Aliens movies

[Hyperspace05]

Alien and Aliens stand high above the rest. I can't decide which I like best, but I guess I would say Alien if I was forced to choose.
- Alien is still the ultimate sci-fi horror film... Such great atmosphere and production design.
- Aliens is the ultimate sci-fi action film... The ultimate bug hunt film. Great action and characters. And the theatrical cut is WAY superior IMO.

I actually like Alien 3 (or Alien cubed) quite a bit. I respect that it tried to do something very different than its predecessor. (Just as Aliens was different from Alien) The dystopia and character deaths don't bother me. Still, it is a flawed production.

Alien: Resurrection... A fun popcorn movie, but nothing more. It is the least of them all.

 

[saturn5]

I rate The Thing as a MASTERPIECE and not just because the special effects still stand up over 30 years later (as do Alien's), the music, the direction are all superb, the increasing sense of paranoia creeping over these men in this impossible situation, the blood test scene and Donald Moffat 'Tied to this *&&^^%$ couch!" not to mention of ressuss scene and the head sprouting legs and running off!
And then there's the ending....

Frankly if anyone can name a sci-fi horror film better than The Thing/Alien/The Fly I'm all ears!

The Aliens characters were great, been over a decade since I've seen the film and I can still remember them all;
Ripley, Newt, Hicks, Bishop, Burke, Gorman, Vasquez, Drake, Uzbecki, Frost, Spunkmeyer, Apone, Dietrich, Hudson and for the life of me I can't remember the name of the pilot (and I think there's one more marine?). The reason they seem cliched now is that they were so good everyone copied them and they are now standard. By contrast the prisoners in 3 were unlikeable and indistinguishable, I think the survivor has one line of dialogue in the whole film?

Don't excuse Fincher, he was the one who made the major plot decisions everyone hated, his direction is bad but that's not the problem. He killed the wonderful franchise by turning it into a depressing, boring slasher flick in space. I'm sure the studio wasn't one the line saying "Be sure to kill off the characters everyone loves! Be sure to make the first 2 films utterly pointless! Be sure to make it unwatchable and have the audience leaving the theatre feeling really down! Let's not have any excitiment or suspense or imagination or great dialogue and characterisation as we had in the first 2 films!"

 

[LitmusDragon]

It's been said before but the director's cut of the third movie is a lot better.

I like 1, 2, and 3 a lot, and the fourth movie has a couple of iconic scenes (the underwater chase scene, and the Ripley-clones "kill meeeee" scene).

I also enjoyed the first AvP as mindless popcorn nostalgia entertainment. Requiem was horrible, I only made it about 20 minutes into it without getting really disgusted / angry.

When I rewatch them I would rewatch the first three, I don't need to see the fourth or AvP again.

 

[saturn5]

It's been said before but the director's cut of the third movie is a lot better.

I like 1, 2, and 3 a lot, and the fourth movie has a couple of iconic scenes (the underwater chase scene, and the Ripley-clones "kill meeeee" scene).

I also enjoyed the first AvP as mindless popcorn nostalgia entertainment. Requiem was horrible, I only made it about 20 minutes into it without getting really disgusted / angry.

When I rewatch them I would rewatch the first three, I don't need to see the fourth or AvP again.

Alien 4 isn't great (Kim Flowers ass aside) but it at least gives Ripley her happy ending, her little girl back and has some good scenes, especially the relationship between Ripley and Cal and I love the idea that Weylon-Yutani (or however you spell it) were bought out by Walmart

 

[Anwar]

I'll never get how ANYONE can say the Aliens characters were memorable. The entire cast were stereotypes, and the ONLY reason anyone even knew most of their names was because of that roll call list early in the movie.

The prisoners were very distinguishable, and the important ones had names. Dillon, Golic, Morse, Junior, Boggs, Rains, David and even the unimportant ones like Jude, Troy, Gregor, Vincent. The non-prisoners were Aaron, Andrews and Clemens.

Plus, they're all UK actors which makes them more dedicated to their craft than Americans.

 

[DonIago]

"Plus, they're all UK actors which makes them more dedicated to their craft than Americans."

Speaking of stereotyping...

 

[Harvey]

The prisoners were distinguishable? Outside of (American!) Charles Dutton as Dillon and Charles Dance as Clemens, I'd have a hard time remembering the back stories of any of them. I know Peter Postlethwaite plays one of them, but I'd be hard pressed to remember anything about him. They're a bunch of bald and mostly white guys.

The marines in Aliens may be limited to a defining personality trait or two, but the reason people remember Hudson and Vasquez and Gorman goes beyond the line-up scene.

 

[crouteru]

I thought Alien 3 had some great characters, made even better by the extra scenes in the Special Edition.

One great scene from the Special Edition is an exchange of looks between Ripley and Junior (the one who tried to rape her) as she is trying to help them during the fire.

It was this look of shock and surprise that his rape victim is trying to help him that I think ultimately made him decide to sacrifice him self to trap the alien for the greater good.

 

[Too Much Fun]

The only thing I really remembered (and loved) in "Alien 3" was the scene where Ripley is hysterically freaking out about the aliens and one of the prisoners yells, "GET THAT FOOLISH WOMAN OUT OF HERE!" and then is immediately pulled up into the ceiling and killed from above. For that scene alone and the fact that I vaguely recall Charles S. Dutton being pretty cool, I would say I liked the characters in "Alien 3" more than those in "Aliens". Both casts pale in comparison to that of the original, though.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'll never get how ANYONE can say the Aliens characters were memorable. The entire cast were stereotypes, and the ONLY reason anyone even knew most of their names was because of that roll call list early in the movie.

The only non-Ripley characters I can even remember are:

Newt...because she's a little girl and her name is Newt.

That Android Guy...because he gets ripped in half and spews milk everywhere.

The Android Girl...because she's played by Winona Ryder.

Otherwise, none of the characters are memorable to me at all.

 

[LitmusDragon]

The only non-Ripley characters I can even remember are:

Newt...because she's a little girl and her name is Newt.

That Android Guy...because he gets ripped in half and spews milk everywhere.

The Android Girl...because she's played by Winona Ryder.

Otherwise, none of the characters are memorable to me at all.

Not even Burke, the sleaziest sleazeball weasel of a villain in sci-fi?

 

[RoJoHen]

Is that Paul Reiser? If so, no, he doesn't count...because he's Paul Reiser.

 

[RoJoHen]

double post

 

[Anwar]

Oh please, Burke was a nothing compared to Ash and Bishop II. And Bishop II was only on-screen for 5 minutes!

 

[Mr Light]

I never saw the special edition of Alien 3. I didn't even know it existed!

 

[Tulin]

The Aliens characters were great, been over a decade since I've seen the film and I can still remember them all;
Ripley, Newt, Hicks, Bishop, Burke, Gorman, Vasquez, Drake, Uzbecki, Frost, Spunkmeyer, Apone, Dietrich, Hudson and for the life of me I can't remember the name of the pilot

Ferro.

"Fly the friendly skies"

 

[ladyheather69]

Hmm...I would have to say Aliens and Alien.

I like them both. I did find Alien 3 a bit different and not quite what I wanted, and Alien Res wasn't as horrid until the last part. I find the ending to be completely screwed up and so out there, that it ruins the whole movie for me.

The Predator movies are action flicks and are good in their own right.

AvP wasn't too bad. I was actually more impressed with the novel and that wasn't even that great :P

AvP 2 sucked ass. I didn't like the slasher type quality they put into it. (IMHO)

There is so much potential with Alien vs. Predator it isn't even funny!!! But those that have tried before did a crappy job, imo.

so back to the original post: I would have to say Aliens and then Alien are my faves.

 

[Deckerd]

Alien Resurrection had some minor irritations all the way through but they were bearable to see Ripley as an Alien hybrid, the underwater scenes and the stellar cast of the Betty, making a pretty good fist of creating a believable working crew. The thing that totally ruined the film was the Big Baby. If they had just cut that whole idea it would have been a much much better film.

 

[Pauln6]

Alien is my favourite. It's easy to forget how controversial it was to kill the 'hero' half way through was at the time or to have the heroine as the sole survivor (heroines are far more likely to meet a sticky end in almost every movie genre out there). The hatching scene with John Hurt was hugely shocking in an era before schlock gore movies were so commonplace. Plus the movie has Ridley Scott's attention to detail. Many of the scenes are picture perfect in their execution. My only gripes are having so many characters smoking on board a spaceship and a tiny bit of modern CGI on the full length alien at the end would make it look a bit less cheesy.

Aliens was an entirely different movie but the change of pace made it as good as the original in its own way (and a superior movie for action junkies). I'm ambivalent about the extended version. The bit about Ripley's daughter was good but seeing Newt's family find the alien ship was unnecessary and lessened the mystery later on in my view.

Alien3 was good but they lost my vote in the opening credits by killing both Hicks and Newt. If they had died during the movie I would have been fine but to kill Newt before the film had even started meant that the final scenes in Aliens lost all of their meaning. I don't think having the characters around for a bit longer would have harmed the plot in any way and would have increased the emotional impact of losing those characters later on.

I preferred Alien 4 to 3, although I'll admit I felt that the inclusion of Sigourney Weaver was rather unnecessary.

The more recent Predator movies have no suspense and are just really schlocky, apart from a bit of suspense when they were almost crushed by the shifting blocks in the first one but that was about it.

 

[Tulin]

Alien is my favourite. It's easy to forget how controversial it was to kill the 'hero' half way through was at the time

Never seen "Psycho", huh?