blade runner vs. alien

alien

I was a squeamish teen when I saw Alien, and it bored the shit outta me.

http://www.therealcuba.com/Elian01.jpg

they're both awesome but i think i've inadvertently fallen asleep more times during blade runner than alien.

I've been many different ages when I've seen Blade Runner, and it bored the snore outta zzzzzz....

giger > syd mead

Blade Runner in a walk.

I've never been able to finish Blade Runner, because it's really boring.

Alien's way more boring than Blade Runner! Still a great film though.

blade runner vs. alien: which of these two dope movies is more boring

bladerunner sux

I refuse to choose.

these are 2 top 5 movies for me, i reckon. maybe top 7. both superb, both visual treats. Blade Runner is the better of the two in just about every department though.

ugh should have made this a 77 poll

'Blade Runner' manages to conjure up a whole believable, beautiful world without any info-dumping (the word-crawl at the start aside): only other SF film I can think of that came near to doing this as well was 'Children of Men'.

Blade Runner.

Blade Runner

i don't know such things i only do eyes! just eyes....

'Alien' seemed like a high budget rip-off of the Dr. Who 'Ark in Space' series, and I saw the original release of 'Bladerunner' with the voice-over and the happy ending. Neither of them could scratch 'Mad Max 2', 'Escape From New York' or 'The Thing'. 'Alien', at a push, for Giger's design.

i think this could be the only poll on ilx that matters, ever.

why would this one matter

i'm not sure. i'm drunk. but this is a question i've asked myself many times, it would be sweet if ilx could answer it for me.

Blade Runner is a better movie, but I'd rather watch Alien almost any day of the week.

Blade Runner. I find Alien tedious.

Love them both (or at least the Blade Runner that was in theaters last year, only version I've seen), cannot choose.

'Blade Runner' manages to conjure up a whole believable, beautiful world without any info-dumping (the word-crawl at the start aside): only other SF film I can think of that came near to doing this as well was 'Children of Men'.

― James Morrison, Saturday, November 15, 2008 12:21 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

alien does this too, just in a more subtle way cuz the characters aren't "in" the world as much, just part of it.

Both have two of the strongest opening credit sequences around, visually and musically -- the slow pan across the planet with the title slowly assembling like strange hieroglyphs against Jerry Goldsmith's blasted, empty romanticism, space as isolation, versus the stark lettering against pure black with Vangelis's utterly forlorn percussion echoes and soft, wailing melody. Pretty breathtaking.

Did Saul Bass really design the Alien title sequence or is that a myth?

R/GA did Alien's title sequence

Oh man... I forgot about Vangelis! That just tipped it over to Alien. The neon Atari signs I can deal with but Vangelis... would be like if Keir Dullea had a mullet in 2001.

Ban Philip Nunez.

Oh man... I forgot about Vangelis! That just tipped it over to Alien. The neon Atari signs I can deal with but Vangelis... would be like if Keir Dullea had a mullet in 2001.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, November 14, 2008 11:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there is a lot of idiocy in this thread but you my friend you push that retardation into a new dimension of wrong.

A poll inside a poll:

Pris or Rachel?

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j255/frodo06/blade_runner.jpg

http://boingboing.net/images/rachael2007.jpg

rachel

Both please. Yum yum.

Rachel. Very iconic, one of the last great femme fatale images in cinema. After that, I can only recall Jessica Alba's dance in "Sin City".

it's all blackness eh

only ppl who think this is a tough call need til New Years to decide.

jesus christ sean young vs DARYL HANNAH what is wrong with yall

xactly, ಥ﹏ಥ

xactly

I find both pretty tedious, although Alien less so, I think. I want to love both of them, because they look so fucking gorgeous, but I just can't. Ought to rewatch Blade Runner, been a long time. The puppets at the end though, always used to throw me, lose my interest.

Rachel. Very iconic, one of the last great femme fatale images in cinema. After that, I can only recall Jessica Alba's dance in "Sin City".

bwahahaha wat?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Alien.

Alien. Not sure why. Blade Runner is more idea-dense, and I've probably gotten more out of it over the years. But I like Alien's simplicity and LOVE the execution of Geiger's designs. Also, I'm a huge fan of that weird bridge-period between fanciful 70s sci-fi and the emergence of realistic, hard-edged 80s stuff. In Alien, you get 70s imagery (the computer room, the hypersleep chambers, the white-blooded robot) mashed right up against iconic 80s-ness in the models, visual effects and overall texture.

this is like choosing between my right and left dorsal spines

alien is a lot more interesting to me. blade runner looks great but i've always been frustrated by how boring the story is. and the dialogue is terrible. ("it's too bad she won't live, but then again who does" may well be the worst — or at least the worst-delivered — line in any movie ever.)

do ppl really find alien "tedious"? i thought it was one of the scariest things ever, but i find the concept of outer space inherently creepy.

Alien for the reasons contenderizer and JD give

blade runner looks great but i've always been frustrated by how boring the story is. and the dialogue is terrible. ("it's too bad she won't live, but then again who does" may well be the worst — or at least the worst-delivered — line in any movie ever.)

so rong

i was gonna say... that line & ejo in general are classics beyond all classics

I'm watching Blade Runner for the first time ever right now.

alien is a lot more interesting to me. blade runner looks great but i've always been frustrated by how boring the story is. and the dialogue is terrible. ("it's too bad she won't live, but then again who does" may well be the worst — or at least the worst-delivered — line in any movie ever.)

I have similar issues with the characters in Alien though and some idiotic plot devices: Evil robot! Evil corporation! Running after the cat is bad!

Man, Ridley Scott had one heck of a theatrical start... First three movies are The Duellists, Alien, and Blade Runner. Sheesh!

I know The Duellists is kinda outmatched here, but I'd love to see a poll matching it with the other two. Such a neat movie.

Blade Runner. By coincidence I'm listening to the soundtrack right now

the corporate stuff in alien is great!! i'd never seen the future look so... privatized

Slocki OTM. Or so working-class. Alien nails this feeling of lived (and labored) in-ness like no other science fiction movie I've ever seen. You get a sense that you're not seeing the totality of the characters' lives, but just this one, small corner. In part it's the quality of the actors, in part it's the Altman-like approach to dialogue: fragmented, naturalistic, delivered with no regard to cameras or microphones. Especially true during the build-up to the chest-burster gag (perhaps, less so elsewhere in the film). Anyway, it fascinated me as a kid, and it still seems unique and compelling.

yeah, also the fact that the actors are all aged about 30 and up. imagine a major horror /sci-fi movie doing that now.

i know, they'd add in some kid who somehow escaped from teh aliens or something!!

https://proprintwear.com/images/Touche%20Fit%20Trim%20Black%20Shorts%202.jpg

Slocki OTM. Or so working-class. Alien nails this feeling of lived (and labored) in-ness like no other science fiction movie I've ever seen. You get a sense that you're not seeing the totality of the characters' lives, but just this one, small corner.

Silent Running and Dark Star to thread (even though they're inferior). I know I'm deliberately unfair on Alien here, but this isn't anything particularly new to SF although Weyland-Yutani is a particularly 70s/80s American version of interstellar capitalism than the monoliths Bester, Sheckley, and Pohl wrote about.

CHOAM would take out W-T in a first round TKO though.

I know I'm deliberately unfair on Alien here, but this isn't anything particularly new to SF...

-- E.T.

That's not unfair, and I agree. But I don't think it's ever been executed so well in SF cinema, before or since. (Or, anywhere else, for that matter. Literature just isn't capable of that kind of immersive versimilitude. Not that I wanna fight about it...)

What I liked about Alien is the ordinariness of running into other life/ancient spacecraft in the universe. There's no "OMG we're not alone!" but implicit irritation of a trucker delayed by snowstorm. Also sets up the "just another bug hunt" gag in Aliens

my gf had never seen alien until recently and i think the shit that freaked her out the most was the Ash meltdown.

ya that's good shit

i mean, maybe it wasn't the first to do some of that stuff in sci-fi but to write it off as "idiotic plot devices" is TOTALLY unfair!

even the cat thing... didn't alien pioneer the modern cat scare??

i think it did! always wondered how the cat got into those lockers though.

Cats do that sot of thing.

i mean, maybe it wasn't the first to do some of that stuff in sci-fi but to write it off as "idiotic plot devices" is TOTALLY unfair!

Standard horror movie stuff though. Just because it's in outer space doesn't mean that it's new.

which stuff are we talking about now?

Watched Blade Runner the other day for the first time in years, and it was really good. The toys annoyed me less so than before. I think I'd pip for Alien ahead of it though, just.

Both are classic. Could this thread not be renamed "Horror vs SciFi"?

one thing that bothered me in Alien recently is the poor cut between fake broken down Ian Holm and real broken down Ian Holm in an otherwise excellent scene, why didn't they fix that?

one thing that bothers me is how does teh alien get so big in between chest bursting and eating its first human.

alien is more fun

i think this could be the only poll on ilx that matters, ever.
― Ant Attack.. (Ste)

why would this one matter
― TOMBOT

because its a mom vs dad poll, would be my guess.

one thing that bothers me is how does teh alien get so big in between chest bursting and eating its first human.

I can't find Ebert's original review of the movie, only his "Great Movies" entry, but he remarked on this as well, referring to the creature apparently building mass out of thin air or somesuch. He likes to go all biology/Darwin on monster movies.

No XTRO, no credibility.

it ate a cat, right?

oh wait, no

that was ALF

the writers on alf used to play In A Silent Way and shoot heroin

Standard horror movie stuff though. Just because it's in outer space doesn't mean that it's new.

― Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Wednesday, December 31, 2008 7:37 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just because it's not 100% new and spun out of thin air doesn't mean it's idiotic.

sondangerbot and ledge OTM. Cut between plastic head and Holm head is jarring, as is the sudden biggification of thee Alien. But for a special-effects heavy late 70s flick, it has very few such flaws. (Running chestburster is super fakey, shot of breaking landing gear looks a little dubious; once you notice that they're using water to get the space engine blast effect at the end, it's hard to unnotice it, though it still looks cool.)

one thing that's great about the movie is the fact that the alien looks completely different in every scene... it doesn't bother me that it gets bigger.. it's an alien!!

maybe it just LOOKS bigger to the people who are terrified of it

This is true. Maybe it's just Jonesy the whole time, and as they get more and more freaked out, he keeps looking bigger and weirder.

"Aah, get this cat off my face!" "Aah, the cat is in my lungs!" Etc.

one thing that's great about the movie is the fact that the alien looks completely different in every scene... it doesn't bother me that it gets bigger.. it's an alien!!

"just means more of you to love!"

only movie that would've beaten alien is aliens imo

http://www.filmwad.com/fw_images/2008/06/26/roy-batty.jpg

how did that replicant get so big

he ate a bird

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

only movie that would've beaten alien is aliens imo

^^^^^

except no

yeah, i watch both alien and aliens recently and the original holds up better imo

anyone who says "kind've" can't be trusted

actually kind have a crap film

what is that word contracting? kind have a crap film?

kind'f

x'posts

I still stand by what I posted on the Aliens thread

I saw both Alien and Aliens in the theater recently and I like both movies less than I did originally - Alien much more so.

Alex NYC was critical of Aliens' dialogue, and Alien is just as dopey, cartoonish, and two-dimensional as Aliens only instead of war movie cliches, it's full of horror movie cliches. Alien's suspense is really just shock-value: the alien goes "boo" and chows down on a crew member. Once you know the story, Alien has very little repeat-viewing worth except as a filmed H.R. Giger sketchbook. The new director's cut does flow better, but I could have done without the infamous "Dallas cocoon scene". On the plus side, the new digital sound is just amazing and worth it alone to see in a decent theater.

The original cut of Aliens was great, I wish that Cameron had just left it alone - really the only thing that needed to be included was the scene with the massed alien attack on the remote guns. Couple of scenes in here are just spectacular - the initial drop ship scene is amazingly well done and everything from "looks like they're having a goddamn town meeting" to "ease down - you've blown the transaxle. you're just grinding metal".

Thin writing or not, I defy anyone to repeat dialog from the original Alien without looking.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, August 30, 2004 5:09 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

what the fuck is "kind've"

― max, Monday, July 16, 2007 10:23 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

still ashamed that I used to say that all the time!

if you said it's ok because you were probably actually saying "kind of"

and that is kind have better.

what kind of fools are we?

Maybe we got 'em demoralised.

argh, ilx search shows that I am the main offender, historically. It made sense to me, as long as I didn't think about it too hard!

hahaha i have gotten to the point in my ilx career where i dont remember what jokes ive already made

Alex NYC was critical of Aliens' dialogue, and Alien is just as dopey, cartoonish, and two-dimensional as Aliens only instead of war movie cliches, it's full of horror movie cliches.

-- E.T.

This is true, but it's still OffTM. Alien and Aliens each operates very traditionally within its genre (horror flick and war movie, respectively), but they both also succeed within them, and even transcend them. Alien is atmospheric, claustrophobic, visceral and horrifying. The suspense works, the jump-scares work, the imagery and ideas are suitably unnerving. More to the point, it does all this, delivering a classic "monster in a haunted house" scenario without ever being too obvious about it. The use of well executed science-fiction elements to render the familiar horror scenario fresh is clever and effective. And it's a richer film, visually, politically and thematically than most of its genre bretheren.

Same goes for Aliens and it's relocation of a traditional small-unit combat film into a horror/sci-fi setting. The genre fundamentals may be familiar, but they're delivered with exceptional skill, and the hybridization makes sense.

Where Alien isn't "just as dopey, cartoonish, and two-dimensional as Aliens" is in the acting and the production design. Harry Dean Stanton, Yapphet Kotto, Ian Holm, John Hurt and Veronica Cartwright all deliver exceptionally convincing, non-cartoonish performances. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to specifically fault the dialogue in Aliens. Relative to Alien, it really is dopey, cartoonish, two-dimensional.

i don't really have a problem with "horror movie cliches" if they're done well -- the whole problem with those "cliches" is that they're usually done badly.

oops, that was me

are there any other movies that exploit the inherent scariness of being isolated in outer space as well as alien?

2001

but ya, criticizing a genre movie for being a genre movie is pretty silly imo

I actually think Alien doesn't really exploit the scariness of isolation in space very well. That's not to fault the film, just to say that it's scariness depends more on "trapped in creepy place with gross monster" than on endless freezing vaccum horror. Those scenes in 2001 with Dave inside the airlock and outside the ship do a far better job with that angle, IMO.

edit: damn you s1ocki!

Nah, freezing vacuum horror isn't what Alien is all about. The film's scare strengths have more to do with claustrophobia and body horror than anything specifically related to outer space, IMO.

"I actually think Alien doesn't really exploit the scariness of isolation in space very well."

Did you see it in the theater first, or on video at home? Because in 1979, that shit was terrifying.

Both, but maybe it's been too long.

I mean, the movie's scary as hell. The "in space" part, not so much.

ya, no one can even hear you scream

It's sound dampening powers are truly mighty.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

o well, at least it was close

a mighty mighty poll

but it's rong

another metric for ascertaining the results of polls like this could be to discard the numbers and simply tot up which option generated the most discussion; if applied to this poll it would be a landslide

trick polls

Solid, solid poll nonetheless. I'm glad it was close.

still mightily rong tho

I love both films but I voted Blade Runner simply because it's the one I've gone back to the most, recommended the most, and discussed the most. Alien is very cool, but not quite as ground breaking/thought provoking.

Maybe Alien has been slightly watered down by the franchise too. No Blade Runner sequel helps to preserve its appeal somehow.

although there was this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/BladeRunner_PC_Game_%28Front_Cover%29.jpg
which for me I guess only made it even better

I think the poll would have had different results if it was Alien 2.

Yeah it would be a landslide for Blade Runner.

another metric for ascertaining the results of polls like this could be to discard the numbers and simply tot up which option generated the most discussion; if applied to this poll it would be a landslide

a landslide of rong

next on "discussion generator," contenderizer vs slocki in who can have the last word about how they appreciated the art design, altman-esque dialogue, and which sfx are a bit wack in ridley scott's 1979 space-horra opus Alien

another metric for ascertaining the results of polls like this could be to discard the numbers and simply tot up which option generated the most discussion; if applied to this poll it would be a landslide

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/images/gallery/sarah-palin-vice-president.jpg

damn dude I thought my post was cold

she has more teeth than the alien did

Saw this tonight (in a theatre) for probably only the third time ever--when it came out, and then a second time within a couple of years. Intense, but I'm glad I didn't vote for it in the horror poll.

I spent much of the film trying to figure out if it just wanted to scare you, or if there was more going on. There was almost always more going on in the best horror films from the era--in Rosemary's Baby, in Night of the Living Dead, in The Exorcist, in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. Alien's at the tail end of that era, '79, before slasher films become the norm. Did it have anything to do with either the events or the general climate of the day?

I don't know, but I was eventually struck by how precisely Ash's description of the alien ("I admire its purity"--the perfect killing machine, remorseless, detached, etc.) matches similar descriptions of the shark in Jaws and Michael Myers in Halloween (and also, except for the killing part, Leonard Nimory's description of the pods in Body Snatchers). It wouldn't seem like the best metaphor for the country after the very emotional debacle of Vietnam, so again, I don't know.

Vietnam proved the USA could kill very effectively. it just couldn't win the war.

That's why I didn't think the supposed indestructibility of the alien/shark/Michael Myers worked as a metaphor for the USA at that particular moment: the country seemed anything but after Vietnam. I think there's something going on there, I'm just not sure what.

james cameron said aliens was explicitly about vietnam. it kind of ruined it a little. i'd rather it be about aliens in space and lance henriksen.

They were playing Aliens right after Alien the other night, but I wasn't up to another film. I saw it a long time ago...I thought it was all about matriarchy and such, but I guess Cameron had something else in mind.

alien > blade runner because of the convincing depiction of unglamorous interstellar shipping, the mounting tensions and paranoia among the shipping crew in the claustrophobic spaceship, the anti-corporate politics, and the hotness of young sigourney weaver.

i've never seen the alien sequels (unless you count prometheus) even though alien is one of my favorite films. it seems like a stand alone thing for me; not something that should have sequels. blade runner is also a favorite, although i am troubled by the degree to which ridley scott seemed to associate asian ppl with a dystopian future.

I think that was an early 80s L.A. Thing, where you had the initial sushi/karaoke explosion mixed with a perceived industrial might accompanied by portable consumer electronics flooding the markets.

I saw Aliens again last month and was struck how well constructed the film was.

It's a choice between a monster that can talk and one that just fucks you and kills you.

Both 'futures' depicted seem to hold up for being dirty, grimy and broken.

Can't choose.

I suppose you could say that robots had already been perfected in Metropolis but aliens had never been as perfect as the one in Alien

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02cs3ph

This is a pretty good podcast. I like Iain Sinclair (especially as a film critic) and Linda Ruth Williams (who is more than qualified to comment on the feminist critique around the film)

big lolz around "the alien IS Margaret Thatcher".

Sinclair became a bit more cranky as the politics unfocused - still not bad.