selenak

I watched some more extras from the Alien Quadrilogy and was intrigued to learn that in James Cameron's first script from Aliens (at that point still titled Alien II), Ripley's daughter is actually still alive but bitter about having been left as a child, and the fact that Ripley is still young while the daughter is old and frail makes it only worse. There is a massive rejection. Now obviously, Cameron changed this so that Ripley would learn her daughter died. I wonder whether it was because of the possible implications - Newt as a adoptive daughter because the real one is dead is one thing; Newt as an adoptive daughter because Ripley got rejected by the real one is quite another.

Or it might just be that Cameron, sucker for mother-child relationships that he is (and I mean that in the best possible way - as I said to

raincitygirl, it's totally refreshing when compared to all the daddy issues every other director/scriptwriter and their dog seem to have, didn't want to go through with the concept of a mother and daughter giving up on each other. No matter how much fate is to blame.

This in turn makes me think again of the supremely nasty but effective twist Fincher (plus a lot of co-authors), Our Man Joss and Jeunet gave the mother-child theme by connecting Ripley and the Alien(s) this way. And how most modern versions of Greek tragedies shy away from happens in quite a lot of them - child killing parent, parent killing child. Not, obviously, because the modern world can't bear to have such things happening (see also: newspaper headlines throughout the year). But it might be because quite a lot of modern creators don't want to go there in fiction.

Otoh, if they do, it can produce such powerful work as Brief Lives and The Kindly Ones, those volumes in which Neil Gaiman brings the Sandman saga to a climax. That brief scene between Dream and his son Orpheus, and the aftermath, devastate me each time, and they are among the reasons why I on reflection don't want to see Sandman filmed, because I don't think this storyline would make it through the process of Hollywoodization.

Two links:

artaxastra on civil rights politics, and how we relate to them in terms of popular culture;

cadesama on different concepts of alcholism, and their use as a metaphor for vampires in Angel.

And a question on this last day of Babylon 5 month:

andrastewhite, bless her, is in the process of learning how to make vids. Does anyone have any idea for a song particularily suited to Londo and G'Kar?