10 Great Performances in Average Films

Given the law of averages, it’s fairly common that as film fans we’re far more likely to run into a stinker than we are a new classic, or worse still a underwhelming slice of anti-climax that promised so much more. Quite often that leaves us deciphering a mess and hanging on to small morsels of consolation from an ultimately wasted couple of hours.

The end result of this is that we often stumble across a disproportionately good turn from the only actor in the movie who seemed to be taking their work seriously. You could make a legitimate claim that this is far more worthy than excellent acting in Oscar bait, but such feats are so often ignored and dismissed along with its mediocre surround.

Here is a run down of ten such performances, a rare moment of acknowledgement for the thespians who really did suffer for their art.

Sigourney Weaver in Alien: Resurrection

Appropriately kicking us off is an actress playing a part only made possible by ridiculous plotting. After three strong central performances (or two and a half, for those of a pedantic nature) in the Alien franchise, Weaver returns as the now cloned Ripley. In a rare example of future science not being conveniently perfect, the reborn Ripley comes back with a smattering of Queen Alien DNA in her system, resulting in some disturbing new facets to her personality.

While Resurrection is an unsophisticated gore fest of relative entertainment value, Weaver, almost unnoticed, gives a curious and enjoyable performance as the altered Ripley, with old parts of the classic heroine showing up in glimpses between dark and predatory tangents. As a drifting and homeless figure, not quite fully human, she is surprisingly compelling and, dare I say it, almost convincing amongst the B movie ham. Sterling work in spite of the numerous obstacles, including almost all of her dialogue.

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Sigourney Weaver and the cat Jones on the set of Alien.

‘Prometheus’ a deeply flawed visual spectacle

Prometheus
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof
USA, 2012

Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green are scientists who find a pictograph in the isle of Skye, Scotland; the same pictograph of giant men pointing up to the same constellation of stars as other ancient dead societies. Reading this to be an invitation to discover the origin of the species thanks to the financial support of the Weyland Corporation, they embark on a mission into deep space to investigate the LV-223 planetoid. Welcome to Prometheus.

Upon arrival, they find a super-structure ready to investigate and it’s there where everything goes wrong. Each film in the Alien franchise has the same dynamic, in that there is an alien species killing off the crew, one by one. As ever, each of these films is sufficiently different from one another for them not to become derivative and boring; Alien was a haunted house in space, Aliens was a militaristic action movie, Alien 3 was a prison escape movie, while Alien Resurrection was simply apalling. Prometheus, meanwhile, is straight sci-fi. This film was created to give an answer to the long considered question in sci-fi and horror circles, “who is the giant figure in Alien dubbed the ‘space jockey?’”

Sadly, Prometheus is a victim of hype. Everything Ridley Scott is renowned for as a great modern visual stylist is up to par here; nobody builds worlds like him. That which is out of his hands, namely the script, is a series of plot holes, oversights and questionably ostentatious dialogue.

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Promo-Video of TED Talk from Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’

Here’s a bit of interesting promotional material for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus that ties into the character played by actor Guy Pearce. The following promo video for TED Talk wasn’t directed by Ridley Scott, nor does it appear in the actual film, but it does shine a certain light on Peter Weyland and how Weyland Corp. ties into the story. For the unfamiliar, Weyland Corp is one of the two companies that joined together to eventually become Weyland-Yutani, the corporate entity that plays a big role in the Alien series.

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