"Aliens" : Some nice effects, but actually kind've a crap film.

You want bad, watch the third one. I always like to point out the moment when the first act ends and the third act begins.

because it's one of the best-directed action movies i've ever seen

See, that's just it:
Alien = a horror film
Aliens = stoopid action movie

No, ass-kicking action movie. If you don't like actions movies, we can't help you.

and as an action movie, one of the best of its kind!

Yeah, I guess that is a good scene. But, it's only one scene.

Also, what up? One beast goes slam-dancing all around the Nostromo without so much as a fuckin' scratch in the first one, meanwhile in this one, they drop like flies. Inconsistent!

No, ass-kicking action movie. If you don't like actions movies, we can't help you.

Bad writing is bad writing, regardless of genre, and that's what damns this film.

Why couldn't Tom Skerrit have survived the first one instead of Ripley? (I'll tellya why: because no one wanted to see Tom Skerrit in his underwear fight the beast at the end).

sigourney also got significantly LESS hot from aliens on. before, she was DEFINITELY hit-able.

Ah, but I don't consider this a good action movie. i consider it, unfortunately, a rather stoopid action movie.

and that scene i mentioned was an example, one of many!

also if you force me to be a nerd, they didn't have big guns in the first ones (the crew of the nostromo were just working joes, not heavily-armed marines)

(xxp)

this line is like a rejected billy corgan lyric, or something.

Alex, you're making totally irrelevant points

I'm just making observations, Harold, don't get your pants wet.

totally irrelevant, but m night shamalyan (or whatever the fuck his name is) is such a putz.

Ok. But I still think your arguments are silly given the topic at hand. An action movie is this: establishment of premise. Build. Payoff. That's it, man. "Writing"? Pfft. I don't understand what it is you're expecting of this movie, or why.

yeah but she allows sigourney to express her maternal ass-kicking instincts when she fights the ALIEN MOTHER.

Well-executed formula -- I agree. I think Alex is objecting to character development and dialogue.

Alex OTM. I love Alien but the rest are rubbish. Whenever I say I don't like Aliens people always go "But it's got cool guns". Yeah, well.

Oh, I've seen it properly before (in a theatre, actually). And yes, TV doesn't do justice to many films. I just don't think it's that well written. It's predecessor, meanwhile, was.

I don't understand what it is you're expecting of this movie, or why.

Well, I just don't think, in retrospect, it lives up to the promise of the first one.

I think Alex is objecting to character development and dialogue.

....or lack of it.

By the way, there are certainly worse films out there, for what it's worth.

the sexual subtexts are easily the best thing about the alien movies - why else have giger design the shit? - hell, and scifi and horror movies in general, too, as opposed to scifi and horror novels - and the 2nd movie expands on those subtexts in a way that "alien: resurrection" just don't (now there's a shit movie).

I would argue that it's a great deal more difficult to make an effectively scary, suspenseful horror film than an action movie (wherein all you really need to please certain folks, as noted, are "cool guns").

Was HR Giger involved with the films that followed the second one?

Also, vahid OTM.

S: the theatrical cut
D: *only* being able to have the extended cut on DVD for a long time, but that's thankfully now corrected

Alien and Aliens are different takes on standard tropes that were successful precisely Scott and crew on the one hand and Cameron and crew on the other were able to hotwire them into something which was so ridiculously successful -- commercially and in terms of effective filmmaking -- that each in their own single-handedly established a slew of new cliches. Which may seem a strange thing to credit them for, but *how* many films since then have essentially tried to be one or the other, borrowing set pieces, concepts, dialogue practically and more? And none are nearly as good as these two.

that's pretty much the subtext of EVERY ilxor post you've ever written, alex!

:-)

Brilliantly parodied in the MST3K movie. So I will have nothing said against the original.

It's certainly the best-*looking*.

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/alien.html

Because he's a COOL ROBOT!

Oh, there's no talking to you.

"ALIEN 3 is one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen. It is a triumph of art direction and a disaster of screenwriting, and the eyes appreciate it more than the mind. Watching it in the moment, we are absorbed. After it's over, we are disappointed, because what actually happens in the movie is so much less interesting than where it happens and how it looks while it's happening."

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/alien_20.html

The fat man nails it!

you can't tell me those flamethrowers weren't useful

http://www.planetavp.com/amr/films/a2/carriehennat22.jpg

Doesn't this picture make you just want to root for the aliens?

Of course they were useful. Flame-throwers are damn useful tools. Hell, I could certainly use one right now. But why would a space-age forklift come equipped with one? That's my question.

(Winona is at her loveliest in that movie, though.)

Space-age palette wrapping is a motherfucker.

I would argue that it's a great deal more difficult to make an effectively scary, suspenseful horror film than an action movie (wherein all you really need to please certain folks, as noted, are "cool guns").

I would argue that that's bollocks. While we're being reductive, we could just as easily boil horror movies down to "sexual guilt." Formulas are formulas, and they exist because they work on a base level. Your base level may be different than mine, but I wouldn't hold horror movies up as a higher art then action movies. In fact, just typing that seemed silly to me. Really... come on.

Then there's this:

Seems to me, at least, the first one was genuinely suspenseful and NOT FOR EVERYONE , whereas this one went for the wider audience buck. That seems kinda crass to me.

Alien was the third highest-grossing movie of 1979, right between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Muppet Movie. Don't argue that the second movie sold out. DON'T TRY IT.

http://www.fact-index.com/1/19/1979_in_film.html#Top%20Grossing%20Films%20of%201979

My point remains the same.

Aliens = Flimsy, cliche-ridden, poorly patched together whizz-bang blam-o action pic designed to sell popcorn. Bring the kids, hey, it'll be fun!

I remember sitting infront of a father who brought his FIVE YEAR OLD SON to "Natural Born Killers". WHAT PART OF THE TITLE, "NATURAL BORN KILLERS", MADE YOU THINK THIS FILM WAS SUITABLE FOR YOUR FIVE-YEAR OLD?

The ads for "Aliens" claim that this movie will frighten you as few movies have, and, for once, the ads don't lie. The movie is so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy?

It has been a week since I saw it, so the emotions have faded a little, leaving with me an appreciation of the movie's technical qualities. But when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence. This is not the kind of movie where it means anything to say you "enjoyed" it. ..

I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.

If it does this to a man who has seen 20,000 movies, what will it do to the average filmgoer? Or to CHILDREN?

Which made these (released prior to the second film) even more mysterious:

ihttp://www.toyzine.com/magazine/articles/alien/alien+box_lg.jpg

I'm sorry, but I'm a little confused. You still seem to be saying that the first Alien movie was "not for everyone," because... it's horror by genre? And the second one was more for... fun? The second movie is scarier and more traumatizing in many ways.

The first film was more of a classic horror film written with a degree of sophistication and unflinching, realistic gore (relatively speaking) that was inarguably not child friendly. The second one, though still violent and gorey, reads more like a western shoot'em up. It's not exactly Spongbob Squarepants but it's easier on the sense than the first one.

http://www.filmfodder.com/movies/reviews/alien/images/alien.jpg

I don't think this is a particularly good argument, but I must pause to say that I like the first film better, easily. I like the pacing and the dialogue better. I like the tone better. I just don't think that that's a good jumping-off point to argue that the second film is bad.

If it does this to a man who has seen 20,000 movies, what will it do to the average filmgoer?

Answer: thrill the shit out of them.

(also, Newt was traumatised,FFS. What were you expecting, Alex, some nice, likeable, well-adjusted kid? Of course she wasn't fucking likeable...)

The actress who plays vasquez, I forget what she's called, she was in "near dark" and IIRC terminator 2 as well? K-ROWR!!!

foolish elvens.

you can't say that thats a cliche can you?

The trouble is films since Aliens have robbed it to fuck and now admittedly watching it again it some parts seem cliched but you have to realise it was unique at the time and was, and remains to be, an absoloute classic

Anyway:
Alien: claustrophobic atmosphere, good script, suspense, nasty shocks, superb design

Aliens: Suspense, nasty shocks, superb design and GUNS GUNS GUNS! LOTSA GUNS!

I declare a tie.

Alien 3 is underrated, by the way.

haha xpost

Alien: haven't seen it! wtf
Aliens: That's the clumsiest exoskeleton I've ever seen, HOMO SNAPIES U HAVE NO CHANCE 2 SURVIVE MAKE UR TIME, also kind of an injustice to the Aliens that they keep getting killed so easily, yes I understand the guns are big but seriously people, this is the most dangerous species in the galaxy, they don't need numbers to win
Alien 3: I have tried to watch this like 5 times and have been unable to figure out what is going on enough to bother sitting through the giger cave bukkake
Alien Resurrection: Am I the only person who thinks this would have been better standalone, without trying to tie in to the Alien franchise? Ron Perlman!!! Whoop

Heavens! This is the best of the lot.

OTM.

i can't really participate in this thread objectively, as i'm an alien/aliens obsessive. but Alex, you ARE SO FUCKING WRONG!

ripley's character "humorless and wooden"? echhh. she is traumatized, she narrowly escaped being killed by a space monster. she is the only one who realizes how much of a threat the alien really represents, and she is exasperated by the marines and the company's incompetence. to her this is serious shit, the stakes are just too high if the aliens spread. and i think sigourney weaver nails this perfectly.

newt annoying? i've always thought that newt was one of the least annoying child characters in a movie like this. she doesn't even have that many lines!

btw everybody I saw Sigourney at the Belmont last year and she's still SUPREMELY BEAUTIFUL at like 56 or whatever.

No I'm not, actually. You're just a fanboy in denial.

she doesn't even have that many lines!

One doesn't need lots of lines to be annoying.

why did i become a fanboy in the first place then, hmm?

"But why would a space-age forklift come equipped with one?"

welding?

I was about to say! Tom, trust me, it's worth it.

Perhaps, like I was, you were intrigued by the first film. Unlike me, however, your blind devotion to the promise of the first one makes you overlook the flaws of the second.

ps. tiny pedantry from earlier - the new Exorcist movie is a prequel. ?

Duly noted, Stence. But why do we need one of those either?

True, but von Sydow isn't playing said character. I believe the guy playing him is the advanced-Calculus genius from Eastern Europe with the fancy scarf that pals around with Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. To which I say: why?

The Exorcist is fine where it is. Leave it there.

because von Sydow is 80billyion years old and this is supposed to be about him as a young priest, duh!

i do not quite understand the profound awe that blade runner inspires in so many people.

ps. in the future all ships will have flimsy subway-grate floors and people will still use those hanging lamps that mechanics use to look at your engine when the hood's up.

Weirdly enough, I've read this. And I also have nothing to add to this thread kthxbye!

No, dick, my question is why are they doing it at all?

he's a dick for attaching the "duh!" to his post.

And really....for the money? It ain't like Exorcist II: the Heretic and/or Exorcist III really cleaned up at the box office.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/38/features-foundas.php

Were you as entranced when she did that salute with the gun when they were getting ready to drop onto the planet? That was a sexy piece.

Alien: Resurrection is the funniest of the lot.

What type of goth are you! You're fired.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...) (webmail), August 20th, 2004 8:48 PM. (vassifer) (later) (link)

additional hottness?

Ooh and also as a sort of waypoint on Ripley's movie-long seething lesbian lust rampage until it came to rest on the Queen alien.

x-post

otm! "GAME OVER MAN!" (no comma!)

Hahahahahahahaha. I love that.

Reverse the roles for Alien, though.

I watched Sigourney Weaver in "Galaxy Quest" last night, btw!

-- Gear! (drink_to_remembe...), August 22nd, 2004.

i take offense at that, ALIENS IS TEH BEST MOOVIE EVER YOU SATANIC HEATHENITE MARTIAN FUXOR

Ron Perlman (aforementioned knife-wielder) should be in every movie.

The Space Pirate Captain is almost as great (and he was hands-down my favorite actor as a kid, for his performance in Robin Hood) - "She is... severely fuckable, isn't she?"

Alien Resurrection is entertaining by itself, but for me it was just too jokey and tongue in cheek to work as an Alien movie.

His role in "Dead Man" is hilarious.

not sure why.

also have never seen Alien 3 all the way thru since originally seeing it twice in the theaters...

he also designed the alien queen himself (h.r. giger wasn't involved)!

Alex NYC was critical of Aliens dialogue, well Alien is just as dopey, cartoonish, and two-dimensional as Aliens only instead of war movie cliches, it's full of horror movie cliches. Alien's suspense is really just shock-value: the alien goes "boo" and chows down on a crew member. Once you know the story, Alien has very little repeat-viewing worth except as a filmed H.R. Giger sketchbook. The new director's cut does flow better, but I could have done without the infamous "Dallas cocoon scene". On the plus side, the new digital sound is just amazing and worth it alone to see in a decent theater.

The original cut of Aliens was great, I wish that Cameron had just left it alone - really the only thing that needed to be included was the scene with the massed alien attack on the remote guns. Couple of scenes in here are just spectacular - the initial drop ship scene is amazingly well done and everything from "looks like they're having a goddamn town meeting" to "ease down - you've blown the transaxle. you're just grinding metal".

Thin writing or not, I defy anyone to repeat dialog from the original Alien without looking.

"Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"

"It was a bad call, Ripley--a bad call."

"One express elevator to Hell .. Going down!"

"Hey maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"

I could go on...

one bum note though: I didn't like the fact that the aliens communicated in this one - part of the fear and allure of the first few films' aliens, what made them seem so dangerous and efficient, was their seeming elimination of any necessity of a membrane of communication. that is, they were perfect killing machines, effortlessly, simultaneously and constantly in sync with their surroundings and each other.

"Oh no! Slimy slobbery alien!"

"He's fucked!"

"We now pause from the action to enjoy a moment of relationship subtext!"

"More subtext"

"Hooray for guns!"

"Welcome to Ripley, bitch!"

"The end (now with added subtext)."

"Credits: Predator ship designed by..."

"I'm finding a lot of things funny nowadays. I don't think they are."

The design/creatures/effects are pretty good for the most paart, though the spaceship shots are a bit perfunctory and bland.

But overall the film was just too cartonish for me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Millions died, Earth saved, wanna go out to a lesbian bar and get baked on hash brownies later?"
-- B.A.R.M.S. (b4rim4_...), September 12th, 2004.

OTM.

xpost - gory a good film does not make.

Sigourney Weaver is marvelous. I'm still amazed that the Academy, with its distate for genre pictures, managed to nominate her for Best Actress. It's her best movie.

I'll even take Resurrection over Aliens.

ALIENS RPG is coming! Done by Gearbox/Obsidian!

and FPS

i wish they'd make an aliens game that couldn't be summed up with three initials

:(

this is apparently the thread where we take sides about the first Alien sequel. I am firmly for it.

Ebert is great on it, actually... he gave it 3 1/2 stars and says it left him feeling wrung out and stressed and kind of upset. That's a sterling recommendation!

yeah, but most game genre names are now reduced to shorthand, same as everything else in modern culture. FPS/RPG/MMORPG/RTS/sim/etc.

What would you do in a Lucasarts-type adventure game, or an Aliens cart racer?

xp

anyone remember the first alien game? great tension and the most incredible feature of having the characters sometimes not respond to your commands - due them being in a biff wiv u

kingfish my point is that Alien was a new kind of movie - the game should be a new kind of game

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/yr13/yr13_49c.gif

looks like nethack

Never actually played the first AvP. Did play the Aliens game put out by Activision on the Apple ][.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28video_game%29

Holy shit, there was an Alien game for the 2600

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Alien_1982_atari_2600.gif

But how was Alien a new kind of movie, tho? Just due to the nature of the Giger alien and the societal fears that each film could play off of? The first two films were a synthesis of a lot of different bits floating around; with the first one, you had the 70s blue-collar "truckers in space" thing, along with the "shit technology that looks lived-in and actually used" look that Ridley Scott admits that he borrowed from Star Wars, along with a more graphic horror look that Carpenter and everybody else was working on.

The 2nd one had the Reagan-era send-in-the-marines vibe with bits from Starship Troopers and the 80s corporate shill in the form of Paul Reiser of all people. (and no cat).

Still, inventing a new kind of game for a licensed property is a pretty damn tall order. Aspects of the experience that the consumer of the original properties/brands/texts/films/etc enjoyed have to transfer over, or the new thing doesn't ring true, and the vibe ain't there. It's like that 2600 game, or the Final Fantasy movie. The nature of the original experience dictates certain aspects of any other media claiming to be its descendent.

The alien in Aliens = Qaddafi

trust me kingfish, the "vibe" is not gonna be there for me if i play an alien RPG (experience points, "new skills" yada yada - i don't like RPGs in general though). i'll admit that an FPS is very very close to some of the most breath-catching scenes in alien, but it's not the whole movie! both alien and aliens consist of set pieces, each of which has to be solved/blasted through on its own terms, which makes me think more of a sui generis game like metal gear solid, which asks the player to confront entirely new situations - and use new controls - with each stage.

Well, probably not, but again, one of the fun aspects of each flick(like science fiction in any media can be) is that they reflect their times, and the various fears and hang-ups of different eras, from AIDS to cloning to whatever.

(i'm excepting the stupid AvP flick for this, even tho their a sequel coming out already)

xp

Dig it: Square even put out a game in 1987, with music from Nobuo Uematsu

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Alienssquare_screenshot_1.png

is that a naked woman with an electric guitar? Fucking sweet.

stop it

Dig it: Square even put out a game in 1987, with music from Nobuo Uematsu

!!!

what the fuck is "kind've"

there used to be this fps online ALIENS game where you were either a marine or an alien and played like 500 people online at the same time. it cost like 7.95 a month and totally kicked ass. i got totally stoned and played that many a night.

game over, man, game over

Alien 3 i sthe best film Fincher will ever direct and I suspect, if ever we see the 40 or so minutes cut, the best of the lot.
-- i, grey, Friday, April 13, 2007 7:31 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

A++ contrarianism, would be shocked to the core again

still prefer Resurrection over Aliens

chaki, are you thinking of Aliens Online?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Aliens_Online.jpg

yah that was it. i played the fuck out of that game. can't believe that was almost 10 yrs ago :( :( :(

so what was the latest AVP multiplayer game like? Any good?

what the fuck is "kind've"

something Alex shouldn't of written.

Watched this again yesterday for what has to be the fifth or sixth time in my life. I don't know if Alex In NYC is right or if I've just seen it too many times - it was good, but no longer great somehow. I was noticing all the sequences that go on a little long rather than just grooving on them, and oddly I wanted to see more of the aliens. Definitely too many false climaxes. But still, it holds my attention, and the sheer number of images it's burned into my brain really do make a case for classic status. A few things I'd like to call out for special praise:

* Hicks poking his head up into the ceiling, pointing his flashlight around, somehow not noticing the horde of aliens until the camera flips around and we see them just SWARMING forward, fabulous

* all of Hudson's other lines (especially his response to Ripley's pep talk about how Newt has survived all this time by herself with no weapons and no training: "Why don't you put her in charge?!")

* Bishop wedging his way down a pipe, with that great wide-angle shot of just his face

* ALL the beeping tracking devices, from the "see who's dead now" console in the tank to the "six meters...five meters!" radar to the "how close are we to Newt" gizmo - simple, dumb, brilliant way of amping up suspense. It must suck to work in the future where every utilitarian thing is sound-designed to make you more stressed out

* the emphasis on the acid-for-blood problem. I dunno, I just like the way they make it so that constantly, even blowing up an alien can mean killing off your own guys. Nice.

* "You always were an asshole, Gorman."

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/5714/aliensfm4.jpg

no, i do not know these people

LIES

Those homemade Smart Guns are *magnificent*!

they are pretty impressively craf---HEY WAIT A MINUTE!

How exactly did I come up with "kind've"? 2004 -- dark times.

oooh look sega

It must suck to work in the future where every utilitarian thing is sound-designed to make you more stressed out

hee

This looks very interesting: Rejected Alien 3 script by William Gibson. I haven't read it yet.

that does look interesting. 'might have gone this way' scripts are fascinating. have just started on the rejected indiana jones 4 frank darabont number.

classic Challops in NYC thread

i've just been reading some of the v early star wars drafts, they are lol-tastic.

RANGER: The Bogan force is too strong upon us. Our spirit is broken.
...
DEAK:
You're feeling the Bogan's despair. Be strong, Tyree, drive it from your thoughts.
...
TROOPS: The Bogan! The Bogan!
...
VADER: You will come to know such suffering as only the Master of the Bogan Force can provide.

It's still mostly the best of the series. Mostly.

where's the indy script at?

i wld never in a million years dress up like any character of the cast of any of my favourite movies or any movie in fact and then pose for a picture with other people dressed up like the other characters

for the record

^^secret stormtrooper

except maybe this guy
but only if it was the end of the world and no one else was dressed up like other characters
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1356/548998656_6c09eea55f.jpg

XPOST!!

xxp found indy here

http://dl.free.fr/getfile.pl?file=/Bxkz0sDW/Indiana_Jones_and_the_City_of_the_Gods.pdf

thought bogan was some kind of Australian insult

Yeah, it's the aussie equivalent of chav/redneck.

Joss Whedon's Alien: Resurrection script.

Yeah, it's the aussie equivalent of chav/redneck.

-- chap, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 1:47 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

is this meant to imply chav = redneck

i read that script before the movie came out. there was this junk sale/knick knack convention at the mall and this dude was selling bootlegged scripts. i liked the script ok. certainly better than the final product.

x-post

It must suck to work in the future where every utilitarian thing is sound-designed to make you more stressed out

still kills me

lololol

In Space Everyone Can Hear Those Eerie Steam Pipes

all of the unused alien3 scripts are rubbish :(

is "kind've" an accepted contraction?

"game over, man! scary-sounding game over!"

that rig sure did have a load of those steam pipes.

lots o'scripts: http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/alien3/

Results 1 - 10 of about 92,600 for "kind've". (0.22 seconds)

From what I can see, a lot of people use it, but completely incorrectly. Logic dictates that it's a contraction of "kind have":

"Want some gum?"
"What kind've you got?"

Everyone appears to be using it in place of "kind of," which makes no sense at all:

Kind’ve like candy…
Kind've frustrated.
It's kind've ironic that the image posted for this article
What kind've rims are these?

People be stupid.

language be flexible

i'm all about the fluidity of language, but "kind've" doesn't save you any syllables when spoken or any keystrokes when typed, which is typically the purpose of a contraction, plus it just looks weird and wrong

i wld take out the apostrophe

This is why god gave us kinda.

i'm all about the fluidity of language, but "kind've" doesn't save you any syllables when spoken or any keystrokes when typed, which is typically the purpose of a contraction, plus it just looks weird and wrong

It doesn't save you any syllables but it sure is nice not having to reach back for that voiceless glottal fricative between two frontally-articulated consonants. Whether it should be reflected in spelling as a contraction, I don't know. The fact that it sounds so much like "would've" and "could've" is probably a big factor in making people wanna do this.

Between two frontally-articulated voiced consonants even.

I love Aliens!

You can all kind've blow me.

"kind have"?

Read the thread.

no.

YESSSS

sigh

alex in nyc getting upset about corny one liners is pretty o_O

I'd say it's kind've o_O, kind've OTM.

lmao this fucken thread

i. superb trolling by alex in nyc, a+++
ii. slocki's finest moment????

ok so i watched this again (thank you alex for reminding me of this terrific movie!) and when it was over i am slightly embarrassed to say that i exclaimed loudly to no one in particular, "rockin' good times!"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, August 21, 2004 4:02 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOL

Newt ruins this movie just like Short Round ruined The Temple of Doom.

Kinda vs. Kind've = the "o" sounds vs the "f" sound in the word "of", no? Would prob explain the confusion about usage anyway.

Watching it again right now. Not as bad as I remembered.

Next up -- "Destiny's Child: hey, not bad!"

Watching movie on TNT vs. on Bluray/DVD

Ha. Seriously, when I composed this thread, it was 4am. I was doing the Friday night overnight shift at the TIME Magazine news desk (where I worked for over a decade). I was invariably tired, hungry and - thus -- wholly cranky and contrarian. That might explain a LOT of my posts between 2001 and the latter end of 2005, actually.

TNT's okay as long as the animated graphic ads in the lower third are kept to a minimum.

I did raise some decent -- or at least entertaining -- points here, though.

I bet a lot of fucked up parents brought their kids to both films. Don't be that parent, Alex!
― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, August 20, 2004 6:48 AM (4 years ago)

Hah, my mother took me to see "Alien" in the movie theater when I was 8 years old. My first R movie. Loved it then, and still do. Sure, it was scary, but I knew it was make-believe. Being scared by choice when you can't really get hurt = fun.

my dad took me to alien 3 when i was 9, and nothing came of it.

...or did it

Airlock scene at the climax is still a towering stack of crap, though.

My new favorite part of this movie is when Burke is like "Hold on hold on, you're talking about nuking a very expensive installation here!" and Ripley goes "They can BILL me!" Somehow sums up the attitude of the whole thing perfectly. Much prefer pissed-off, working-class human Ripley to creepy, detached pseudo-alien Ripley of the latter two films.

What about the officious, middle-class Ripley of the first film?

Like.

These are all on sale at my local used book/DVD place. Despite them all being run on TV continually, I'm tempted to shell out and watch them again properly without commercial breaks/"formatted for your TV screen"/etc. etc.

"I'm tempted to shell out and watch them again properly without commercial breaks/"formatted for your TV screen"

I've been enjoying re-watching all of my favorite films widescreen with a projector. It's insane when you think that you've only seen 2/3 of most of your favorite movies.

If you can find the Alien Quadrilogy box set cheap it's worth investing, it has lots of goodness including alternative
cuts of the movies, including the original cut of Alien3.

I quite like Alien 3, does anyone else?

It's flawed but I like it a lot!

god the premise of this thread is rongness at its rongest

One of the rejected scripts for Alien 3 sounds very cool:

The story by Vincent Ward[8] and the screenplay with co-writer John Fasano had Ripley's escape pod crash landing on a monastery-like satellite, which had parts of its interior, both wooden and archaic in design. The Alien³ special features disc set, Alien Quadrilogy[9] explains how Ward came about creating the story for this partially wooden satellite also as a place of refuge for Luddite-like monks. The story begins with a monk who sees a "star in the East” (Ripley's escape pod)[10] and at first believes this to be a good sign. Upon arrival of Ripley, and with increasing suggestions of the Alien presence, the monk inhabitants believe it to be some sort of religious trial for their misdemeanors, punishable by the creature that haunts them. By having a woman in their monastery, they wonder if their trial is partially caused by sexual temptation, as Ripley is the only woman to be amongst an all male community in ten years. To avoid this and (hopefully) the much grimmer reality of what she has brought with her, the Monks of the "wooden satellite" lock Ripley into a dungeon-like sewer and ignore her advice on the true nature of the beast.[11] The monks believe that the Alien is in fact the Devil[12]. Primarily though, this story was about Ripley's own soul searching complicated by the seeding of the Alien within her and further hampered her largely solo attempts to defeat it. The Alien Quadrilogy DVD set features scenes and illustrations that show this ‘Wooden Planet’. Aspects of the monastery and monks of these drafts were later utilised in the final production of the film by having the male inmates participating in an apocalyptic religion that forbid sexual relations. Primarily it was the plot of Alien 3 that was borrowed from this story but little of this world remained in the film. Despite his credit [13], Ward noted that the things he liked best about the story and those that he believed would have made it work were not used. The screenplay featured scenes set in different locations on the one-mile wide wooden planetoid, ranging from wheat fields, through a grisly but darkly comic scene in the monks’ communal toilets, to furnaces and a glass works (also used in the finished film). Empire Magazine described Ward’s ‘Wooden Planet’ concept as ‘undeniably attractive – it would have been visually arresting and at the very least, could have made for some astonishing action sequences. In the same article, Norman Reynolds - Production Designer originally hired by Ward, remembers an early design idea for “a wooden library shaft. You looked at the books on this wooden platform that went up and down”. ‘Imagine the kind of vertical jeopardy sequence that could have been staged here – the Alien clambering up these impossibly high bookshelves as desperate monks work the platform’[14]. Sigourney Weaver described Ward’s overall concept as “very original and arresting.”[15]

Search out the Lebbeus Woods sketches for the monk habitations.

It's flawed but I like it a lot!

― fel (latebloomer), Sunday, November 15, 2009 10:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ditto!

The wooden planet idea was ludicrous and was never going to work.

http://talentedapps.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/kijinnmaru-inconceivable.jpg

i don't know why i love this so much:

cliches? the end where the mother alien *gasp* isn't dead but is holding onto the ship zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 20 August 2004 08:46 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah what a boring scene
― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 20 August 2004 08:48 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wooden planet could have been cool though - certainly something more distinctive than the flames-and-steam-factory planet we actually got.

yer man ebert's review gets mentioned a bunch upthread from years back. he's talking about here = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMtv1WfgJFA

slocki is such a fuckin' hero in this thread

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/arvo/Legodreams/Alien/alien_01.jpg

slocki is such a fuckin' hero in this every ILX film thread

i wonder if they had a wooden spacecraft, that 'wooden' go !

alien3 improves as it ages and slopes out from under the towering shadow of Aliens, imho.

lol @ the alien resurrection defenders itt

Alien Resurrection suffers from being not quite distinctive and necessary enough to justify being made, but not nearly faceless and boring enough to be the kind of dull, bean-counting franchise junk that AvP was. Basically all credit to Jeunet and the cast - the story is just not there and neither are the scares.

AvP2 totally redeems the franchise, tho.

resurrection was admittedly on to an interesting idea but it got buried in actual boring action movie cliches and some of the worst dialogue i've ever heard.

not to mention the turd

http://photos.bravenet.com/272/478/925/3/5CBF206132.jpg

Can't remember the Geiger quote but he says something like "they made [the alien] shit, literally into a piece of shit", lol

lol @

Alien 3 i sthe best film Fincher will ever direct and I suspect, if ever we see the 40 or so minutes cut, the best of the lot.
-- i, grey, Friday, April 13, 2007 7:31 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

A++ contrarianism, would be shocked to the core again

― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, July 16, 2007 3:16 PM

(Just for the record, though, I would never turn off Alien Resurrection if I came across it on TV. The over-the-top acting and saturated colors and the underwater scene collectively kind of make it work for me.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcLTaMpRl2o

Surely it's some dude from Goldie Lookin Chain behind that? If not, he sounds exactly like him. Whatever, good stuff and it makes me want to watch Aliens right now, rather than be in work.

Some nice lines in there.

Gotta give them an A for effort on the kind of dorky project I would talk about but never actually do. I also like how thoroughly it covers all the minor twists and suspense-jacking moments, and then Alien 3 is done in like fifteen seconds.

Watched this again last night and it was as wonderful as ever. One of my top 5 movies of all time.

Bay twelve - please!

lol @ the thread premise

that kenan-alex debate is one for the ages

(kenan otm btw)

Roffle.

There's something endearing about that level of SF nerdiness in a director, that he's constructed such a detailed backstory for everything under the sun.

You can't go from Aliens to thinking about buying some packaged cookies, than back to Aliens.

kenan otm seven years ago. in a ghost story control over mood and pace is U&K.

I just watched Alien again last night. As fantastic as the sequel is I just don't see how you can improve on Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton futzing around with the ship like a couple of shade-tree mechanics trying to bash an old Ford into shape.

Also pretty much everything that happens in Aliens is just a slight re-do of what happened in Alien. Newt = the cat; "you bitch" = "you bitch"; etc

Speaking of Jonesy, that cat is a DAMN GOOD ACTOR.

the cat from alien vs. the dog from the thing

The cat makes an appearance in the 8-bit video game of Alien too, you have to bag it before you escape.

you have to WHAT

oh

i feel like aliens is very different in story and tone from alien.

ya i mean it's almost a cliche that they're two totally different kinds of movies

Totally - I mean the great thing is watching four "name" directors take the same generic material and run it through four different mills. Of course they all have Sigourney Weaver, an alien, and things that have to be rescued, but that's like saying "all these covers of 'Hey Jude' include the word 'na' somewhere."

The across-the-board quality of the actors involved in the first one is just o_O

"i can't lie to you about your chances...but...you have my sympathies."

ice cold.

The scene that made me realize that was just after Dallas dies and they're arguing about what to do. Weaver's struggling to assert her authority and Yaphet Kotto is over in the corner, in the background, just out of focus, not. giving. her. an. inch. It's two people struggling with each other, reacting instinctively to each other, undercutting each other, using every ounce of power in the words they have to try to impose their will on the situation. The quality of the acting in that half minute or so is on par with anything you'd see on any stage anywhere.

^ The best and most believable part of Alien (come to think of it, Carpenter's The Thing also does this well) is how tense and irritable everyone one is toward each other. Feels like a real workplace.

btw dudes the entire making-of doc from one of the special editions is in its entirety on youtube and worth a watch if you have a free afternoon

http://www.youtube.com/user/alien1979themaking

the entire aliens making-of doc is too but watching too much james cameron as talking head bums me out

Tracer and latebloomer OTM about the acting. Was it on ILX or somewhere else that someone made the case for the cast based on their age as well? Like, first of all it just feels realer in the sense of looking like a workplace where these people really do this for a living and have been doing it for ages. And it also means that they're more experienced actors with better chops and all that stuff.

yeah the casting and age of the actors and the "workplace realism" of alien seems to be the remnants of 70s genre filmmaking in alien. a few years later it probably would have been full of beautiful quippy young people on loan from john hughes movies.

ya if they made it today they'd all be 22

haven't seen prometheus, but the alien series as a whole hasn't cast a lot of beautiful quippy young people (maybe winona?)

"Will you LISTEN TO ME, PARKER? SHUT UP!"

^^^^

"As long as that means killing it."
"OBVIOUSLY it means killing it."

latebloomer so otm - that's the thing that grabbed me so much about Alien from the first time I saw it. The future is dirty and greasy and broken-down, and the people working on the ship are all irritable mechanics beaten down by the man. It's like belowdecks on a battle cruiser after years at sea. It feels like a real place, in a real time. And for a change, it's not a nice place.

That milieu against the whole rapey sex/reproduction angle makes me wonder why I didn't actually give it a few points on the horror poll. Not that it needed any.

i thought harry dean stanton's hawaiian shirts were pretty festive. the future can't be that bad -- they have hawaiian shirts! presumably hawaii still exists!

Ridley Scott mentioned once that seeing the scuffed-up production design of a lot of Star Wars gave him the internal go-ahead to commit to the vibe of "space truckers". Where you didn't have military or sciencey types in clean, sleek starships, you had working stiffs shuffling about in long-haul freighters

Blue-collar / working-class Sci-fi flicks: List them here

oh here's a neat bit, focusing on the costume design:

http://hellotailor.blogspot.com/2012/03/movie-costumes-i-have-loved-alien-part.html

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DvzIdKKMHwk/T1Kl3FkB0UI/AAAAAAAABIA/ow5wuyVdgjI/s1600/alienbrett.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XXlLOIYx5S0/T1Jpu0Y5rNI/AAAAAAAABGo/056ski5rXJ0/s1600/aliencrew.jpg

I like how there are now multiple places online where you can get Nostomo or Weyland-Yutani crew patches. I kind of want a W-Y logo decal to put on my hardhat, see if anybody notices it amongst the other ones.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-baKobTewysY/T1J3seBPZnI/AAAAAAAABG4/npr5yvsH0aM/s1600/alienlambert.jpg

boots!

Also, between this and the 70s Body Snatchers, Veronica Cartwright could play the terrified screaming blonde with the best of them.

all youse guys otm about the performance quality in & workplace realism of alien, something that's largely absent in aliens, replaced by enjoyable but rather cartoonish miltary action characterizations. from the blade runner vs. alien thread, some three years back:

the corporate stuff in alien is great!! i'd never seen the future look so... privatized

― s1ocki, Tuesday, December 30, 2008 7:36 PM (3 years ago)

Slocki OTM. Or so working-class. Alien nails this feeling of lived (and labored) in-ness like no other science fiction movie I've ever seen. You get a sense that you're not seeing the totality of the characters' lives, but just this one, small corner. In part it's the quality of the actors, in part it's the Altman-like approach to dialogue: fragmented, naturalistic, delivered with no regard to cameras or microphones. Especially true during the build-up to the chest-burster gag (perhaps, less so elsewhere in the film). Anyway, it fascinated me as a kid, and it still seems unique and compelling.

― served by boot-face (contenderizer), Tuesday, December 30, 2008 10:31 PM (3 years ago)

next on "discussion generator," contenderizer vs slocki in who can have the last word about how they appreciated the art design, altman-esque dialogue, and which sfx are a bit wack in ridley scott's 1979 space-horra opus Alien

― El Tomboto, Friday, January 2, 2009 12:39 PM (3 years ago)

So many cargo pants. The movie took place in an Old Navy c. 1998.

It's a film out of time; the pants and the high-tops vie for true temporal localization.

Growing up in the 80s, it was always weird to go back and see Tom Skerritt's various pre-moustache experiments in facial hair throughout the years.

The first time I saw MASH and saw Skerritt w/o facial hair I was like WHAAAAAAAA?

It's funny, even in MASH Skerritt never seemed like a "young" dude -- he was always a dude who'd SEEN stuff, ornery and kinda out there. Love him

He was 37 by then.

I think he was 21 when he was born

We need a poll of his changing style

He is Benjamin Button IIRC

He's so fkn funny in Steel Magnolias (I know this not the thread for that)

So many cargo pants in Steel Magnolias.

coulda done with a few more chestbursters imo

I think that one had at least two too many.

are we talking about Dolly Parton y/n

Olympia Dukakis

ok i've started the special edition of aliens (life intervened) and am struck by details that seem lifted right out of "gateway" by frederik pohl.. the family doing "exploring" and getting excited that they've struck it rich by discovering an unknown alien artifact; our hero getting a flunkie job at the spaceport in the cargo bay; the "company" which controls everything; kids running around

it's all scene-setting for the militarized reboot of the main action obv but still

Hm that is a v interesting point of influence, and one that might enhance my liking for Aliens...

ok i've started the special edition of aliens (life intervened) and am struck by details that seem lifted right out of "gateway" by frederik pohl.. the family doing "exploring" and getting excited that they've struck it rich by discovering an unknown alien artifact; our hero getting a flunkie job at the spaceport in the cargo bay; the "company" which controls everything; kids running around

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, May 25, 2012 3:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

super true... which reminds me to reread those books, i really like the just scraping by vibe of them, felt new for scifi

added to (very long) reading list, thanks!

its pure scifi so if thats not your thing it might not be yhour thing.

i can dig it

in case you were wondering i mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-OYKd8SVrI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6oSCng12xQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXxs4vE4-oA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyX_xwh2yPY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJwtMvesWA

working class scifi is kind of a boring norm by now i think

not if you're watching ALIEN

I strongly disagree; 30+ years later and it still ain't.

no-one's done it better. Battlestar came close but Alien still does the best job of making every aspect of the 'working-class-ness" of the ship tangible and real.

what else counts

i'm not saying "working class scifi" from the 70s/80s isn't great, but at this point "lived in" "gritty" sci-fi environments are sorta ... yawn

for example give me the shiny banal apple store dystopia of minority report or gattaca over the burning trashcans and smudged faces of children of men anyday

sure, but i think it's a mistake to equate burning trashcans and smudged faces with working class sci-fi. star wars, for instance, inspired alien and clearly presents an clunky, industrial, lived-in future - but i'd hardly call its overall sensibility, story and setting "working class". of the major characters, luke is the only one who clearly comes from a working-class background (probably han too, but it's hard to say) and we see only a little of that before he's whisked off across the galaxy to battle dark lords and rescue princesses. other than the disposable stormtroopers, we rarely see anybody actually working for a living in the original trilogy.

repo men is pretty working-class (and distinctly class-conscious), but it's also a train wreck.

I would say Dark Star is good working class sci-fi. Plus it's great.

I should specify that I'm talking about space opera, or thereabouts, I guess. The deliberate juxtaposition of the highest and most optimistic dreams of post-war spaceflight contrasted with the far more-realistic earthbound workaday concerns of actual people doing actual unglamorous schlub work in those environments of hardshelled tubs floating about in low-grav.

In film, this never would have been possible to portray were it not for the changes in the Hollywood studio system of the late 60s/early 70s.

This kinda stuff has been in fiction since before the war, but I don't think it ever elevated to multimillion dollar 35mm until like 35-40 years ago. Flicks like 2001 made spaceflight far more realistic, stuff like Silent Running and Dark Star brought it to the enlisted level, if you will.

yeah and red dwarf and mst3k too but now that everything in sci fi is super gritty and unglamorous i wouldn't mind seeing a new look

i would rather see john carter on mars than another gritty 00s sci fi movie

i would rather see a thoughtful depiction of actual working lives in a visionary far-future context than either "grit" or idealized fantasy

like "wall-e"

lol, yeah, sure

Pluto Nash

"moon"

weird to use minority report as an example of a shiny future as one thing that movie really got right was interleaving the futuristic buildings/tech with older houses, neighbourhoods etc, it def felt way more lived in than most scifi these days

"Moon" was dead-on; we are shown the day-to-day dreariness of a workaday stiff doing wage drudgery.

I separate this from, say, Sunshine, which was a scientific crew

there were tonal problems with the future in minority report -- the whole thing would have been much better as a backdrop to back to the future 2 where the incessant product placement and concept car futurism would have worked for rather than against the movie.

serenity is working class sci fi but i did not like that film at all; haven't seen the TV series.

moon is awesome and a perfect example of this.

serenity is dire

moon was tedious and predictable, occasionally beautiful

district 9 showed the weariness of a workaday stiff

war of the worlds had a deadbeat dad

the road dude was just a doctor

late great you can show yerself to the door at any time

Huh, when did Tombot leave, I didn't know he was still around in 2009.

tombot is still around now isn't he?

Well, holy fuck.

moon wasnt that great imho

On film 4 right now. I guess it's the director's cut, there's stuff I've never seen before - Newt's family discovering the derelict!

Might switch over to hot tub time machine in half an hour though.

Gorman sticking a cigar in his mouth the moment he wakes up might be the best shot in this.

I mean Apone. Sorry Apone.

http://i.imgur.com/0Mh6G.jpg

:D

wow.

kind of suverts the film's politics of motherhood though, don't it?

return of the repressed IIRC.

one of the great things about this film is the palpable sense of actual dread at the fate that will befall the characters if they don't escape, and how cameron keeps you with them 100% of the time. barely any wide cutaways or swooping cameras, just claustrophobic terror. even in most horror films the actual fate of everyone isn't something to get worked up over in a queasy manner but even after characters get shuffled offscreen in this one we're still given reminders of the unfathomable tortures they're going through and you're like 'you guys holy shit get the hell out of there you guys'

i feel like that is a pretty rare tone to set for a film, even horror flicks. 'no country for old men' and 'silence of the lambs' had some of the same unsettling grim atmosphere but esp in the case of the latter it never feels so helpless. love the lack of a slow turnaround, the marines go from cocky kill mode to shitting themselves for the rest of the film in two minutes flat.

^^^ i dig all this - maybe accounts for why I've had more bad dreams about this movie than any other probably - the dread is thick even when the pulse-pounding stuff is going on, which is sort of the exact head-space that nightmares hit.

I dunno. The dread seemed more unpredictable and unsettling in the first one, which had the extra fun suggestions of ugh sexual violations.

love the lack of a slow turnaround, the marines go from cocky kill mode to shitting themselves for the rest of the film in two minutes flat.

p sure i've said this somewhere else but i really like this movie's depiction of Total System Failure -- the way you're introduced to these very prepared and well-armed marines (in contrast to the hapless truckers of the first one) and then a single weakness, the deactivation of the weapons in the reactor room, like a hairline crack, spiders outward so rapidly and totally shatters the upper hand they've got. this is also (some of) why i like jurassic park and the decent parts of 28 weeks later.

the dread might be less predictable in the first one but its predictability in this one is part of what makes it so dreadful. the nightmare just goes on and on and on and they're in constant terrifying danger for like two straight hours. like the tagline says, it's a war movie where the first one was a horror movie.

Jurassic Park is an interesting example - pretty sure it was the explicit theme of the book, as in Crichton had just discovered chaos stuff and was really interested in the idea of the minor thing that snowballs in lightning speed to become the total catastrophe. Thus the "you can't play God!" stuff was more "it's just not conceivable to control nature because there are too many variables you will overlook and SOMETHING will go off the rails." Neither the book nor the movie is half as bleak as Aliens though, in the sense of "Jesus, these people are just fucked."

Love the sense the movie gives of temperature/humidity too. The whole "it's a dry heat!" gag - you're aware of the setting throughout as being close, bad air, just muggy and sweaty and icky which also feels very much like a nightmare....

Aliens: Colonial Marines, which is designed to be a direct sequel for this, gets released next week.

It's done by the Borderlands guys.

xp yeah, it's the crichton half of the movie. leavened (+ improved) by the spielberg half, which is all "they do move in herds" and sam neill splayed in joy across a triceratops and laura dern not noticing the brontosaurus because the ferns are mindblowing enough. that's the half that weighs more, the awe-of-discovery half; it's like one of the james mason jules verne movies. the tone even when the raptors are barking is basically joy. aliens meanwhile is like the pacific theatre. good date movie though; you hold on to each other the whole time.

Spielburg does give the movie some scare though - the big T-Rex scene and the raptors-in-the-kitchen bit have more to do with Jaws than they do with Crichton I think. Or there's some overlap there. But yeah - Aliens is a meat-grinder. My new lady acquaintance hasn't seen any of the series and is interested in trying them out; I'm sure she'd be into it but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to go through them again. Something exhausting about the prospect, much as I do love the series. Maybe it's all the fault of Prometheus...

er...Spielberg. Clearly I was thinking of Quest For Glory.

oh yeah the raptors are def jaws descendants -- even the way everybody talks about them for two hours but you don't see them. but even that strain of the movie gets resolved by the t-rex taking them out while we cheer and a huge WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH banner flutters down from the rafters.

aliens is one of the most exhausting movies ever made i think. i like the ebert review, which is 3.5 stars out of 4 ("because it does the job it says it will do") but not exactly a rave:

I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.

I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment.

so yeah, absolutely something exhausting about the prospect.

If you think the film is full of dread, you should have tried the Amstrad CPC 464 computer game version

haha that is a great review

I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.

I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment.

this passage from the Ebert review almost perfectly describes my feelings about the two Dark Knight films. I don't think Aliens achieves that same queasy intensity, but then, I didn't see it in theaters at the original release; dated effects+home viewing bring goofiness to the forefront while softening some of the dread.

Well, first of all, "Aliens" has some prolonged quiet moments where they're just waiting around. To die, maybe, which is more dread, but at least they give you a break. But second, the action at the end of "Aliens" is a huge release. Even the fight scenes in Batman are full of portent. "Aliens" may be the rare exception where wall to wall machine gun fire is satisfying in and of itself.

ya that's true--my thinking w/r/t the parallax in Ebert's review is that maybe "wall to wall machine gun fire" reads as more 'dreadful' and less 'satisfying' in 1986 than it does in 20xx.

Isn't the auto machine guns only in the Directors cut? If you mean the firefights in the plant or towards the end, I remember them being deeply steeped in "Ofuckofuckofuck"

There's definitely a sense of release when they finally get to open up the guns against the aliens at the end, but they're so clearly outnumbered and doomed that the dread doesn't dissipate one bit. Plus: red light! Stressful noise! Burke is locking the door behind him! Etc.

http://i.imgur.com/C7VqGiJ.gif

omg

hahahahaha

aces

love it so much

Amazing.

great

Meh

some nice effects but kind of a crap gif

Every time it reappears this thread title shits me

http://38.media.tumblr.com/17747f28c917e6668884864cae2b2e26/tumblr_nd26s6bzwn1toxnu4o1_400.gif

Brilliant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4QY5Z8LBEo

loooool

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/50/b9/39/50b939a13f86fa5043e3f2a8d23083de.jpg

And then an alien pops out of the cake and