Sacrifice was top-notch. I recall citing it in a college paper about free will and predestination.
Aliens movies
- Thread starter kathrynJaneway2
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Yes the comic started off very strong. It's a shame that the versions of the comics with Hicks and Newt have been rewritten as Wilks and Billie because of Alien3 (the coloured art is very nice though). It was totally unnecessary because they kept the surprise appearance by Ripley (The Female War) and some of the redone versions forget to change the names at certain points. I much prefer them as a sequel to Aliens - we're scifi fans, we can handle divergent timelines.
The rest of the comic (and there's a shitload of it) is mostly about differing groups of characters in different locations in the galaxy. There is a very loose continuity if you look for it but it's not really that important.
Because of the mixed nature of it you get some brilliant stories like Sacrifice (Salvation by Mike Mignola is very good as well - those two often get packaged together).
There are quite a few mediocre ones - the "mad scientist tries to breed aliens for whatever reason" trope is often reused (although Labyrinth is a particularly strong version that works) and there are some downright terrible stories.
Overall though I think it's a strong comic that really expands what the Aliens universe can be and what the creatures themselves can mean. Because it's composed of barely connected stories by wildly differing creative teams we get a lot of different ideas, and, as I said, some don't work, but almost all are interesting. What IS interesting is that very few are retreads of the movies. There is a surprising lack of butt-kicking colonial marines stories. There are definitely quite a few, but given the popularity of the source movie I would have expected it to be the same every month. I'm glad it wasn't though.
Peter Milligan wrote it when he was at his peak, and yes it was top-notch. He could barely put a foot wrong at the time.
I think the Dark Horse editorial people (some of them, anyway) were prefectly willing to take this route, but Fox were not happy about the idea of an alternate sceanario, hence the changes.
They definitely did overdo that particular trope - I remember "Rogue" being particularily weak. Didn't care all that much for Kelley Jones' take on the aliens, either.
The same pretty much goes for Aliens vs Predator regarding the ideas and mixed quality, and I will say one thing - Chris Claremont's epic story arc "Deadlist of the Species" was UTTERLY INSANE.
Aliens is about as intelligent as a full-frontal lobotomy.
However since you asked I'll elaborate on my opinions. When I said that Aliens is Disneyfied I'm not talking about the violence or the gore or the horror. Clearly all of those things would be out of place in a Disney movie.
What I'm talking about when I say Disneyfied is the overly simplistic characterization of the Ripley character.
Ripley is a woman whose life is effectively ruined. She has lost her place in history. She has lost her career. She has faced an unspeakable horror that has left her psyche scarred and nobody believes her. Worst of all her child is dead and gone. Ripley has nothing and she has nobody. It would take years for her to deal with all that has happened to her and all that she has lost.
In short she has complex issues with no easy answers.
By the end of the movie we're supposed to believe that she's just fine and dandy because she's faced her fears and got herself a new daughter.
In short James Cameron resolved his issue in the easiest, Disneyest way possible. Never mind the fact that little Newt is likely to have years of nightmares and a terrible fear of loss and abandonment ahead of her. The girl watched her entire family get killed off by the Aliens. If she ever tells anybody they're going to think she's either crazy or a liar. Newt is fucked and has lost her childhood.
But everything's okay because Ripley has a new daughter and Newt has a new mother.
Hollywood bullshit!
I far prefer David Fincher's more mature less hopeful take on things. Ripley's problems were going to be with her the rest of her life and no adopted child was going to make it not so. Aliens was phony. Alien 3 was real. IMO Alien 3 was a lot better.
To further elaborate on how Aliens is Disneyfied I'll further point out is that just like a Disney movie Ripley only won because she was the hero and not because of her skills, abilities and talents.
This is a woman who just learned how grenade launchers and machine guns and grenades work. She isn't military, she has no training and yet she's going to storm an alien nest and take out every beastie that gets in her way, save Newt and escape?
Bullshit.
She isn't Rambo. She isn't a Green Beret. She isn't going to survive this encounter. Vasquez? Maybe. Ripley? Never.
I enjoy Aliens on the level that I enjoy Rambo: First Blood Part II. Dumb entertainment. But IMO Rambo II had far more credibility than Aliens when it came to justifying it's heroes abilities.
BTW James Cameron wrote the first draft of Rambo II. He also went for easy answers in his script. Stallone rewrote the script and took out all the easy resolutions that Cameron came up with for the Rambo character and the movie is all the better for it.
I love Cameron. I love the Terminator. I love True Lies. I love Titanic. I loved Aliens as a child.
Now I just like Aliens.
I love Alien 3. The best Alien sequel IMO.
Well, this thread was good for one thing, anyway. I've never seen The Fly, but if it's as good as two of my all-time favorites (The Thing & Alien), I'm gonna have to check it out.
The Fly is quite good. See it. 
Skip The Fly 2 though.
Skip The Fly 2 though.
Done. I just bought it.
Aliens is about as intelligent as a full-frontal lobotomy.
However since you asked I'll elaborate on my opinions. When I said that Aliens is Disneyfied I'm not talking about the violence or the gore or the horror. Clearly all of those things would be out of place in a Disney movie.
What I'm talking about when I say Disneyfied is the overly simplistic characterization of the Ripley character.
Ripley is a woman whose life is effectively ruined. She has lost her place in history. She has lost her career. She has faced an unspeakable horror that has left her psyche scarred and nobody believes her. Worst of all her child is dead and gone. Ripley has nothing and she has nobody. It would take years for her to deal with all that has happened to her and all that she has lost.
In short she has complex issues with no easy answers.
By the end of the movie we're supposed to believe that she's just fine and dandy because she's faced her fears and got herself a new daughter.
In short James Cameron resolved his issue in the easiest, Disneyest way possible. Never mind the fact that little Newt is likely to have years of nightmares and a terrible fear of loss and abandonment ahead of her. The girl watched her entire family get killed off by the Aliens. If she ever tells anybody they're going to think she's either crazy or a liar. Newt is fucked and has lost her childhood.
But everything's okay because Ripley has a new daughter and Newt has a new mother.
Hollywood bullshit!
I far prefer David Fincher's more mature less hopeful take on things. Ripley's problems were going to be with her the rest of her life and no adopted child was going to make it not so. Aliens was phony. Alien 3 was real. IMO Alien 3 was a lot better.
To further elaborate on how Aliens is Disneyfied I'll further point out is that just like a Disney movie Ripley only won because she was the hero and not because of her skills, abilities and talents.
This is a woman who just learned how grenade launchers and machine guns and grenades work. She isn't military, she has no training and yet she's going to storm an alien nest and take out every beastie that gets in her way, save Newt and escape?
Bullshit.
She isn't Rambo. She isn't a Green Beret. She isn't going to survive this encounter. Vasquez? Maybe. Ripley? Never.
I enjoy Aliens on the level that I enjoy Rambo: First Blood Part II. Dumb entertainment. But IMO Rambo II had far more credibility than Aliens when it came to justifying it's heroes abilities.
BTW James Cameron wrote the first draft of Rambo II. He also went for easy answers in his script. Stallone rewrote the script and took out all the easy resolutions that Cameron came up with for the Rambo character and the movie is all the better for it.
I love Cameron. I love the Terminator. I love True Lies. I love Titanic. I loved Aliens as a child.
Now I just like Aliens.
I love Alien 3. The best Alien sequel IMO.
Au contraire! No one's saying that the survivors from Aliens will have an easy time of it but there's hope and humanity. In Alien3 the message is, life is hopeless, kill yourself now! Are you really suprised that people who loved the excitment, triumph and brilliance of Aliens hated the depressing, nihilistic mess that was Alien 3?
Remember Hicks taught Ripley how to use the Marines weapons and she's already a tough hombre as Alien proved, maybe not in the She-ra sense like Vasquez but she has steel. Also there were very few bugs left in the hive when she rescued Newt, they were all still over at the colony.
Alien 5;
A spaceship cruises through the heavens. Inside the Colonial Marines in stasis are hypnotically briefed on what they should expect to find when they reach the derelict ship. Amidst their briefing images we see a long shot of a tall dark haired woman cradling a young blonde girl as they watch an injured marine and crippled android being removed from their stasis tubes by medics/technicians. "Only four surivivors from the entire colony and rescue team" goes the briefing commentary "And boy did they have some bad dreams on the way home!"
As for the rest the Marines encounter not just a new mutation of the Aliens but a shipload of mercenaries sent out by the Company, some survivors from the colony who fled rather than holed up and the Space Jockey's who put in an appearance at the end.
That would do for me!
Yeah The Fly is good but have a strong stomach!
I was Aliens Fan #1 until Alien 3 came out. I loved how the excitement, triumph and goofiness of Aliens matured into the atmospheric, moody, tragic brilliance that was Alien 3.
I was 17 years old when I saw Alien 3. I was still dumb enough to think Aliens was a masterpiece instead of an above average summer event movie. If anybody should have hated it I should have. But I didn't.
I love it.
I'm surprised that someone could love "The Thing" and "Alien" equally. Part of the reason my friends and I didn't much care for "The Thing" when we watched it together for the first time was because we thought we'd seen it all before, particularly in "Alien" and "The Terminator" (not to mention "Terminator 2: Judgment Day").
Just another 'dangerous being/individual stalks and kills a bunch of people' movie, except unlike those other ones, it didn't have good characters. The only unique impressive quality of the movie was how wildly creative and gross its special creature effects were, and it takes more than that to make a truly excellent movie.
"Alien" was a truly original movie in so many ways, from direction, to characters, to storytelling, to production design, to special effects. Many movies (including its sequels) are just inferior derivative wannabes.
Admiral James Kirk;4046262I was still dumb enough to think [I said:
I hope that spending time on a forum with morons like us who think that Aliens is fantastic isn't causing you any mental anguish.
Oh don't give me that horseshit. I never said I was better than anybody else.
I was Aliens Fan #1 until Alien 3 came out. I loved how the excitement, triumph and goofiness of Aliens matured into the atmospheric, moody, tragic brilliance that was Alien 3.
I was 17 years old when I saw Alien 3. I was still dumb enough to think Aliens was a masterpiece instead of an above average summer event movie. If anybody should have hated it I should have. But I didn't.
I love it.
My diagnosis is that Alien3 just thinks it's a masterpiece. It's moody, it's nihilistic, it's got some great art direction, but unfortunately it's boring, poorly paced and doesn't have anything much to say. Why do people love that end to the Ripley character so much? I agree that sequence is a good piece of cinema but Alien isn't a terribly nihilistic film and Aliens certainly isn't. Why is this sacrifice so appropriate to people when Ripley's story has always been one of survival against all odds? It would make a little more thematic sense if Ripley had been fighting these monsters all her life but she's only encountered them twice, in the same year, in her timeline. She's not ready to quit yet.
I was Aliens Fan #1 until Alien 3 came out. I loved how the excitement, triumph and goofiness of Aliens matured into the atmospheric, moody, tragic brilliance that was Alien 3.
I was 17 years old when I saw Alien 3. I was still dumb enough to think Aliens was a masterpiece instead of an above average summer event movie. If anybody should have hated it I should have. But I didn't.
I love it.
My diagnosis is that Alien3 just thinks it's a masterpiece. It's moody, it's nihilistic, it's got some great art direction, but unfortunately it's boring, poorly paced and doesn't have anything much to say.
Opinion. I could say that Aliens is silly, frenetically paced and doesn't have anything much to say. And I would be just as right than you are.
Because in the end it was all she had left to give. In her time fighting these beasts she lost her ship. She lost her career. Her reputation. Her daughter. Her place in time. Her adopted child. All she had left was the aliens. She had a choice between beating them or joining them. She beat them in Alien 3. She gave up her life to save mankind from the alien threat and the threat of human greed. She died a luminous hero so much greater in death than she was in life.
Alien 3 didn't have a downer ending. It had a glorious ending. An ending that lights up the spirit and inspires one to do better for yourself, community, family, humanity. The ending of Alien 3 was inspiring.
It was a more mature ending than Aliens and a natural end to the series. A better ending than any "And they lived happily ever after..." ending could have been.
In my opinion.
If we keep having to restate that things are just our opinion it'll get pretty redundant. Since we're talking about art here, rather than science, I think we can take it as read that we're talking about opinions.
I get what you're saying about how much Ripley has sacrificed over all but you're discounting Aliens as an emotional film while using all the emotional backstory from it, which is a little unfair. The Ripley character in Alien was written to be either sex. She had no daughter, no backstory, her story was just one of survival. Then, in Aliens, she had survived so she went back for revenge. She got her revenge and at least gained a surrogate daughter. Thematically, her sacrifice is unncessary.
I would suggest that it's meant as a good start, not a magical fix.
Aliens is perfectly paced and intelligent unlike Alien3 which is nonsense and just boring and nauseating. And it's much more than just a 'summer film', other films aspire to be a fraction as good, Ripley is the great survivor and feminist heroine without becoming a bombastic Rambo.
Aliens doesn't give Ripley everything she lost back but it gives her hope. Alien 3 ruins everything, Fincher couldn't get funding for his own 'monks on a wooden planet' idea (which I actually would quite like to see) so hijacked the Alien series and ruined it, turned it into Seven in space.
Probably an argument for another thread but I think The Thing is a masterpiece, much like Alien and Aliens you have these characters in utter isolation faced with an unthinkable situation, all three terrific studies of humanity in peril rising to the occasion. And all three films have this creeping paranoia and visceral body horror
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