Mikhail's TV Digest #18 PLUS Alien 3 and Hobbit 2 Climax Similarities
August-September Posts, Also Some Revisio-News, and a Scheduling Update
This is the eighteenth issue of what is typically an ongoing monthly-ish series that I like to call Mikhail’s Textual Variations Digest, aka MTVD, for short. It includes links to my recent posts, as well as some additional related thoughts and notes.
If you’re a new subscriber, please check some of these out to get a better sense of what this newsletter offers or catch up on previously unread or missed emails. If you are a more casual subscriber, you can change your settings to receive just the digest section in your inbox.
The Digest
August 6:
I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of the Rebel Moon director’s cut but had very mixed feelings when it finally arrived. Part 1 was made better by the added footage, while Part 2 was made worse. Thus, my article became a critique of the version that exists and a proposal for a version that doesn’t. I doubt we’ll see more movies from this franchise but I wouldn’t mind seeing another edition that combines the best elements of all the versions.
August 13:
This was a short follow-up to my original long post on the subject of erased streaming originals. Having finally signed up for Disney Plus, I was surprised to find that I could watch Gordita Chonicles and Amy Schumer, two shows that were reportedly gone for good following their original removal from streaming. I checked the trades and was surprised how little coverage the former’s return received and how the latter got no coverage at all!
Indeed, nobody seemed to care that Schumer’s series returned, even though everyone was in an uproar when it vanished. So, this was an opportunity to react to that.
August 20:
This is a post I’ve been meaning to do for a little while, both as I thought it was amazing that a Paramount Plus Original Series was now co-streaming on Netflix and because School Spirits is just a great series. I wrote it before all the recent news about Paramount merging and laying off employees though, so my speculations about its future did not account for all that. I sincerely hope it gets to continue in one form or another.
September 10:
This was a spur-of-the-moment article inspired by my catching a digest version of the original Alien on the web. Initially, I wanted this to be part of a longer VARIATIONS piece summarizing my thoughts on it and some of the other Alien films, especially the most recent entry, Romulus. But as tends to happen, the story of the Super 8 Cut kept expanding until the whole thing became too long, so I decided to break things up into multiple posts.
Keep reading for some of my thoughts on the Workprint Version of Alien 3 and the interesting similarities between it and The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug.
Bonus Features
Thoughts on 'Alien 3' and its Workprint Version
Nobody will convince me that Alien 3 is a good movie. It is the type of sequel that can only exist by virtue of betraying almost everything that came before it yet it also doesn’t work in and of itself.* Charles de Lauzirika’s restoration of the film’s Assembly Cut showed what it could’ve looked like at one point but the new version never managed to address the fundamental issues plaguing it.
*I absolutely hate how the movie has an Alien egg inexplicably show up on the Sulaco ship. If I were a screenwriter tasked with contriving a reason for the xenomorphs to still be bothering Ripley, I'd go with the idea that Newt was impregnated before Ripley rescued her. Still wouldn't make perfect sense but definitely more sense than what we got in the end
Nonetheless, it’s still fascinating for me to discover new or unreleased material from that picture. And as it turned out, back in 2016, somebody actually posted a thorough breakdown of a leaked Alien 3 workprint version, including video clips of footage that has still never been officially released. Having seen these, I’m pretty sure some fan somewhere had crafted a new cut that incorporates the best from the theatrical, restored Assembly and rough workprint versions into some sort of definitive edition.
One moment in particular really stood out to me: the one where Golic meets his end. The Assembly Cut never gives a clear idea of just what happened to Golic after he enters the Xenomorph’s trap chamber, with the film cutting to the creature just running away.* But in the workprint, we actually hear the xenomorph killing him and Golic’s death scream echoes against the black screen. This should’ve been in the Restored Assembly Version, cause Golic’s final scene otherwise feels just weirdly ambiguous, and the cut to the creature leaving seemed confusing.
*Sure, Golic’s death is discussed afterwards, but the scene itself just comes off as incomplete.
You should check out the whole thing here and judge for yourself.
Did 'Alien 3' Inspire the Ending of 'Smaug'?I have been a long time defender of the Hobbit trilogy, telling everyone that would listen that the films are underrated, that yes they have their flaws, in script and editing, but they are nowhere near as bad as some people would lead you to believe.
What always surprised is the way some folks, even scholars, would disparage the climax of the second Hobbit film, Desolation of Smaug (2015, dir. Peter Jackson), the extended cut of which was the best installment of the new trilogy. The central claim is that the climax made no sense due to the fact that the dwarfs decide to immolate Smaug with molten gold, when they should know this wouldn’t affect him due to his resistance to fire. But to me, that’s an odd misreading as it seemed obvious that the goal was to drown the dragon in gold and so kill him via asphyxiation.
And the biggest piece of evidence for this is the fact that the climax of Desolation of Smaug bore an uncanny similarity to that of Alien 3, which ends with Ripley luring the xenomorph into a furnace area and attempting to drown it in molten lead.
A few years ago, I asked my colleague Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire to make a side-by-side .gif of the two films’ respective events. Here was the result:
Sadly, this doesn’t capture the part where the main character momentarily thinks the creature is dead, only for it to burst out of its molten metal covering, still alive and ready to kill again. One has to wonder if all this was just coincidence or case of filmmakers becoming inspired, perhaps subconsciously, by what came earlier.
I personally think it’s the latter case.
Revisio-News: Tarsem’s 'The Fall' Restored CutOn September 27, Mubi is releasing a ‘restored cut’ of Tarsem Singh’s cult classic fantasy film The Fall, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland last month. I remember really liking The Fall when I got it on DVD back in 2006.
It was one of a number of dark, visually breathtaking fantasy films anchored within the perspective of a little girl that came out around the time. (Terry Gilliam’s masterful Tideland was another example.) I remember loving how the story changed depending on the Lee Pace character’s psychological and emotional state.
Sadly, my disc seems to have gone missing, which is a real bummer, as the DVD went out of print years ago, making it hard for the film to get seen in general.
This is one of the reasons why Tarsem decided to make this new edition, which will see the film become available in high-definition 4K quality for streaming. Though not billed as a ‘director’s cut,’ the new version is said to include a couple of new scenes totaling about 1.5-2 minutes of additional footage. I am really looking forward to it.
Scheduling Update
I had originally planned to have a really big article about the seminal TV series LOST available by now, to coincide with the show’s 20th anniversary.
But now it looks like that won’t be happening for a little while.
September is now really busy, and there are things that needed to be sorted behind-the-scenes before I can resume posting on the regular. Though I do plan to share a guest post I’m currently finishing for another newsletter, expect longer breaks between updates.