Alien 'Quadrilogy'

However, the yanks have been one up on us with Indiana Jones too - cannot believe we got the but to pieces BBFC approved version of Temple of Doom.

i prefer to pretend that Ressurection doesn't exist.
bunch of shite, innit?

Rest in Peace, Dan O'Bannon. He was 63.

what?! ah, shit. RIP

nooooooooooooo

he was the real genius of sci fi. I credit him with inventing "Blade Runner."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QozLSpjQc0

i got the blu ray version of the quadrilogy, and just watched Alien 3 the 2003 version (which i've never seen before)

They really changed a lot didn't they. I think I preferred the dog host rather than the ox though.

one question. how did the 'company' know anything about ripley being impregnated?

The little scanner doohickie automatically sent the CAT scan to the company.

^ yes indeed

Preferred the ox host, but only because I'm a squeamish person who didn't like seeing the dog being killed

Surprised at how much better that version of Alien 3 was, and also and how feeble were the attempts to clean up the audio in the extra scenes

dude who came up with word "quadrilogy" should be fucking eaten by wolves

or any form of quadruped

Lobster Quadrillogy

haha I was just coming here to post that Phil.

the blu-ray set's just the "alien anthology" now, thankfully (at least in the US)

they shoulda just called it the "ALIEN THIS-MANY" with a pic of Ripley holding up 4 fingers on the cover

yes Latebloomer correct, i'm in uk and it's called the anthology too.

Bought the Alien Vault 'making of' book recently, pretty nicely produced and lots of detail on the production, pre-production sketches, storyboards etc. Doesn't have the hilarious ron cobb or chris foss visualisation of the spave jockey tho - just a crap humanoid skeleton in an office chair.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1845136675/ref=asc_df_18451366757156531?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=1845136675

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8GJbAAr1DY8/TK_1Vxc-DYI/AAAAAAAABv8/Y1GVIAv2REo/s1600/spacejockeypic.jpg

doesn't quite have the belittling office cubicle perspective i recall.

this image satisfied Dan O'Bannon in terms of what he wanted.

obv he deserves a lot of credit for the story and script but you gotta be glad the design work was out of his hands. he didn't even like giger's derelict ¯\(º_o)/¯

http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-book-of-alien

yeah i remember reading someone else's copy of this as a kid, definitely beats 'alien vault' for concept art.

So I ran into this company Super 7 over the weekend down in Orlando - they've received permission from 20th Century Fox to produce and sell the "Alien" action figures that were planned but never came to be:

In 1979, prototypes for 3 ¾” action figures for the ALIEN film were developed but never manufactured. Through our network of industry and collector contacts, Super7 has unearthed the original 33-year-old prototypes and will utilize these to help make these “lost toys” a reality.

With official authorization from 20th Century Fox, Super7 will produce the full series of ALIEN toys as part of our REACTION Figure Series (Retro-Action.) REACTION Figures are stylized exactly as items from the “golden age” of action figures with approximately five points of articulation, accessories, and period-authentic blister card packaging.

The original line up of 3 ¾” action figures for the ALIEN were scheduled to be RIPLEY, ASH, DALLAS, KANE in NOSTROMO SUIT, and the BIG CHAP (the nickname used on-set for the ALIEN creature).

http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-07-08/nwJHtaDvkluaDxGeJDlCxvprzrjDcrmzEtjFqzBFJGqAzBGAAxntbluehIyg/Alien_Lineup.jpg.scaled500.jpg

Kane in the Nostromo suit looks like one of the dancers from the "True Faith" video.

http://vincentwardfilms.com/concepts/alien-3/unrequited-visio/

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Alien_III_(Vincent_Ward)

knew those were going to be about the wood-structured satellite thingy

they threw away more interesting ideas making this series than some movies have ever had

wood moon is a trippy idea that should not have made it past the drug session. i'm glad fincher changed it.

films never made and the documentary/speculation bits prob lend well to the imagination, may not have done well on film

the jodorowsky/dune doc being prime territory for that

has anyone seen aliens on 70mm? is it special?

I watched the Alien 3 "assembly cut" once and thought it was OK. Am I misremembering?

I don't know if this was discussed in another thread, but last month the North Bergen, NJ high school put on a stage production of Alien that very quickly went viral. They apparently had zero budget, so they built all their own props and costumes, which all turned out to be very clever. It got some attention from both Ridley Scott, who offered his congratulations and future assistance; and Sigourney Weaver, who recorded a video thanking the school and then attended an encore performance.

Sigourney Weaver visiting the NBHS cast and crew at their encore performance of Alien after national media recognition was unbelievable!! #alien #Alien40th pic.twitter.com/2UXL0v1H3X

— Nicholas J. Sacco (@NicholasJSacco) April 27, 2019

The whole thing is now available on YouTube, and it's really nicely done. The special effects and staging are clever, they use pieces of Jerry Goldsmith's score and some video elements from the movie, and for not having any budget, accomplish some really great things on the stage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX3VaFG7AvU

omg this rules

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

Jeunet otm

the original interview - https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/alien-resurrection-interview-joss-whedon-jean-pierre-jeunet-b2212720.html

studio... OTM?!

Whedon fought to set the film’s finale on Earth. It is the Alien series’ ultimate dramatic question: what would happen if xenomorphs came to Earth? “The reason people are here is we’re going to do the thing we’ve never done,” Whedon argued. “We’re gonna go to Earth.” The studio, however, wanted to spend the money elsewhere.

Broken clock of financial prudence

Just rewatched Alien: Resurrection and it's on par with 3. now knowing Whedon wrote it makes me revisit his work because that script is hot ass. the concept is there and would have really benefited being stretched out for a short series run. all of the characters are great! i wanted more hedaya. dourif killed it - i figure his grand monologue at the end was edited down.

Whedon’s always been a fucking hack.

What I remember about Resurrection is Sig Weaver's fuck-you energy.

Alien movies are Sigourney movies, not Alien movies

i rewatched resurrection the other day and frankly the ideas and images are too good to be entirely sunk by the fuckboy script. it's still whedon's worst tendencies all at once, particularly the crew dynamic... and yet it is the only alien movie to really dwell on abortion, and the only alien movie that is aggressively lesbian and trans, and the only alien movie where a human has sex with a xenomorph. god, what can you do except appreciate its mutant form

I haven't watched it since 1997 but even then I noticed the queer coding. I should watch it again this weekend.

the ripley/xenomorph sex scene is literally soooo beautiful lol

agree on all those points - though re "the only alien movie to really dwell on abortion" - prometheus has a quite memorable self-administered abortion scene!!

oh true but it's like a THEME in resurrection and it's just the coolest scene in prometheus (full disclosure i haven't seen prometheus in ten years)

Ivy completely otm. It's also the most gooey alien movie, so it's got that going for it

and Sig looks great!

Love her in this. From playing the prey in alien to the predator in alien 4.

Overall the casting is just so unbelievably perfect. Winona Ryder + Ron Perlman + Michael Wincott + etc. etc. etc.

xps i was gonna say -- that Prometheus scene is an unforgettable all-timer. but i am definitely a full-hearted apologist for that film

that interview with Jeunet made me want to rewatch Resurrection, don't think i've seen it since release

same

i tend not to watch movies more than once though in general

love her as the predator here:

https://i.imgur.com/qJgBSgT.jpg

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ1CwCIh0WmNJZLzWVbgHJwZfVq1oPdpnNV-g&usqp=CAU
Well okay then

Looks like it's a rom/com night!

looks like H.P. wants to be the prey

I haven't watched it since 1997 but even then I noticed the queer coding. I should watch it again this weekend

Yeah, I remember Frank DeCaro’s pointing this out on his Daily Show review even back then, something about how had scenes like a modern re-staging of _All About Eve_

this should probably be for the prometheus thread but how they completely fucked up the second run is amazing. the basic ideas are there! the direction - shockingly shitty by Ridley Scott standards with god knows what those budgets were. whedon's writing for resurrection makes prometheus and covenant look like double A ball at best.

wait, which is the second run

the truth is that i think every alien movie is good as hell

including romulus, which was a fucking blast

Turns out cute babby alien is a real actual fella 😑

and there's barely any difference

*second run* i meant everything post-resurrection. i haven't seen romulus yet, though.

i just don't think either prometheus or covenant are shockingly shittily directed... scott's still got it imo, whatever it is

certainly Fassbender's bitchy-priss elegance has never been put to better use

his insistence on just getting all of the shooting done for his films in a reasonable amount of time is probably one of his strengths

I can't remember if it was Covenant or Prometheus but he had some comment in an interview where he was doubling down that he only needed 90 days to get the movie shot and that the studios that kept doing screenings and reshoots to doctor up their movies were doing it wrong

lmao he shot Napoleon in 62 days

CGI aliens in covenant were hot garbage - i thought covenant would've worked better without any aliens in it at all. like just keep it a tight mystery with a skeleton crew that leads to the walter/david switch at the end.

finally saw Romulus. quick thoughts:

I thought it was interesting how... respectful? if that's the way to put it, the setting, costuming, and props were. Time period-appropriate, I guess? I was having trouble placing what seemed familiar about the station itself until I remembered briefly playing the video game Alien: Isolation that also takes place on a station, rather than a ship.

The reappearance of you-know-who's likeness was something I'd already heard about but I'd forgotten and honestly thought we'd see Lance Henriksen. Sounds like the new SAG approval/compensation policy was tested out with this movie. I honestly wasn't too put off by the animation/animatronic because we've already had several movies of half-destroyed androids playing out uncanny valley versions of characters and the goo and android guts were as expected

These alien xenomorph critters really are the science fiction version of convergent evolution. Much like many crustaceans evolve to look like crab, the xenomorph human/alien and alien/human progeny all kind of look like variations we've seen

For some reason the weak point to me in any of these is when we see an entire hallway full of the aliens. Just too busy of a threat.

I knew there'd be a few plot turns in the last act, but they really packed a half dozen of them into there