The 3-D Experience and Hero’s Journey of Avatar

By Peter Krämer

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (2009)

Great Expectations

In April 2009, an article in the New York Times entitled ‘Fan Fever is Rising for Debut of Avatar’ opened with the following statement: 

In an old airplane hangar …, James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that may

a) Change filmmaking forever

b) Alter your brain

c) Cure cancer.

The writer was obviously having fun with these exaggerations, which were inspired by the larger-than-life persona of the filmmaker and by his many public statements about his latest project, ever since it had been announced to the press in January 2007: ‘Mr. Cameron has done his share to feed the hype with his repeated assurances that a coming wave of 3-D cinema … would have the power to penetrate the brain in a way that movies never have.’ The writer’s choice of words here is interesting, perhaps designed to evoke the colloquial term ‘mind-fuck’, while also mocking Cameron’s machismo (only a very special kind of man would want to ‘penetrate’ people’s brains). 

Yet, beyond its humorous hyperbole, the article also appeared to register a widespread and sincere belief in the possibility of radical change. Referencing both the religiosity of American society and the recent election of the country’s first African-American president, the article stated that Avatar was ‘stirring up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the Rapture’, and that the film’s ‘technological wizardry is presumed by more than a few to promise an experiential leap for audiences comparable to that of The Jazz Singer, the arrival of Technicolor or an Obama campaign rally.’

When Avatar, which had originally been scheduled for a May 2009 release, belatedly appeared in cinemas around the world in December that year, it certainly told a story about dramatic change: parts of a distant moon’s ecosystem are severely damaged by the operations of a mining company; a humanoid alien tribe has to deal with the destruction of its ancestral home; for the first time in many generations the moon’s scattered tribes unite so as to be able to confront the threat; the neural network of trees, which constitutes a kind of brain for the planet’s ecosystem and is revered as a Goddess by the natives, gives up its usual practice of non-interference and helps to eject the operatives of the mining company. All of this is explored through the central storyline of one of the employees of the mining company who uses a specially grown body as his avatar in the world of the natives, then takes their side in the conflict before he finally abandons his human form for good so as to be reborn in the alien body. 

In addition to telling this complex story about dramatic change, Avatar also initially lived up to the expectation that it might in fact change cinema. In the run-up to its release, there had already been a marked increase in cinemas with 3-D projection capabilities around the world; some of this expansion had clearly been fuelled by the announcement of a live action 3-D release (almost all 3-D releases in recent years had been animated) by one of the world’s most successful filmmakers. When Avatar then went on to break all existing box office records, both in the United States and in the rest of the world, with a particularly strong performance in 3-D cinemas, there was a perception that the popular habit of cinemagoing, recently under a particularly strong threat from alternative leisure time activities, had been given a new lease of life, and, furthermore, that it had been transformed forever, insofar as 3-D could now be expected to become a new standard, rather than the exceptional attraction it had been heretofore. 

Now, if one were to claim that cinema was reborn through the 3-D technology of Avatar, which allowed audiences to inhabit cinematic space in a compelling new fashion, such a claim would constitute a curious echo of the very story the film tells about its protagonist being reborn through the avatar technology which allows him to inhabit a new body and through it a new world. Such echoing can also be observed when the circumstances of the film’s release are considered. Its original May release date derived from Hollywood’s practice to set up its major releases for a high impact before the summer holidays which will hopefully translate into a long run during these holidays. Once it became clear that Avatar would not be ready for this early date, the only obvious alternative was a release in December which would allow the film to profit from increased cinemagoing during the Christmas holidays and also set it up for consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other organisations handing out awards in the first few months of the new year. 

Logo for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009

In the end, the precise release date chosen for Avatar coincided with the final stage of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which was widely regarded as a catastrophic failure. Thus, as a film about environmental issues, Avatar could, in very general terms, be said to have profited from the public interest in, and intense media reporting on, climate change across 2009 which culminated on the very weekend that the film was first shown around the world. More specifically, the film’s story echoed real-life developments in at least two striking ways, first by imagining a future humanity which has destroyed the ecosystem of its home planet and now sets out to do the same on another planetary body; secondly by imagining an alternative way of life. Here, human-like beings are shown to live in harmony with nature and to achieve a kind of global unity in their attempt to defend themselves and the ecosystem they are part of against destructive forces. 

The most high profile attempt yet to achieve global unity so as to take action against global warming fails at the very moment that Avatar begins to draw audiences all over the world into its story. One might go as far as saying that, whereas politics fails to achieve global unity and bring about necessary change, this film does not only offer a vision of such unity and change, but through its impact on individual viewers and its international success also laid the groundwork for potential real-life personal change and unified global action. At the very least, a substantial proportion of the world’s population now shares the story that Avatar tells. It is conceivable that such sharing will contribute to an awareness of the shared fate of humanity and indeed of the Earth’s ecosystem, and perhaps even to the willingness to take action on its behalf. 

Audiences and Their Avatars

The title of James Cameron’s science fiction epic resonates with ancient myth and with contemporary cultural practice: an avatar is the shape an Indian God takes when walking among humans, and it is a player’s audiovisual representative in the electronic world of a computer game. In the film’s story, Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine, is employed by a mining company to enter the dangerous jungle outside the fortified human compound on the distant moon Pandora. This is achieved by projecting his consciousness into an artificially grown body, which mixes human DNA with that of Pandora’s intelligent humanoid species, the Na’vi. In this way, Jake, who has come down from Pandora’s heaven as one of the ‘sky people’ - the Na’vi designation for humans - can walk among the Na’vi, and he can temporarily lose himself in the adventures he experiences in their world. In the course of the story, Jake learns a lot about the capabilities of his new body and about the Na’vi and the other life forms he interacts with, and this provides him with an increasingly critical perspective on the human world he comes from. In the end, he is willing and able to leave his human body behind so as to live permanently as a Na’vi on Pandora. The player thus exchanges what he took to be his reality for his game world; the one who came down from the sky joins the web of life on this new Earth.

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

Through its mythical and gaming associations, the film’s title also comments on the very nature of the cinematic experience. As viewers and listeners, members of the audience descend from their own reality into the fictional world of the film, using its protagonist as their avatar. Like gamers, they may concentrate on learning about this world and confronting numerous challenges within it, which in turn allows them to engage with it ever more intensively. While they have no actual control over the actions of their avatar, like divine beings audience members may feel that this whole world is at their service, and that everything is ultimately organised for their avatar’s convenience. So what are the implications of Jake’s decision to switch permanently into his avatar’s body and thus stay in his gaming world? Where does this leave the audience for whom Jake is an avatar?

Similar questions are raised by the film’s opening sequence. The film begins with the camera flying over a dense forest, and a voiceover explaining that this was a recurring dream the protagonist (Jake Sully) had when he was in a veterans’ administration hospital. Given that this is a 3-D movie and that initially it was shown on the largest available screens (including many IMAX screens), the opening emphasises one of the main attractions of widescreen and 3-D technologies, namely the possibility to create a heightened sense of movement through space. Jake’s dream has been the dream such technologies have pursued ever since they were widely introduced in the 1950s. Right from the get-go, Avatar confirmed to viewers that this dream has now become a reality.

At the same time, the opening scene offers references to a particular tradition in Hollywood filmmaking. In recent decades, thoughts of war veterans and jungles are most likely to evoke the Vietnam war and in particular Hollywood’s numerous representations of that conflict in films primarily of the 1970s and 1980s. If one makes this connection, then the dream flight over the jungle landscape represents more than simply the age-old human dream of flying, or the specific desire of an injured soldier to compensate for his restricted mobility in a hospital with the heightened mobility of flight; it also entails a potential threat, because American soldiers might just start firing into the jungle, dropping bombs and setting fire to it (which of course they do later in the film).

Finally, the opening scene is presented as arising from within the protagonist’s consciousness, and it does so in two ways: first it is said to be a dream of the soldier lying in a hospital, secondly the voice-over narrator explains that it is a dream he used to have in the past; even the dream is now only available as a memory. Hence the flying scenes are twice removed from narrator’s present reality: they are memories of past dreams. Yet, for the viewers (especially those in a 3-D IMAX cinema) they take place very much in the present and may well have the power to affect them physically. There is a gap, then, between the narrator’s highly mediated connection to the flying scene and the viewers’ immediate experience of it. One might expect that this gap will be closed in the course of the film (as indeed it is). 

This expectation is also raised by the conventions of Hollywood storytelling: We can assume that, if a dream is so clearly stated at the beginning, the protagonist who has this dream will strive to make it a reality, and that eventually he will achieve this. We can also expect the distantiation created by the voice-over to fade in the course of the film, so that the sense of present tense overrides the fact that everything presented in the film is in fact a memory. In this way, then, Jake’s experience of his own dream will catch up with that of the audience. (Indeed, the voiceover of the protagonist looking back into his own past can in places be mistaken for, and is eventually dissolved into, the present-tense commentary that Jake records for his video log.)

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

A Hero’s Journey in 3-D

Let’s take a closer look at the kind of change the story of Avatar focuses on. Hollywood cinema is centred on the transformation - the personal growth, psychological maturation etc. - of the stories’ protagonists.  According to script guru Christopher Vogler, filmic protagonists go on a journey (a hero’s journey) into a ‘special world’ which mirrors, in a highly exaggerated and fantastic manner, the everyday concerns of their ‘ordinary world’, and which allows them to resolve internal and external tensions and conflicts, so as to emerge from this adventure as more rounded, more socially integrated individuals. 

Films such as Avatar first establish an ordinary world for the protagonist - a world of family, community, work, which is comparable to our own world. This world is full of problems. In Avatar’s case, it is characterised by Jake Sully’s low social status, his inability to carry out his previous job due to partial paralysis and his lack of qualification for the new job he is given, his loss of the cameraderie with fellow soldiers and the initial hostility of his new boss, the death of his brother, and the absence, or active destruction, of natural surroundings. Once this ordinary world is established, the film transfers Jake to, and immerses him - and us - in, the special world of the jungle of Pandora. Cutting-edge film technology is used to make the ‘special world’ as extraordinary as possible.

How does 3-D technology function with regards to the hero’s journey? And how does the film itself reflect on that technology and that journey? It is certainly the case that 3-D effects allow viewers to immerse themselves deeply in the natural world of Pandora, and motion capture (or ‘performance capture’) and computer generated images bring its alien beings to life. However, a word of caution about the importance of 3-D for the film’s impact is in order: Both in cinemas and on DVD and television, the vast majority of the film’s viewers worldwide saw the 2-D version. And although Avatar was by far the most successful 3D-Film in history, the expectation that its success might make 3-D a new standard for Hollywood releases has not been fulfilled. Nevertheless, I want to concentrate on the particular contribution that 3-D makes to the experience of the film.

Before entering the cinema auditorium, we are given 3-D glasses, which we have to use to cover our eyes so as to be able to enter into the world of the film which is going to be projected onto the screen. If we were to refuse to wear them, watching the film would be an exceedingly unpleasant experience. Putting on the glasses reminds us of how utterly dependent our cinematic experience is on technology. It also constitutes another threshold we are crossing in the transition from our everyday world into the world of the film adventure (other such thresholds are the departure from our homes, the purchase of the ticket, entering the auditorium, the lights going out). Each threshold serves to emphasise how different our cinematic experience is going to be from everyday life. At the same time, the donning of glasses brings us closer to the people who are going to share this experience with us. Not only are we all converging on this particular cinema auditorium at this particular moment in time, but we also cement our connection by all donning these glasses, creating a uniformity of appearance. But the glasses also serve to distance us from each other, insofar as looking at each other rather than at the screen is discouraged by wearing them.

3-D IMAX cinema audience

Now, in the story of the film, after a long journey across space, a group of people arrive on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. Before they set foot on this planet they are told that they have to wear a mask on their face which will enable them to breath. The mask is a reminder that their presence on this planet is heavily dependent on technology, and that they have moved far away from their previous existence. It also serves to emphasise their shared humanity in contrast to the natives who require no such technological support to breath. Of course, they are not required to wear the mask all the time because they can move within the man-made environments constructed on the planet; in other words, instead of wearing a mask, they can inhabit a technological construct that is like living inside a giant mask. Still, whenever they cross the threshold between their built environment (buildings as well as vehicles) and the outside world, they all have to wear the mask, which makes them look alike and also creates a distance between them, a physical barrier between one face and the next. The necessity for human characters to wear a mask thus echoes in quite a profound way the necessity for viewers of the 3-D version to wear glasses. 

At the same time, the wearing of the mask expresses the tension at the very heart of the film’s narrative: in it humans confront an environment that is dangerous to them, developing a range of strategies for how to deal with that danger. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies: first, the mask and the built environment; second, the avatar programme. Both are heavily dependent on human technology. In a surprising twist, towards the end of the film, a third strategy arises which is no longer dependent on human technology: the permanent transfer of a human mind into the avatar, brought about by the planet’s neural network. The avatar programme thus constitutes a transitional stage - inbetween the initial stage of a fundamental physical separation between humans and environment, and the final stage of full human immersion in that environment. One might even say that the avatar programme marks that moment when a cinema audience, awkwardly conscious of the glasses in front of their eyes and thus of a physical barrier between themselves and their surroundings and also of their dependence on cinematic technology, loses itself in the 3-D cinematic space their glasses allow them to see and in the story unfolding in that space, with the film’s protagonist acting as their own avatar. 

While the transition from an awareness of one’s own body, of a technological process, of the real space of the auditorium and the people in it, to an immersion in fictional space and story is typical of all cinema experiences, the 3-D technology enhances the transformative nature of this transition. The use of the word ‘avatar’ in the film’s title, and the way it is literalised in the story, marks this heightened sense of transformation by suggesting that viewers can physically enter into a different world (as gods walking among mortals, as players in a computer game). Yet, the term also is a reminder of the fact that this entering into a different world is only a partial and temporary experience (the gods will eventually return to the heavens, the players never actually leave the physical world around them and they can not play on forever). 

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

All of this is mirrored in the story of the film. On the one hand, the story emphasises how physically liberating and stimulating it is for the protagonist to inhabit the avatar body (here his disability serves to heighten the difference between his everyday existence - which is, of course, characterised by a restriction on mobility similar to that of the people in the cinema auditorium - and the technologically facilitated experience of the avatar’s world - once again mirroring the viewer’s technologically facilitated experience of the cinematic world). On the other hand, this experience is constantly disrupted (initially in a planned fashion, later through violent outside interventions), and the reminders of the needs and vulnerability of the human body left behind become an increasingly important issue. The story comes to focus ever more on the nuisance and danger of having a human body, and it culminates in its abandonment. 

If the protagonist’s journey echoes that of the viewer, what are we to make of that final transformation? One might say that it simply takes the logic underpinning the cinematic adventure (the transition from the everyday world into an alternative reality) too far so that instead of heightening the vicarious experience the viewer has through the protagonist (and through the 3-D glasses), it actually serves as a painful reminder that such total transcendence of the everyday is simply not available in the cinema. Our connection with the protagonist does not go as far as physically and permanently being able to leave our regular lives and bodies behind. Of course, the film’s action ends precisely at the moment when the protagonist has achieved what is impossible for us to do: The last shot of the film is of his eyes opening and staring at us (and Neytiri - but that is another story); then the story ends (although as soon as the credits begin there is more material from the story world projected on the screen; once again this needs to be considered separately). 

When the protagonist has finally done what is impossible for us to do (to abandon the old body and permanently inhabit a new one), our connection with him has to be severed. After all we are only viewers - and the fact that he stares at us, mirroring our own staring at the screen, tells us that this is all we are, and the contrast between his uncovered eyes and our own eyes, covered by 3-D glasses, confirms our essential difference. At the same time, the protagonist’s face points forward to the moment when we remove the glasses and thus enter into a much more unmediated relationship with our surroundings again. In other words: when Jake awakens in his new body, he prefigures our imminent awakening into the reality of our own body and our actual surroundings. If Jake’s story ends with leaving behind what he has come to regard as a lesser existence, we also ultimately have to recognise that watching a film is a lesser reality than our actual bodies and social connections.

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009

Specious Evolution: The Horror of Darwin in Alien & Prometheus

By Emma Bell

“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes then 
shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket” 
- attr. W.H. Auden, cit. Alien Script, 1978

“You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. 
Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. I admire its purity. A survivor 
unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality” -  'Ash', Alien

Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

The Auden-attributed quote above was an epithet to the shooting script to Alien, written by Walter Hill and David Giler, based on a story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, and directed by Ridley Scott. The quote invites us to question the intentionality of the creators of this masterpiece of sci-fi horror: which of our deep ‘fears and hopes’ does the film extract from and 'show' us? Is it, as Auden suggested, our fear of the Other - monsters, predators, alien invasions - and our hopes for technology and exploration? I’d like to suggest that it is something even deeper - the fear of life itself, and the hope that humanity can overcome any threat to our ‘species supremacy’.

In On Film Stephen Mulhall set out his reservations about film studies approaches to philosophical ideas in films, asserting that films can not only reflect or engage with pre-existing philosophical ideas but can ‘do’ philosophy. That is, that some films should be seen as 'philosophy in action - film as philosophizing' (Mullhall, On Film, London: Routledge, 2008, p.2). Mulhall used the Alien series to exemplify his thesis, drawing out the ways in which the series engages the viewer in philosophic reflection about the nature of identity, personhood, and sexuality. Mullhall also commented on how the films engage with Darwinism in terms of competition between mutually ‘alien’ species. I want to expand on this and look at the ways in which Alien portrays a lived reality of evolution.

If we accept three premises: 1) species evolution is the consequence of survival, 2) there is probably extra-terrestrial life in the universe, and 3) variation and entropy are conditions of the universe, then we can accept that species evolution and extinction are inexorable. This would mean that all life forms across the entire universe are both conditional and transitory. To be superseded by a bluntly existing creature, not a ‘perfected’ human, runs counter to what might be thought of as human ‘evolution’. It may be horrific to think of oneself - a human - not as a grand being to be transcended by something even ‘greater’, some Nietzschean Übermensch, but as a comestible adaptation of the circumstances of life. This – not the horrible behaviour of the aliens – is the power of the sci-fi classic Alien and its prequel, Prometheus.

A brief summation of the theory of evolution is useful here to emphasise that evolution does not equate to either ‘survival’ or ‘perfection’. Regardless of one’s superstitious or spiritual beliefs, organisms change over time and new species of organisms develop. This happens as adaptive selection in relation to factors such as environment, predators, disease, and competition for resources. Evolution – often parsed as ‘survival of the fittest’ - is defined as genetic changes in a population of like organisms over a discernable period, which afford selective advantages for reproductive success and propagation. Natural selection – the reproduction of those specimens best adapted to reproduce in a given time and place - is not the only force driving evolution, nor is evolution a teleological process of species perfection or environmental homeostasis.Other mechanisms of evolution include genetic mutation, migration, environmental changes, and genetic drift. While evolutionary change is not an innate ‘force’ and has no ‘aim’, it nonetheless functions to encourage survival - a paradox I will address later. 

It is crucial to grasp that an evolutionary change does not make an organism “better” in the sense of the surviving generation necessarily being faster, stronger, larger, or more intelligent. Species that evolve to flourish in a cool climate, for example, will perish if that climate warms, or they are forced to migrate to a warmer environment; as larger and faster animals need more food, they are more vulnerable when resources are scarce or when they have to rest. Evolutionary changes are neither linear nor purposive: animals probably first evolved feathers, for example, to regulate body temperature - feathers only later became an advantage predisposing creatures for the adaptive advantage of flight (‘Archaeopteryx’ - the famous ‘feathered dinosaur’ fossil first discovered in 1861, just after Darwin published his provocative theory of evolution - demonstrates this point, being a creature in a stage of evolutionary transformation between lizard and bird). In summation, evolution is neither perfect nor progressive – it is a mindless process of gradual transformation of temporarily preferential variants unguided by romantic notions of benign forces or organic homeostasis.

Fossilised Archaeopteryx

The immediate horror of Alien is, of course, humans encountering an unknown creature that has not evolved on Earth, and that preys on humans for its reproductive and resource needs. That humans are at risk from being wiped out by predators is not in itself the horror of Alien – after all, we are prey for creatures on Earth. The horror is that, taken out of its terrestrial context, the human species is shown to be insignificant and non-superior. Any speciesist ideas we may have of the markers of species supremacy – intelligence, ethics, adaptableness, and technology – are not only contingent but dangerously speciesist and possibly even specious. The film, then, struggles to reassert human species superiority by addressing the existential reality of evolution. 

'Speciesism' is a concept in ethics that asserts that human animals assume supremacy over other species and thus privilege themselves with more moral rights than non-human animals. In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer defined it as ‘a prejudice or bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species’ (Singer, Animal Liberation: 2nd Ed, New York: Ecco, 2001, p.6.) Speciesism – or 'homocentricity' - describes not only the behaviour of humans towards non-human animals (that would run the risk of claiming bigotry when dealing aggressively with predators) but also the ideology that humans are ‘superior’ in terms of intelligence, technology, adaptability, culture, biology etc. Darwinism has, in some ways, contributed to speciesism in that his 'common ancestor' theory can be used by some to reinforce a homocentric organisation of species superiority such as the Aristotelian or Christian 'Great Chain of Being' hierarchies (scala naturae) as well as Social Darwinism. Instead of God at the apex of creation it is homo-sapiens - specifically white, western, male, socially elevated ones. The existence in sci-fi of beings or animals not of the Earth adds a new element to the debates on humanity’s moral obligation to non-human animals.

The Chain of Being, from Charles Bonnet's Œuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie,1779-83

The very notion of an ‘alien’ is homocentric in that it implies that, even off-world, humans exclude themselves from notions of Otherness. How different might our way of being 'emplaneted beings' be if we understood ourselves as 'alien'? The idea that it is morally right to favour humans over animals when making ethical choices breaks down when brought to the level of pure survival or of the threat to the planet by, for example, human caused climate change. To include beings or animals not of the Earth adds another community of interest to the potential sphere of moral obligation. For example, are aliens ‘animals’ in that they are non-human life forms? If so, do they have 'rights'? In the human imagination aliens have been constructed as having intelligence, culture, technology, and will, as well as having none of those attributes at all. They can be vaguely 'humanoid' as well as/at the same time as being 'creatures'. Including an alien in the sphere of any moral category seems depend on its potential threat to human existence, rather than its capacity for rational thought (contemporary sci-fi films such as District 9 and Monsters play with screen stereotypes by portraying non-predatory, animal-aliens that threaten only when attacked).

Yet, it is not animal rights debates around speciesism that are most interesting in Alien (although that could be explored and, perhaps, brought to dialogue with Phil Hutchinson’s thinkingfilm piece on Monsters and Rupert Read's on Avatar). Rather it is the desperate and tenuous speciesist ideology of human supremacy that drives it. In other words, the ideas explored in Alien that human evolution might involve not a ‘perfected’ humanoid creature, but a human/alien hybrid, or possibly extinction, suggests that a) evolution operates across the universe in diverse environments that demand different ‘superior’ adaptations, and b) human survival ultimately plays out not on Earth, but in space. This is an recurring issue in sci-fi, as inferred in Peter Krämer's thinkingfilm piece on 2001: a Space Odyssey. The work of resolving fears of evolutionary change and extinction in Alien is of finding some means of reasserting human species superiority.

It is fruitless to insist upon philosophical or ‘scientific’ continuity in the discourse on evolution across the Alien franchise, as there are a few anomalies in the description and behaviour of the Alien species. Rather, one can look at the ways in which the original film provokes anxieties about the force and trajectory of evolution by emphasising the life cycle of the creature and destabilising assumptions of humanity’s species supremacy. One can then consider the ways in which those fears are explicated in the film’s ‘prequel’, Prometheus. It is also significant that Ridley Scott directed both films because other Alien film directors modified the species described in the original film.

Alien

Man touched by Other, in Alien dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

The two main threats to human survival in Alien are the alien itself and the actions of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that seeks to sacrifice its crew and exploit it. The specific, visceral horror is the creature’s symbiotic relationship to its prey – it hunts prey not only for its own sustenance but its existence. The creature is a manifestation of the fearful reality of life mutely exerting itself regardless of any need for ‘human’ qualities such as intelligence, self-awareness, language, or culture. As such, it embodies a fear of the supersession of humanity by a seemingly non-superior species. The other epithet to the Alien screenplay is 'We live as we dream: alone', a famous quote from Nostromo, Joseph Conrad’s existentialist novel about capitalism and exploitation. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s mining spaceship in the film is named after Conrad’s book, foregrounding the Corporation’s appalling exploitation of workers as well as Conradian fears of colonialism and voyaging to a ‘dark’ continent. These anxieties are surely manifest throughout the film’s franchise, yet Alien speaks more directly to Auden’s fear of monsters in that its narrative is dictated by the consequences of an 'alien' process of inception, gestation, parturition, survival and, ultimately, of evolution.

A synopsis is warranted to briefly underscore that the alien process of the 'creature's' lifecycle is central to the narrative. In 2122, the Weyland-Yutani commercial spaceship Nostromo is returning to Earth with its load of mineral ore and 7 crew members held in stasis for the duration of the voyage home. When the ship intercepts an alien transmission, the pilot computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Being obligated to investigate any systematized transmission indicating possible intelligent extra terrestrial life, a party descends to the origin of the transmission on moon LV-426, where they discover the wreckage of a vast alien spacecraft. Inside they find the fossilised remains of an alien crewmember ('spacejockey') and a large cluster of eggs, or pods. One bursts open and an organism ('facehugger') attaches itself to Kane, paralysing him.

Finding the eggs in Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

'Face Hugger' in Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

Ripley refuses to let the infected crewmembers back on board, insisting they follow the Science Division's quarantine law, but Science Officer Ash defies her orders. He wants to extract the creature, dissect it and study it for scientific advancement. Eventually the 'facehugger releases Kane and dies. The ship continues its journey but Kane goes into convulsions and an alien bursts from his chest, killing him. 

'Chest-burster' in Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

When the 'chest-burster' escapes, the crew must find and kill it. It rapidly grows into a huge, ferocious adult 'Xenomorph' (lit. 'alien-form') When Ash tries to kill Ripley for interfering with his 'specimin' she destroys him - revealing him to be an android. The Weyland-Yutani corporation deployed Ash to intentionally infect the crew of the Nostromo, thus capturing an alien sample and bringing it home to develop and possibly weaponise. The crew was expendable in his mission. One by one the alien picks off crewmembers, storing some in cocoons, until only Ripley is left. She initiates the ship’s self-destruct sequence and escapes in a tiny shuttle. The alien follows her into the shuttle where she forces it out of the hatch, blasting it into space. She sets course to Earth putting herself and Jones, the ship’s cat, into stasis.

Xenomorph vs. Human in Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979

Themes of extinction, parasitism, and metamorphosis are integral to the narrative and the focus for generating horror. Metamorphosis is a necessity of the alien species survival, and an advantage for species dispersal. It maximises the possibility of propagation by ensuring diversity of hosts, temporary as opposed to fixed habitats, opportunity to maximise food supply, and widespread dispersal of animals – in short: it ensures the advantage of adaptation and flexibility. 

The alien Xenomorph also has the advantage of being parasitic and something approaching holometabolous. It has a similar lifecycle to some endoparasitoid insects, including some species of flies, cockroaches, and wasps. The Xenomorph lifecycle can be compared to that of Ampulex Compressa - an entomophageous tropical wasp that stings and zombifies a cockroach host with neurotoxins, then lays an egg on its leg and buries it alive. The larva that emerges from the egg then devours the cockroach host, ultimately killing it. In Alien, the creature's life cycle is similar yet it consists of four distinct phases involving two separate obligate parasitic ‘creatures’, the metamorphoses of which are dependent up on a dispensable host.

Ampulex Compressa approaching its prey

As android science officer Ash admires, the alien is a ‘perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility’. The initial phase consists of egg fertilisation and laying by a Queen Alien. The eggs are diapause and, when disturbed, release a sessile larval parasite  (‘face hugger’) that attacks a host and deposit a pupa (embryonic Xenomorph) in the host's internal organs, rendering the host docile. Facehuggers have a hard protective coating, acid blood, and genetic material that reforms in response to atmospheric conditions. The facehugger supplies the embryo rather like a placenta, and the pupa feeds on the host. It destroys its host when it emerges as an infant (‘chest-burster’) before growing into an imago (adult Xenomorph) within days.

The Xenomorph is capable of instantaneous 'evolution' – its form varies depending on its host as it has the ability to appropriate genetic material from its host and it is physiologically capable of rapidly adapting to the atmosphere it finds itself born into. It uses host DNA to ‘evolve’ during gestation, becoming comparable with its prey and adapting to its environment. The human phenotype is a bipedal, insectoid vertebrate with acidic blood, a hard exoskeleton of 'protein polysaccharides', and both external mandibles and a retractable inner pharyngeal jaw of venomous teeth. As well as using them as hosts, Xenomorph capture creatures, storing them in cocoons for feeding or impregnation at a later point. In later Alien films, we learn that the alien species function as hives - super organisms generated by a formidable Queen. This is nonetheless inferred in Alien by showing the field of eggs as well as the practice of nest building and encasing live victims as food storage. Queens, which are much larger, more developed and more intelligent than ‘drone’ Xenomorph, control the actions of the lower creatures.

The admiration the android Ash has for the un-self-aware alien is based on a shared lack of empathy or ‘purpose’; ‘I can't lie to you about your chances’ he tells the crew, ‘but you have my sympathies’. The alien has no discernible purpose other than its own existence and no moral compunction. A more sentient life form would be a more purposeful predator, but Ash venerates as 'perfect' precisely it because it has so few ‘human’ characteristics, being ‘a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality'. Unlike humans, the alien has no ‘reason’, and its practices of colonization and exploitation are extramoral.

As a Darwinian nightmare, Alien is deeply problematic and yet it reaffirms the idea of a 'monstrous' space at the very fount of existence, showing the subtle or dramatic changes inherent in the non-inear, non-progressive evolutionary process. In the documentary Alien Evolution writer Dan O’Bannon was very clear about ‘sexual’ procreative contact and the alien’s evolutionary power being central to the film's horror: "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape, that's it. That's scary. That's scary because it pushes all our buttons, all of our unresolved feelings about sexuality". He went on to clarify that the symbolism of "oral rape" by the impregnating facehugger was an intentional means of discomforting male viewers. In this nightmarish primordial wrestle males can play host to the next generation of life, but in so doing they are destroyed. This is procreation without man - a Darwinian psychohorror of reproduction (and not in that sense is it in any way a 'feminist' film in that it points horrifically to the literal place of evolutionary change as the 'feminized', parastitized body). 

Critics might define Ripley by her moral stance towards her female biological capacity as a vessel for evolving creatures: she can make ‘people’, hence she can make 'creatures' - an act of biological warfare. Yet the 'creature' that threatens to supersede humanity is in fact amorphous - there is no 'Alien' and, horrifically, no individual entity to will its own survival (the self-aware Queen Alien in the later films being an attempt to continue the franchise beyond its natural demise). To survive, the Alien species, like some insects, separates its developmental stages into discrete beings the purpose of each being to secure the next, more evolved stage in its genesis. These discrete creatures nonetheless exert their roles and are prepared - unlike humans - to die in order to complete their purpose and ensure the perpetuation of the species.

The fears being played out here are that we are not the sine qua non of the universe's evolutionary exertion and that, like the Alien, we exist only to exist: this exerting life in one biological form as opposed to another demonstrates a paradox of Darwinism being in that a creature exists, adapts or dies in futile and self-defeating defence of its NOT changing and to PREVENT its supersession. Human beings are particularly guilty of this in our fantasies of both a distinct human essence that transcends our brutish past, as well as some distinction - biological, cultural, or cognitive - between our ancestors and ourselves.

What we see, then, is a reassertion of human species superiority over a parasitoid predator defeated, in the end, like any other animal, by human intelligence and technology. It took only one alien to wipe out Ripley's entire crew, so what if Earth were to be invaded by that species? Scott intended the ending to be the Alien biting Ripley's head off and answering the distress call response from Earth in 'her' voice. That ending would have more clearly spoken to the film's Darwinian anxieties and it is a great disappointment that he was not able to end the film like that. That ending would have made the film a much more powerful existential horror about evolution with no reassuring ideology about human species superiority. Had Scott done that, however, there could have been no sequels and, possibly, no prequel... 


Prometheus

Prometheus, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012

In Prometheus, Scott was able to more directly focus the film’s theme of evolution, and in that film we see human species superiority more shakily defended, and the question of the origin of the species - human and Xenomorph - uncompromisingly addressed. In Prometheus the evolutionary horrors of the original Alien concept are brought to the fore of a narrative that also speaks loudly to contemporary debates around creationism, intelligent design, and evolution.The premise of Prometheus is that the Weyland Corporation’s search for extra terrestrial life has been on going for decades. Before the Nostromo ever set on its voyage, Peter Weyland commissioned a search for not just aliens but the origins of life itself, believing that non-supernatural intelligent designers (the ‘Engineers’, or ‘Mala'kak’) created the human race. An alien is not so much ‘humanoid’ as humans are ‘alienoid’.



Prometheus opens with an alien being sacrificing itself on an ancient Earth. The being drinks a black toxin whereupon its body disintegrates, falling onto the water where its DNA becomes corrupted and reconstituted, seeding Earth with alien life. Human life, then, is directly shown to be the result of a conscious process of exogenesis. 

Seeding Earth in Prometheus, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012

On Earth, two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway, find evidence in ancient wall murals of beings who came to Earth and seeded it with humans. Funded by the Weyland Corporation they travel to LV-223, a distant planet, where they find evidence of a civilisation as well as the severed head of an alien creature they take to be one of the 'engineers'. Back on the ship, the head is analysed and the Engineer’s DNA is discovered to be identical to that of the human race. The android David intentionally infects Holloway with the black substance to see if it will change him and/or cause him to impregnate Shaw with an alien.

On LV-223 abandoned crewmembers are attacked by serpent-like creatures and infected with the black fluid. When the rescue crew arrives, David discovers a live Engineer in stasis and a star map highlighting Earth. Holloway's infection is causing him to violently change and when Weyland Corporation supervisor Vickers refuses to let him aboard, he bids her kill him. Shaw is indeed ‘pregnant’ with an alien creature and, rather than return to Earth in stasis, as David wants, she escapes into a surgery machine and ‘aborts’ the creature. Peter Weyland is found in stasis on the ship, having contrived the mission solely to beg the Engineers for more life. The crew theorize that LV-223 was a military base for Engineers who were using the black DNA toxin as a biological weapon. When David awakens the dormant Engineer and tries to communicate with it, it decapitates him and kills Weyland. 

Speaking to the 'Engineer' in Prometheus, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012

David’s severed android head is able to tell the horrified crew that the ampoules of black toxin are destined for Earth: our creators have for some reason decided to destroy their creation. When the Engineer tries to take off for Earth, Shaw convinces the remaining crew to crash Prometheus into its ship, but the Engineer survives. Shaw’s aborted alien foetus has also survived and grown to gigantic size. When the Engineer attacks Shaw in the escape pod, she releases ‘her’ offspring upon him. Shaw and what is left of David take off in an alien ship to the Engineers' home planet to discover why they created, then tried to destroy, humanity. An alien bursts out the dying Engineer's chest (cue: Prometheus 2). 

Prometheus modifies the Darwinian premise of the first Alien film, as well as acting as a rebuff to the metaphysical yearnings and ‘species supremacism’ of creationist or intelligent design theorists. The search for the origins of the species has shifted in Prometheus from the evolutionary development of life involuntarily exerting itself as varied forms, to fixed-point intentional interventions in the development of life in the universe. There have been scientific theories of extra-terrestrial processes of evolution, such as Panspermia – the theory that life exists throughout the universe, and that planet Earth was inseminated by genetic material (usually bacteria) on space debris such as meteoroids and asteroids. The theory does not yet explain how life initially began in the universe, only how might have been propagated.

Prometheus explores the idea that what some see as premeditated features of life on Earth are indeed the result of intelligent design, but adds a twist to the God/science debate by positing that the ‘designers’ are neither supernatural nor benevolent. What is more, their design (us) is not at the axis of their existence. Their ‘superiority’ is their creation of humans as a kind of technology; what little the voyagers learn about their creators leaves them as baffled about reasons for life on Earth as they were before.

The alien that hunted down Ripley through the universe is shown to be only one species in a much larger narrative in which human life is actually a synthetic supplement to a larger process of evolution taking place across galaxies. It is added that metamorphosis is a designed feature of the alien species - the alien genus is released via a vector - an organism that spreads pathogens between hosts. The black virus is used to intentionally re-engineer genetic material. When a DNA helix comes into contact with the black fluid it is corrupted, broken down, and reformed.  Thus life - human life - was seeded on Earth by a superior intelligence that has designed other worlds and other creatures, and it has no benign intentions for us. In fact, they seem to have decided to shut down the human 'experiment'. Were we a rogue mutation? A crop to be harvested? Or - most chillingly - a biological weapon that has now evolved to the stage that it is a significant threat to the supremacy of other life forms in the universe - perhaps even to the Engineers?

Alien vector in Prometheus, dir. Ridley Scott, 2012

The idea of the Xenomorph as also being created in this obscure programme of interventionist evolution is exploited in the Aliens vs. Predator franchise of films and videogames in which it is posited that Xenomorph are also used as ‘game’ bred on Earth and other planets by Yautja (Predators) for use in hunts. It is also suggested that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is again in some way aware of this activity. The darker side of evolution and creation in the universe is aligned with anti-humanist corporate exploitation, by which the ability to monetise and weaponise extra-terrestrial life forms supersedes any claim to scientific knowledge or human advancement. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is integral to the narrative in that they – like the Engineers – are using Xenomorph for their own advancement but also, as their corporate mission states, Weyland are  ‘BUILDING BETTER WORLDS’ - in other words, Weyland is a corporation intent on colonising planets by building artificial environments that support human life - ‘terraforming’ (this spoof 2023 Ted Talk explains Weyland's paradigm shift in cybernetics and world building) 

http://www.weylandindustries.com/

What is there to cling to after exploration and science so radically alter our understanding of ourselves? We can see in Alien and Prometheus the fundamental insignificance of our own evolutionary existence. We can see ourselves as merely one among many evolving things - evolving without moral restraint, adapting or dying in an ultimately indifferent universe. This is a horror of Nietzschean amoral and extra human striving for life with no afterworld and no supremacy in a universe of parallel evolutions. The 'horror' of the films is that we are merely life exerting itself and that, in order to survive, we must change. 

[Thanks to Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read, Vincent Gaine, and Peter Krämer for the discussions that helped shape this piece.]