Hacker Cinema
Aliens
1986 · Film · 137 min
Part of Alien Collection
Directed by James Cameron
Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo's deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years. Although her story is initially met with skepticism, she agrees to accompany a team of Colonial Marines back to LV-426.
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260 comments on Hacker News
A non-percentage-based one would be more interesting. The whole MCU phenomenon would likely increase the absolute number, but I doubt that it would be as dramatic. What the chart as-is fails to show is the specific loss of other types of movies that have moved to other media.
Ever since made-for-cable TV series went mainstream with HBO in the late-90s, a huge chunk of yesterday's non-blockbuster movies have become today's TV series. And there are massively more TV series than ever before.
That "25%" in the 80s shows you that there were already tons of those, and it's easy to remember them (Jaws 2, Empire Strikes Back, Temple of Doom, Aliens, Godfather Pt 2, etc etc etc).
>Aliens was Alien fanfiction
Just because an established Hollywood director was a fan of the first Alien movie does make his script for Alien's sequel "fan fiction".
Cameron had already written and directed The Terminator when the owners of the Alien franchise chose his script for the sequel.
(Fifty Shades of Grey in contrast really did originate as fan fiction.)
FYI huggingface refers to the alien from the Aliens movies that we need to prevent from reaching earth at any cost because it means the end of civilization.
Just checking in because y'all sound good with that.
> But there was another aspect too and that was Linda Hamilton. This was one of the first mainstream big-budget movies that changed the way women were portrayed in film. Lots of people had posters of her wearing the sunglasses, carrying weapons, etc. It was actually a really big deal.
Yes, a strong female character in big budget movies wasn't a common theme. Aliens 2 also had a strong female protagonist played by Sigourney Weaver. The movie was also directed by James Cameron.
Terminator 2 was a huge cultural phenomenon. I remember going to the movie theater with my Dad to see it. I think it was the first R rated movie I saw in the theater, so it was something that we bonded over. Many of my friends had a similar experience.
In Aliens (the second episode), the automatic cannons are controlled by a pair of Grid Compass.
I wondered if this might have been the basis, either physically or at least aesthetically for the Aliens APC. Apparently not; while very similar in low-slung form factor, that was a Hunslet ATT77 air towing tractor: https://www.hooniverse.com/movie-cars-aliens-armored-personnel-carrier/
If you enjoy The X-Files, you really should check out Millennium, by the same creator (Chris Carter) and broadcast at roughly the same time.
It's very intense, with an Emmy-deserving performance by star Lance Henriksen (whom you may remember from the movie Aliens). It mixes Christian theology and eschatology, mythology, horror, and serial killers, leavened with delightful humour.
The first season is mostly "serial killer of the week", but is important to establish the characters and long-running story arcs.
The second season is a delight, with some of the best writing of any TV show I know, and a lot of complex situations with no easy answers.
The third season changed (and cheapened) everything, and is only worth watching for completists.
I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.
Blockbuster was a corporate, soulless chain sent into the world to destroy the wonderful experience of mom-and-pop and small chain video rental stores. They were the Walmart of entertainment. They knew small stores couldn't afford many copies of blockbuster hits so when you visited Blockbuster they would have an entire wall dedicated to one single hit movie. Their selection was garbage.
The weekly visit to the local video store was one of the highlights of my youth. I could browse for hours. I remember the first Blockbuster that opened near me. It had zero atmosphere or charisma. I guess if you just want to watch a movie, that's the way to go. and that's why Netflix killed them.
About 10 years ago I was driving through remote Texas and stopped at a gas station that had, to my utter surprise, a video rental section. VHS tapes, not DVDs. And there was a young family browsing! It made me so happy to see.
The shift to digital for movies and music stripped away something real from the experience. Better picture and sound? Sure. At the cost of atmosphere and fun. I recently watched a 4K remastered Aliens (1986). There were maybe 3 short scenes where I said 'wow, the detail is amazing'. The entire rest of the film was me thinking how they had stripped the atmosphere from the film experience. The blue hue was gone. The murky, exoplanet looked fake.
Close Encounters (1977) on 4K is a different experience. It looks great, but there are scenes that play totally different in 4K. What once was a dark shadow moving against the starry sky is now very clearly a spaceship. The shadow was better. At the end, the aliens were clearly kids in crappy costumes. But on VHS they were child-sized aliens standing in front of a bright light, leaving much to the imagination. Outside of those who saw it in the theater during it's original run, everyone since has had the same experience, pretty much. The 4K version changes that. And don't get me started on the massive changes to color grading in Eyes Wide Shut and Trainspotting. Or how they jacked up the color and brightness on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) so it better matched the cartoonish, and inferior, sequels.
Few franchises that span generations?
The entire current zeitgeist of popular media is about zombifying your parent's IP. It's Nintendo's entire business in fact. Sure, usually they are doing good work with that IP, but they are the outlier in the industry. Everyone else is shitting out remakes of what your daddy played that don't even understand the original material, or like Halo, remakes of what your daddy played which was already a mediocre remake.
Halo 1 came out the month after 9/11. It's old enough to have graduated college and started a family. It will be resold soon.
Jurassic Park was dug up out of the grave to crap out several more movies. Star Wars is inflating a couple good plot lines into an entire Universe of "Content". Even reality shows are made up of people who were contestants on older reality shows. Pixar is making yet another Toy Story.
Aliens is still going, long after it's reanimated corpse was overplayed.
One of the premier television series, that just finished, was all about nostalgia for living in the 80s, with some silly plot tacked on that apparently even the writers didn't care about.
Even our propaganda, like Top Gun, is basically the same script as an 80s movie with minimal changes.
It feels like the entire media ecosystem is designed around reselling content to my parent's generation before they finally kick the bucket or satisfying the nostalgia of that generation's early children. Even the President's administration bitches about things like the 90s USDA food pyramid that only affected that 13ish year segment of the population and was deprecated, twice, since then. Our authoritarianism is nostalgia based, for the time that generation was children, and things were "Simple" and "Good", because they were children and got to live the lives of kids.
Yes, and also many fandoms lack the maturity to know when to say "no, I do not want to know MORE details, and certainly not about this obscure secondary character's difficult childhood that explains everything they did later in life".
See:
- All of Wookiepedia and most of Star Wars Expanded Universe.
- "The Hunt for Gollum".
- Every movie in the franchise after "Alien" and "Aliens".
- The sadly upcoming expanded universe/sequels/shows for Blade Runner.
Etc, etc. Everyone has their exceptions ("this one was cool"), but in general the point stands: fandoms ruin everything. They simply don't believe in the adage that "less is more". They always want MORE, and the industry is only happy to oblige.
I love stuff like this.
Often films and TV shows have anachronisms in them (like the very first episode, IIRC, of Narcos with the clearly very modern touchscreen photocopier where the screen has been covered with a piece of paper, or the BMW that wasn't released until the mid/late 1990s), but every so often you'll see something that is instead a flash of the future.
Due to #reasons I watched the sentry gun scene in Aliens for the first time in decades the other day. This scene only appears in the director's cut of the film. Anyway, bearing in mind it was released in 1986, imagine my utter shock when Hicks busts out a couple of laptops to monitor and manage the guns. The machines in question are a pair of GRiD Compasses, originally released in, I think, 1984. Imagine that: a laptop computer from 1984. They're not even that big and cumbersome.
Of course, the specs are laughable by today's standards but actually pretty decent for the period, and especially for portables. In terms of memory and raw CPU power they'd certainly have wiped the floor with the average home computer of the day, although graphics capabilities might have been non-existent, and sound would have been PC speaker at best.
So, yeah, Nedry with a tablet? I can buy that. His whole den/lair is like a toy box of the coolest hardware and software from the early 1990s. But for all the times I've seen the film, I've never spotted this before.
I have seen tons of great movies made after 2010, but must admit I’m having trouble thinking of any blockbuster-type movies that stand up to the best of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Does Fury Road count? I dunno. The closest I can get aside from that are a couple Tarantino movies. Jurassic Park, the first Mission Impossible movie, Aliens, Jaws, hell even Independence Day. Nothing’s quite up there. Lots that are a kind of janky B-movie sort of good, but nothing as solid as those. Almost all are marred by lots of CG that might look ok at the time but seem dodgy and very distracting within 5 years max, for one thing (to be fair, Jurassic Park suffers from that in a couple scenes, too)
I tend to agree with your take on these movies, but I find I can enjoy some of them to a greater extent by rejecting the notion of what's "cannon".
For instance, I like the bleakness of Alien 3 opening with Newt and Hicks both dead. That doesn't spoil my enjoyment of Aliens, which ends on a triumphant note. These are different stories, and they can be treated on completely different planes. If you want, you can imagine the movies as representing alternate branching universes, where one branch led to Newt and Hicks dying in hibernation, and in some other branch that's too uninteresting to be put to film, they live happily ever after.
I also liked Blade Runner 2049, but I don't need to retroactively reevaluate the original Blade Runner in light of any of the questions that are settled in the sequel. In Ridley Scott's original film, Deckard's humanity is still open to question, regardless of what's presented in Villeneuve's version.
Of course when the sequel is complete trash, it's easy to ignore entirely. Terminator 3 being the obvious example.
Alien and Aliens were masterpieces, but I've been consistently disappointed by everything after.
Let's agree to ignore the awful VS Predator crossovers for a second. I'm not sure they are canon anyway, and they are obviously cash grabs and not made with the same care of even the worst Alien movies.
Alien 3, while it has a cool idea (prison planet), is a mess as a result of executive meddling (the story can be read online). And they killed Hicks and Newt... bastards!
Resurrection was awful and awfully badly acted. I like Jeunet, but this was a hard miss. It has some cool visuals at times, typical of Jeunet, but the movie itself was embarrassing.
Prometheus was atrocious. Badly acted, badly scripted (characters making the dumbest of choices at every turn, professionals who don't know their profession -- xenobiologists who pet alien snakes, geologists who get lots at the first turn -- this has been discussed countless times). And the loss of mystery... nobody needed to know more about the Engineers/Pilot aliens, that's not how good storytelling works. Aided by technology, Scott "pulled a George Lucas" and forgot the cardinal rule of scifi horror/mystery: less is more.
After this, I exercised the good sense of avoiding Covenant (the plot summary seems bad), and Romulus, and now the new TV show.
I think overall the gravest sin is that the Alien universe was meant to be sketched in the broadest strokes, and details and mystery kept, not overexplained.
I wish they had let the first two awesome movies rest in peace.
Extended universes suck.
P.S. same applies to Blade Runner. Then again, I didn't even like the sequel, so I'm sure I'll dislike the upcoming show :(
Cameron doubled down on the aesthetic in Aliens, he just changed the genre from horror to action. Both films were "peak 80s" (Alien was '79) and just ooze with what must be the absolute pinnacle of science fiction vibes.
If you haven't seen these two films, you need to fix that this week. It'll change your life.
Scott tried to expand the aesthetics with Prometheus and Covenant. I felt the films did a great job of refreshing the look and feel while remaining faithful to the 80's. Unfortunately, the writing was trite and Scott's directing is averaging .200 at bat these days.
Romulus was not bad, though certainly not a masterpiece. At least it was better written and had better character arcs than Scott's recent films.
I'd rather have the performance of this series than whatever Jurassic Park or Star Wars have become.
Predator, oddly enough, has strangely been improving if you don't count Shane Black's entry.
I'm happy they keep making these, and I hope the writers and directors at the reigns keep experimenting rather than conforming to "safe" or "understandable by a general audience".
>CGI and Photoshop filters were 'fake' too. Until they weren't.
IMHO they still are, watch any old movie with practical effects (Aliens, Star Wars, just to name 2) and compare them to any 2025 production, green screen movies might look spectacular but they look fake, flat and boring.
For those that love fonts, SciFi and funny bloggers, can't recommend the below blog post that analyzes the various fonts in the movies Aliens enough:
https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/
There are couple other posts for other movies as well.
Thats from "Aliens", right? Not the movies in the title. As a sibling comment says, RIP Bill Paxton. Really enjoyed the similar army grunt stick from him in "Edge of Tomorrow".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY
Aliens and Terminator 2 also make sense as continuations. Of the character growth of the protagonists (growing more competent). And also of the “size” of the threat.
It is no coincidence that the first in each series is a horror movie (the enemy is overwhelmingly stronger than the protagonist, survival is the goal). And the second is an action movie (the enemy is strong but the protagonists have a fighting chance). It is the only way the momentum can keep building.
I think this is the main reason why so many series stall out at 2. There isn’t a third popular genre they can go to that keeps building. Maybe Alien:Earth will pivot into the Disaster genre, that would be a novel try at least.
The Alien, Terminator, and Matrix franchises have similar problems.
Aliens successfully changed genres, from horror to action. But subsequent movies could never recapture the primal horror of the original or the fun action of the second. It's almost like there are only two local optima in the Alien movie universe and Alien + Aliens took them both.
Terminator is the same. The first movie was a perfect sci-fi action movie, with a trippy premise and loads of fun. The second was a subversion of the first: the Terminator is the good guy! And that worked too. But after that, where else can you go?
And, of course, they never even bothered to make sequels to The Matrix.
The Abyss is a movie by James Cameron, who also made Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, True Lies, Titanic, and Avatar.
"The Abyss" is about a deep sea crew that encounters ... aliens...?
And yes, in general, I recommend The Abyss. It's definitely not the same as Project Hail Mary, but it does have similarities.
>The idea that a film artist doesn’t need to know how a camera works is laughable. And not just the camera, but different film stock, processing methods, lenses, lighting, and the interaction of all those as well as the subject being shot. The level of attention to detail in great films is wild.
The Aliens documentary is really good for this. So much of the special effects on the film are in camera tricks.
Cameron is a really interesting person to study because he absolutely mastered every part of film making before deciding to go all in on Avatar and ubiquitous 3d effects.
That movie was so weird. It had flashes of brilliance but also a really dumb "idiot ball" plot in a lot of ways. Astronauts would never be as stupid as they're depicted in that film, things like "oh gee I think I'll take my helmet off around all this potential biohazard."
It also doesn't really work in the Alien universe at all. It would have been much better had it been set in an entirely different 'verse, maybe even its own things.
IMHO the Alien canon should be: Alien, Alien Romulus, and Aliens, in that order (since Romulus is in fact supposed to occur between those other two in-world). Maybe the sequel to Romulus (and Aliens) could be an updated adaptation of the William Gibson script that begins when Rain reaches the "non-Weyland colony" (which would kinda fit with Gibson's script).
My opinion on Interstellar is similar. It had brilliant moments (and visuals!) but overall I didn't like it. I couldn't get past things like: okay, so we are in a kind of semi post-collapse world apparently run by milquetoast descendants of the Heritage Foundation. Where exactly did they get a starship? Did they just have, like, a warp drive sitting around up on concrete blocks in someone's lawn? What? Also they had to lift off from Earth with chemical rockets, but somehow they're able to lift off from much larger planets later without thinking about delta-V budget at all. Sorry but if you're gonna say it's hard sci-fi it's gotta at least try to know something about physics and have coherent world building.
Yes I'm a sci-fi geek.
> Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong.
As part of a restoration, yes. As part of a remaster, no.
If the remaster is overseen by the primary creative (such as everything done to the Aliens UHD 4k release, which was overseen and approved by Cameron), then it's official -- and as an audience member, you have to examine how you feel about that. For example, some enthusiasts lament the removal of film grain in Aliens, but Cameron has said in interviews that he hated the grain in Aliens because he was forced to use a particular film stock and didn't like the result. So it was never the director's vision to have excessive grain in that movie, and the audience should accept the 4k UHD release as canonical and authorized.
These debates are colored (no pun intended) by nostalgia, much like the vinyl vs. digital debates.
I haven't looked into this study but those are populations that generally have a higher level of obesity and also smoking, alcohol & recreational drug use. They also tend to have somewhat lower access to high quality health care. All of which are correlated with increased health issues like lower resistance to infection, less resilience to physical stress, slower recovery times, increased incidence of complications, higher blood pressure, diabetes, etc. And pregnancy is basically a massive, system-wide physical stressor.
My wife is physically fit and super athletic. No smoking, alcohol or drugs before or during pregnancy (as well as zero junk food before or during). And, unsurprisingly, her pregnancy was basically ideal. She had an easier time than any of her friends, but it still kicked her ass - especially the final trimester (fatigue, poor sleep, hormonal swings, etc). She joked it felt like birthing a face hugger from the movie Aliens. Her friends who already had underlying conditions or overall weaker health generally also had the roughest pregnancies, and many of them had various medical complications. They also had higher incidence, severity and duration of post-partum depression which can be a big issue (fortunately, my wife had virtually none). Plus my wife only worked minimally and entirely by choice while having great medical care that was local and which she knew how to fully utilize.
There's a lot of really great film meta-commentary like that on YouTube. Nerrel's video about about dynamic range and colour gamut in the context of Aliens was a game changer for me in appreciating the true potential of the UltraHD format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxOqWYytypg
Oh yeah, like the three Alien movies: Alien, Alien Romulus, and Aliens.
I see what you did there and I did the same. :)
This is how I feel about it as well. It's not perfect, but it is the best, prettiest version of Aliens, hands down. James Cameron is notoriously picky about the quality of the re-releases of his films and I honestly think this was the best outcome here. Yes, a "grindhouse" style 4K HDR transfer of the original film negative would also be nice in order to get that classic film grain for those who are in the mood for it, but as it is, the release we got was exceptionally high quality even with its imperfections.
The fresco in the Prometheus goo chamber showed a Xenomorph creature before David had a chance to work with the goo.
I don't mean to nitpick there, it's more a comment on continuity in multiple movies.
I'm an old school Aliens appreciator; I recognize as canon Alien and Aliens, and the Dark Horse comics of the early 90s (80s?). It's easier on my old brain than juggling plots from 20 different people.
sometimes the title is in the script, but isn't actually a line said by anyone:
Aliens (1986)
(Aliens hissing)
https://www.titledrops.net/explorer?movies=tt0090605&title=
Yes. You can find our version of "Aliens" and "Alien 3" there, along with Audio Introductions (Pre-show audio description) for each, which I highly recommend. Also the TV shows "The Bureau of Magical Things" and "The Secret of Sulphur Springs".
I publish the scripts under a Creative Commons licence so anyone can legally record and mix their own versions if they like. I believe it's possible to run the subtitle files through a braille reader as the film runs for a different experience, but I've never heard of anyone who tried that.
That said, we are experimenting with legal distribution by releasing the timed unmixed narration on Youtube and, in theory, you should be able to sync the narration to a (legally purchased) copy of the film.
AMA if you like.
I can assure you that the accountants and executives at these studios can absolutely value, evaluate, organise and produce the valuables that should reside inside the "container".
It's what the entire movie and TV industries have been about ever since the idea of sequels e.g. Aliens, Terminator and worlds e.g. Marvel took off.
I found that I actually only really like a movie or tv show if it is infinitely (aka a lot; more than 50x without getting bored) rewatchable (for me obviously); not many movies are. Some favorites which fall in that category; Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Das Boot, Cold Lazarus (the Dennis P one), ...
It is very personal as looking through what other people mention ; many of those I couldn't sit through once, but if friends tell me to give it another go, I watch 2-10 times to see if it grows. Rarely it does, but there have been cases. Notably everyone likes Pulp Fiction; I saw it at least 15 times and find it unwatchable.
Alien and Aliens. Those two movies are the perfect blend of timeless action, scifi, and horror.
I’m feeling really hopeful for Alien: Romulus.
No, the whole reason "Director's Cuts" exists is that those represent the cut the director wanted, not the theatrical cut released by the studio (which is driven by the studio's or producer's wants).
See, for example, Alien 3, Blade Runner, and Justice League for the most notorious/well-known examples. Lesser known examples include Aliens, The Abyss, Kingdom of Heaven, Doctor Sleep, Lethal Weapon, Dark City.
Only a handful of directors at the big studios get the right to control the final cut. You'll notice the director responsible for 3 of the 4 highest-grossing movies of all time has 2 movies in that list; this is because James Cameron didn't earn the right to control final cut until after his 3rd blockbuster success.
A few studios, like Netflix and A24, adhere to the "auteur's theory" of filmmaking, and let the director have full control over the creative process of the film, including the final cut, even without an established record of hits, but this is the exception, not the norm.
Please try watching the opening sequence of Aliens with motion smoothing enabled sometime.
Without motion smoothing, the model shots still look reasonably convincing 40 years later.
With motion smoothing, it looks like a low-budget B-movie.
I don't mind if a film is shot at a higher frame rate and then displayed that way, but interpolating additional frames looks terrible, and I don't know why any manufacturer turns it on by default anymore.
A birds eye view, turn based game, based on the Aliens film. I played it on apple Mac maybe 25+ years ago. Have never been able to find it since. It always ended with the famous quote from the film "it's game over man, game over".
One of my favourite LEGO MOCs ("My Own Creation" although this one isn't my creation) I've seen has been Iggy Pop and Tom Waits from the movie Coffee and Cigarettes:
https://bricknerd.com/home/cigarettes-and-coffee-man-thats-a-combination-9-2020
https://singersincinema.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/0.jpg
There's some plans out there for fantastically detailed models with thousands of pieces, for instance The Sulaco from the movie Aliens: https://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/vs6b1x/as_promisedthe_10529_pieces_lego_real_build_uss/ (that one is definitely a lottery-win purchase!)
> In the case of Aliens, James Cameron is explicitly saying he just went with Kodak film that was available at the time, which everyone was using.
State of the badass art.
The AI upscaled 4K UHD version of Aliens is freakin' amazing.
I know the main complaint with upscaling older movies is that it can remove most of the film grain and that can give people a waxy, mannequin like look. But they really found a nice balance in Aliens.
I watched the non-UHD a few months ago and just recently saw the 4K version and the difference was pretty stark.
> In the case of Aliens, James Cameron is explicitly saying he just went with Kodak film that was available at the time, which everyone was using.
Ok, fair. James Cameron can do whatever he wants with his films. They are his artistic output, and if he feels the technology available at the time didn't properly communicate that, he can certainly work to mitigate that however he wants. I assure you, this is not common among directors. If you invited Ridley Scott and Derek Vanlint to a meeting informing them that Alien was being re-released as an AI "enhanced" movie, I sure as fuck wouldn't want to be in that room.
> I will submit that directors are not generally the right people to call the shots here. A director can never watch his own movie the way the audience does.
Ha. I'm a Tech Artist and do VFX, so I have more visibility than most into how a lot of these decisions get made. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but of all the confidently incorrect declarations about art I've seen in tech fora, this has got to be in the top 5.
To some extent, the misconception is understandable from a consumer vantage point: without spending a lot of time creating images from nothing to have a specific impact on the viewer, you really don't understand how many decisions there are to make about minutiae, and how much it all affects how the work hits. Prompt-based AI image generators are a good example of this. Their making these decisions is the real boon for non-artists that want to make images, and also why they're non-starters for high-level professional deliverable work. Learning to use art tools to produce clean images is the easy part. The hard part is deciding at an extremely granular level what those images should contain. Since the models amalgamate those decisions from the millions of decisions that artists have already made in different images, that lets end users indefinitely create visually compelling images without having to know why they're compelling at a granular level. But the decisions at that granular level communicate a lot to the viewer, and even with the finer-grained control you can get with prompt manipulation, control nets, inpainting, loras, etc. it's still bumper cars vs driving. Famous artists are usually famous because their vision isn't just a mix of what other people have done before them-- it's got other frameworks, stimuli, references, connections and influences that are implemented in novel, complex, and very specific ways. Fighting against the amalgamated decisions of every artist that contributed to the model to achieve those results requires so much more effort than just making it from scratch. That's why generative AI in industry tools like Nuke don't integrate prompts or generate direct visuals-- they do things like make masks for compositing. A huge win, but 100% not creating images that go on screen. On a much more extreme level, Disney could not have trained a model with the entirety of early animation and pre-1937 non-animated visual art-- even their own films-- and come up with The Old Mill, no matter how much engineering they did.
In a film, almost all of those decisions made by an AI model when generating images are made, or at least finalized, by the director, often in conjunction with the DP and Production Designer. Most of them are obsessed with things like the slope and toe of film, grain, minute differences in very specific color representations, etc. etc. etc. and it affects nearly everything about the film-- set decisions, framing to get more or less of something, what time of day to shoot at, lighting, grading, etc. etc. etc. Saying directors shouldn't have complete control over the medium on which their movies are captured betrays a complete lack of understanding of making movies, both as an art form, and a practical process. If you want to learn more about how movies are made before you pontificate about the craft of making movies, I recommend looking at StudioBinder's youtube channel for a sub-cliff's-notes level introduction to how it's actually done.
I also found the studio audio description track for Aliens very ordinary. It's a film that says "aliens" on the tin, but there are no verbal descriptions for them other than "giant", "towering" and "beast". Not really doing Giger, Winston or Cameron justice there. I'd be surprised if he heard it, or read the script prior to recording.
Curious, how is Aliens a "goofy 80s film"?
It contains very little of humour, all the cast and the director are taking it seriously. I'll buy Goonies as a goofy film, but Aliens? I remember someone glued to a wall and screaming in agony as a creature tears its way out of her chest. I remember the ratcheting tension of the motion-detectors getting more and more high pitched as nothing is happening but we're expecting it any moment now.
I know there's some don't-think-about-it plot-holes, but goofy?
In the case of Aliens, James Cameron is explicitly saying he just went with Kodak film that was available at the time, which everyone was using.
I will submit that directors are not generally the right people to call the shots here. A director can never watch his own movie the way the audience does. They always see an unfulfilled vision, a compromise being made here and there because of technology being limited, and some like Cameron or Lucas will make misguided attempts to modernize to make up for it.
This disregards that Aliens will always be a goofy 80s movie and not a movie from them 2020s. Its look should be preserved, be that the film grain, or its color grade. At least, the few people who still buy optical media should be given the choice, as they are the most likely to care.
I recently watched the new Aliens remaster and actually thought it mostly looked very good. It was definitely a bit jarring at first because it doesn’t look like an 80s movie anymore: it’s too crisp. But once I got over the strangeness of it and realized some of my attachment to the original look was nostalgia I liked it. I do wish they’d kept more film grain, it’s a little too cleaned up, but it looks good nevertheless.
From what I’ve read the same team did all these Cameron remasters, and True Lies was the first one so they were still figuring some stuff out and it’s more flawed as a result. Haven’t seen it yet, though. But based on Aliens I’m interested in rewatching The Abyss.
Just watched Aliens [1] this weekend and it's my favourite film in the alien series. Probably the best of James Cameron as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliens_(film)
Parasite: an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense.
If we drop the species bit, and the negative connotations, it's not far off the mark. Children, in utero are certainly not symbiotic.
Just from a biological POV the toll on women for carrying children is HUGE. There's a whole swath of things that get rebuilt in a woman's body (nose/sense of smell being an interesting one) and a rather large tax on resources. Calcium is a huge one, most mothers in the west supplement as part of pregnancy. Dig deeper and you're going to find more and more biological impact that looks less (re)"productive" and more parasitic.
If you change domains to art, the whole film aliens covers the themes of rape, impregnation and parasitic child birth. These notions are not far from our fears and nightmares.
Lastly loving your children and being honest about a biological and personal toll they take are not incompatible. I know women who HAVE children they love and adore who have used the term parasite to describe the process they went through. It is done partly with tongue in cheek and partly to express something horrifyingly taxing on their bodies...
>This entire "zomg bad film + female character = woke mind virus!!11" is just silly.
Nobody is saying this. (Strong) Female main characters have been in many successful movies and video games before and nobody bat an eye, quite the contrary, they loved them: Sarah Connor - Terminator, Trinity - Matrix, Ripley - Aliens, Lara Croft - Tomb Raider, Blood Rayne, Salt, Black Widow, Lucy, Charlie's Angles, etc, I could go on and on, and I'm no movie/video games enthusiast to know all movies with female leads.
The big difference is that those females were always written as the main characters in their own stories from the start, whereas what Disney is doing, along with Gemini and other woke corporations, is they try to replace established male characters of beloved IPs with female leads in the worst way possible, by disrespecting the original character that made the franchise popular and shoehorning a fake Strong Girl Boss™ stereotype with no personality and no character arc in his place, and then when the movie inevitably flops they blame the CIS white male audience for being incels "unable to handle strong females".
Do you think people would go to see James Bond or Top Gun Maverick if they replaced the male lead with some female actress that's trendy right now? Or would they see Tomb Raider if they replaced Lara Croft with Tom Holland? You can try for diversity's sake of course, but the audience and bean counters might stop you.
It's a very long time ago that I saw that Aliens movie, I forgot the names but I remember now that the bot "admired" the beast's "pureness". That goes a bit beyond finding something "interesting". Something can be interesting and frightening/horrific at the same time.
Nevertheless, if things keep advancing at current pace, within 10 years we will have Bishops among us, even without our knowing, who might be malovent.
"Both transfers are, however, within acceptable parameters for most normal people."
From the article commenting on Aliens and The Abyss.
Thank dog I was getting worried there for a second that I as a normal person would not find them within acceptable parameters.
I get where this guy is coming from but seriously there is no agenda or grand conspiracy behind all of this, nobody is trying to make anyone forget anything.
You have the choice to watch whichever version you prefer all the way back to VHS.
[Edit]
Taken from the comments of the same article:
"And just on principle, these are movies shot on film. They weren't intended to be digitally manipulated like this."
That's up to Cameron, it's just naive to think this won't keep happening. It's technological determinism.
That's very black and white thinking.
Copyright is broken, and in many cases actively impedes accessibility. For example, I have many DVDs that have no subtitle options. If I were hearing impaired, and if piracy were "immoral", I would be shit out of luck if I wanted to watch a film I'd, you know, paid for.
In this day and age I can go to OpenSubtitles and find a subtitle track, enabling me or someone who was in genuine need to actually enjoy what they purchased.
(Except in Australia, Open Subtitles is blocked! Its considered by the lobbyists to the Government to be piracy and of course, piracy as you point out, is "immoral regardless" and a "violation of the social contract").
There are many other examples of copyright impeding the creation of accessibility options for media where there is no economic motive or legislative requirement to produce such things, such as in the case of Audio Described content for blind and low-vision users for older films. If you're blind and want to watch, say, the Special Edition of ALIENS (1986) then there's no official option to do so, and the only way to be able to enjoy that is via (illegal) volunteer efforts on an "immoral" pirate-archivist website.
I don't recall any science in it
Can't agree with you there. I think even Cameron would be the first to say that Aliens is primarily a thrill ride. But it is also objectively true that at least two hard scifi elements provide the scaffolding for the events of the movie.
Two of the most central themes of the movie were fairly hard sci-fi... although admittedly one of them was nearly entirely deleted from the theatrical cut.
One: What would a person experience after decades of hibernation? In many ways the film revolves around or is set in motion by Ripley's extended cryosleep after Alien. She is now alone in a strange world where her skills are no longer relevant or current. This primes her for manipulation by Burke. She has also missed out on her deceased daughter's entire life, which primes her to think of Newt as a surrogate daughter and protect her with a mother's ferocity. (Unfortunately, the exposition about her daughter was removed from the theatrical cut. Huge miss.)
Two: How would mankind react to alien contact? Would we treat it with ontological reverence or would it be business as usual for warmongering corporations? The second half of the movie is set in motion by Burke doing the latter on behalf of Weyland-Yutani.
The terraforming stuff.... yeah I agree it's just a setting.
T2 much better than T1. Aliens better than Alien.
These are great sequels, but they are Hollywood action movies compared to their predecessors. I do prefer ESB, but Star Wars has better structure and a more satisfying ending, so it is close.
The best thing about ALien is that when it came out, you had no idea who the "hero" was in the crew. Tom Skerritt was the biggest star, had first billing, and was the white male captain. There was no expectation the someone else would be the hero and survivor.
Aliens is more of a vanilla monster movie than scifi. I don't recall any science in it, other than the setting.
Alien was based on a short story in "Voyage of the Space Beagle", though the implementation of it was fresh. The discovery and exploration of the alien's life cycle was good scifi.
Strange choices. ESB is in almost every way a much better film than Star Wars. T2 much better than T1. Aliens better than Alien.
I haven't seen the other two, bet I'll just assume they also have better sequels.
>The only issue now is that Disney owns half of all media, so if you like movies or want to go on a date or take the kids to the cinema, you don’t get a seriously large variety.
Not true, you just need to watch movies at home. I brought my girlfriend over to my place and showed her "Alien" and "Aliens" (she had never seen them) and she loved them. Why bother watching new junk when there's SO many wonderful classic movies you can watch instead? And you can get an absolutely huge flat-screen TV these days for not that much money. Who needs a cinema?
>Don't do a re-write kids, but if you do, do it from within the existing software like a parasite or a chest bursting creature from the movie Aliens.
Honestly, this approach worked well for me in the past.
Did rewrite parts of an vb6 application in .net really was a Frankenstein monster.
Other films that sprung to mind while reading this: Columbus (2017), Aliens, Escape from New York, Brazil.
Deep seated reasons he probably hasn't spent the time exploring.
I'm 43. To this day I can put Aliens on in the background on Plex in my office while I'm working. I could watch it every single day. One, it's an exceptionally well-crafted action movie (the first action scene doesn't even take place for almost one hour into the film), and the second, my Mom is very much like Ellen Ripley, even down to appearance and build - long, curly black hair, pretty, smart, driven, soft and caring, but harsh and brash when necessary.
It took me many nights smoking cigars and sitting around discussing movies with my friends before it dawned on me that's why I enjoy Alien and Aliens so much. I'm basically watching my Mom be a space trucker Xenomorph-killing badass.
I get your point that things don't have to go certain ways.
However, there are plenty of systems where the a giant and real pubic good isn't fought for because the "good" is highly distributed and the "bad" which kills it has highly concentrated profits for a few folks.
These are systematic issues because the massive of folks who are passively harmed have a difficult or impossible time "choosing otherwise" or fighting back or whatever because there are som many divergetn bad actors that are operating on them.
The only way to avoid that is to make changes to the underlying system in which it is more difficult to concentrate the outcomes for a few people, but very few people I know are wanting to institute those kinds of changes, as they are correct in understanding that fact as broadly anti-capitalist.
That's neither here nor there- even if you can't accept that political stance, the trope of "incoming disasters [which] are perfectly or mostly preventable but the real problem is that people in power just choose to ignore it for their own short-sighted gain" is literally everywhere.
Dr. Stangelove can be understood this way, though for "MAD" rather than climate change. The "Aliens" films (especially the second one) can be understood that way. Hell, "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" can be read that way, but for public transportation.
"I just wanna make this cool tech so I will ignore how it impacts other people because I see the short term benefits" is literally everywhere in this culture.
If someone could make $2MM releasing skynet and knew it would end up with the entire plots of the first three Terminator films occurring I have zero doubt someone would do it.
I don't think we, in general, are "ignorant of our own ability to maybe not do something?" I think most of us have a very realistic understanding of how the people who unleash their technology into our shared ecosystem have worked historically.
I think some of the reason for the strong reaction is Star Wars is for kids while Aliens is not. There are a lot of people who were in an age of innocence when they watched Star Wars and it gets them upset if the new movies aren't entertaining to them as adults. Even if you did watch Aliens as a kid it's a horror movie in space with a giant bug in the shadows making it a lot less relatable.
Great film with the suspense and tension of Aliens.
Sequels are particularly tough to pull off.
Aliens and Terminator 2 are beloved by fans, but most sequels seem to be either overt cash grabs, or a director trying and failing to recapture what made the first movie special.
> Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
I hope out hope that a very special directory/writer team could pull off something wonderful, but in practice you're probably right.
Maybe I'm making too much of it, perhaps it's just the modern style to use hyperbolic rhetoric in movie reviews.
But for new movies to make old movies worse used to be an uncommon attitude I think. I remember in the 90s and 00s, lots of movies had really shitty sequels, often straight to DVD, but nobody talked about these cash grabs ruining the original movie. For instance Aliens 3, Alien Resurrection and then all the AvP crap... some people like these (I think Aliens 3 is defensible FWIW) but a lot of people really don't. Still, nobody talks about Alien or Aliens (e.g. 1 & 2) being ruined by the later movies. Aliens 3 is frequently criticized for the way it killed well-liked characters from Aliens, but that doesn't stop people from still enjoying Aliens. People just choose to ignore Aliens 3. And why shouldn't they, because Aliens 3 is canon? That's just a legal IP relationship, that doesn't matter.
And Disney has dozens of straight-to-vhs/dvd cashgrab sequels of their classic animated movies, people who don't care for them just ignore them and they aren't said to ruin the originals. There used to be a general understanding that sequels are very rarely good, people were pleasantly surprised when it was otherwise and nobody said their life was ruined by a bad sequel. Because who cares about cannon in animated disney movies?
I've seen Lucas's Clone Wars, but if I watch the original Star Wars I'm not compelled to relate it to the Clone Wars movie. By simply choosing to ignore it because I don't like it, I free myself to imagine my own clone wars.
I think new movies ruining the originals is some relatively recent cultural phenomena that was brought on by internet culture's obsession with canon. The existence of popular sites like wookiepedia both evidence it and drive it. If I'm wrong and it's not an overabundance of respect for IP laws that is the root of this, then why isn't bad fanfic also said to ruin the original?
I'm with you. I think most of the star wars movies are pretty bad, but some of them are pretty good. And the bad ones don't make me feel worse about the good ones.
I think there has been a serious cultural shift in this regard sometime during the 00s. Most people used to understand that sequels are generally shitty and didn't make a big deal of this. S-tier classics from the likes of Disney used to get shitty straight-to-DVD sequels (e.g. Lion King 2) and nobody even thought to whine about it. Even movies that had very well received sequels would sometimes receive further sequels that were stinkers, and nobody started ranting about how the original was ruined because of it.
Alien and Aliens were great, then you got Alien 3, AvP, etc.. a bunch of mediocre slop to put it nicely (actually I like 3, but I admit it's deeply flawed). But when did you ever hear somebody say that AvP or Alien Resurrection ruined how they felt about Alien or Aliens? Terminator and T2; great movies that got a bunch of shitty spinoffs and sequels, but nobody said at the time that their enjoyment of the first two was ruined by what followed. James Bond has been a rollercoaster of quality for decades but it keeps going and fans enjoy calm respectful debates about which are their favorites. The Godzilla franchise has lots of quality interspersed with lots of crap, I don't hear many people saying that the horrible Minilla retroactively ruined King Kong vs. Godzilla, or for that matter, that King Kong vs. Godzilla ruined Godzilla (1954). The first Jurassic Park wasn't said to be ruined by the cashgrab sequels. The Land Before Time is still warmly remembered, despite 13(!) direct-to-dvd sequels.
Even in the early 2000s, I heard a lot of people saying they didn't like the Star Wars prequels, but I didn't hear many people saying the first three movies were ruined. Not until a few years later did this attitude start to find traction.
> I don't think it would be possible for someone to change their rating but that may be a feature.
It should definitely be possible. Take films. I had a friend who would go see a film. On the day he saw it: "OMG THE BEST THING EVER". Next Week: "Yeah, that was a good film". A month later: "Yeah it was okay I guess". Six months later: "A bit ordinary really"
In 1990 if you'd asked me to rank the Alien films, I would have put ALIENS first, and ALIEN second. These days, I reverse those rankings.
People's tastes change over time. It would be inaccurate to "fix" a rating in stone.
Yes, because they teach us what we're expected to believe are the tropes about risk, and societal understanding of AI and risk.
Can war films teach us anything about war?
Can courtroom dramas teach us anything about the law?
Can watching roadrunner cartoons teach us about buying goods from the ACME corp?
Several authors have tried to modify the detective genre by inclusion of the mobile phone. They have to resort to Deus ex Machina outcomes like "oh no the battery's dead" or "damn, I'm out of range" because in most normal situations, phoning it in, does in fact short circuit the problem of partial knowledge and keeping others informed.
Likewise DNA testing. It both raises and dashes hopes of how to "prove crime" because the probative value of DNA evidence is contextual. When 90%+ of violent crime happens from within the family, what does it help, to show DNA evidence associates the family members?
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" at least was partially informed by Minsky but thats almost laughable as a statement of "AI informed from movies informed from AI research"
the androids of Bladerunner had interior desires. The androids of Aliens.. it's more circumspect. The robots of Bicentennial and AI Artificial Intelligence are entirely about the search for "personhood" in an autonomous, artificial person. I argue that the narratives inherent in a story which is designed to beg the question cannot really answer the question, because it's presumed as an axiom: If the robots were not already autonomously independently conscious, then their desire is not comprehensible.
About one thing, I think we can be confident: the bootup power sequence for the first autonomous rubbish robot better be the "Mac" chimes or Pixar is dead to me.
I should have replied sooner but distractions...
> 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.
I hate 3 largely because it felt like killing Newt really shouldn't have been on the table.
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.
I don't really think I agree.
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.
> This is also why there couldn’t be a good third movie, there’s nowhere natural to go after action.
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.
The Director's Cut of Aliens is also a brilliant example of how sometimes less is more.
The added opening scene on the planet completely ruins the tension of the first part of the movie.
I never really got over the fact that they killed Newt in the first five minutes of the movie. To me it sort of negated the entire third act of Aliens, which was all about saving Newt and somewhat of a redemption story for Ripley.
To be fair to Fincher, didn't he want to take his name off of it because he problems with the script?
Aliens and Terminator 2 revealed something about sequels I think.
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…
Easily top 2 sci-fi for me. I'm not sure if it's my age (born in 84) but I prefer almost all the late 70s and 80s, early 90s sci-fi movies over newer stuff.
Predator, Thing, Total Recall, Alien, Aliens, Terminator, Original Star Wars, all in my top sci-fi films.
R.I.P. Dan O'Bannon. Dark Star is another one of my favorites. I think Dan kept that film-school vibe when he penned Alien.
Unlike a lot of others, I am not as big a fan of Aliens. The characters are a bit too corny.
It's because Alien is a suspenseful horror movie, not an action movie. Aliens might be a better fit for you if you need it punched up.
Watched in not too long ago with my older one, aged 15. Means he grew up with Marvel and DC movies. I never saw him as glued to a film before, onoy thing that came close was Terminator 1&2 and Aliens.
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.
Every kid is different and every parent is different.
At 12, I found most horror movies silly or disgusting rather than horrifying. But ALIEN and ALIENS are both great. A few scenes from THE TERMINATOR were disturbing, but it's a good story and TERMINATOR 2 is very good. PREDATOR wasn't for me at 12, but certainly was at 14.
THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE MARTIAN, BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, THE INVENTION OF LYING are all well-made, entertaining, and should be thought-provoking.
Wow. That might be the most reactive chemical that can be stably synthesized and kept at normal temperatures and pressures.
I wonder if the Aliens movies got their idea for the blood from this stuff.
> There’s a report from the early 1950s (in this PDF) of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I'm sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.
Agreed in general but do note the dropship scene is not particularly dark. The dropship is going through the clouds and the "superimposed" image is pretty bad. I'm pretty sure Cameron cringes nowadays when he looks at it.
Do note most of the other Aliens SFX stood the test of time very well, and of course, it's a Well made movie with awesome pacing, making it easy to forgive those few effects that aren't very good.
> they completely ruin the tension of Ripley and the marines later arriving at the colony (because we already found out about Newt), and spoils the reveal that Burke sent the colonists out to the alien crash site.
Not sure what we found out about Newt? That's she's a character? Who screams?
I also didn't remember Burke being named as the one who sent the colonists to check out the crash site - I thought it was just "the company". Can't believe I never noticed that.
> The sentry guns are just watching a boring ammo counter
There are also a few cool shots of aliens getting shredded by them. But, more importantly IMO, there's the discussion about the aliens intelligently probing the defences they've set up to find a way in. That adds a level of set-up to the aliens later cutting the power which I liked.
> the Ripley daughter retcon is just a lazy way to smash us over the head with the motherhood themes,
Are you sure retcon is the right word there? Not sure what Ripley being a mother changes about anything that came before that reveal? I can't think of anything it recontextualises from the first film - but then I never considered that before.
Yeah, the motherhood bit is a little heavy-handed in the director's cut, but, it's not exactly a subtle film! I still think it adds some value though. For example, after the first firefight with the aliens, Hudson notices that some of the marines they thought were dead actually aren't, and it's suggested they should go back for them. Ripley shoots the idea down, saying there's no point, they can't be saved. But later she decides to go back for Newt? Why? The surrogate daughter aspect gives her a reason - even if Newt is almost certainly beyond saving, she has to try anyway, no matter the odds.
Yeah, the extra runtime those things take does slow the directors cut down slightly, and it's not quite as tight and focussed as the theatrical cut. But I think they do have some merit, and the extra details are worth that for me.
I've never met anyone who considered James Cameron to be other than a blockbuster factory. Aliens, the Abyss, True Lies, writing the second Rambo film... who the hell would be surprised that James Cameron was involved with a Terminator movie?
Aside form that, Terminator 2 not only isn't Cameron's best effort, it's not even the franchise's best effort. It was the beginning of "to hell with making sense, look at these explosions," which got worse with each passing film, and better in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.
Had my daughter watch aliens for Halloween cause she was suggesting shit scary movies like the witch. She's 22. Gosh is that movie excellent. The best was the 3 endings where she relaxed and I was like excellent. Esp the spaceship fight. You thought this was over, no the most tense parts of the movie are yet to come.
Most of Cameron’s older movies hold up very well. Aliens is still fun, tense, and well-paced. Even True Lies is still fun.
I think Cameron’s secret weapon is the camerawork and editing. He really lets the camera breathe and has an incredible sense of “beats” for every cut.
I watched Predator when I was very young, on VHS, without having watched any trailers, and I still remember how amazed I felt. What was this monster? How was Arnie going to win, the creature was unbeatable and was everywhere!
A couple of other movies -- again, no trailers -- which made me feel this way were "Aliens" (they are everywhere!) and "Die Hard".
I don't really feel that way anymore with scifi or action movies, and of course much of it has to do with growing up. But I wonder if teenagers feel that way about the current crop of scifi/action movies, do they feel the thrill, do they feel "the good guys can't possibly win", or is this forever lost in modern cinema, what with all the rushed pacing, spoilers and trailers?
For those who don't know, the woman playing his mother is "Vasquez" from James Cameron's previous film, Aliens.
It is kind of interesting, it looks like the Weyland timeline is kind of a mess. They apparently ignored the Alien vs Predator backstory when writing Prometheus.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=45645.0
So Prometheus has Weyland Corp from 2012. AvP has Weyland Industries, which the folks on that forum think is supposed to be founded in the 80’s. So hypothetically there could be an AvP/Stranger Things crossover.
But I think a more likely explanation is that a character in the Stranger Things universe is a fan of the Aliens series, since the first two movies came out in ‘79 and ‘84. Hopefully the world will be sufficiently diverged from the real life timeline by the upside-down, and they will be spared the horrors of Alien 3.
Ad Astra is "story" wrapped around visual effects to allow Brad Pitt be used as lead actor. And there could be so much to it: The emotional controls, done by I assume AI? Great plot for a dystopian society. A rogue scientist at the edge of explored space posing a big threat? The Heart of Darkness is great, regardless of version. Various powers battling of the few rocks in what is otherwise an empty solar system? The Expense shows us how great that can be.
All of that in one film? Not so much. And then there a the logic holes bigger than a smaller galaxy. Earth is facing severe energy issues, up to the point a habdfull of dudes are fighting over three luna rovers? Could be fun, ubtil one realizes that there is apparebtly enough energy to be had to kill civilisation by energy waves created somewhere around Saturn... Then Brad is sent on a secret missions, and instead of flying on a military vessel to the lunar station, he takes acivilian flight wearing uniform. Only to land travle across the moon. The inly reason for that seems to be show some fancy lunar battle scene... I could go on...
Space Cowboys so, that would fit. As would Alien and Aliens, everything after Prometeus... If I want Eric Daenicken, I go read one of his books.
To be fair he also created The Terminator, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day—all of these films were blockbusters and arguably excellent films.
Avatar and Titanic presumably aspired to be excellent films as well. The visual effects that went into each were nuts, and Titanic's production values were quite good.
Why legendary directors sometimes end up making progressively worse films later in life is a rather complex question.
Power suits as in Aliens, Avatar and the Matrix movies? Those are empowering.
it does not hurt that the first Die Hard is one of the best movies ever made.
Next watch Aliens (the second one) together and you are gold.
Aliens movies are similar!
the best way to look at movies is, "the good guys are really the bad guys, and vice versa". Thanos was right, Darth Vader really did bring balance to the Force, and the Alien from Aliens was really just a pacifist who was looking to maintain a secure home.
It's hard not to be cynical or entertain thoughts of Hollywood planning these things in case the show sucks. Because they can clearly do entertainment with diverse casting, non-white people, female leads and succeed:
- Tom Holland Spider-Man does not have a red-head MJ, Flash is Indian and the made up best friend is Filipino. - Domino in the Dead Pool movies is black. NTW doesn't seem to have the same powers and is gay. But I'm not sure what the current character status is. - Everything Everywhere All at Once - Black Panther - Shang Chi - Jordan Peele does good work: Nope, Us, Candy Man, Get Out - The Expanse - Life of Pi - Sandman swaps a bunch of stuff
Appetite for completely foreign media is much slower in English speaking countries but once in a while you get a major break through: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Parasite.
For iconic female leads: Terminator has Sarah Connor, Ripley from Aliens, The Bride from Kill Bill, Charlize Therons character in the last Mad Max movie. Buffy. I apologize for how narrow the genres are here.
I don't think the popular media for anything I just mentioned was too negative (maybe Black Panther?). Is it really just the fans? I bet the overlap of Rings of Power watchers and watchers of the stuff I listed is pretty big ...
edit: formatting
Well, I had to test the development environment, somehow!
(apologies for the audio, new filter chain, and I only had time to record this ONCE)
As part of @tr1nitr0n and myself rebuilding the GRiD Development Environment from batches of GRiD server hard drives, I needed something to test that the development environment that could compile Pascal, PL/M, Fortran, C and Assembler was working as expected. Then I thought about the sentry remote weapon system scenes that were cut from the theatrical release of James Cameron's Aliens (1986) film, which used GRiD Compass II 1129 laptops. GRiD had developed a set of working displays in GRiDBASIC for the film. These were never released, but now that the same tools are working again, I recreated them.
Video: https://youtu.be/-hjH8cOvskk
GitHub Here: https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C
Release with raw Hard disk image here: https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C/releases/tag/UA571C-V1.0
I did a rewatch marathon of sorts with the kids, Alien, Aliens, Terminator 1-3, stuff like that. Those new action flicks, especially the super hero movies, cannot compare against those. An opinuon my son shares, and he grew up with Marvel. He was glued to the screen when we watched Alien for the first time together, because it did build up astory ajd tension (his words, not mine). Compared to Marvel were the CGI orgy starts 2 minutes into the movie.
Heck, I'll take the Terminator 1 stop motion effects over any scene in the forst half of the last Dr. Strange "movie" (I couldn't bring myself to watch more than that, even Meg is more fun to watch...) any day of the week. Because T1 is still scary and conveys emotion (despair mostly for being chased by an unstoppable killet machine), while those Marvel effects are, well, boring by now. They have no wow effect (we see them in almost every single modern day movie), the convey no emotion (difficult to properly act, I think, when you are in front of a green screen and everything just plays out in your imagination) not do those effects actually drive the "story" forward.
As compared to, e.g., the Expense, a ton of sci-fi short films (Dust in a great channel for that on Youtube) or the Mandalorian. I think the over use of CGI is just an easy excuse for bad story telling, and people swallow it.
I spend more time on Netflix looking for things to watch than watching things.
This isn't necessarily a Netflix thing - it's a streaming industry problem - driven by short supply and high demand with having multiple competitors in the market with big bank balances. When Netflix first started, they were pure quality distribution, now they and other streamers are bleeding money in bidding wars for content generated primarily by lame "chose one word from each column" production houses. Aliens, Teenage, Investigators - out pops humdrum 8 episodes of binge-fodder.
I went to streaming to escape from the cable playbook. I anticipate that all these additional revenue tactics will result in me dropping Netflix, and others. Maybe I'll return once the market has consolidated a little. Maybe not.
Robocop was part of a unparalelled series of action films that came out in the mid-80's. The sequence started with Aliens, then the next year we had Predator and Robocop and then finally Die Hard. They're still making the sequels to these films in one way or another today. The sequence has never been equaled, though I really wish it were.
It’s not easy for me to think of a scifi movie that I like more than Blade Runner, or Alien/Aliens. The cinematic craft they show is, IMHO, simply stunning.
I enjoy the pace of Blade Runner. Many movies today are just too busy and pointlessly hysterical.
It suffers from the same misfortune as the LOTR novels, Aliens, Friday the 13th, Godzilla, or countless other works that were among the first major works in their genres.
They were groundbreaking, foundational works that influenced everything came after them. The later works were often amplified takes on what came before; explicit attempts to out-do their ancestors.
(Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. You don't always improve things just by adding more...)
So, folks go back to the originals and wonder: "what's the fuss about? what was so groundbreaking about the hard-sci-fi-ish space marines and H.R. Giger visuals in Aliens? or the boring, soulless, pondrous killer in Friday the 13th? " The originals seem tame or quaint by comparison to what came after.
Know this: there is a whole world of enjoyment out there waiting for you should you ever decide to appreciate works of art in their appropriate historical contexts. Blade Runner has its faults and its charms and is by no means a perfect movie, but it is arguably the most visually influential movie in history or damn close to it.
Things are never entirely born from nowhere, but Blade Runner's now-cliched "neon cyberpunk dystopian future" look had never been really done before, certainly not on the big screen, and I'm honestly not sure if it's been done better since.
As far as discussing Blade Runner on its own merits, outside of any context... I understand why some think it's boring. It's slow and meditative. Deckard is a cipher. But this is by design. It works for me, mostly.
Of course, if you just want to skip all of that context business and focus on the latest/flashiest works in a particular genre... that's cool too. Literally nothing wrong with that. It's art. You can interact with it however you want. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
I am one of the 11 people on Earth that hates coffee. "Hate" isn't strong enough. Even "despises" I'm not sure goes far enough. It tastes disgusting to me. I can't even stand the smell. This has led me at times to wonder if I'm crazy or if everyone else is. I do notice a ton of people consume a ton of sugar in their coffee so it seems like many don't really like coffee. They like sugar. But I digresss.
I have the same "am I crazy?" thoughts with Blade Runner. Unlike coffee it's not bad (subjectively). I just don't get the hype.
It's a product of its time too. I'd put it in the 80s Cyberpunk bucket where the noir surroundings and mega corporations are a product of xenophobia, basically. There were genuine fears the Japanese were "taking over". And Blade Runner reflects this zeitgeist. In Blade Runner it's the Tyrell Corporation. In Aliens it was the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
Rutger Hauer did give a good performance and there were some good lines [1] but I'd never put it in my list of top films. Not even my list of top sci-fi films. It is better than Interstellar though, which is trash, so there's that.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRxHYHPzs7s
Hey, I named two characters (three with Eiwa!)!
I actually liked the movie, it's just that the characters aren't often addressed by names, so it's hard to remember them. In Aliens, for example, people always refer to each other by names (Vasques, Hudson, Bishop, etc), but in Avatar they don't.
(And i can probably name actors who played most roles, including Giovanni Ribisi)
> I feel there are plenty of good shows on Netflix.
Not sure who else feels this but for me:
There's a lack of "regular tv shows". I knew it was over when they got rid of The Office, that was pretty much the only reason I kept Netflix.
HBO Max, Disney Plus, Prime Video, AMC (temporary) all have the shows we regularly go to. Sopranos/Frasier, Simpsons/Star Wars/National Geography, The Office/Friends, Breaking Bad/Better call Saul (just need to see how it all ends).
Heck even Prime managed to bag many of the shows that used to be on Netflix. Aliens, Tora Tora Tora and even Independence Day is on Disney Plus. Lot of movies outside Netflix.
Netflix just has these one off good shows that frankly doesn't attract across the demographic. Sure there's something for everyone but its lacking those "must have and easy to access binge reruns".
Mostly just precedent. Male action heroes tend to be fighters. Even clever Odysseus just straight up murders all of this foes when he returns to Ithaca.
Female action heroes are generally few, and many of them that are, are either more tricksters or agile or just kind of oversexualized replicas of the male variety. Many of them tend to be physically weaker than their opponents even at the climax of their films and overcome it through other means whereas male action heroes will more frequently prove themselves to be superior in a pure battle of fisticuffs, sometimes even sacrificing an advantage they have so that they can "fight like a man". Consider, perhaps, Ripley from Alien and Aliens. Always underpowered. Uses a loader suit for her final confrontation.
Captain Marvel is undeniably aware of the gender connotations here. It's a pretty explicitly mentioned barrier when they discuss how women couldn't be fighter pilots. She's unusual in that she's just a powerful bruiser kind of female and is way more powerful than her foes.
Would it be entertaining to watch a bunch more female (or male) led films that take this same approach? God no. Fights are fun. If you want to subvert that for an interesting message it's got to be somewhat novel each time.
Though personally I think fights are more entertaining when they're not clearly aligned with any moral message. John Wick, perhaps, as a counterexample.
Just in case PT's Stasi as a Service company ($PLTR) has a hard time parsing this, I want to make clear that this is a joke based on a quote from Aliens the movie. I am not endorsing anything violent.
It is a joke.
I would delete my parent comment if I could.
> The Shining is one that gets better when shortened
For me the opening scene added in the extended edition of Aliens completely ruins the first half of the film for me. Sometimes less is more...
Reminds me of one New Years Eve party where Aliens was playing on the TV and a friend walks past and says "Watch Bishop's severed body now as he grabs Newt to stop her getting sucked out the air lock...", and clear as day you can see the lower part of the actors body come out a hole in the ground when he grabs Newt. I had probably seen the movie a dozen times before but never noticed it.
In a similar vein, just after having watched X-Men 2 in a cinema a (different) friend who did CGI animation for a living pointed out that during the scene where Magneto moved the bridge, you can see that the shadows on the water don't move with the bridge. His theory was that the special effects team were likely completely aware, but looked at the amount of effort required and hoped no one would notice. I never noticed the problem myself until it was pointed out.
I guess back then when special effects were monumentally difficult and computers weren't as capable as they are now, directors often relied on the audience's attention being elsewhere at that moment and thus being less likely to notice.
One thing I've never seen asked or answered is whether the name Bay 12 is a reference to the film Aliens - when Ripley picks up a crate with the loader and asks Apone "where do you want it?" he laughs and says "Bay twelve, please." Surely too obscure to be a coincidence?
I don't agree with this. Scientists are people too, and science is a human endeavor after all.
I really, really dislike when Hollywood portrays scientists and science as fundamentally blind and cold, and that what will really save you is The Power of Love. The good old "leave your cold facts and numbers and follow your heart" trope, which tends to triumph in movies because Hollywood thinks audiences are uninterested in science (which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy).
In Interstellar this is manifested in that the "logical" choice of planet (i.e. the one we would have wanted this group of people to pick, were this a real situation) was wrong (because obviously a scientist lied), and the right choice was following your heart all along.
As for xenomorphs: I utterly love Alien and Aliens (a pity they never made any sequels, right?) but they aren't examples of realistic movies, and the characters often make movie-logic decisions, and that's fine: these are horror-scifi and action-scifi movies, respectively, and don't try to be anything else.
> I would really like a scientific paper that showed instances where intuition, common sense and "love" don't mislead you, and sometimes you don't have to follow the more methodical procedure and check your blindspots.
Those exist. Unlike with movies often ridiculing science and scientists, science doesn't downplay the usefulness of emotions and intuition.
I bet they're not taking a lot of it in. Youth might convey certain enhanced abilities to switch between tasks efficiently denied to older people, but I'm willing to bet that even at the simple level of "computer game while on a call" sacrifices some of the attention of one of those things.
Related, my kids make grumpy faces when I tell them to turn off "background" Netflix or YouTube while they're doing their homework.
Semi related, my wife's friend came over and it was suggested we watch a film. "Aliens" was chosen as the friend and my wife hadn't seen it before. I put it on, they started chatting. When they started chatting I paused the film. They stopped chatting and asked what was up. I said that you started chatting so I figured you weren't watching the film, and I was actually trying to watch it. They promised to stop chatting. I played the film, they started chatting again after a short pause. We went through the pause/explain/promise cycle again and I played the film. They both promptly fell asleep.
> Movies like The Thing, Terminator, Alien, Aliens, etc. Don't really have a political message other than some vague politics as window dressing.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a34518538/john-carpenter-2020-interview-coronavirus-trump-they-live-the-thing/
https://gen.medium.com/the-scariest-thing-about-alien-is-how-real-it-s-become-fa2182d2207e
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2012/06/13/the-politics-of-ridley-scotts-blockbuster-film-prometheus/?sh=60c077293e6a
https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/terminator-james-cameron
> Give me the politics of Tetris, Pong, Super Mario, Donkey Kong
You got me. Let me rephrase it as any culture with a message.
That depends on how pedant you want to be about things being political. Movies like The Thing, Terminator, Alien, Aliens, etc. Don't really have a political message other than some vague politics as window dressing.
Also since you said culture, and not FILMS.
Give me the politics of Tetris, Pong, Super Mario, Donkey Kong.
I participated in an ecological impact study off the coast of guam once upon a time and we pulled a couple of these up from the sea floor in deep sea traps ... the amount of slime covering the back deck was truly astonishing ... they also have really freaky mouths -- a circle of teeth on a squishy stalk reminiscent of the inner mouth from the movie Aliens ...
Unless you mean Aliens as in the film, any ET life, while interesting, is a-priori no more likely to be useful for bioweapon research than random new life on Earth. Possibly less so, as the environment it evolved for may be radically different. What good is kevlar skin (or whatever microbial equivalent of you want that sort of biowarfare) if the proteins which make it require a 130 C body temperature? They’d freeze to death here. Heck, even just a few degrees is enough to have people worried about crops, and until we find other examples of life that is here on Earth, we can’t actually be sure what the real limits are.
> I do think there is a kernel of truth to what you're saying, but I don't think it's right to dismiss entirely the fact that representation IS important.
This idea is insidious.
Firstly people have to remember fiction is fiction. The reason why the first few seasons of Game of Thrones was compelling was because the world they lived in didn't have any modern sensibilities in it. The more they threw in modern sensibilities the worse the show got (thought the action scenes for the most part got better).
There was some show recently where Black slaves in the USA had taken power over the whites and a white KKK member from another dimension somehow got transported there. Some decried the show and wanted it banned. I thought it sounded excellent, because it was soooo divorced from reality. Same with the "Man from the High Castle". The setting in which the enemy won WWII was compelling.
Secondly just randomly pushing people into roles for the sake of representation ends up cheapening any genuine effort. The Wire was brilliant because the huge number of black people being in the show made sense. At the time I didn't actually notice that most of the cast was black.
You know what the end result is. It made me notice skin colour when I didn't used to and made me start to resent any effort (no matter how genuine) because I know there is probably some quota involved somewhere to pander to a demographic.
> Historically, "rich white people" have been in control of the media, so it's great to see this group becoming more self aware.
It isn't self awareness though. They are projecting their prejudices onto the rest of us. This includes places where it just isn't relevant and makes almost no sense.
How dare they project their prejudices onto me in an effort to absolve themselves of guilt, then have the gall to tell me that I am the one with the problem when I object to it. Fuck them!
I clearly remember when I decided I wouldn't watch anymore broadcast television (this was about 8 years ago now).
There was a show hosted by Scottish Comedian Frankie Boyle that was infamous for his offensive comedy. On that show there was a rich Canadian woman on the TV telling people in the audience that all men had done through the centuries was raping and beating women.
Then there was a black musician called "Akala" telling me the British Empire institutions were guilty of perpetuating racism. He seemed to be obilvious to the fact that he was on a British Institution being broadcasted to every home in the country.
Other the gross oversimplification of history. I had nothing to do with it (nor did my family as they were all very poor). It would be like blaming today's Germans for what Hitler did. It is absolutely disgusting.
You know what the end result of this is? It made me hugely suspicious of any claim of sexual misconduct or racism. It is the classic story of the boy that cried wolf.
> We should let people with compelling stories tell their stories! Now that streaming is the norm, there's room for everyone, now that we're not limited to only the stories which are marketable for primetime.
Maybe I am getting old but I remember a lot of this already happening. I am not saying it was perfect and I don't disagree with it in principle.
Recently "Black Panther" was released. "The first black super hero" they said. People seemed to forget Wesley Snipes played Blade for 3 movies (starting in 1997) and they were the first Marvel Movies and made the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe viable as it showed that a comic book property could be successful.
Before that we had the "There are no female action heroes" they said. Forgetting all thrillers in the past with heroines, a whole movie franchise called Aliens, Cherry 2000, Nikita, Tank Girl, Buffy and a bunch of other movies I have probably forgotten about where the woman had taken charge of the situation and won the day.
People increasingly think that the world before they were born didn't exist.
Completely off-topic, but having heard a "youngster" (relatively speaking) use the phrase "nuke the site from orbit" and then turn right around and ask, "BTW, where is that from?" [0], I wonder if this title hasn't suffered the same fate? Considering that the reference was released about 35 years ago, I imagine many folks saying "it goes to 11!" weren't even born when This is Spinal Tap came out.
[0] Aliens, the sequel to the first one: Alien. I'm old enough to have gone to the cinema to see all movies mentioned.
Somehow I don't see most skins here that were popular in russia in late 90s..early00s. Have no idea where to dig them now, but some of those were really cool. A lot of them were anime-themed, movie-themed (Aliens, Predator, Matrix, Terminator, etc).
There was a "behind the scenes" style documentary about QinetiQ and/or DERA (it was around the time DERA was split into QinetiQ and DSTL) where the engineers were shown analysing the 3D displays from the "Aliens" dropship sequence for inspiration.
I'll admit I came in expecting "Aliens" and was deeply disappointed. Even in retrospect, the movie might be good commentary, but it doesn't have good characters or good storytelling.
Thank you for this, I did not know about Syd Mead, but just flipping through the images on that page it's clear how influential he was. Wikipedia lists pretty much exactly the associations I made:
> Mead worked with major studios on the feature films: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Short Circuit, Aliens, The Spirit of '76, Timecop, Johnny Mnemonic, Mission: Impossible III, Elysium, Tomorrowland and Blade Runner 2049. George Lucas created the AT-AT for his Star Wars saga based on art by Mead.
This is in no way to diminish his work, but the impression I got (and that I'm trying to confirm/debunk, given the wikipedia article doesn't really address this) is that his art really transposes the society of its time into the future. That is, he almost exclusively addresses the technological advancement, while keeping the societal structures largely intact. For example, that's why the retrofitted houses give the impression of still being inhabited largely by working class people, while the ski resort and leisure time imagery with the sports cars still seems to be a luxury only few can afford even in the future. I don't see signs of "fully automated luxury space communism" there.
This may be me projecting though, hence the question if this is correct. And again, this is not to take away from his work. They are stunning. :)
I wonder if this was inspiration for the design of transport vehicle in Aliens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliens_(film)
I noticed this too.
In addition to planting forests that we then harvest and convert to biochar at peak rather than letting them decay and release carbon back to the cycle, we need to use energy intensive means to capture carbon.
I have seen one proposal linked on HN that suggested direct use of a nuclear reactor's energy to do it... something like that would have the necessary power (pardon the expression) to make a dent in atmospheric CO2.
Essentially, we need to build machines like the ones on LV427 in the movie "Aliens"...large structures that are essentially nuclear reactors with some extra equipment to use all their energy to terraform.... Terra.
> AI and Quantum Computing come to mind as likely focus areas in addition to those already mentioned.
Um, yeah, no. Pretty much all experimental QC students capable of doing the work are accounted for. The theorists who don't hustle mostly can't get jobs, with good reason: it's mostly malarkey.
You'd think if there were some blackops AI center of genius out there, at least one of them would have a job at Facebook making $2m a year or at a hedge fund gobbling up the order books. There are none.
Neither the predator nor stealth choppers were particularly surprising. You can watch documentaries on youtube about stealth choppers like the RA-66 Comanche, and drones were in wide, boasted-of use in Vietnam.
FWIIW I did a little consulting work for SBIR places; most of the procurement officers got their ideas from shitty science fiction. I'm pretty sure we'll eventually get all the dumb things from Aliens no matter how impractical and useless in actual combat they are.
Literally every single one in the UK. But it's not even supermarkets, pretty much every car park in this country works like this, I've even seen ones next to pubs and cinemas have that(made for a fun viewing of Alien + Aliens in a promotional re-release few years ago, the staff at the cinema were warning everyone that if you parked outside and are here to see both movies in one go you will be charged for overstaying as the time limit is 4 hours). And those fines are very much enforceable - as long as the conditions are listed in a public view the company can charge you for parking over the allowed time(it's a charge, not a fine technically).
Clearly explained here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland/law-and-courts/parking-tickets/appealing-parking-tickets/parking-tickets-on-private-land-s/
A pet peeve of mine is the noble suicide trope used often in film and tv. Armageddon, Aliens, Endgame, 7 Pounds, its everywhere. I haven't seen any research but I imagine it could normalize suicide in the minds of the impressionable young.
I get that's its an effective (though artistically blunt) plot device but I would prefer that it be used less.
It also appeared in the movie Aliens as the portable terminal used to control the sentry guns.
http://www.starringthecomputer.com/appearance.html?f=728&c=263
My Name is Scott Yannitell. I live in Marion Ohio, a place where thousands of people have been permanently enslaved by this family. I say with no lack of conviction that the fires of hell will burn for eternity and there will be praise in heaven and earth because of God's justice.
Here is my town on NPR
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/23/433575293/ravages-of-heroin-addiction-haunt-friends-families-and-whole-towns
When I saw the Movie Aliens as a child I wondered how it could be possible that Burke, as as a human being, could be so savagely selfish and greedy. But now there are real life Burkes among us.
There is certainly no justice for the rich and the powerful in this life as the Saville, The sacklers, and Epsteins know. But I swear to you there is justice in the afterlife.
Input: "Elon Musk to Star in Next Iron Man Movie'
>> As an aside, here are some other movies in this directory.
* The Iron Man and Aliens ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt010248/ )
* The Mars One ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0638888/?ref_=tt_1 )
* The Mars Orbiter ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt009608/ )
>> So Musk got a job at Apple and then worked on it at Apple for a week before he was told the movie went live.
>> This movie is really about this as an advertisement for the movie. Just so you guys know, this guy is making a better movie by talking about the movie not about the movie but just the movie, and how he has a lot of different experiences.
People go to a Star Wars movie to see the hero destroy the Death Star!
I'm reminded of that scene in the Empire Strikes Back where they destroyed a Death Star. Oh wait! They didn't. Because in the middle movie of most trilogies, bad things happen to the heroes. They fail. They reach rock bottom, and the third movie is their final struggle.
You can't take any story with any characters and any plot elements and place it in the Star War Universe and magically have a Star Wars movie.
That's exactly what they did with Rogue One. Worked very well. In contrast, Solo was done in the style of the traditional SW movies and is generally acknowledged as a failure.
It's the same reason the Mad Max remake was good...You have to have some respect for the tone, themes, and plots of what came before. TLJ disrespects it's audience's desires by disrespecting the draw of the source material.
Mad Max Fury Road was completely inconsistent, tonally and other wise, with the original Mad Max, and is a direct descendant of the campiness of Beyond Thunderdome. Batman v Superman, on the other hand, ws made with the same tones, themes, and plots as the other DC Synderverse movies, and was still quite terrible. Aliens and Alien are both considered terrific, genre-defining films. Yet Aliens has very little in common with Alien other than Ripley and the xenomorph. The same can be said of Terminator and T2. Harry Potter 3 and on have little tonally in common with the first two films, yet the third is considered one of the best in the series. Etc...
Arguably, the Ellen Ripley that we have all come to know and love was mostly developed and solidified in Aliens, and "motherhood" was a major theme in that film.
Aliens on the other hand isn't relative at all, it's objectively the best film in the franchise.
Late to this game...
Galaxy Quest
V, but the original miniseries from the 80's
Close Encounters
Dune, this is controversial I'm sure!
Starship Troopers
The Day After Tomorrow
The Fifth Element
Terminator I
Alien
Aliens
Tron, oh god I nearly forgot this one from the 80's!
The Black Mirror series is worth watching, although they seem to focus mostly on 'digital consciousness'. The USS Callister episode is not only gripping but very funny too. So many great episodes though - hard to pick a real standout although I would have to say if I had to San Junipero is one of the best things I have ever watched.
Then there's the really cheesy old "so bad it's good" stuff, for example: - When Worlds Collide (1951) - The People That Time Forgot (1977) - Swamp Thing (1982)
Have you seen the original War of the Worlds?
Then there is the Alien franchise, Aliens (Alien 2) being my personal favourite - Bill Paxton is sooo funny in that and of course it's directed by James Cameron. Some other great actors like Michael Biehn too.
Have you watched the series Firefly? Also the (related) movie Serenity.
There is soooo much great stuff out there!
Isn't some of this just the difficulty of describing something unique?
If you asked me to describe what the aliens from the Alien/Aliens movies looked like, I'd completely fail. If you asked me to describe the alien from Predator, on the other hand, it'd be fairly easy. The Predator is a guy in a costume so I could just describe the differences.
Suspension of disbelief only works when the world presented is believable and the story interesting. I find myself able to suspend belief on Nolan films, for example, because of their engrossing story and style.
With your example of Prometheus, no, the flick is not bad because of that scene, but the scene is an indication of the overall laziness of the plot. All the nit-picking, as you put it, is because there is nothing else to hold on to, which is not true of Alien at least (I don't particularly like Aliens).
It seems to me that people are a lot harsher on movies now, less willing or able to suspend disbelief [1]. I see scathing assessments of sequels, but with examples of the imagined problems being problems that have reasonably close equivalents in their predecessors which no one had a problem with when those were released.
Here's a concrete example: probably the most commonly cited 'problem' I hear about Prometheus is that near the end of the movie the heroine "tried to run away from a wheel in a straight line", and therefore it is a bad movie. The general criticism I take from this is not that she took the reasonable general action (running away) but the specific course she took (running in a straight line so the wheel just followed, and not noticing it was following).
The thing is, I think that both the main previous movies in the series, Alien and Aliens, have comparable incidents which no one complains about.
In Alien, near the end of the movie when she was the sole remaining survivor, we had Ripley delaying her escape in the shuttle in order to scuttle the ship - an entirely pointless action. If her plan of escape in the shuttle had worked, it wouldn't matter whether the alien were still alive. What did she think it would do, learn how to fly the Nostromo and pursue her? Scuttling the ship both increased her risk of dying at the alien's hands (it could have easily snuck up on her when she was engrossed in the scuttling procedure), and also nearly caught her in the explosion.
In Aliens, we had Ripley delaying her escape with Newt from the processing plant in order to exterminate the room full of eggs which posed no immediate threat to her (especially those still in the egg sac). Further to this, she did not bother to spend even one bullet or grenade on the queen herself. Ripley expended virtually all of her ammunition on this task, not reserving any to cover her retreat, and she apparently did not bother packing a spare magazine despite being given the resources of a fully-stocked armoury when she was preparing to go get Newt. If she had not exterminated the eggs (pointless, given the impending explosion) the queen would not have had reason to personally follow her and cause all the subsequent grief. Needless to say, those problems could also have been averted by simply shooting the queen along with or instead of the eggs. Again, no one complains about this.
Note that I am not complaining about the above aspects of Alien or Aliens. I love both those movies, and think the examples I gave above are nit-picking. The thing is, I think the criticism of Prometheus is also nit-picking, and directly comparable.
My tentative hypothesis for this recent nit-picking is that, unlike the earlier movies which were from a pre-internet era, it is easy for people to congregate in online communities to pick apart inconsistencies in movies they were personally disappointed in, and then anyone who looks at discussions of a movie they just saw will read all of this stuff they might have otherwise just overlooked. Further to the particular example I chose above, lots of people were disappointed with Prometheus particularly because it was not what they wanted: another formulaic Alien or Aliens movie, so that gave them extra incentive to pick it apart.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief
How many folks here still buy media (movies/TV) from Apple? I've never had an Apple TV, but I pretty much buy exclusively off of Amazon. Not only can I use the same iOS/Web app to view my purchased videos as the Amazon Prime streaming collection, but Amazon Prime is available on every other device I use, including smart Samsung TVs, PS4, and Android devices. Whereas the few things I've purchased off of the Apple store (sadly, classics like Aliens and Zoolander) are forever locked in the Apple ecosystem. I don't buy much music thanks to Spotify, but when I do I use Amazon Music as I suspect that will have more portability than iTunes will ever have.
Prolog indeed seems eminently suitable for this use case.
For example, let us consider the first use case shown on the page:
graql>> match $x isa movie; $y isa person; $z isa movie value "Avatar"; ($x, $y) isa directorship; ($y, $z) isa directorship; select $x;
This finds movies directed by the director of Avatar.
Here are a few relations in Prolog that we can use for this example:
movie('Avatar'). movie('Titanic'). movie('Aliens'). movie('Terminator 2: Judgement Day').
person('James Cameron').
directorship(X, Y) :- movie_director(X, Y). directorship(X, Y) :- movie_director(Y, X).
movie_director('Avatar', 'James Cameron'). movie_director('Titanic', 'James Cameron'). movie_director('Aliens', 'James Cameron'). movie_director('Terminator 2: Judgement Day', 'James Cameron').
These are Prolog facts and rules that suffice to illustrate this use case.
In Prolog, we can query this database as follows:
?- findall(X, (movie(X), person(Y), movie(Z), Z = 'Avatar', directorship(X, Y), directorship(Y, Z)), Xs).
Note how closely this query corresponds to the initial example!
Prolog answers with:
Xs = ['Avatar', 'Titanic', 'Aliens', 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day'].
Note that this is in fact more complete than what the example shows:
results>> [ {"isa": "movie", "value": "Titanic"}, {"isa": "movie", "value": "Aliens"}, {"isa": "movie", "value": "Terminator 2: Judgement Day"} ]
Interestingly, this misses Avatar!
It was the exact plot of the movie Robocop. There was also a bit of Aliens in the mix.
> Aliens is a bit different from your typical action movie in that the heroes are getting their butts kicked the entire time
Yeah, especially the first scene at the beginning when they start to get into the Alien lair and get their ass massively kicked. That whole scene was awesome from beginning to end.
> but I can't understand the fascination with Aliens
Aliens is THE perfect movie for me. The story is simple but eventful and with lots of surprises. There are many characters that are well written and who all have their opportunity to shine. Cinematography-wise, it's extremely solid with Cameron as a director, doing some of his very best work. Casting was perfect, everyone fit extremely well in their roles. Even special effects for the most part, were extremely well done and remain believable to this day. And the musical score was the icing on the top.
Really, I can't find anything wrong with Aliens. I like Alien (1) as well but it's a very, very different movie.
Alien 3 traditionally gets a lot of flak, but it is actually quite a remarkable movie. It left strong impression on me and is so rich in story and emotions I watched it many times over.
The premise and setting are very depressing, yet the prison, its visuals and inhabitants quickly get intriguing. This is a great narration of how people that have nothing but each other and their faith realize that their only real chance of survival is to work together and fight the beast. It is also a story of one strong woman who wakes up in a world where every hope of hers gets destroyed one by one. Just when you think things cannot get more dire, there is another bad luck, another loss, another jolt of despair.
Extremely strong emotions, thrilling chase and a great finale where Ripley's final decision is the perfect and only possible conclusion of a life that destroyed her hopes and gave her nothing except for a chance to fight for others, and win.
The film's music is beautiful and visuals are very good. I think people say bad things about the film mostly because they expected Aliens: the sequel where Cameron's vision would continue. Don't get me wrong, Aliens is a great film, and the novelization by Foster a great book to read. But if you take Alien 3 as an independent vision of the theme, you will enjoy it.
I always watch Alien and Aliens back to back. From time to time, if I have more time to kill, I watch Alien 3 ( the extended director's cut ). I watched Alien: Resurrection once and have never watched it again and have no desire to. Terrible movie.
I will never be able to forgive Alien 3 for killing off hicks and newt so unceremoniously ( off screen ). That was so lazy and cowardly, it ruins what is a fun movie to watch.
> It's just that, in each franchise, the other two movies are so much better
Alien 3 is a fun/exciting movie. But it never lived up to Ridley's Alien nor Cameron's Aliens standard.
It is not a terrible movie by a long shot. But when you compare it to the two masterpieces that preceded it, it disappoints.
My 12 yo daughter loves sci-fi movies and we just started watching the Alien franchise in preparation for Alien: Covenant this weekend.
My plan was to show her Alien, Aliens, then Prometheus. I hadn't even planned to watch Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection (or any of the spinoffs like AVP). But after reading this, maybe we should at least watch Alien 3.
Any suggestions?
"I am a huge Alien fan, but I can't understand the fascination with Aliens, it always seemed like a cheap action movie when compared with the true psychological horror of the first one."
Having seen both movies during their original release, I originally liked Aliens more; probably a side-effect of being in my teens and liking guns and explosions. As I've gotten older, as much as I've come to further appreciate the suspense and design of the original, Cameron's film is still one of my favorite movies and IMO is a rare example of a worthy sequel.
In Alien, Ellen Ripley is a victim of circumstance. She's the smarter-than-average crewmember whose advice is largely ignored and despite doing the best she can barely survives an ordeal that should be guaranteed to leave her with a lifetime of PTSD.
In Aliens, we quickly find out that Ripley is once again a victim of circumstance: her lifeboat drifted off course while she was in stasis, resulting in her returning home after decades. Nobody believes her about the Xenomorph, and she's considered a responsible party for the destruction of the ship in the first movie. Deleted scenes (restored in the director's cut, I believe?) revealed that her daughter died of old age before Ripley returned.
She's in rough shape. Traumatized by what happened and relegated to menial work due to her perceived unreliability, she's given a path for redemption: go back to where it all started and help the military (which is revealed to be largely incompetent and impotent when things go south).
Alien is a great horror movie, to be sure. But Aliens is, IMO, a redemption movie when you look past the swagger and gunfire. A smart character who should be in good shape (after being victorious in the first movie) is shown to be a fractured, vulnerable person who still summons the strength to face her fears, rescue another victim of circumstance (Newt), overcome her bias (against Bishop), presumably prevent the problem from ever happening again, and definitively prove that she was right all along.
And all, IMO, without cheapening the first movie and by revisiting one of the strongest female characters to appear in a movie franchise. It nukes the Bechdel test from orbit.
This is also why I hate Alien 3, as it was released, with a burning passion. It completely invalidates Ripley's character arc in Aliens with the lazy reverse deus ex machina of killing Newt, Bishop and Hicks in the first act. I'm not a huge fan of Gibson's screenplay, but it would have been much better than the dreck that was ultimately released.
30 years later Aliens looks like a cliché action movie. I think it looks that way because it set a lot of standards for action movies. Poke around at popular action movies from the early 80's. Aliens has no Star Wars mysticism. Aliens lacks Star Trek optimism. It's not 'a guy with a grudge' like Rambo or Commando or any of a dozen others.
It certainly pulled from old westerns and war movies, but did it in a (imho) pretty innovative way.
I hated Aliens 3 - it's like the guy who got it basically wanted to say "f* you" to Aliens, which was a good, fun, if not particularly deep movie.
I think it's just that people have seen Aliens more, because it's easier to jump into it and have a good time, laugh at the "Game over man" scene, etc. Whereas with Alien you are on the edge of your seat the entire time. Much more draining.
Aliens is a bit different from your typical action movie in that the heroes are getting their butts kicked the entire time. The only time where the heroes really had a fist-pump moment was when the 2 sacrificed themselves by blowing up a bomb and taking out a couple of aliens.
> I mean, &#(@, look at the script for Alien and Aliens.
I am a huge Alien fan, but I can't understand the fascination with Aliens, it always seemed like a cheap action movie when compared with the true psychological horror of the first one.
I think the key here, in retrospect, is that this would have been Gibson in his 30s, immediately after writing Count Zero (and Neuromancer before that).
I can't think of a better thematic match to continue on from Aliens.
Also incredibly annoyed that the noted reason it got shot down was "not being innovative enough." I feel like most movies die from overly innovative scripts, whereas most of the classics, reduced to script form, are really simple ideas executed well.
I mean, &#(@, look at the script for Alien and Aliens.
Hi, thanks for your feedback!
Actually, it's not a bug, but a feature :)
If you want to tell the system that you like particular movie more, than others, you can like it twice or more.
For example, if you like "Alien" a few times, movix will show you more like "similar" films (like Aliens or Predator)
I presumed that that was the version which GP was referring to because the other ones are also dated to 2016.
And I chose to mention it because Ebert rated Aliens highly, at 3.5/4. In retrospect, that may not qualify it as sublime art as opposed to a really good film. I'd have to refresh my memory of Ebert's scale.
...just survivor bias at work. Nobody remembers the terrible summer blockbusters from years past.
But people remember Jaws, Terminator, and Aliens.
At some point somebody is going to make The Searchers of robots beating everyone up
It's about time we got something like that: https://xkcd.com/311/
There was that 1st person movie, which actually was kinda cool, but it made me nauseous.
>Something about their styling screams "high tech"
In a similar vein Seiko recently reissued the watches from the Aliens movie
The Grid laptops were famously used as the interface for the sentry guns in the 1986 movie “Aliens”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ey4MVSpqhw
With the exception of Star Wars: The Force Awaken, I haven't seen any of the blockbusters mentioned, though I wonder how much this article cherry-picks, given that the 2 top grossing movies this year (Civil War, Zootopia) [0] seem dialogue-dense based on their trailers despite being summer entertainment. Also, I would have attributed the disappearing of dialogue to our increasingly dumbed-down short attention spans, something that has been evident in Jerry Bruckheimer films. Also, Avatar, which had such shit dialogue that I found it hard to believe until I looked it up that James Cameron had written the screenplay for his Aliens, which has timeless (if brief) dialogue.
That said, it's completely believable to me that the cost of making universally clever dialogue is much harder than just doing it in one language, and will be the easiest line-item to justify cutting with international audiences being increasingly prized. I've always been OK with reading subtitles but it wasn't until Inglourious Basterds did I realize how jarring and unusual it is to have foreign languages hold equal screentime to your own native language (which makes me respect IB even more for its artistic achievement).
It'll definitely be a shame if plots themselves become increasingly dumbed down for international reasons. One thing the OP didn't mention in terms of the Chinese-market effect on Americans is the seemingly higher frequency of Chinese locales making cameos...though this is something I welcome, as the Chinese-based set pieces in movies such as Skyfall as Pacific Rim have usually been spectacular.
The best aspect of Alien, Aliens, and the game Alien: Isolation is how they create a realistic (as in, you feel like you're there) environment. Whether it's a silent, scary thriller or an action movie it really makes you believe in the characters. Aliens is probably one of the few non-drama films that made marines have interesting personalities.
I've heard this too and thought it was brilliant. So James Cameron even repeated this and added constraints on the music with the second movie
James Horner thought he’d have six weeks to write the musical score. Instead, he had three weeks, and had to write some parts overnight. The movie was behind schedule, not even finished being filmed (let alone edited) when Horner arrived in England. What’s more, the recording studio he’d been provided with was outmoded, not equipped to handle the synthesizers he wanted to use. Horner called the experience a “nightmare,” and ended up writing the climactic musical cue overnight. Coming away with the impression that a James Cameron film was too stressful and rushed, he figured he’d never work with the director again. And he didn’t ... until Cameron approached him for Titanic. (That rushed Aliens score earned Horner an Oscar nomination, by the way.)
It seems like there's a Machiavellian lesson there. There's a lot of great "making of" material on Aliens, which shows James Cameron being a genius on other aspects too.
It took a while to find the "getting started" page:
https://github.com/futurice/pepperoni-app-kit/blob/master/docs/SETUP.md
Ultimately, I'm rooting for libui[1] over React Native or anything related to it. But the more competition, the better, since competition seems to usually drive innovation.
You know, it's kind of funny how we've come full circle. 15-20 years ago, developers were experimenting with all sorts of new GUI ideas.
I remember using a program that had something that looked like scrollbars, but the mouse's scroll-wheel wouldn't work on them, and you couldn't drag them either, you could only scroll by clicking the arrow buttons on the top and bottom. But man, it looked super sleek, like it came straight out of the movie Aliens or something!
And now we're doing the same thing. Reinventing GUI so that it's pretty, but ends up being broken. I wish I could find that one tweet from a year ago or so, where someone said that scrolling a certain web page triggered no less than something like 67 animations.
[1] https://github.com/andlabs/libui
"Nuke em from orbit" is a quote from the movie Aliens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
I think (hope) it's being used in that playful way.
I've got one of FLIR's cheaper thermal imagers and every time the issue of rain or snow comes up when discussing the limitations of self-driving cars I wonder why we hadn't already paired thermal sensors with machine learning.
The thermal sensor might not tell you much in isolation - you can see what's warm in contrast to the surrounding environment, but moving objects give away a lot of information. A person moves a certain way and has a certain heat signature, as does a cat, another car, a person on a bicycle.
I recall an interview with a (relatively) young James Cameron after he'd made the movie Aliens. He said that they spent a lot of time simplifying the Alien outfit, making it easy for performers wearing the costumes to move more freely, to help make their movement appear more alien or insect-like and less like a human struggling to stride in an outfit. To paraphrase him, the mind only needs a few pixels of movement information to understand what it's looking at. The loss of detail in the outfit was trivial compared to triggering the part of the human mind that associates certain movements with caution.
An array of fairly humble low-ish resolution thermal sensors around the car paired with AI could be done with a cost in parts not much higher than USD 1k.
Dominated - Have a commanding position over.
No one said they do not exist.
Salt is rated PG-13 Aliens while rated R is 37 years old.
I dont understand the point you are trying to make?
How many movies have you seen, where men beat up women? How many movie shave you seen, where women beat up men?
As long as society has asymmetric views on gender you will never have equality of roles in movies.
This article mentions the Gridcase which I thought was an amazing rugged-looking machine. Then I saw this
"GRiD Defence Systems produced the laptop computers used in the 'Aliens' film in 1986. The scenes were cut from the theatrical release but subsequently added to the DVD release." [1]
[1] http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1054&st=1
Had my ex-partner's oldest kid (age 14) hiding behind the sofa. I too was not popular when he woke up in the middle of the night by a nightmare and blaming it on watching Event Horizon.
I thought he could handle it because we'd just watched all the Alien movies and he quite enjoyed them. He saw Aliens first and I suggested we watch the original/rest, he was quite drawn into suspense of the first film which the others have never quite matched in intensity. I guess Event Horizon was a bit too dark and visceral for his tastes.
> But I think many expecting a traditional Sci-Fi movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Aliens, might be disappointed. It is more about humans and what it means to be human than about aliens or special effects.
There must be a more clear way to express what you're saying here. I don't think anyone would sensibly claim that 2001: A Space Odyssey was about aliens or special effects; it clearly had a lot more to say about humans and how they relate to technology and the unknown.
But I don't doubt that Solaris is very different, and if I had to guess (as someone who hasn't seen Solaris and who isn't particularly cultured) I'd guess I'd describe it uncharitably as "artsy" or "touchy-feely". Can someone try to say something more charitable, while still making clear what distinguishes it? Maybe a focus on person-to-person emotional relationships rather than single-person emotions and person-to-person plot conflicts?
I like the movie, and in general most Tarkovsky's movies, (favorite is The Mirror). But I think many expecting a traditional Sci-Fi movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Aliens, might be disappointed.
It is more about humans and what it means to be human than about aliens or special effects.
To summarize the idea of the movie, this quote from Dr. Snaut probably is probably appropriate:
---
I must tell you that we really have no desire to conquer any cosmos. We want to extend the Earth up to its borders. We don't know what to do with other worlds. We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror. We struggle to make contact, but we'll never achieve it. We are in a ridiculous predicament of man pursuing a goal that he fears and that he really does not need. Man needs man!
---
It is also interesting that Stanisław Lem never quite liked this version. It was mostly Tarkovsky's own re-interpretation, which I think is great, but it was not true to the book.
Speaking for GP: The problem with the word 'culture' is that it has an evaluating component (more culture = good), which I don't think is what GP meant. Maybe a better term would be "amount of hard rules in society", i.e. how many rules do you have to follow as a member to be accepted. In those terms, from personal experience, I'm pretty sure that Japan >> Western Europe > USA - correct me if you think otherwise.
Edit: I recommend watching the making of "Aliens" [1]. Young American (J. Cameron) goes to England to direct a British film crew, experiences surprisingly big cultural clash and the whole project almost ends in chaos, even though everyone was working at a very high quality level.
Edit2: Just to preempt here, yes I know Cameron is Canadian, but he clearly comes out of American movie making culture, so I took a shortcut there.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V--gH9ayR-o
Good question, but seriously, no.
You can actually test that hypothesis yourself very easily. Go look at some of the more gory scenes from Saw, or the Aliens movies. If you're like many typical internet people they won't even phase you. Now go and find some of the typical rotten.com / liveleak content and see how much you can stomach of that. Likely not a lot and not easily at all.
Knowing that something is real makes a MASSIVE difference.
Further, being on the ground with a gun, facing armed and active enemies² makes you more likely and less inhibited to recklessly kill people, because while there may be consequences to killing, the consequence to being killed is FAR greater.
Soldiers need to be trained to not go full auto with their rifles for a reason.
² Just a note to make clear that i edited that part in as clarification.
vvvv For one, that book doesn't seem to cover direct vs remote combat, which is the comparison i was making, and further: Read the reviews underneath.
Isn't that the point of a horror movie though? The audience is supposed to know that it isn't real, and are supposed to be scared of what it symbolizes.
If kids aren't scared by Aliens, then the movie failed. Being scared by Aliens even though they know it isn't real doesn't mean that the movie inappropriate for them, it means that they are handling the movie as adults do.
> Don't recall seeing her in anything else.
That's actually how I found her bra shop. A friend and I were geeking out over Aliens and we realized that Pvt. Vasquez was such a memorable character but seemed to almost totally disappear after that movie. So I Googled her and saw her current venture. In an unbelievable bit of good luck, we were actually already planning to visit LA in a couple months' time, so we knew we had to find a way to make that visit happen.
There's an interesting thing called "The Bechdel Test". A work of fiction "passes" the test if it has 2 named female characters who talk to each other about something aside from a man. It's a simple little thought experiement, and it's shocking how many films don't pass it.
It was first mentioned in a web comic, and Aliens is the example given.
Other people may be talking about Saw, I'm not. I'm specifically talking about the film that was mentioned in the first place and is being talked about in the original post.
I'm also not trying to win any argument. I'm presenting my opinion - on that one specific topic of the original post.
A small selection of posters say they were 'distressed' when watching Aliens? What they call 'stress', I call 'being thrilled' - exactly the intention of the film.
"What life lesson is an eleven year old going to learn from watching Aliens?" - you learn whether or not you like watching these types of films or not. Don't like it? Don't watch another one. Lesson learned. Think you got traumatised over it in some way? Go find someone to talk about it and help you through it - nevertheless, a lesson was learned one way or the other.
Other people are talkig about films like Saw. Why are you trying to win the argument that nobody here is having?
But, if you want to talk about Aliens: plenty of people in this thread have spoken about the distress they felt when watching Aliens as teenagers. What life lesson is an eleven year old going to learn from watching Aliens?
I'm specifically talking about whether it's 'bad' or not for 11yo boys to watch Aliens. Keep to the subject. Why mention some other film when I'm talking about Aliens?
I despise people who try to 'win' their argument by constantly shifting the goalposts.
I've upvoted you because I'm noticing a pattern on this topic where anyone questioning the "think of the children!" attitude is being downvoted.
Before you guys downvote me; I'm a parent. The boy is now 13yo and has been growing up with Star Trek, Dr Who, and whatever other sci-fi I like to watch. Even some Dr Who and Star Trek had material some of you would consider to be a bit 'iffy' to show kids. Doesn't seem to have done my son any harm - he's growing into a well balanced kid who goes to the Air Cadets, is popular, and does well at school.
As a parent, I see no harm in showing 11 year old boys Aliens.
Listen - you cannot wrap your kids up in cotton wool. The reality of life is way more brutal and uncaring than is shown in a mere film.
As long as these kids understand that it's just a story, that it involves plastic and latex models, these are actors, and so on and so forth - where's the harm for these 11yo kids?
Like I say - life is hard. I for one don't want my son growing up to be some limp-wristed little snowflake because I shielded him from all sorts of things. Seriously guys, get real.
I'm not sure I'd call them cliches, but the kind of one dimensional portrayal of the various marine characters. For example the Bill Paxton character--he starts the film the most outwardly bloviating and macho, and becomes the most (annoying) scared. It was played to 11 which made it feel very shallow to me. The company man was also a pretty one dimensional character. I also felt the mothering at the beginning and with Newt kind of cliched. I was very glad both Hicks and Newt were killed off for Alien 3, which in its directors cut version, I liked much better than 2.
I guess not liking Aliens much puts me well in the minority.
Read the article. The younger viewers complained about cliches in Aliens, probably from seeing the same cliches reused in movies they've already seen, like Avatar.
> His comment was how the original alien was smarter than than the crew, but in the second movie the aliens are just dumb animals.
In the first movie, there was only one Alien and it acted more like a lone hunter. In the second movie, there were lots of aliens and they acted like a hive. I think that it's possible for both of these to be consistent with each other.
Perhaps you'd care to elaborate on exactly what the cliches were? Cameron intended to make the early parts with the colonial marines feel like a Vietnam movie, where you worry that the soldiers' lack of discipline and seriousness is going to lead to tears. I'm not sure I'd call that a cliche. Honestly, I think the sound the pulse rifles make is sufficient to earn Aliens a place in cinema history.
Also anecdotally: as a young teenager I'd remember scenes from movies like Aliens in order to psyche myself up for doing things that were scary. Like: "Okay, self. You can go into that dark basement. It's scary, but not as scary as a bunch of marines going into an alien-infested death trap."
Don't get me wrong: Aliens was really freaking scary to me. Probably the most a movie has ever scared me. As soon as they encounter the first xenomorph it's pretty much sheer terror for the next hour.
The Abyss and Avatar were both made after Aliens. How can Cameron reusing themes from Aliens in those movies be a criticism of Aliens?
> Funny thing was that our local cable network showed the "extended version" (with the sentry turrets, scenes with Newt's parents, etc) and for years I thought I'd imagined some of those scenes because the extended version wasn't available on video until much later.
Wow. So there WERE sentry guns. For years (pre-Google years) I used to argue that there was a scene with sentry guns, though I don't think that's what I had called them. Those guns were awesome and they had made a huge impression on me. Problem was, no one else could remember seeing them. My family and friends swore I was crazy. So I asked for the uncut version of Aliens for Christmas one year (probably around 91 or 92) and I was so disappointed. No sentry guns. So I just figured everyone else was right. I must have imagined it or was mixing up my films. A few years later I purchased a "special edition extended version" on VHS which, sadly, also had no sentry guns. So that was that. I was wrong, there were no sentry guns, and that was the last I thought of it until now. I knew I saw those damn guns!
Enitrely this.
The first time I saw Aliens - it was one of the strange TV edits that included the sentry guns, but lacked the other salient bits - holy fuck, it immediately gave me the sense of "this is what films should aspire to."
Roughly seventeen years later, I always experience the same thrill that I did the first time I saw it.
On an unrelated but personal note, which I feel appropriate given the subject matter: it took me YEARS to figure out what the fuck was wrong with my memory, because that strange cut that had the sentry guns (CBS edit, I believe?) was not readily available until the director's cut came out on DVD - I was not fortunate enough (keks) to own a Laserdisc player, so I spent a good number of my formative years thinking I was insane for insisting that "ALIENS HAS SENTRY GUNS! IT'S BAD-ASS!"
Further unrelated note, because I'm that much of nerd, and couldn't afford it, but went nuts anyhow: I purchased a $4,100 replica of the M41A pulse rifle built by Phil Steinschneider, and while I no longer have it - wow. What an amazing piece of film history, even if to only have a meticulously researched, almost exact replica of an item that defined a good chunk of my existence.
TL;DR: Aliens is the greatest film ever, and I hope every future generation (and those that show it to them) have the same enthusiasm that OP and I do for the film. Masterpiece.
I watched the first half of War Games (1983) with my 6 and 8 year old boys tonight, and they were both totally into it. The movie holds up incredibly well, especially the back-and-forth of Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy choosing targets to attack as the officers in NORAD are running around panicked.
I can perhaps imagine showing Aliens to my sons when they're 11, but it seems overly aggressive to show their friends, without getting explicit agreement from their parents first.
Your logic makes sense, but there's something special about visual imagery - the way the images go directly into our brains without being filtered through our imaginations - that gives it true power.
When I was a kid, I read a lot of horror. Mostly Stephen King, and Clive Barker, which were far more than my 8-year-old self should have been reading, but for the most part, I could handle it, just fine. (Stephen King's It was really the only book that scared me beyond the moments I was reading). On the other hand, the violent films I saw (Aliens, Robocop, etc) proved much harder to shake off. Remember the end of Robocop where they guy gets toxic waste dumped all over him, and his flesh starts dripping off? I spent weeks trying to get that image out of my head. Hell, even the end of Raiders, or the Ceti Eels from Wrath of Khan disturbed me far more than anything I read.
As an adult, I watched Devils Rejects - a truly great film that I cannot recommend to anyone because of how disturbing I found some of the imagery in that.
Or, to take a real life example - plenty of us are fine with reading accounts of terrorist beheadings but purposefully avoid watching the videos of the events.
This is perfect. Watching Aliens at exactly that age was a rite of passage for me. I had been really scared of scary movies up to that point. When I saw Aliens, it definitely freaked me out but, after the movie was over, my mind had been blown and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Totally cured me of my scary movie phobia too.
I don't get why you were downvoted.
Anyway, I think so too. Humans seem to have an innate fear of the dark, and any recent memory of danger will increase that effect. Heck, I'm an adult and still after watching something like Aliens I get seriously stressed when going to bathroom at night. And my closest friend openly refuses to watch scary movies when she expects to be alone home at night.
The thing is the dad thought it wasn't just a gortesque mediocre movie, it was one of the top of his favourites. So to the parent, it seemed like they were showing them a masterpiece. Also by the discussion that ensued afterwards the kids could see a lot of cliches and parallels. "She is like Snow White". If they can make those kind of references, they can handle a few aliens jumping out of the shaddows.
When I was about 5 I wandered into the room just in time to see my slightly older cousin watch the opening scene of An American Werewolf In London. That convinced me I wanted nothing to do with "scary" movies.
A few years later I saw an advertisement for Aliens and declared "I never want to see that movie!"
When I finally did watch Aliens at about 15 it immediately became my favourite movie. AAWIL is also pretty awesome :]
I'm old enough that I saw Aliens in the theatre, with my Dad. I remember he had a similar perspective to you. His comment was how the original alien was smarter than than the crew, but in the second movie the aliens are just dumb animals. This may be true, but for me the second movie is one of my all-time favourites.
Hah good info. So far Fredericks is the only resource for my girl. Jenette was also in T2 and that odd ball vampire movie where some of the crew from Aliens were re-united. Don't recall seeing her in anything else.
Invariably whenever we run into a dev problem, somebody on my crew will always blurt out, "Game over man, we're fucked!" We're an agile shop of course.
To counter your anecdote, my parents never really censored what I viewed as a kid either. Aliens was (and is) one of my favourites as a kid. My babysitter used to "force" me to watch horror movies, she and my parents thought it was funny or something. I don't feel I'm any more or less uncomfortable in the dark by myself than the average person is.
Cameron made some really outstanding movies, but I at least don't count Aliens among them. The Abyss was more than amazing for me.
Part of the problem is James Cameron reusing the same themes and tropes in all of his movies. The Abyss and Avatar are pretty similar to Aliens thematically.
My daughter was almost scarred for life by it. I think she was about 8 and she had a friend living in our building who was 4 years older. The older girl was into scary movies and I mentioned how Alien, the first movie, was one of the scariest I had seen. I explained the whole plot to them and then showed them the movie and they said it wasn't that scary at all. Long story short, I then showed them Aliens. Unfortunately I'd only seen it once and didn't have a strong memory of the plot, in particular I had completely forgotten about Newt. She ended up a number of phobias for the next year or so that she completely blames on me.
Aliens is one of my most lived movies of all times. But if you plan on buying a copy of it, please, please make sure you are not buying the Director's Cut edition. The ones with 20 minutes added to it. Most of the additions are useless (or just plain bad) and spoil all the surprises the movie had in its first cut.
Many, many times I find that Director's Cut is just synonymous with "take the best cut and fill all the crap we did not think was worth it in the first place".
> "This movie has so many cliches in it," a boy said (...) My son told him, "This movie was made in 1986. It invented all the cliches."
The first boy was right. It felt full of cliches even then. I watched it in eighties as soon as it was distributed to my place and I all the time I had that feeling of "boring 'we're the marines' movie." And I still can't understand why would anybody consider Aliens an interesting movie. The first Alien is however something else. And I was always amazed to later watch "The Dark Star" made before the Alien and find it (among the other things) an Alien parody made before the Alien(!) It's really so thanks to Dan O Bannon. Now that's something. Aliens... not even worth mentioning.
Watch Alien, watch The Dark Star. Forget the boring Aliens.
Disclaimer: I'm old enough that I've watched the Star Wars in seventies in my movie theatre. And Mad Max. And and and.. Of course Aliens were already cliches and cliches.
My dad took me and my sister to see Aliens in the theater, when I was ten or so. At about 15 minutes into the opening scene I suggested to my dad that maybe we didn't need to see it, and we left. When I was a little older we rented it as a video, and it's been one of my favorite movies ever since.
The early 80's were a truly special time for action cinema, and sequels in particular. There were several sequels that stand out for both putting a completely different spin on the movies that preceded them while offering relentless and tight pacing.
Aliens is just one example. Consider also, "The Road Warrior" (a.k.a. Mad Max 2). It took the faded and failing civilization of the original and pushed that out to every extreme possible. Total collapse. Anarchy. Barbarism. Post-apocalyptic wasteland. It also featured some of the tightest editing, most impressive stunts, and most relentless action of any film ever made. However, it was far from alone.
"The Empire Strikes Back" took the light, fun, and somewhat corny adventure of "Star Wars" and turned that into a dark, brooding character driven film that was a non-stop roller coaster of tension. Empire is the film that makes people take Star Wars seriously no matter how much zany Ewok slapstick and standup-droid-comedy Lucas put into ROTJ and the prequels (I refuse to even type the full J-J word). The 2001-derivative "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was followed by the "The Wrath of Khan", which itself focused on character development and featured a climactic battle between both leaders and star ships. This film, despite being made on a shoestring budget when compared to the first Trek film, defined Trek movies for all time. Arguably, the franchise has suffered as Trek film after Trek film tried to recapture the magic of "The Wrath of Khan" instead of blazing their own paths.
When you watch these films and compare them to today's action flicks, one thing that stands out is that the action is anything but non-stop. All of these films feature extended sequences of slow, careful character development that are punctuated by action scenes. Compare the most recent Superman film to Aliens for example. Aliens may have felt relentless and draining in its last hour, but the first hour is relatively slow. That slow, building action sets everything up. It made us care so much about the characters and appreciate how utterly alone and vulnerable they were that it was tough watching them go through the meat grinder of the second half.
"Man of Steel" on the other hand, begins with action, continues with action, and ends with action, taking only brief breaks to string along a flimsy plot and barely flesh out stereotypical characters. Halfway through the city-wrecking final action sequence one finds oneself wishing the film would just get to the point! Both the magnitude of destruction and sheer volume of film expended in "Man of Steel" dwarfs that of Aliens, but there is only a fraction of the tension. You could take your time going to the bathroom at any point in "Man of Steel" and, odds are, all you'd miss is some CG mayhem that has no lasting effect on the plot. Does it really matter how many buildings Superman and his foes level without resolving anything?
Today's film makers are too often afraid of boring their audience and too frequently sacrifice developing what makes the action matter for the sake of giving their audience non-stop action. Non-stop meaningless action is like eating nothing but ice-cream for dinner. Sure, ice cream is great, but it simply isn't satisfying on its own. Today's film makers should look to the early 80's as an example of what can be accomplished when you don't underestimate your audience's attention span.
> That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
That doesn't make sense to me. Martin Roby was the original character for "Alien" and in the first movie, for the most part Ripley wasn't the bad-ass character she would be throughout the second movie.
But the OP was anyway talking about "Aliens" and there Roby could no longer have been an influence for her character.
Agreed, I'm actually pretty shocked that they reduced it to a 15, there's some pretty strong stuff in there.
11-year-olds are young enough to get terrible nightmares from films like Aliens - if it was my child who wanted to watch something age-appropriate and got shouted down, I'd be pretty furious.
The Aliens series of sci-fi films is my favorite of all time. Even though I watched the first two on tv, they were still amazing, and I have the 5 DVD set. I enjoyed them all, even though one or two of them weren't as popular. The story lines and arcs were pretty original and well thought out. Just an awesome series.
Neill Blomkamp, director of "District 9," is going to direct an "Aliens" sequel! It seems that first he said he'd ignore "Alien 3" and "Alien: Resurrection," but it seems like he's taken that back.
[1] http://www.avclub.com/article/neill-blomkamps-alien-movie-will-ignore-alien-3-an-215808
[2] http://www.avclub.com/article/actually-blomkamps-alien-movie-wont-ignore-alien-3-215905
"I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."
I felt the same about "The Pianist"!
> Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female).
That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
My kids love the really 'German' tales - but I won't let them watch Aliens (just yet). The difference is that the reading gives us the opportunity to discuss the tale, allay fears, and try to find a moral message within the tale.
A movie tends to be presented without an ongoing parental filter as the images go directly to the psyche without pause.
I watched Aliens with my 10-year-old daughter a few weeks ago. We had watched Alien a few weeks before. She had wanted to watch a real horror, but couldn't make it through the first few minutes of Scream, so we settled on Alien. She thought the alien bursting out of John Hurt's character was really funny. And it is. She thought the beginning of Aliens was too slow and it wasn't all that scary for her, but she enjoyed the film overall. I don't know if I would watch Prometheus with her - I'm sure she'd agree that film was terrible.
The second episode of the excellent "I Was There Too" podcast features Ricco Ross, who played Private Frost in Aliens.
It's an excellent episode (and show) filled with cool trivia from the cast and film shoot.
http://iwastheretoo.wolfpop.com/audio/20250/aliens-with-ricco-ross
Also, Aliens is the 2nd greatest action movie (after Die Hard) of all time, and #1 sci-fi action movie ever.
> Fun fact: Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez)
Did you ask her about the auditioning gaffe where she turned-up thinking it was a film about illegal aliens?
Hence the Vasquez recruiting joke that made it into the film.
Anyway, I have found that it's pretty much impossible for a group of adults to sit and watch Aliens. Everyone wants to shout Hudson's lines, at least after dubbing-over Frost for the first 30 minutes. Completely spoils the atmosphere.
I saw Aliens when it opened and I was about a week from turning 16. I had seen Alien when it came out (my Mom was a movie lover), and had been about a month from turing 9. I had not even seen the trailer so I was expecting another creepy horror film. I was totally blown away, it really felt like an action adventure with some horror. Since then, they released an extended edition with the auto-cannons and it seems like a different film.
Funny thing is the first movie was scary when I saw it, but not something I dwelled on. I did get the big Alien that glowed in the dark for Xmas, and that scared the crap out of me when my Dad hung them by their tails in the basement.
Plus, for how many times you hear: "Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" or the actual quote "Nuke the entire site from orbit--it’s the only way to be sure", it had to have a bit of an impact.
Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom.
You certainly don't want to give your children free reign to watch all the sex and violence they want (Will I sit down and watch a porn with my kids? Heck no!) but I think that discussing sex and violence with them is probably a lot more valuable than simply shielding them from it.
I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13, along with a bunch of other dumb 1980s action movies. I didn't grow up to be violent, because my parents gave me a strong moral grounding and I understood the line between fantasy and reality - blowing things up and doing martial arts on people was okay in a movie, but not okay in real life. I understood that, so no movie was ever going to be able to change me.
It's almost a crime to be a writer on RogerEbert.com yet not reference Ebert's classic review of Aliens, so well written that I can still remember his characterization and nod my head at it:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/aliens-1986
> It's here that my nerves started to fail. "Aliens" is absolutely, painfully and unremittingly intense for at least its last hour. Weaver goes into battle to save her colleagues, herself and the little girl, and the aliens drop from the ceiling, pop up out of the floor and crawl out of the ventilation shafts. (In one of the movie's less plausible moments, one alien even seems to know how to work the elevator buttons.) I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.
> I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.
It sounds like all of the kids were boys...It'd be interesting to hear the perspective of girls watching it for the first time. Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female). Only years later have I realized that Alien and Aliens (never watched the other Alien movies) were unique among blockbuster movies in how the heroine is both the savior and not written as an object of romantic interest (beyond a brief flirtation with Cpl. Hicks)...Unlike movies like "Kill Bill" (which I love), the woman isn't written as an oddity, but a down-to-earth character who happens to be strong and resourceful. I never even thought Sigourney Weaver was beautiful until seeing her in other non-action movies.
Edit: speaking of watching Aliens as a kid...I think it's the movie that caused the longest-running movie-inspired-phobia in my life...hearing something under my bed, and then not wanting to look under my bed for fear of a facehugger attacking me.
For all the "think of the children" commentators here and in the blog - why is it that kids who have parents that hide them from everything "bad", wind up so messed up, narcissistic, and are generally unable to cope with life?
The answer is of course right there, by putting them in a "safe place" you've removed every adversary and every challenge - right when the mind needs those things the most so it can form abilities necessary to deal with and move forward in life (a life that will throw all kinds of issues, disasters, and curve balls at you).
Its kind of like the peanut allergy study that was posted here a day or two ago... The infants and children that don't get exposed to peanuts at an early age - so their systems can get familiar and use to it, are most likely to end up in the highly allergic group. [this is just an analogy]
edit:
This isn't about movies (that word is not mentioned in my post). Some of the replies so far are red-herrings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring).
I'm not suggesting that children should be constantly exposed (or made to watch) graphic and horror movies to prepare them for life.
And I'm sure there are cases of children who just can't handle these things at the age of 10-15... Though most will be fine - and won't need therapy, will not have their lives ruined, nor will their well-beings be negatively impacted.
I am also not suggesting that they should have no supervision.
What I am suggesting is that there are too many over-protective and helicopter parents who are making "special children" that can only live and function inside bubbles.
And if the child get's broken by watching "Aliens" at the age of 11, then the problem is with the parenting - rather than the friend's dad who let them watch it.
In which case, please, attach a note to the child with all the rather available things that he/she should not be exposed to or is allergic to (like peanut butter).
We live in a society where a child would have to sit on a park bench for 700,000 years before he/she would get kidnapped, but if you leave him/her in a car to pay the gas station clerk, someone can take a picture of that child being untended and send it to the police, which will then charge you with a misdemeanor.
I first saw Aliens when I was 12 or 13 on cable in the late 80s and it blew me away. Perfect movie in every way. I could watch it every day and never get tired of it. Funny thing was that our local cable network showed the "extended version" (with the sentry turrets, scenes with Newt's parents, etc) and for years I thought I'd imagined some of those scenes because the extended version wasn't available on video until much later.
Fun fact: Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez) runs several bra stores in the Los Angeles area that cater to women with difficult-to-fit sizes. She is a total sweetheart. If you have a small group and contact her via email ahead of time she may be willing to make accommodations for your group. We had about four couples and she opened the store a bit early for our group. The women got fitting sessions (she personally fitted my wife) and she chatted with us for a bit afterward, including answering some questions about Aliens.
Please be respectful of her time and the fact that she's running a business, obviously. The bras are fairly expensive (but worth it, according to the women in our group) and they don't carry anything smaller than a D cup. So if you're not a potential customer, this is not the way to meet "Pvt. Vasquez!"
My son (just born Friday!) has a named influenced by Aliens. The special edition is one of my favorite movies. Even as an adult I could watch it continuously. I can't wait to watch it with my boys (quite a few years to go).
What a treat to see such a great dad and movie story on an exhausted morning. Joeri's comment about practical effects is spot on.
Great write-up. But why did I read the comments? Immediate conjectural descent into the harm inflicted on the children without parental consent. This is a more egregious reality today than kids needing to verbalize all the things.
Personally, if I'd sent my 11yo over to Roger Ebert's house I'd expect him or her to watch whatever movie was on offer and thoroughly thank me for the experience years later.
I just watched Aliens for umpteenth time last week. The harsh language line still gets me. And I always am just a little more on edge when I walk outside after watching.
The first time I saw Aliens, I was on acid, and to me, in that state of mind, it seemed like the best movie ever created.
I remember sweating a lot watching it, and all the meta-references that psychedelics enhance seemed to work perfectly within the framework of this story and show.
More to the authors point, I have two grown sons and a 13yo daughter, and always, the best way for me to relive my (often misspent) youth is with and through them, by sharing the same or very similar experiences.
I was born in 1980, I didn't have an awesome home life but some of my fondest memories are watching films like Aliens (and Blade Runner and Terminator) with my father.
There was and is something undefinable about movies of that era (maybe everyone feels the same about the movies of their era) that modern films rarely capture for me.
And as we watched, I realized again that while unfortunately you can't see a great movie again for the first time, the next-best thing is to show it to people who've never seen it.
The third-best thing is reading a well-written account of that fresh showing of the movie. Now I want to watch Aliens again with my kids.
> "I also rewatched Alien, and my god, when they show the whole Alien's body it looks like a guy in a rubber suit. Without CGI, that's the best you can do. A guy in a suit or a crappy puppet."
You should compare Alien to its sequel Aliens. It too used people in suits and puppets to portray the xenomorphs, however due to improved creature design I think it looks miles better.
I recommend watching the entire movie instead of clips of the effects, but even on their own I think Aliens's hold up very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp7SNoYOQmY
In my early teens I watched Alien the first time, I thought it was boring and lamer than Aliens.
In my twenties, I decided to watch both again, and it was only then I could deeply appreciated the brilliance of a true genuine horror sci-fi movie.
Yeah you can actually take it further and see Aliens as a struggle between two mothers, Ripley and the queen alien, fighting over the child Newt.
It's also interesting that the strongest characters in the movie are women. Ripley is the strongest civilian, Newt the strongest colonist (the only survivor actually), Vazquez the strongest marine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYkxCzBszOQ), and the queen alien is the strongest xenomorph.
I think it is unfair to say that Aliens ignores the gender of the main protagonist. Rather, it makes great use of it. Ripley assumes a maternal role with Newt, the little girl survivor, which is something foreshadowed by the scene at the beginning when she learns that her daughter died while she was in stasis. Unfortunately, this scene was cut from the original theatrical release of the film but it is preserved in the special edition. They say Sigourney Weaver was furious that the scene was cut, and rightfully so, as it frames her character's relationship with Newt.
OT: This is a throwaway comment in a caption near the end:
> Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of Alien, but Alien had a reason for it.
A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades that inadvertently lead to the final fight.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels logical (she's getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.
For the speculative future sake of humanity, if you ever work on the GUI for one of those things, make sure it has an elevation indicator.
More than 1m below the detector, show a downward-pointing triangle. More than 1m above it, show an upward-pointing triangle. Within 1m, show a square. Change the relative size of the icon according to the size of the moving object. Add telltale lines extending from the center of the icon in a contrast color to show direction of motion and speed.
I realize that the shortcomings of the device UI were critical to the dramatic tension, but whenever I see that scene in Aliens, I can't help but sympathetically think about the poor military-industrial-complex gadget developer who wasn't even allowed to think about the user experience, because the requirements were determined by someone who would likely never use it, and cast in concrete long before anyone was hired to implement them.
And the thing that really kills me is that the person who created those requirements probably based them on a device seen in a sci-fi movie. This is why it is so important for film directors to employ technical consultants whenever they include gadgets and computer monitors. Anything seen on the big screen will have an ongoing and possibly unintended future influence on design.
This quote from the article made me think immediately of the 'motion trackers' as used in the Aliens films, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yNOT6lWedA
"The radars work like finely tuned motion detectors, using radio waves to zero in on movements as slight as human breathing from a distance of more than 50 feet. They can detect whether anyone is inside of a house, where they are and whether they are moving."
Even though I've got a keen interest in computer graphics I've always found well-done live-action special effects to be more engaging than digital effects. There are movies who don't abuse the seemingly limitless power of computing but in my opinion there are surprisingly few.
Good examples where analog > digital: all the Ray Harryhausen movies, Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, Terminator, Predator...
This isn't for city riding. It is for riding on country roads. If you've ever done any road cycling outside of city centres, it can get very risky as the cars are going so much faster and there isn't the same road shoulder. Your ears are not enough. Personally I hate cycling on country roads because of this so I would definitely use this radar.
I agree with an earlier comment about non-visual feedback. An audio queue would be good (thinking like the trackers in the Aliens movies)
Maybe I misunderstood your comment but parent was about Aliens, this is about The Fifth Element. Different movies different fictional weapons. TFE's one is more fictional.
[Spoiler?] If the movie is called "Alien", is it really a spoiler to say that you see the alien by the end? I suspect that most of the movie is spent dreading the eventuality that we all expect. ;) Granted it's been a long time since I saw the movie, so I might have forgotten why it's a spoiler.
edit: I suspect that I saw Aliens before Alien, and therefore already had an expectation of what it would look like. Thanks to the sibling/cousin comments for explaining that :)
OK, to go off on a tangent...here's the best example I can think of that illustrates the imbalance of gender neutral roles that men take for granted and that women basically have never had: the only time I can think of, in American entertainment history, that a woman achieved the authority and an unforgettable identity that had nothing to do with "...because she's a woman" is: Ripley in Alien and Aliens (never saw 3 and 4, and probably never will).
In fact, she was so good at being "just" Ripley that it wasn't until I saw Sigourney Weaver in other movies did I realize, "Huh, Sigourney Weaver is a woman and she is hot"...She is the only female character I can think of in which her gender has no real bearing to how she acts, what she says, or how she is presented on screen.
I challenge anyone to think of any other woman character who follows Ripley's mold:
1. Does not overtly seek a romantic relationship
2. Sexual tension is not a compelling foil or conflict for the character
3. Is not thrown into an action role purely for the spectacle of a woman kicking ass
4. Is not shouted down or treated differently specifically because she is a woman.
5. Is not shown in a gratuitously sexual light (she is in her underwear the same time everyone else is logically in their underwear).
6. Is unequivocally the hero of the movie. In fact, in both movies [spoiler alert for 20 year old movies], it's quite notable that she is literally the last human being standing, and she wins on her own terms.
No other contenders, that I can think of, meet this standard, especially in the action film role: Catwoman, Aeon Flux, Tomb Raider...nope. Clarice Starling...even if you want to argue that no sexual tension exists between her and Hannibal Lecter (even though he specifically refers to it), much of the non-gruesome psychological conflict her character faces is precisely because she is a woman in a (tall) man's world. Beatrice in Kill Bill...great role, but again, it only works because she is a woman and it is a spectacle, even if empowering (i.e. could you imagine Kill Bill being made with a man in the role?)
The only woman character who comes close to the unisex appeal of Ripley is Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Other than that, it's pretty slim pickings...whereas for males, there are too many to count.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder how much growing up with Alien/Aliens affected how I think about gender roles and imbalance. Those being among the first and the most interesting of the action movies I'd ever seen (then, and today), I kind of think that the idea of a woman action hero was completely normal to me. And yet, as far as I can see, no one like Ripley has since been written...
The thing is, this basically suffers the same problems. It's not so much technical shortcomings (although the sound desperately needs work...but I'm a sound guy so I would say that). It's just that special effects, ultra-violence, money shots, and showdowns are not the backbone of a movie. Now, the eye-candy stuff is the most expensive in production terms on a real movie, and trailers are always full of eye candy because a) you want to catch people's attention and b) you need to sketch the story very quickly and pictures are the most efficient way of doing that. But the backbone of the story is the relationship between the characters that you care about, and you can't ever get to know characters enough to care about them if they're just walking around turned up to 11 all the time.
Look at South Park - visually speaking it looks terrible, the character design and animation is about as basic as it can possibly get. But it's involving because the characters act out their personalities in a consistent enough way that the audience can identify with them by mentally modeling their behavior. South Park sin't to everyone's taste of course, but you can think of lots of other examples, I just picked this one to point out that the visuals are the least important element. The surprise in a storytelling reveal comes from discovering that a character is not who you thought she was, or or from having a resolution between two conflicting elements within the same character.
The reason that tragedies are tragic is because there are many things you like about the lead and it's painful to see them lost because of the lead's poor moral choices and eventual downfall. Likewise the enjoyment in seeing a hero's triumph is in watching them transcend their weaknesses. Rocky wouldn't be a success if it was just 90 minutes of Sylvester Stallone boxing to victory. the film seems like it's about boxing, but it isn't. It's about a dead-end guy who wants love and self-respect. Only his girlfriend knows what his real goal is, because she's the only person he's able to be completely honest with.
The problem with Deathknights in Love is that nobody in this story seems to have any life outside of Being Epic, whether they're Casting Epic Spells, Fighting Epic Battles, or Making Epic Whoopie. I can't relate to them because they're not real people, they're WoW avatars. I think Valve's Team Fortress & source toolkit are a far more fruitful tool for Machinima because the characters are more cartoonish and have clearly delineated strengths and weaknesses, so while none of the related Machinima is Shakespeare there is plenty of scope for comedy. The relative lack of realism makes it easier to focus on the dramatic elements rather than the purely visual ones (camera moves, impressive entrances and poses, special effects etc.). I think this was also a key aspect of Red v. Blue's success - it's much easier to transcend production quality constraints with humor.
I work on a lot of low-budget films, many of which are dreadful - and what makes them bad is not the lack of production value (sets costumes, cinematography, FX etc. etc.) but the lack of life in the characters, who are usually so bad that the actors and crew hold the fictional characters in complete contempt; at least if the characters are ridiculous the film has a chance to be tongue-in-cheek funny, but often they're just awful. This is the opposite of the film school problem where the characters tend to be richly textured wonderful people (because the writers and directors want everyone to know how interesting and pleasant they are), but there's not much budget or time for production value so you get a lot of films where Nothing Happens and the nice people who live in the world of the film are never put under sufficient stress to make for an interesting story.
With Machinima, the temptation is to use the computer for all that stuff that would be impossibly expensive to do otherwise. And I don't blame anyone for wanting to do something that looks epic, because while comedy is easier to stage it's harder to write, and if you want to be dramatic then awkward/comic stuff lets the air out of the balloon and can actually be depressing. But the strength of epic stories comes from the character development and that ultimately means characters have to overcome their natural tendencies in pursuit of something else. I would be much more interested in (and forgiving of) the Deathknight story if started out with a character that was actually fearful and whose sole interest was in escape, survival, and relief from being someone else's target all the time. That's a situation where good and evil start to actually matter, and courage has to be found rather than just being a character trait for the people on screen to measure each others' bad-assery. Apocalypto is a good film exploration of this theme, not least because it has so little dialog and all the action is motivated by the lead characters need to escape.
Alternatively, I'd be intersted in a story where I find out why the villian is so bent on exterminating everyone else. It's not Because He's Evil; nobody goes through life doubling down on the belief that they're a bad person, people do evil things because they believe they're superior and that people who get in their way are obstacles to be overcome in the pursuit of some worth (by the villain's standards) goal. A villain that just wants everyone dead doesn't have anything much to struggle for; even if s/he's a sadist, then there needs to be a struggle against boredom. If the villain completely succeeded in taking over the world and eliminating all opposition, what would s/he do then? Villains are either fleeing fears or pursuing goals just like heroes; when a plot revolves around Good vs Evil it's usually a sign that the story is basically Zombies vs. Zombies. Even in such a situation, audiences still want o pick a side; so the Alien vs. Predator movies succeed as action movies because we can anthropomorphize the Predator character more easily than the Xenomorph. If it was, I dunno, Aliens vx. Giant Spiders or Terminator vs. Predator (or any plot where both sides are intent on the destruction of the other and have little or no instinct for self-preservation) then it isn't that interesting to watch any more because questions of success or failure become so abstract as to be meaningless.
In short, I need a reason to care for characters other than their merely wearing metaphorical white hats or being the first people to appear on the screen before the Villains.
My first reaction to this news was: "there is one screenwriter who was involved in writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi?"...and he's still alive? what the hell has he been doing all this time and how badly did he piss off George Lucas to not be involved in the most recent Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies? Both Raiders and ESB have such wild adventure and such respect for the audience's intelligence that watching them today is still a revelation, even after seeing them dozens of times. I recently watched Avengers for the first time and was shocked at just how such a dull movie could make so much money...are our standards just lower? Are special effects too relied on to gloss over poor imagination? Or am I just getting really old, even though the original Star Wars movies were before my time? I felt the same way during Avatar...I couldn't believe that the same guy who wrote the sparse but brilliantly quotable dialogue of "Aliens" was behind Avatar's groanworthy one liners.
I hope Kasdan brings back the magic and that the reason why we don't see movies like ESB and Raiders anymore is because their screenwriter simply stopped writing them.
"provide an equal number of counterexamples, then."
Equal number to what? What is the number we are looking at - did anybody even count anything here? I already mentioned several female action heroes in other comments, like Underworld, Resident Evil, Buffy, Dark Angel, Aliens, Aeon Flux, Nikita. If you only count movies that are actually worthwhile, the comparison to male hero movies is not bad (I can only compare to mostly worthwhile movies).
Also some things don't make sense, as somebody pointed out, WW2 didn't have that many female soldiers, so why would you expect 50% of WW2 movies to be about female soldiers? You could go on and complain that there are too many WW2 movies, but that is hardly convincing as a feminist issue.
"Your last paragraph is blatant sexism, fyi."
It's not actually. Would "women have boobs" also be a controversial statement? It is very obvious that it is easier for women to reproduce than for men, and it is statistically proven. Just because you can't see it (like boobs hanging off a person) doesn't mean some difference does not exist.
Men get to do the life threatening jobs because men are more expendable. Women are the limiting factor in reproduction (only about one baby can be produced every nine months per woman).
It doesn't mean that women can't do life threatening jobs, just that there is a reason they usually don't have to.
If it is sexist to assume that there are differences between men and women, then maybe it was sexist. Then I'd have to say I'd rather be sexist and stick to science than give up logic for ideology.
Edit: I wonder what is the feminist explanation for less women doing risky jobs? The patriarchy doesn't want women to be cannon fodder because they could start believing they can be aggressive and revolt against men? Or really just the media - if more female warrior movies were being made, women would be flocking to the military by the millions?
I came to say something similar. Much of the tech like light-speed travel and other advances will not be around for a very long time, perhaps never. There's a fine line between sci-fi and fantasy. Lots of ideas have been done in other movies, like The Matrix, with instant learning through brain programming, lifelike VR simulations. Men in Black, Thor, Contact, Aliens go from sci-fi to unrealistic fantasy.
I think Star Trek tries to maintain a balance that still looks attainable. Also, perhaps there's a shortage of grandiose discoveries lately. We know the Higgs exists, the universe is flat from WMAP, quantum entanglement is gaining practical use. But this isnt as useable for movies as say discovering that we live in a universe with other galaxies, etc...
Didn't they refer to characters in the Aliens films as Space Marines? The movies predate the game genre I believe.
Obviously the 1930s has both trumped.
Starcraft rips off both WH40k and Aliens, but I think it rips of Aliens more. Plus, Aliens was released 1 year before WH40k, so it has precedence. And Aliens ripped off Starship Troopers (the book), and Starship Troopers (the movie) rips off Aliens. It's complicated.
WH original and Warcaft are both simpler - they both rip off LOTR.
Aliens came out in 1986. I don't know how much more common you need to be than that.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/
I'd personally been using the term since growing up watching Star Blazers cartoons in the 70s.
> Exactly the same thing is happening in the movie industry.
And I personally hate it. I remember a time when "blockbusters" included stuff like Total Recall, Die Hard, Terminator II or Aliens, I just want that again. There's still the casual Sucker Punch or Watchmen, but they're too few and far between.
"Look at the popular SciFi shows of the last few years. Namely Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. Both presented a future that was lived in, almost dirty."
Good point. One reason the first three Star Wars movies were so popular is that the places they showed looked "real". They looked reasonably lived in, solid places with actual inhabitants. The Falcon looked like my parents used station wagon.
It can go wrong, the Aliens movies always end up in a future that's positively filthy. Blade Runner, I think, sits just on the fithy side of the line. But future LA feels like a real "place".
My personal favorite vision of the future is the one presented in the Fifth Element loosely based on Valérian and Laureline. It's lived in, bustling, stylish (at various levels of fashion), shiny and bright where it counts, unfashionable where it should be and just dirty enough in the places that should be dirty. Small details, like the dirt Leeloo picks up when escaping the lab, add to this feeling of solidity. Popular culture is magnified to stand out amongst the crushing masses, and it seems like a place with endless nooks and crannies to explore. It's not utopian, but it's not dystopian. It feels like what the future would be like if it were the present...and somebody made a modern day adventure movie. It has an amazing tone.
It's amazing to me that more works haven't been created in that universe.
Except for movie posters Clockwork Orange. Aliens. Star Wars. Love the black.
In the context of the narrative itself ... And you gotta start there.
See, I disagree that it has to start there.
I love the movie, but I analyze it that Dan O'Bannon wrote a script in the 80s for an 80s crowd, and he knew that the audience and the purchasers of his script would love seeing a shapely Ellen Ripley in her feminine white panties one moment and in a masculine yellow loader the next showing all the military men she was their equal or better. It was a rah rah feminism moment, one of many you go grrl moments in cinema. (And O'Bannon also knew about Chekhov's gun and knew it would be good for the audience to introduce her talents with the loader early in the movie.)
So I see the internal narrative as a function of what scripts could be expected to sold and be successful in the 80s.
Similarly, Aliens can also be analyzed outside the narrative of the movie as a Vietnam War movie, and in the early 80s when it came out, that was a pretty big deal, especially since the movie was a science fiction movie, set in the future, about the Vietnam War.
Hahaha, I love the "nuke em from orbit" comment. Aliens is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time!
But I agree 100% with you. Feeling appreciated and valued can make up for a surprising amount of small things (which can quickly become mammoth). All I ask is that you treat me like a human being and give me a fair salary, and in return I will do my absolute best for you.
> Regardless of what one may think of his movies; this is bad ass.
Hmmmmm.... Aliens, Titanic, Avatar... not to mention Terminator, T2, The Abyss. Many people consider his movies to be bad ass and innovative as well. He's one of the very few directors where I can count on him setting his own bar so high that I'm going to love whatever he makes. Along with Ridley Scott and Spielberg, and more recently Nolan and Fincher joining their ranks, in my eyes.
I've been saying this for years!
It should be called "James Cameron Goes to the Moon."
The movie is about James Cameron trying to go to the moon, but he is constantly sabotaged by the bad guy from Aliens. Ultimately, he succeeds and gets to the Moon. The last 30 minutes are just sweet, sweet HD shots of the moon, directed by James Cameron.
>This is just sad, I get the impression from the comments and up votes that tech does not get Hollywood. Hollywood business only work because only Hollywood is willing to give Christopher Nolan 200+ million dollars to make Dark Knight, ditto with James Cameron's Avatar.
Your comment is somewhat ridiculous because these examples are not risks. Christopher Nolan was well known before Batman Begins in writing Memento. James Cameron wrote the script for the original Terminator and directed Aliens, T2 and the highest grossing film of all time in Titanic. Anyone would've bet on these two individuals.
Interesting.
The nice thing about the Orwell review for me is that by explicitly talking about the atomic bomb and spelling it out for me in that context, it led me to an understanding of a lot of other cultural output (especially film) over the next few decades. Star Trek IV? Oh, that space probe that's out to destroy the world is a symbol for the atomic bomb. (I had some help from the boombox quip about how "we'll all be crispy critters after WORLD WAR III.") Blade Runner? Is about living with the expectation your life could end tomorrow. Aliens? Is about the destruction of civilization. And it's not just hardcore sci-fi. Why did the film adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH into The Secret of NIMH rewrite the end plot with that stupid mystical jewel-locket-thing? Besides the fact that it's more cinematic, perhaps the director was pondering the promise and perils of science, especially atomic weapons and atomic energy. Flippin' Rock-a-doodle? I'm thinking 'nuclear winter'.
You just don't get that same flavor with things produced after the mid-eighties.
I think a problem with "rewatchability" is that it can vary drastically with the amount of viewings. I'm going to substitute Aliens for Transformers, because "watchable" is not a word I would use to describe Transformers.
Aliens is very rewatchable. It has tense but predictable action (the aliens kill everyone, "get away from her", etc.). Sure, it's best the first time, but Aliens only ceases to be rewatchable when you get tired of watching Aliens.
Films like Primer, Fight Club, and The Usual Suspects, are very rewatchable once, with a sharp decline afterwards. The Soze/Durden effect is incredible once. The next time, you want to watch very closely to catch all of the obvious hints that you missed. You might still miss some, but not many. By the fourth time, it's almost pointless.
I agree entirely with the various posts as to why Blade Runner has held up so well - the keen visual style, the incredible craftsmanship of Trumbull, and least of which - Ridley Scott's brilliant directing.
There is one other thing that I pointed out 10+ years ago in a film class that's often overlooked - the hair styles of the film (and also Alien 1).
Seriously, think about what a smart/bold design move it was to have everyone in such short hair - it's timeless. If you think I'm joking compare Alien 1 or Blade Runner to Aliens By James Cameron - a movie can be dated by mishandling such a small detail.
The other thing I love is how thorough Ridley Scott, Sid Mead, Dan O'Bannon and Trumbull's vision is in both Blade Runner and Alien (1); so dense and fully realized you get the sense that the doom shipped Nostromo departed Blade-Runner earth. Classic, incredible films.
They won't stop. Warm-cool color combos (orange/yellow vs blue, teal vs orange, cyan vs red, steel vs red etc.) provide the most color contrast, so the picture always looks "bright" and "vivid" to a casual viewer.
BTW, the trick is far from new. Some examples that come to mind are Aliens and Terminator 2 (blue/gray vs red/orange, done via lighting) and Empire Strikes Back (again, blues vs reds/oranges -- very well nuanced across the entire movie except the Yoda swamp scenes).
See also: "Superstimulus": http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Superstimulus
I actually thought the film was much less anti-corporate than previous work by Cameron. In Aliens we have the corporation that is the acting force behind the military. In Avatar the Ribisi character is weak and even somewhat sympathetic.
As far as the script goes, my favourite line was Sigorney Weaver's toss-off about the Tree of Souls: "I'd die to get a sample of that". Between that and the obvious dualism intended with the mechanical and natural avatars, there's enough evidence of a thinking screenwriter to justify the film. Too bad it never really comes together.
Not to review a review, but this is not a very good review. Much more interesting is the linked wired article.
I have always been disappointed in the Star Trek films, being a fan of Dune. Yes, it does seem to me to be a rip-off of Dune, and a poor one at that. I think Avatar is a much better movie than any of the Star Trek series. I wouldn't say that it is the best movie ever, but it is certainly at the top of the list for special effects, by a large measure.
(Don't forget that James Cameron did Aliens, Titanic, Terminator one and two.)
I didn't find the linked article remotely critical or insightful. The author accuses Cameron of hypocrisy simply for having an environmental agenda. Why it is wrong for a successful entrepreneur to have an ecological agenda. I use money and care about the environment. Am I a hypocrite too?
The most interesting thing as far as I'm concerned is the evolution we can see in Cameron's approach to the military industrial complex. In Aliens it is the corporation that is the malevolent organization. It manipulates the military to do its will, and while the military is dehumanizing and anti-feminist, at least the individual soldiers are morally neutral and somewhat sympathetic characters.
In Avatar we see a much more coercive and malevolent military organization which is inseparable from the corporation itself. Cameron has become much more cynical in his view of politics. And that is interesting on its own, even without going into all of the strange parallels the script draws between the two sides which imo undermine the claims that this is an unthinking film.
"... An entire generation of teenagers are now going to have a lifelong crush on a huge blue woman with a tail named Neytiri ..."
I went and saw Avatar yesterday and was blown away.
It was as good as when I first saw Star Wars the first time it was shown after wagging school and catching a train into the city. It was way better than the first Star Trek feature film first hit the cinema - those close-ups of the Enterprise still make me cringe. It was as good as Alien and Alien II which followed. I was trying to think why. Here's some of the reasons.
While most films shy away from the complexity of situations, this one didn't. I get the feeling Cameron had some unfinished business. A story not told, an alternate Aliens. The similarities are pretty striking. The film is about colonisation of a planet, with ruthless company yes-men backed up by Colonial Marines (or PMC's in this case). It even has Ripley. This time though we see colonisation and exploitation from the eyes of the conquered. We see what is lost. We see the consequences.
This isn't a re-make of Aliens two where the Colonial Marines blast away Ripley's bad-guys. Instead we are shown the complexity of a culture clashes, the conqueror and conquered. We see the relationship between locals and their environment, man made corporations and hired muscle and most importantly the consequences of War. It could be South America when Cortez arrived looking for gold, it could in the jungles of Sumatra now with timber ~ http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/wherewework/borneo/people.html The film is also is about as anti-mainstream as you'll probably get in popular culture.
Ask yourself what was the last time you saw a film that painted a beautiful picture of an environment and culture then see it destroyed in grisly detail before you... this is no ordinary Hollywood action flic. Sure the good guys win and the company men get packing. There are weak points in the film. I noticed even William Gibson was a bit shocked (my measure of what good writing is) ~ http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/6810783279 at name given to the exploited mineral "unobtanium" ~ http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/6810951397 being mined.
The strength of the film is that it mirrors enough of our own world right now and that and the richness of the characters and ideas in my mind makes up for any of the technical shortfalls.
The sad part is that the trailer gives an impression of what I believe the movie is not at first glance. The title of the project would have been better if changed as well. The title seems like a kids movie and blue anoxeric smurfs do not seem like they would be enticing to adults; however, I really want to see this movie... not because of the trailer but because I like the idea of Cameron returning to what made his films special in the first place. Titanic was a terrible movie and should have been a dud. It was not enjoyable to watch for me, and it was the first and only movie I walked out on. (I returned around the time the boat started sinking.) However, Aliens, Terminator, etc. are some of my favorite movies. To see his talent is to compare his movies to their sequels by other directors. Terminator 3 was terrible. T4 was good, but it did not compare to T1 and T2. And Terminator 2 was one of the only sequels I believe that was actually better than the original. Anyway, I think this movie has promise but the marketing itself has been lacking. They should have focused on the epic aspects of the film in the marketing.
The Terminator, Terminator 2 and Aliens are his best in my opinion. The Abyss is also quite good but not as much of an action movie.
Notable films from: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/#director
Titanic (1997) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) The Abyss (1989) Aliens (1986) The Terminator (1984)