From there, Scott cuts between close-ups of Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), looking she’s about to cry or vomit, or Ripley, cooler, considering that she is in charge now that Dallas is gone. Scott cuts back to Parker, who bangs the flamethrower against the table and then snatches it up, like he’s going to use it to kill the alien himself, which he seems to want to go and do, moving around the table to his right.
As he does, Scott cuts to this shot, with Ripley in the foreground and Parker in the background, out of focus, the oddly reticent Ash (Ian Holm) between them.
It’s among my favorite shots in the movie, because if Parker seems like he’s going to go and play action hero, he still defers to Ripley in this situation, which this framing suggests. Yes, there’s the moment when Ripley blows up, literally screaming at Parker to shut up, but that’s her asserting authority, suggesting that even far in the future a dude might have some trouble taking orders from a woman. But in not cutting back to a close-up of Parker, Scott denotes that Ripley is still the one in charge and that is Parker is following her orders, grumbling under his breath as she explains they will stick to Dallas’s original plan.
Parker is famously established in the opening scenes as not being a company man, making his priority an expected bonus over following orders to investigate the mysterious signal that leads them into harm’s way. Ah, but like anyone under a corporation’s thumb, sooner or later, even when there’s an acid-bleeding alien on the loose, you gotta fall in line.
No comments:
Post a Comment