Species II

Infobox_Film
name = Species II


imdb_id = 0120841
writer = Chris Brancato,
Dennis Feldman
starring = Natasha Henstridge,
Michael Madsen,
Marg Helgenberger
director = Peter Medak
producer = Dennis Feldman,
Frank Mancuso Jr.
cinematography = Matthew F. Leonetti
distributor = MGM
released = April 10 1998 | (USA) runtime = 98 minutes
country = USA
language = English
music =
awards =
budget =
preceded_by = "Species"
followed_by = "Species III"

"Species II" (a.k.a "Species 2: Offspring" and "Species 2: Origins") is a 1998 sequel to the 1995 film "Species". It stars Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen, and Marg Helgenberger, who reprise their roles.

Plot summary

The movie begins roughly two years after the events of "Species". It begins with a trio of American astronauts (Anne Sampas, Dennis Gamble & Patrick Ross) on a mission to Mars. Patrick is the only astronaut that lands on the surface and is shown collecting soil samples. When he plants the American flag, he is instantly hailed a hero. After he returns to the shuttle and the three astronauts prepare for the return journey home, one of the soil samples is shown to have contained alien DNA. The temperature on the ship thaws out the DNA bringing it to life causing it to break free from the tube and infect the three astronauts. Though one of the astronauts, Dennis Gamble (Mykelti Williamson), carries the sickle cell gene that prevents the alien's assimilation, the others, Patrick Ross (Justin Lazard) and Anne Sampas (Myriam Cyr), are, unknown to them, speedily infected by the alien DNA on the journey back to Earth.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, a clone of Sil, named Eve (Natasha Henstridge), has been created. Engineered to be more docile than her predecessor, she is part of another attempt to understand the alien life form and prepare for defense should it ever arrive on Earth. This program is run by Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger).

The trio return from Mars and after undergoing tests, are given a sexual quarantine of ten days. Patrick, the son of U.S. Senator Judson Ross (played by James Cromwell), attends a function being held in his honor. While there, Dennis and Anne are wondering where Patrick is at such a big moment. Melissa (Patrick's girlfriend) tells them that he hasn't been feeling well and that he is resting but really, he is in the bar lounge making out with a woman referred to as the Debutante. They are interrupted when he is called up to the stage to give a speech so she invites him up to her hotel room. After giving the speech, he leaves the function to meet her in her room. He finds her waiting for him along with her sister, because they "share everything". He walks into the room and shuts the door behind him. The next scene shows Patrick and the Debutante having sex while her sister is watching. After they finish, she tells him that he is a "hero". When her sister strips and claims that it is "her turn", he flashes her a cheeky grin as if to say yes and they begin having sex. While this is happening, slimy tentacles emerge from his body as he starts transforming into an alien. Because she is getting carried away whilst having sex with him, she doesn't notice his alien form until she finds her hands stroking his tentacles and she starts to scream and although she pleads for him to stop, he carries on anyway while the Debutante is in the bathroom going through 9 months of pregnancy within 5 minutes until the alien baby growing inside her causes her stomach to burst open. Shortly after, the sister also gives birth. Neither woman survives. Patrick buries their bodies and hides the children inside his childhood shed.

Meanwhile, Dr. Orinsky, who took the astronauts' blood samples, is looking at Patrick's blood under a microscope. Just as he finds alien DNA in his blood, the bottle with Patrick's blood inside rolls off the table and shatters. The puddle of blood then flows forward and seeps into the wall. As Orinsky looks on in shock, an arm of tentacles, shown to be Patrick on the other side, bursts from the wall and disembowels Orinsky. As he is dying, he grabs his cell phone and calls Laura. He tells her that his old apprentice was right about the possibility of alien infection. After Orinsky dies, his wounds are examined and alien DNA is found. However, the DNA does not match that of Eve's.

The government then summons Press Lennox (Michael Madsen), now the owner of a private security firm. After meeting with Dr. Orinsky's old apprentice, Lennox and Baker begin searching for the astronauts. They search first for Patrick but he can not be found. They then search for Anne Sampas, the female astronaut. Patrick is shown to be at his hunting lodge with Melissa. She tells him that she is very happy to finally have him all to herself. She tells him that she loves him and although at first he doesn't want to have sex because something doesn't feel right, they have sex anyway.

As Lennox and Baker are driving to the Sampas residence, Anne and her husband Harry are having sex. By the time Laura and Press get there, Anne instantly becomes pregnant and screams to her husband to call for help. Just as he is about to call, Anne suddenly gives birth to her alien offspring, which kills her husband. Press breaks through the door and shoots the creature as Laura gasses it to death. Anne does not survive.

After they perform an autopsy on Anne, they find that her DNA does not match that found in Orinsky's wounds. The team finds Dennis Gamble, but after a through blood test find that he was not infected due to his sickle trait, (Dennis does not have sickle cell anemia himself but he is a carrier, making him inadequate for the alien DNA) they discover that the DNA in Orinsky's wounds belong to Patrick. The team then focuses on finding him.

The next morning, Patrick wakes up next to Melissa's mutilated body and yet another alien child. He washes all the blood off himself, then puts on his air force uniform, grabs one of his hunting rifles, and goes out onto the backyard deck to commit suicide. Dennis arrives just as Patrick sticks the barrel of the gun into his mouth and shoots his head off. Seconds later, his entire head grows back. He then realizes his new alien instincts and sets out to create more offspring. Dennis informs Press about Patrick's whereabouts. They soon arrive at a motel and discover the mutilated body of a prostitute he had impregnated. Patrick goes to a local club where he manages to charm one of the strippers into sex by offering her a large sum of cash. Afterwards, he buries her body before taking his son to the shed, where he has a large family of children. Though Baker is resistent, the team eventually activates Eve's alien DNA in an attempt to track Patrick. She detects him at a supermarket. When a woman recognises his face from a cereal box and asks him to sign the box, he drags her out of the store and into a van in an attempt to rape her. But when he senses Eve, he lets the woman go. Patrick then wants to mate with Eve.

Press and Gamble find Patrick and they take him to the lab to get tested when really, he only agrees to go to the lab to find Eve. When they arrive at the facility, he senses Eve and tries to break into her lab until he is thwarted by Laura, Dennis & Press and escapes back to his shed. His father is waiting for him, telling him they can fix what is wrong with him. Patrick kills his father and proceeds to have his children go into cocoons to rapidly become adults.

As Press, Laura and Gamble prepare to track Patrick, Eve breaks free from the lab and hurries to Patrick. The team tails her and finds the shed and Patrick's brood, killing them with use of Gamble's DNA. Eve and Patrick start to have sex, first in human form, but then change into their alien forms. Press interupts Eve and Patrick and Laura manages to convince Eve to help them. Patrick kills Eve by what appears to be an alien form of fellatio in which he splits his head into two separate heads, bites Eve's arms, and forces a phallic shaped tentacle down Eve's throat, presumably killing her. Press then stabs Patrick in the back with a pitchfork coated with Dennis' blood. This causes Patrick to severely weaken and disintegrate.

As the movie ends, Eve's now human body is loaded into the back of an ambulance. One of Patrick's children is also shown to be in the ambulance, along with a cat. The cat jumps on Eve's lifeless body before her stomach starts to expand. This is the last shot of the movie.

Eve

Eve is the recreation of Sil from the first movie, played by Natasha Henstridge. Unlike her predecessor, Eve is portrayed as more human and driven by human emotions and motivations. This is because although she is still very much alien, her alien genes have been suppressed and she is medicated to keep this in maintenance. She is able to learn extremely fast, just like Sil. But without proper life experience, all of her learning stimuli come from reading newspapers and watching television. Her favorite program is The Dukes Of Hazzard and she is able to learn to drive competently by watching the show. In the Species II novelization, it is hinted that she was also able to learn a degree of martial arts by watching old action movies. She is also very observant of the scientists and security personnel around her, able to learn how to use security equipment such as card scanners and passkey cards. It is only after she undergoes treatment to increase her alien genes that she goes from being fearful of humans to looking down on them. In the novel, Eve's body is able to adapt to any threat; during the scene where she is repeatedly shot by soldiers, in the novel, that experience allows her skin to become literally bulletproof.

When we last see her dead body in Species III, a government agent orders the autopsy technician to burn her body, however we only see the scene cut away without seeing this event. In the directors commentary, he mentions that it was deliberately cut this way in case she was brought back for a future movie. Although the official canon is that she is dead, this revelation throws her fate into doubt.

The Species

The nature of the alien species is explored to a slightly greater extent in the second film. A professor claims that they originated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (called the Magellanic Galaxy), due to it apparently being the only other place carbon-based life forms have been discovered. It is also stipulated that they were a "cancerous" race that visited Mars millions of years ago and annihilated all life on its surface, (which was Earth-like at that time) before leaving a remnant of DNA in its soil. This DNA was intended to be picked up by other visitors so their species could continue to infect other planets in like manner. Since Patrick's alien form was quadrupedal (as opposed to bipedal, like Eve's form) and more 'brutish' in appearance than hers, it is assumed that this must be the common appearance of the males of the alien species. Their appearance is similar to the Xenomorphs of the "Alien" films; both were designed with input from H. R. Giger.

Trivia

* Director Peter Medak wanted to make this mainly as a horror movie than a science fiction movie due to his background as a member of the original Hammer Horror crew which he revealed on the DVD Commentary. When he was offered the position of director, the first person he called was music composer Edward Shearmur who was unknown in Hollywood at the time. Peter liked his previous work and offered him to compose the soundtrack.

* There were scenes that were filmed but cut due to money and time. One of these was a scene where Patrick, played by Justin Lazard, proposes to Melissa, played by Sarah Wynter, in a restaurant as said by Peter Medak in his DVD audio commentary for this film. Also a tracking shot of Patrick sitting in a corner sobbing after seeing Melissa dead after impregnating her, causing her death. A hint of this scene appears in the theatrical trailer. Also in the trailer was more footage with Press about to attack the Patrick creature with a shovel, he also says "Half human, huh? My ass!" which was not in the final film.

* This was an early role for Sarah Wynter who went on to star in the Fox TV show 24 as Kate Warner.

* According to Michael Madsen on the DVD Commentary for the first film, he says there were two scripts written for this sequel. One was a continuation after the first film, the other was this theatrical version. On the DVD Commentary, Natasha Henstridge added that this film got changed quite a bit, went way over the top in a few areas and did not have the subtlety of the original at all.

* The scene with the death of Dr. Orinsky, played by Baxter Harris caused confusion at the time of release. Peter Medak tried to resolve this on the DVD commentary. The Patrick creature was behind the other side of the wall all through the scene when the blood sample trailed toward him. According to the novel, Patrick broke into the clinic to kill Orinsky from telling anyone about finding the outcome of his blood test. He hid in the next room and discovered his new DNA taking over, making him into the alien form. With the blood sample tracking across the floor after it was spilt, Patrick kills Orinsky through the other side, ripping out his organs and Patrick's blood returns up his leg and the camera reveals this to be him.

* The scene where Patrick makes love to Eve, in their alien form, was shot underwater as a reference from the first film which used the same technique.

* There was a scene that was shot but cut from the film which involved Patrick picking up a girl from a club and going back to her apartment. While they kiss on the bed, Patrick finds out she is a man. The "woman" tells him he is as good as "any other girl". Patrick gets angry and snaps "her" neck. This scene was replaced with the Motel sequence with the seedy manager in the wheelchair in the final film.

*In the novel, Press and Laura's chemistry is more in league with the first film and even results with them being together at the end of the story. In the film version, the romantic chemistry does not exist, with Press and Laura having lots of disagreements.

*In an online interview with Metro in 2004, Michael Madsen expressed his opinion on this film saying "Species 2 was a crock of s**t. There are a number I'm not very proud of. The movie studios can't mind that much, as they haven't contacted me to tell me off about it. I'm honest - if I've made a bad movie, I want my fans to know what they're letting themselves in for." This was questioned due to his honest opinion of each of his own movies shown on his official website at the time, which has since been redesigned.

Reception

Unlike its predecessor, "Species II" was a box office flop. Critics, who almost universally panned the movie, pointed to the thin storyline, poor acting and gratuitous violence. Peter Medak highly praised the films' special effects and use of horror in his DVD commentary. He also thought audiences had too much expectation as this was a very different sequel due to not continuing from the story with the alien-infected rat that survived the finale, which hinted at a sequel in the 1995 original. Medak also admitted being uncomfortable with the amount of nudity in the film but said it was for the purpose of the story.

Novelization

Like the first film, there was also a novelization based on the original screenplay which gives plot and character details not seen in the film. Some reviews tell of how the book gets across the tragedy of Eve's life and gives in depth character details. Eve's body adapts against any form of physical attack; this includes gas and eventually bullets - after Eve is shot by soldiers, her skin adapts, becoming bulletproof. She also has little knowledge of the outside world, so little that she actually doesn't know if Superman is a real life personality or not. Other details and scenes also appear in the book, such as Eve's first escape attempt and Patrick discovering new senses in a restaurant with his fiancé.

External links

*imdb title|id=0120841|title=Species II

References

Michael Madsen Interview - http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/interviews/article.html?in_article_id=1020&in_page_id=11