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

That's my instinct as well.

makes it richer (daughter stuff)

Wait so the stuff about Ripley's daughter growing old and dying is not in the theatrical? Cos that really ties the film together thematically.

Nope, cut then put back in later.

i didn't mind that so much but some podcast or something made the argument that it overloads the substitue/surrogate aspect of her relationship with newt, sapping the integrity of it as its own things. plus she does not need to have an actual lost daughter scene for us to empathize with the more general situation of everyone she ever knew being old/dead, and to grasp what the relationships with hicks and newt might mean to her.

it does expand on the mother vs. mother alien as rival fight.

that's all there anyway, though, because ripley has a nurturing mother-like relationship with newt. i just think it resonates more powerfully as subtext and that cutting the scene reflects a smart show-don't-tell thought process.

Theatrical worked like a charm. I've seen this a million times, the first when I was 12 or 13 in the theaters with my dad - my older daughter is, coincidentally, the same age now - but I still have some fresh thoughts, having watched it with fresh eyes with someone who has never seen it:

1) Sigourney Weaver really is so great in this. As is Carrie Henn. If either of them faltered, this might have fallen apart. (Clearly the whole cast is perfect, particularly Reiser and Paxton and Biehn.)
2) The blue screen (why did the color change to green?) largely holds up, give or take, as do the models, though I never bought the vehicle they crashing around in, which seemed poorly designed for a combat ATV.
3) Was this the first militaristic machine gun sci-fi film? 30 years later it's still the marines 'n' monsters standard. And obviously constantly ripped off and referenced.
4) Speaking of which, the action scenes are just so specularly well storyboarded. Ever notice there are virtually no scenes where the aliens and people actually share a shot? And yet it never feels like people reacting to things that aren't there.
5) Man, I simply can't believe Bill Paxton is dead. I hung with him once, and he was every bit Bill Paxton. Michael Biehn, btw, I want to say has a second career now as a porn producer (!).
6) This is like the least coked up mid-'80s action film imaginable.
7) I do think Ripley learning she had a daughter who lived and died without her wouldn't have hurt. Sets up the maternal rivalry with the queen, particularly when they first meet, and obviously all the stuff with Newt, not to mention the explicit parallels with alien impregnation. Doesn't need it, but it's the only of the extra material that enhances the film rather than simply extends it. (Forgot that Newt actually hugs her and calls her mommy when she finally kills the Queen).
8) How in the world is it that we managed Segweys but we still haven't designed cool-ass exoskeletons? Screw flying cars, this seemed well within reach 30 years ago.

(Should note that my daughter was kind of so-so on it. Liked it, but not blown away, and predicted a couple of the big beats. Kids today ... )

The blue screen (why did the color change to green?)

It didn't.

blue is better for night / dark sequences, where any blue bleed is less noticeable.
green is better for day.
Obviously if any of one or the other color is IN the scene, preference is to use the other.
Also, green works better with digital, blue is better for film.

I just looked all the up btw. JtM would know best probably.

Hmm, I never really thought about it before, but that makes sense. I just could have sworn, anecdotally, that any bts stuff I saw growing up was always blue screen, but when things went digital they went green. Which yeah, green works better with digital, but I didn't know they still did blue.

9) One last observation, the sound design is just incredible. From the guns firing to the almost elephant-like shriek of the aliens to the sound of the nuclear power generator melting down, just so many iconic sounds.

Yeah, I guess I just wasn't paying attention. This is my favorite ever blue/green screen demo, and it's night and uses blue:

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

Bishop's crawl down that tunnel is still damn terrifying, even in its scarcity in terms of screen time.

"I may be synthetic but I'm not stupid" is one of those great throwaway lines delivered just so perfectly.

because lance henriksen is fkn gold

ALIENS is still kind've a crap film though

It definitely has a weird structure, but I don't know how anyone can call it crap, not least because for point of comparison there have been a half-dozen crap Alien films that followed it.

The structure's not that weird? Bit of a slow burn for an action movie I guess, but very three act-y.

Long stretch of no action - 45 minutes till first battle, right? - then long stretch of no action, then long stretch of action. It's just kind of lopsided. Not bad, though.

I'd say that's a pacing issue rather than a structural one.

Works for me though.

Sure, maybe that's more pacing, but that may be just splitting hairs, because that is how the story is built. That's another thing I always liked about it, though. The quiet no action parts are really quiet, for an otherwise loud action movie with machine guns.

Was this the first militaristic machine gun sci-fi film?

The first one that springs to mind is Predator, which was filming when this came out.

Speaking of which, the action scenes are just so specularly well storyboarded. Ever notice there are virtually no scenes where the aliens and people actually share a shot? And yet it never feels like people reacting to things that aren't there.

This is a really good point, and not something I'd noticed.

Michael Biehn, btw, I want to say has a second career now as a porn producer

I'm not sure you should say this - it isn't in any sense true.

How in the world is it that we managed Segweys but we still haven't designed cool-ass exoskeletons?

There's a few, but less than you'd expect alright. One of things that I thought the film shared with Alien is the impression that these were not exactly cutting edge on the industrial or military sides, it wasn't a crack teched-up team, these were just standard grunts either way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87lSB5XWVs

I think they are meant to be a pretty well-equipped team, maybe not some super-elite unit but the spiels about their gear suggest they think they've got the good toys. It's just a future where the best way to kill people is still bullets and the best way to transmit live footage is still a crappy analog signal. Obviously it all helps secure the Vietnam vibe as well.

Michael Biehn, btw, I want to say has a second career now as a porn producer

I'm not sure you should say this - it isn't in any sense true.

It's the weirdest thing, I could have sworn I used to get press releases touting his involvement in some adult video line. My mistake if not. Sorry Michael Biehn!

Another thing I thought of upon re-viewing, is this movie really set the template for a lot of first person shooters, right? With the helmet cams and vitals and whatnot. I'm not much of a gamer, but that really reminds me of how a lot of games are set up. At the least it set the template for "Contra," or so I assume. "Contra" was 1987.

yeah contra is heavily ripped from this, including a lot of the boss visuals and stuff. and it reaches FPSes almost immediately if without such 1:1 connections in DOOM, whose creators had obviously seen this about ten times each.

(OK, xpost, but I guess Biehn and his wife Jennifer Blanc were producing a line of grind house films? Maybe I saw a press release for one of the more salacious titles and got the wrong idea?)

A lot of the movies lines were nicked and appeared in various FPS games.

the box art for contra stole the alien design but the main dude on the cover was clearly modelled on schwarzenegger (based i think on a still from predator?)

http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/32879-contra-nes-front-cover.jpg

meanwhile artwork for the first metal gear game was clearly modelled on michael biehn in aliens

http://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l839lvg6Oc1qbn1vmo1_1280.png

is that Aliens or Terminator?

oh yeah, you're right, it is terminator

http://loyalkng.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/sylvester-stallone-arnold-schwarzenegger-contra-konami-alien-predator.gif

Love it

Alien Vs. Predator Vs. Rambo.

Like, a dance-off or something? Because...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxQmFw565_8

what the fuck @NECA_TOYS pic.twitter.com/zQqrAEolEV

— BenDavid Grabinski (@bdgrabinski) November 7, 2017

looks like david harbour's character from stranger things in the middle of a fatal stroke

Eleanor Ripley
Flushing a Xenomorph into the vacuum of space
They hug your face

— Alex Hannon (@Liffonmelsmork) January 12, 2018

They hug @ u face

I'm ready, man. Check it out. I am the ultimate badass! State-of-the-badass-art! You do not wanna fuck with me. Check it out. Hey, Ripley, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you!

It's a fantastic film, though I question how many of the story beats are innovative, rather than just Cameron displaying a screenwriting ease packing in beats from other films. I feel like its a summation of cinematic action that came before, and a huge weight on what could come after. If any franchise needed a Rian Johnson to confound expectations, it was the Alien franchise after 1986.

you mean like making a sequel where no one has any weapons?

ah yes, rian johnson, the most expectation-confounding filmmaker of our generation

wtf are 'innovative story beats' btw? aliens tells a gripping story, it expands significantly on the world established in the first movie and takes it in new directions, and it deepens our understanding of ripley's character and motivations in surprising new ways, i don't think knocking it because it fails to revolutionise hollywood storytelling conventions really works

I think, maybe, the only innovation (if it can be called that) of this movie is its really awkward, unbalanced structure: it remains an action movie exemplar despite two looooooong stretches with no action. That attests to the sheer quality of said action but also to the quality of the characters, or at least the colorful snappiness of their dialogue.

From 2019, "give the kick-ass woman issues about whether she's a good mother" doesn't really count as surprising.

it wasnt made in 2019 i mean cmon

Speaking of years, I do appreciate that Alien/Aliens were set in what is still now the distant future.

xp, I know but 'surprise' isn't a reaction that takes the timestamp into consideration.

i always forget there's such a long period between the initial arrival of the Marines and the point where shit goes bad; the film keeps up its momentum so well that it flies by.

Cameron's skill with narrative structure and atmosphere has always been impressive, and w/the latter the film's early use of helmet-mounted cameras and motion sensors and heart monitors for each marine (when they flatline it just makes everything more final and chilling*) is just an astonishingly effective way to ante up the dread and oppressiveness.

(*flatlining in cinema is usually a whatever moment, an easy out, and to see it used in this way is a minor testimony to Cameron's directorial abilities.)

I get the criticism about the story beats not being innovative - the bones of it are an off-the-rack 'go on a mission, find the key to your character at the end of it'. All that's missing is a bit at the end where the Queen looks at Ripley and says "we're not so different, you and I..."

cliches? the end where the mother alien *gasp* isn't dead but is holding onto the ship zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, August 20, 2004 8:46 AMBookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah what a boring scene

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, August 20, 2004 8:48 AMBookmark Flag Post Permalink