I just like the idea that it was only one alien in the first movie. It wasn't an entire horde of them like in Aliens. Also, even though the Marines may not have known what happened to the colony in Aliens, the viewer still did, which took all of the shock element from the first film out of the equation.

In Alien, it was a single alien almost stalking its prey silently throughout the vast majority of the movie. It wasn't battling soldiers, it was hunting relatively "normal" people, with the exception of the cyborg character. Not showing the creature until near the end was what made it so unique and so much different than the second. I did enjoy the second (minus Bill Paxton's acting), but I just don't really find the military aspect of it very appealing.

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Originally posted by OrangestO This isn't about physics, this is about waves.

Which modern viewer doesn't know what's going to happen to the crew of the Nostromo when they touch down on LV-426 in a film called Alien with a tagline "In space no one can hear you scream" that borrows liberally from older sci-fi films and is itself one of the most widely referenced and imitated sci-fi/horror films of all time?

In both films, you already know that the characters are going to have an unpleasant encounter with an alien. The tension comes from waiting to see exactly how it's going to pan out. One of the most effective devices for creating narrative irony is letting the audience know what the characters don't, and the first half of Aliens is all about an over-confident and under-prepared military unit marching into a situation they're completely unequipped to deal with.

For me, Aliens remains a more absorbing film even after a billion re-watches, because it is character driven. The characters are committing the hubris and mistakes that lead to their downfall, and in the second half of the film there's obvious development as most of the marines become decidedly more contrite, and Ripley gains a sense of vindicated authority. The characters in Alien don't really develop at all, such as they exist in the first place. Kane, Brett and Dallas in particular are just alien-fodder.

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Last edited by SYSTEM-J on Jun-10-2011 at 16:57

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Which modern viewer doesn't know what's going to happen to the crew of the Nostromo when they touch down on LV-426 in a film called Alien with a tagline "In space no one can hear you scream" that borrows liberally from older sci-fi films and is itself one of the most widely referenced and imitated sci-fi/horror films of all time?

In the poster/movie cover all you see is an egg. You never know what the alien looks like, how it kills, etc. until you actually see it, which is nearly at the end of the movie. In Aliens, you already know what the aliens look like, what they sound like, how they move, how they kill, etc. I didn't really know anything about it when I first saw it, obviously since it's such a classic sci-fi film now, that aspect of the movie would be lost. Still, I find it to be much more tense than Aliens. The element of suspense in the first one can't really be duplicated by any sequels.

The tagline just adds to that imo. The viewer knows something bad is going to happen, but not when or how.

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quote:

Originally posted by OrangestO This isn't about physics, this is about waves.

See my edit.

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quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J See my edit.

I agree with the character development issue you have with Alien, but I would argue that it's not really an issue for the film. The seemingly never-ending suspense has little to do with the characters. The viewer doesn't care about who the characters are, or how they're reacting to the stress of the seemingly invisible intruder. They're on the edges of their seat wanting to see what it is that's hunting them. You're right that they are two completely different styles of movies, so which one is "better" is obviously completely opinion based, I'm just saying that what I think makes Alien so great isn't dependent on acting or character development at all really. The characters are fairly irrelevant to the goal of the movie, which is to keep you guessing until the end.

Edit: You clearly know a lot more about film than I do, so I don't want to get into an argument about the various film conventions that make either movie so great. I'm just saying why I like the first one better.

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quote:

Originally posted by OrangestO This isn't about physics, this is about waves.

I had a dream about a battle between superheroes and aliens when I was a young. They fought eachother on my grandmothers front lawn. I climbed the apple tree just to be safe from the fighting. I watched from where I hid as superhero and alien battled it out to their deaths. Supeman had his penis hacked off and green ooze started pouring from the svered tip. But he grew a replacement out of his ass and launched into the sky like a rocket.

Blade Runner

Bladerunner

Ghost Busters

Temple of Doom

Predator

Aliens

infact...gonna watch temple of doom tonight with the lady just cause.

Last edited by BTG on Jun-11-2011 at 20:58

quote:

Originally posted by BTG Temples of Boom

Good album...

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Originally posted by chinamon chinamon is INCH MOAN. LOL so fitting.

I have a couple of decent thoughts i could express through film, one came upon after a dream i had about the fallout (nuclear holocaust); well, to save yourself some valuable time, the most vivid part of the dream was 'waking up to the sirens'[...] walking down the stairs of the building, seeing the common folk [...] a buoyant sense of doom and gloom [...] very eighties.