Dude, what the fuck?
We’ve been down this road before, you and I, (on other topics) and I am not going down it with you again.
Not going to get into a niggling 50-post debate with you about whether Aliens is or is not an action movie (I am comfortable that there is consensus on this) or whether Alien was influenced by Lovecraft (ditto). So there you have it.
I’m more sorry that I didn’t get a good movie.
Alien is considered a great horror film by fans of the franchise. Aliens is considered an equally great but separate action film. Talk to fans and you almost always get “They’re both great, just different types of movie.” It makes no sense to say “Well, you just didn’t like Alien 3 because it was horror” when the first film is considered great. People would have been fine with a good Alien horror film (as evidenced by their love for the first movie) but they got Alien 3 instead.
I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. Did we get in a fight about something once? I don’t recall ever being in an argument with you about anything.
Jesus, so just don’t post if you don’t want to talk about something. I happen to enjoy niggling little fifty post debates, but you don’t have to play if you don’t want to. I’m not going to hunt you down and force you to respond to my random brainfarts about thirty year old sci-fi films.
Well, yes, exactly. And I have said my piece about these films. You may agree or not, as you please.
It’s not that Alien is a horror movie and Aliens is an action movie – it’s that Alien is a horror movie that cares little about logical things and common sense, while Aliens is a science fiction action movie that strives to be consistent in its character’s actions and even in relation to the prior film.
Too many things about Alien make no sense and are obviously there only for effect.(and Lovecraftian it ain’t. I’m in the midst of reading The Annotated Lovecrafgt – Lovecraft cared deeply about background and consistency, as well as mood. He didn’t surrender common sense to the SEnse of Horror)
What things don’t make sense in Alien?
How does Aliens strive for consistency?
It’d take much longer than I have right now. But for starters:
1.) How does the freakin’ chest burster grow so big so fast (the novel tries to explain that it got into some food supply and ate really fast, which I take as proof that this detail bothered Aklan Dean Foster, not that the filmmakers gave it any thought)
2.) Why does nobody question Ash’s breaking quarantine (except Ripley)? Why aren’t they extras-careful with Kane even after they remove the face-hugger?
3.) “micro-changes in air density”? Really? The damned thing must be going off constantly.
4.) When Dallas is in the shafts looking for the Creaturte, and they find it going towards him, no one thinks to tell him from what direction
5.) After Dallas’ demise, they don’t use the Magical Alien Locator anymore. Why not?
6.) People separate and go off on their own while a malicious Beast is loose among them with alarming frequency.
7.) How the hell did Ash get into the control room for “Mother” without Ripley noticing?
8.) Why does he subsequently try to shove a magazine down her throat?
9.) I have to admit, the reveal of Ash as a semi-organic robot bothered the HELL out of me. We’d been given no inkling that such things even existed before this, and the headless Ash , in context, looks like some manifestation or creation of the Alien xenomorph.
A lot of the weirdness is explicable from the cobbled-together nature of the script. At one point they wanted to have “Mother” be the entity that was helping the Alien along, misleading the humans because she thought it a superior life form. Then they delegated that role to Ash, making him an android. But then they changed it to him acting on behalf of The Corporation (we wouldn’t learn it was called Weyland-Yutani for a long time), even though “capturing” it by letting it infect an entire crew is a stupid way to proceed.
I just find the film badly conceived and thought out. It doesn’t help that it’s virtually ripped off from Jerome Bixby’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space, made in the 1950s. It has its problems, too, but it stands as a shining beacon of rationality beside the bollixed up lurching thing that is Alien.
I agree in general with your comments, even though I still like the movie, but a couple deserve comment:
I don’t even think the crew believed that - you can tell by their expressions. I think they suspected something else was going on, but had no time to stop and think about it.
Although it doesn’t quite fit, I would say that the sensor used something else to track the alien. Ash knew more than he let on. Since the entire encounter with the “distress” call was engineered to bring an alien back, Ash might have had a sensor specifically designed for alien tracking. (How W-Y knew what would work would then be another problem, but what can you do?)
I suspect because someone involved in the movie has serious oral rape fantasy issues. First there was the face hugger’s “deep throat” behavior, then the double extension mouth attacking Ripley, then finally the “magazine rape” by Ash. He could have killed her by blunt force, strangulation - anything, but cramming a magazine down her throat seems most inefficient. Is it even possible to kill someone that way?
As I hinted at earlier, I have a sense that people who first saw Aliens as teens or younger are much more fond of it than people who saw it as full-grown adults. But maybe I am wrong. Are there any folks out there who first saw Aliens as an adult and who love it whole-heartedly?
One comment:
Per the dialog, this did not cause the meltdown. It was the crashing of the dropship that caused the reactor destruct. From the dialog:
[QUOTE=Bishop]
I’m sorry, the crash just cause too much damage. An overload… is inevitable at this point.
[/quote]
They should have made the gunfight in the reactor room the cause. After all the dialog that shooting would cause exactly this problem, nothing came from it.
Of course, the whole point of the scene in reality was to get rid of a lot of Marines quickly, to pare down the cast to manageable proportions. But they should have left the gunfight as the cause. Without that plot connection, Gorman looks even more stupid.
Right here. I was 25. Adult enough for you?
My wife didn’t see it at all until about 5 years ago, and while she doesn’t “love it whole-heartedly”, she likes it a lot.
I think I watched a documentary where the magazine oral rape thing was explained by the idea that Ash kinda sucked at killing, not part of his programming. If he had had some idea of what to do, it would have been ridiculously easy for him to just gouge eyes and snap necks considering his strength and lack of pain response.
Now that I think about it, it’s a nice comparison to the xenomorph. They both have a kind of blood that is repulsive; acidic vs milkish. Ash hides like the xenomorph but their method of hiding are different. At some point, they both hide inside a human. in a way Ash is unskilled at killing whereas the xenomorph is very skilled at it. They’re both amoral. Ash and the xenomorph are both non-human yet (after the chest burst for the xenomorph) partly of humans. Ash is a machine that looks biological. The xenomorph, as a possible weapon, which is what Weyland wants to do with it and may be its origin, is a biological that is meant to be used as a machine.
Aliens: Wasn’t it meant as a Vietnam metaphor?
Fair enough. I allow for the possibility that I am wrong. I could be projecting. I loved Alien as a teen, but watching Aliens as an adult, I found it to be a disappointment. Not a fan of 80s action movies generally, as I found them to be pretty juvenile, and I didn’t think Aliens was any exception. YMMV
I like Alien because the cinematography and dialogue convey a mixture of unpolished grit and unpredictability. The setting looks high tech enough to be believable for the future, but not so razzle dazzle that it becomes the centerpiece. There is little character development, but the different personalities among the crew add flavor and depth. Out of this combo comes mystery–mystery compelling enough to keep most people from letting the illogical parts prevent them from enjoying the movie.
We should have just nuked it from orbit?
.
Wasn’t everything at the time?
“Style” is a large barrel in which you pack outdated things, layer by layer, until it’s full.
Then you close the top, turn it over, and open the former bottom of the barrel. What’s on the top is now in style.
Mid 20s for me, too.
I like both movies, and I accept that they are different sub genres in the sci-fi main category.
Aliens is not the typical formula for 80s Action Romps, as has been pointed out earlier. BOTH movies are rather well done and still hold up, IMHO. I can’t say the same the same about any of the other movies in the Alien franchise, ymmv of course
an aside: So many people seem to fixate on either the Newt character or Hudson (both of whom I enjoyed), but what makes the movie for me is the relationship between The Company (represented by Carter Burke) and The Hero (Ripley, Bishop, Hicks). Without that, the movie wouldn’t have much of a story other than just being another bug hunt. Again, ymmv
If you were watching very, very carefully, you might have. In this link iamthewalrus(:3= posted on the first page, it’s pointed out that the name “Weylan-Yutani” [sic] is all over the ship - it’s even printed on the beer cans.