Michael Madsen, Species, and the Art of ’90s Sci-Fi Grit

The Hollywood community recently bade a sad farewell to actor Michael Madsen, who carved a reputation for himself with performances in brutal, uncompromising classics such as Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco. While the late actor’s list of fan favorites is long, one of his more unusual performances has largely been forgotten—Species, the 1995 sci-fi movie about an intergalactic hybrid creature who terrorizes L.A. As the film approaches its 30th birthday this year, now is a good time to revisit not only the movie but also one of Madsen’s odder roles as well.

Species was an unusual take on the alien invasion/science gone wrong subgenre. Co-written and directed by Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, The Bounty), Species opened with an audacious premise: The U.S. government receives two signals from outer space. One details a new, more efficient form of fuel. The other provides specific, step-by-step instructions on how to splice human DNA with alien DNA. Guess which one they follow up on?

Under the guise of Dr. Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), the U.S. government synthesizes a hybrid out of human and alien DNA, and soon an embryo-like creature named Sil begins to grow and develop under Fitch’s supervision. Portrayed in her formative years by Michelle Williams, Sil is supposed to be docile, malleable, and controllable. Instead, she’s a force of nature.

Sil rapidly grows into a child of terrifying beauty. Within three months, she is the physical equivalent of a 12-year-old. But there are hints she’s not as “containable” as once thought. Sil has violent nightmares and tells Fitch (played by Ben Kingsley) the dreams “are not my own.” When Fitch tries to end the experiment by pumping cyanide gas into the chamber Sil is kept in, she fights back and escapes.

Assembling a task force to help track her down, Fitch recruits Preston Lennox (Madsen), a taciturn black ops mercenary, Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger) a molecular biologist, Dr. Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina) an anthropologist, and Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker), a hunk with empath abilities that allow him to sense the emotions of others, including Sil. After following her across the country, they track Sil to Los Angeles, where, fully-grown and portrayed by Natasha Henstridge, she proceeds to find a mate and, naturally, begin reproducing. Sil is smart, resourceful, and wildly driven by instinct. Her first victim is a train tramp. The nightclub is next. A potential love interest follows. By the time everyone has met their grisly end, Sil has already developed into something more primal and dangerous. Will Fitch and his crew of ragtag specialists be able to stop her before she gives birth to a race of faceless monsters?

A Monster of Seduction and Death

Arguably, one of the most notable elements of Species was the physical design of Sil itself, an assignment that was given to famed surrealist H.R. Giger. Giger, who would win an Academy Award for his work on the film, wanted Sil to be “an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly.” Giger’s creation was show-stopping: In her final form, Sil was equipped with translucent, partially see-through skin described as having the appearance of “a glass body but with carbon inside.”

Giger originally wanted to develop a four-stage alien evolution cycle for Sil. From embryo, to child, to adult, to the matrix form her body finally evolved into, Giger worked on a series of connected forms he wanted to illustrate Sil’s transformation from human to alien to hive organism. Production issues limited how much of this Giger could implement. He was able to create a transformation cocoon, and another later phase in which Sil’s mature body begins to sprout more animalistic features and aspects of her alien DNA from the alien “matrix” body we see at the climax.

Despite Giger’s handiwork and the movie’s relative commercial success, the artist was not fond of the finished product. He thought it was too similar to his work on Alien, pointing to similarities in the final act “punching tongue” scene, as well as a suggestive birth sequence that Giger found derivative of the “chestburster” sequence from Alien.

Midway through production, Giger took it upon himself to contact the studio and note that his design for Sil’s final moments called for the character to be shot in the head as she died, and not with flamethrowers, which Giger himself noted was a plot point far too similar to Alien 3 and Terminator 2, in his opinion.

Love at First Bite: Species as Soft Sci-Fi

Species was never a critical darling. The dialogue is awkward at best, and many of the characters aren’t particularly deep or interesting. Fitch is a cold, amoral caricature played by Kingsley. Whitaker’s empathy largely flutters around at the edges of each scene, pronouncing things most of us already know or can guess. Marg Helgenberger is a bland, one-note performer throughout.

There are a lot of ideas hinted at but never fully developed in Species. Bioethics, first contact, and maternal instinct are all superficially covered, only to be set aside for narrative convenience. While it’s possible to sympathize with Fitch and his team as they are put on a clock to prevent what is a biohazard from killing dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, the human cost of stopping Sil is hard to ignore in the narrative.

Where Feldman’s script shines is in the hook. Inspired by an article written by Arthur C. Clarke on why we may never meet aliens in our lifetime, Feldman contemplated a world in which extraterrestrial contact with Earth wasn’t a matter of alien spaceships but blueprints for an alien that could be synthetically created here on Earth. His proposal: “A film that would be the story of an Alien invasion, but the Alien part was already here.”

Species is simultaneously a cautionary tale and a thinly veiled excuse to build and unleash an unstoppable monster on L.A. The results are uneven, to say the least. It’s hard to imagine Species ever being mistaken for an Alien film in retrospect, but in 1995, it had its cult following—and for good reason. Natasha Henstridge is otherworldly as the mature Sil. Madsen’s haggard grit anchors an otherwise star-studded but also miscast cast of characters. The creature designed by H.R. Giger is in a class of its own, and even 30 years later, impossible to forget.

Taken as a whole, Species is a time capsule, a snapshot of what 1990s sci-fi looked like when the style overpowered the substance. For Madsen, Species is a curiosity as well. While he is known today for a handful of hard-edged performances in films such as Sin City or 8MM, his roles from the ’90s (Species was his first big-budget hit) often leaned heavily into his hard-boiled approach to characters. In addition to Species, Madsen starred in films such as Escape from L.A., Last of the Enforcers, and No Escape in the ’90s, but for many, Species is perhaps the most memorable of them all.