Ha, that’s exactly why I rewatched the movies. Great game, isn’t it?
-Tom
Alien is great. Aliens is one of my favorite movies of all time, definitely in my top 5. Everything else ‘Alien’ since then is shit.
The game is great, although I was one of “many” customers with missing cards! But Upper Deck customer support finally sent me replacements, so everything is fine now… (I thought Legendary was a hard game until I started playing Shadowrun Crossfire, nowadays I come back to Legendary for relaxation)…
Really my biggest issue with Alien 3 is the damned alien in the composite shots. It’s sooooooooooo bad. Like… Kevin Sorbo Hercules effects bad, only this is supposedly a major motion picture with presumably a budget larger than a schlocky tv show.
I’ve never seen the re-whatever, so that might make it more enjoyable, but that stupid green-screen-what-ever-the-fuck alien will likely still be there.
Yeah, it’s very bad. There are shots where they use practical effects for the alien and it looks great.
The practical effects are great, which just makes the other shots that much more horrific when they appear.
I remember for me Alien was the first movie that charged the outrageous ticket price of $5.00 . Prices were way out of control.
Funny thing is, $5 in 1979 is the same as $16.17 today. I’d be pretty upset to see that as a ticket price, as well.
He hated the Aliens in IV, “It looks like it is made of shit!” whereas his aliens are sexual and sensual creatures.
I would love see the Vincent Ward version of Alien 3. Monks? On an artificial planetoidmade of wood crafted in a medieval style? That’s stunningly original idea. No wonder its touted as one of the greatest sci-fi movies never made. (qt3 friendly link)
What makes it cool for me, is that they revealed just enough that it was intriguing. An unsatisfactory explanation would have ruined even that much. Up till Prometheus, the Alien movies were pretty much cookie cutter. Prometheus doesn’t ditch the mold, but gives it a substance that it lacked up to that point. The ancient alien aspect was done extremely well, and made for a great movie.
Alien Resurrection is the best Alien film as they stand in today’s light, for me. At least it wasn’t as bland as 3 and hasn’t aged anywhere near as badly as 1 and 2. Try and watch the original Predator, to be able to sit through that requires a thick pair of rose coloured glasses. 1 and 2 are almost as bad, but at least they had some semblence of story.
I…you…head explodes.
There are plenty of critical comments you can make about the various Alien movies, but I’ve never heard anyone accusing any one of them of being “cookie cutter”! Every single one of them, for better or worse, breaks tradition with the previous one.
As for Prometheus, it’s ridiculous to me that Ridley Scott decided to make a space Jesus movie about the space jockeys. Remember the scene in The Exorcist when Ellen Burstyn hears snarling coming from the attic? Remember how much scarier it was that the snarling was never explained? Prometheus is the equivalent of William Freidkin deciding 30+ years later to make a movie about what was in the attic.
-Tom
An Alien movie involves the aliens being awakened in some way, then getting out of control, taking over and some people try to escape only all die except Ripley (Alien (Ripley), Aliens (Ripley), Aliens 3 (Ripley in effect for Resurrection, despite Weaver forcing them to kill her off), Alien Resurrection (Ripley, android doesn’t count)). The difference is whatever icing they glued the cookies together with, with the lowest point being Alien 3 where they went cheap on the ingredients.
To you, Tom, yes. Because you didn’t like Prometheus, and anyone who valued the Exorcist experience in it’s time, wouldn’t like a ill-conceived attic movie. But the analogy falls flat unless the reader also didn’t appreciate Prometheus. Attics and ancient aliens are not the same thing. To me your analogy seems like you may as well say that Marvel Agents of Shield for instance, should freeze it’s storyline because if it goes any further along it, it will undermine the storyline that has already been revealed.
The more times I watch Prometheus, the more I like it. The android with the agenda. The desperate old man. The compelling setting, haunted ruins, and the aliens. The drones that map the place. The ancient astronaut. The disdain. The surviving Ripley equivalent. The unanswered questions. Yes, even though it (to me) added a fascinating depth to the Alien universe, it still stuck to the Alien cookie cutter mold. It just made it secondary for a change, and therefore made it better than the Alien franchise has been for a long time. And it didn’t answer anything, it just left further questions. I can’t imagine they could make a sequel to Prometheus that could be as good it was. And this Alien movie will age well, as the years pass, I claim it and Resurrection will be the only two which remain watchable.
I’m sorry you lack appreciation for what is to me, one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade. I’d put Edge of Tomorrow up there with it.
You’re missing the point. There was no reason to make a movie about the space jockey backstory. For Ridley Scott to think that was what Alien fans wanted, much less whether that was even a solid hook for a movie, just shows how he’s out of touch with the guy who made Alien back in 1979.
-Tom
Can I just say that this is a very underappreciated movie, especially for the ensemble banter (the plot itself is rote fantasy stuff) which I assume was Whedon’s work, mostly.
demagogue -
Minor quibble: Newt and Hicks also survived Aliens (the film). Sure, their characters were announced dead later on in Aliens 3, but that wasn’t a part of Aliens.
First, space Jesus is the best kind of Jesus.
Beyond that, I kind of wanted to know more about the space jockey. We know other alien species exist in that universe, in the form of the xenomorphs, but we never got to learn about the intelligent aliens, which interested me.
Yep. That’s why you should always leave some dragons on the map.
Or make the map bigger. But what do I know? I liked Resurrection.
I need to check out that alternate edit for 3. I should have that blu ray set, I just never popped it in.
It’s nice to hear from some Alien 3 apologists out there. I’ve always felt that for my money, Fincher’s film was the second best Alien film out there. I get why people love Aliens, but a lot of those reasons are why I put it below 3. I really didn’t like 4, but I’m also not a universal Whedon fan so having his name attached to shit doesn’t make me respond one way or the other.