Nice...original ALIEN trailer done Prometheus style...

[Starbreaker]

Just had the Alien Anthology imported on Blu-Ray from Amazon.UK for $25 thanks to this trailer.

 

[davejames]

"Alien: Resurrection" has a lot of little things in it that I love and feel are perfectly consistent with the rest of the series. It may only be in the Extended Edition, but there is a scene where Ripley 8 is being shown flashcards with pictures of them, and she is supposed to say what the pictures are. They show her a picture of a young girl, and she suddenly gets very sad. I thought that was a great, subtle reference to her daughter and Newt.

It's not the greatest movie ever, but I still really like it for what it is.

Yeah I think the biggest problem with the movie is simply the execution. The characters and basic setup were actually decent enough, and could have made for a scary, kickass little Alien movie in the right hands.

The problem is the director they went with couldn't generate an ounce of suspense or atmosphere, and made the whole thing just seem incredibly cheap and trashy.

 

[Saul]

I don't think the tone was ever constant. Alien was very much a horror, Aliens was more sci-fi/action and Alien 3, while a partial throwback to the first film, was more of a thriller than a horror.

Aliens was sci-fi action yes but the character remain true and there is a serious tone in the movie overall. Alien 3 I would also agree is closer to the first film as it's not as high on action as it is on tension. In all of these films though we see real people facing a unreal situation.

But 'Alien Resurrection' throws that out as characters seem more comical. Now Ripley is an Alien/human clone giving her super strength and acid blood and there is very little in common with her previous self. The characters that fight the Aliens this time are all muscular, well equipped with guns galore and it just seems they were written with the purpose of fighting the aliens. The characters are no longer believable is basically what i'm saying. They aren't people. They are something out of a computer game.

 

[scnj]

That's a fair point. And it is probably my least favourite of the four, but I tend to watch it more than Alien 3, simply because I still find Resurrection fun, but 3 is just depressing.

 

[Set Harth]

The characters that fight the Aliens this time are all muscular, well equipped with guns galore and it just seems they were written with the purpose of fighting the aliens.

Yeah, I can't see how you could ever base a successful Alien movie around something like that.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

Wow that made it look Brand New, well done.

 

[Warped9]

In 1979 I was 18 when I saw Alien with a few friends. Some women screamed and a few people left the theatre because they couldn't take it. There were a couple of moments I was watching through my fingers.

It's still a damned effective film because it relies on suspense and mood and mostly what it doesn't show you---it messes with your imagination and worst fears. There's really only one shocking and grisly scene in the whole film. It makes you edgy in the buildup and then lulls you into a sense of complacency then BAM---the chest burster. After that you're a case of nerves for the rest of the film.

It's really a very simple B-movie story done very effectively: monster comes out and starts killing everyone. It's all about technique and it's brilliantly done. And because of how it's done it's still effective and still works for anyone seeing it for the first time. Even now when I know the film well enough it can still make me edgy.

 

[stonester1]

Amazing production values, well written characters, and fantastic mood establishment and manipulation. Deceptively simple ingredients all masterfully executed.

 

[Set Harth]

I thought that was a great, subtle reference to her daughter and Newt.

The reference to Newt seems kind of overt.

 

[Destructor]

I do enjoy Alien3 these days, mainly because it's David Fincher's first film and I'm a big fan. The huge problem with it, for me, is that it shat all over the main story of Aliens. Aliens is a film about a woman reclaiming her motherhood. Killing Newt in the first few seconds in service of an inferior story shits all over that theme and it does not have the right to do that. (oddly enough, T3 pulls the exact same trick with the theme of T2)

I didn't much like Alien3 until Alien: Resurrection came out. It suddenly looked a lot better by comparison.

 

[Saul]

^ James Cameron reportedly hated Alien 3 but liked T3.

Terminator 3 & Alien 5: James Cameron recently talked with BBC1 and revealed he's very happy with how Terminator 3 ended up: "In one word : Great. There was a small part of me that hoped it wasn't good - but another part of me hope'd it succeeded. And it did. And I'm so glad it did. Jonathon's made a great movie. Arnold's in great form. I really like what he's done with it". If he had done it, would he have handled it differently: "Yes. That's only natural. I mightn't have structrued it the same, nor may I have ended it the same way - but coming in where he has, such a hard thing to do, and I give Jonathan points for it".
This isn't a man whose going to whitewash his opinion either, take for example his reaction to "Alien 3" - "Hated it. Simple as that. I hated what they did.... I couldn't stand Alien 3 - how they could just go in there and kill off all these great characters we introduced in aliens, and the correlation between mother and daughter. It stunk, but hopefully I'll get a chance to rectify all that". You mean the talk about him being tied to "Alien 5" is true? "To an extent. yes. We're looking at doing another one. Something similiar to what we did with Aliens. A bunch of great characters, and of course Sigourney. I've even discussed the possibility of putting him [Arnold Schwarzenegger] into the Alien movie".

Would have loved to have seen his Alien 5. F**k Avatar.

 

[davejames]

Well I still get the impression Cameron was just being kind when he complimented T3 back then, considering what a respected director Mostow is.

Yeah it's a fun guilty pleasure and a decent little action movie, but I'm sure he could still see (along with the rest of us) that there wasn't much going on storywise, and that it was basically just a thin, lightweight rehash of T2.

 

[Reverend]

As it happens I was just last night watching Aliens with the commentary on and at one point I recall Cameron saying that he liked what Fincher did in terms of cinematography, but he (quite understandably) hated what was done story-wise. Which is pretty much how I feel about it. In some ways, Alien 3 in my favourite of the four (even before the workprint edition). Indeed, for me the first three are very close in terms of quality and appeal. The fact that they're very different from each other in terms of tone and style probably helps.

As for T3, I thought it was complete rubbish myself...at least until that ending scene. Saved the whole movie IMO.