Opinions on the Alien movies
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Bishop brought an egg back on the second drop ship before picking Ripley and co. up. He says it will take 40 minutes for the drop ship to get to where they are and somehow they forget that it actually takes four minutes for it to get down to the planet. "Express elevator to Hell," remember? Not everyone agrees with my interpretation of The Bishop Conspiracy but I think it's borne out by the later films (Alien 3 and AVP) that Bishop was not a good guy.
Now as for the Alien films and what is worthy of a home theatre:
Alien: not the best in terms of special effects. The creature is a guy in a rubber suit and I don't know how well he does in high-def. In any case, most of the creature scenes are shot in the dark and you never get a very clear picture of what is going on. Decent movie, kind of slow. Anachronistic- the pre-DOS computers that spit out information one... letter... at... a... time... will take you right out of the movie. All the cigarette smoking is weird too; I half expected the alien to light one up at some point. A poster on another message board has pointed out that this film has an "idiot" plot which is to say (like 24 for example) that the plot progresses only because of the characters making the wrong choice all the time.
Aliens: fun and quote-worthy. You will find many occasions in life to say "Game over man, game over!" or "Marines! We are leaaaaaaaaving!" This movie had better effects and although there are aspects of an idiot plot (Vazquez and Drake disobeying orders, Gorman and Burke being assholes) not everyone is an idiot in this movie. The marines are cannon fodder but not in a slasher-flick kind of way. It's more of a Blackhawk Down kind of way; the super-elite soldiers swagger in ready to kill everything and end up getting their asses handed to them by a relatively primitive opponent. I would watch this one simply because it is worth watching and is definitely the best film in the series.
Alien 3: dark and depressing, somewhat gory, somewhat unnecessary. Apparently the workprint edition gives you more characterization than "bald Brits with bad attitudes". There was exactly one scene in this movie that I liked and that was when the alien came through a ceiling vent to grab a character who was giving Ripley a hard time. This is not a visually impressive movie (unless you like dark industrial wastelands) nor does it add much to the franchise.
Alien Resurrection: worth seeing if you like Firefly. You can see the genesis of the Firefly crew here (roughly though, it's not a perfect match) and they bring some great Joss humor to a very dark movie series. The movie is pretty good for the first three quarters but falls to crap at the end when another creature is introduced. Visually it's good, pretty refined in creature effects. Story-wise it's hit and miss but I didn't think it was as bad as Alien 3.
Alien Vs. Predator: now this is a movie where the characters are cannon fodder. Don't get attached to any of them. However, the effects are fantastic and the fights are really good. The last battle is especially great. There is very little gore in this movie which I liked. It's not a good Alien film and not a very good film in general but it's a good popcorn shut-your-mind-off-for-a-while flick. It would look fantastic on a large screen. If you've got a few hours of your life you don't want back pair it up with I, Robot and you're set!
Alien Vs. Predator Requiem: dumb dumb dumb movie. The characters are so bad in this movie you will root for the aliens and the Predator to kill them off and quickly. The only real high point of the movie is the high school bully getting his face melted off. Which reminds me, this is the goriest of all the movies- faces and arms get melted off, pregnant women have their stomachs exploded, a dude gets skinned, et cetera. Not only that, the Predator's imprecise fire shuts down power to the town and the rest of the movie takes place in the dark. This is suppose to hearken back to the first movies where less was more. Instead it just makes one wish the directors (a team of brothers who are special FX guys and had never done a feature film before) had heard of these newfangled things called lights. Stupid movie, paper-thin plot and disposable dipshits for characters. However, there is a nuclear blast in the movie so that might look good on the big screen. Skip to that part and don't watch the rest.
The DVD is actually an improvement in terms of lighting, at least over the print that showed up in my local theater. The film was so dark I heard someone near me wondering if there was a problem with the projector; if it came out like that now, you'd wonder if they had left the projector's light intensity set for a 3D film. I had to rent the disc just to see what the hell was going on (not much, as it turned out).
Your post becomes null for including the last two.
I wonder what people would think if the third film, in its extended cut (which is more like what Fincher was aiming for) were the first? I think it would get a lot more respect. Some people can't get over their extreme grief at the axing of two not very remarkable characters from the second film. If, for nothing else, the last Ripley scene in 3 was one of the most stunning and memorable in cinema.
4 was pretty and empty and went waaaay over the top at the end. But there were good actors and Ripley was awesome as a hybrid.
1. Classic people trapped in a confined space with a scary unseen monster chasing them film. Probably the best of the genre.
2. Heavy duty action film. Marines vs. bugs, and the marines don't know they are dead meat. Some really good characters and great suspense and action sequences make this another all-time great.
3. Classic example of a film that could have been rather good but the Hollywood process got to it first. Too many re-writes and director changes rendered it kind of muddled and often just not interesting. We care about Ripley, but a bunch of unarmed convicts are so much cannon fodder. Still its dark, nihilistic, and claustrophobic setting gives it a lot of atmosphere.
4. Just silly and pointless. We've devolved from the spooky, shadowed creature in the first to a bunch of CGI monsters jumping around like monkeys. Lame attempts at humor also highlight how ridiculous the franchise has become. Sigourney Weaver does make a case though that Hollywood producers who don't hire women over 40 because they think no one will find them sexy are dumb-asses.
2. Heavy duty action film. Marines vs. bugs, and the marines don't know they are dead meat. Some really good characters and great suspense and action sequences make this another all-time great.
3. Classic example of a film that could have been rather good but the Hollywood process got to it first. Too many re-writes and director changes rendered it kind of muddled and often just not interesting. We care about Ripley, but a bunch of unarmed convicts are so much cannon fodder. Still its dark, nihilistic, and claustrophobic setting gives it a lot of atmosphere.
4. Just silly and pointless. We've devolved from the spooky, shadowed creature in the first to a bunch of CGI monsters jumping around like monkeys. Lame attempts at humor also highlight how ridiculous the franchise has become. Sigourney Weaver does make a case though that Hollywood producers who don't hire women over 40 because they think no one will find them sexy are dumb-asses.
Ripley had injured the Queen and her ability to make more eggs (not destroyed it completely, the sac isn't necessary for making eggs). Her priority THEN would've been to make sure there were more aliens, thus she laid the Superfacehugger egg and put it in the dropship landing gear.
There, simple.
The first two I like with Alien being a straight-up horror flick and Aliens an action film. The rest are shit.
I think if they had gone with the Gibson screenplay for the third film people would have reacted better to it.
I never got the hysteria about Newt and Hicks. The story is always about the alien, its lure for venal men and the nemesis of both. The stories are populated by interesting people but they are transient. The third film would have been much better if the management had left the director to do his thang but this has been redressed to a certain extent by the DVD cut of the film which is infinitely better than the theatrical release. The fourth film broke all the rules of the simple storyline by telescoping time to an utterly ridiculous extent, introducing a completely unnecessary and frankly risible new monster and at one stroke diminishing the alien in a like manner to the Voyager/Borg vandalism.
I'll confess to not having gotten beyond the core issues of keeping Newt/Hicks alive, going forward into the future and Ripley dying in the end. Killing off Newt/Hicks and rendering the end journey of previous film null-and-void kind of irked me. That and the alien being shown as both the suit from the previous films and a different-looking CG puppet, ugh. I didn't mind the accents though.
The fourth film as Deckard says isn't really salvageable - I don't know what they were thinking there.
The Vincent Ward screenplay is amazing. There's a strange kind of poetry to it. A wooden space station, monks blowing glass -- just amazing stuff. It doesn't answer Sean Aaron's Hicks/Newt problem, though, as they're not in the script at all.
There never seems to have been a point in the development of Alien 3 where the "Aliens family" was kept together. The Gibson script dispensed with Ripley and Newt, the Ward script dispensed with Hicks and Newt. Partly, that's due to the problem of the producers didn't know who they were going to get back for the film, but really it's down to the fact that the producers simply didn't know what kind of movie they wanted to make.
What really bothered me about it was the lack of thought put into it. If "facehugger magically sabotages sleeping chambers" was the best they could do, then really they might as well have not bothered with the set-up at all. Just cut to Ripley waking up in the infirmary.
I'll handle this;
Alien; arguably the greatest sci-fi horror film of all time only rivalled by the John Carpenters remake of The Thing and possibly the remake of The Fly
Aliens; best sequal of all time and the best sci-fi action film of all time, for a long time my favourite film ever. If you're wise just watch the first 2 and don't bother after that.
Alien 3; the film they should show to film executives to show them what they should NEVER greenlight. Unique amongst appalling sequals in that not only is it staggeringly awful in itself but it ruins your enjoyment of the wonderful first 2 films
Alien 4; not great but ok, if you've made the mistake of watching Alien 3 you have to watch this, it rescues the series from the pit of despair it had sunk to. Interesting if you're a Firefly fan
Alien vs Predator; with the exception of Frost vs Nixon about the best film you'll ever see with 'vs' in the title. Doesn't hold a candle to Alien/Aliens however
Alien vs Predator; Requiem-pretty terrible but still a million times better than part 3
Alien; arguably the greatest sci-fi horror film of all time only rivalled by the John Carpenters remake of The Thing and possibly the remake of The Fly
Aliens; best sequal of all time and the best sci-fi action film of all time, for a long time my favourite film ever. If you're wise just watch the first 2 and don't bother after that.
Alien 3; the film they should show to film executives to show them what they should NEVER greenlight. Unique amongst appalling sequals in that not only is it staggeringly awful in itself but it ruins your enjoyment of the wonderful first 2 films
Alien 4; not great but ok, if you've made the mistake of watching Alien 3 you have to watch this, it rescues the series from the pit of despair it had sunk to. Interesting if you're a Firefly fan
Alien vs Predator; with the exception of Frost vs Nixon about the best film you'll ever see with 'vs' in the title. Doesn't hold a candle to Alien/Aliens however
Alien vs Predator; Requiem-pretty terrible but still a million times better than part 3
The character of Newt might be unimportant, but the fate of Newt was very important for Ripley's character which I'd argue is very very very important, more than the Alien. If she was simply some kid that got saved, it wouldn't bother me that they got rid of her in that manner, but the connection that developed between her and Ripley made it very unclimatic. It would have worked better if Ripley's grief was given a little bit more screen time and affected her sound mind here and there. There was some of that, but it wasn't specific enough and I somehow didn't buy it.
Essentially 3 took a brilliant and thrilling film series that everyone loved and just destroyed it in order to make a depressing and pointless worst sequal of all time. What were they thinking?
They were thinking that it would be impossible to out-Aliens Aliens, so they decided to do something smaller scale, more intimate, and with the psychological horror of the first film brought back to the fore.Essentially 3 took a brilliant and thrilling film series that everyone loved and just destroyed it in order to make a depressing and pointless worst sequal of all time. What were they thinking?
That's a creative choice for Alien 3 that didn't work for a lot of people, but the complaint that the film is "depressing" misses the point of the film -- it's supposed to be bleak, nihilistic, and depressing, and it that the film succeeds.
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