Opinions on the Alien movies

[scnj]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

Hmm. I love the first three. I enjoy the underwater sequence in Resurrection. And watching AVP and AVP:R are some of the best times I've had with one of my closest friends, even though they're pretty much terrible across the board.

I guess each is special to me in its own way, but I'm hesitant to vote for Alien-AVPR just because of how poor those last films were.

 

[LitmusDragon]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

Well I'm the kind of person who will intentionally watch bad movies like Battlefield Earth or Showgirls from time to time (just to marvel at their badness) so I think there is something at least worth seeing once about almost all of the films. Except Reqiuem, which I couldn't make it past the first half hour of.

 

[Harvey]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

I'd watch the four Alien movies and then stop. The third and fourth sequels are seriously flawed, but not completely without worth (visually, they're both quite interesting; each also boasts a solid cast).

Alien Vs. Predator and Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem are, unfortunately, complete and utter trash. The only thing worth recommending in them is Lance Henrikson, who only appears in the first one, and not for very long.

 

[ColeMercury]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

You might as well watch all four original ones. Alien3's "Assembly Cut" is quite good, and Alien Resurrection is bad but you might as well watch the whole series.

The Alien/s vs Predator movies can be treated as a separate series and thus cheerfully ignored.

 

[ColeMercury]

What bothers me most about "Alien Resurrection" is that it undoes the ending that Alien3 provided. Whether you like the film or not, Alien3 wrapped up the Ripley saga in a very real way. The story was finished.

Then "Resurrection" came along and opened it all back up again and then just kind of left it there. It's like tearing the stitches from a half-healed wound. It'll heal, but now there's a big scar.

Right after 3 came out, on the early 90s version of the Internet, we were already speculating as to how the aliens would inevitably come back. One of the theories was that Morse, the only apparent survivor, was carrying an alien.

Well, I'm glad they didn't do that. Morse rules.

Special Edition (i.e. exactly the same but with a new scene tacked onto the beginning and different opening credits)

Not quite. There is also intermittent extended footage throughout the film and a different ending which shows the Betty landing on Earth near what's left of the Eiffel Tower.

Oh yeah, I forgot that bit. Doesn't really make sense to have post-apocalyptic Earth as "home base", does it? Still, I think that ending was actually a little better than the Theatrical one... but it doesn't make up for the disgusting CGI bug-squishery at the beginning.

 

[ClayHefner]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

AVP2 wasn't a great movie, but I liked some stuff about it, like the Predator homeworld bit.

Cool Alien universe moment at the ending (for those who watched the extended Aliens version).
I liked that better than Bishop in AVP. I mean, are there thousands of Bishops in the "Aliens" era or did that ship just happen to have the one android made after Bishop aboard? Seemed forced.

On a side note, the whole "company" stuff is really stupid if you think about it. The Weyland-Yutani guys are sooo resourceful and mighty, they know that organism they badly want is on that planet (and thanks to AVP we can assume they perfectly know what they're dealing with), they basically OWN the planet ...and what do they do?
Send a team of mercenaries and biologists to quietly (and relatively safely) seize the Alien eggs or some facehuggers?
NO they first direct some freighter there (with only the robot as a reliable crewmember) and see what happens, THEN they get a bunch of civilians on the planet, direct them toward the crash site and see what happens, THEN get Paul Reiser there, along with "unreliable" soldiers, hoping he can somehow survive, obtain the organism and keep the soldiers in check within all that chaos of hundreds of creatures running around.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

I would keep my memories of the first three movies. Alien 3 is excellent. Fuck Hicks and Newt. One's a plank and the other's a Disney orphan, right out of The Rescuers. Bishop was the only one of the three Aliens characters who was interesting and he had a great exit as did Ripley.

 

[Davros]

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.

Simple but nothing I can buy into. They would have done better by following the story line Dark Horse Comics had in their continuation of the story.

The Dark Horse comics are utter trash that are unworthy of use as toilet paper.

Far better than that nonsense that wound up on the screen.

 

[saturn5]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

I would keep my memories of the first three movies. Alien 3 is excellent. Fuck Hicks and Newt. One's a plank and the other's a Disney orphan, right out of The Rescuers. Bishop was the only one of the three Aliens characters who was interesting and he had a great exit as did Ripley.

Alien 3 is the equivalent of the Enterprise after Wrath of Khan developing a navigational error and crashing into the sun so it was all for nothing. What I liked about Hicks and Newt is that they weren't stereotypes, there was more to them than that.

 

[24thcenstfan]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

I enjoyed Alien and Aliens. I'd probably stop at those two if I could do a "redo".

 

[Anwar]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

I would keep my memories of the first three movies. Alien 3 is excellent. Fuck Hicks and Newt. One's a plank and the other's a Disney orphan, right out of The Rescuers. Bishop was the only one of the three Aliens characters who was interesting and he had a great exit as did Ripley.

Alien 3 is the equivalent of the Enterprise after Wrath of Khan developing a navigational error and crashing into the sun so it was all for nothing. What I liked about Hicks and Newt is that they weren't stereotypes, there was more to them than that.

No there wasn't.

Alien 3 would be like if the movie after Wrath of Khan undid all the drama that came from David's introduction and Spock's death.

Oh wait...

 

[Anwar]

Simple but nothing I can buy into. They would have done better by following the story line Dark Horse Comics had in their continuation of the story.

The Dark Horse comics are utter trash that are unworthy of use as toilet paper.

Far better than that nonsense that wound up on the screen.

What, getting rid of the useless characters (Newt and Hicks) and returning the series from the action nonsense?

All the DH comics offered were more guns and explosions and action stereotypes.

 

[Set Harth]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

When the credits are over and the DVD has returned to the main menu.

 

[saturn5]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

When the credits are over and the DVD has returned to the main menu.

Good answer

And unless Star Trek 3 ended with the whole crew dead and an unknown convict redshirt being led off to prison there's no comparison

Well the results are in and pretty overwhelming result, if you're new to the series just watch Alien and Aliens and skip the rest

 

[saturn5]

The Dark Horse comics are utter trash that are unworthy of use as toilet paper.

Far better than that nonsense that wound up on the screen.

What, getting rid of the useless characters (Newt and Hicks) and returning the series from the action nonsense?

All the DH comics offered were more guns and explosions and action stereotypes.

The comics were a mess but still better than three which didn't help them with it's contradictions

 

[Daneel]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

The first three films make a great trilogy. Resurrection kind of sucked, though, and the AvP movies certainly weren't inspiring entries in the franchise.

 

[Starkers]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

My order would be thus...

Aliens
Alien
Alien 3
AVP
Alien Ressurection
AVPR

My cut off would be after AVP, AVP isn't especially great, but all things considered it's a better film than it had any right to be. Having watched the 4 Alien films again recently my opinions of 3 and 4 haven't changed. 3 is a flawed (very in places) masterpeice whilst 4 is just...hell it feels like a spoof at times, truly terrible. I did revise my opinions of the first two. I'd always felt Alien was better, but actually (and especially going back to the theatrical rather than special edition) I have to say Aliens is better.

 

[Anwar]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

And unless Star Trek 3 ended with the whole crew dead and an unknown convict redshirt being led off to prison there's no comparison

Trek III undid most of the end of WoK and killed off a major character introduced in the prior film. Same difference.

 

[Anwar]

Not really, the comics were stupid testosterone poisoning nonsense. 3 at least tried something unexpected.

 

[Klaus]

Re: When should you stop watching the Alien films?

When the credits are over and the DVD has returned to the main menu.

That was my first thought too!

I've only seen Alien and Aliens and nothing I've heard has yet enticed me to go any further...