Bioshock and Alien Franchises

 

[A quick note before the blog post: I’ve decided to change my schedule again to make this a monthly blog. Though school is over for now, I’m still very busy, and I show no signs of slowing down. From now on, check back the first last Saturday of every moth for the new blog post.]

I’m about to compare two things that should not be comparable. Assuming you read the title, you already know I’m going to compare and contrast the first two Bioshock games with the first two Alien films. If you read the title and assumed I was going to be writing about which franchise is better, you’ll have to go elsewhere on the Internet to read stupid people compare apples to oranges.

The Bioshock and Alien franchises are very different. The only similarity they share on the surface is that they’re both critically acclaimed and set in the science-fiction genre. But there’s actually a lot of concepts shared between Alien and Bioshock and between Aliens and Bioshock.

Let’s go over what the originals shared in common first. Both Bioshock and Alien had an emphasis on horror. The audience never really sees the alien in Alien; we only catch glimpses of the monster just before it’s about to attack. The alien is most terrifying when it’s not killing its victims, when it’s when he’s lingering in the shadows, when you know its there, but you don’t know when it will attack or where it even is. Likewise, in Bioshock, the game isn’t about the violence; it’s about the anticipation. Literally everything that moves is trying to kill you. Every person, every turret, every goddamn Big Daddy is out to obliterate you. Ammo is in short supply, vending machines are rare, the best chance the player has of battling these powerful foes is strategically attacking them, managing resources, and avoiding the Big Daddies when you can. The game is terrifying because you never know what’s around the corner, but whatever it is, it can probably kill you without too much trouble.

The originals were also about the main character arriving at the foreign world because of a distress signal. The distress signal in Alien is actually a radio distress signal, transmitting an SOS at a regular interval, but the distress signal in Bioshock is much more subtle. The player character, Jack Ryan, survives an airplane crash in the middle of the ocean and “accidentally” winds up in Rapture. It turns out that Frank Fontaine remotely activated Jack’s sleeper agent programming, summoned him and had Jack crash the plane into the ocean, so he could return to Rapture.

Now then, onto the sequels! In both Aliens and Bioshock 2, there’s a symbol of rebirth. Aliens illustrates the symbol of rebirth through Ripley: she’s cryogenically frozen for 57 years, basically dead, until a group of humans find her and revive her. In Bioshock, the rebirth symbolism is much more obvious: the player character is killed and then revived by the Little Sisters 10 years later. The game also has jars of butterflies lying around Eleanor’s stuff to connect her to the caterpillar’s metamorphosis. The game even has the words “Rebirth” and “Reborn” painted in giant, bloody letters on many of the walls in Rapture. The main characters (Ripley & the Big Daddy the player controls) are portrayed as angels, as mysterious individuals with either otherworldly knowledge (Ripley’s information about the aliens) or otherworldly power (the player is a one of a kind Big Daddy that can also use plasmids) that are not capable of really dying.

The sequels also have a much larger cast. Alien only had a few crew members, but in Aliens, we see various doctors, Weyland-Yutani executives, and, of course, the loveable group of space marines. Even if it was just the space marines, there were still more people in Aliens that fought alongside the protagonist instead of dying after five lines. Same thing in Bioshock 2: the original Bioshock has a few NPCs that advise the player, but the player never physically meets them. In Bioshock 2, there’s a larger ensemble cast that the player interacts with (you can even kill a few of them, too).

Finally, let’s see what the franchises themselves have in common. What jumps out to me immediately is that neither demanded a sequel. Both the originals had self-contained stories that didn’t leave any loose ends. The sequels did their best to make their worlds surprising and new again (more so Aliens than Bioshock 2), but neither was necessary. The tones of the originals were horror with elements of action but their sequels developed tones of action with elements of horror. In a weird way, I feel that’s the perfect change to make. I think part of the tonal change was because only part of the crews that made the originals worked on the sequels with new a director/writer, but I think it was also a strategic change. It’s like the crews of the sequels understood they couldn’t out do what the originals did and that their only hope of bringing something new the their worlds was by exploring the worlds through a different genre. But despite how scary world or how powerful the heroes are portrayed, the goal for the heroes is to simply survive and escape, exterminating monsters as needed.

Both of the franchises’ stories are about women; specifically in the originals, it’s about a woman. Alien has Ripley as the main character, but Bioshock is more indirect; the main character in the original game is male, but the story is really about Dr. Tenenbaum and her little sisters. In the sequels, the plot is more about a mother/daughter relationship. Newt is the daughter figure and Ripley is the mother figure in Aliens, and in Bioshock 2, the daughter figure is Eleanor and the mother figure is Dr. Sofia Lamb. Both Ripley and Dr. Lamb attempted to protect and nurture their daughters and Newt and Eleanor are children that have been warped by their hell (Newt surviving the aliens invading and killing all of the humans and Eleanor being transformed into a Little Sister). Both the little girls represent the potential for a brighter tomorrow, and their mother figures are responsible for nuturing them. Ripley gave Newt the locator Hicks gave her and Dr. Lamb attempted to give Eleanor nearly infinite power. Both mothers wanted to ensure their protection. (Although one mother primarily did it so she could use her daughter to spread her political ideas but hey: we all express love differently. Who am I to judge?)

To balance out the emphasis on women, both franchises have a bit of phallic imagery, primarily in the alien design and the Big Daddy weapon. The alien’s head is has a phallic shape and the aliens basically rape the humans; they attack them, they impregnate them, and the baby alien bursts from their chests. Bioshock’s phallic imagery is dumber and much more awesome: Big Daddy’s drill; the drill is part of the Big Daddy design, and in the sequel, where the player controls a big daddy, it’s oh so satisfying to drill dash some ugly sonuvabitch.

There’s also a smidge of morality in both franchises. In Alien, Weyland-Yutani Corp ordered Ash the android to acquire the alien at any cost. Bioshock has morality in its Little Sister system, where the player can either “harvest,” essentially killing, the Little Sisters and acquiring lots of Adam, or they can “save” the Little Sister and receive less Adam and the Little Sister is turned back into a normal girl. Ash’s analysis of the situation and the reaction of the other characters on whether you harvested the Little Sisters or not act as morality reference point, allowing the audience/player to figure out from there what’s right and wrong. In the sequels, the concept of morality is expanded. There’s duality in Aliens; Weyland-Yutani Corp asks one of its employees, Burke, to acquire the alien at any cost. However, unlike the original, Burke is a human being, not an android. The android, Bishop, serves as the foil to Burke, protecting the humans from the aliens at any cost. In Bioshock, the only moral choice the player could make was harvesting or saving the Little Sisters. In Bioshock 2, not only has the Little Sister morality concept expanded, but also the player will encounter a handful of very important NPCs throughout the game. The player learns about them, and what they did, good and bad, and then, after acquiring this information, the player can choose to either kill them or let them live.

The biggest difference, to me, between the originals and the sequels is that the originals emphasized the individual, and the sequels emphasized the group. In Alien, the alien attacks the group, one by one, but ultimately, Ripley is the sole human survivor and defeats the alien on her own. In Bioshock, the whole game is about Objectivism, a philosophy that cheers the success of the individual, and while the player meets a handful of characters throughout the game, they’re hiding while the player struggles through the danger of Rapture. But in the sequels, the rules of their worlds have changed. Ripley can no longer survive on her own in Aliens, and she must work together with the other people to survive. At the end of the film, Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop are all able to escape the planet. In Bioshock 2, the central theme of Rapture has taken a complete 180 and now it’s all about abandoning the individual and working together. At the end of the game, you and Eleanor are able to work together to escape a horde of Splicers and escape to the surface, and just before you die, Eleanor absorbs your soul/consciousness, so you can live on through her.

I’m pretty sure that at least some of the Bioshock and Bioshock 2 team member saw Alien and/or Aliens, but I doubt the films influenced the games (at least consciously). I think it’s just interesting whenever different art/entertainment products coincidentally share certain traits, as if they’re both connected to something much bigger, like the Collective Unconscious. I wonder how many franchises/films/games that have nothing to do with one another but share certain key themes can I find?