A L I E N Appreciation Thread

Yes there are... They're rare, but they exist

 

I personally don't care for anything after the first two movies. I think they said everything that needed to be said. However, I'm not gonna waste my time (or yours) trying to tell you that you need to feel the same way about it.

 

^ Sums me up, too.

 

You got one right here. Scott's film is so much more subtle and sophisticated than Cameron's, its creature itself so much more mysterious and sublime than the Viet Cong termites of the sequel that I prefer to think of the first movie as self-contained, much as I do with Jaws. I get the love for the action-packed, quotable sequel, I just don't share it--flawed as it is, I prefer even Alien 3 to Aliens. (The fourth movie and the Predator crossovers need not be considered at all, imao.)

As far as Alien is concerned, I think it edges out Scott's other SF masterwork Blade Runner (no mean feat), it's that good.

 

I first saw it when it was on TV, so I didn't get the full glory of it until I finally rented it. This is just a flat out fantastic movie, and I'm saying this as someone who saw ALIENS first in the theater and loved it.

 

I adore this movie. An absolute classic. A few years ago I picked up the massive 9-disc Alien DVD box set, and it has a tremendous wealth of material about the entire series. But Alien is clearly the best of the four films, and the most ground breaking. It practically created the whole "Gothic Horror in Space" style that's been copied endlessly ever since.

It utterly astonishes me that shortly after making the groundbreaking Alien, Ridley Scott directed the equally groundbreaking Blade Runner. Like hitting two home runs during the same inning.

 

Yep, love this movie too. I've watched it dozens of times and it still feels like a timeless classic. The one thing that surprises me when watching the extras is how scared cinema audiences were back in '79 of certain scenes like the chest-burster or the final act. I mean, they were great exciting scenes, but these days the movie isn't really scary at all (not to say that in any way detracts from the brilliance of the film).

 

Alien is the best, hands down.

 

Yep another Alien fan here, I remember also jumping when first saw at the cinema (when Dallas is taken in the air vents), even though I was so familiar with the movie on VHS.

I also love Aliens, and the way that Cameron could have just made a bargain-basement sequel, but tried not to copy the original, stamping his own mark.

Of course, the fun part is theorising how the Alien turning it's victims into eggs in the first movie can also be the same species that needed a queen in the second.

C'mon guys, if we can explain away the inconsistancies in Trek, that should be a doddle!!

 

Easy, since the Queen needs a Superfacehugger to be created that means there won't always be a Queen around whenever there are aliens. Thus, each individual alien can make more eggs as long as they have the raw material (living beings) to do so. Perhaps the eggs they turn people into are meant to be Superfacehugger eggs to make a Queen.

 

Purist, schmurist, here's my take: the warrior aliens in Cameron's film all had nude heads; that is, the translucent sheath that covered the distinctive skull of the creature in the first movie was absent. The queen, however, had a translucent sheath that was downright hypertrophic. My theory is that the first alien out of the eggs--one that, like the creature in the first film, has a sheath--will eventually metamorphose into a queen and set up a colony. Indeed, that was probably what the alien was doing when it was hidden on the Nostromo's shuttle, the Narcissus: preparing for its final metamorphosis.

But, um, that's only when I'm not being a purist.

 

Indeed, it's an unusual pedigree for what is fundamentally a B-movie franchise.

Alien edges out Aliens for me, although I adore them both and enjoy Alien 3 well enough also, mostly for its continued evolution of Ripley.

 

Okay I'm a little fuzzy on the Alien mythos so could someone please explain the superfacehugger concept to me.

 

Originally, in Alien 3, they were going to introduce the concept of a Super Facehugger, that would carry the queen embryo (it's basically a larger and darker coloured version). However, due to studio interference, this concept was dropped and it was implied that the queen simply came randomly from a normal facehugger. Then, when the Special Edition was released, a restored scene showed (albeit from a distance) one of the prisoners picking up a Super Facehugger corpse. It was still very vague and I'm not really sure if it's official canon in the films or not.

 

Well, I don't know if it was because I was rather young when I saw the movie the first time, but I have to say I disagree with you about the scariness. The original Alien is easily the scariest movie I have ever seen. Nothing else has come close.

 

I love this film, too, and I can remember what I first saw it. Alien and Blade Runner defined big screen sf for me for a long, long time (and maybe still do).