Alien (1979)

[version]

Always loved that Isle of the Dead.... remnants of teenage wannabe gothdom I suppose

He did loads of versions of it. I like them all.

 

[IdleRich]

Annihilation was pretty good, strange in a ‘now’ way (cinematographically, soundtrack and acting-wise) but also laudably so. It bracketed a lot out to focus on the themes it wanted to raise which is respectable and the final sequence where there’s a climax of otherworldly revelation that doesn’t resolve anything but makes things even more mysterious was compelling. Funny resemblance to The Thing where the solution to eliminate the intruders is the brute elemental force of fire but there remains the cliffhanger of our hero being compromised by the experience.

But fire ultimately doesn't kill the thing does it?

I wanted more from Annihilation so I ordered the book but it never came. I doubt it would have solved the film for me anyhow. Ultimately it's Stalker without such a clear-eyed hand on the tiller.

 

[sus]

Slated!

 

[version]

Annihilation was pretty good, strange in a ‘now’ way (cinematographically, soundtrack and acting-wise) but also laudably so. It bracketed a lot out to focus on the themes it wanted to raise which is respectable and the final sequence where there’s a climax of otherworldly revelation that doesn’t resolve anything but makes things even more mysterious was compelling. Funny resemblance to The Thing where the solution to eliminate the intruders is the brute elemental force of fire but there remains the cliffhanger of our hero being compromised by the experience.

I love the piece that plays when she encounters the alien.

 

[IdleRich]

He did loads of versions of it. I like them all.

Definitely seen at least one, er, version in the flesh but I forget where.

 

[version]

But fire ultimately doesn't kill the thing does it?

I wanted more from Annihilation so I ordered the book but it never came. I doubt it would have solved the film for me anyhow. Ultimately it's Stalker without such a clear-eyed hand on the tiller.

Apparently the book's quite different. I've said it before, but I'm convinced there's a lot of Ballard's crystal world in the film. The plot of these people entering into this shimmering, warping forest, the flora and fauna changing into strange, glittering new forms. One of the characters has the same name as one of the characters in the Ballard too. They're both called 'Ventress'.

 

[IdleRich]

Apparently the book's quite different. I've said it before, but I'm convinced there's a lot of Ballard's crystal world in the film. The plot of these people entering into this shimmering, warping forest, the flora and fauna changing into strange, glittering new forms. One of the characters has the same name as one of the characters in the Ballard too. They're both called 'Ventress'.

Yeah can't be coincidence. I think that's one of the very few Ballard I've read but I don't remember the details.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah can't be coincidence. I think that's one of the very few Ballard I've read but I don't remember the details.

Actually I haven't. Sound a bit like Ice Nine, which came first?

 

[version]

This scene felt like a clear nod to Alien's 'Space Jockey' and the two-headed corpse in The Thing.

 

[sus]

The plot of these people entering into this shimmering, warping forest, the flora and fauna changing into strange, glittering new forms.

More post-Darwin in the Galapagos, nuclear radiation in Polynesia plotlines

 

[sus]

Joseph Banks visits the jungles of Tahiti and when he returns he isn't the same something's changed his fiance doesn't recognize him their engagement falls apart

 

[sus]

Melville spends three months with cannibals ln the Marquesas, when he returns he's caught a bug, he isn't as fit for clothnapkin life anymore, he writes a book and spreads the virus.

 

[IdleRich]

Ice-nine is a fictional material that appears in Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle. Ice-nine is described as a polymorph of ice which instead of melting at 0 °C (32 °F), melts at 45.8 °C (114.4 °F). When ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8 °C, it acts as a seed crystal and causes the solidification of the entire body of water, which quickly crystallizes as more ice-nine. As people are mostly water, ice-nine kills nearly instantly when ingested or brought into contact with soft tissues exposed to the bloodstream, such as the eyes or tongue.

The Crystal World is a science fiction novel by English author J. G. Ballard, published in 1966.[1] The novel tells the story of a physician trying to make his way deep into the jungle to a secluded leprosy treatment facility. While trying to make it to his destination, his chaotic path leads him to try to come to terms with an apocalyptic phenomenon in the jungle that crystallises everything it touches. Ballard previously used the theme of apocalyptic crystallisation in the 1964 short story "The Illuminated Man" (included in The Terminal Beach), which is also set in the same locations.

Strange how everything fits together and loops back round.

 

[version]

Yeah can't be coincidence. I think that's one of the very few Ballard I've read but I don't remember the details.

Actually I haven't. Sound a bit like Ice Nine, which came first?

The central conceit of the crystallising jungle's absolutely brilliant and his descriptions of it are predictably incredible, but it's quite a dull read apart from that. The story isn't interesting.

“He had entered an endless subterranean cavern, where jeweled rocks loomed out of the spectral gloom like marine plants, the sprays of glass forming white fountains. Several times he crossed and recrossed the road. The spurs were almost waist-high, and he was forced to climb over the brittle stems. Once, as he rested against the trunk of a bifurcated oak, an immense multi-colored bird erupted from a bough over his head, and flew off with a wild screech, aureoles of light cascading from its red and yellow wings. At last the storm subsided, and a pale light filtered through the stained-glass canopy. Again, the forest was a place of rainbows, a deep, iridescent light glowing from within.”​

 

[sus]

Yes that's just it, and isn't Cat's Cradle set on a Pacific Island or am I misremembering?

 

[sus]

Crystal is a frozen Wyndham Lewis form

 

[version]

Baudrillard has a book called Revenge of the Crystal.

 

[sus]

Yes that's just it, and isn't Cat's Cradle set on a Pacific Island or am I misremembering?

Caribbean Island but same difference: pagan tropics

And an explicit nuclear connection

And note too the sun worship on the cover (been too long since I've read, so unsure what it connects to in the text)

 

[sus]

This scene felt like a clear descendant of Alien's 'Space Jockey' and the two-headed corpse in The Thing.

This image has gotten very popular, see also The Last Of Us.

Our zombies are no longer rabid animals but something like the mind-captured individual become host for the Network, shedding spores

 

[version]

The fascinating thing about the crystallisation process is the tension between the beauty of it and the fact it's killing everything, like being hypnotised by a steadily coiling snake. There's something similar going on with people like Giger and Antonioni and Lynch being transfixed by industrial machinery.