Dead Space trilogy and Aliens films – So close, so far

I love Alien and Aliens.  They are two wildly different films, and I tend to like Alien better than Aliens,but they were extremely solid movies.  They set up a great gritty sci-fi universe that has been stretched and molded almost as much as Star Trek or Star Wars.  The first movie set up the universal narrative with tension and horror, and the second brought it home with action and explosions.  Then the third and fourth movies came out, and they did not live up to the promise of the first two.

Dead Space follows almost the exact same trajectory as the Alien movies, and it’s third installment makes me extremely worried for the future of the IP.

1. Dead Space vs. Alien

   • The setting is a mining/resource ship on a long term mission to bring direly needed resources back to Earth.  The Ishimura is a planet cracker and the Nostromo is a transport for a mobile refinery, but they’re both serving the same purpose in the story.

   • The protagonists are blue-collar workers just trying to survive.  They’re not scientists or military people with training – they’re just ordinary folks like a lot of us, trying to get through a day.  Isaac Clark is just an engineer trying to make some repairs to a ship, and Ripley is a space teamster.

   • Both deliberately use the cramped, dark interior of a working ship for effect.  The Ishimura and the Nostromo are both full of tight, dark, cramped corridors for things to burst out of, and both use those corridors to build tension.

   • The xenomorphs and the necromorphs are both designed to push the same fear buttons in us.  Aliens that burst out of or change other people into unstoppable monsters.  In fact, the bird-like necromorph that infects corpses might as well be a face-hugger.

   • A spy turns against everyone for the sake of a larger organization.  Ash betrays the crew of the Nostromo on the orders of Weyland-Yutani, and Kendra for the government.

2.  Dead Space 2 vs. Aliens

   • The setting is now a colony, more people are involved and the stakes are higher.  In Aliens the colony is basically already destroyed before the main action starts, so you get to see a bit more of the collapse in Dead Space 2, but it’s the same basic setting.

   • Our protagonist is now a fish out of water – a blue collar worker in a military world.  Ripley is recruited for another mission by Weyland-Yutani, this one military in nature, while Clark is pulled out of storage by the Unitologists.

   • In both cases the protagonists are being used by the people that sent them on their mission.  Clark is used for his knowledge in how to construct markers, whereas Ripley is used for her knowledge of the xenomorphs, and then survives an attempt to make her an unwilling host to one.

   • We now get to see how the military holds up against the ‘morphs – in both cases, not very well.

   • The increased action of the sequels lets us get a bit more revved up while playing the game, but it calls back enough on the first installment that we are still tensing up when we go around corners.

3.  Dead Space 3

   At the third Alien movie and Dead Space game, the parallels pretty much stop in everything except for quality.  The lonely dread of the first game is missing in Dead Space 3, as are the feeling of high stakes and immediate danger to others besides yourself that was seen in Dead Space 2.  Basically you just walk around in the snow a lot while hordes of the same necromorph we’ve seen 3 times already runs straight at you and you fired 20 shots into it to kill it.

    Dead Space 3 was boring, it’s characters had inexplicable motivations, important characters were suddenly introduced with no real warning or reason (Captain Norton), other important characters vanished with no mention (Nicole gets exactly 0 mentions despite her importance in the first two games), and it felt about 3 hours too long.  So, actually I guess it does have a lot in common with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection.

 I love the Dead Space universe.  I love it because it feels like a working universe, where the tech is plausible and seems shaped to the needs of humanity at the time.  The details of the universe remain amazing in Dead Space 3, but basically everything else is missing.  I’m praying that the rest of the franchise, because there is certainly more to come, does NOT go down like the rest of the Alien movies.  Each subsequent film and crossover has gotten worse and worse, and the Dead Space series is not trending in a good direction right now.

 The one positive thing I really have to say about it is that the first bit of DLC was actually pretty good.  It reintroduced the insanity factor, and while it went way over the top with it, it was still better than the main game.  I can only hope that this means better things for the future of the series, and not an segue into Necromorphs vs. Reapers – The 3D Experience!  (Hey, anyone else notice that the ultimate bad guys at the end of Dead Space 3 are . . . the Reapers? :p)