Alien vs. Aliens

Agreed.

You don't see the Space Jockey ship again so for all you know, the eggs are naturally occurring on LV-426, or why the hell the Nostromo stopped there in the first place and more importantly, why Ripley has an intense dislike for the company.

15 minutes in and I've felt like I've missed a shitload of context...

Here's what you do: Take Aliens out of the video player, put in Alien, and watch that, then start Aliens again.

Well let's review.

She literally summarizes the events of Alien, including the nature of the xenomorph, what was on the planet, and what happened after they got there before she even gets to LV-426 with the marines.

She doesn't hate the company in one or two. Seriously. That isn't a thing till the other movies. She is more pissed about not being believed and losing her license.

Alien, while good for it's time, has begun to age badly. As a stand alone horror film, it's pretty bad to be honest. Aliens is also beginning to show it's age, but it's holding up better than Alien.

When I show the films to others I always do Aliens and then Alien as a prequel. It works better, especially with most of the films main surprises being spoiled to most people already.

lol

You're crazy if you think Alien has aged worse than Aliens did.

That was what was tripping me up. I wasn't understanding her summary or something. Anyway, I've put Alien on now.

Alien has really aged worse. I just watched them with someone who hadn't seen them and they were laughing during Alien. lol

Seinfeld Is Unfunny?

What was he laughing at?

If we are going to talk about Aliens (and Alien) lets all remember the noble sacrifice of Hudson.

He went out shooting horrible monsters while swearing at them. That's how a man dies.

Well, and spoiler for the new guy, look away new guy! Look away!

When Dallas goes down the vent to try to kill it, the scene where he gets caught was some high level hilarity. He dubbed the surprise birthday Alien. Also he got upset when Lambert and parker bite he thought it was stupid, which it kinda was. lol

I don't think I would get along well with anyone who started laughing during Alien. Punching would probably ensue.

Given a choice at gunpoint between Alien and Aliens, I would be all of thirty nanoseconds in saying, "Give me Aliens, please. In fact, give me more Aliens. Give me a proper sequel that ignores EVERYTHING that wasn't the comics version of Aliens v Predator and I would be yours for life."

None of the movies made after Aliens were any good, and I saw all of them either all the way through or enough to make my mind up that "yeah, this is shit."

Alien may be the better film, but Aliens was a superior popcorn movie. There's a difference between those two things, and one I tend to see a lot from Hollywood.

Everybody knows the real debate is Pushing pencils for the CIA vs Getting to the Choppa

That's the same movie in both choices.

Somebody has a stick up their ass.

So I never much cared for Aliens because it felt just like a lot of other action films I've seen. But back wheN i made this topic here and elsewhere, a lot of Aliens fans told me that the reason for this is because there was a lot of Follow the Leader. Aliens was the pioneer for a lot of the tropes or cliches I've come to take for granted. And the same is true for Alien.

They were both revolutionary for their time but a lot of people looking back see them as "unoriginal" or "generic" because we've seen all the stuff made after them.

So perhaps my feeling Alien was a lot more nuanced had more to do with the fact I've seen less movies like it while I've seen a lot of flicks like Aliens.

I still prefer Alien. I like how much more down-to-earth it is while Aliens is really half-comedy in my opinion. But maybe it's satire, sort of like the movie version of Starship Troopers. In any event, I just find Alien's slow and methodic approach better for the "alien" than the more action format of Aliens.

edited 21st Aug '14 11:25:34 AM by Nikkolas

Alien...because Alien has the better Ellen Ripley imho (honestly, the character is written differently for every single movie). Plus, I think it was a really good idea to set a horror movie in space, thus removing the old "why the hell are those stupid people not leaving the house and go to the police" question. An action movie on the other hand feels kind of generic, and is, at the end of the day, kind of limited in space, in both meanings of the word.

Alien.

Aliens.

Been trying for a while to watch Alien now. First impression is that it's freaking sloooooooooooooow and I can't tell any of the characters apart.

That's because they're not characters, they're meant to be more like people than archetypes. You're not seeing characters, you're eavesdropping on the lives of some folks who can barely stand one another and just wanna do their job, get paid, and go home.

And that slowness is called buildup. It's why the movie's so scary. That and the facerape.

And done. That was... um, a thing?

Spill a bit more: What did you like about it, what didn't you like about it, did it scare you?

Liked: Ripley's character, alien's design, overall atmosphere of everything, sciencey explanations of creature's biology.

Unexpected twists that I liked: Ash being an android, the alien still being on the ship near the end.

Disliked: Pacing. It takes what, six minutes for anything to happen?

Scared: Maybe a tiny bit. I think works of fiction don't usually scare me because I know they're fiction.

I think I'm just so new to movies as a whole that I don't really know how to process one in a totally unfamiliar genre, so it takes me a few hours of processing to decide whether or not it was worth my time.

Well, that opening on the seemingly abandoned ship was there to set up the future we've arrived at; on this ship, humanity seems to have vanished, and yet, the Nostromo continues about her daily maintenance as if we don't even matter. Just a little taste of how, well, alien this world is.