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

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you know what else is cool (and has to do with burke's collars)? they decided to follow ridley scott's lead and not give everyone futuristic outfits, which i like, very few sci-fi films ever did that before alien & aliens. (james cameron talks about how he liked how they wore hawaiian shirts in the first one... "they're basically truck drivers, there's no one aroudn to tell them how to dress")

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

i know i'll never win you over, alex, but i've had my enthusiasm for this film so rekindled i can't help but try!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

alex, I'd share a grenade with you. x x

― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I do like the point about the upturned collars, though. That was a nice little flourish.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:46 (twenty-one years ago)

tht kinda makes me gorman though : /

― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

you always were an asshole, gorman

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

anytime, anywhere.

― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked how that dopey lieutenant(?) got bonked on the head.

― Leeeter van den Hoogenband (Leee), Thursday, 26 August 2004 20:59 (twenty-one years ago)

"it's cool that you mention the design though--cameron says one of the main things that appealed to him about the movie was all the cool designing he'd get to do. (they had a couple of prod designers but he did a lot of the initial sketches, for the apc lander and a bunch of other stuff)"

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

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 27 August 2004 01:20 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah he says he maybe regrets not involving giger but that it was kind of an ego thing for him!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 27 August 2004 01:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I LIKE ALIENS, GUYS!!!!!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 27 August 2004 02:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Doesn't "you didn't see it properly, big screen, nice sound" = bad film? Presumably the attraction of the film cannot be dialigue, characters etc? Of course, if you are fine with that, good. Pleas don't vote for it in best movie polls though.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 27 August 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)

whatev

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 27 August 2004 04:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know if this has been said enough on this thread but sigourney weaver is awesome in this film with her almost asymptotal acting - always to the edge of things ('out of breath, unmade up &c.') - earning the film its dramatic danger. thomson says she is 'lofty, droll, ready for surprise, smart, attractive, and plainly desperate comedy, sigourney weaver has a robust reasonableness worth bearing in mind when other actresses kill themselves, ascend the olympus of vanity, or disgrace the human race' (haha woah tiger!). this film ws always weaver vs. 'the bitch' and never about the marines anyway. she's an underrated actress with a careful (?), short filmography full of understated (trans: aggresively reasonable) but liminally dangerous ('like something underwater turning ten fathoms deep, and swimming after you and me...') performances.

― cºzen (Cozen), Monday, 30 August 2004 18:48 (twenty-one years ago)

that formatting error is going to bug me sooo much.

― cºzen (Cozen), Monday, 30 August 2004 18:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I LIKE ALIENS, GUYS!!!!!!

― cºzen (Cozen), Monday, 30 August 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I saw both Alien and Aliens in the theater recently and I like both movies less than I did originally - Alien much more so.

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.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

One thing in Aliens that will bug me forever - the horrible blue screen backdrop during the drop ship crash.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 00:11 (twenty-one years ago)

rear projection.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 00:24 (twenty-one years ago)

actually i thought that always looked rather good myself.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 00:25 (twenty-one years ago)

anyway, different strokes for different folks, different xenomorphs for different...well you get the point.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 00:28 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah "aliens" as reconfigured WWII combat movie is a big part of what i think is interesting about it.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 01:25 (twenty-one years ago)

cameron insists it's a reconfigured nam movie! (actually, how many nam movies were there to reconfigure then? maybe it's wwii-as-nam-as-outerspace)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 02:10 (twenty-one years ago)

My family's not religious at all but the dialogue from Aliens might be the closest thing we have to a Bible or prayer at dinner. Certain lines have been used in everyday conversation since I was in grade school.

"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...

― Richard K (Richard K), Monday, 6 September 2004 08:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Jesus. Like the alien in the first (and vastly superior) film, this thread SIMPLY WILL NOT DIE.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 September 2004 13:20 (twenty-one years ago)

YOU STARTED IT!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Monday, 6 September 2004 13:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Hahahahaha

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 September 2004 13:29 (twenty-one years ago)

saw the first film again, the art direction is really magnificent isn't it? way better than the second in that respect anyway

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Aliens has too much of the cheap-o look of The Terminator.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

i still like the look, it's just not nearly as beautiful as the first

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Fair enough.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

and fuck, it always blows my mind that aliens was shot for only EIGHTEEN MILLION dollars!! can you believe that shit?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

it certainly looks way more expensive than that. jesus, where does all the money go these days?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

catering

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 September 2004 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

'aliens: resurrection' is pretty good, I think. it's obv. why they picked someone like jeunnet (that strong design sense of his, those yellows and browns). ripley's smile is as 'opposite of plain' as ever, here. I think maybe where the film suffers is in jeunnet's casting though - his films have always had a caricatured-bent and he seems to pick people who're able to pull off strong cartoons... the psychological frightener perhaps not the best genre fr cartoon work and it makes weaver's (sizzlingly flat) performance all the more stand-out (she had to be cast &c.).

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.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

also: jeunnet has his aliens play the game of human intelligence (pressing buttons, opening doors / escaping) whereas the old aliens' intelligence ws a logic of war & killing, honed to an assassin's expertise and selfishness. it ws a stubbornly isolated technology of destruction and all the more cinematically (dramatically) powerful for it.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 20:56 (twenty-one years ago)

do those posts make any sense at all?

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 20:56 (twenty-one years ago)

'earth' in the future in jeunnet is always shitty and not somewhere you want to be, great thing abt alien franchise j-man gets to play this up with a nice twist: 'earth', that name, we never hear it, just as another co-ordinate (2000: america, costa rica, maui, wherever; 2200: earth, mars, lv 1241) on the (200 years into the future) newly emerged map: the universe. it's a nice comic turn: everyone's disgust at the prospect of having to deal with returning to earth as well as the 12 meat hungry aliens that are after them. funny.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Remember that these aren't the same aliens as in the first movies. They cloned them using DNA from Ripley, so it's likely that they have as much human in them as she seems to have alien in her. It's the theme of the whole movie. The freaky ape-alien at the end is like a perfect half-and-half.
(I could be confused about all this)

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:12 (twenty-one years ago)

The aliens, even the ones that look like regular aliens, in A:R always seem a little more anthropomorphic than the ones in earlier movies.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

They need to make another Alien movie directed by Jodorowsky.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Man, I still can't see why everyone else can't see that A:R is by far the best one. IT'S SO OBVIOUS

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I'd like to revise my judgement from 'good' to 'ok'.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:19 (twenty-one years ago)

when antonioni is cloned he shd make a silent aliens movie.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:20 (twenty-one years ago)

With the old on-screen cue cards for dramatic moments:

"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..."

― B.A.R.M.S. (Barima), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

haha ripley to winona: "they programmed you to be an asshole?"

― You've Got to Pick Up Every Stitch (tracerhand), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:35 (twenty-one years ago)

"you're the new asshole model?"

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

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:48 (twenty-one years ago)

the end of this movie is kinda fucked up.

― cºzen (Cozen), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:49 (twenty-one years ago)

"Millions died, Earth saved, wanna go out to a lesbian bar and get baked on hash brownies later?"

― B.A.R.M.S. (Barima), Sunday, 12 September 2004 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

i liked resurrection a lot when it came out.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Sunday, 12 September 2004 22:13 (twenty-one years ago)

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