Alien was released 44 years ago today
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Space is bleak and enormous. There is no technology that will shrink it which means travel will take decades at a minimum and the most palatable way for humans to travel in that environment is in some kind of stasis. And it's going to require massive space ships that are going to be funded by huge multinational corporations. They will enforce their will through AI that have absolutely no empathy for the humans on board.
Depressing, but I think it's the most realistic portrayal of space travel in sci fi and the amazing art design reinforces that feeling of bleakness throughout the film.
Everything up to here is fine. But this one (and consequently the next), why do you think that?
Why would corporations finance interstellar travel anyway? There's no profit in that.
(Personally, I still think the most palatable way to travel in that environment is to make your ship so damn good that you don't even care if it's getting anywhere.)
Shipping.
That's exactly what the Nostromo was: a shipping container. They were hauling goods from one planet to another for some (profitable) reason.
What we know now, however, is that a great deal of that could likely be automated / not require a crew. But even then: the Nostromo was massive with what could amount to a skeleton crew (half a dozen?). Container ships even today have more than that on them.
If they won't, then nobody will. The most you'll get is a few state-prestige projects which fly around a tiny handful of people at most before they get bored and move on. This is probably the most realistic outcome but it doesn't make for much of a sci-fi story so it's better to take some liberties and assume that commercial exploitation of space flight might somehow be possible. Once you've accepted the possibility of space commerce for the sake of the story, you can pull publicly funded space travel into your story as well if you wish.
You could also use war as a justification, but the viability of the sort of interstellar war that involves spaceships of people flying around (rather than the use of long-range weapons of mass extermination) likely suggests the viability of interstellar trade or at least resource exploitation.
Churches? To spread the good news to alien worlds?
Resources? Should we find planets with lots of them but a surrounding environment that is hostile to human life, there would be enough demand for mining and automated manufacturing with cargo ships going back and forth. The industry would likely love being permitted to pollute those planets at will since there would be no biosphere that could be harmed.
Alien lifeform - Check Dangerous - Check Ability to eat through spacesuit dome - Check
Sorry dude, we going to need to quarantine your ass.
Instead, all but one of the crew gets killed, the entire shipment is lost, and the spaceship itself is destroyed.
They don't have insurance in the future?
Amazing that 'Bullshit Jobs' still exist in the future
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...
...Is a book I have not read, but the author is also the author of my favorite non-parody Scifi series (Remebrance of the Earths Past / Three Body Problem).
Spaceflight is in good compassionate hands. AI is in good hands and will never be told to lie/manipulate. Gene editing is not another genie being let out of the bottle. Alien really doesn't have a message relevant to today's realities.
I very reluctantly disagree. I'm in my mid-30s (born 1988), and I watched Alien for the first time about a year ago. I have to say on the whole, I didn't like it. I think it's a victim of being just on the cusp of being "too old" for modern tastes. Like much other media of its era & older, it's paced too slowly. Too many long panning cuts, too much staring at a wall, too much space between dialog, too little action. I ended up staring at my phone for the 2nd half of the movie, wishing it would be over already.
There are some other films of a similar timeframe that do hold up. I thought Jaws, released 4 years before Alien, was paced absolutely excellently, and I'd call it one of my favorite films. But Alien feels more like older media in its pacing, and it suffers for it today. I absolutely do not deny it is an excellent film "for its time." Obviously the special effects, acting, set design, and music are all wonderful and hold up on their own, and it's undeniably a very important film historically & culturally. But much like Citizen Kane or original Trek, I think it's just a bit too slow for a general audience in the 2020s. The sequels feel better today.
I tend to prefer films like this and I think there are plenty of "modern" examples. I do find some older films too slow paced, but I think its only when it's coupled with weaker writing and atmosphere building. In Alien I find the pacing works for the content and I assume it was a conscious decision, and that's why I think it holds up. But I'm not an expert on this stuff so I could be quite wrong here.
I grew up watching movies with slower paces (born 1980), but some of those I also have issues watching unless I'm in the right frame of mind. I think in part it's just we've gotten used to information overload, and thus expect the faster pacing.
That said... What I really like about the original is that it has that classic look and feel of 70's sci-fi. The white paneling and bright lights on the space ships, the grainy film, red and orange stripes on things, etc.
And without it, we wouldn't have gotten Wrath of Khan.
What do you think of 2001 A Space Odyssey?
Exactly. If "modern tastes" can't appreciate this film, I feel that's more a sign of an ADHD epidemic.
There are contemporary productions that are absolutely plodding -- the recent miniseries The English [1] is full of over-long shots of oblique plaintive faces looking out over the prairies. I was twiddling my thumbs at times. Admittedly, it is a contemporary Western, which is prone to that style, and it's a deliberate effect. The same kind of tension-building as in Alien, really. It's not to everyone's taste.
And there are older films that feel very fast-paced and, well, modern -- I recently watched an old Japanese yakuza film, Battles Without Honour and Humanity [2], released in 1973 now 50 years ago, and it opens with a scene cut every 20 seconds or so, just action, action, action and it never lets up. Felt like watching something released a few years ago.
Tastes come and go, but no style ever fully goes away.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_(TV_series)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_Without_Honor_and_Huma...
Maybe part of the problem is that due to its success, a lot of the designs and themes have been copied elsewhere, so it's less captivating. Back in the day, there was nothing like those Giger sets, so people were quite happy to see a slow descent into an alien spaceship.
I think that says a lot about the latest generations and the boom in children hyperactivity disorders.
I think this says more about you than about the film.
I hate that so much of our media has become this constant mess of distraction with constant flashy lights and a million cuts, but I think a lot of it has to do with competing with our pocket pacifiers for our attention. If you dare slow down for a moment to let your audience feel the weight of what's happening, half of them will be on there phones in seconds.
Good movies become worse if you're distracted by your phone during them, and are also usually much more sedate.
Alien would be a solo but forgotten masterpiece like Man Hunter until James Cameron made Aliens.
“Mother” is kept mysterious in Alien, relying too much on 1970s zeitgeist of technology. I kept expecting a Dream Scene which were all the rage in 1960s/70s.
Good contrast with Jaws, I would also add Blues Brothers from the same period. Excitement possible even in those days.
This can sometimes require more effort to pay attention so you actually do have thoughts on the material in those moments (and other times it comes easily), but that is its own reward afterward in a Type II fun sort of way, and it's generally the works that prompted you to have your own thought commentary that stick with you.
I'm not always in the mood for entertainment that requires me to do a little work for it, but slipping into this is a habit you can train (e.g. by visiting art galleries, and maybe watch some YouTube videos interpreting paintings beforehand to teach yourself a method - Nerdwriter1 is very modern and accessible), and it's ultimately very rewarding imho.
This is to say, I don't think it's the age of the piece. It's more likely taste (maybe you just didn't like it that much and/or it didn't have that much to offer you personally, which is fine, it's just a movie), mood, consumption habits, etc.
Any example of fast paced current era movie that you like?
Just don't pull your phone out while watching a movie and take some time experiencing the slowness. It might feel boring or torturous at first, but give it some time and you will begin to see the value in focus.
Sure the average audience of today has no attention span and needs constant flashy-action, but that doesn't mean you have to be a part of that.
The "for its time" is 100% subjective, and some young (18-20) people I know (very well I must say: children and nephews, etc) also enjoyed it very much. Asked to watch the sequel on our next "cinema night". Also all were flabbergasted at seeing an "empowered woman character" from "literally like 50 years ago". Came as a little bit of a shock for them. :o)
And ... I would kindly argue the opposite: today's productions are a blur of action, cgi vomit, sometimes almost non-sensical kaleidoscope of seemingly unrelated scenes and topics. I believe they reflect "their time": <tongueincheek>I want it all, I want it now and delivered to my door please. I will let Alexa answer the doorbell for me</tongueincheek>.
The interesting thing there is that the story and dialog was written for a male character and then swapped to a woman for commercial reach reasons. They'd didn't really change the dialog when they did that change though.
Had it Ripley been originally written as a woman I'm not sure her character would have been as empowered and I'm also not sure the movie would be the masterpiece that it is.
:-)
Leia is a straight-up badass the entire movie. She's the only competent one in the main 3 (Obi Wan's a contender if you expand it to 4, but he dies, spoiler alert). The other two are bumbling idiots until the very end, and don't go through half as rough a time as she does.
Then we open Empire and she's perfectly cool under fire while being the #1 person in charge of commanding a fighting retreat against an overwhelming, mechanized force, and has to be dragged away to finally leave her post as the structure is collapsing around her.
The whole thing is played like it's ordinary, no awkward asides to make sure we understand that this is a WOMAN being STRONG. 1977 and 1980 release dates.
Like... holy shit.
This is a big problem I have with modern movies; they're unable or unwilling to simply show, they need to show and tell. It doesn't matter the theme, even wholly unpolitical themes are far too often explicitly laid out, multiple times, with blunt dialogue exposition to the audience who are presumed to only be half-watching the movie.
A modern movie can't just have a bank robber kill another bank robber. They need the killer to say "hehehe, this way I get a larger cut of the profit!" Does that really need to be said? Why can't a movie just show it but not have the character explain his motivations outloud to an empty room? Because modern movies are made to spoonfeed disinterested dimwits with short attention spans. Movies are catering to people who aren't even paying attention, because in test audiences there are always a few people who keep muttering questions "what's going on? what did they just say? why is this happening?" And the worst part is, these sort of people are still confused even when the movie explicitly explains everything to them.
The smart writing (and smart audiences) have all moved to TV. The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, Better Call Saul. These are the shows that respect their audience's intelligence.
The movie business has turned into Disneyland with guns.
I've got a few relatives I simply can't watch movies with because it's like this the whole movie. It's like they can't remember anything that happened over 2-5 minutes ago. "Who's that character?" "Where are they?" "Now who's that?" "Is that the cousin or the uncle?" "What are they doing now?" "I don't understand." OF COURSE you don't understand! You've been on Instagram the whole movie! They come out of a standard brain-off romcom and they don't really know what it was about, except that the ending was sweet and romantic and they liked it. Put something like Inception or Tenet in front of them, and they're going to just sit there totally befuddled.
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the day, it still fits the meme:
"Alien is a movie where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat."
If her character was really empowered, maybe they'd listen to her?
/SPOILER ALERT
I do actually think the theatrical cut is still pretty entertaining. That said, I did like Aliens better.
Jaws, OTOH, FANTASTIC movie! I saw that in a HUGE screen theater that had a balcony. The scene where the head suddenly appeared in the hull sent popcorn raining down in the main auditorium! One of my most memorable movie experiences! That reminds me, I saw a lot of great movies in that theater!
You might as well have described Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, modern universally lauded productions.
They're swiping Tiktok videos even faster than that!
It's incredibly disturbing to me. I'm reminded of drug addicts clawing at the drywall of their dilapidated apartments, fiending for their next fix. We've used all of this wonderful semiconductor technology to turn millions of people into digital junkies. And our culture is deteriorating right along with it!
The further you go back in time, the worse it becomes. Watching films from the fifties, there's a recurring theme of
1) Protagonist decides he needs to speak to the president
2) Protagonist grabs his coat and goes outside
3) Protagonist drives to the airport
4) Protagonist boards a plane
5) Stock footage of an airplane taking off
6) Stock footage of an airplane in flight
7) Stock footage of an airplane landing
8) Protagonist disembarks
9) Protagonist hails a taxi
10) Protagonist enters taxi
11) Protagonist asks driver to take them to the President
Slow pans and long takes are important tools for a good director to heighten the mood and shouldn't be stricken from the cinematic vocabulary. The unfortunate truth is that most directors are merely average and when the mood is boredom, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging them to amplify it.
It only had step 11.
Todays movies and series really go fast into the action, and grab you from start to finish.
I was hoping by the time he gets a little older, he can appreciate the slower pace a bit more, but your comment gives me less hope ;).
Anyway, the 'classics' such as Godfather and Casablanca are also too boring for me :D.
Tells a lot about good story telling, because by now the overall arc of Alien is not much of a surprise anymore, cinematography, design, music and sound. Absolutely one of the great films of all times, and proof good scifi doesn't need a ton of CGI.
Bill Paxton in Aliens was pure gold!
The first movie in each case is horror, the monster is invincible and the hero is super weak, just trying to survive. By the end, the main character has survived and is now a certified badass. There’s no way to make a horror movie sequel without resetting the main character’s development. So instead, they made action movies, which was the perfect decision.
This is also why there couldn’t be a good third movie, there’s nowhere natural to go after action.
Maybe one could slip a disaster movie in between the horror and the action…
Though, I guess you could argue that Evil Dead 2 is much more of a "comedy slapstick remake" of the first one than a sequel.
Let me explain: part of why I like Evil Dead 2 so much is because it does a great job of walking the line between "horror" and "comedy". At some parts it's pretty goofy, but always in a way that kind of feels like it could plausibly be in a regular horror movie. Stuff like the moose head laughing, or Ash cutting off his hand and replacing it with a chainsaw are silly, and even slapsticky, but still kind of works in the tone of a "regular" horror movie.
Army of Darkness on the other hand is basically a just a comedy. It has no pretense of being anything else, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but a part of me wonders what it would have been like if they had kind of kept the goofiness into "potentially plausible in an action movie" territory.
I really can't imagine what else one might argue.
I didn't agree with him.
There’s a strong parody element to the series, Ash is basically an idiot so it isn’t that annoying/unexpected to have him redo some character development. Oh he learned nothing in the previous movies? That scans.
It also manages to continue raising the stakes by shifting to a new genre. In this case, a sort of weird… fantasy/sword-and-sorcery/post-apocalyptic(?) universe. It confronts the protagonist with a new type of challenge so it doesn’t feel like a re-do.
Rom-Com? Heist movie?
Heist might make sense.
The trajectory could be something like survive -> kick ass -> pulled back in at a disadvantage? Maybe.
I felt the third Alien film actually made a pretty good punt at this; it's not a perfect film without its issues, but I rather like it. The "female lands on abandoned prison planet with a bunch of violent criminals" setting was a good direction to go in after the first two films. It would have been better if they had focused more on the prisoners and such and less on the xenomorph running after Ripley (especially in the second half). In spite of the problems, I still like it more than Cameron's Aliens (which was certainly not a bad film, but also suffered from some issues IMO).
A problem with "big franchises" type of movies is that studio people with seemingly no sense of what makes movie great get involved and make things hard for people who want to do anything different that could make a sequel work. "People paid for aliens chasing Ripley in the previously films, so we must have more of that!" I have no problems they're focused on their investment and money, but it never seizes to amaze me how poorly these people sometimes seem to understand their market.
I thought Ripley's character was substantially more developed in Aliens than Alien. In Alien, most of the humans exists to be victims (or potential victims) of the monster. In Alien (at least in the directors cut), we have Ripley coming to terms with the fact that she outlived her daughter, developing a maternal bond with Newt, and fundamentally just growing as a character.
A part of me hates Alien 3 so much that I just pretend it doesn't exist.
Instead, we got a "no guns" and trashing everything that was great about the second movie. I have a difficult time reconciling it with the fact that it's a Fincher movie.
To be fair to Fincher, didn't he want to take his name off of it because he problems with the script?
How could it be any other way? Because "canon"? It's a senseless concept. Suppose I buy the full rights to all Alien intellectual property, and then commission a prequel story in which Ripley cruelly murders a dog for no reason. Does this ruin the first movie, by making it into a story about a heroic dog murderer? No, I didn't change the first story at all. Owning the IP doesn't make me into a time traveler who can retroactively modify the meaning of art created in the past. Even if I were the original creator and not just somebody who has the IP rights, I cannot travel into the past and modify the meaning of things already published.
you just summed up Star Wars 1-3, only without having to buy the rights issues. so, yes, "prequels" and "canon" can harm the existing movies, or at least how people feel about them.
I know a lot of people feel that way, but it seems like self-inflicted harm to me. In the 90s I thoroughly wore out VHS copies of IV, V and VI. I came out and I thought it was a dull stinker (except podracing.) I really didn't like it, but it didn't change how I felt about the earlier movies which I continued to enjoy. They continued to be exactly the same movies they were before, it was just the new one that wasn't good. Midiclorians cannot devalue the original movies because they objectively weren't in the original movies. If you choose to believe they're now in the original movies, retroactively, because the IP holder says so decades later, how is that not a self-inflicted wound? When I hear these kind of complaints about later movies ruining earlier movies, all I can think is "stop hitting yourself".
Star Wars 7 showed that the celebration at the end of 6 was premature. The Empire is still out there and is still a match for whatever government exists. Luke, Leia, and Han haven't won. The misery continues for another 40 years.
Star Wars 8 explained nothing.
Star Wars 9 "somehow Palpatine returned".
Fuck Disney and fuck everyone they hired.
Fundamentally memories aren't really immutable; I feel like Alien 3 actively made Aliens worse because now it means that the last third of Aliens was kind of pointless. This is canon, and moreover by the time I watched these movies I was a teenager (~2006 or so), and so it was well-entrenched into the canon.
I wonder if I'd still enjoy it if I watched it again now, though.
Agreed. Though I still count it as part of the original Alien trilogy. It felt like the story was a poor mix of the preceding two. The setting was confusing - a desolate forgotten prison colony that were miners or metal workers - a mill of some form? Worst one of the three BUT I will watch it any day compared to the next three turds which become more and more painful to watch. It was boring.
Resurection was forgettable - I dont remember much save for Ripley is bought back from the dead, captive aliens escape from their inescapable pens (tired trope), Film finishes with Ripley fighting a hybrid human-alien on the space ship made from her DNA (it has a ma ma moment) and must have been made of boogers as it gets sucked out a little hole by a modest pressure differential. Basically another boring remake of Aliens.
Then there is Prometheus and Genesis. I can't even begin to explain the seething hatred I have for these two - genesis being beyond infuriating. Basically the plots of both films are moved along by all the characters being awful at the jobs they are experts in or completely oblivious. But, hey at least the visuals were "breathtaking" or at least that's what the critics said... I wish these two steaming piles never existed.
"We're on an alien planet with an unknown biosphere so let me angrily take off my helmet because it's slightly uncomfortable; oh noes I've been infected with some alien virus; how could this possibly have happened?!?! Absolutely no way this could have been prevented in any way whatsoever!"
Also interesting satire/social commentary on COVID masking and such if you think about it.
Prometheus was, as you said, a combination of incompetence (in film) and some steange views on evolution and the source of life (out of film). Especially the latter rubbed me in the wrong way, because it was just unnecessary for the plot. And hell, that the planet was literally a neighbor of LV-426, really? Just why?
Heck, I liked AvP and AvP 2 better, at peast the last one could have easily been set in space, with the smallntown being some unsuspecting colony in the Amercan Arm or so. And Predators woupd be such a nice explanation why you find Xenomorphs all over the place, once the Engineers went extinct.
Oh, and the black goo. Still no idea what that was good for anyway. Create or destroy life? And if so, why? It did serve as the basis for a really well written RPG adventure, Chariot of Gods. One I'd love to see as a movie actually. Or Destroyer Of Worlds, also a good basis for a script.
Thinking of it, one thing I like about good RPGs is the world building. While movies canbget away with whatever they want, consistency be damned, RPGs, the good ones, need some consistent and good bavkgrpund universe to work. And Alien has, with its RPG, a good basis for that. Pretty sure so, that none of that will be used for the future films.
Dave Feloni and Jon Fabreaubdidba great job in bringing in the good elements of the Star Wars EU, now Legends, into the new canon with Rebels, Mandalorian and Boba Fett. Heck, we get Thrawn's return at the same time (9 ABY) than in the orginal Zahn novels. When you know the old Westend Games stuff, d6, on Tatooine, you see similarities as well.
Edit: The story of Alien:Isolation isn't too bad neither, I have yet to play the game so. Personally, I like the aspect of how different the reactions to those Xenomorphs are. Some want to exploit them, some want to destroy them, some want to bread them. Most don't care about the loss of life involved. A nice view on modern capitalism. Because nobody asked the Xenomorphs how they feelnabout being exploited, they might as well just be happy hibernating in their hive, tending ever so often after their eggs. Plus, it is humans spreading them, Xenomorphs have yet build and pilot space ships.
> Covenant was even slightly better than Prometheus. ...
The thing that bothered me a lot was no one really questioned the droid when he changed his appearance to exactly match that of the crews own droid. Did they just think it was cute or something? WTH? And general ignoring the creepy as fuck robot and falling into its traps. Just ... stop it already. It's like those old ed wood horror films where the actors clearly throw themselves into the monsters mouth and flail about screaming. They just kept walking into the jaws of death. The dumb scene where the stereotypical "fat stupid southerner" captain childishly risks all lives on board for his wife and had to be stopped by other crew - ugh WTH, dumb scene.
They tried to tie the two together with a grand story that never really coalesced - but it could have provided better writing. Alien was a great unseen monster suspense horror - in space (no one can hear you scream) The crew was just a regular . In Aliens the marines were competent fighters but had no idea what they were up against, were massively overwhelmed and a brutal fight for survival ensues. And it was that rat-fuck son of a bitch Burke. Whereas Prometheus left me angry at the crew's own stupidity and general incompetence with corporate greed framing the whole thing. They also continued the brutal "kill the previous film's survivors" trope from Alien 3 which was depressing (a good description for Alien 3 really - depressing.) I wish those two could get a do-over with a more solid story and truly suspenseful action. 8 meters... 7 ... 6 - cant be that's inside the room - its read'n right man look (beeping intensifies) I love that film.
> Prometheus was, as you said, a combination of incompetence (in film) and some steange views on evolution and the source of life (out of film). Especially the latter rubbed me in the wrong way,
"I'm a gruff expert in mapping - watch me two balls map this place out, yeah!" next scene: "fuck mate, we're lost!" Me: "HOLY SHIT, YOU JUST MAPPED IT OUT! LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING ARM!" Another adjacent scene: "I'm an exobiologist: watch me cosplay Steve Irwin and taunt this CLEARLY VICIOUS sharp-toothed snake alien thing in the water while repeatedly warned by the guy who is smart and clearly backed away ... fuck I'm dead." Everyone dies by folly but the crazy android and the woman who escapes in a flying croissant - advanced space faring pastry technology?
Unlike the alien trilogy there's no hero to root for throughout the series - the seemingly new heroine who survives the first film is dead before the second film. Only the shitty man-child droid survives and wins in the second film - twice. Eh. I guess experiment with a villain? But you don't care for him at all, its not like he's the lovable or relatable anti-hero type, he's creepy AF and you want him dead. I guess we have to wait for the third installment for him to finally get killed, unless he's already dead by the films starting point. No cat to outlive the crew either -lame.
> And hell, that the planet was literally a neighbor of LV-426, really? Just why?
This one really made me laugh. Like oh wow, right next door to your dead rock planet colony destination was the blooming origin of life on earth and other planets. Talk about a serendipitous find. I guess the astronomers they hired to scout potential planets to terraform were frauds or blind.
> Oh, and the black goo. Still no idea what that was good for anyway. Create or destroy life? And if so, why? It did serve as the basis for a really well written RPG adventure, Chariot of Gods. One I'd love to see as a movie actually. Or Destroyer Of Worlds, also a good basis for a script.
I dunno what that black stuff was either, a mutagen? A macguffin of sorts. I think it somehow ties into the origin of life theory, like it was their bio tech crap that spawned life here on earth and other planets? Maybe there was more to the story but couldn't be adapted to film or wasted too much screen time with back story and was cut.
> Heck, I liked AvP and AvP 2 better, at peast the last one could have easily been set in space, with the smallntown being some unsuspecting colony in the Amercan Arm or so. And Predators woupd be such a nice explanation why you find Xenomorphs all over the place, once the Engineers went extinct.
I have never seem them. I'll have to give them a go. Predator 2 was kinda half crap, but 80's over-the-top cheesy good. I remember seeing it as a kid and while some of it was fun I also remember being bored at times whereas I really liked Predator. You got the into to the gruff commando crew and their personalities, watch them complete their mission, then something goes very wrong and one by one the commandos are killed by an unseen specter until the strongest - ARNOLD FUCKING SCHWARZENEGGER - kicks its alien ass - then it goes nuclear suicide. I kinda miss those over-the-top 80's actors and films. Thank cocaine I guess.
The last act of Aliens was all about saving Newt, sort of a redemption story for Ripley. Sort of the mantra of "the Aliens could kill all these people but I will be damned if I let them take this child". By saving Newt, Ripley wins the only battle that actually matters in the movie.
I feel like having it so that Newt is killed five minutes after Aliens ends really cheapens it. Ripley isn't redeemed, the Aliens did win the only battle that mattered .
Prometheus was pretty horrendous. Every character in there is a moron and we're supposed to be rooting for them.
The added opening scene on the planet completely ruins the tension of the first part of the movie.
What the first scene shows so, is that Hadley's Hope was a nice and striving colony. So one could make the case that it served a purpose.
That said I don't think it would have added much over all, so unlike the other scenes I'd say just drop it.
It creates such a terrific and engaging world while making it totally relatable and realistic.
I don't know why that isn't a common motif across all media. Even the later movies in the Alien universe seem to shy away from it now. My only thought is that the management at studios feels it's a bit too on the nose.
There have been some amazing films in recent years with plenty of effort put into their craft. Villenueve's Dune and Arrival come to mind in Sci-Fi, things like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Knives Out, these are all films that I think have been made with a deep appreciation for the craft, without trying to appeal too widely and lose their depth. I guess you could argue that some of these are telling from "weird angles", but I'm not sure I'd agree, and even if so I think those differences bring significant value rather than being gimmicks.
For example, in regards to sci-fi, it's not super recent but I thought Arrival [1] was actually really good. It told a solid story in a somewhat unique way.
I also think a few episodes of Black Mirror have done a pretty decent job with some of their stories.
- Dredd
- Melancholia (may not qualify for some sci-fi fans, I suppose, and I can understand why—it's so very allegorical)
- High Life
- Under the Skin
- Annihilation
- Ex Machina
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Looper
- Blade Runner 2049
- Sorry to Bother You
- Arrival
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Last Jedi (I know lots of people hated it—I think it's the only more-or-less good Star Wars movie since the original trilogy, and was shocked at the broadly-negative reaction, having come out of the theater thinking "finally, we got a good one, even if it did play the ending way too safe; everyone's going to be so happy!". We're not gonna change each other's minds in HN comments. Agree to disagree.)
And that's just the ones I've seen and thought were somewhere between good and great. And that I could remember or quickly find a reminder of with a quick search. I hear very good things about the new Planet of the Apes series (like, "each entry is better than the last" good) but have only seen the first one. Lots of people liked Rogue One, Snowpiercer, Ad Astra, and Interstellar (I didn't, or at least didn't think they were notably good, but hey, lots of people did). Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and Kong were OK romps. Heard good things about Upgrade and Attack the Block, but haven't seen them. The Martian was OK (some loved it). Inception was alright (again, lots of others like it way more than I do).
How many really good sci-fi movies did the 70s produce? The 80s? I think we're doing fine.
how about there is no fictitious science in that movie?
[EDIT] I mean, then again, that's almost as true of Annihilation... which is why it's hard to nail these things down with certainty.
And, Sigourney Weaver is an insanely beautiful woman...
I was in high school when Alien was released and I couldn’t agree more.
Great storytelling while actually having a realistic take on what space travel would probably look like in the not too distant future.
And the corporate angle resonates more today (with me at least) than it did then.
As an example of what I mean, this was a pretty good blog post that touches on the semiotic standards aboard the Nostromo: https://crewsproject.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/aliens-standar...
The audience never directly interacts with this standard in any way, but it adds so much depth to the world and makes for a much richer experience.
I first watched it when it came out and I was in the fourth grade, so I definitely have a lot of nostalgic value attached to it. I try and watch it at least once a year!
(But there was another, similar article, much longer, with the actual frames from the movie, going through symbols one by one… I thought I had it bookmarked…)
That said - love Alien and will occasionally rewatch it. It's "space trucker" environment with low tech interiors really took on a different approach compared to other works in scifi. It's tranquil scenes and score are also pretty unique. Even the trailer feels a bit ahead of it's time when compared to trailers today.
The sequels really are worth it, imo, with each director adding its own ideas and set design, photography, special effect etc... Please Hollywood do not destroy that franchise like LOTR, SW, Harry Potter etc with garbage reboots.
I had a similar experience in front of The Thing, but was in the theater this time.
I'm not saying Alien "ripped it off", but it is fun to watch sort of a proto-Alien.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%21_The_Terror_from_Beyond_S...
The second was ace too but the shock and grit of the original I think gives it a special place.
What a great film :-)
We are used to realistic special effects now. Imagine how intense it was in '79.
Great cast, great characters. And a franchise which: 1) is one of the greatest scifi franchises around (bar the couple of alien/predator anomalies) 2) is hopefully not going to be purchased and ravaged by Disney.
Sorry to tell ya, but Disney got a hold of Alien in the Fox purchase. [1]
Is an "Alien cinematic universe" coming? [2] Ugh.
[1] https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3551687/now-officially-o...
[2] https://screenrant.com/alien-5-movie-updates-disney-fix-fran...
Pray they don't alter it any further. [1]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-alien-1979
https://theanomaloushost.org/2021/03/14/alien-1979-analysis/
https://www.aaronbalick.com/news/alien-a-kleinian-psychoanal...
https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/alien-40-ridley-scott-sigour...
Predator, Thing, Total Recall, Alien, Aliens, Terminator, Original Star Wars, all in my top sci-fi films.
Alien has aged increadibly well, much better than Star Wars with its grotesques creatures that look too obviously like a man in a suit.
"The five minutes to destruction are typographically uninteresting."
Sci Fi horror is pretty close to the polar opposite of my mom’s comfort zone, so I guess watching Alien was a test.
The movie scares me the shit off. I had months of bad sleeps. But hey that was really a good experience that I never had later.
I highly recommend "Nightflyers" (and pretty much every story in that anthology):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGciYgiR4atF_ovvv0e0Q...
Unlike a lot of others, I am not as big a fan of Aliens. The characters are a bit too corny.
Love the soundtrack.
Much like the Terminator, only needed one sequel.
What's that? What are you talking about? I can't hear you LA LA LA CANT HEAR YOU