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

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

Awwwww, tho. :(

cool that all three of those blokes were in Terminator as well

Trying to gauge your level of surprise at that or not

Actors Lance Henriksen (Prince of the City), Michael Biehn (Tombstone), and Bill Paxton (Traveler) help schoolteacher Carrie Henn celebrate her birthday.

xp not surprised, more a general aww feeling

Traveller. Ha!

Hadn't thought of that movie in years.

http://i.imgur.com/DTw8EMF.jpg

Pleased to discover Newt did not become a child star tragedy (Aliens is her only film credit), and is now a 4th grade teacher.

She mostly teaches math. Mostly.

:D

ok how cool would it be to see ALIENS in high school or whatever and then learning that Newt was your fourth-grade teacher? that is amazing.

also, from Wired:

“I wasn’t nervous about being on set, because I knew everybody, and they were very friendly,” Henn said during a recent stop at the WIRED Cafe during Comic-Con International, where the film is celebrating its 30th anniversary. “The aliens were all my friends, wearing suits. I was actually most nervous about going to the cafeteria for lunch, because I had to go in-character as Newt, and I thought everybody would be staring at me. I didn’t have any concept that everybody else was going to be dressed up, too. My tutor actually gave me a big pair of sunglasses to wear when I went in. But it turned out not to be such a big thing.”

Henn had gotten the part after a meeting with Weaver, who’d flown on the Concorde to London to test out their on-screen chemistry. “I was excited, because I was like, “She was in Ghostbusters! How cool is this?”, Henn remembered. (...) According to Henn, who still keeps in touch with Weaver, the two actress’ bond was evident from the get-go. “Immediately, we hit it off,” she said. “She took me under her wings when we were filming, because I was so inexperienced. I can’t describe my relationship with her, because she’s more than just a friend—what you see on screen is genuinely how we feel about each other.”

Even though Henn was only 10 when Aliens was released, she has a vivid recall of her days on the set. Her favorite scene to shoot? The one in which Newt, stuck chest-high in water, is snatched up by a towering alien—a terrifying sequence, and one that gave most other 10-year-olds nightmares for years to come. But for Henn, it was mostly a chance to goof around. “The first assistant director had actually had someone stay there overnight, to make sure the water stayed warm,” she said. “But it was actually too warm for me, so I would sit up on bars on the side, and the alien and I would stay up there, kicking our feet in the water.”

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

So genius.

Do we have a thread for actors with a one-and-done film career? Meaning they had their big/notable role and then that was it -- they didn't die, it didn't turn tragic, they were just all 'that's good' and went on and enjoyed life?

this one? Actors who only appeared in one movie

Actors Lance Henriksen (Prince of the City), Michael Biehn (Tombstone), and Bill Paxton (Traveler) help schoolteacher Carrie Henn celebrate her birthday.

― nomar, Tuesday, February 28, 2017 6:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's apparently Carrie's stunt-double, Louise Head.

Officially an action figure. Never been prouder.#aliens #blessthevest pic.twitter.com/xRDRGYAU1D

— Paul Reiser (@PaulReiser) June 29, 2017

I've always been curious, how did Reiser ever land that role?

they needed a smarmy shitweasel for the part and he was perfect for it

^^^

haha

Watched it again last night. Still better than Alien.

IDK, I guess you could argue its more fun, but the mood, production design, and general aesthetics of Alien always made me rank it as the superior film.

Yep the production design is better in the first, but Aliens is just way more entertaining, and the characters and plotting are stronger. Depends what you look for in a film I suppose.

Rewatched Alien fairly recently as well, and the scene I found most compelling was Ash's reveal/destruction.

imho the characters are wayyyy stronger in the first but agreed that they scratch different itches and I am very very happy to spend time with the bolder and cartoonier characters in the second.

i think that's legit the scariest scene in the film tbh - giger's glistening biosextech aesthetic is a bit overfamiliar now but ash's breakdown and assault on ripley is genuinely unsettling

xp to chap obv

I don't really compare the two. Alien is my favorite horror movie and Aliens is one of my favorite action/war movies.

(and of course ash's assault foregrounds the queasy sexual undertones of the movie in an alarmingly literal fountain of robojizz)

Now we just need a Helen Hunt action figure.

greg evigan or gtfo imo

Don't forget Ash literally tries to ram a girlie magazine down Ripley's throat!

well, yeah

the utter lack of subtlety is part of what makes it so unsettling, i think

I remember as a teenager I had a poster on my wall which featured the speech that Ash gives when he's just a jizz covered head on the table. Love that scene.

I don't really compare the two. Alien is my favorite horror movie and Aliens is one of my favorite action/war movies.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, July 3, 2017 9:15 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The differentiation between Alien and Aliens is usually rightly chalked up to the fact they're different subgenres within action science fiction. The other main factor that changes is the role of the Corporation as an entity. In Alien you think there's a person who is acting without regard for human life, that they have a direct representative on the ship that's to blame, but it's revealed they're still completely anonymous and offscreen. Ash is mechanical and has no emotional stake in his actions. The line between the characters we know and the shadowy entity is kept intact. Maybe it's malevolent, maybe it's just a computer on the other end doing the risk/reward calculation of losing a crew in order to capture a new lifeform.

The further into the franchise you get, the more the role of the other end is expanded. That's probably the main failure of Alien 3, all things considered: the role is dialed back, and when the human face is revealed, it's in the very last act and not that threatening.

Alien: Resurrection turns the formula on its end, and every corporate or military character has some ridiculous set of craven motivations. It's malevolence as farce, played against a still-threatening xenomorph. So there are three parallel tracks that play out: alien versus protagonists (Ripley and Call, with the mercenaries being relatively disposable), alien versus corp/military which is farcical, and protagonists versus corp/military which becomes more mechanical in the end when you realize that the real triumph of their research wasn't the weaponized alien, but Ripley as post-human who walks off at the end

good post

yeah that's a cool reading!

fwiw this isn't my full or really a well thought-out take, I just love spitballing on ilx. pretty obvious when you see how badly I need to copy edit. need a blog, I guess.

do it!

actually watching Aliens again now, and I'm remembering how Cameron does his ensemble films well, but in a way that always kind of irritates me. it's by-the-numbers, but in a way where the stock characters are just a little too punchy

"The further into the franchise you get, the more the role of the other end is expanded"

What I like about Burke as the face of corporate evil is that even if he's kind of an 80s yuppie archetype he feels utterly contemporary. The news has never been more full of Burkes.