April 27, 2016

Sometimes, there are characters in genre pictures that are so darned righteous and awesome, you can’t stop thinking about them or their amazing feats long after the movie is over. This column is dedicated to those cinematic bad-asses that keep us coming back for more. We’ve paid tribute to men, women and even dogs in this very spot. It’s time we set our sights on one of the most lovable synthetic humans to ever grace the silver screen. I’m talking about Bishop as portrayed by the great Lance Henriksen in James Cameron’s seminal sequel, ALIENS!

What’s great about ALIENS is that although it works perfectly fine on its own as a movie (and is a bonafide classic in Sci-Fi/Horror cinema), it builds upon and expands the strong foundation laid down by Ridley Scott’s masterpiece ALIEN. In the original ALIEN, after a xenomorph impregnates one of the passengers, gestates then escapes and begins slowly targeting all the remaining crew, one of them is not what he seems. Under corporate orders, Ash (Ian Holm) reveals himself to be an android and his plan is to kill the crew and bring back the alien species. It doesn’t work out for him and he ends up becoming nothing more than a head spewing a white milk-like substance from what’s left of him. And naturally, our hero, Ripley, is now somewhat reluctant to trust just about anybody, let alone synthetic humans.

So, years after the events of ALIEN, Ripley is awakened from a deep cyber sleep and asked to assist a military crew in obliterating a potential alien threat that’s broken all communication with a colony. She reluctantly agrees, but knows that she has to go and face her fears. Part of the new group is Bishop, a soft-spoken, genial & respectful member of the crew that’s always offering to help. When Ripley discovers that he’s an android, she wants nothing to do with him. Bewildered by her hostility, he does his best to comply.

But the thing is, Bishop isn’t Ash. I get that on the first viewing, even you as an audience member are supposed to be suspicious of him, considering what we saw happen with the android character in ALIEN. There’s even one awkward, strange moment where Bishop takes a long pause before replying to one of the soldiers’ questions, as if to put doubt that maybe he’s got a tad of corporate evil in him. But of course, if you know the movie, it’s the furthest thing from the truth and Bishop actually turns out to be the hero. Still, when I watch it, I feel bad for how crummy Ripley is to him for the duration of the movie.

Not only does he manage to make it in an underground pipe over to the ship, he swings in in the nick of time to rescue Ripley and Newt. And even then, he gets torn in half by a goddamned Alien queen! Poor Bishop. He sort of returned in ALIEN 3 both as the same destroyed robot, as well as his human counterpart, Weyland. He also played the human Weyland in Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2004 monster mash up ALIEN VS PREDATOR. But I think what stands out, even to this day about Bishop, is the sincerity in that performance, which goes back to Lance Henriksen.

If you’re on this site, then you no doubt know who Lance Henriksen is and you’re probably a huge fan of one of the many great characters he’s played over the course of his very rich and diverse career. But really, there’s something about Bishop that resonates with who I think the real Lance is. I don’t know him personally, although I’ve crossed paths with him several times in the past and he’s always been a wonderfully warm individual. But I imagine there’s a lot of Lance in Bishop.

About 10 years ago, my very talented good friend Steven Tsapelas wrote a hilarious short film script simply titled “Untitled Lance Henriksen Romantic Comedy,” And in it, the friends of the main character, “Steven,” recruits actor Lance Henriksen to help him get a girlfriend, because obviously, someone as cool as Lance has got to be a ladies man! But every night when they hit the bar scene, Lance ends up stealing all the girls by regaling them with tales of how he was James Cameron’s original choice to play THE TERMINATOR before Arnold Schwarzenegger stole the role from him. It worked every time, much to Steven’s dismay and frustration, but eventually Lance, the intense method actor that he is, begins morphing into his proposed Terminator persona.

Held over a platform in an old, abandoned warehouse, a la the ending of TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, Lance is about to drop Steven when he reasons with the cyborg-possessed actor saying, “Look, Lance Henriksen, before you terminate me, I just want to say something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about. Now, I’m sure it sucked to have the Terminator role stolen from under you, especially because I think you would have owned in that role. But did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, James Cameron looked into your eyes and he understood what you really were? And so he took all of your months and months of android research and created the heroic character of Bishop for you in the hit movie ALIENS. James Cameron knew what I knew. You’re not a bad cyborg, Lance Henriksen. You’re a GOOD android.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Bishop… you’ve earned this hashtag.

#RESPECT