 Alien Nation, 1988From producer Gale Anne Hurd comes one of the best science fiction films from the 1980's. The story was brilliant... the film itself is filled with so much humor... the writer Rockne S. O'Bannon and director Graham Baker took as much of what was happening in the late 80's... and put it into the film. From the Rambo 6 movie marque to the Newcomer Pepsi ads... and with brilliant production from Hurd... it's an all around successful movie.O'Bannon went on to write for the Alien Nation television series (which I was a huge fan of...), along with Farscape, SeaQuest, The Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories. I'm not sure if he's related to Dan O'Bannon (Dark Star, Alien, Heavy Metal, The Return of the Living Dead, Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars, Total Recall, Screamers...) but it fits. This script was also re-written by James Cameron... you can download the script here. Baker went on to things I've never even heard of before. The Recruit, Born to Ride and Beowulf. To bad, I thought he did a good job with Nation. Hurd, of course, is the driving force behind some of today's biggest productions. Starting with The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Downtown, Tremors, T2, Raising Cain, No Escape, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Relic, Dante's Peak, Switchback, Armageddon, Dead Man on Campus, Virus, Dick and the soon to be released Clockstoppers, Hurd's productions go from 'incredible' to 'ehh' to 'wow' to 'what?'. Clockstoppers is directed by Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame... and it's starring Jesse Bradford, French Stewart and Michael Biehn. I'm not sure, but I hope for her sake it's not straight to video. Alien Nation has a great cast. James Caan does some really great acting in this picture... along with delivering some great lines. The dynamic between him and Mandy Patinkin (The Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya) is wonderful. Patinkin does a great job, too... with some of the funniest facial expressions I've ever seen... perfect for the naive Newcomer. Terence Stamp had just come off of Young Guns... a complete departure. His other roles in the 80's were few and far between, certainly because of his role as General Zod in Superman II. The two roles are semi-similar... and you can see Zod creeping in at the edges, but this doesn't take away from the film. Stamp isn't much of a force in this film because of his on-screen time being pretty minimal. But he was still fun to watch. One of the things that makes this film so successful as a sci-fi film is that there are almost no special effects. When I say special effects, I mean CG. Almost none. The only CG I saw was in the credits, when we get the shots of the Newcomer ship. Other than that, it's all make-up and story... and really well done. Well done enough to promote a successful TV series. Adam Greenberg was the DP. I can't say that his work was spectacular... but it was decent enough to warrant talking about. He's had a fantastic career, to say the least. He's been a cinematographer for almost 40 years, originally working on Israeli films and finally breaking into mainstream Hollywood in 1980 with The Big Red One, a Lee Marvin vehicle. From there, Greenberg waited for his big break, and in 1984 directed the cult classic Terminator (with Hurd). Then went on to make a number of other good to great films. Once Bitten, Iron Eagle, Wisdom, Three Men and a Baby, Near Dark, La Bamba, Turner & Hooch, Ghost, Terminator 2, Sister Act, Dave, Junior, Renaissance Man, First Knight, Eraser, Sphere, Rush Hour, Inspector Gadget and the soon to be released Collateral Damage with our good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger. His career is jumpy, I will admit that. I'm not sure how someone goes from Ghost to T2, but he did it... and proved his worth as a cinematographer completely. It just came out on DVD. Would I purchase it? Definitely. I love movies like this. Dated movies that make fun of the 80's... that take advantage of smart scripts... and that have good producers on it. J.P.
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