Alien 3 could have been great if they just fixed a couple things: 1) Don’t kill Newt and Hicks. Hicks would have been a great character to have around because he could, possibly, organize the prisoners into some sort of military unit, once they became afraid enough. Newt dying was just cruel. 2) Lose the shitty CGI alien. Go back to pure practical effects.
I honestly didn’t think 3 was all that bad of a movie, otherwise. It was still nicely creepy, just hated any scene with the CGI alien in it. It looks so bad.
The genius of Hudson’s character is that not only is he comic relief, but he also provides the audience a cue for just how fucking scary this situation is. His lines help amp up the tension.
Few actors could pull off what Bill Paxton does in that role.
Yeah I remember that scene from watching it on TV when I was a kid. Years later when we rented the movie, my friends thought I was crazy/lying/confused when I was going on about it and it didn’t show up.
Fun fact: The actress who plays Vazquez also played the Irish mom who calmed her children to sleep as the Titanic was sinking.
I had heard the lines and seen scenes from Aliens so many times throughout my life that it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized I hadn’t ever actually seen the movie. (Now I have.)
I think I need to rewatch 3 and 4. I know 2 front to back because it’s such and excellent film, though I’ve never watched the Special Edition. But you’re making 4 sound better than I remember, and 3 worse.
I don’t think 3 is all that bad, it just doesn’t feel like an Aliens movie to me. It’s so different in tone, style - even the performances are weird and feel like they’re in a different universe. I know this sounds like an odd thing to say given how different in tone Aliens is from Alien, but there you have it. I don’t even think of Alien 3 as being part of the canon.
4 I don’t remember enough about to comment on. All I remember of it was that it seemed to be an exercise in art direction more than a movie. It had Ron Perlman, didn’t it? It couldn’t be all bad. I should rewatch it.
Well, if you like the series it’s definitely worth going to the latest blu ray version for the comparisons. You can watch 3 go off the rails in excruciating detail from the way it was intended to be, and how all of the cool little details and possibilities get swallowed up in the greater burden of advancing the franchise along a set path determined by assholes (and, possibly, actors…I blame the continued focus on Weaver for a lot of the problems in that film). I’d say there’s a reason that Fincher is the only one of the directors who refuses to associate with the franchise in any way since, and it’s tough to blame him for it when you look at all of the angles.
The only good thing from 4 is the proto-Firefly crew. From a historical perspective, the rest of the film is shit in comparison to the others.
I still like 3 as a stand alone movie, but i admit when it came out I was pretty pissed that it misfired on all the “lore”.
I still watch Alien and Aliens anytime I notice they are on. As everyone mentioned above it is all the little things that make the second one great. The attention to details on LV 426 are incredible.
The first one still holds the distinction in my life as the only film to give me nightmares. That end run to the shuttle gives me the willies even now, at 10 years old it was unbearable for a Star Wars kid…all Aliens are friendly right? Uh…no.
Cameron’s film was like revenge for me against those nightmare givers…well, until it all goes bad.
It’s the attention to detail, like the graffiti on the weapons and all of those little touches, that really do it for me, I think. It’s one of the things that makes Blade Runner such an outstanding movie as well, and to a lesser extent it was there in Alien too. I still think Ridley Scott is probably the king of that kind of stuff (having been a former art director), but Cameron does a good job with that sort of thing as well, and I don’t think he does it better anywhere than in Aliens.
