The Four Color Media Monitor

It's been 45 years since the first official Alien movie debuted, directed at the time by Ridley Scott (whose resume has unfortunately become more PC in the past decade or so), which went on to become the subject of many comics stories too the following decade, as seen in this SpaceCom listing. There is, however, one entry on the list that can decidedly raise questions whether it's worth it:

Originally titled Alien Vol. 1, Alien: Bloodlines marked the fresh start of Marvel's first three-story arc for the Alien franchise, which was completed with Revival and Icarus. It does kick off like a typical Alien storyline, but things quickly get stranger than anyone expected going in.

Salvador Larroca's art wasn’t to everyone’s tastes, yet Phillip Kennedy Johnson's writing more than makes up for it. More importantly, this trilogy convinced fans from the get-go that new, exciting stuff could be done with the property under Marvel's umbrella, and the mystery of the biomechanical ‘Goddess' is a nice twist on the more psychological and strangely erotic side of the Alien movies.

Oh, please. The woke way they're going these days? Not really. Marvel's brand new item under their oversight is decidedly one example we could do without, and what they're telling here sounds so biased.

Now, the Federalist's asking whether the anti-corporate themes in the movies - and surely the comics by extension - still prove effective in an era where corporatism may actually have become acceptable to leftists. Here's what's really fascinating:

Corporations certainly have a strange place in American politics, let alone in Hollywood. The Republican Party has historically been far more aligned with the interests of major corporations, with Democrats long wailing about pollution, Big Pharma, monopolies, and the detrimental effects of Walmart on the small business economy. That’s certainly changed in recent years, with Disney, BlackRock, and Pfizer becoming leftist darlings. It is much easier now to be a conservative and to hate corporations, if only because it’s clear corporations are happily working against conservative values.

Science fiction’s deep hatred of corporations isn’t difficult to understand. The genre has a futuristic and progressive bend going back to its foundations. Corporations are easy fodder for stories about mankind’s follies and our species’ future (or lack thereof). It is easy to imagine corporations choosing profits over human life in a story because it’s clear that there are corporations in real life that do so.

From Foxconn’s suicides to Vietnamese sweatshop labor and DuPont’s history of Teflon poisoning, the trope does speak to an observable carelessness among global mega corporations — one rural and middle-class Americans have endured amid globalization as their financial lives have been quietly destroyed.

What makes “Alien: Romulus” fascinating is how little has changed in the genre in the past 45 years. Ridley Scott’s 1979 “Alien” told a story in which all of the events are manipulated by Weyland-Yutani, pressuring a crew of space truckers to put themselves in danger for the company’s good. Working-class people have their contracts threatened by their unwillingness to risk their lives, leading to five brutal deaths at the hands of a horrific alien monster. James Cameron’s “Aliens” further shows the company putting hundreds of colonist families in danger to access the Xenomorphs, lying to its protagonist as a means of using her body to traffic an alien embryo back to Earth.

The critical reaction to “Alien: Romulus” has largely focused on its nostalgia and fan service, with the film paying tribute to all of the previous films in the franchise — to its detriment. It’s schlocky and violent and tries to gloss over its lack of originality with heavy-handed callbacks and practical special effects. This isn’t to say the film is bad, as it is occasionally clever and engaging, but the result is that it transports the same concepts and ideas from a 45-year-old horror film into a modern context without much unpacking.

I can't say I thought about this much, but it sure is bizarre if years before, conservatives were that attached to supporting conglomerates - as certainly occurred a quarter century ago, when they backed Disney over Mickey Mouse and such - this despite how only so many leftists came to manage them, and rightists by contrast apparently didn't have what it took to build up their own presence within the same. And despite any and all backing by conservatives, it clearly never convinced the leftists in the offices to change their voting patterns.

But if modern leftists still view conglomerates as perfect choices for villains of the show, one must wonder if it's in the sense they model them after perceived conservatives and capitalists of the same side, and said corporations are never pegged as liberal-run in any way. No doubt, that's why potentially leftist filmmakers like Scott don't have an issue with making corporations the crooks of the show, because they'll never clearly and explicitly identify the businesses as sporting left-wing management. The same doubtless goes for comicdom, which'll also never go so far in the mainstream to identify businesses as liberal-run. As a result, what good does it do for the most part to hope something informative will come of even a 45-year old film franchise? Because most leftist filmmakers won't critique their own side, that's why a really challenging movie or comic won't be made by the mainstream. And that's how little's changed when it comes to entertainment in general.

Labels: history, indie publishers, licensed products, marvel comics, politics