[Jordan]

So you think his character in that film was shit? Like Top Gun shit?

[Just your average movie goer]

Tom Cruise also has a tendency to play himself a bit - and then there's that smirk of his that he's used in every movie he's ever been in. However, it was unfair of me to put him in the same sentence as Nicholas Cage. I apologise for that. He's a thousand times the actor that that plank of wood is... damn. Now, I feel as though I've insulted a useful building material as well. Anyway, regards of what you think about the acting abilities of these stars, I hate the idea of people saying:
"I want to see (insert movie title) because (insert movie star name here) is in it."

I think it is a far better thing when audiences say "I want to see this movie because the story looks really interesting and I think I'd really enjoy it."

However, that said, the cast of Alien can act the house down compared to most movie stars. Obviously, there's Sigourney Weaver - the woman is a joy to watch - but everyone in the cast is in that league. Yes, even the woman playing Lambert. Remember, she's playing the character as she was supposed to be played. Still, I can enjoy the movie for the acting alone.

You mention another point with the wide angle shots used in movies of this time period. I'm with you all the way on that. I also like the fact that the shots last longer than they generally do now. It's pleasant to be able to let your eyes rest on the same shot for a little while rather than deal with this constant cutting away that's so popular these days. Some newer movies are really terrible with this. Frantic cutting is a little tiring sometimes, but it also robs you of the chance to fully appreciate a shot. Sometimes I feel that I'd like a shot to last longer so I can have time to register everything in the frame but I'm often denied this. And models and painted backgrounds, yes. Give me something tangible over CGI any day of the week.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 23 April 2011 - 08:02 PM

[Mr Pye]

I kind of liked Tom Cruise in Magnolia.

Quote

Actually, let’s take care of the Alien VS Predator concept right now before doing anything else. You see, the premise is rubbish from the outset. These two don’t belong in the same reality. A predator would be more natural in a Star Trek movie, to be honest, since these things are so obviously human-like aliens. Putting them next to Giger’s genuinely A-grade alien creature only draws attention to how inadequately alien predators really are. They’re also obviously B-grade, literally ogres from outer space, and the entire franchise is an imitator of its predecessor to boot – the poor man’s Alien.

The remnants of geek inside me still likes the idea of an Alien vs Predator match-up. It is the ulitmate Sci-Fi action version of Technology vs Nature. The two movies we got have been utter crap though. I should know, I watched them both, and I deeply regret ever watching the second one. The first has both a stupid setup, with hunting ground pyramids in Antarctis which breaks several established facts from both franchises, and main characters without screen presence and charisma. I have forgotten the name of the actress that plays the heroine but watching her trying and spectacularly failing to play and look a badass Ripley type character is embarrasing. The movie also has a weak script. Now the second movie, oh boy, what can I say about that one? The moronic Strausse brothers like so many other people I don't understand seemed to think the problem with the first movie was that it didn't have enough blood and gore in it. But we are into deep levels of stupidity now. Number two also came out at a time when the horrendous practice of shaky cameras was used, and this coupled with the movie beeing very very dark meant you couldn't see what the h*ll was happening, and thank god because bringing Aliens and Predators to a teen tv-series american town must be one of the worst mash-ups in cinema history.

If they had managed to do a good AvP movie, it would still have shrunk the universe as one might say, but even then there is a part of me that would have liked to see a good match-up between the two. Like JM I remember the old AvP computer game which for it's time had great atmosphere and tension. Everything from the strobing lights, the music, to the trippy motion detectors that kept beeping for elevators and shatering glass so you were never quite sure if an Alien was lurking around the next corner or not. I wish the movies felt anywhere near that good. Ah but now I am complaining and should probably have an idea of what they should have done instead. But I don't. (Does anyone else feel that the StarCraft games with their Protoss and Zerg races ripped off AvP btw? I understand they took a lot from Warhammer but I don't know where Warhammer got it from.)

Quote

Ridley Scott believes that the sequel doesn’t really explore the concepts of the original film and he’s right. It rehashes the original story, but makes everything bigger (but not necessarily better) and ditches any further exploration of the concept in favour of big loud action. It’s a riot, no doubt about it, but it’s also something of a missed opportunity. The fact that Ridley Scott sees this tells me that he might have something on the table to offer viewers.

The irony here is that if Scott does succeed in offering something good and this becomes a hit, then a new wave of big loud action is likely to ensue as Hollywood scents dollars in the revived franchise.

Quote

Now, I’m not suggesting that Ridley Scott would do something like put in flashy monitor displays that are completely at odds with the computer screens we saw in Alien or anything like that. I think he’s a smart guy. He’s not like a certain talentless hack who butchered another film series. I don’t worry about that. However, even though I’m sure he’d try to match the look and tone of the original, I think it’s just a difficult task.

Probably not as hard as it may seem, assuming he gets free reins. One of the best aspects of the original Alien today is how well is has aged. Apart from one or two computer screens with mother, the graphics of the landing pipe, and possibly Sigourney Weavers 70:s style panties, there is almost nothing to date the movie. (I'm disregarding here aspects of image quality and other movie technique issues, which I know nothing about anyway.)

Of course if the producers say we've got to have modern computer graphics etc.. then things are bound to look diffferent.

[Jordan]

Quote

Does anyone else feel that the StarCraft games with their Protoss and Zerg races ripped off AvP btw? I understand they took a lot from Warhammer but I don't know where Warhammer got it from

Blizzard IP is entirely pilfered from other successful companies. Warcraft did'nt take alot from Warhammer, it IS Warhammer. Blizzard orginally wanted to make an RTS game using the Games Workshop IP (Warhammer). Back in the early 1990's, Blizzard was an obscure video game company with a few quasi-successful SNES games on their resume. For whatever reason, Games Workshop told Blizzard 'no dice', so Blizzard went about on their own and created a medieval fantasty. Warcraft, the orignal game, was very similar to Warhammer and Warcarft 2 was even more so. Warcraft lore began to take a turn for the different after Warcraft 3. It was here that Warcraft lore came to it's own. This is also when Warcraft lore became incredibly stupid. World of Warcraft took the shit factor to a whole new index and now the story line is as stupid and predictable as any prime time sitcom you see on TV.

The Zerg are the TYRANIDS and the Terran are most definately SPACE MARINES, both of which are again from Games Workshop (Warhammer 40k product line). The story of Starcraft is much better than Warcraft. But it ain't orginal. Blizzards genius is not story writing, it's RTS development. Nobody made an RTS like they did. The story in Wc1 and Wc2 was just good enough. Wc3 became very sloppy but most people enjoyed it nonetheless. World of Warcraft is popular for the same reason their RTS games where; simplicity, gameplay, and customer service. Blizzard still releases patches for Sc1 and Wc3, even though they are no longer money makers.

Any how, that was a long response for a comment you had in brackets.

[Mr Pye]

Any answer is welcome. Write an essay if you like, though I won't promise to read it all.

I was curious to know if anyone else had thought of AvP when Blizzard revealed the races for Starcraft back in the late nineties. I think the first AvP games came around the same time so I did. I didn't know much about Warhammer at all in those days, though I have read since that a lot of Starcraft was very similar to Warhammer.

Speaking of Warcraft, deviating from the main topic for a moment, I really liked the first one, found the second one slightly odd, and was pleased again with number three. But the moment Warcraft turned MMO I gave up on it, and the rest of the world embraced it. I can't stand the soup that most MMO:s turn into, and they go on forever. There was a Blizzard game in development called Lord of the Clans, that I think I would have liked. An old graphic adventure style game. I think they cancelled it because it felt outdated, but I'm almost sure I would have bought and played it had it been released.

Is there an Alien/Predator MMO? Or is it just a matter of time?

[Just your average movie goer]

Yeah, I can appreciate the appeal of Alien vs Predator as a separate entity. It's just that at the conceptual level it seems disrespectful to the original Alien. Anyway, too late now. Perhaps however, Ridley Scott's Prometheus can make the bad memories of the Alien vs Predator movies go away.

Oh, and Alien vs Predator: Requiem had these creatures terrorising teenagers in a mid-west American town? Wow. That's dragging the original Alien down to exactly the type of film it so carefully avoided being in the first place. That's kind of impressive - but not in a good way.

Quote

The irony here is that if Scott does succeed in offering something good and this becomes a hit, then a new wave of big loud action is likely to ensue as Hollywood scents dollars in the revived franchise.

There is that. However, there's also that faint and fragile hope that perhaps studio executives might take heed and realise that audiences aren't as dumb as they want them to be - and that many of us would prefer well-paced stories as opposed to special effects extravangas put together by the kind of people who edit music videos. Then again, I keep hoping that sooner or later they might start to pay more attention to the fact that the overuse of CGI is almost universally derided and use more sets and miniatures but that hasn't happened to any great extent yet.

As to making Prometheus fit the look and tone of Alien, I don't think it should be hard either, but I think that even after you give everyone seventies hairstyles and give them retro wardrobes, you've still got the lightning, the contrast of shots and a host of other things to consider. However, perhaps my fears are misplaced and Ridley Scott will know how to pull if off. I hope so. My most sincere hope actually is that Prometheus will look as though it could have been shot simultaneously along with the original. If Ridley and his crew can pull that off at least, I think he'll go a long way to making a great film. I don't share Civilian's pessimism about the project. What's more, if Prometheus really does turn out to be a worthy addition to the franchise, we will finally have a proper Alien trilogy of sorts. Another hope is that it might usher in another period of great science fiction movies, because I really feel that since that fantastic run from the late seventies to the late eighties, there really hasn't been much in the way of science fiction cinema to get excited about. I think it's high time that changed.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 25 April 2011 - 07:51 AM

[Mr Pye]

Just your average movie goer, on 25 April 2011 - 08:48 AM, said:

Another hope is that it might usher in another period of great science fiction movies, because I really feel that since that golden age from the late seventies to the late eighties, there really hasn't been much in the way of science fiction cinema to get excited about. I think it's high time that changed.

I have been waiting in vain for this also. If I take a look at which sci-fi themed movies I have liked they are almost exclusively from the late 70:s to the late 80:s. There is also the first Matrix and Pitch Black from the late 90:s but after that nothing. It could be the CGI era, which will now be replaced by a 3D era, or it could be an age thing, but going back to those movies I enjoyed as a teenager I still find in them, let's call it a respect for the audience intelligence that I can't detect in contemporary movie. Independence Day and Transformers having been the norm for a long time now.

It is easy to forget, when we call out a certain hack for not keeping up his past performances, that the whole sci-fi genre has taken an ugly turn with the turn of the century.

I don't know what to feel about Prometheus. The last Ridley Scott movie that blew me away was Gladiator. He has done some great movies in his days, The Duellists, Alien and Blade Runner comes to mind, but since Gladiator there is something of a lull. Black Hawk Down was professional but not terribly engaging, Kingdom of Heaven didn't do anything for me, and neither did his new Robin Hood. I hope he hasn't lost the touch. It's about time he scores a new hit, so here's hoping it will be Prometheus and we finally get a worthy sci-fi themes movie again.

Also glad he isn't using Russel Crowe for this. Lately Scott and Crowe have seemed as inseperable as Burton and Depp.

[Just your average movie goer]

I agree. I personally haven't seen anything done by the man that I've liked since Alien. Even Blade Runner didn't work for me. On a theory I mentioned earlier regarding the way our regard for a movie is influenced by when we saw it, I only saw Blade Runner a couple of years ago, so there was absolutely no nostalgia in it for me. However, I just felt that it fell flat. The replicants were too vile and I think this harmed the movie (there's a scene were one of them is just heaping artificially manufactured eyeballs onto some character's head, which was just pointless and gross). Anyway, I felt that if they were more sympathetic, the audience could better appreciate their plight. However, as it stood, it felt as though eliminating the replicants was doing a public service. I couldn't sense any of the grey moral boundaries I was hoping to find.

Still though, I know what you mean. I haven't seen much else of his work to be honest, so I can't judge. I thought Kingdom of Heaven was awful and that dark blue hue he cast the whole picture in ruined the cinematography. The glare of the sun against the desert sand, the beauty of European woodlands... all these things lost. For most of the movie, I felt as though there was something wrong with the projector to be honest.

However, I have hope. Maybe all of these things are just projects that he's done to keep the money rolling in and he wasn't passionate about any of them - but I'm really hoping that Prometheus is something special. I hear it's got a release date now. June 2012. So it's happening.

Loved the comparison between Ridley Scott/Russel Crowe and Tim Burton/Johnny Depp by the way. So true.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 25 April 2011 - 08:35 AM

[Zatoichi]

Dear Lord guys, I thought I'd never get through the first page of posts. Twas an entertaining read though. Well, I'm a bit late to the game, but I'm going to throw in my 2 cents anyways.

I started checking this thread out, and after a few posts, I just knew I had to re-watch Alien. I’m glad I did too. I liked it a lot better than the last time I saw it which was many years ago. In fact, I like it a lot better now. Comparing it to a bunch of the crap that's come out over the years, I see it as another one of those films that stands much closer to the top of the heap.

Really like Civ says, it is at its core a horror, monster movie flick. I'm alright with that. It is possible for those kinds of movies to be good too. Because unlike pretty much every monster movie out there, this one manages not to suck. There are a lot of good points that MG was bringing up like cinematography and musical score.

I think the pace of the movie was good, and the acting was wonderful. I didn't spend the movie thinking that these were actors and actresses, or even characters. I thought of them all as people. There was even a really nice surprise because I had totally forgotten Ash was an android. But even better was that I watched the movie and was not thinking, "That there is Sigorny Weaver." No, the whole time I was thinking, "That’s Ripley." That's a huge thing for me with watching moving pictures with more famous actors and actresses. Which name comes to mind when I see the part, the performer's name, or the character's name?

A few things however did bother me, mostly the crew. Insomuch as, why can't all of the characters in a horror movie ever go down in a believable fashion? For this film at least, they weren't made up of a bunch of people that were too dumb to live. That is already extremely rare in horror movies. Still, they could've used a little more brainpower. I mean come on; between a couple of them they jury-rigged a portable motion sensor, flamethrowers, and repaired a shuttle that had a ton of things busted in a day. There are several different officers on the ship and most of the people there seem as though they ought to be smarter than me (they probably are, just not in the staying alive department). Cain’s death I can obviously accept, the same with Brett there. Cain was just exploring around and had no way of really knowing what was going to happen to him. With Brett, they thought they were looking for some little bugger when it had gotten really huge. After Brett’s death though, I cannot accept any of the rest of the crew’s deaths, except maybe Lambert (the way she had been acting the whole time, you knew she was going to freeze up).

Now when Brett died they had even figured out that this thing was not only much bigger, but a lot more dangerous. Even though they keep telling each other to stick together, they keep not doing that and have evidently forgotten one of the oldest advantages you could have in any situation, superior numbers. What happened, these guys had all been doing pretty well. I have no qualms about them splitting up when they thought it was small, but after they knew it was a very credible threat ... splitting up is just plain stupid at that point. Unless there was some specific reason where they needed members of the group to be in more than one place at once, it should not have happened.

Between having an advantage in numbers, knowledge of the layout of the place, and an inventory of things that could've been used as or jurry-rigged into offensive weaponry, the plan should've been different. Personally, I would've had the crew gather the necessary weapons, supplies, comforts, etc, and held out in one room or area that had only one way for the xenomorph to gain entrance. Sooner or later it'll probably need to feed and will come knocking on the door. At that point you can either wait it out and let it starve, or open the doors and blast it with everything you've got (Ash probably would’ve screwed with this plan).

But that didn't happen. Alright, so they figured out it was lairing in the "vents" or whatever they were. They also, had the ability to open and close off sections of these. So why not just close them all? It is possible that this approach wouldn't have worked if there were ways out of the area that could not be blocked off. But the audience doesn't know about that, and it never comes up. Still, if it can be done, here was another way to trap and starve it (Ash probably would’ve screwed with this plan too). But that didn't happen either. At the very least they could've closed off all of the areas, isolated its movement, and then pinpointed its location before having Dallas go in to roast it (Ash probably would’ve screwed with this plan as well. What a jerk).

Parker and Lambert - What happened with them; here is what happened. First off, the remaining "still alive" people split up. Lambert dying I understood. She had been all upset and things earlier, it just seemed within her character to freeze up. Parker not taking the shot with the flamethrower when he had the good looooong chance to do it, I can't really believe. It was rather obvious that Lambert had frozen up and was fixed to the spot. She is dead meat unless the xeno is driven off or killed. That's when you just flamethrower the xeno. If it hits Lambert a little bit, so what? Not killing the xeno or driving it away will result in her death. Yeah, I know, heat of battle, untrained combatant, bad decision making, etc. So what does he do, Parker tries to tackle it. This is possibly one of the worst things to try. It dragged away two other people. It is a bit obvious that tackling it will have little to no effect, unlike the freaking flamethrower!

I really liked the bit with Mother, Ash, and the company fucking the crew over (I actually wish there were a couple more hints/things to make the audience think something besides the alien was working against them), but that sub-plot brought on issues of its own. To clarify things within the plot, it is hinted at and can be surmised by the audience that this whole plan was in place before they left. For one, all mining (and I would guess other non-combat) vessels most likely would not have standing orders to check out and bring back any potentially devastating alien life forms. So this isn't a routine, regular order. When the crew is woken up, one of them comments that they are still a year away from our solar system, if not earth. In Aliens it is noted that communication between the colony and Earth takes two weeks (this is 57 years later, and comm tech has improved since the last film). So unless the ship parked its butt of its own accord for a few weeks after picking up the warning transmission and sent out for orders, the orders were already in place.

So, why did the company go about acquiring the xeno in such a round-a-bout fashion? Now, it is possible that a probe picked up the signal or something, and the Nostromos was just the closest company item on its way back home. A military/merc outfit could have just as easily been sent though. Just bring livestock or something as a food source for the xenos and you're pretty much set. It'd probably be a better/safer solution. It could also be the case that they needed to get the xeno through quarantine. But I don't see how having a ship full of dead crew would help it to achieve that. Extreme nitpick - The crew would’ve been more than expendable, they were needed to feed the xenomorph. Shouldn’t Ash have worked towards spacing out their deaths to keep it fed for a year? Since it is highly doubtful it could’ve been put into a sleeper chamber. And who knows how the alien biology would’ve worked for doing that if it was even attempted.

The way I see it is that Mother was set up to run through things when it neared the planet it stopped and woke everyone up. When asked it played out a transmission for the crew, one that it had "received". I figure that there was a transmission being sent at one time, but over however many years that had gone by, it had faded. From there, Mother worked with Ash to make the crew bring xenos onto the ship, and then turn the crew into fodder.

I've got more on this later, but for right now its 2:35 am and I' really tired.

[Just your average movie goer]

Life on the forums again. Cool. I enjoyed your post, Zatoichi - however, I can sympathise with the amount of reading required to catch up since you came in after the bulk of the discussion.

You raise interesting points about how the crew handled the situation. Personally though, I think they really did as well as they could for the most part. The weapons for one thing - since the alien bleeds acid, shooting it could result in a hull breach. Also, the flame throwers may have frightened it, but they wouldn't harm it as we can see by it surviving the thrust of the shuttle engines at the end.

As for splitting up, I think it makes sense that Dallas went into the air vents alone as that way, no one else was endangered. Maybe they could have sealed it in by closing the hatches, true - however, I think they wanted it off the ship and I can understand. Imagine if you were there and you had the thing trapped in the air vents. Would you feel confident enough with this containment to go into hypersleep for eleven months? Neither would I. As for Dallas freezing up in the vent, that's fine too - I thought that was quite human. He didn't know exactly where the alien was, he started to sweat and he panicked. Not rational - but human.

I will say that Ripley, Parker and Lambert probably should have kept together at the end - although Ripley did say she wanted to get the shuttle prepped for a quick getaway. Also, don't forget that for the duration of their survival ordeal, these characters have been unable to sleep or eat any meals - not even a five minute nap or a little snack. So they'd be strung out. Also, none of them are soldiers or anything like that. They're truckers in space.

Finally, with Parker and Lambert, it sounded like Lambert was in the way when she froze up but you already mentioned that. There's also a quick shot of Parker's flamethrower getting thrown away before the alien grabs him. This is one scene where budget limitations forced the filmmakers to leave a lot to the audience's imagination. I'd say that the alien costume was probably really hard to move around in so they couldn't show fluid movements onscreen. Wisely, the filmmakers choose for the most part to show just fleeting glimpses of the creature. Actually, I think they would have done that regardless - whether they had a greater range of movement with the costume or not - but anyway, what they did works.

You also raise another interesting question about the company and why it goes about trying to acquire the alien in such a roundabout fashion. My reading of it is that it's expensive and time consuming sending ships out vast distances away from Earth and its colonies so that the company was probably just being opportunistic. They had a ship that was going past the planet on its route back to Earth, so someone thought that they might as well use it to pick up an alien. As for their ideas for getting it past quarantine, my understanding is that they didn't quite know what they'd be acquiring either. Ash seemed to have some idea about its life stages but he does seem to be surprised by its capabilities. I like Ash's characterisation actually. I don't think he's a simple black and white villain, as many would assume. He's quite human, prone to emotions and he's obviously interested in the alien from a purely scientific point of view, at least personally. His orders to bring the specimen back however would no doubt be part of some programming and therefore they would not be something he'd have any free will about. He's still scary though when he snaps and you can completely understand Parker flamethrowing him after Ripley pulls the plug - but he's not a one-dimensional villain by any stretch.

And you liked the acting too? I love the acting in this movie. I think I've said it somewhere in this thread already but I could enjoy watching Alien for the acting alone. The characters really feel like genuine people, don't they? They get stressed, they get tired, they complain about their financial woes - and who doesn't relate to Parker and Brett? I'm sure we've all felt a little unappreciated at work sometimes. However, we can relate to all of them. You feel Ripley's frustration when everyone goes about ignoring pretty damn important rules - and yet at the same time, you can understand Dallas. When he's tired and grumpy and just wants to go home, you can see why he doesn't want to have long discussions with Ripley about why Ash is allowed to keep the dead facehugger specimen. They're all very real. I also like the fact that they talk in a real manner as well and that not everything they say is related to the plot or written into the script to provide viewers with key pieces of information. You know, "I just wanna finish my coffee. It's the only thing good on this ship." vs "I have a feeling that we're heading into the vast unknown here - and that what we find may have terrible consequences for us all." Oddly, these days, many scriptwriters would favour the latter style of dialogue. I think it's good that Alien is still popular today so that people can occasionally be reminded how to make movies properly. That old adage that they don't make 'em like they used to is so often true.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 12 May 2011 - 03:30 AM

[Zatoichi]

damned Internet. I had it this nearly finished when it closed itself out Graaaaa!!!! Alright, starting again. And it won't sound as good now. Sadness.

I guess I came off as a little too harsh sounding on the crew. I think they actually did a decent job in the trying to survive deptartment. They were essentially a group of space truckers, its not like they were military or anything. What takes me out of most horror movies is when the characters do things that are so mind-numbingly stupid that I start to cheer for the killer to forcefully take them out of the gene pool. This didn't happen here. And the "betrayer" in this was an android following orders. Usually its some twit who screws everybody over for money or a percieved increased chance of survival (usually by locking a door before the rest of the group can get through). That person almost always dies right after. By the hand of the monster killer thing no less. It's a movies in general thing that I got tired of years ago. I understand the morality lesson that gets shoved down my throat so often, consequences of your actions and stuff. I just wish they would find ways to make it not so obvious, a bit more palatable, or have the character betray in a more intelligent fashion. On the whole, I just think they could've done a better job at trying to stay alive, but I don't think they did too badly for who they were and the situation they were in.

Oh I am totally with you there on Dallas freezing up. I would've been pissing my pants in there. He's getting told the freaking thing is coming right at him and he neither sees nor hears it. Scary as hell. And I know why they did that plan. They wanted to try to crispify it while only putting one person in danger. I just think they ought to have come up with a better plan and that their execution of said plan was rather poor.

I also agree that Ripley, Parker, and Lambert were strung out, hungry, and a slight bit traumatized from being hunted and having their fellow humans die all around them (Ash was certainly not helping things either). This would probably account for them doing things like splitting up and trying to tackle alien death machines.

xeno with acid blood vs. flamethrowers - Actually, the crew didn't know what kind of punishment the xeno could take and would've been working under the assumption that the flamethrowers would have some effect on it. It is also my guess that since they were able to make a cut into the face-hugger with a scalpel, that opening up the full grown sucker wouldn't have been too much harder than that (this is just an assumption I think they'd be going on). Now with the acid, a small bit of it ate through 3 or 4 decks on the lander they had. We don't know the schematics of the ship, and the actual possibilities, but they just would've had to lure/trap the thing high enough up. It also looked like there was plenty of water around too. They would really just need a bucket of water on standby. As soon as they wasted the sucker, just splash the water over it to dilute/neutralize a fair portion of the acid.

I also had a problem with the xeno's insane growth spurt without feeding on anything. The growth spurt part I can get behind because it is physically possible for something to grow that quickly insomuch as the species beginning rate of cell division could have been astronomically fast and then slowed after it achieved a certain amount of growth. That's very feasible. But it didn't take in anything, and living things simply don't achieve that kind of growth without getting any input. As Civ already suggested, there was a few ways this could've been done. As it was left, I saw this as the film's only major reality flaw. MG, I got where you were going that since the xeno's biology is so different from other things that you really can't place limitations on it based on what all other lifeforms we know about do. I can accept that a person can be given the ability to fly (wings or no). But while flying, barring an outside force interfering, that person is still subject to physics. Now its possible that it only fed off of the water that was apparently abundant on the ship, but something tells me no. If it only needed water, why would it need people meat? Ooooh, just a thought, what if was like one of those things to stick in water and it expands? Like to get going into battle form, it needs to hydrate up first. That's an explanation I can live with, but really I'm not the one who's supposed to be coming up with these reasons. Its the job of the material to do and present that.

Now what's this business of the rocket booster not killing the xeno? Oddly enough, I can accept the thing not exploding when it got ejected into space. I get the feeling that its biology allowed it to seal itself up to be its own personal space suit. And it was a breather. You can hear it breathing when Ripley walks up to it on the escape shuttle while its taking a nap or something. I haven't the slightest why it was napping though. That seemed just a shy bit contrived, but oh well, I'm not that bothered by it. Anyways, it had just gotten shot out the door by the grapple/harpoon gun thing. The gun caught on something, so the xeno was still there. Then Ripley fires the thrusters. The xeno gets torched and the cable line broken. I'm pretty sure the xeno actually did die right there. The audience is given no indication that its still alive when it starts to carren off into space, and the camera cuts away from it shortly after its demise. If it is still moving around at that point, I'd say they were death spasms at least or "oww that frickin hurt and now I'm dying spasms" at most.

I agree with you on the costume wholeheartedly. It looked like it was hard to move around in. The xeno seemed to be noticibly slow in that scene, whereas because of cuts it seemed to be really fast moving/reacting in others. It's especially telling when its tail starts to wrap around Lambert's leg. Watching it you can tell the movement is stilted. As a side note, it could be the case that the xeno still looked alive after taking a rocket booster to its whole body because they didn't want to damage the costume (or maybe the person inside it). As what happens in film making, they might've not filmed that scene last, and so still needed the suit. Why make another, when you have a perfectly good one that you're using already?

Ash was awesome as a villain. How he told Ripley that he sympathized with the humans before she unplugged him, it was great. It made him more than just some lackey or automaton for a greater force pulling the strings. If more villains could be half the character he is, we'd have so much better villains. Though I wish they showed a little more evidence for it, it is interesting to think of the ways in which he was helping keep the xeno alive the whole time. Escpecially despite the efforts of the crew to kill it. Though, as the science officer, I think his best effort in aiding the xeno (besides getting it on the ship) was in not giving aid/advice on how to beat it to the crew. And when he sneaks up on Ripley while she was accessing Mother, bonechilling. She's all alone in the room with one enterance, and its not a big room. She reads the order that Ash was given, and then he just appears next to her. The guy puts ninjas to shame.

[Zatoichi]

Double posting madness!

Oh and I forgot - Alright, the stuff with a guy getting face impregnated and then chest busted and its affect on the audience as opposed to what if it happened to a woman instead. This is the sort of thing that probably doesn't hit most of the audience in its concious mind. Its a thing that your subconcious is more likely to pick up on. Which is almost better because you know something is freaking you out a little or throwing you off a bit, but you can't quite put your thumb on it. Now, while I would put that most people would get an uneasy feeling from the scenes (besides the dying and all of that), most won't be able to identify why. The reason for becoming uneasy about it, has already been stated more or less. Its an inversion of the natural order of things. It was a man who was "impregnated" and soon after "gave birth". Yes it can happen to both men and women, but in the movie we only see it happen to a man. If it had happened to a woman instead, our subconcious minds wouldn't be bothered by it because that it the "natural" order of things.

Alright, now for some other movies we've been talking about here.

What's this talk of Aliens 3 and Aliens 4 I keep seeing. Those movies don't actually exist, they never got made. Whatever you're refering to, it must've been a hoax.

Actually, I have no problem whatsoever with the Xenos taking on different characteristics depending on their parent host. To me its just another advantage the Xenos have. It allows them to evolve more rapidly or something, and bring in more advantages for the colony or some such. There's a good example of something else that does this, but I can't remember what it is for the life of me.

For Predator, I liked it. Its your regular great action movie full of muscles and guns. I expected nothing more from it. The only real problem I ever saw was that once they figured out it wouldn't kill you if you were unarmed, they should've immediately dropped all of their weapons. But of course, if they did that, there'd be no "the rest of the movie".

For Predator 2, yeah I liked it also. I know it isn't a great film, but I don't know the problem a lot of people out there had with it. I'd have to watch it again to see the things that were wrong with it for sure.

Predators ... Alright, the title alone makes me think that its actually going to be a series of stories about sexual predators, not the movie monster ones. I've not watched this film, and I don't plan on subjecting myself to this form of torture. The premise of the film is that they gather up a bunch of worthy advasaries and then stick them on a Predator Safari planet. Right there, I know I don't like it. Its simply not what the Predators do. They fly around the galaxy hunting other stuff on its "home" turf. It's their schtick. You are supposed to play with that idea, not change it. So right off the bat, they lost me. Now looking at the preview the humans are supposed to be a bunch of the deadliest of the deadliest from around the world. If they're so deadly, then why does it look like at least half of them would have trouble surviving for a single day out in the woods? I mean, for Pred 1 there was so much freaking beefcake that you'd have no trouble thinking this was a crack military team that could kick the snot out of anything five ways to Sunday. These guys ... I'd be afraid of fighting Laurence Fishburne, and that's because he's pretty big, and did a bunch of kung-fu for the Matrix trilogy. But that's it. In Pred 1, the nerdy guy looked like he could hand me my ass on a silver platter. Also in the preveiw, it looks like there's 10-15 Preds out doing their thing ... again no. You don't do it like that. These guys operate alone, and occasionally in small groups. Oh and now there's a different, even bigger type of Predators that beat up on the smaller ones. You know what, fuck you movie and everyone who got this in the works. There are a bunch of consistencies that ran through all/most of the others works of fiction that dealt with the Predators. Why would you just ignore most of those from the start?

The Predators from the first couple of movies cannot be thrown under B-movie monster villains. Until, the quality of A-movie monsters rises, then they are still up there (just on the bottum rung). I mean, think of all the shite mosnters you'd be lumping them in with if they were in the B lists. You can't just do that to the Predators. You're hurting their feelings.

Aliens vs Predator and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem - There is almost no point in going into these. The films are both pretty much shit, and I'm sad that I've actually watched them. I was tricked into seeing the second because a trusted source said he watched it and it didn't screw up like the last movie. He lied to me. The stupidest thing was making the Predators into "heros" of any stripe. Now the only thing I actually care for in either of these is the concept ... well not even the entire concept. Just the idea of the Xenos fighting the Preds. This had been explored in comics and videogames already. I don't see why the movies didn't just do what those did and set them in the bleak future of the Aliens universe. With that you have the Aliens that are just starting to pop up all over the place, the humans have some decent future tech so they can compete in combat, and colonies in the far reaches of space to serve as a battleground. There's no reason for the Preds to have died off, so its perfectly fine to have them there. Plus, setting it in the future doesn't scew with timelines at all. Such as humans probably haven't ever encountered the xenos until the first Alien movie. So you start from there and build a sweet sci-fi movie. But noooo, we don't get that, we get dumped with garbage. Especially since Requiem was more like a teen love-drama on the whole then a god damned horror OR action movie. What the hell Hollywood? What the hell!?!

This post has been edited by Zatoichi: 12 May 2011 - 12:09 PM

[Mr Pye]

I don't know if the idea of the crew barricading themselves would be feasible. I suspect the best way for them to get back to earth would be to return to the cryobeds, but they wouldn't dare to do that with an Alien intruder sneaking around the ship. So they kind of had to go look for it.

It's a good point that Ripley, Lambert and Parker shouldn't have split up. They could have stuck together and gotten the parts they needed for the shuttle one at a time. At the same time the stress levels are so hectic that I'm willing to accept them not thinking clearly.

The crew does feel like real people, and this is good. Though everyone has their role to fill there is no military diciplin involved, and treating the Nostromo like a real workplace and not a fantastic futuristic space ship also helps the feel of the movie and it tells us these things are commonplace in the world of this crew. A larger believable future is hinted.

The quick growth of the Alien is probably one of more uneblievable elements. It is in a way necessary for the plot to work but it can make you wonder if the Alien stopped by the kitchen and swiped all their canned sprouts.

At least there is nothing as crazy as the super quick chestbursters in AvP.

[Zatoichi]

Aliens

Genre/concept - I liked the fact that the sequel wasn't also a horror sci-fi movie. If had been, they probably would've ended up doing the same exact movie. I think that doing that would've been a discredit to both films. We've already seen the xeno once and know of its abilities and such. To do something with it, you have to give it a little more "new". I do wish that they had made Aliens a little more terrifying though. Take that first action sequence that happens at about an hour into the movie. Now, what if the audience only got to see it from the view of the tank on all of the cameras and such? For a while nothing is happening, and then you hear the screams of the marines. Yeah it takes away from the action, but throwing in a little fear would've been nice. Concerning the marines, its a movie and we all knew most of them were going to die (because its a movie). With the scene, you could see their deaths coming from a mile away. I don't think it would've hurt to use their deaths to build tension or something.

The setup - I think Civ said it earlier, there is a thing they do when they make sequels. They keep the characters they can and throw them to the wolves once more. Most of the time its basically the same kind of situation, or up against the same kind of enemy. So I'm fine with them wanting to do that. However, the way it got done, there's just too many things that don't add up. I'll try to offer possible explanations where I can, to be fair I guess.

57 years into the future - This is dumb and here's why.
1. There have been alarm clocks since somewhere around 400 BC (Greece). The first user settable mechanical alarm clock was invented in 15th century Europe if not earlier. With all of the tech stuff of the FAR FUTURE (after 1979 of course) I'm pretty certain Rippley could've set a sleep timer on the sleep chamber. She says at the end of Alien that getting back to our solar system would take about 6 weeks. So, you set a timer, you get up check your bearings, make course adjustments, and then go back to sleep. [Actually that's something odd in the first film. In the beginning they woke up about a year early. By the end of the film, Ripley was about 6 weeks away from our solar system. So the escape shuttle is equiped with lightspeed? Okay, so she says 6 weeks from the core systems and could've been talking about multiple solar systems. But you are one tiny escape shuttle in a huge freaking galaxy. With a little luck you'll get picked up huh, try the chances of you getting picked up are more like astronomically high. Aren't you a pilot on a freaking spaceship? Why don't you know these things! Alright, sorry for nitpicking that. Moving on ...]
2. Based on the first movie, we know that the company knows about there being aliens (possibly), and a non-human spacecraft is just sitting around for the taking (they totally know about that). Also in the movie you know that getting ahold of the aliens is worth enough to the company to label the ship's crew as expendable. In Aliens Burke tells Ripley that just bringing back two face-huggers is worth so much to the company's weapon division that the two of them would be set for life. Maybe its the case that the weapons division is acting all cloak and daggery, but still, some people in the company know these things and have a lot of power. It is simply unbelievable that they wouldn't act on that sooner. Or what about when their 20 million tons of refined ore don't show up on time/ever? Wouldn't they send a scout or a probe along the Nostromo's last known trajectory? The ship alone was apparently worth 42 million dollars.

If you took away the large time gap between the films, you almost wouldn't have to change a thing. All the tech and other changes, you can just say that we already had all of this stuff. A rock hauler doesn't need cutting edge tech, but other facilities and ships might have it. If they want to keep in the idea of Ripley being isolated, have her daughter die in a car accident or something, and have her put under house arrest or imprisoned after her little hearing. It makes the offer to get her life back that much sweeter because she still might have some semblance of a life left (friends and other family). As for wanting to have a colony come under attack, simply have the xenos show up at a different place. There's no need for them to be confined to one planet in the galaxy ... especially since we know they weren't from there in the first place.

A colony on that planet is actually okay by me, well at least as far as the feasibility of setting up shop there. Many planets in the galaxy are all composed out of gas. A lot of the solid ones are either deadly cold, or made of volcanoes and acid air. Most of the planets and moons in our galaxy would kill us in about a minute to 5 minutes with a space suit on of course. So really, any place that its actually possible for us to set up shop is a worthy place for a colony.

With the colonists not finding the alien ship beforehand, I suspect a few things might've happened. I would guess that the warning signal couldn't be broadcast indefinitely. I already suspect that it wasn't being broadcast at the beginning of the first film, but that Mother knew the coordinates ahead of time and told the crew there was a signal [If this is true, why tell the crew it was a warning signal? They were going to be ordered to check it out anyways. Might as well let them know there's some kind of danger so the whole crew doesn't get killed before they get an alien on the ship.] Even so, I'm sure it was many, many years before a colony was set up at the place (apparently the colony had been there for a little over 20 years). As for not finding the ship sooner, I would guess that the colonists didn't get to do too much exploring. I mean what are the chances that the colony was even set up anywhere near it at all and not on the other side of the planet? Well, if the company wanted to get the Xenos in gear, yeah, they'd have them set up shop nearby. Really though, a weapons research lab should've been set up as well and get mentioned somewhere. It would just help make the movie make more sense.

At Ripley's "hearing" it totally looks like the company was trying to cover its tracks even 57 years later. They stone walled Ripley and told her things like they never received the orders to check things out and be made expendable. Ash the synthetic merely malfunctioned, yada, yada. If word got out that they knowingly sent a bunch of people to their dooms ... or various other things that could discredit the company. Still, I take this as further evidence that the company knew what they were dealing with and would've acted to get a hold of the xenos and possibly alien tech from the downed ship waaaay sooner.

Alright, I think I've managed to establish that in lieu of the first film, the setup of the second really doesn't make much sense. Let's move on.

The execution - There's a lot of different things here for good or for bad. I still liked the movie overall, so there must be some things I enjoyed.

The nightmares: A bit cheesy, sure. They're dream sequences after all. But, they're something I can live with. In moving pictures it is often difficult to give insight into a character's mind and/ or thought processes, unlike in a book where you can just read their thoughts. Ripley is a person who puts up a tough and generally logical exterior. So how were they going to show that on the inside she was actually afraid? Its a tough thing to convey, and dreams and internal narration are tools used to portray thoughts. I'm glad they did it with dreams in this case. Oh and on a side note, I have actually sat straight up after a nightmare. But only once ever. That it is a regular occurrence in movies still makes no sense.

Burke as the villain: I thought he actually worked fine as the bad guy. He struck me as the kind of person who puts on a smile, and then stabs you in the back later ... which is exactly what he does. Since we're watching a movie there's two tip-offs that he will become the bad guy later on. When he says he's going along on the mission too, and when he promises that they won't bring any xenos back. At that point, you know that's exactly what he'll be trying to ensure happens. You know it was Burke that sent the colonists to go check out the alien ship and get the xenos up and moving. Ripley even accuses him of that later on and he admits to it. (And it least it takes away the stupid coincidence that Ripley gets back in the game just as the xenos start on the prowl once more. Though the whole thing is already stupid because the company simply would not have waited this long to act, but I said that already)

Bishop: I agree with MG on what this character was used for. But I'm okay with him being just that. He doesn't need to be the villain like Ash was, and I'd be rather disappointed if he was. "Oh, the synthetic is the bad guy again. This is just getting stupid now." Plus the actor was great. Oh, and he was the voice of Admiral Hackett in Mass Effect. I spent the whole game wondering where I heard the voice. When I rewatched Aliens, I was like omg, Bishop was the Admiral.

The Pilot: Umm, at most her voice might be a little annoying. But she actually doesn't sound very cocky at all. Her lines consist of. I'm flying. We shouldn't crash land. Landed without a hitch. I'm talking back off. Co-pilot, hurry the hell up and get back inside. Oh swizzle sticks, I'm a gonner. For her death, I was surprised. She had her hands on the controls and was in the air flying. Instead of going for her gun, why didn't she try to knock the xeno off its feet first by jostling the ship, or doing a barrel roll (if it could) first? My actual problem is with the co-pilot going out to take a leak in the first place. What kind of military are they running in the future? You are in most likely dangerous territory (since no civies were spotted milling about or communicating with them, meaning that something was up), there are potentially an unknown large number of hostiles that could be anywhere, and you just open up the only readily available means of getting off that rock. Are you kidding me. Plus they just got told on the radio to make ready because most of the marines just got wasted. I would be on high alert at that point. Actually for that scene, the xeno got on the ship before the co-pilot. I think it’s a little bs-y that it skipped over him at first. In the end, I realize that the whole point of this bit is to make the movie as long as it needed to be. If they flew away at that time, the movie would be over. Which is why the transport "had" to crash.

Newt: Actually, I didn't mind her tooooo much. As far as "children being in movies where they probably shouldn't be" go, she was probably the easiest one I've seen to let slide. I actually laughed at a couple of moments like the one where Ripley is telling her that the doll doesn't dream, and Newt is like "duh Ripley, its head is made out of plastic" (except she says it in a cute and amusing way, because a child being no-nonsense about something like that is funny. However, if she had been a sarcastic little punk about it, I'd liked to see her slapped across the face)

I'll put up my thoughts on the rest of this tomorrow because I've got to get going right now.

[Just your average movie goer]

While I appreciate where you guys are coming from, the alien growth spurt has never bothered me. However, I don't really have anything to add on that I haven't said already in my debate with Civilian - but my main point is that while laws of matter conservation etc may have been broken, the internal rules of the movie weren't. Now if they had two aliens - and one grew really slowly after eating half the crew, and the other just became a full sized adult overnight without ingesting anything, then you'd have a problem.

And the retro rockets thing. Sorry, I've seen this a tonne of times and all the blast does is dislodge the alien. It's still waving its arms and screeching. I can easily imagine it going into a state of hibernation and just drifting through space for a few millenniums until it gets caught in some planet's gravitational well and brought down.

With plans, Zatoichi, I love that idea of someone running around with a bucket of water to dilute the acid blood. Brilliant. That'd be great.

Yeah, Alien3 and Alien Resurrection... yeah, I've never heard of them either. No idea what those things are.

With Predator, I love it too. I take your point on the B-grade monster issue. You're saying that the B-grade category allows for a lot of substandard fare and it'd be unfair to group the predators in there. Okay. I take your point. We'll put them at the bottom of the A-grade ladder then. However, they certainly have nothing on the xenomorphs. Also, xenomorphs don't need masks to make them look cool because they already look awesome.

I can't meet you on one Predator-related point though. You don't need characters to be big beefcakes in order to be deadly. Plenty of characters of different stature pull it off. Personally, from what I've seen, the characters in the new movie look tough enough. My problem (well, my main problem) is that it just doesn't look like it's bringing anything new to the table. Are they exploring the Predators' homeworld? Are they acting on knowledge gained in the previous films? Is this some film set in the far future where a now space-faring Earth civilisation has decided that given their nasty tendencies, the predators have to be wiped out - and has, to this end, sent a task force to attack their homeworld? No, it's just people surviving in the jungle.

While many people dislike Predator 2, at least it changed the setting. Personally, I thought moving the action to the city was an inspired move. I think it could have been pulled off to much greater effect than it was - but at a conceptual level, that was a good move.

Also - many people complain that Danny Glover couldn't beat a predator because he wasn't a beef cake. With all due respect, did those people not watch the first movie? The point at the end was that all the bulk and weaponry these guys had wouldn't do a thing to help them out - and at the end, Dutch beats the predator with wits, not brawn.

However, a large part of the original Predator's appeal is its cheesy cast of steroid abusing hammy... um... 'actors'. Although, Elpidia Carrillo (Anna), Carl Weathers (Dillon) and Richard Chavez (Poncho) were good. It was as though McTiernan had decided that he better do something to counterbalance the groan-worthy one liners. Oh, and Dillon is hilarious. Every second line of his cracks me up.

Actually, here's another reason why I have no intention to see Predators - it looks like it takes itself seriously, and half the appeal of the other movies is that they don't. They're cheesy little popcorn flicks and they know it and they roll with it.

Back on Alien again - yes, they had to get the alien off the ship. There's no way they could go into their hypersleep with it still onboard. There's a rather intense deleted scene (shot oddly with the characters in the far background of the frame) where they discuss this. It's interesting but Ridley Scott was right to leave it out.

Actually, also on deleted scenes, there's a sequence that was only partially filmed where Parker has the alien in an airlock and Ripley goes down to him to help him flush it out. However, just as they open the hatch, Ash sets off a fire alarm which makes the alien panic. It then puts a limb under the closing door of the inner hatch, the limb gets pinned and bleeds acid, burning a hole through the hatch and sucking out oxygen, which makes Parker and Ripley pass out. It was only partially filmed. We see Ripley on the bridge getting the call from Parker, then Lambert on the bridge realising that something is wrong and calling Ash to bring some oxygen tanks to the main hatch. I had to find out what this was all about by going online and searching - but anyway, that could have been interesting for you, Zatoichi. It could show Ash helping the alien in other ways.

However, again, I'm glad it was left out. With Alien, everyone worked to get the running time down around the two hour mark. I wish that such prerogatives were more commonplace today since these days, directors think nothing of releasing untrimmed 160 minute messes in theatres all over the world - without an inkling of concern that maybe they could have ... just maybe ... been a little more judicious in the editing room.

And in closing...

Quote

For Predator, I liked it. Its your regular great action movie full of muscles and guns. I expected nothing more from it. The only real problem I ever saw was that once they figured out it wouldn't kill you if you were unarmed, they should've immediately dropped all of their weapons. But of course, if they did that, there'd be no "the rest of the movie".

How it should have ended has a nice little video on just that point.

Quote

And the "betrayer" in this was an android following orders. Usually its some twit who screws everybody over for money or a perceived increased chance of survival (usually by locking a door before the rest of the group can get through). That person almost always dies right after.

Just like Burke in Aliens... and yes, it was crap. Burke was nowhere near half the villain Ash was and his comeuppance was all too cliched.