THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
The Hideous Relationship between ALIEN and Zombies
"I think it's safe to assume it isn't a Zombie."
- Ash, Science Officer aboard the USCSS Nostromo
Did you know that in Ridley Scott's landmark horror film ALIEN, the word "Zombie" is used, and not just idly mentioned by some random Johnny-on-the-spot, but purposefully stated by the Science Officer to refer to something coming back to life once clinically dead? It's true, after Kane's impregnation by the facehugger, it's subsequent death and Ripley's panic after the dead creature plops on her shoulder, having fallen from behind some overhead cabinets, Ash prods the dead specimen with a futuristic pointer thingy, getting a response which Ripley assumes means the dread beast is still alive but is actually just a muscle twitch, dead flesh responding to physical input without thought or control.
Ash: Seems dead enough.
Ripley: Well, good. Let's get rid of it.
Ash: Ripley, for God's sake, this is the first time that we've encountered a species like this. It has to go back. All sorts of tests have to be made.
Ripley: Ash, are you kidding? This thing bled acid. Who knows what it's gonna do when it's dead?
Ash: I think it's safe to assume it isn't a Zombie.
From that one line, that simple handful of syllables, there is one clear and certain fact we can draw, linking two worlds that are usually thought of as distinct, Zombies and Aliens exist in the same universe.
Hang on there pal, that is a big statement.
Yep - I know, it's a big claim but it is one based in truth. Consider who said this sentence, used the term "Zombie" as a metaphor for a once living thing coming back from the dead; Ash. Now, ignoring the fairly large piece of justification that Ash is the officially sanctioned Science Officer assigned to the Nostromo by the Company (the single mega-corporation that owns everything in the fictional ALIEN universe; think a future Disney) and, very likely, a 'serious dude' who is not going to flippantly joke or compare a such a landmark scientific discovery as complex extra-terrestrial life to something in popular culture. He is also, spoilers incoming, as the crew later discover, a robot; an Android built by the Company, strategically inserted into the unassuming ship's crew as a synthetic 'sleeper agent' to ensure the study and safe return of the xenomorph species for use in the bio-weapons division. Nefarious purposes aside, it goes without saying, that this Android has an artificial brain and, therefore, somebody programmed that brain. Now, I cannot even imagine the amount of complex code that goes into creating something that can fully pass as a human - believe me, science is nowhere near such a feat at the time of writing - but there must be some sort of neural net or artificial learning routine. In other words, the Android must be able to think for itself, to take things it has seen or been taught and apply them in the real world - to create something intelligent, this is the only way forward, you can't have rules to govern every situation, that is just infeasible, you need to make the artificial brain capable of inferring its own rules. Basically what I'm saying is that no one told the Android - Ash in this case - to directly reference Zombies, he just came up with it as a perfectly logical comparison. This tells us that one of two cases are true, if not both...
- Zombies and Zombiism is still popular in the distant future
- A Zombie outbreak occurred
Scenario One: Zombies and Zombiism is still popular in the distant future
Zombies and Zombiism as a whole has had quite a rough ride when it comes to being 'popular' - and, to keep things sane, I'm going to ignore the Voodoo Zombies of old from this article, jumping straight to post-Romero, modern Zombies. In 1968 and the years after, from what I have read, the world became obsessed with Zombies, the walking dead, ghouls, undead corpses, risen through some unknown biological means - radiation from space, a virus, whatever. They were everywhere, not mere ghosts or werewolves, vampires or demons that could be avoided, these usual creatures of horror were rare and lived in old castles or neglected cabins in far away woods, these new horrors could arrive at any moment, from anywhere, no one was safe from this walking terror which had never be seen, heard of or even imagined before. Underage kids snuck into theatres, scaring themselves beyond rationality, to see these lumbering creatures of the night. For some, it spawned into a craving for more. That need for more was answered in 1978, ten years after the first Zombies infiltrated the fortified psyche of the world, with the holy-grail of Zombie movies; George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. As the world spun in an undead frenzy, more and more Zombie movies were produced - The Return of the Living Dead, Zombie Flesh Eaters and Re-animator to name but a few - keeping the undead legacy rolling with new and inventive ways to 'use' the undead antagonists. By the mid-eighties, Zombiism was at a peak and seemed ready to grow and grow, spreading the evil seed to all corners of the globe. However, this train of decaying horror was picking up speed with alarming pace, a rate which, it, no doubt inevitably, could not maintain.
In 1985, George Romero released his third entry in the of the Dead trilogy. He hailed it as the best Zombie movie he had ever made, a masterpiece of undead horror, the public, however, felt otherwise. Many said the filmed suffered from "over-acting", the plot was too thin and mainly focused on people arguing, siting the film as uninteresting and "generally unimpressive", with good special effects but little else. The film suffered terribly at the box-office and the entire cast and crew were distraught, Romero especially. Throughout the late 80s and 90s there were some light-hearted attempts to revive the Zombie genre, to breathe new life into a film-category so centred on death. There were some minor successes such as Tom Savini's dramatic remake of Night of the Living Dead and Peter Jackson's Zombie-comedy Braindead but nothing like the high-notes of the decades past; it seemed, the world of cinema, no longer wanted their dead. The undead did break new ground in the world of video games with 1996's Resident Evil, and its eventual sequels, to ensure they were not totally forgotten.
However, just like the re-animated dead themselves, Zombies in culture did not stay dead for long - and this time they had adapted, evolved, this time they weren't content with slowly creeping up on innocents, devouring flesh and spreading fear in slow, tense ways; this time they were in your face, moving with lighting speed and unholy agility, spewing vile grotesquery in your eyes and mouth, the Zombies were back and back with a vengeance. However, it was a strange revival, one that, when you think of it, is eerily poetic. The movie to hail in the new age was Danny Boyle's surblime 28 Days Later - though, in later interviews, Boyle would report that this was in no way a Zombie movie:
"I don't like Zombie movies. I never did."
- Danny Boyle, Director of 28 Days Later
In all honesty, I agree with Boyle, 28 Days Later is not a Zombie movie - just a horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic world were living humans have been infected with a virus, transforming them into brainless automatons of doom, driven only by extreme, unsatiable, untargeted rage. It was the public that labelled these death-creatures as Zombies which quite unnervingly mirrors how modern Zombies first rose in popularity; Gorge Romero was also not trying to create a Zombie movie back in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead - the public just labelled the flesh-eaters in it as Zombies. Whether they technically were Zombies or not (the thought of Zombies that could run was simply abhorrent to some), the fate of the dead returning to ruin our minds from within was sealed in 2004 with the one-two punch of the Dawn of the Dead remake, followed swiftly by Zombie-comedy Shaun of the Dead. Also, Resident Evil, that decade old video game series - the draw of the geek generation - had started its big screen debut, taking a different approach to the video games in terms of style and story but still managing to scare up heaps of excitement for the living dead (heaps of money too). Zombies burst forth on a new medium too; television. There had been some recons into this area before but with Charlie Brooker's Dead Set and AMC's The Walking Dead both being record-setting successes, the Zombie infiltration reached feverish new heights. This new rise of Zombies in culture (now almost every area of culture) hit it's crescendo with the triple powerhouses of; Resident Evil: Afterlife, Zombieland and World War Z. It was the subsequent fall, that was so damning.
There was no single catalyst this time, no landmark title that failed, spelling destruction for the undead, no sharp decline in the appeal of the living dead, just a gradual decay, a rot, an unceasing malignance, source-less and seemingly unstoppable. Maybe the Zombie-genre had just grown too big for itself; the huge budget of some of the last great Zombie movies made taking risks in a genre that thrives on experimentation and off-beat ideas, incredibly daunting for potential investors. Maybe it was the incredible weight to try and recapture the Zombie horror movies of old; the true classics which many new audiences pine for. This last point played a large part in the decline of the once overwhelmingly stupendous The Walking Dead TV show; seemingly unwilling to stray very far from its 1968 forebear of Night of the Living Dead - endlessly repeating the same basic formula of survivors grouping together in a structure, fighting off hordes of undead, only to find that man is just as deadly. Even the stalwart of Zombie representation in video games has now moved away from these creatures of unliving horror - replacing them with werewolves, vampires and other such nasties. It is in this dearth time-period which we now inhabit but fear not, while the vengeful dead may be, once more, returning to their tombs, they shall return, resurrected and with renewed horror - partially re-buried but never completely forgotten.
So, getting back to the topic at hand, Ash must have inferred the rule that things coming back from the dead equals Zombie. However, we know from later movies in the ALIEN franchise - particularly 2017's ALIEN: Covenant - that Androids, after David, cannot create; they can emulate others but they cannot come up with something unique or, to be specific, Ash could not create the inference himself, could not have read about Zombies being things coming back from the dead and give that attribute to living things on his own - he must have been taught or seen a representation of someone coming back from the dead and stumbling around as a Zombie, driven by a desire to devour human flesh. Ergo, Zombiism - the production of Zombie movies, Zombie games, Zombie books and so on, heck, even just people talking about Zombies - must continue well into the period humans can create such technologically baffling Androids (sorry, artificial people - right, Bishop?); as ALIEN takes place in 2122, it's fair to say that Ash was built somewhere around the start 22nd century. This single fact is amazing and confirms my choice of hobby was a good one; Zombies will never, ever die - they will endure low-points and high-points but they will always be there, waiting in the darkness, shuffling down your street, moaning with worrying intent or smashing through walls, careering off cars, stopping at nothing, not even grievous bodily harm to eat your flesh, swallow your soul and bring you back, as one of their own, to walk the Earth forever, searching, hunting for your next meal. Zombies are dead and what is dead may never die.
Scenario Two: A Zombie outbreak occurred
There is a flipside to the first scenario I described, one that may, depending on your personal opinion, be the more likely scenario, something that does not preclude the first case from holding true but adding to it; a Zombie outbreak actually occurred in the ALIEN universe.
That is another whopper of a claim but, think of it, in scenario one I explained how Ash, being an Android, would have to infer the correlation between Zombies and things coming back from the dead. I also showed why Ash, after David - the first Android, assembled many hundreds of years before Ash -, could not have created this rule for himself, from his own knowledge or experiences, he must have directly observed, or at least been shown, Zombies being the result of humans dying and re-animating. It's quite natural to hypothesise that this inferenced rule spawned from real-life events; I'm not saying that Ash was part of quelling a Zombie outbreak or that one even occurred during his time of operation but, the simple comparison drawn by Ash between Zombies and the supposedly dead facehugger does suggest that, to the inhabitants of the fictional ALIEN universe and timeframe, Zombies are regular, average, day-to-day, just a fact of life; a reminder of one terrible event in the past, maybe multiple events, that saw the dead, walk the Earth.
That said, the ALIEN universe consists of thousands of worlds; all explored, documented and some even colonised by humanity. ALIEN takes place on planet LV-426, ALIEN 3 on Fiorina "Fury" 161, Prometheus on LV-223 and ALIEN: Covenant on the newly discovered Planet 4, absent an official declaration. It is a safe guess that there are at least 500 planets that have been 'surveyed' by humans and the Company, with, one could guess, half of that number being colonized. Perhaps outbreaks of undead happened on one of these distant worlds or maybe originated there and spread to other inhabited worlds; the first humans encountering 'space Zombies' and spreading the infection to their host planets unknowingly. There is however, one cobbled-together piece of potential evidence that a Zombie outbreak affected Earth, or perhaps more accurately, would go on to affect Earth as we are journeying far beyond the operational timeframe of Ash here. At the end of, the somewhat dire, ALIEN: Resurrection set in 2386, we glimpse Earth in ruins - something clearly apocalyptic has happened. It is not a huge stretch of the imagination that a full-blown Zombie apocalypse occurred, maybe the infection was spawned on another planet and came back to Earth, catching everyone off-guard or maybe some virus being studied escaped from a lab, maybe humans were engineering a disease to wipe out the xenomorph threat by creating an army of undead soldiers which could not be implanted with alien embryos and it got out-of-control, the possibilities are endless. And what of the Engineers we see in Prometheus? It is clear they want to destroy humanity, after wrongly giving humanity life in the first place. To achieve this while leaving other, less evolved life on Earth intact, a Zombie virus is surely the best weapon; something that kills but also spreads rapidly without tarnishing other lifeforms, unlikely to 'jump species' between vastly different organisms. I mean, the Engineers clearly process the technology and skill to create such a virus and to set that virus loose on Earth so why would they not and, who is to say they had not tried such things in the past, trying to snuff out the light of human civilization but getting the formulae of the virus slightly off or using the wrong distribution method, ultimately, failing in their task.
To me, I love the idea of Zombies existing in the same universe as the xenomorphs from ALIEN and would adore some further exploration around the subject, particularly in future films and novelisations. It is not too taxing to see an action-heavy movie, with minor areas of shock, like James Cameron's era-defining ALIENS movie being recast as a Zombie movie, no xenomorphs what-so-ever. That is the direction I think the fatcats of the film-industry should go; they should not directly tie it to the ALIEN franchise but leave enough hints, enough easter-eggs, for diehard fans to piece it together. Can you imagine a version of 1979's Alien where there is only one Zombie creeping around an old towing-vessel instead of the xenomorph, keeping the dark, gooey horror intact while adding elements of John Carpenter's The Thing, not knowing if other crew members are infected and are hiding it - perhaps resulting in them being cryogenically frozen and bringing the deadly infection back to Earth in a hotly-anticipated sequel? It would be difficult to do well but, given the right director and one who is not afraid of the extreme devotion of Zombie-fanboy culture, someone who is not fearful to break the well-established rules and who is not afraid of mixing the very-highly regarded ALIEN franchise with the, often maligned, Zombie genre, I do really see this being the next major landmark in the rise of the undead.
Is this a Zombified xenomorph? Nah, but the idea of a movie linking the two creatures of nightmare is a good one.
© Amazon
PS: A movie similar to what I am describing above was attempted by an Australian company working on a meagre budget. It is, however, not directly tied to the ALIEN franchise and simply (often with alarming blatancy) 'rips-off' ideas within the first two movies in that franchise. It was also not actually shot under a title that even hinted at a link to the xenomorphs of the ALIEN franchise but was simply rebranded to include the word 'Aliens' in a desperate attempt to boost popularity and make more money. For those interested, the movie is called Aliens vs Zombies - The Dark Lurking, released in 2009.
DESCRIPTION:
In this special article for Halloween, I put on my theorist hat of peril and dive into the movies of the ALIEN franchise, spotting the morbid relationship to the Zombie genre. It also features a summary of how Zombies, especially in their cinema form, have invaded popular culture, riding an apocalyptic rollercoaster of doom.
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DATE UPLOADED:
31/10/2021