Alien (1979) - 40th Anniversary

mid_gen · 13 Jan 2019 at 08:55

The Aliens sentry scene is just a great bit of cinema. Not big or clever, but good suspenseful stuff.

Re: newt's family. I just finished Alien : River Of Pain, the Audible audio drama. It's basically the prologue to Aliens, tells the story of Hadley's Hope and Newt, interspersed with the opening scenes from Aliens. It's actually very good and any Alien nerd should listen to it.

The other two Alien audio dramas are pretty ****. Out Of The Shadows is toss. Sea Of Sorrows is better but has this dumb psychic character as the lead...who can 'sense' the aliens....

SixTwoSix · 13 Jan 2019 at 09:11

@mid_gen get onto The Cold Forge next, better than the entire trilogy and an excellent anti hero protagonist. Plus it completely ditches any direct movie links apart from the Aliens themselves.

robfosters · 13 Jan 2019 at 12:25

Uncle Petey said:
And now you can see Ripley's pants scarcely contain her spongebob in ultra high def giganto-vision!

Maybe I have no taste in women, but i have never found Sigourney Weaver attractive.

Rroff · 13 Jan 2019 at 12:27

robfosters said:
Maybe I have no taste in women, but i have never found Sigourney Weaver attractive.

Yeah I wouldn't say she is unattractive but certainly doesn't do it for me.

SixTwoSix · 13 Jan 2019 at 12:37

Same, while I stated in my OP that Alien is my favourite movie, I've never been vaguely attracted to her. As @Rroff said, she's not unattractive, she's just never given me a twitch.

Uncle Petey · 13 Jan 2019 at 12:46

robfosters said:
Maybe I have no taste in women, but i have never found Sigourney Weaver attractive.

I never said it was a good thing

Pigeon_Killer · 13 Jan 2019 at 13:38

My favourite film and my favourite actress, would love to watch this at the cinema without having watched it before.

Never found her attractive either until I watched Galaxy Quest.

Uncle Petey · 13 Jan 2019 at 14:38

The wonders of hair dye and push up bras...

Still, she was quite tasty when tarted up and possessed by Zuul.

mid_gen · 14 Jan 2019 at 09:18

Wanted to watch Aliens Director's Cut after reading this thread...

Rainforest UK is selling the 1-6 BluRay set (inc director's cuts) for 12 quid.

Yoink!

MookJong · 14 Jan 2019 at 12:05

One of the best and immersive things about Alien was the fact that Sigourney Weaver wasn't a typical love interest or eye candy.

Ripley is such an amazing female character for the time, she has none of the usual Hollywood plastic sheen and seems very human and real.

SixTwoSix · 14 Jan 2019 at 12:11

MookJong said:
One of the best and immersive things about Alien was the fact that Sigourney Weaver wasn't a typical love interest or eye candy.

Ripley is such an amazing female character for the time, she has none of the usual Hollywood plastic sheen and seems very human and real.

Also Parker (Yaphet Kotto) isn't just a token black character put in just to be killed off early. While it doesn't seem a big deal now, the idea of having both a female hero and a black guy survive to the final act of the movie was quite ground breaking back then.

MookJong · 14 Jan 2019 at 12:52

SixTwoSix said:
Also Parker (Yaphet Kotto) isn't just a token black character put in just to be killed off early. While it doesn't seem a big deal now, the idea of having both a female hero and a black guy survive to the final act of the movie was quite ground breaking back then.

Yes it's never mentioned or made a point of, these were the days days long before overt virtue signaling. The film doesn't really make an in your face deal about being a SCI-Fi movie either. It's a horror drama almost, you could make Alien into a play in a theater. It's a workplace dealing with a bad situation. There is little audience pandering or self awareness.

Aliens is a very different beast however.

mid_gen · 14 Jan 2019 at 15:41

Alien is a straight up horror movie first...sci-fi movie firmly second. It's by a long way my favourite film of all time, can't fault it.

Aliens is different...it's 'just' a well executed sci-fi action romp. Cliches all over the place, little consideration for the story actually making sense, characters are just window dressing for the meat which is scary aliens getting blasted.

Alien 3 is well underrated imo. Charles Dance's doctor is easily the second best performance out of the whole series, after Ripley's first outing. The whole setting of these hardcore double-Y criminals getting scared witless and hacked up works great.

We can just pretend the dross that is resurrection never happened

Prometheus is ok back story wise...a bit too self-reverential perhaps. Covenant was much better, recaptured a bit of the visceral horror of the earlier films.

Kinda wish they'd gone down the road of the evil Weyland Corp trying and failing to capture this bioweapon story, instead of the origins of mankind stuff

ttaskmaster · 14 Jan 2019 at 16:35

Rroff · 14 Jan 2019 at 16:51

mid_gen said:
Alien is a straight up horror movie first...sci-fi movie firmly second. It's by a long way my favourite film of all time, can't fault it.

Aliens is different...it's 'just' a well executed sci-fi action romp. Cliches all over the place, little consideration for the story actually making sense, characters are just window dressing for the meat which is scary aliens getting blasted.

Alien 3 is well underrated imo. Charles Dance's doctor is easily the second best performance out of the whole series, after Ripley's first outing. The whole setting of these hardcore double-Y criminals getting scared witless and hacked up works great.

We can just pretend the dross that is resurrection never happened

Prometheus is ok back story wise...a bit too self-reverential perhaps. Covenant was much better, recaptured a bit of the visceral horror of the earlier films.

Kinda wish they'd gone down the road of the evil Weyland Corp trying and failing to capture this bioweapon story, instead of the origins of mankind stuff

While 3 had some good performances and some interesting ideas as an Alien movie it doesn't work at all for me (and a lot of people apparently) and undoes some aspects of the Alien premise - IMO the original script was probably for a completely unrelated movie that was reworked to fit in the Aliens stuff.

Resurrection I can switch off and enjoy but it is another one really where a lot of the ideas weren't really connected to the Alien universe and Joss Whedon went on to use a lot them with Firefly more in the style they were kind of intended.

Aliens is still the best one for me as it has a real lived in universe feel and strong theme - Alien I think I was born too late to ever truly appreciate.

Baron C · 14 Jan 2019 at 17:19

Few years back, a friend of mine admitted he had never seen any of the Alien movies...!!!

robfosters · 14 Jan 2019 at 19:15

Baron C said:
Few years back, a friend of mine admitted he had never seen any of the Alien movies...!!!

I haven’t.

Columbo · 14 Jan 2019 at 19:57

Tickets booked for Nottingham, never need an excuse to see Xenomorphs on the big screen.

MookJong · 15 Jan 2019 at 10:08

robfosters said:
I haven’t.

Watch the first two then stop.

SixTwoSix · 15 Jan 2019 at 10:15

mid_gen said:
Alien 3 is well underrated imo. Charles Dance's doctor is easily the second best performance out of the whole series, after Ripley's first outing. The whole setting of these hardcore double-Y criminals getting scared witless and hacked up works great.

Agree completely but needs to be the workprint/directors cut which makes more sense, flows better and also doesn't cut out the whole Alien capture at the mid point.

Dark Horse are currently doing a comic book series of William Gibsons version of Alien 3, up to issue 3 and is an excellent alternate version which very nearly got made.