Aliens movies

[Allyn Gibson]

Alien 3 has a great ending. I was very moved by Ripley's heroic sacrifice, and nothing the haters say can ever change that.

QFT.

Alien 3 has some genuinely moving emotional moments, more than the other films put together, I'd say.

The cremation scene is extremely powerful, with the intercuts between the falling bodies, the death of the dog and the birth of the alien, and Charles S. Dutton's benediction. This scene has moved me to tears.

Then, Ripley's plunge into the cauldron. I find that scene uplifting, as even in her final act she still fights against the uncaring universe.

I cannot think of a comparable scene in the other films that hits in quite the same way as these two do.

 

[Anwar]

The Thing is superb, though some characters are undeveloped and it seems at points they just arbitrarily decided who was and wasn't the Thing. Still great though.

As opposed to arbitrarily deciding the Aliens can do whatever they need to do?

I suppose we can fanwank it that the Thing copies peoples' own health problems when it copies them (which explains why one of the guys had a heart attack moments before being revealed as a Thing).

I LOVED the ambiguous ending though.

 

[saturn5]

The Thing is superb, though some characters are undeveloped and it seems at points they just arbitrarily decided who was and wasn't the Thing. Still great though.

As opposed to arbitrarily deciding the Aliens can do whatever they need to do?

I suppose we can fanwank it that the Thing copies peoples' own health problems when it copies them (which explains why one of the guys had a heart attack moments before being revealed as a Thing).

I LOVED the ambiguous ending though.

Again, would have less problem with Ripley sacrificing herself at the end of 3 if everyone else hadn't died too. 3 is definitely the exception, totally at odds with Alien and Aliens and the later movies learnt from it's mistakes.
Although it's not a great film glad we had Alien 4, Ripley deserved her happy ending
Now personally I always thought Norris was being slowly taken over by the Thing (as Windows told MacCready could happen) and that his 'heart attack' was the moment it assumed full control of him. On the other hand it's possible that people who are The Thing don't KNOW they are the thing which is why Palmer makes his famous 'kidding me' remark but later turns out to be The Thing in the blood test scene, maybe it was happy to let Norris act normally including his heart attack and only revealed itself when it thought it was under attack from the defibrilator?

 

[Pauln6]

Please. If you hate Aliens' so-called "Disney ending" so much you must hate it in Alien when Ripley goes back for the cat? Who then survives with her? I expect you'll say something like "she was trying to claw back a vestige of all that she had lost to the alien" but, frankly, Alien has a vaguely positive ending, when you include Jones. Maybe not quite so positive as the second movie, but of the four, Alien 3 is the odd one out, not Aliens (although Alien: Resurrection is total balls, whereas I'm just not that keen on Alien 3 compared to the first two - it's still a fairly good movie on it's own terms).

The opening scene ruined the dramatic tension of 3. It's hard to care whether the alien eats a bunch of scumbag convicts and Ripley is going to die anyway. Hicks and Newt would have made me care.

Credit where credit is due though, I was genuinely psyched to see if they caught her before she topped herself at the end.

 

[Reverend]

I rather think the point was that the scumbag convicts managed to find some semblance of redemption in sacrificing themselves to kill that thing.
I suppose I'm a sucker for films that don't have "happy endings" so I did like how they ended Alien 3. I don't feel the need to be comforted in a bleak, oppressive horror film.

As for the beginning, as much as I like the film, as I said before it's horribly contrived and there's no denying that none of it makes any sense.
A person can say "there's no proof eggs only open when near people" all you like but in all of the films, every single time an egg has opened it's been right next to someone. There's just no other logical answer, I mean looking at it from the other direction, why exactly would an egg open without a person there? Facehuggers die off pretty fast so they have to be sure there's something there to impregnate before hatching. Do you think that first egg sat in that hold for thousands of years before randomly hatching, which just by pure coincidence happened to coincide with Cain sticking his face right next to it? Please.

 

[Anwar]

There was that blue mist down there, and the eggs only started to respond after he broke through them. That mist could have been keeping them "asleep" until Kane broke through it (and yes, while this isn't 100% provable it isn't UNPROVABLE either).

Hell, you can even rationalize it that the humming a vibrations of the engines and machinery are what woke up the egg in A3 (since all other eggs have never been on a moving starship).

 

[Harvey]

If breaking the mist woke up the eggs, why was it that only one of them hatched? Why were there more eggs around to be discovered by the colonists decades later in Aliens?

 

[Anwar]

The same reason that Newt's mom was able to go down into the same room Newt's dad got facehugged in, get him out, and yet come out a-okay.

OR

Kane broke the mist over that one egg the most out of all of them, which increased likelihood of it opening. If he had walked around and dispelled the mist around them as much, they probably all would've opened.

 

[Harvey]

Since we have no idea what happened to Newt's parents on the derelict (except that her father was impregnated with a facehugger), it's hard to draw any conclusion there.

Honestly, the beginning of Alien 3 is the weakest part of the film. It only allows for the alien to get on the Sulaco through a serious ret-con, and then proceeds to kill Hicks, Newt, and Bishop off-screen. At least Bishop gets a death scene of sorts later, but the other two deaths are just a dramatic waste.

Of course, if you don't care for Aliens, I'm sure it strikes you with less of a feeling that it's a waste and more of a feeling of 'good riddance.'

 

[RoJoHen]

Of course, if you don't care for Aliens, I'm sure it strikes you with less of a feeling that it's a waste and more of a feeling of 'good riddance.'

I was struck more with feelings of "Geez, that sucks."

These movies were never about Newt or Hicks. They're about Ripley. If the people she loves dies, it definitely sucks for her, but I couldn't care less about them as characters.

 

[SilentP]

There was that blue mist down there, and the eggs only started to respond after he broke through them. That mist could have been keeping them "asleep" until Kane broke through it (and yes, while this isn't 100% provable it isn't UNPROVABLE either).

I always thought the blue 'mist' was meant to be a stasis field of sorts, are there people who think that it wasn't?

 

[DonIago]

I don't think I ever thought that....

 

[Pauln6]

These movies were never about Newt or Hicks. They're about Ripley. If the people she loves dies, it definitely sucks for her, but I couldn't care less about them as characters.

Only because the writers decided to make them solely about Ripley. I always thought they were about characters trying to survive against the aliens - Ripley just happened to be a survivor.

I would have been as happy if they'd moved on to a new set of characters (as long as they don't make them as emotionally shallow as the AvP movies).

 

[SilentP]

I don't think I ever thought that....

Fair enough. Maybe it was just my mind reconciling the fact that the eggs were still 'fresh' even after a time period long enough for the 'Pilot' to become fossilised and the fact the blue mist seemed to be somewhat technological in base (or rather the blue line that Kane broke through).

...come to think of it, wonder what happened to the Xenomorph that burst out of the Pilot, that thing must have been huge

 

[Teelie]

What burst from the Pilot might have been the Queen. We honestly don't know where the Pilot got impregnated and whether his "cargo" was there before or after he died. And we also do not know the shelf life of an egg either. The xeno's themselves seem to be able to endure a long hybernation cycle, judging from AVP's Queen (though if you choose to ignore the movie, I wouldn't hold it against you).

The blue mist also had a noise associated with it but until the prequel movie comes out and presumably explains it, we won't know what it's involvement was.

 

[LitmusDragon]

I always thought the blue 'mist' was meant to be a stasis field of sorts, are there people who think that it wasn't?

I always thought this too.

If you look at the layout of the room, it's like a gigantic cargo hold, with eggs spaced evenly around. I always got the impression that the aliens were some kind of biological weapon being transported by the space jockeys, and then they got loose and the ship crashed and we had the scenario we saw in Alien.

I guess we'll find out in the prequel. (Though, I have a sneaking suspicion we'll barely even see the jockeys in the prequel)

 

[DonIago]

Hm. I'll qualify my earlier statement by saying I've only seen the beginning of Alien once, and not recently. Seeing it again might alter my feelings on the matter.

 

[saturn5]

Sure they're Ripley's films but that doesn't mean you have to arbitarily kill off everyone else! (and thankfully Alien 4 doesn't, Ripley walks off into the susnst with her new family)I always thought the characters in AvP and AvP;R were ok, I mean at least you could tell them apart. Wish we could have seen the deleted scene in AvP;R where the 'Ripley' character takes on the bugs with the National Guards .50 cal.

The machinery activating the eggs idea isn't sound, we've seen them in the reactor and exposed to the machinery in AvP etc I think they can only be activated by sensing organic movement nearby (the adult versions also sensitive to movement as they have no eyes).

Blue mist? I always figured it was part of the way the derelict transported them or it was some kind of residue from the ships engine system?

Maybe Newt's dad found a single egg in a different area of the ship? Remember it appears to have been damaged since the Nostromo

 

[Tulin]

Personally I don't take too much as gospel from the AVP films and AVP:R just did not happen.

 

[Anwar]

The alien that burst out of the Jockey wandered outside the ship after it took over the ship (even notice how the Hives look like the inside of the Jockey ship? The ship was "Hived" as well). It froze to death and fossilized into one of the hills Dallas and co walked by on their way to the ship. This was cut from the movie but exists as some stills on the net.