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Post your favorite 80s movie (pg. 5)
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
Only one of the Alien movies was made in the 80s, and it wasn't even the best one. |
You're half right. |
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| srussell0018 |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
You're half right. |
Which half? The original was made in 1979, and that was the best one imo. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
The half that's factual, obviously.
I like the original film a lot, but I think it's a little weak on the characterisation and dialogue fronts. It's also somewhat over-analysed subtextually, and I have a bit of a grievence with Ridley Scott making visually pretty, near-silent sci-fi films that get analysed to death.
I think Cameron's film is generally stronger in all departments and I think he took on and developed the idea brilliantly. The original is essentially a tarted-up '50s creature-feature B-movie, but Aliens did something very new with it. |
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| srussell0018 |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
The half that's factual, obviously.
I like the original film a lot, but I think it's a little weak on the characterisation and dialogue fronts. It's also somewhat over-analysed subtextually, and I have a bit of a grievence with Ridley Scott making visually pretty, near-silent sci-fi films that get analysed to death.
I think Cameron's film is generally stronger in all departments and I think he took on and developed the idea brilliantly. The original is essentially a tarted-up '50s creature-feature B-movie, but Aliens did something very new with it. |
I don't know, I feel like the building anticipation throughout the first Alien is what makes it so special. It's not a bunch of Marines blasting their way through hordes of aliens. It adds an element of mystery to what the aliens even are, as you don't even see it through the majority of the movie. I can see your issues with it, but I think that's what makes it special. It's not just a sci-fi thriller action movie. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
I don't know, I feel like the building anticipation throughout the first Alien is what makes it so special. It's not a bunch of Marines blasting their way through hordes of aliens. It adds an element of mystery to what the aliens even are, as you don't even see it through the majority of the movie. I can see your issues with it, but I think that's what makes it special. It's not just a sci-fi thriller action movie. |
If you think Aliens is just "a bunch of Marines blasting their way through hordes of aliens" you simply weren't paying attention. This is particularly true if you watch the original cinematic cut and not that ty and unnecessary Director's Cut that was released entirely to shift a few more DVDs. It's a long way into the film before you actually see a xenomorph or find out what happened to the colonists, and at no point do the marines ever have anything resembling control over their situation. Aliens has just as much tension and release as the original film, and while it doesn't have the same mystery about it, I like the more rigorous expansion of the film's universe.
And you think skeletal dialogue and characters are what make Alien special? |
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| VDub |
| I like all of them equally.. |
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| EddieZilker |
I think anything past the discovery of the alien ship, in Alien, was mostly a horror film suspended in a Sci-Fi setting patched together out of its superficially explored conventions (i.e. Artificial Intelligence Malfunction). It's one outstanding merit is its artistic conception.
Aliens was much better. |
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| srussell0018 |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
And you think skeletal dialogue and characters are what make Alien special? |
I meant the visually pretty, near-silent part. I agree with Eddie though, that it's almost more of a horror movie than a sci-fi movie. I guess I like that because I really enjoy those types of horror movies that are more anticipation, and less slashing. |
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| WittyHandle |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
Aliens was much better. |
Yes. And Eddie, do you just talk yourself to climax? |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by srussell0018
I meant the visually pretty, near-silent part. I agree with Eddie though, that it's almost more of a horror movie than a sci-fi movie. I guess I like that because I really enjoy those types of horror movies that are more anticipation, and less slashing. |
There's very little science fiction element to the first film; perhaps the cockpit on the derelict ship is the only truly fictional thing the movie proposes. We have no idea how such a contraption might work, or why this gargantuan creature might need such an elaborate and fantastic device to operate an apparently once-functional boneship of odious design, the counter-point being the eventual take-off scene just a few segments later where it takes an entire human crew just to adequately propel their space 18-wheeler off Acheron.
I like to think of the first Alien as a pure horror film in antithesis to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The original Chainsaw Massacre used a lot of sudden and grating sound effects to not only break its suspense, but to further it at the most disjointed times in what would essentially become canon for American and Italian Horror. Alien takes this concept and flips it on its head, as if to say that this killer is completely silent, it has no need for intimidation nor showy scare tactics, as it lacks any pathos whatsoever; It's horror is that which we instill ourselves with when we are quiet and alone, though the alien itself is, ironically, quite alien to this very concept. You know, like immigrants. :mad: |
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| srussell0018 |
| Hyes, quite. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
There's very little science fiction element to the first film; perhaps the cockpit on the derelict ship is the only truly fictional thing the movie proposes. |
Actually, in theoretical terms the alien itself is pretty much a pure science fiction device: a thematically metonymic "point of departure" and "an encounter with Otherness", rationally grounded and logically explored in a pseudo-scientific discourse (quite literally, in the film, by a "science officer" character).
There's also very little difference between science fiction and horror. It's significant that the prototypical science fiction texts came from gothic writers like Poe and Mary Shelley. A lot of HG Wells' work was extremely nightmarish and Lovecraft revolutionised the macabre by bringing in tentacled contractors from deep space. |
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