What worked so well about the Alien series?

Cafe Society
21

Well, actually, at least some of the dialogue shows an effort at research. At one point Sergeant Apone says “Say again, all after ‘incinerators’.” This is actually standard and correct military voice procedure.

Of course, what makes far less sense is the officer not going in with them to take field command. There should have been an experienced Lieutenant with the marines and I can imagine a less-experienced second-Lieutenant staying back with the monitors.

Aliens is not a perfect film - it has weaknesses and flaws, but the plotting is tight, the characters properly likable or unlikable, the antagonist is scary and the action relentless.

22

The best part of ALIEN was Sigourney Weaver stripping doen to he underwear.
Of course, the movie was a nice anodyne to the syrupy-“ET”-style movies (where the aliens are godlike creatures who love us). Alien was a situation where the ET’s viewed us as a potential meal.
I like how HP Lovecraft portrayed the aliens (old ones)-creatures who really don’t give a damn about us.

23

The first of the films I saw was Aliens, in 1987 or 1988 at a friend’s off-campus apartment while in college. (BTW, he had a killer surround sound system for the time, so that added to the enjoyment.) What immediately struck me about the movie was the epic battle between the human mother and the alien mother. OK, Ripley wasn’t Newt’s real mother, but she clearly was acting out of maternal instinct. And of course the mother alien wanted to avenge the eggs Ripley had destroyed.

Also, I liked the bit where they come upon someone who appears to be dead, only to have him open his eyes and plead for them to kill him. I also liked the cargo loader thing that Ripley got into to battle the mother alien.

24

Back when the film was being made, a friend of mine noted a reference in the newspaper to Cameron (since we much enjoyed The Terminator, he was on our collective radar), saying that he was at work on a sequel to Alien that would “explore the themes of Vietnam and motherhood”. There was much headscratching until we saw it, when suddenly all was made clear.

25

Inspired by this thread I sat down to watch my favourite action/sci-fi film again after a break of some years and its still just a fantastic movie.

But one scene had me wondering if I’m misremembering things or have they changed it for the special edition, I seem to recall that when Hudson is dragged under the floor by the aliens Hicks leans over and fires a short burst downwards, obviously as a mercy-killing, however when I rewatched it this scene isn’t in it, instead Hudson is dragged away, Hicks just looks horrified and retreats.

Have I gone crazy or was I imagining the former scene?

btw favourite part of the movie? Unlike most movies when the voice-over says the characters have, “Fourteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance” they really do have fourteen minutes, the countdown is played out in real-time.

26

Excellent post and name combo.

Hudson is the one who fires into the floor. “You want some?! You too! Come get it!” And of course they do.

27

I thought it was a nice touch that the last thing Hudson did after being dragged down was to fire a burst at the Alien that got him. Still died, but at least he went down fighting.

28

Tron - Moebius

29

Thanks :smiley:

Looks like I was misremembering the scene after all. I first watched Aliens when I was about twelve years old and I liked the scene where Bishop does his trick with the knife (“Hey Bishop, do that thing with the knife!”) so much that I learned how to do it myself, lots and lots and lots of practice initially with blunt pencils etc until I had the hang of it.

So flash-forward a few years and that was my party-trick, “Hey DH, do that thing with the knife!”

I haven’t played it in years, having become of the more mature ilk, and I really wouldn’t recommend that anyone has a go, its a good way to injure yourself! But I blame James Cameron for influencing at least one gullible kid… :wink:

30

Maybe that was his point.

The Space Marines, perhaps, are comical and exaggerrated because they’re full of bravado, not real bravery. When they’re confronted with a genuinely strong foe they’re initially confused, terrified, and hopelessly inept. Their bragging and preening doesn’t hold up for long when the shit hits the fan, does it?

After all, what makes them top notch pros? We don’t actually know what their experience is, what makes them “tough hombres,” in Paul Reiser’s claim. Maybe all this combat experience they say they have is bullshit. Maybe it’s all been beating up on half-assed little revolts in outlying colonies.

All we see are soldiers strutting and bragging, and then they get their asses handed to them. Soldiers ALWAYS strut and brag; the bullshit starts on Day 2 of basic training. Maybe the remarkable dichotomy between their implied and overt claims of awesomeness and the fact that almost all of them die, and the mission’s saved by a civilian, was on purpose?

31

And don’t forget, Rick, that Ripley tried to tell them exactly what they were facing, and they all had bored, arrogant and/or skeptical expressions on their mugs, and basically shut her down.

IME in Army Green, if a bunch of privates and junior NCO showed that kind of lackadaisial attitude and disrespect in a mission brief, our Top Kick would have made a bunch of size twelve assholes in the whole squad (speaking metaphorically, of course; the First Sergeant has many evil, insanely devious, and occasionally painful ways of making his displeasure known).

Also IME, the only soldiers with that much arrogance and bragadocio would be Marines, Intel, Airborne, and Rangers; most regular troops (Grunts, Scoots, DATS, Cannon Cockers, and Rotorheads) as well as the few true Special Ops. types we dealt with were stone cold pros when it was “game time.”

I mean, yeah, sure, there was interbranch trash talking, but the only time I’ve ever seen a U.S. Serviceman talk to civilians in a manner resembling what we see in Aliens were a couple of Marine boots shipping through Lambert Int’l Airport; a quiet word to the Marine Gunny manning the USO desk was all it took to set those young men straight toot-sweet.

I don’t recall if it was in the novelization, or it it was a fanwank retcon, but Burke essentially picked Gorman because he was an inexperienced “yes man” he thought he could manipulate or browbeat into doing things his way; essentially, kill the bugs, and cover his (Burke’s) ass.

32

Pretty much everything there makes perfect sense. Whether or not the Marines had any “real” combat experience, it wasn’t against anything like the Xenomorphs (one wonders how well they’d do against Predators on even ground). Also, it’s very possible that even if the Colonial Marines as a whole are highly professional, highly capable troops, this platoon was not hand-picked for those qualities.

It seems to me that they didn’t want a crew that was good enough to kill all the aliens with no casualties, they wanted a crew that was good enough to survive, preferably with one or three that had gotten a “face full of alien wig-wam”, in the immortal words of Scott Ramsoomair. If they turned out to be capable enough to defend themselves, even better, Burke could then push for them to go into the Hive and capture an egg or two to bring back for research.

33

Within the context of the movie, we don’t know why “they” picked this particular batch of Marines. For all we know it made no difference, or they trusted Burke to get an alien back, or secure the facility so a team could go get one, one way or another. In fact, we aren’t even sure what Burke’s precise orders are; it’s a good guess Weyland-Yutani, “The Company,” is up to no good, but precisely what they told Burke to do, the full extent of the conspiracy, and how closely he’s following his orders we cannot say. We’ve no evidence that anyone hand-picked the team for any particular reason. All we know for sure is that they don’t perform well.

34

True, I suppose it’s possible that his orders didn’t include bringing back samples at all, and that this is all just Burke’s pet project that the company doesn’t know about too. :smiley:

All I know is, it’s weird watching the guy from Mad About You be a bad guy. :smiley:

35

In addition to everything else already pointed out about “Alien,” I’d that the phallic imagery of the alien is nicely counterbalanced by the maternal/feminine imagery of the living areas of the Nostromo. This ship nurtures its crew in sleeping pods (artificial wombs, basically), has attractive corridors with deltoid-shaped doors, and communicates with the crew via a computer system with a feminine identity which the crew addresses as “Mother”.

Whether symbolic, on-the-nose character names is a good or bad thing is certainly debatable (and I suppose a matter of taste), but FWIW the original film’s cast of characters has several names that hint at their identities or fates: Kane is both Ash’s/the alien’s first victim as well as the unwitting agent of his colleagues’ destruction (with the facehugger obscuring – marking – his face for awhile; if proper protocol had been enforced, he would’ve been kept quarantined outside the ship, not unlike the Biblical ostracism imposed on the Cain in Genesis); Dallas is a laid-back, laconic leader who could well have been from Texas; Lambert ends up led like a lamb to her slaughter; and Ash, the robot scientist, serves a directive that’s indifferent to the fate of the organic crew who consider him a human colleague. Think of what ashes actually are: the cinders that remain from immolating organic matter. The crew is just a collective of organic lifeforms who will be betrayed (burned) by Ash, whose secret priority is to collect the alien lifeform. He/it is so devoid of natural emotions and instinct that he is willing to do so even at the risk of his own life, and remains emotionless even at the face of his own destruction.

36

I think that’s more-or-less it. There are a few indications in the movie that, while Weyland-Yutani certainly isn’t “nice”, Burke has gone way off the reservation. He botched the initial order to explore the “space jockey” ship, and everything he did thereafter was an attempt to cover his own ass (at a minimum) or earn a promotion/bonus. The Company are professionals - Burke is a yuppie idiot.

37

That corporation has, by the end of the series, a long track record of sacrificing the lives of their employees in various attempts to learn about and secure an alien. If it was just Burke’s individual initiative, where did the diversionary wake-up call in Alien come from? Why did W-Y send a team of scientists/alien wranglers at the end of “…3”, and wasn’t that same company involved in the experiments on living alien specimens at the beginning of “…Resurrection”?

I think it’s more accurate to say that the weaselly Burke exemplifies Weyland-Yutani’s ideal middle-management-level special projects facilitator.

38

Other than some bragging on their part, and Burke’s line about “tough hombres,” is there any indication that the Marines are elite bad-asses? If they’re just your average, every day, run-of-the-mill Marines, is there any reason to think they would be walking, talking superweapons? I got the impression that they were pretty much what they seemed to be - grunts (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). People just doing their job, but not any more talented, intelligent, or tough than any of thousands of other Marines. They were just the squad that got picked.

When Hudson asks if the mission was going to be a stand-up fight or, “just another bug hunt,” it led me to believe that they weren’t taking Ripley seriously because, in their minds, they had no reason to. They’d been sent out multiple times to deal with an alien threat, only to find that there was nothing there. I believe that they honestly thought they’d get to LV-426 and find a FUBARed transmitter, or some other mundane, solvable situation. Some of the subsequent freakouts and near-panics would be completely understandable in that scenario. Even then, though, everyone does do their job - even Hudson who is the biggest complainer of the bunch.

39

Why Intel? I understand that the Marines, airborne and Rangers would attract the kind of people who brag a lot and have a macho attitude but why Intel?

Also, Cracked contributes to this thread: Alien: A Film Franchise Based Entirely on Rape | Cracked.com

Rickjay:
What did people brag about when you were in the military? I heard just a little of it myself. Maybe it was because we were a bunch of weekend warriors.

40

Intel-types typically think that they’re the smartest thing that ever was, and anyone NOT in Intel not only rode the short bus, but still belongs there.