I’ll stand with Bienville in liking the third episode more than the second.
Alien: Really tense horror movie
Aliens: Big dumb action movie, one of my least favorite genres
Alien3: Returns to the heightened tension of the 1st movie, but with more psychological horror and character exploration than jump-out-at-you screaming.
I loved the themes of Alien3 - the horror at the idea that you are becoming what you have fought against, the metaphor of Alien-as-cancer (or maybe Alien-as-unwanted-pregnancy?).
The fact that I saw them all in a row over the course of I think 3 days may have had something to do with not having the repulsion that most folks apparently have at Alien 3. I didn’t watch Aliens over and over and over, I wasn’t invested in the parental relationship between Ripley & Newt - Newt dying before Alien 3 opened is one of the main things I see people criticizing it for.
Aliens was just boring to me. But again, I don’t like the genre.
Yeah. The script clearly teases the audience making us think that Tom Skerrit is the main character, and Sigourney Weaver the heartless bureaucrat who won’t let him in because of regulations… and then it hits you making her the main character in the middle of the movie. Really well written.
Maggie: you may not care for big-budget action movies, and I’ll grant you that there’s plenty of good reason and good examples of why not to, but Aliens is far from “dumb,” and is rather one of the better examples of the action-movie genre.
It may not be your cup o’ tea, but that doesn’t make it a bad movie.
Aliens did have better quotes, this board is the perfect example of that, I’m actually surprised more of them haven’t popped up here by now but I guess they mostly come at night.
I saw it when I was a teenager in the theater and I slept with the lights on and the closet door closed for weeks after. I also made sure to check the closet carefully before I went to bed. I didn’t see the other movies until they were on TV or video so I could watch them at home, with the lights on.
ETA: I guess we’re not quoting so we don’t spoil Leaffan, so Leaf hurry up and watch Aliens and then find the old Alien quote thread. It’s hilarious.
…and starred him, too, as “Pinback”.
Actually, Alien had the plot that I thought (from the trailers) that *Dark Star * had – an alien loose aboard a spaceship. Dark Star did, in fact, have that, but only as a subplot. Dark Star started life as a student film, and they had to pad it out to get the running length up, so they filmed the extra scenes with O’Bannon as Pinback chasing the comical alien “Beachball” all over the ship.
And, just to complete the trifecta, O’Bannon also did special effects work on the first Star Wars movie. The targetiung computer shot on the Rebel Base moon at the end is his work. O’Bannon ended up doing FX work, writing, producing, acting, and directing before he died.
It is here in the US. Lots of people still smoke though. It remains a very popular habit in other parts of the world. People cling to all kinds of habits that aren’t good for them. If we really want to think about it, cancer may be so curable as to be a non-issue in the Alien universe…or the cigarettes may no deliver all the harmful chemicals that the ones in use today do.
Well, they spoke American English on the ship. And the rest is a fanwank. Not to mention, even if it wasn’t cancer causing, smoke irritates people, and causes problems to delicate electronics.
People used to smoke all over in submarines; the Russians still do I understand. And submarines are the nearest modern equivalent to a spacecraft like* Nostromo.*
And if there’s one thing that’s been consistently shown in the Alien franchise, it’s the deep, passionate concern of Weyland-Yutani corp for the health and well-being of their employees.