Alien 'Quadrilogy'

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

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

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

what?! ah, shit. RIP

nooooooooooooo

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

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

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

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

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

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

^ yes indeed

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

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

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

or any form of quadruped

Lobster Quadrillogy

haha I was just coming here to post that Phil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the jodorowsky/dune doc being prime territory for that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

omg this rules

I've only just heard of Alien Romulus, due August this year. It looks like some schoolchildren and an AI remaking the first film.

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

Posted on the "KH Studio" YouTube channel....

thank god

directed by fede álvarez, who did the evil dead remake. i’m stoked bc i love that movie and ive been wanting something new from him and it’s an alien movie! hooray

So - real film, fake trailer?

I've found some other trailers and I don't know what's real any more. I feel like someone's granddad on facebook.

oh i didn't even watch the trailer, but yeah this is obv fanmade AI nonsense. i don't think there is an official trailer yet

there is also a tv series coming out that is a prequel which will be inconsistent with prometheus/covenant.

It would be even better if it pretended they’d never happened.

Ok for real this time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTNMt84KT0k

Interview with Alvarez. I did like this:

Q. The synopsis involves a group of young space colonizers and scavengers who encounter “the most terrifying life form in the universe” inside a run-down space station. Did you choose to focus on a younger cast just because that’s a relatively new dynamic for the franchise?

A. I wish there was some sort of deep-thinking strategy about it. It was really more based on Aliens. I remember watching an extended cut of Aliens, and there’s a moment where you see a bunch of kids running [and riding a big wheel] around the corridors of this colony. And I thought, “Wow, what would it be like for those kids to grow up in a colony that still needs another 50 years to terraform? There’s no sunlight and there’s no real life, except to just take the place of a parent and do the same job they did.” In my movies, I’m always interested in those characters. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the small country of Uruguay. I think it connects to a lot of people who grew up in small towns and think that all the important things are happening somewhere else.

Both Scott and Cameron allegedly love it to bits. (I guess Fincher and Jeunet don't count.)

Plus looks like all the blood in the first tracking shot is the aftermath of...something:

I’ll tell you more without spoiling too much. It takes place in [the teaser’s] first shot. There’s a tiny hint in there, and it has to do with that scene that Isabela talked about, which is great. When you manage to have an idea or concept that has not been seen before in any Alien movie — and it’s also something that has never happened before in the history of movies and science fiction — my first test usually when I shoot it is to just look at the boom mic guy. He has no idea what’s about to happen, and then I see his face completely in shock over what he’s witnessing. So that is, for me, the biggest reward, and when you know that there’s something special, then you just can’t wait for opening night. I’ll sit in the front and turn around to see people’s reactions to those moments.

To be fair, Scott's opinion on what makes these films good or bad has taken some punishment.

Cameron yassifying Aliens and True Lies in his latest remasters indicates that the man may not be totally trustworthy now.

lol at him finding inspiration in the 10 minutes or whatever cut from theatrical version of Aliens.

The final trailer for #AlienRomulus has arrived.

Get tickets now and experience it in IMAX. In theaters everywhere August 16. https://t.co/N35mxAEvS8 pic.twitter.com/IsBESsLPbg

— Alien: Romulus (@AlienAnthology) July 18, 2024

very spoilery but looks good

Oh no! I sure hope there's no aliens on that derelict spaceship

Huge, if True.

all this characters better be making smart decisions or ILX is going to come down on this movie like a mountain

Oh when will they make something interesting again from this franchise, they could go in all sorts of directions but instead we get 'this could be our ticket out of here...' and 'da fuck was that?'

it has been forty fucking five years since ALIEN (1979), if we must continue to make these movies can we find another story to tell other than 'space chumps learn a hard lesson about exobiology'

or what maresnest said

or what i said

sorry tracer i have u on mute

it looks even less interesting than that fake AI generated trailer upthread. I thought the franchise had gone full in on the engineers and all that shit.

nooo nothing new must ever happen

while it is true that there’s something comforting about the elements of every alien movie - a woman turning her face away from a drooling alien, everyone just trying to escape, face hugging, implantation, an android with white fluids, the danger of an alien hitching a ride, etc - much like the familiar comforts of a sade song or a baseball game, you do sort of wonder if at some point an ai could if not make the film then at least have a good go at the script

need one from the alien's pov

surely all these future astronauts must have seen the movie by now

i genuinely don’t understand why they haven’t let the alien loose on earth yet, it would be so sick

the lizard people who rule us wouldn't allow that

this movie is going to be dope, you nerds

they did! it was called ALIEN VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM (2007) and it was sick alright xxp

but not in a good way

the engineers: origin story

before becoming a genocidal god cult they made some magnificent bridges

lol i think i did used to know there was an alien v pred on earth and until now i had successfully blocked it from my mind

i agree with ivy i think there is a very good chance this is going to be an excellent kinda back to basics reboot with a like, rizzed up cast (am i using this word right)

i think alvarez is probably going to play with the alien toy set in a fun way, but i do hope it's got something, anything to offer beyond a remix of some very creaky ideas

maybe the trailer is designed to make it look bog-standard - so when it turns to be slightly above average for this type of thing - then your mind is blown!

the engineers: origin story

before becoming a genocidal god cult they made some magnificent bridges

― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), 19. juli 2024 17:18 (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Infrastructure week!

"Alien : Cringe"

Prometheus also had a dope trailer, and well...

I haven't seen one of these movies since that one. Won't get fooled again!

you need to rethink your inner modality

The Prometheus trailer flew too close to the S(dammit, that was Icarus, wasn't it)

time to give this guy a go

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2f/11/6d/2f116d78389da705a9460250575fa501.jpg

sadly laurent de brunhoff died in march

this one might be good, Alvarez does atmosphere and suspense well, he doesn't just give things the right look.

it does seem plotwise like Don't Breathe, but the blind guy is aliens.

Can definitely see the Evil Dead remake lineage - make it sort of like the original but wall to wall hi-def CGI and dumber

mind boggling that Zack Snyder is the only director to successfully pull off a modern remake of a VHS classic horror

uh what about alexandre aja's the hills have eyes

i know i'm more forgiving of '00s remake horror than most, like i love platinum dunes and marcus nispel soooo much, but i thought the evil dead remake offered a lot in its portrait of addiction and intervention and also in the massive amounts of blood rain

Alien: Romulus panel…everyone in Hall H, all 6500 of them, just received facehugger masks. pic.twitter.com/GjJ3UdltXQ

— Borys Kit (@Borys_Kit) July 27, 2024

Poor Ian Holm, holy shit

he got over it and played Bilbo Baggins later on

guess I'll catch Romulus later

colour me intrigued?

dead actor resurrection should be banned

oh ew i didn't know that's what the revive was about, thought maybe Mares was just seeing og Alien for first time!

There's an article in the NY Times about the lead actress from Romulus (who I did not know also played Priscilla in that movie) and in one of the photo captions (and later in the text) they describe her as the "final girl" — hello! Spoiler alert, maybe?

Thanks for sharing

I feel like my thoughts about this are too spolierish for now, but damn.

Is there any good reason to watch alien 3 or resurrection? Going into this on the weekend and debating whether I try squeeze the two I missed (intentionally) in beforehand

never finished Resurrection. was told the Assembly cut of 3 is good. I watched it and was bored out of my fucking mind.

Alien 3 rules. Second best of the original 4.

I like Alien 3 a lot, its got some great sequences and its fun to watch all those character actors go off. The big climactic alien-trapping chase sequence is super exciting, worth it for that alone imho. Assembly Cut is def for completists only.

Alien 3 is a fascinating failure. Resurrection is boilerplate Joss Wheedon bullshit given a classier look than it deserves by the director.

All right, just got out of seeing the new one and I’m just copy/pasting my FB post on it here because it doesn’t deserve a separate writeup:

Uhhhhhhhh boy. So pretty much I’m a fan of the first two movies and give _Prometheus_ a heavily conditional “at least you tried” award so a film theoretically drawing on those three should be okay enough for me. But no. First half is best; once a certain hidden extended cameo part (which I was accidentally tipped off to earlier) kicks in then things start moving from “Yup it’s an _Alien_ movie” to “This is a lot of _Alien_ movies in a pureé” and it gets messier and often stupider and more obvious from there. (At this point I have long since given up trying to make any sense of xenomorph life cycles.) Right from the opening credits it’s all “Boy you’re not hiding anything here” though at least O’Bannon and Shusett will always get a nod (plus a prominent H.R. nod at the end but honestly they should have done the same for Jerry Goldsmith, Michael Seymour, Roger Christian etc given the end result). Much like Michael Fassbender, David Jonsson easily walks off with this by providing his own distinct spin on the Inevitable Android Role, and there are a couple of good set pieces and one amusingly creepy body horror element at the end. But by that time so many beats long since familiar and self-conscious will have ground you into a fine powder. (At least there wasn’t a Jonesy knockoff. And was Alvarez simultaneously trying to pay tribute to _Blade Runner_ in the opening segment?)

Hmmm okay, I’ll give Alien 3 a go, at least to see the “alien drooling near woman’s face as she cries” shot in its context

Alien 3 is a fascinating failure. Resurrection is boilerplate Joss Wheedon bullshit given a classier look than it deserves by the director.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, August 15, 2024 6:49 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think many of the ideas in Resurrection are good and the actors do a good job with it, but it's best evaluated while considering that it's got Whedon on the script and Jeunet in the director's seat, so you have Whedon humor (goofy) and French humor (goofy, but in a different way) at odds with each other. I think Whedon scripts, disregarding the fact that guy should not be allowed near a script or direction again, can be decent if tempered by decent rewrites and direction. Like some sort of Aaron Sorkin where he's snorting pure nerdisms ("If I repeat a line enough, my fans will love it and repeat it, no matter how clunky it is!") instead of cocaine.

Jeunet understood none of these nerdisms, which is an asset. But you can spot a half dozen of them in the finished production, but half of them are delivered with the wrong, non-nerd inflection, so the characters sound like they're from an alien (heh) culture.

There are some bits that feel very Jeunet in casting and wouldn't be out of place in a Moebius comic.

At this point the only thing that makes me happy about a new Alien movie is that one of our greatest directors gets a check every time they make one. Walter Hill's been a producer on all of them, including the Alien vs Predator movies.

Just watched the original the other night with the 13-year-old, he loved it. Warned him about the chestburster scene without spoiling it, just in case, but he was transfixed. The part that tripped him out the most was the scene with Dallas in the vent. The money bit comes at you several beats before you think it might and works all the better for it.

Wow, quite the bold start to Alien 3

Resurrection just tries *so* *hard* to be quirky and edgy and falls on its face repeatedly. Plus the hybrid elements are initially disgusting (good) and end up unintentionally funny in an unbearably cringe way. Very little to redeem it apart from the swimming bit.

Just watched the original the other night with the 13-year-old, he loved it. Warned him about the chestburster scene without spoiling it, just in case, but he was transfixed. The part that tripped him out the most was the scene with Dallas in the vent. The money bit comes at you several beats before you think it might and works all the better for it.

― omar little, Thursday, August 15, 2024 10:45 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i saw that at the exact same age and will completely agree that the Dallas scene was what got me more. Even worse, at the time I was living in the basement of our house so all I ever heard were the noises of the heating and ac vents going and I was essentially terrified of going to sleep for hours on end.

I enjoyed Romulus, a solid B.

Too indebted to familiar beats and too many set pieces in the half hour, and really no fuckin reason to drag the likeness of Ian Holm into this.

Still, I had fun so that works

the other problem is the big reveal. not only was it easy to predict what it would be, but the payoff of introducing a new hybrid creature when you're creating an in-betweenquel is that because this creature very clearly doesn't exist in the rest of the series, you know it's going to be destroyed along with the compound, so it's really just an amusement. but...like I said, the atmosphere I found fun, I enjoyed Cailee Spaeny and David Jonnson, and the pregnant character is a great screamer.

he was on the radio yesterday saying that he had to please both the people who knew the originals and the younger people that didn't. and that he'd also used a couple of giger's ideas that were removed from the original (possibly self censorship by giger)

Need Alien 3 update from H.P. pleeeese

Lol! It sucked!

haha

Nahhhh look..... the early 90s cgi.... I guess you can forgive things for being of the time? The religious/patriachy/capitalist ideas kinda great in theory but not spelled out enough/given enough depth? Like they really could have gone somewhere focussing more on resurrection (the burning of the body's at the start, greater beings coming back after death) but... they didn't. The chase scene kinda great in a looney tunes whackey way. The Ridley crying next to smelling alien shot is so utterly classic. Killing of the Aliens characters not done seriously enough. One or two mourning scenes, and then we move onto aliens 3! Lame. I did really like the prison colony setting and the power plays inside of it. Movie did well to make me feel bad for a warden; poor 85 getting dunked on the whole film. But honestly that cgi..... just thr worst.

All that ^^ is small beans. The most damning indictment I can give it is that it just simply was not scary, primarily because it was not serious. First two set such high bars, and this one did not come close to meeting them

Off to Romulus now! Convinced my fraidy-cat wife to see her first "horror" film at the cinemas. Thoughts and prayers it's not her last

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

Oddly, a lot of what looks like CGI with the alien in 3 is actually a puppet, not CGI at all. only shadows in a couple of shots were beefed up digitally to add mass.

Thoughts

1. Bloody hell, can every institution on planet earth stop trying to get me to care about AI in 2024? Movie is dud for this point alone

2. Oh so that's why they called it romulus

3. bold to leave the singular new idea in this film to thr last 15 minutes. And that's being generous.... new alien reveal in the fakeout ending already done with aliens

This is getting like the Terminator, endless middling or bad relaunches

wait lol, the alien franchise motored past terminator (also bad and boring now) in that regard a v long time ago

alien3 is good tho, ppl who dislike it don't understand cinema
— jean-luc godard

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

― H.P, Friday, August 16, 2024 5:00 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd still put Alien 3 as third-best Alien movie, but I will admit that until Zodiac came out probably the spiciest take in my arsenal was that A3 was the best Fincher movie.

if you've watched any behind the scenes doc about alien 3 you will be astonished at how coherent and atmospheric the final film is

my dream alien 3 would be a combination theatrical/assembly cut... iirc in the theatrical the alien bursts out of a dog, which is much cooler than what happens in the assembly cut, and also the ending of the theatrical is more emotionally complete. but everything else about the assembly is superior

Also unperson wtf was that opinion above? Justify yourself. Calling aliens 3 better than alien/aliens is a baffling take

I didn't say it was better than Alien. I said it was the second-best of the original four. I am a longtime and confirmed Aliens hater. Taking one of the darkest, scariest SF/horror movies ever and turning out a sequel that's a pure none-more-80s action movie gets you a spot on my fuck-off list forever. (Cameron has two good movies to his name: The Terminator and The Abyss.)

Alien 3, due to the setting, has the most uniformly drab costuming and character appearances but leans into it by having the most interesting looking dudes fill out the cast. I'd imagine people with face blindness might have had issues, but the fact that nearly every character has a distinct facial expression and voice is a feat in itself

re: Aliens being a 80s action cliche, I'd argue that the "squad of actual troops fight against unworldly horror" was relatively new? I rate it much lower than Alien and it seems kind of tired when revisiting, but only because it originated many of those plot devices and cast dynamics

arguably Predator is the other side of the coin, but with all of the tone flipped 180 degrees

there are obvious written predecessors to the whole Space Marine subgenre but Aliens was the primary influence for a lot of what followed, especially in video games

Aliens was 100% the right pivot.

i feel like aliens transformed blockbuster cinema in a similar way to jaws, a decade removed from it. it influenced everything. it is also just really beautifully constructed in every way, from the plot machinations to the design of the colony and the planet outside

sorry to just reword your post, mh

np, I'm in desperate need of an editor over here

One of the very few 'dude talks about movies' YouTube channels I have time for is the Bad Movie Bible, because the dude has perfect dry delivery and sharp humor/editing, and his three parter on the endless ripoffs/repurposings due to the Alien universe smartly splits those films that lean more towards Alien and then those more Aliens into separate videos.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMEQI4dmEuA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKX-XQtL7uI

one thing I can concede is I know lots of us have "pop culture quote machine" fatigue where we get tired of hanging out with the one dude who does nothing but quote movies all day and nothing else and this movie definitely has a few quotes that have been banged into the ground so sometimes I don't enjoy this movie as much as I used to as lines like "game over, man" have been beaten to death in the public psyche.

but then I see awesome set piece after awesome set piece and just don't care.

also...I played Hudson in a Elizabethan-era, Shakesperean version of Aliens and getting to yell DIE MOTHERFUCKER while holding a claymore and charging at my 6'4 friend in a xenomorph costume was maybe one of the coolest moments of my theatrical life lol

but then I see awesome set piece after awesome set piece and just don't care

My two favorite moments in that regard were easily the 'silent' section, however handwavey, and the dodge-the-acid part.

the dodge the acid part was a little weird for me because I'm not saying this because I'm a childish person, although I am, but at one point it looked like floating cum and that hurt the gravitas a bit. the silent section felt revisionist with what we know of the lore and it bugged me a bit because it also felt derivative of a scene in the recent Quiet Place movie.

I swear I did like the movie! but I would say if you wanted to pick apart the in-film logic using the established or implied in-universe rules...you could keep yourself busy. i had to force myself to stop doing that during yesterday's watch and just enjoyed the bitey bitey.

The utilitarianism-or-deontology thread throughout the film felt hollow. Not that I'm expecting any deep philosophical arguments from an Alien flick. Just.... don't put the thread in if you are going to give it such a shallow treatment/not really say anything?

Sorry, I'll stop being such a hater now. I liked the face-hugger chases. I liked the pregnant lady storyline from start to end.

Facehugger scenes in alien movies have become the lightsaber battles from star wars for me.

I'm sure I will watch this soon, even though haven't appreciated any of the franchise efforts since Alien 3 (yes I liked it).

I liked resurrection more than 3. The direction was so classic, like someone filmed a comic book. It was silly, but more self-assured of itself in that fact compared to Alien 3. Alien 3 screwed up by making one of the plot points "we all need to die", thus killing all suspense of when/how things will turn out.

The Alien death at the end of resurrection is so grotesquely beautiful.

Elizabeth Vicentelli agrees with me in ranking all the Alien movies for the New York Times. (Gift link.)

Aliens
Written and directed by James Cameron, the first sequel to “Alien” is widely held as either the best or the second best movie in the series. But have you watched it recently? Because “Aliens” has aged badly. After 57 years in hypersleep, Ripley grudgingly agrees to help wipe out a nest of beasties threatening a settlement. “Aliens” bears many of the badges of dishonor of formulaic 1980s action: cartoonishly aggro toughies, a little girl in peril (Carrie Henn), a company tool with an upturned collar (Paul Reiser), a bombastically martial score (by James Horner) and, worst of all, an avalanche of hackneyed would-be catchphrases. Best: the confrontation between the alien queen (a major addition to the canon) and Ripley. Worst: almost everything else.

Alien 3
For many fans, this is the “Alien” maudit: the second sequel to “Alien” was cursed by a chaotic production process, met with a divided reception and disowned by its rookie director, one David Fincher. But time has been generous to this installment, whose number may also refer to three times the bleakness and desperation. The film starts with Ripley crash-landing on a planet that’s been turned into an all-male prison, where many of the inmates have become apocalyptic fundamentalist Christians. A parasitic facehugger, which attaches itself to a host and deposits the embryo that will eventually burst out, quickly grows to full size and spreads havoc on the colony. Featuring Weaver’s best performance in the entire series, “Alien 3” has a haunting grandeur and a core melancholia that are subtly emphasized by Elliot Goldenthal’s imaginative score. This one easily bears repeat watching.

Ah yes, the would-be catchphrases, none of them caught on.

I'm a bit bemused at how Vicentelli seems to skip over a kinda key point about Aliens, namely that the military's cartoonishly aggro toughies etc get their fucking asses kicked almost completely and mostly die gruesomely, which makes all the militaristic strutting/smugness early on ('another bug hunt' etc) completely get shot out of the water. It's fairly clear Cameron circled back to that later with the Avatar films and I'd rather watch Aliens as a Vietnam-themed film from 1986 than Platoon these days.

^^ Yes, exactly this. Bill Paxton, so good in his meltdown scene.

Also every film should be lucky enough to get Paul Reiser as a company tool with an upturned collar!

Alien 3, due to the setting, has the most uniformly drab costuming and character appearances but leans into it by having the most interesting looking dudes fill out the cast.

I cannot countenance considering a bunch of English actors Actin' 'Ard as more interesting than Winona Ryder / Ron Perlman / Brad Dourif / Dominique Pinon (and directed by someone interested in the interesting, too)

Andrew extremely otm

you're arguing against a point I wasn't making

also, nearly every one of those English actors plays a character that immediately falls apart as soon as the alien appears. Charles Dance gets killed nearly immediately! the only guy who survives long enough to see if he can hold it together who is not scrambling through hallways and running into the others is Charles Dutton

which is why I said "fills out the cast" because there's no team of soldiers or mercenaries in 3 until the company men show up, just a bunch of scared lifers

it's some Guy Ritchie hardman stand-off movie

sorry, NOT some hardman stand-off movie

https://i.imgur.com/jTIq9IT.jpeg

1>3>2>>>>4 which only gets included because of the scene where Dan Hedaya holds a piece of his own brain

Latter-day Ridley ones are too bad to consider and surely this one isn't worth the punishment

Seeing the new flick tomorrow with friends. We’ll see how it goes

"He needs to know that things like that could happen in life, it could be a true story, based on science..."

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

Ned otm about the two best set pieces in a rather okay film with dreary actors, though the last dude killed -- I won't even look up the actor's name -- was cute in a poncey way.

I'll also grant that the last creature is quite terrifying -- reminded me of the Julian Sands Mugwump in Naked Lunch.

beautiful pic.twitter.com/auQ73kEjSo

— giannis (@musashinoelegy) September 2, 2024

if you don't want to click thru that's
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWeT1BSWAAA0N4E?format=png&name=900x900

adding:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GWeS7qiWgAAc-kH?format=png&name=small

Jeunet otm

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

studio... OTM?!

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

Broken clock of financial prudence

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

Whedon’s always been a fucking hack.

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

Alien movies are Sigourney movies, not Alien movies

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

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

the ripley/xenomorph sex scene is literally soooo beautiful lol

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

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

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

and Sig looks great!

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

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

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

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

same

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

love her as the predator here:

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

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

Looks like it's a rom/com night!

looks like H.P. wants to be the prey

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

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

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

wait, which is the second run

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

including romulus, which was a fucking blast

Turns out cute babby alien is a real actual fella 😑

and there's barely any difference

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

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

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

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

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

lmao he shot Napoleon in 62 days

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

finally saw Romulus. quick thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

This was fun, this was nothing new, I liked Andy but think he should have left the last two words off The Catchphrase, I really liked the threat of smashing into the rings as well

Just caught up with this. At first I thought all the callbacks were simply a form of continuity, but from the start they came so fast and furious that it got kind of distractingly silly. Ah, yes, crawling through a vent. Ah, yes, condensation dripping. Ah, yes, trapped in a red-lit room with critters. Ah, yes, teaching her how to use a gun. Ah, yes, a countdown clock. And yes, of course, a lo-fi helmet cam. Not to mention the virtual cameo, which was extra distracting, because there was no reason at all it had to be that actor's image, it literally could have been anybody. And they kept bringing him back, too, as if they were so proud. (Oh, and by the way, I counted not just the big one but *3* intentional direct script quotes from the first two movies.)

At one point I had to pause it and was shocked there were 45 minutes left. However, I thought they did an OK job with the set pieces at the end, particularly the zero gravity sequence, and I liked the look of the planetary belt and, I suppose, the creepy hybrid, which is better than the similar one in Alien 4. Loved Andy, too; like its immediate predecessors, the artificial human is the best part. That said, the best Alien franchise installment aside from the first two remains the "Alien:Isolation" video game, which absolutely gets right everything the movies post-"Aliens" get wrong.

god this was so deathless & kinda dull, like it did not take long for me to root for the alien to kill all of them

why do i keep watching these movies thinking they will ever not be hopelessly broken

I’ve passed on everything after Prometheus but I’m sure I’ll be dumb enough to watch this when it’s included on one of my services. Not quite dumb enough to pay for a rental.

basically i cosign Ned’s review way up thread

like this was some alien franchise drinking bingo shit, it got so boring

like when andy Said The Thing i was like oh good is the movie over yet lol

Haha yup. What a nothing.

With a couple of fleeting exceptions it felt a lot like a PG-13 YA reboot.

that’s what The Thing prequel felt like too iirc

I liked it okay, but was put off by the "plucky teen TV series" energy of the cast. Maybe trying to chase contemporary horror audiences? I appreciated that the first half felt genuinely tense and creepy in a way that I don't think any of these has pulled off since Alien3. Like, it was by-the-numbers creepy abandoned spaceship stuff, but they did it well. Kinda lost me as it went on, I'll admit.

nice to see you Doc!

i guess i understand the complaints but this movie had someone floating in zero gravity through an acid vortex, so it was awesome

We are a long way from the deeply intelligent and effortless plotting and characterization and dialogue of the original alien and also obv the thing. Skilled and weary-looking character actors, stars who could be character actors, excellent use of cats and dogs.

I suppose I'm immune to carping about this or that Alien film given its genre roots, so in a sense I regard this one as a revanchist move: this is what the first film could or should have been.

should?!?

Maybe? *shrug*

hi Tracer!

fuck outta here with should

this movie is a parasitic entity that entirely subsists on thr first 2 movies … there is, to me, nothing that this movie does narratively or visually that in any way stands alone or could be an improvement on the original.

improve how? by replacing hungry talented actors with deadeyed teens sleepwalking through their characters? or having the final reveal look like cgi developed based on sketches by Chris (Simpsons Artist)?

i’ll pass. thanks though

All I meant by "should" was to hint at the film's pulpy roots. It's a monster movie at its core but deepened by first-rate visualists and action directors like Scott and Cameron (and Jeunet). I don't feel a sense of betrayal because the last couple of installments were just as vaporous but at the moment diverting.

I didn't feel a sense of betrayal, just disappointment at how rote it seemed. I thought the last two Scott films were among the silliest sci-fi movies I'd seen in some time, but they looked great and had some sort of vision, even if said vision was as dumb as a rock and shapeless as sand. In a lot of ways I'm always more bummed by mediocrity than failure, because mediocrity often means there's a sad residual glimmer of what the movie could have been. This one, those glimmers are there, but they were reduced by all the endless, lazy callbacks and references to the other movies, which might have been more acceptable if they were in service of something more compelling. This one was just a pu pu platter of Alien tropes and (literal) quotes.

otm

Love your hard pan VG

One thing this film reinforced for me was how superb (and essential) the lighting in the first film was. Quite a few glistening closeup knockoff shots which just looked like maquettes being pumped with aloe vera in this one, whereas in the first film they look feverish and terrifying. Anyone who has a 4K player should get the disc of ALIEN, it’s an absolute revelation for the lighting alone.

and to be clear, if my hard pan made it unclear, i dont dislike Romulus more than Covenant or Prometheus - if anything i’m more irritated by Scott driving the whole thing into the ground with boring yet visually beautiful nonsense.
I had zero expectations going into this & was still left wanting so idk

I’ll keep seeing new Alien movies because of the good will still burning in me for the first two, and the hope for something creatively exciting … but at this point not clearing a very low bar is status quo

otm

saw this tonight, i would like just one morsel of a new idea in an alien movie pls

i was struck by how much it felt like ALIEN: ISOLATION, kinda sad that a videogame remains the best alien-related media of the last three decades

i guess i understand the complaints but this movie had someone floating in zero gravity through an acid vortex, so it was awesome

― ivy., Saturday, 19 October 2024 17:39 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I practically fell off my sofa yelling WHERE DID THE ALIEN CORPSES GO during this sequence

i was struck by how much it felt like ALIEN: ISOLATION, kinda sad that a videogame remains the best alien-related media of the last three decades

That said, the best Alien franchise installment aside from the first two remains the "Alien:Isolation" video game, which absolutely gets right everything the movies post-"Aliens" get wrong.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 16, 2024 6:31 PM (three days ago)

High-five!

^ this guy gets it

did I get it when I mentioned Isolation a month ago?
🤔

alright fine glad we’re on the same page about this

but where did the alien corpses go ffs

Same place the facehuggers came from, a pocket universe of narrative convenience

Where have all the corpses gone
Gone to graveyards
Every one
Oh when will they ever learn

This felt so much like Dead Space: The Movie. It was all fetch quests. Pretty good derelict space ship set design though. Would have been a good airplane movie, not so bad watching it 1/2 an hour at a time while exercising.

Lol Dead Space is a perfect comparison

I watched it while working the other day and had fun. It’s pretty brain-dead and the obligatory fan service was embarrassing and the fake Ian Holm looked so bad. But the bulk of it worked for me. I especially liked the young android and his personality shifts.

BUT WHERE DID THE ALIEN CORPSES GO FFS

It could have been a pretty decent movie without the aliens, just some kids trying to figure out how to steal and fix a broke-down ship and outwit the corporation.

The director admittedly playing a shit-ton of _Isolation_ before beginning work of this film kind of structures the entire thing, with aspects down to using the exact same sound effects of the doors.

I get why they cast young people vs the older folks in the first one, as the differences between how film horror has been consumed between the 70s and now, but I wish they had done more with the characters to actually set them up and their relationships before you get to the picked-off-one-by-one section. I think I read that they had a lot more shot about all that but it got cut.

Watched ALIEN: COVENANT last night and was reminded once again that Danny McBride is the snob's Larry The Cable Guy, and nothing more.

when Larry creates something like The Righteous Gemstones, let me know. I'm tuning in

I made it halfway through one episode of that.

other than sounding vaguely folksy and being white dudes, I don't really think they have much at all in common. but it's really funny you're broadly painting them both as the same and live in Montana?

like, Larry is a fictional persona of a Canadian man who moved to the US and does his shtick as a wholesome parody, and McBride generally plays characters that lean into mannerisms that are only broadly similar to skewer the same

one of them is more a cynical ploy than the other and it’s not McBride, imo. but maybe I’m out myself as a snob!

"Alien: Romulus" or, for the Raimi-fans "Alien Resurrection 2"

Alien Resurrection is so much better

Until I watched Alien and Aliens on back to back nights it never clicked how much less I care about the latter. Alien is neck and neck with The Thing for sci-fi/horror GOAT and then s is a pretty good action movie (but itself not as good as The Terminator).

I would probably rather watch Resurrection over Aliens again if I had to do one in the near future.

Started watching Romulus a couple of weeks ago but only lasted about halfway (made it as far as CGI Ash's appearance). The less overtly Alien-movie it was (like the whole bit about the characters striving to escape their life of corporate wage-slave exploitation), the more I liked it. But when they were being attacked by 500 facehuggers it was just a video game and I lost interest.

...we're getting a sequel?

https://www.fangoria.com/alien-romulus-sequel-update-2/

We’ve almost checked all of the boxes of things that I want to see [in Romulus], and brought back a lot of the things I hadn’t seen in a while. Wherever we go now, we can go into uncharted waters […] I think it’ll be so exciting to go with characters you know from this movie, to a place in the Alien franchise that we’ve never been before, and to discover things that you’ve never seen before.

And they end up on a prison planet or something, calling it now.

A desert planet! No! Wait…an ICE planet!

If they CGI in a young Bill Pullman we burn down the studio.

ejecting myself into space in 3…2….

This time around an alien will say "Game...OVER."

Alien: Romulated

2 Alien 2 Romulus

Alien: Remustered

Alien: Romulus: Sure

Alien: Romulus 2: Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

Alien: Romulus: Allstars vs UK Season 3

I would enjoy seeing those aliens serve.

Aliens: Romuluses

Alien: Romulans

2 Alien 2 Romulus

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, January 15, 2025 4:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Only if Tyrese and AI/CGI Paul Walker get a cameo

Got to be Alien : Remus

Honestly, I look a little forward to a Romulus sequel - maybe they'll feel less compelled to wink at the older entries, and keep the (surviving) likeable actors

All two of them!