ALIENS VS ROBOCOP – THE BATTLE TO DECIDE THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE, T. WOOD AND KIT POWER DUKE IT OUT

The rivalry has always been there, rumbling away on social media, sometimes raising its head in a blog post, but other than a tremulous undertone of unease, the opposing team-leaders have never gone to war. That is, until now.

With the fires fanned on Twitter, and a challenge made and accepted, it’s time to decide once and for all which movie truly deserves the title of the Best Movie Ever Made.

With T. Wood in the blue corner representing ALIENS and Kit Power in the red corner for ROBOCOP, these two outspoken writers will present four, passionate 1000-word essays in a bid to persuade you, dear reader, to vote for which movie you think should reign supreme.

Essay One – The Opening Statement for ALIENS
By T. Wood

While I feel pretty confident in assuming that almost everyone has seen film number two in the ALIEN franchise, for the purposes of this essay I shall pretend that you know nothing about this cinematic masterpiece, and thus my job is to explain to you exactly why ALIENS is the Best Movie Ever Made. I must also state for the record that I will be referring to the Special Edition extended cut of the movie which clocks in at 2 hours and 34 minutes of high-octane thrills.

Let me begin by stating a fact: ALIENS is, without any semblance of a doubt, the Best Movie Ever Made, and I can prove it to you.

Consider this – what other movie has:

• a strong, sympathetic female lead,
• non-stop fast-paced action,
• an incomparable supporting cast,
• genuinely terrifying monsters,
• stunning special and practical effects,
• and manages to retain a strong, emotional range and sense of humanity throughout it all?

ALIENS has all of this, and more.

Made in 1986 as a follow-up to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979) director James Cameron took a very different approach to his forerunner. His earlier success with a murderous, cybernetic organism in TERMINATOR (1984) set a precedent for his ragtag group of Colonial Marines sent to a far-flung moon in search of a mysterious Xenomorph. Although it is a sequel, comparing the two movies is like comparing apples with oranges and you can enjoy ALIENS without ever watching ALIEN (although why you would want to do that, I don’t know).


The plot is a relatively simple one: a terraforming colony living at Hadley’s Hope on Acheron (formally LV-426) stop responding to hails and the multinational conglomerate bankrolling the endeavour – the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – send an elite team into space to find out why. Of course, Lieutenant First Class Ellen Ripley has a good idea why. LV-426 was where she and her team manning the Nostromo first encountered a hostile Xenomorph in a derelict spacecraft.

Being the only surviving member of her crew, blowing the creature out of an airlock and floating in space in hypersleep for fifty-seven years, she is finally found by a salvage team. Despite her best efforts to explain her traumatic experience, the Weyland-Yutani bosses don’t believe a word. That is, until Hadley’s Hope goes unexpectedly dark and she is enlisted as a Special Advisor to Sergeant Apone’s team and sent to join them on their treacherous “bug hunt”.

Ripley is not a soldier, nor is she trained in combat, but she is tough, determined and resilient. Stuck in space with a bunch of hard-ass marines, she doesn’t try to be anyone or anything she’s not, and she makes no apologies for that. She never backs down and won’t ever give up. Instead, she rolls up her sleeves and gets on with the job. It is this quiet confidence that makes Ripley a genuine and relatable strong female character, an icon for female empowerment and a survivor.

Despite all the guns, gore and military ‘grunts’, ALIENS is really about a mother who has lost her child and a child who is in dire need of one. It shows just how far a woman will go to protect her ward. And if you go ahead and flip that on its head, you realise that the Alien Queen has exactly the same prerogative. It’s an epic showdown between two formidable matriarchs. Survival of the fittest.

“Get away from her, you bitch!”– Ellen Ripley

The 1970s and ’80s were filled to the brim with some great science-fiction monster movies, but none of their monsters could hold a candle to the H.R. Giger-designed Xenomorph. With the double-jawed, acid-for-blood creature having already been revealed in the preceding film, Cameron wasted no time in throwing the audience right into the action. This is not a slow-burn like ALIEN where nothing much happens for the first 45 minutes, in ALIENS there is no break in the action and no time to stop and catch your breath right up until the credits roll. And you love it all the more for that.

“They come mostly at night.  Mostly.” – Newt 

​The SFX in this movie are admittedly not as impressive as those used in later ALIEN movies, but thanks to Cameron’s preference for practical effects over computer-aided ones, they don’t seem dated either. With the addition of some clever lighting, a bitterly-cold colour palette and a good helping of atmospheric smoke, we find ourselves peering into the dark corners of the screen in dread and yet we are still shaken when the creatures come out snarling.

Of course, the chest-bursting Xenomorph isn’t the real monster here, that dubious honour goes to the sleazy Carter Burke and those ‘higher up’ at the Weyland-Yutani HQ. Cameron’s not-so-subtle reminder that capitalism and corporate greed are the true killers of modern society.

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“You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse.  You don't see them screwing each other over for a fucking percentage.”– Ellen Ripley

The hardware used in this movie is phenomenal. From the mighty starship Sulaco to the M577 Armoured Personnel Carriers; from the pulse rifles to the M56 smart guns. Cameron and Giger have probably shaped the look and feel of video games just as much as anyone in the games industry. Just look at HALO, DOOM and RESIDENT EVIL.

It would be remiss not to mention what is often forgotten about ALIENS – its dark, deadpan humour and eminently quotable script. While Ripley might have most of the iconic lines, the Colonial Marines are an excellent supporting cast, so much so that you would gladly watch their exploits even without Ripley. Hicks, Hudson, Apone and Vasquez deliver the goods without ever missing a beat, and every character is fully-rounded and multi-dimensional. Their deaths are not soulless sacrifices simply to forward the plot, you genuinely care about all of them and feel sadness and anger when they’re gone.

“Game over, man. Game over!”– Private Hudson

​ALIENS wrote the blueprint for successful science-fiction action/horror. Without it, there would be no ROBOCOP. No PITCH BLACK, EVENT HORIZON or STARSHIP TROOPERS. Forget about PREDATOR and TERMINATOR 2, Hell, even JURASSIC PARK has echoes of it. ALIENS represents film-making and story-telling at its absolute finest, and is undeniably the Best Movie Ever Made.

ESSAY two – Why Robocop is the greatest movie ever made
​by kit power 

Well, okay, so, look; we’ve been here before.

Now, I know this is a movie Vs movie title fight, and as the series develops we’ll get into the comparisons; but, you know what? I nailed my colours to the mast back then in 2014, I unsay none of it now, and I think the case is pretty compelling. I’d be happy to make the case for Robocop against Citizen Kane, Titanic, shit, even Die Hard (oh, wait, I did that last one already).

So let’s just start with love.

I left off my 2014 essay stating the case that what made RoboCop the greatest movie ever made was the blending of genres, but also of storytelling modes. Especially, though, what lifted it was the fact that it is both a sci-fi action horror revenge thriller and a parody of all those movies at the same time.

And that’s basically impossible.

Because, dig it; satire relies on making a metacommentary of the thing being satirised. I mean, satire is commentary, right? It’s pointing at the thing we all do/see/watch/experience and saying “get a load of this nonsense, people!”

Now, where the thing in question is a real-world phenomenon of some kind; government machinations, say, or war, or bureaucratic processes (ah, but I repeat myself), the movie can play it straight, and let the absurdity speak for itself. Characters can be absurd or caricatures, but they don’t have to be, because if the writing is sharp enough, it’s the situation that provokes the uncomfortable comedy; the uneasy laugh of the ‘hey, but that’s kinda how things work and it’s kinda broken’.

So far, so good. And of course, Robocop does satirise, amongst other things, the real world phenomenon of corporate culture, corporate news, and creeping privatization, and in a rather magnificent fashion at that; there’s a not-really-at-all-contained fury lurking behind the portrayal of a world where such obvious public utilities such as news and the police should be privatised rather than in public ownership, and the dystopian hellscape that is the inevitable consequence of such boneheaded policies, and yes, hello 2021, I do see you waving, there, yes indeed, well spotted, it’s you.

So, sure, you can satirise the thing, whatever the thing is, with a straight face.

But satirise a movie genre? Whilst still also being a straight movie in the style you are satirising?

Unpossible. You can be an action movie (Die Hard) or you can be a movie taking the piss out of action movies (Hot Shots Part Deux, The Last Action Hero), but you can’t actually be both at the same time, for the fairly obvious reason that you can’t simultaneously mock something while also showing how fucking brilliant it is. At some point, you have to pick a side.

Unless you’re RoboCop.

If you’re RoboCop, you say ‘fuck sides’, and you do both at once.

Example; Murphy’s execution. It’s the classic moment in act one of any revenge action thriller where the Baddies kill someone close to the Goodie in ‘Big Mistake’ fashion, kicking off the carnage to come (when it is, as is depressingly often, a woman killed in such a fashion, it’s known as Fridging). It’s That Moment. We, as the audience, get to revel in the moment of villainy, getting the dark thrill of projection that goes something like ‘yeah, I’d totally become a badarse and kill any motherfucker who put their hands on x’, which, no, Keith, you wouldn’t, but fine, it’s a movie, knock yourself out. It’s the same function as horror, really; here, have an incredibly horrible shitty thing happening to someone, feel ill about it, but also sneakily relieved that it isn’t happening to you. Only with a revenge movie, there’s the vicarious savage joy of seeing retribution happening, the more brutal the better.

But RoboCop flips the script, by having the victim also be the avenger. The Baddies don’t kill the Goodies missus/kid/female partner (who is right fucking there, by the way, and good luck selling on me on the idea that wasn’t entirely deliberate), but the kill the fucking hero, in an explosively violent, torture-with-shotguns sequence that is utterly stomach churning.

Everyone in it plays it straight; the villains are like a gang of school bullies who graduated from pulling wings off of flies to shooting arms off of cops, and Weller is frankly magnificent; the mortal fear and courage in Murphy, and the pain and despair as he realises it’s going all the way South, is mesmerising. And the impact is horrific; I’ve seen my share of horror movies, and I’ve seen this movie well over 100 times at this point, and I still get the prickly fear-sweat every single time I watch this sequence. And in the over the top ultraviolence of the scene, the movie seems to be screaming at you you LIKE this shit?? Huh? You want big gory action??? Open up and say Ahh, asshole, here you go! Here’s some more! We having fun yet?

So, sure, it’s That Moment; at the same time (seriously, log that; at the same time) by switching the victim, then turning the violence all the way up to 11 and snapping the knob off, it’s a satire of That Moment, a commentary on it; instead of watching from the mindset of the vehicle of vengeance, we’re unexpectedly forced to identify with and experience the pain of the victim. It’s an incendiary moment of script-flipping, absolutely making a satirical (not to mention furiously angry) comment about That Moment in revenge narratives.... While also being That Moment.

Unpossible?

Sure. If you’re not RoboCop.

If you’re Robocop, you do it continuously, operating on multiple levels and across genres, being brilliant at literally every single thing you attempt to do, selling short not one single element in the process, satisfying every fan who came for whatever they came for.

Because you are RoboCop. The greatest movie ever made.

So whose side are you on?  Let's get a discussion going n the comments section below, let us know if you agree with either of the authors, or if like me you think they have both been drinking deluded juice. 

​ If we get more than twenty comments I will select one lucky winner to receive a copy of both Tabatha's and Kit's latest books 

If you enjoyed this article please check out the latest publications from Tabatha and Kit below, click on the images to purchase a copy from your country specific Amazon store 

DARK WINDS OVER WELLINGTON: CHILLING TALES OF THE WEIRD & THE STRANGE

Horror and speculative fiction author Tabatha Wood invites you to the Coolest Little Capital, where nothing is quite what it seems. 

Strange creatures lurk in the shadows of the Beehive, while a beast From The Deep is determined to destroy us all. Being Neighbourly might just change your life, and if you listen closely you can hear demonic Whispers in the wind. So sit back, take a sip of A Good Cup of Coffee and question all The Things You See. In the city, there are no Second Chances and every chapter might be your last. 

Inspired by Wellington legends and folklore, these thirteen original short stories will drag you on a chilling journey through the eerie, the weird and the strange.

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A SONG FOR THE END BY KIT POWER  

‘Becoming an overnight sensation was supposed to be a good thing.
Not for Bill Cutter, supply teacher and weekend rock star. His band, The Fallen, have just released their latest tune on social media, and it’s blowing up.
So is the body count.
Now, Bill faces a frantic race against time to stop the spread of the song, before the horrific effects can no longer be contained.
Terrifying, bitterly funny, and tragic, A Song For The End is a breakneck, bloodsoaked tale of truth, lies, consequences… and Rock N Roll.

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