![]() Smartly, the comedy tone of the film allows this to run its course naturally. It’s not a villain as much as it is a comic-foil, leading Pinback through a cartoon-style chase sequence that’s about as terrifying as Baby’s Day Out. A long way off from Alien ’s Xenomorph, this creature is literally an unconvincingly spray painted beach ball with feet. Control panels are ice cube trays and one of the crew members literally wears a muffin tin on the front of his costume. The astronauts wear children’s toy helmets. ![]() Taken in context, Dark Star absolutely feels like a movie made by friends in somebody’s garage. It’s essentially proof of concept film, made while the creators were still in film school and cutting any corners they could take to pull of a semi-realistic sci-fi aesthetic. Probably the biggest giveaway to the youth and inexperience of the filmmakers is the movie’s ultra-low budget. You see the masterful eye that would become more adept as time went on, but for now there’s also an experience of “Hey, let’s try this!” that’s witnessable in the film, and the enthusiasm is endearing. In this film, most clearly in the direction, it’s clear that Carpenter is experimenting. Carpenter also scored the film himself in ominous synthetic glory, though that too is still an unrefined effort, limited by the technology available at the time. Carpenter would already be thinking about his trademark themes of semi-apocalyptic futures. Or to put it more precisely, they are sick of the sight of one another, and would kill for the cryosleep that Ripley and her fellows would get to experience in the rewrite. The characters in this film, Doolittle, Boiler, Talbot, and Pinback, all clearly hate each other. The differences between these two directors isn’t subtle, and Carpenter’s vision for a future populated by dead-headed, short tempered layabouts is even more nihilistic a dystopia than Scott’s ultra-capitalist future his worldbuilding in both Alien and Blade Runner helped contextualize. Obviously one of the biggest differences between Dark Star and Alien is that this film is directed by a young John Carpenter instead of Ridley Scott. Though it vexes some viewers, I still believe there’s a lot to be said about a movie that feels like the crew of the Nostromo woke up mid-cruise and stared out into the void for too long. Some even say Alien represented a “do over” for Dark Star, a second attempt at capturing the idea that had evaded him in this dark space comedy. There’s an interesting comparison to be made between this film and the franchise screenwriter Dan O’Bannon would go on to create. Like many early films from great filmmakers, Dark Star shows the growing pains of a young writer and director still struggling with tone and appropriate cinematic structure, but it still holds the spark of marvellous ideas. It’s a movie that survives in the public consciousness by means of its association with the historic creation of a perfect film, though it is not by itself without merit. An earlier, unrefined rough draft of the iconic film that would leave a permanent mark on science-fiction in as little as five years time.
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