinch.

The punker was played by Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer on the film. He actually made himself up in full punk attire and haircut, and even wrote the I Hate You song playing on his boombox.

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the only one of the films in which no one dies.

Top Gun

Released May 16, 1986
Budget: $15,000,000
Grossed: $176,000,000

Starring Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards and Tom Skerritt.

The Plot:
Is there a plot? A pilot code-named Maverck attends the Top Gun Naval Flying School, is determined to prove himself and rise to the top, while wooing a beautiful civilian instructor.

Thoughts:
• Matthew Modine, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Sean Penn, Michael J. Fox (!), Scott Baio (!!), Rob Lowe, Kevin Bacon, Eric Stoltz and Robert Downey Jr. (!!!) were all considered for the part of Maverick.

• The Navy set up recruiting booths in theater lobbies across the country, hoping to recruit pumped-up young hotheads exiting the theaters. Believe it or not their plan worked, and recruitment rates that summer were the highest in years.

• Top Gun star Tom Cruise had to wear lifts in his shoes when acting opposite Kelly McGillis.

• Val Kilmer didn't want anything to do with the film, but was contractually obligated to appear in it. The role of "Iceman" turned out to be the most iconic of his entire career.

• Kelly McGillis' character Charlie is based on an actual person. Christine Fox was a civilian flight instructor, who rose through the ranks of the Pentagon and became Acting Deputy Secretary Of Defense, the highest office ever held by a woman at the DOD.

• An early draft of the film had Maverick and his squad squaring off against North Korean planes. Ultimately the nationalities of the enemy were kept vague, so as not to offend our enemies, I guess.

Other notable movies that premiered in 1986:

• Solarbabies
• SpaceCamp
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
• Blue Velvet
• Manhunter
• The Color Of Money
• Hoosiers
• Three Amigos
• Heartbreak Ridge
• Troll
• Critters
• The Hitcher
• From Beyond
• F/X
• Henry, Portrait Of A Serial Killer
• Night Of The Creeps
• Chopping Mall
• Deadly Friend
• Iron Eagle
• Children Of A Lesser God
• Gung Ho
• King Kong Lives
• Invaders From Mars