A contemporary android that has been coming to mind throughout this unit is the character Ash, played by Ian Holm, from Alien and to a lesser extent Bishop from the sequel, Aliens. In the first film, the crew of the Nostromo pick up a distress beacon from a planet whose name is a series of numbers and letters that despite my nerdiness I can't remember right now. Once landed on the planet they discover hundreds of strange eggs in the hull of an abandoned alien ship. Upon inspecting the eggs, a spider-like facehugger latches onto a crewman's face (John Hurt), unbeknownst to the crew inseminating him with the creature that will become the titular Alien. Although the crew and the audience doesn't know, Ash is an android installed by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (simply referred to as "The Company" in the first film) to ensure that the alien be brought aboard the ship. Ash sets the events of the film in motion by allowing the boarding party back onto the ship and allowing the alien to evolve inside the crew member.
I think one of the most interesting things about Ash is that no one knew he was an android until they KNOCKED HIS FREAKING HEAD OFF. He was such a convincing synthetic human that none of the crew could tell what his true purpose was, that is to do the bidding of the nameless company and secure the alien by any means necessary. He has no morality and when the crew members start dying because of his actions he feels no remorse. All sense of what it means to be a robot are challenged by Ash because isn't immediately clear that he is not human. In fact, it takes quite some time before anyone gets anywhere close to seeing that he's not real. He ends up being responsible for the deaths of the crew members of the Nostromo because he was simply programmed to do so. In the film, Ash is a representation of corporate greed. The Company placed him aboard to acquire the alien for their own purposes, disregarding the lives of the human crew. In the futuristic world that Alien takes place in their is apparently nothing that Weyland-Yutani won't do in order to get their hands on a Xenomorph specimen as it seems to be the main cause of the conflict throughout the series.
I think one of the most interesting things about Ash is that no one knew he was an android until they KNOCKED HIS FREAKING HEAD OFF. He was such a convincing synthetic human that none of the crew could tell what his true purpose was, that is to do the bidding of the nameless company and secure the alien by any means necessary. He has no morality and when the crew members start dying because of his actions he feels no remorse. All sense of what it means to be a robot are challenged by Ash because isn't immediately clear that he is not human. In fact, it takes quite some time before anyone gets anywhere close to seeing that he's not real. He ends up being responsible for the deaths of the crew members of the Nostromo because he was simply programmed to do so. In the film, Ash is a representation of corporate greed. The Company placed him aboard to acquire the alien for their own purposes, disregarding the lives of the human crew. In the futuristic world that Alien takes place in their is apparently nothing that Weyland-Yutani won't do in order to get their hands on a Xenomorph specimen as it seems to be the main cause of the conflict throughout the series.
Comments
Post a Comment