Yeah I mean I like Aliens but no way it is Die Hard or Terminator level. It just isn’t.
That being said, as parker’s post is the most recent example of, I think a lot of people dislike Aliens in contrast to Alien rather than on its own merits. I’ve never been particularly susceptible to considering the context of media properties in relation to their franchises, especially movies, which are as close to self-contained capsule experiences as media gets. It doesn’t bother me that an amazing sf/horror movie was “downgraded” to a merely pretty good action movie, they’re just two movies. You can always watch Alien if you want.
I also understand that Tulpa at least is trying to say Aliens is also a failed action movie in itself but Tulpa knows as much about action movies as I do about tabletop RPGs so that doesn’t bother me none.
Yeah, I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that Scott’s early work had the benefit of him being surrounded by such great talent.
“It certainly should explain what the Alien is and where it comes from,” he told Omni’s Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies in 1984. “That will be tough because it will require dealing with other planets, worlds, civilisations. Because obviously the Alien did come from some sort of civilisation. The Alien was presented, really, as one of the last survivors of Mars – a planet named after the god of war. The Alien may be one of the last descendants of some long-lost self-destructed group of beings.”
Ridley also explained to Cinefantastique that “’in many respects it’ll be more interesting [than the first movie], from a pure science-fiction stand point. We’d get into speculative areas, deal with two civilisations.”
Ridley apparently thought that the first movie had unexplored territory worth looking into. He had been enticed enough by Dan O’Bannon’s ideas regarding the Alien’s civilisation that he demanded that the producers Walter Hill and David Giler rewrite his pyramid -which they deleted in favour of their own device– back into the script. Unfortunately limitations on both time and money saw the pyramid being cut and merged with the derelict spacecraft, and Ridley was certainly affected by its omission: “I would love to have shot [the pyramid],” he said at the time, “but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it would have been wonderful in a three-hour version.” Or perhaps a sequel.
He also seemed to regret not expanding on some issues regarding the Alien in the first movie: “There were no speculative scenes or discussions about what the Alien was and all that sort of thing either. I believe that audiences love those, especially if they’re well done. They give the threat much more weight. If they make Alien II, and if I have anything to do with it, the film will certainly have those elements in it. From a certain point of view, Alien II could be more interesting than Alien I.”
this has always been true imo, Scott is a great visual director but whether or not his movies are any good depends entirely on the cast + screenplay… he usually even casts his movies well but demonstrably has no clue what makes a movie good from a structure/story perspective
I mean, the first alien also had the benefit of jodorowsky’s dune team (as did blade runner a little bit, I think) and he arguably hasn’t done much that’s all that great since?
Any thread about Aliens has to have a recommendation to watch Near Dark from me. Kathryn Bigelow’s feature debut as director from around the time Cameron was becoming seriously romantically involved with her.
It features a lot of the cast of Aliens who just sort of stuck around together to make this southern vampire action movie and it was great. Great acting, wild effects and cool enough kills for a young gorehound like me. Check it out, y’all
I watched Aliens for the first time in a long time last night. It was pretty enjoyable. A little too long, but that is normal for Cameron. The queen riding the elevator is pretty hilarious, but it didn’t take me out of anything really. Newt’s “…mostly” is just really really funny to me.
i still enjoy aliens quite a lot, but the last few times watching it have really struck me more than ever just how weirdly and jarringly “b-movie” some of the direction and/or maybe especially the adr feels. like the first big escape from the hive: it’s full of weird cuts, weird groans and shouts from the marines as they blast offscreen aliens. it’s like that leaked trailer of the new mummy thing, where most of the sound is missing and you just hear tom cruise going “eeeeuuuuunngghhh!” in emptiness. there’s so much of that shit in this movie.
but i don’t know. i watch and enjoy lots of silly trash, like godzilla and gamera and other kaiju and tokusatsu flicks that have the benefit of camp, but are often so boring and messy that aliens looks like a damn masterpiece alongside them. i might see its bizarre, gaping flaws more vividly now than i did when i loved it to death as a kid, but it still excites me. the idea of this militant post-capitalist world of humans in space, and a bigger, more ridiculous version of the merciless void manifest in gleaming black.
