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Of the 4 Alien sci-fi horror films made so far, starring Sigourney Weaver, what's your favorite one and please say why.
Registered: Apr 2003
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First one: ambiance and isolation make it work. The same formula is used far more effectivly in Carpenter's The Thing.
The first film is cool because of the questions it raises, including that of what the "spacejockey" is doing with all those eggs. The performances are the most believable of all the Alien movies and Ridley Scott did some groundbreaking visual shots (particularly by NOT showing the whole creature untill the very end).
One thing's for certain: I'm skipping the Aliens vs. Predator movie: it takes place on Earth in 2004 in a arctic underround city with pyramids that the predators built to huny aliens in. A worse concept I could never envison. Aintitcool.com hada review up, but it looks like they were forced to remove it.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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People are probably going to hate me for this but I've always favoured Alien3 for some reason. I think it's because I like rooting for the underdog and you can't get more under-doggy than a bunch of thieves, rapists and all-round nutcases. I won't deny that the first to two movies are superior to the third, but I just really like that one best...despite what it did to poor Newt & Hicks.
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I really liked the look of the third film; the prison sets looked the most "real" out of all the films IMO - old-fashioned while still looking high-tech. The ship sets of the other films were similarly industrial high-tech, but the A3 sets were comparatively awesome.
That said, I gotta vote for Aliens as my favorite. Because of the BOOM! and the WHOOSH! and the BLAM BLAM BLAM!!
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"Alien", no question about it. Great effects, great-looking Nostromo-interior, wonderful miniatures of the derelict ship and the Nostromo, and the most terrifying horror scenes I ever watched as a kid (dinner scene, the Dallas-tunnel scene, and of course the Lambert-Alien-Parker threesome).
Actually, it's kind of hard to separate the first and second movies, they are so intimately bonded, with LV-426, the derelict ship, the Weyland-Yutani bosses. I would like to edit the two movies together (both Director's Cuts), with just a "many years later"-text between the last shot of the Nostromo-shuttle and the first shot of the same shuttle in "Aliens". Then show it all to a person who's never seen any of it. Hell, I'll pay for the future therapy sessions, just to hear what the person thought of the experience.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Probably a tie between the first two movies. The suspense of the first and the BOOM! and the WHOOSH! and the BLAM BLAM BLAM!! of the second just make for two very different and very good films.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
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Yeah, but you're just a grunt. You can't make that kind of decision. B)
Anyway, Alien for its claustrophobic and desolate atmosphere, Aliens for the all-out carnage. Never cared for 3 or 4.
Registered: Nov 1999
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Aliens. But it has to be the director's cut with all the connections to the first one, where we see the colonists finding the ship and the miniguns running dry in the ventilation ducts.
Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
Member # 33
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Alien: Liked it. Scary. Very scary, but hey, it was good.
Aliens: This is my personal favourite. Ripley turns the tables and gets to kick ass. They do explain a lot with the queen Alien here, which IMHO is the best MOFO I have ever saw.
Alien3: I'll have to admit, I liked the plot. Aside from the peculiarities in the beginning of the film (how did the alien egg get on the ship when the queen disposed of her sac?). The ending was satisfactory as well. Not great, but understandeable.
Alien Ressurection: God this is horrible for so many reasons 1) why did they have to bring back Ripley? and 2) the hybrid Alien/Human is just, well, not right with the rest of the world as we know it.
-------------------- "And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!
Registered: Mar 1999
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Actually, it's kind of hard to separate the first and second movies, they are so intimately bonded, with LV-426, the derelict ship, the Weyland-Yutani bosses.
Having recently watched the Alien Director's cut in the theatre, I found lots of discrapencies between the first and second movie. In the first movie, LB-426 is a small planetoid with an erratic orbit, not the full blown planet of the second movie. The signal from the derilict ship was picked up almost a whole solar system away by the Nostromo's "mother" but the colonists never noticed it? ...the fuck?
Then there's the physical diffrences beteween the first Alien and those from the second movie....unless the first alien is some kind of sub-class that preps the area for a new hive before the other eggs are hatched. Mabye.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I believe James Cameron has explained somewhere, the answers to all those points.
If I'm remembering correctly he said that the gas giant around which LV-426 was orbiting is still there, just that it was never seen in any of the shots. This does make sense since you can't always see Luna from a fixed point on earth, or in orbit but that doesn't mean it has disappeared. Also it looks more like a planet in Aliens because WY have had the atmosphere processors running 24/7 for the last few decades and so the clouds look much more dense. I think he also said that there had been some geological activity around the derelict since the Nostromo left and that Lava flows had damaged it, exposing the egg chamber (note that Newt's parents entered through a gash in the hull, not one of those exhaust orifices like Dallas & co) and also damaged the transmitter which is why there is no more warning beacon.
As for the differences in the Aliens themselves remember that the one we saw in the first movie was less than 24 hours old when Ripley blew it out the airlock. The ones that infested the colony were much older, several months at least. The fact that they were members of a hive and not lone 'scouts' may or may not also be a factor. The aging theory is consistent with the other movies since the creature in Alien3 was also, quite young (a few days at most), smooth headed and looked quite similar the the original, as did all of the captive creatures in Alien 4 who were also only around for a few days at most.
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But LV-426 had rings in the first movie... and going from "planetoid with an erratic orbit" to "planet capable of being terraformed" is a biiiiig reach. Terraforming I could see but changingf a planet's orbit would be impossible (even by Trek's tech standards)
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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LV-426 never had rings. Those were on the gas giant.
As for terraforming, the surface of the planet(oid) still looked windswept and inhospitable, the only real difference being that the air was slightly more breathable. As for the orbit, I don't recall hearing that it was any more stable in Aliens than it was 70 years before hand.
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of the second just make for two very different and very good films.
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