Is there a name for the style of the sets and costumes used in Alien 3? I really dig it, and would like to find more. As I said before, it reminds me of WH40K in a way, and also of things like the Chaos Engine. But other than “angry bald guys” I’m not sure how to describe it.
It is very Warhammer 40k, isn’t it? But, yeah, that whole aesthetic of an advanced facility left to slowly slide into disrepair under the watch of a handful of sexually frustrated, lice-ridden, fundamentalist Christian convicts is certainly unique. If there’s a word for that, I’d love to know it!
-Tom
“I’m going to re-educate the brothers.”
And there’s your conceptual problem. I’m talking about the story. You are acting as if since they are two different movies, they are somehow disconnected, and that the events of the one movie don’t immediately proceed from the other. You are saying:
1…
…+ 1 /= 2
And I’m just pasting the two parts together and removing the slash because they are a directly connected event within the storyline.
But keep it coming, corsair. One of the things I love about Alien 3 is how angry it makes people like you! :)
-Tom
Idunno - you’re the one who seems to be angry. I’d really prefer we don’t go down this route yet again.
Whoa, you just conceded that they’re two different movies! You are so close to a breakthrough.
-Tom
I really didn’t expect you to address my point. You evade it, you sneer, you dodge, you duck, but actually refute or even address my actual point? You’re so far, far away from a breakthrough. Substituting snarky remarks rather than actually engaging in an intelligent conversation might be your ego-defense mechanism of choice, but I find it kind of tedious. Not sure why I expect better of you - I always do, and I’m always disappointed. And it’s over such a trivial thing - I express an opinion that does not attack anyone’s position, does not denigrate anyone, and you take it as a personal insult. Not sure what to say to you, Tom. Not sure you are worth the effort at this point.
You know what pissed me off? The alien survives molten lead. Okay sure. But spraying it with water makes it explode? Fuck that.
No, I agree with those examples too, and they’re not inconsistent with what I was saying. Nothing can affect Star Wars/Empire/Matrix, but it’s the movies that are more on the margins - Matrix Reloaded and Return of the Jedi – those movies got the doubt because of their predecessors, but when Matrix 3 and Phantom Menace came out, it became more apparent how flawed those two earlier movies were, and how much Lucas and the Wbros were pulling nonsense out of their asses.
An excellent point. And I agree with your point about the Matrix sequels and, to a lesser extent, Jedi. I had even written that in, but I guess I edited it out of my final post.
I assumed that your point extended to undeniably great movies, as so many people try to say. In this very thread, for instance. (I’m sorry, Corsair, but even after several years of math grad school, I have no idea what you’re trying to say with that 1+1=2 thing. Or why you’d conflate the ending of one movie with the retconning done by another.)
[dickish reply deleted]
On second thought, I apologize. I was being antagonistic and that was probably uncalled for. But in my defense, your 1+1=2 comments were pretty condescending. I might have deserved it for ribbing you and being snarky about your refusal to watch Alien 3, but I should have just let it go instead of continuing to tease you. So, please accept my apology.
I actually take issue with characterizing this as retconning, Austin. Retconning would be actually changing something that was established in Aliens. But Aliens never specified what happened after Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the halves of Bishop are put into cryosleep! If Cameron had, say, appended a title card that read “And they lived happily ever after…”, then you could technically call Alien 3 a retcon. But because Cameron’s movie ends where it ends, Alien 3 is technically free to do whatever it wants to the characters.
And that’s my point. The four Alien movies are each breaks in tone, style, mood, and even perhaps genre. But I don’t think there’s any actual retconning going on, which is why I think it’s a measure of the effectiveness of Alien 3 that some people feel betrayed by the way it opens. That’s clearly intentional, and regardless of whether you like it, it’s effective.
-Tom
I, in turn, will apologize for my condescending remark, which in my defense, was because of the antagonistic way you phrased your message. Of course, it might have been just friendly counter-needling - I tend to speak to people as spoken to (see my Tim Cain (Fallout programmer) vs the edgy needling duel). I acknowledge that it is a failing on my part, and that I should try and hold myself to a higher standard. Our past exchanges may well have triggered a shorter fuse - since intent can be difficult to interpret at times on the internet, I try to give everyone a three strikes break before I figure that they really did mean to be antagonistic rather than just trying to do some friendly needling. Even when I think we both mean it as friendly needling, it always goes south.
I actually take issue with characterizing this as retconning, Austin. Retconning would be actually changing something that was established in Aliens. But Aliens never specified what happened after Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the halves of Bishop are put into cryosleep! If Cameron had, say, appended a title card that read “And they lived happily ever after…”, then you could technically call Alien 3 a retcon. But because Cameron’s movie ends where it ends, Alien 3 is technically free to do whatever it wants to the characters.
I would not call it retconning, either. That’s a rewriting of the basic premise - comic books have resorted to this rather a lot if late - you work off premises people have little access to for 75 years, that even the writers are confused about, and it’s understandable. For the Alien stories, the events of the one movie flow directly into the next from Alien, to Aliens, to Alien 3. It’s a bit more of an inherent break between Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, but still the same one following the other.
And that’s my point. The four Alien movies are each breaks in tone, style, mood, and even perhaps genre. But I don’t think there’s any actual retconning going on, which is why I think it’s a measure of the effectiveness of Alien 3 that some people feel betrayed by the way it opens. That’s clearly intentional, and regardless of whether you like it, it’s effective.
Well, you like it or you don’t, and it probably flows from there whether you think it is effective or not. They wanted to get to situation B to tell their tale in a certain fashion, with the stipulation that they had to include Ripley in the movie to get the amount of people they wanted to show up and pay for tickets. It’s not the main tale they told so much as what they had to do to get to that point that bothers me. But… just to be clear…I have utterly no problem with people who enjoy it in spite of, or even because of that.
You could argue that Cameron, by turning Ridley Scott’s beautifully constructed haunted house horror movie into a supercharged action-packed war movie, did exactly that. Granted, Aliens is a really good action flick so “ruin” isn’t the right characterization, but he did as much to change the tone of the franchise as Fincher.
That’s fair. Other than changing the tone yet again, it doesn’t really change anything.
But people seem to react to Alien 3 with the same exasperation they exhibit when you retcon their favorite character, as though you’ve kicked their dog. In that sense, I do think it’s a fair comparison.
The thing that kicked that whole sentiment off was Michael Biehn and James Cameron slamming the movie pre-release for tossing aside the characters of Newt and Hicks with all the dignity and respect usually reserved for used condoms. Now, maybe Biehn was also dragging along some luggage because at one point in Development Hell the star of the third movie was to be Hicks, and Ripley was only to truly return for the fourth, but I tend to agree with him, nevertheless. I just wouldn’t drag in retconning because the movies don’t really do that and it becomes something of a confusing comparison, even if reaction might run down parallel paths, as you note.
I suppose you could argue it, but since no one really is, I’m not sure of its relevancy.
As to Fincher, to a certain degree I absolve him one way or another. He inherited a last second mess, with decisions by committee restricting what he could do, and as far as I recall, has since disavowed the movie. So, if I avoid Alien 3, at least I have Fincher and Cameron on my side. Though I do read with interest the comments by those of you who did like it.
Yeah, it struck me a very WH40K as well – the very dystopian “Britishness” of the whole thing: the bald thugs; the calf-high boots; the towering, decaying wreckage of huge machines, the utter disregard for individual life… and the cult-like religion. The first time I saw it, my thought was that they depicted an Imperial Guard Penal Battalion quite well, almost down to having a Commisar commanding them.
And then they got ripped apart by a Genestealer.
I would definitely make the argument that Cameron’s near tone deaf entry into the Alien franchise needed some kind of correction and for me, finchers movie did that successfully on a lot of levels.
I also might argue that the opening to Alien 3 isn’t tossing away characters willy nilly. The only way an alien 3 happens is if one gets on the escape ship. It’s probably going to do what aliens do if it sees three incubators lying there defenseless. Also on the motherhood front, I find it interesting that Ripley failed that role with newt. From a narrative standpoint I don’t think we need to retread protecting a child for another film. Or as newt would say “I’m mostly extraneous to any further alien plots… mostly.”
For me, it’s a shocking opening that kind of makes narrative sense and spares everyone from mostly retelling chunks of story from Aliens. The rest feels like an interesting quasi Fincher take on Ridley Scott’s Alien.
As far as someone dying on board the escape ship after the end of Aliens, we always knew this was coming. At the end of the credits rolling of Aliens, you can clearly hear an egg opening, so it was pretty much foreshadowed that someone had to die.
Did you see this interview with Joss Whedon?
BE: Okay, and I’ve got one final one, and I promise this is it, but my editor’s as big a geek as I am (You wish, Pop Boy – Ed.), and he wanted to know how different was the final version of “Alien Resurrection” when compared to your script? I mean, was it really dramatic…?
JW: Uh…you know, it wasn’t a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending, it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines…mostly…but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. There’s actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking, because everything that they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from the script, and people assume that, if I hated it, then they’d changed the script…but it wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script; it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable. (Pauses) Good times. (Pauses again) Well, I really must go…
I disagree with Whedon and Tom so much.
Resurrection is fantastic. Yes, it is an action black humored comedy and not a horror or military film. But I love its trashy french comics aesthetics, its cast, and most of its scenes (aliens under water!). The only thing I could do without is the big hybrid baby at the end.
I love how every Alien film is completely different and all are great at what they do.
Well, until Prometheus and Covenant. Those two just suck, and in my mind, didn’t happen.
So is he essentially saying it’s everybody else’s fault?