Still refuse to watch Aliens 3. The premise just basically pissed away everything that happened in Aliens - tag onto the end of Aliens the start of Alien 3, and that’s the real ending to Aliens. So, it doesn’t exist for me - just one director completely destroying what the previous guy did. Cameron didn’t do that to Ridley. As to Alien Resurrection - there’s some bits and pieces that are intriguing, but all in all a train wreck of disparate parts.
Prometheus. Somewhere in there there could have been a good story. I’m not sure Ridley is always a good judge of that, and LindeLost, well, my opinion is summed up in my spelling of his name. But still, that’s the problem - I had utterly no expectations on Resurrection, and knew enough about 3 to know I despised its concept from the word go. But Prometheus I had higher hopes for.
For me the start of Alien 3 was so shocking. I had literally just seen Alien and Aliens for the first time, the night before Alien 3 came out in the theater, in preparation for going to see the third movie the next day. My brother rented both movies for me, and we watched them back to back. They were both excellent for different reasons, and I was so pumped to go see the third movie the next day on opening day. And like Corsair said above, it felt like it pissed away everything that happened in the previous movie right at the start of Alien 3. And I think I was just sitting there in shellshock in the rest of the movie. It was only years later when I watched Alien 3 again did I realize it wasn’t that bad. I had just gone about it poorly by watching them back-to-back. It’s a movie meant to be seen years later.
I like Alien 3 quite a bit, but there’s certainly no shame in feeling differently. It is, after all, an Alan Smithee film, so even Fincher wasn’t willing to own it.
I watched 1-4 on Bluray recently and while the first two are still very much my favorites, I did enjoy watching 3 and I think it’s pretty underrated. The CG alien is cringe-worthy at times, but the rest isn’t bad. I thought most of the performances were fantastic, and the design, cinematography, and music are all wonderful.
Resurrection, on the other hand, is not good. I like Ron Perlman and his character (Hey! I’m not the mechanic here, ironsides! I mostly just hurt people!), but his might be the only one. Brad Dourif is completely wasted, along with most of the other cast. I also didn’t like the premise, which only got dumber as the movie progressed before going completely off the rails at the end.
Wow I had no idea they used a puppet. Though I guess it makes sense since when I saw it I thought it looked like it had been filmed against a blue screen and inserted onto the film. It just looks painted on the screen without proper lighting and shadowing.
I could have sworn he did. Apparently I am wrong. In any case, it was edited by the studio without his involvement and he has publically disparaged it. Also, there’s a reason it’s the “Assembly Cut” and not a Director’s Cut. I.e., Fincher did not come back and produce that cut either.
Incidentally, I went back to my Anthology bluray to try and prove myself correct (which failed) and man, that thing is cream of the crop in terms of collector sets.
I don’t understand this mindset. If you don’t want to see a movie, that’s certainly your prerogative. But to act as if it will somehow invalidate another movie? Ridiculous. Aliens doesn’t stop existing when you watch Alien 3 anymore than Alien stops existing when you watch Aliens.
The remarkable thing about this series is how each movie is its own creation, offering a unique perspective, tone, and style. The opening of Alien 3 is a punch to the gut, exactly as the director – and writer, and studio! – intended to set the tone for this unique story. The fact that it makes some people gnash their teeth in fury is just a sign that they’re doing it right.
But to act as if it will somehow invalidate another movie? Ridiculous. Aliens doesn’t stop existing when you watch Alien 3 anymore than Alien stops existing when you watch Aliens.
It has to do with the concept of an ongoing canon underlying a series of movies. Alien 3 doesn’t make Aliens go away, but it does severely alter the implications of Aliens’s ending. Aliens ends with Newt, Ripley, and Hicks surviving their ordeal and forming a sort of impromptu nuclear family. If you watch those final scenes thinking that Newt and Hicks are ‘actually’ going to die before they wake up, it affects their impact.
I think perhaps the mature thing is to look at each movie as a discrete entity or artwork, but there is a part of me, however childish or fanboyish, that still thinks of things in terms of ‘no, Newt didn’t die!’ and that part of me is bothered by Alien 3. And anyway part of the appeal of serials, whether it be Alien or Game of Thrones, is that we seem to invest emotionally in the long-term destinies of the characters.
It’s like that Spider Man comic arc that revealed ‘he was a clone all along!’ It doesn’t rewrite the earlier comics, but if you subscribe to the mindset that each official comic book release is canon and therefore ‘actually’ happened, then it makes it hard to read the earlier ones in the same way… (I chose this example because of your deep and abiding love of comic books, Tom.)
Well, if we’re looking at in terms of the evolution of the franchise, what Alien 3 did was a necessary course correction that undid the harm Cameron’s feel-good nonsense did to the cold, merciless universe established by Alien.
Sequels can definitely diminish prior installments, but only when they’re by the same creators, as you realize that you read too much into their prior movies. Matrix 3 significantly worsened Matrix 2, for instance, and Phantom Menace almost rendered Return of the Jedi unwatchable.
That’s not a quibble. Aliens would be a very different movie if Newt had not survived (Hicks could have died, but since Riply spent the final stages of the movie in a continuous crowning moment of awesome that would have diminished it a little bit). Even in the theatrical cut the motherhood-theme is front and center in the movie.
You are incorrect on the survivor count of every alien movie except Alien. That’s quite impressive.
The difference is whatever icing they glued the cookies together with
At this level of abstraction you are attempting to make this argument we are talking about every movie ever.
I in turn don’t see why 1+1 = 2 confuses you. I don’t see how a direct continuation of the events of the previous movie are completely disconnected. I can understand shrugging and saying you are good with it (it’s not like I didn’t like Reservoir Dogs where literally every single character dies), or that you appreciate the story told regardless of the starting action, but to act like 1+1 doesn’t equal 2? Ridiculous.
I don’t claim that Aliens stops existing because of Alien 3 (and if you think I do, I can see the problem you may have with the whole math thing), it’s that the ending is essentially invalidated. They don’t win and get away. They think they get away, but don’t and lose.
The remarkable thing about this series is how each movie is its own creation, offering a unique perspective, tone, and style. The opening of Alien 3 is a punch to the gut, exactly as the director – and writer, and studio! – intended to set the tone for this unique story. The fact that it makes some people gnash their teeth in fury is just a sign that they’re doing it right.
Or a really, really bad decision. It’s not the different tone and style that bothers me, it’s the shitting on the previous ending and essentially rewriting it.
Because that’s not the story they wanted to tell (unless the suits basically intervened and forced the storytellers to tell a different story from the one they intended, but that’s a different…story).
James Cameron. If Cameron wanted ending B rather than ending A, he would have written ending B. Or written/directed movie B. Kinda self-evident, sorta like one plus one equals…but I presume that Pogue was just having some fun with his statement.
Well sure, I’m usually having a little fun with my posts but I guess what I’m getting at is, the two movies don’t really reflect on each other. They’re part of the same story of course, but the deaths of Newt and Hicks in 3 don’t take anything away from what they accomplished in Aliens. You are of course free to disavow 3 and assume everyone moved to space suburbia after they made it back to civilization rather than died ignominiously. It’s all the same.
And yet midichlorians have no effect on my enjoyment of Star Wars or Empire, and Neo’s Jesus complex has no effect on the brilliance of the first Matrix movie.
It’s ironic that the very series you mention also serve as counterexamples if we look at the other movies, at least for some people.
As self-evident as the fact that James Cameron didn’t write or direct Alien 3? For a guy who keeps citing pre-schooler math, you sure are confused about where one movie ends and another begins.
But keep it coming, corsair. One of the things I love about Alien 3 is how angry it makes people like you! :)
