Alien 'Quadrilogy'

Just watched the original the other night with the 13-year-old, he loved it. Warned him about the chestburster scene without spoiling it, just in case, but he was transfixed. The part that tripped him out the most was the scene with Dallas in the vent. The money bit comes at you several beats before you think it might and works all the better for it.

Wow, quite the bold start to Alien 3

Resurrection just tries *so* *hard* to be quirky and edgy and falls on its face repeatedly. Plus the hybrid elements are initially disgusting (good) and end up unintentionally funny in an unbearably cringe way. Very little to redeem it apart from the swimming bit.

Just watched the original the other night with the 13-year-old, he loved it. Warned him about the chestburster scene without spoiling it, just in case, but he was transfixed. The part that tripped him out the most was the scene with Dallas in the vent. The money bit comes at you several beats before you think it might and works all the better for it.

― omar little, Thursday, August 15, 2024 10:45 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i saw that at the exact same age and will completely agree that the Dallas scene was what got me more. Even worse, at the time I was living in the basement of our house so all I ever heard were the noises of the heating and ac vents going and I was essentially terrified of going to sleep for hours on end.

I enjoyed Romulus, a solid B.

Too indebted to familiar beats and too many set pieces in the half hour, and really no fuckin reason to drag the likeness of Ian Holm into this.

Still, I had fun so that works

the other problem is the big reveal. not only was it easy to predict what it would be, but the payoff of introducing a new hybrid creature when you're creating an in-betweenquel is that because this creature very clearly doesn't exist in the rest of the series, you know it's going to be destroyed along with the compound, so it's really just an amusement. but...like I said, the atmosphere I found fun, I enjoyed Cailee Spaeny and David Jonnson, and the pregnant character is a great screamer.

he was on the radio yesterday saying that he had to please both the people who knew the originals and the younger people that didn't. and that he'd also used a couple of giger's ideas that were removed from the original (possibly self censorship by giger)

Need Alien 3 update from H.P. pleeeese

Lol! It sucked!

haha

Nahhhh look..... the early 90s cgi.... I guess you can forgive things for being of the time? The religious/patriachy/capitalist ideas kinda great in theory but not spelled out enough/given enough depth? Like they really could have gone somewhere focussing more on resurrection (the burning of the body's at the start, greater beings coming back after death) but... they didn't. The chase scene kinda great in a looney tunes whackey way. The Ridley crying next to smelling alien shot is so utterly classic. Killing of the Aliens characters not done seriously enough. One or two mourning scenes, and then we move onto aliens 3! Lame. I did really like the prison colony setting and the power plays inside of it. Movie did well to make me feel bad for a warden; poor 85 getting dunked on the whole film. But honestly that cgi..... just thr worst.

All that ^^ is small beans. The most damning indictment I can give it is that it just simply was not scary, primarily because it was not serious. First two set such high bars, and this one did not come close to meeting them

Off to Romulus now! Convinced my fraidy-cat wife to see her first "horror" film at the cinemas. Thoughts and prayers it's not her last

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

Oddly, a lot of what looks like CGI with the alien in 3 is actually a puppet, not CGI at all. only shadows in a couple of shots were beefed up digitally to add mass.

Thoughts

1. Bloody hell, can every institution on planet earth stop trying to get me to care about AI in 2024? Movie is dud for this point alone

2. Oh so that's why they called it romulus

3. bold to leave the singular new idea in this film to thr last 15 minutes. And that's being generous.... new alien reveal in the fakeout ending already done with aliens

This is getting like the Terminator, endless middling or bad relaunches

wait lol, the alien franchise motored past terminator (also bad and boring now) in that regard a v long time ago

alien3 is good tho, ppl who dislike it don't understand cinema
— jean-luc godard

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

― H.P, Friday, August 16, 2024 5:00 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd still put Alien 3 as third-best Alien movie, but I will admit that until Zodiac came out probably the spiciest take in my arsenal was that A3 was the best Fincher movie.

if you've watched any behind the scenes doc about alien 3 you will be astonished at how coherent and atmospheric the final film is

my dream alien 3 would be a combination theatrical/assembly cut... iirc in the theatrical the alien bursts out of a dog, which is much cooler than what happens in the assembly cut, and also the ending of the theatrical is more emotionally complete. but everything else about the assembly is superior

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

I didn't say it was better than Alien. I said it was the second-best of the original four. I am a longtime and confirmed Aliens hater. Taking one of the darkest, scariest SF/horror movies ever and turning out a sequel that's a pure none-more-80s action movie gets you a spot on my fuck-off list forever. (Cameron has two good movies to his name: The Terminator and The Abyss.)

Alien 3, due to the setting, has the most uniformly drab costuming and character appearances but leans into it by having the most interesting looking dudes fill out the cast. I'd imagine people with face blindness might have had issues, but the fact that nearly every character has a distinct facial expression and voice is a feat in itself

re: Aliens being a 80s action cliche, I'd argue that the "squad of actual troops fight against unworldly horror" was relatively new? I rate it much lower than Alien and it seems kind of tired when revisiting, but only because it originated many of those plot devices and cast dynamics

arguably Predator is the other side of the coin, but with all of the tone flipped 180 degrees

there are obvious written predecessors to the whole Space Marine subgenre but Aliens was the primary influence for a lot of what followed, especially in video games

Aliens was 100% the right pivot.

i feel like aliens transformed blockbuster cinema in a similar way to jaws, a decade removed from it. it influenced everything. it is also just really beautifully constructed in every way, from the plot machinations to the design of the colony and the planet outside

sorry to just reword your post, mh

np, I'm in desperate need of an editor over here

One of the very few 'dude talks about movies' YouTube channels I have time for is the Bad Movie Bible, because the dude has perfect dry delivery and sharp humor/editing, and his three parter on the endless ripoffs/repurposings due to the Alien universe smartly splits those films that lean more towards Alien and then those more Aliens into separate videos.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMEQI4dmEuA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKX-XQtL7uI

one thing I can concede is I know lots of us have "pop culture quote machine" fatigue where we get tired of hanging out with the one dude who does nothing but quote movies all day and nothing else and this movie definitely has a few quotes that have been banged into the ground so sometimes I don't enjoy this movie as much as I used to as lines like "game over, man" have been beaten to death in the public psyche.

but then I see awesome set piece after awesome set piece and just don't care.

also...I played Hudson in a Elizabethan-era, Shakesperean version of Aliens and getting to yell DIE MOTHERFUCKER while holding a claymore and charging at my 6'4 friend in a xenomorph costume was maybe one of the coolest moments of my theatrical life lol

but then I see awesome set piece after awesome set piece and just don't care

My two favorite moments in that regard were easily the 'silent' section, however handwavey, and the dodge-the-acid part.

the dodge the acid part was a little weird for me because I'm not saying this because I'm a childish person, although I am, but at one point it looked like floating cum and that hurt the gravitas a bit. the silent section felt revisionist with what we know of the lore and it bugged me a bit because it also felt derivative of a scene in the recent Quiet Place movie.

I swear I did like the movie! but I would say if you wanted to pick apart the in-film logic using the established or implied in-universe rules...you could keep yourself busy. i had to force myself to stop doing that during yesterday's watch and just enjoyed the bitey bitey.

The utilitarianism-or-deontology thread throughout the film felt hollow. Not that I'm expecting any deep philosophical arguments from an Alien flick. Just.... don't put the thread in if you are going to give it such a shallow treatment/not really say anything?

Sorry, I'll stop being such a hater now. I liked the face-hugger chases. I liked the pregnant lady storyline from start to end.

Facehugger scenes in alien movies have become the lightsaber battles from star wars for me.

I'm sure I will watch this soon, even though haven't appreciated any of the franchise efforts since Alien 3 (yes I liked it).

I liked resurrection more than 3. The direction was so classic, like someone filmed a comic book. It was silly, but more self-assured of itself in that fact compared to Alien 3. Alien 3 screwed up by making one of the plot points "we all need to die", thus killing all suspense of when/how things will turn out.

The Alien death at the end of resurrection is so grotesquely beautiful.

Elizabeth Vicentelli agrees with me in ranking all the Alien movies for the New York Times. (Gift link.)

Aliens
Written and directed by James Cameron, the first sequel to “Alien” is widely held as either the best or the second best movie in the series. But have you watched it recently? Because “Aliens” has aged badly. After 57 years in hypersleep, Ripley grudgingly agrees to help wipe out a nest of beasties threatening a settlement. “Aliens” bears many of the badges of dishonor of formulaic 1980s action: cartoonishly aggro toughies, a little girl in peril (Carrie Henn), a company tool with an upturned collar (Paul Reiser), a bombastically martial score (by James Horner) and, worst of all, an avalanche of hackneyed would-be catchphrases. Best: the confrontation between the alien queen (a major addition to the canon) and Ripley. Worst: almost everything else.

Alien 3
For many fans, this is the “Alien” maudit: the second sequel to “Alien” was cursed by a chaotic production process, met with a divided reception and disowned by its rookie director, one David Fincher. But time has been generous to this installment, whose number may also refer to three times the bleakness and desperation. The film starts with Ripley crash-landing on a planet that’s been turned into an all-male prison, where many of the inmates have become apocalyptic fundamentalist Christians. A parasitic facehugger, which attaches itself to a host and deposits the embryo that will eventually burst out, quickly grows to full size and spreads havoc on the colony. Featuring Weaver’s best performance in the entire series, “Alien 3” has a haunting grandeur and a core melancholia that are subtly emphasized by Elliot Goldenthal’s imaginative score. This one easily bears repeat watching.

Ah yes, the would-be catchphrases, none of them caught on.

I'm a bit bemused at how Vicentelli seems to skip over a kinda key point about Aliens, namely that the military's cartoonishly aggro toughies etc get their fucking asses kicked almost completely and mostly die gruesomely, which makes all the militaristic strutting/smugness early on ('another bug hunt' etc) completely get shot out of the water. It's fairly clear Cameron circled back to that later with the Avatar films and I'd rather watch Aliens as a Vietnam-themed film from 1986 than Platoon these days.

^^ Yes, exactly this. Bill Paxton, so good in his meltdown scene.

Also every film should be lucky enough to get Paul Reiser as a company tool with an upturned collar!

Alien 3, due to the setting, has the most uniformly drab costuming and character appearances but leans into it by having the most interesting looking dudes fill out the cast.

I cannot countenance considering a bunch of English actors Actin' 'Ard as more interesting than Winona Ryder / Ron Perlman / Brad Dourif / Dominique Pinon (and directed by someone interested in the interesting, too)

Andrew extremely otm

you're arguing against a point I wasn't making

also, nearly every one of those English actors plays a character that immediately falls apart as soon as the alien appears. Charles Dance gets killed nearly immediately! the only guy who survives long enough to see if he can hold it together who is not scrambling through hallways and running into the others is Charles Dutton

which is why I said "fills out the cast" because there's no team of soldiers or mercenaries in 3 until the company men show up, just a bunch of scared lifers

it's some Guy Ritchie hardman stand-off movie

sorry, NOT some hardman stand-off movie

https://i.imgur.com/jTIq9IT.jpeg

1>3>2>>>>4 which only gets included because of the scene where Dan Hedaya holds a piece of his own brain

Latter-day Ridley ones are too bad to consider and surely this one isn't worth the punishment

Seeing the new flick tomorrow with friends. We’ll see how it goes

"He needs to know that things like that could happen in life, it could be a true story, based on science..."

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

Ned otm about the two best set pieces in a rather okay film with dreary actors, though the last dude killed -- I won't even look up the actor's name -- was cute in a poncey way.

I'll also grant that the last creature is quite terrifying -- reminded me of the Julian Sands Mugwump in Naked Lunch.

beautiful pic.twitter.com/auQ73kEjSo

— giannis (@musashinoelegy) September 2, 2024

if you don't want to click thru that's
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWeT1BSWAAA0N4E?format=png&name=900x900

adding:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWeS7qiWgAAc-kH?format=png&name=small