Rear View: Patlabor - the Movie.

From grandmaster Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atomu ("Mighty Atom", or Astro Boy), and Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Tetsujin 28-gō ("Iron Man #28", or Gigantor) - both original manga animated for TV in 1963 - to Gō Nagai's Majingā Z ("Mazinger Z", or Tranzor Z), and Tezuka-apprentice Yoshiyuki Tomino's epic Gandamu (Gundam), robot manga and anime have left an indelible impression on contemporary Japanese culture.

These transforming, combining mechanical warriors, often deployed to save Earth from invading forces, are Japan's answer to America's superheroes. But perhaps because they are mechanistic, and (largely) culturally neutral, they've managed to stomp into the consciousness of audiences worldwide. By the mid-1980s, animated television series based on Japanese concepts, like Voltron, Robotech, Gobots, and - above all - Transformers, provided an astounding boon to robot toys, comics, and merchandise internationally.

Japanese comics are created for a readership that shares very specific attitudes and customs, often virtually unknown outside Japan. Animation, on the other hand, has managed with its broad appeal to open overseas doors otherwise closed to Japanese comics, and have in fact become Japan's supreme goodwill ambassadors. Even when only available in Japanese, anime are usually more accessible than manga, not requiring ability to read Japanese or learning the often unique conventions of printed Japanese comics.

Manga also tend to be produced by a single artist, making them more direct and personal than anime, which are often a collective effort produced by teams, aiming for the broadest possible audience. While Japanese film in general has lingered in artistic and financial doldrums, anime has prospered on the back of the home video boom - to a point at which the Japanese animation industry easily dwarfs that of the EU or the USA - receiving a massive boost from the increased availability of video hardware in Japan in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Original Video Animation films (OVA's) begun appearing in 1983, aimed at the home video market, partially as a response to rising film and TV production costs, but also to the segmentation of the audience, with rising demand for original video material and more specialised programming. OVA's quickly became the niche for animation not mainstream enough to warrant a substantial TV audience, or lacking the budget necessary to produce a theatrical release.

Patlabor first appeared as a seven-part OVA series in 1988, the year most Westerners became aware of anime thanks to Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira, and Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Tonari-no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro). Though the concept for Patlabor was one that manga artist Masami Yūki had been working on since the early 1980s, having earned notoriety with a parody of Gandamu, and wanting to further the riaru robotto ("real robot") approach of Tomino's creation - as opposed to the more fanciful sūpā robotto ("super robot") varieties.

Originally conceived as a light comedy set in space, the concept was pitched to a studio in the mid-1980s. Upon rejection, Yūki brought it down to earth and injected more realism with the help of scriptwriter Kazunori Itō, and designers Akemi Takada and Yutaka Izubuchi. The revised concept was picked up by Bandai Visual on the condition there would be a manga tie-in to the OVA series (in Japan, anime frequently act as ads for manga). All that remained was to find a director, and Itō suggested Mamoru Oshii. Despite some initial skepticism whether he could pull off realistic science fiction - given his background in children's fantasy - Oshii joined the group of artists now known as Headgear.

Banding together as a collective, the Headgear quintet managed to retain full control of their creation rather than sign it over to a production company or an animation studio. Though some of the the members have collaborated on other projects, Patlabor was the only one Headgear worked on as a group, ultimately spawning three feature films, an additional sixteen-part OVA series, a TV series, a 22 volume manga, a series of novels, many model kits, CDs, and much, much merchandise.

Essentially an ensemble police procedural (think Hill Street Blues with giant robots), Patlabor is set in the latter half of 1999 (then, a decade into the future), in a Tōkyō where humanoid, multi-purpose machines - basically oversized powered exoskeletons - known as "labors" are employed in all aspects of industry and heavy construction, which in turn has led to the use of labors for unsavory purposes. Consequently, the police has branched out with a new, special section equipped with patrol labors - "patlabors" - to combat labor crime.

The main protagonists are the officers of the Special Vehicles Section 2, Division 2, an outfit stationed on a strip of reclaimed land in Tōkyō Bay with the reputation of being a dumping ground for freaks and misfits. There's the overeager young officer, the nervous salary-man, the trigger-happy jerk, the wizened engineer, his whizz-kid protégé, the spunky yet naïve girl, the quiet giant, and the femme fatale. Presided over by a captain whose Machiavellian streak is obscured by slack attitude (mainly manifested by a rather relaxed choice of footwear), for whom the career-oriented captain of the far more professional Division 1 is an object of unrequited love.

Although this (first) film's plot concerns the suicide of the developer of a new operating system for labors - which may in fact be part of a sinister plan to disrupt Tōkyō's largest re-development and land reclamation project by causing the thousands of labors it employs go berserk - it focuses more on the characters than actual crimes, and Division 2's two youngest members, Asuma Shinohara (the overeager one) and Noa Izumi (the spunky naïve one) in particular. Though the youngest patlabor officer, Noa is in fact the projects oldest character, its heroine ever since development began in the early 1980s, and a member of what was then a rather scant set of strong female manga and anime characters.

Unlike manga, which permeate mainstream Japanese society (in the early 1980s, Japan used more paper for comics than it did for toilet paper), anime isn't something the average Japanese adult spends time watching. Unlike overseas, where anime are an entrypoint for an audience which - more often than not - is adult, the domestic target audience tends to be quite young. Despite this, Headgear deliberately chose a more "mature" style for what essentially was an "adolescent" concept.

Manga artists have always felt a kinship with filmmakers. In fact, many manga artists create stories as if they were making films, often incorporating every camera technique ever invented - many of them dream of directing and of the early days of Japanese animation when practically anyone who could draw could switch careers. Here's where the choice of Mamoru Oshii as director really paid off: this feature allowed him to utilise his considerable skills and further his style of philosophical longueurs interspersed with rapid bursts of ferocious action.

Fairly successful in its tightrope attempt to provide enough information for audiences unfamiliar with the Patlabor OVA's while avoiding boring committed fans to tears, the film's overall mood is more solemn compared to the original series, its palette cooler, less bright. Likely due to director Oshii's inclinations, biblical references rain down throughout the story like frogs on Egypt, while the mechanical action is mainly confined to the finale (hardware aficionados will find much more labor-on-labor action in the Patlabor manga). However, Yutaka Izubuchi's mechanical designs are among the most original and realistic, logically extrapolating on exisitng heavy equipment, and worth glimpsing even briefly.

In between labor battles and extensive dialogue, Oshii takes the audience on a tour of vanishing Tōkyō vistas, eminently commenting on the relentless, seemingly unyielding march of progress - a theme he would return to with similar adroitness in several later features, like his 1995 international breakthrough Gōsuto In Za Sheru/Kōkaku Kidōtai (Ghost in the Shell). However, Oshii's restrained and subtle manner also allows for scenes brimming with technical information and acronyms, requiring that viewers remain active; previous knowledge of the OVA's isn't crucial provided viewers pay attention.

Oshii has said the his films wouldn't work without composer Kenji Kawai's music, even claiming that Kawai's music is "half the film". Here the fairly conventional, upbeat soundtrack is complemented by Kawai's more ambient, meditative pieces, making Patlabor an excellent introduction to the style for which he and Oshii would later become famous. Curiously, the cast of voice actors are practically all middle aged veterans, portraying characters who pretty much all are half their age.

Like Japanese poetry, Japanese comics tend to value the unstated, allowing pictures alone carry a story. Mamoru Oshii excels at this seemingly spare approach, occasionally indulging in caricature to reveal the "essence" of a prevalent mood or situation. Though likely a nod toward fans of the original OVA's more comedic slant, the sudden simplicity can be bewildering, with serious exchanges suddenly drawn in an overtly "cartoony" style, or characters depicted as abbreviated caricatures against a hyperrealistic backdrop.

But Japanese manga - and their distant cousin anime - tend to be unashamedly emotional and human, representing the one space where the Japanese are allowed to "drop their mask" and indulge in fantasy. Often created by artists with little formal training, they tend to be very unpretentious, with few aspirations toward artistic excellence and fame. Their main aim is to entertain.

It's always hazardous to set a film in the future, particularly the near future. Though when 1999 did roll round there was little - apart from certain stylistic aspects - that dated the first Patlabor feature. In fact, though the Internet and cell phones are conspicuously absent, the film's environmentalist theme seems quite prescient. Land reclamation in Tōkyō Bay may not have been quite as aggressive as the film depicts, but some 20% (or, roughly, 250 km²) has been reclaimed over the past century.

While massive exoskeletons aren't yet employed in construction, heavy machinery has been known to be used for nefarious purposes - likely making police wish they did have patlabors at their disposal. Certianly, robotics research continues unabated, persistently improving and redefining robot capabilities, interfaces and roles in society. Unmanned vehicles fly over war zones, scour the ground for explosives, allow humans a broader virtual presence, while gaining more parity with them. This film ironically illustrates the folly of giant, humanoid machines, in a scene where a construction labour displays all the efficiency of a kid let loose among building blocks when engaged in the raising of a building.

Until the recent recession rendered it idle, Japan had the world's largest fleet of mechanized workers, with robots even being manufactured by robots in the facilities of Yaskawa Electric - Japans largest manufacturer of industrial robots (the closest existing parallel to Patlabor's Shinohara labor factory). In 2005, more than 370,000 robots worked in factories across Japan - roughly 40% of the world's total, averaging 32 robots per 1,000 human manufacturing employees. A 2007 Japanese government plan called for a million industrial robots to be installed by 2025; that won't likely happen now.

Yet, with nearly 25% of its citizens 65 or older, Japan is banking on robots to replenish its rapidly diminishing workforce and help nurse the elderly. The option to allow millions of workers in from overseas appears utterly unappealing to a society steeped in xenophobia (Japan has the lowest rate of foreign workers among the world's developed economies, at less than 2% of the workforce, compared to 15% in the USA, or 10% in Britain), even paying foreign workers to return from whence they came once recession has rendered them "redundant".

Japanese scientists and engineers, having grown up watching robot cartoons, are more than eager to create humanoid, robotic companions to care for the more than a million Japanese who will be over 100 years old by the middle of this century. Many of their projects tend to be far-fetched, concentrating on humanoid and other impractical designs, that likely can't be readily brought to market. Robots may be cheaper than human workers over the long term, but the upfront investment costs are much higher.

While the first Patlabor film may share a certain amount of technological skepticism with the majority of science fiction films - particularly in its prediction of the impact computer viruses and malicious code cold have - it's no reactionary dismissal of change. Rather, it merely advocates a reconsideration of the past's - and its artifacts - worth. It's brilliance lies not so much in its technical qualities, as it does with director Oshii's respect for the audience.

Oshii and his Headgear colleagues dare to tell a complex and ambitious story without explaining every last detail, trusting in the audience's own ability to work things out. This, ultimately, renders the fact that its anime inconsequential, for beneath the skillfully drawn veneer lies an ambitious, well-crafted crime story in a slightly futuristic setting. It just happens to be animated.

Rear View: Alien.

"You have come for knowledge. There will be pleasure.

For knowledge is sexy. There will also be pain.

Because knowledge is torture."

- Jeff Noon, Vurt, 1993

Thirty years ago the release of Alien completely changed science fiction film. Its pioneering design and hyperrealism became a template for futuristic visions in the decades that followed, spawning novels, comics, video games, toys, and an additional five films (including two crossovers with the Predator "franchise"). Its visual impact and the plausibility of the plot, combined with a new, more violent aesthetic to create a story far removed from the sterile, shiny surfaces of the classic space operas in whose wake it arrived. Though Star Wars had introduced rundown settings and rumbustious machines two years prior, that film's plot remained true to the conventional romantic romp in space - as was the case with Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, the more immediate attempts to cash in on the success of Star Wars. While Alien certainly benefitted from their success and particularly the reinvigoration of the genre they signified to film producers, it was a fundamentally darker creation which provided a breakthrough for a new subgenre, ostensibly labelled science fiction but significantly different in several important ways.

It depicts a dark dystopian future technocapitalist society, where omnipotent dictatorial and mercenary business conglomerates grapple for control over people and machines. Its aesthetic obtaining suggestive power and inspiration from various areas of contemporary culture, with a particularly obvious connection to Punk in its films' artificial revolt and exaggerated expressionist violence. It also parallels the rise of the literary genre later known as Cyberpunk, and its disrespectful attitude towards genre conventions, as well as innovations in fantastical art and comics - something exceptionally explicit in the case of Alien, a film designed by some the leading pioneers in those fields. As principal Cyberpunk writer William Gibson pointed out, this scientific fiction didn't deal so much with the future as with the time it was created in, extrapolating tendencies and phenomena already in existence - gone was the utopian future in which humanity had rid itself of the dark, turbulent 20th century's burdens.

No other genres attach so much importance to visual presentation as science fiction and horror films do - and Alien is both. But it was only during the 1970s and 1980s that they achieved a level of realism and persuasion to match the visions of filmmakers, and begun to erase the boundary between what could be imagined on paper and realised on screen. Alien achieved a greater degree of realism by as intensely as possible transferring its fantastical script to the screen; its audience was provided with a visualisation so powerful it appeared to be real. Its plot coupled the intimate with the clinical, while quite intentionally seeking to shock with the same brash attitude as Punk - a revolt that reverberated beyond popular music, in art, literature, film, and continues to resonate in mass media and popular culture. Under the guise of Punk it was suddenly possible (if not permissible) to exaggerate and enhance beyond the normally acceptable. With its shocking clarity and frank violence, Alien also serves as an example of how the film industry can assimilate a subculture and incorporate a school of thought.

Though a great success, Alien was born from disaster. In 1975, Chilean enfant terrible Alejandro Jodorowsky was preparing to make a film based on Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune. The second director among the quartet who'd attempt to adapt the novel, in a process protracted well over a decade, Jodorowsky envisioned a massive project, calling for enormous sets and gigantic scenes, entire armies battling each other in the desert. He assembled a pre-production team in a large Paris office, and among the many famous artists whose participation Jodorowsky was able to secure were three relative unknowns who'd go on to create Alien: Dan O'Bannon, Hans Reudi Geiger, and Jean "Mœbius" Giraud. An old acquaintance, the French comics artist Mœbius had been hired by Jodorowsky to provide storyboards for Dune, having already permanently altered the aesthetics of science fiction comics through Métal Hurlant, the magazine he'd helped found in 1974. Swiss surrealist Geiger had been hired by sheer fluke to create sets, when Jodorowsky came across one of his exhibition catalogues while negotiating Salvador Dàli's participation in the project.

Dan O'Bannon was hired to create special effects on the strengths of his contribution to Star Wars, and the 1974 feature Dark Star he'd conceived with fellow USC student John Carpenter - but only once Douglas Trumbull (who'd created special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, but turned down Star Wars) revealed himself too expensive for Jodorowsky's taste. But O'Bannon only arrived in Paris in time to witness the bloated project collapse. Jodorowsky's approach to failure was to change direction entirely, and when his remarkable version of Dune was cancelled he simply moved on. Geiger and Mœbius too returned to their established careers. For O'Bannon, who'd planned the next several years of his life around the project, it wasn't as simple. He returned to America, broke and homeless, and begun channelling his frustration into screenplays - one of which, Star Beast, would morph into Alien with considerable help from producers Walter Hill and Ronald Shusett. Both O'Bannon and Hill considered directing the film themselves, but their final choice fell on Briton Ridley Scott - after mulling fellow American Robert Aldrich (The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen), and Britons Jack Clayton (The Great Gatsby) and Peter Yates (Bullitt).

Though a successful set designer and commercial film maker, Scott had only one feature, the 1977 period drama The Duellists, to his name. He was not only new to the science fiction genre but somewhat of an outsider in the film business. (Curiously, Scott would become the third director to tackle Dune, working on that film for seven months in between Alien and his next feature, Blade Runner.) However, Alien's success relied more on the creatures spawned by Geiger's extraordinary imagination. The son of an introverted pharmacist, Geiger had become known for surreal airbrushed images of "biomechanoids," symbiotic interconnected organic bodies and machines. Frequently imbued with fetishistic erotic imagery, they were likely inspired by Geiger's catholic, sex- and gun-obsessed youth in the shadow of atomic Cold War paranoia, as well as a lifetime of suffering night terrors. When director Scott engaged Mœbius, whose comics as a fellow draughtsman he admired, to design costumes and spacesuits for Alien, Mœbius hinted at Giger as someone capable of creating a truly alien creature.

Eager to redeem himself after infamously creating a "space monster" in the shape of a beach ball with claws for Dark Star, Dan O'Bannon commissioned Geiger to devise a "monster" for Alien that wouldn't even remotely resemble "a guy in a rubber suit." In February 1978, director Scott accompanied by a couple of the film's producers visited Geiger, who by then had completed almost thirty conceptual paintings for the project in roughly three months time. Convinced that the artist was indeed the man for the job, they invited him to Shepperton, where the film was to be made. So Geiger, assisted by his future wife Mia Bonzangio, came to work directly on the creature which would win him an Oscar for best visual effects, and with which he would henceforth be intrinsically linked. Ironically, Alien also won three awards for best original score, despite the fact that much of Jeremy Goldsmith's original music for the film was rejected by director Scott, patched with interspersed segments from a score Goldsmith had composed for John Houston's Freud in 1962, and excerpts from the first movement of Howard Hanson's second symphony. Regardless of the film's success and the awards, Goldsmith apparently never forgave Scott.

Basically a story about things that go bump in the night - before they kill you - Alien is an exploration of human ignorance, negligence, and greed. The crew of an interstellar tugboat, hauling a massive ore refinery back to Earth, hatch from their artificial sleep upon intercepting a nearby distress call. Obliged to investigate, they trace the signal to an alien shipwreck on a small planetoid where one of the crew manages to become impregnated by an alien creature whose main circulatory fluid just happens to be a universal solvent, and whose offspring hatches explosively from his chest, grows rapidly in size and strength, and proceeds to eliminate the crew one at a time. The slow pacing of the film, reminiscent of thrillers past, is its greatest strength. The suspense is allowed to build slowly, there's no instant gratification of the kind common today. Effects are used sparingly, the realism intensified by the fact that the alien creatures mostly appear in brief fragments, with the handheld camera-work done by director Scott himself lending the film a certain cinema vérité quality.

Much of the dialogue was improvised, further adding to the realistic tone, as did the small ensemble of character actors with few instantly recognisable stars. Populating a spaceship with older actors (the median age of the cast was 40) of practically equal stature also made it almost impossible to surmise their fate, and guess beforehand who would or wouldn't survive the ordeal. The rumour that only John Hurt, portraying the unwittingly impregnated second mate Kane, knew what would happen in the infamous "chestbuster" scene is partially true. It had been explained to the cast, but not in great detail. They weren't told that real animal guts would be used, hence the scene was shot in one take, with four cameras set up to capture the quite genuine reactions of surprise, revulsion, and shock. The parasitoid nature of the alien creatures serve as a very powerful metaphor for non-consensual reproduction - rape, actually - and the fact that a man is subject to it broadens the threat to include all of mankind. Everyone is at risk, not just of death, but total corruption of the human body.

This aspect is contrasted with the complete disregard of the crew's employer, the Earth-based resource conglomerate, whose intent of bringing a specimen of the alien creatures back to Earth is kept from their employees - they're expendable, mere tools, simply "doing their job." Here perhaps lies the clue to why the spaceship, Nostromo, and its shuttle, Narcissus, are named after characters that appear in the stories of Polish-born British writer Joseph Conrad. For though Alien has little in common with Conrad's fin de siècle novels, conceived at the apex of the British Empire, they all share a critical view of the excesses of imperialism. The names of the vessels serve as reminders of humanity's hubris, as signifiers of colonialism. They remind the audience that the conglomerate is interested solely in resources, not research; in expediency, not empathy; in profit, not progress. And that no amount of spacefaring Mates are to be spared when there's a dollar to be made.

With the exception of West Germany, where the film received the camp subtitle "Das unheimliche Wesen aus einer fremden Welt" (The Eerie Creature from an Alien World,) and Hungary, where the slightly more philosophical "A nyolcadik utas: a halál!" (The Eighth Passenger: is Death!) was added, around the world the title was commonly appended with the line "the 8th passenger," which is misleading, particularly as the as the spaceship in question is no pleasure craft nor are the people aboard mere passengers. Theirs is a working vessel, they are its crew - hired grunts doing the bidding of an unscrupulous employer. They are, truth be told, mercenaries hired to harness vast profit, not adventurers or explorers. The titular alien is therefore - at best - a stowaway. But while depicting the people who do all the heavy lifting in space is unusual, Alien is truly remarkable for possessing a female protagonist who's not a damsel in interstellar distress. Perhaps not entirely surprising, given director Scott's unabashed fondness for powerful, emancipated female characters. But third mate Ripley is also Alien's least sympathetic human character, one the audience would consider least likely to survive right from the very beginning.

Ripley's no rebel, she's no lone wolf. On the contrary, she's the only crew member consistently playing by the book, insisiting on following the rules despite being relentlessly thwarted by the cowardice of her colleagues and the ulterior motives of their employer. Ripley is a stickler for the rules, until they no longer apply. At which point she's forced to rely on her own intelligence and initiative instead. An early draft of the script featured a male Ripley, but during rewrites all the characters became androgynous, allowing not only for less rigid casting but also strengthening the idea of humans as incubators, mere tools. Meryl Streep were among the actresses approached, and Veronica Cartwright - who ended up portraying the anxious junior navigator Lambert - was originally cast as Ripley. But the part ultimately went to the (then) rather unknown Sigourney Weaver, whose breakthrough this quite unique part ensured. Unique until the very last act, that is, when for no particular reason Ripley romps around in skimpy togs that are supposed to pass for underwear, and the camera lingers on her waistline. Although this in itself is an interesting comment on how people can become mere cogs in the machinery of economic power. At least Ripley's affair with the ship's captain was dropped from the final version of the film.

Cinema can provide the illusion of exploring new, unknown worlds offering the audience new, unique knowledge. This is particularly true of "scientific fiction" aiming to depict an imagined, future, or contemporary universe. It's also true of the psychological thriller, delving into the past, or detective stories, or various types of horror films. They're all variations of the same, mystical plot: an undiscovered world penetrated by the curious in their quest for obscured knowledge. What makes their quest so suspenseful is the question what attaining this knowledge will entail. Will it be a blessing or a curse, will it involve life or death? Films about forbidden or obscured knowledge can serve as reminders or real scientific risks and problems, but most often dispense ominous warnings regarding the quest for knowledge itself - as do many other contemporary as well as ancient convention shaping stories and myths. The idea that the established order of things is connected to a "higher order" can be discerned lurking behind this cautious stance. If one is altered, or affronted, so is the other.

An exaggerated thirst for knowledge thus becomes something suspicious, capable of provoking a deities' anger or "nature's" revenge. The disrupted order then necessitates restoration, often through ritualised punishment, or a "purifying" sacrifice - in Alien's case, the death of practically every character. To persist in obtaining the obscured or secret despite such obstacles further represents the quest for absolute knowledge. In such cases, it's not merely the story of the lure of the forbidden, but also of the power that resides in owning or performing the exceptional, the astonishing. The attraction lies in possessing knowledge that no one else has previously possessed. In this sense, Alien is as critical towards science and the quest for knowledge as practically every science fiction film before it - yet not nearly as openly hostile as the sequels that followed it. It's likely no coincidence that the ships' science officer turns out to be a rogue; the sole member of the crew attempting to engage the alien creature with curiosity and logic is very much a product of science itself. Not only the sole representative of science aboard, the android Ash - an archetypal evil scientist - is an embodiment of the principles that guide science in Alien's universe.

Curiously, despite the seeming aversion to science, the film commits few scientific faux pas, rarely straying from the boundaries imposed by the universe it imagines. There is of course the plausibility of the alien creature itself, in particular its incredibly rapid development from chest-bursting parasitic banshee to fully fledged bipedal killing machine. Even an unknown, alien biology is unlikely to run counter to natural laws - so called because they appear to be unbreakable practically everywhere. The alien creature's accumulation of mass in particular appears to skirt the first law of thermodynamics, as the audience never actually witnesses it consuming anything it kills - or anything else of substance. There are of course life forms on our planet known to utilise other species as incubators, or increasing their size by ingesting large quantities of liquids. But these traits are rarely combined among them, and certainly not on the scale of the film's antagonistic xenomorph. (Never mind that it would have to be made of teflon to have acid for blood.)

However, keeping in mind that Geiger's creation is a biomechanical symbiont, it may have been designed as a living weapon capable of adapting itself to whatever environment is happens to be deployed in. Though the audience never sees its metamorphosis - in order for the suspense to build - it may acquire part of its bulk from mechanical items it comes across. That would certianly explain some of its vacuum cleaner-like appendages. Indeed, the alien wreck from whence it came may not be a simple transport but something akin to a bomber, lost on its way to egg the face of an enemy with the contents of its deadly hatchery. After all, the plot does suggest that the Earth-based conglomerate, whose interest include not only mining but also armaments, appears not only aware of the alien creatures' potential as biological weapons but in fact possesses some prior knowledge of their existence. This still leaves plenty for continuity fiends to gripe about, but most (f)actual errors in Alien require a level of specialised knowledge not commonly found even among science fiction fans. (Like the fact that the density of the planetoid where the alien wreck is discovered is quite improbable in relation to its reported gravity.)

For the most part, Alien's creators manage to conjure forth a believable setting for their story. Genre conventions, such as practical artificial gravity aboard spaceships, or ventilator shafts sturdy and large enough to spelunk in, do not detract unduly from the logic of the plot. Neither do the scenes with sound in space - something few science fiction films bother getting right, likely because of the importance of sound to their human audiences - even though, as copywriter Barbara Gips pointed out in Alien's legendary tagline, "In space no one can hear you scream." But they still like to hear your spaceship go wooossssh!

Rear View: eXistenZ.

In the dream house of the year 2000, Mrs. Tomorrow will find herself living happily inside her own head. Wall, floors and ceilings will be huge unbroken screens on which will be projected a continuous sound and visual display of her pulse and respiration, her brain-waves and blood pressure [... ] all these will surround her with a continuous light show.

J. G. Ballard, The Future of the Future, 1977

Ten years ago, David Cronenberg's fifteenth feature film, eXistenZ, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. It's Cronenberg's first original film since Videodrome, which premiered almost exactly sixteen years earlier, and they're thematically similar. Where Videodrome explored our growing engrossment with television and video, eXistenZ probes our fascination with emerging media like video games and virtual reality.

Yet upon general release in April 1999, eXistenZ was eclipsed, in Canada as well as everywhere else, by The Matrix — a visually much more advanced, and certainly much more lucrative foray into similar territory. Apart from timing, the comparative simplicity with which the Canadian film was made probably contributed to its obscurity. Where The Matrix relied heavily on expensive computer-generated imagery and wire stunts, eXistenZ was created with trim sets and queasy effects.

True to Cronenberg's habit of creating hermetic little worlds, it's a very small film, shot almost entirely in a Toronto studio, with additional exteriors in surrounding rural areas. Despite being his first feature to employ CGI, Cronenberg's emphasis on the tactile ensured that the majority of its C$31 million budget (the second most expensive Canadian film at the time) was devoted to advanced puppetry: a warehouse staffed with 90 specialist created its mutated creatures and devices.

Furthermore, Carol Spier's set designs blur the distinction between the genuine and the artificial, contrasting anodyne triteness with nauseating novelty, placing the action firmly at an undetermined point in time, while Peter Suschitzky's use of a single lens throughout the film lends it an odd visual unity, keeping the framing off-kilter and modelling pools of soft lighting to provide rich contrasts. The resulting texture and depth provide an almost three-dimensional quality.

Though thematically quite advanced, eXistenZ contains only 45 scenes performed by a small ensemble of characters. The eclectic cast, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Eccleston (the ninth Doctor Who), Canadians Sarah Polley and Don McKellar, reflects Cronenberg's preference for mainly employing character actors he already had experience working with rather than the latest, greatest stars.

The plot revolves around master game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose inventions tap into the user's psyche, utilising his body as a power source, blurring the boundary between reality and game, with the resulting game experience directed by the player's own emotions, fears, and fantasies. These highly involving and addictive games are considered a threat to normal life by a faction of "realists" intent on stopping their designers at any cost.

Following a foiled attempt on her life during a demonstration of her latest creation, Geller finds herself on the lam in the company of inept marketing trainee Ted Pikul (Jude Law) — possibly named after the Shulgins' infamous compendium of psychedelic alkaloids — drafted impromptu as her bodyguard, forcing the brilliant cybernetic mother figure to find a way through the labyrinthine plot with a technical virgin in tow; a digital Eve forced to educate her analogue Adam.

The story was inspired by an interview David Cronenberg conducted for Shift Magazine with Salman Rushdie. Cronenberg found the concept of the artist having to live with his creation once it's assumed a life of its own a very "Burroughsian" concept, adding to it the necessity of remaining perpetually on the run as the creation violently clashed with the views of people inhabiting a reality different from the artist's, completely obliterating what the artist thought he had done.

As their conversation had turned towards the impact of computers on art, Cronenberg was intrigued by the proposition that gaming can be as emotionally and intellectually engaging as any work of high art. With eXistenZ he explores this through philosophical illustrations of existentialist principles, without becoming heavy, deep, or depressing. On the contrary, the film has a much lighter, almost playful, tone, with a visual and verbal humour that surpasses the comic moments of Cronenberg's earlier films.

It's also sensual in a much more human way than, for instance, the coolly detached exploration of alternative sexual practices that characterised his adaptation of J. G. Ballard's Crash. Which ultimately highlights the fascination with change that Cronenberg and Ballard have in common. Both create futures easy to visualise, largely devoid of moralising, dire "warnings". Like anything new, they argue, the future can be unsettling and alienating, yet also arousing and inspiring, and not necessarily negative.

Another intriguing aspect of eXistenZ is its brief examination of game characters' moral boundaries. Players accept, for instance, the unbridled violence they're compelled to impart to facilitate a game's progress because they're indulging in a fantasy. Death in a game is unreal, therefore acceptable. But should the distinction between game and reality suddenly dissolve, and the consequences become irreversible, the player's actions could become increasingly difficult to justify.

eXistenZ's particular brand of biotechnology is perhaps its most disturbing facet. Devices made from a creature's organs rearranged, surgically altered to become useful tools in human hands blur the line between the animate (human) and the inanimate (machine). Representing hybrids of the two, their existence questions which is which, and poses a challenge to the value of life itself; the devices "living" without significant autonomy as tools are juxtaposed with the vast herds of animals designed to feed us.

If "living" tools and devices are still decades away (though the recent application of organic material in video displays and screens certainly brings them nearer), the concept of the human body as a machine to be augmented as we please is hardly novel. The type of direct neural interfaces envisioned in eXistenZ aren't that far removed from the currently common modifications — piercings, tattoos, prosthetics — with which we seek to compensate our real as well as perceived deficiencies.

Because the body incorporates life and the certainty of death, modification also serves as an attempt to flee our mortality — a primary source of inspiration for most of David Cronenberg's work exploring the inevitability of change, and his characters' varying degree of success in coping and adapting to it. Despite the metaphysical somersaults, eXistenZ is no exception, borrowing its fairly conventional structure from traditional video games.

Beyond the down-the-rabbit-hole story, which has characters leaping from one challenge to another within a virtual world indistinguishable from a real one, lies an exploration of how we use technology to recreate ourselves (for instance, as Sims or Second Life avatars), highlighting our use of technology and how it shapes, distorts, and changes what it means to be human, exposing the special bond we have with the tools and technologies that have come to define and control us.

Toying with Cartesian Dualism — the concept that mind and body are distinct and separate, yet complement each other through interaction — Cronenberg asks the existential question "How do we know what is real?" by submitting his characters to the same treatment he already submits his audience. In the film, the game players remain stationary and seemingly lethargic while immersed in an active game — much like a movie audience may appear while actively processing what its seeing.

Unlike most other late 20th Century films probing the existential nature of reality — a trend that possibly began with Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup in 1966, if not earlier — eXistenZ examines the negative impact of immersive virtual realities while remaining on the side of art, artists, and imagination. Where The Matrix and its ilk portray the heroic recovery of "reality", eXistenZ imagines realists battling against illusion, without positing an escape from the perpetually recursive game in which their struggle takes place.