Dir. James Cameron
Androids in films have had some interesting portrayals. Ridley Scott portrayed the android Ash (Ian Holm) in Alien as a human for all intents and purposes, of course that's the point, yet Ash turns glitchy, and become an Other: milk-blooded, surviving great damage, and utterly relentless when the human 'facade' fades away. Scott, of course, also directed Blade Runner, likely my all-time favourite film (Final Cut, naturally), and brought to the screen the fantastically complex androids, headed by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), whose 'Tears in Rain' death-speech remains one of the most beautiful things in any media I've ever seen. Hauer's portrayal fills Batty with eccentricities, which carry over to the other androids, but it's Batty that is the most human android of them all. In the Final Cut of the film, having Deckard (Harrison Ford) be an android really hammers home how truly human, or rather 'More Human Than Human' Tyrrel-Corp have made their androids.
There have been other androids in media, with the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica on TV, Ava (Alicia Vikander) in the recent Ex Machina, and David (Michael Fassbender) in Prometheus, (Scott's return to the universe of Alien). You can see critic Mark Kermode discuss his top five artificial people here, a list I mostly agree with. Kermode selects one artificial person in particular, the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) from James Cameron's Aliens.
In the sci-fi action film that is Aliens, Bishop shines as a character, no small feat in a film that has created action-character archetypes, due to great and iconic side-characters such as Vasquez, Hudson, and Apone. Bishop is more than human, with increased speed and precision as evidenced in the knife scene near the beginning of the film, and Cameron plays with the inherent 'evil' of the android, based on our knowledge of Ash from Alien, and twists it, with the cowardly company-man Burke being the traitor of the group. That in itself makes Bishop a more reliable character, but the prime moment that shows off how human Bishop really is, is the pipe scene.
Trapped in the colony, our heroes, and our main hero Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) are told by Bishop that the colony's power plant has been damaged in the Xenomorph attack. It's apparent that the only possible route to the power plant is via hundreds of meters of narrow, tight, piping. The goal is to get to the power plant and resolve the issue, which requires some extra tech taken with. Bishop volunteers for this. And this tells us a lot about the world and Bishop himself.
If anything, it's almost expected of androids to do such duty, as that's what they're designed for, as intelligent workers that can move cargo, solve tech problems, and, frankly, do all the little jobs that humans would rather not. Yet, none of the characters have this bigotry, and if so, don't express it. Bishop sees the problem in a logical, android way. He is less likely to panic, and he's the best suited to solve the tech issue on the other end. And oh boy, is there reason to panic. The way he moves down this pipe is by shuffling, and shifting his body along, pushing the tech in front of him. I don't suffer from claustrophobia, but I'd dare anyone to take on this duty. Crawling through kilometers-long piping, with only a torch as a light-source, in a facility crawling with deadly aliens out for your blood, be it artificial or not.
But Bishop volunteers for this. Even though he's guided by logic, it's a brave act, a human act. But most importantly, a selfless human act, one that goes beyond the pettiness of humans, the panic, the selfishness, and goes straight into 'More Human Than Human' territory. The androids are the best humanity can offer, and yet they aren't human. Due to many early films dealing with androids, including Blade Runner, and Aliens, this has become a trope, but an important one. So much dystopia, not excluding Cameron's own Terminator, portrays technology as the downfall of humanity, yet in Aliens and numerous others, androids become the best of us, the true humans. The piping in Aliens facilitates this, and atop that, is an iconic and fascinating shot, with Henriksen's face eerily lit and the unfamiliar movement, coming directly into the screen, making the shot all the other interesting and unique.
Bishop goes on to become even more of a hero, returning to save Ripley from the exploding colony, and even when torn apart by the Xenomorph Queen, he reaches out to grab and save Newt (Carrie Henn) from the certain death of the vacuum of space, once again using his android qualities to be utterly selfless and heroic. In Aliens there are characters to aspire to: Ripley, who uses her inherent humanity and femininity to become a badass action hero; Hicks (Michael Biehn) who does his duty and more; Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) who gives her life to save others; and, of course, Bishop, who despite his artificiality, becomes, to overuse a phrase, 'More Human Than Human'.
No comments:
Post a Comment