I just watched Aliens (1986).
Some think it is, like often, inferior to the first one, Alien. But I thought it was actually a good movie (I hadn't seen it since the eighties). Expectations might lead one astray, though, because they are very different movies. Alien was an avant-garde SF Horror movie. Abstract and slow. The second one was a thriller, action SF movie. And it pretty much had to be, because unlike the first one, the monster was now known, there was no way to milk the unknownness-terror and slow reveal like there was in Alien.
Sigourney did an excellent job, as always. And so did Carrie Henn as young "Newt". It seems Carrie had no intentions of continuing making movies, and has kept that, she's a teacher in California.
Update:
Bron said:
Aliens was the rare case of the sequel being more fun than the original. Alien was terrifying.
Indeed. Geiger's monster really is excessively scary. I read some actor complaining that some people said it was *too* scary. "It's art, he said, how can it be 'too strong'". :-)
Despite this, I don't think it will ever be a "classic monster" in the sense of those old Universal critters. Maybe because there is nothing humanoid about it, maybe we have to relate in *some* way to a monster in order to be really invested. And Alien is basically just an excessively dangerous animal. While it's clever, you never get the impression that it's capable of thinking, really.
... Hehe, it's even a bit stupid, because like all movie monsters, it does the timeless "scary pose"... it stops for several seconds and poses impressively in order for the victims (and the camera) to get a good look and a chance to flee. This can't be optimal monster behavior!
Well that's great. That's just pretty fuckin' great, man. Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man! That's it man; game over, man, GAME OVER! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What're we gonna do?
ReplyDeleteOh well, that's beautiful. Oh man, that's just off. I don't believe this. I don't fuckin' believe this!. Oh man. And I was gettin' short-four more weeks and out. Now I'm on the bottom of this rock. It ain't half fair, man. Four more weeks.
Aliens was the rare case of the sequel being more fun than the original. Alien was terrifying.
ReplyDeleteJust heard of the greatest Sci-Fi movie no one has seen.
Google "Jodorowsky's Dune"; some of the artists who worked on this worked on Alien.
Looks interesting.
ReplyDelete---
I'm sorry the first Alien came out in a period where I didn't go to the cine much. Until HD, I think it is one of those best on the big screen.
Terrifying, yes. Geiger's monster really is excessively scary. I read some actor complaining that some said it was *too* scary. "It's art, he said, how can it be "too strong". :-)
Despite this, I don't think it will ever be a "classic monster" in the sense of those old Universal critters. Maybe because there is nothing humanoid about it, maybe we have to relate in *some* way to a monster in order to be really invested. And Alien is basically just an excessively dangerous animal. While it's very clever, you never get the impression that it's capable of thinking, really.
... Hehe, it's even a bit stupid, because like all movie monsters, it does the timeless "scary pose"... it stops for several seconds in order for the victims (and the camera) to get a good look and a chance to flee. This can't be optimal monster behavior!
I don't think it will ever be a "classic monster" in the sense of those old Universal critters.
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't know, it's pretty iconic, don't you think? I doubt it'll ever be as recognized as those classic monsters, though, but that's probably more to do with when it came out than anything. There were fewer choices in the days of Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Wolfman, or Dracula.
The big regret I have about Aliens is that it created a perfect setup for a scene exploiting the effects of cold sleep and time dilation during interstellar voyages. When Lt. Ripley wakes up in installment 3, everyone is talking about Dr. Jordan, the greatest living expert on the aliens. When Ripley finally meets her (played by Maggie Smith?) she asks "Who ever said you were such an expert on aliens?" Jordan whips around and snaps, with fury and pain, "You did, when you picked me up and held me, ... and then abandoned me."
ReplyDeleteTotally wasted.
What left me cold in Aliens was two things. First, the tough chick marine character. That probably seemed cool in 1986 or whenever that movie came out, but her character doesn't really hold up for me, just seems too forcced.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the "hoo-rah" marine banter just seems like something a scriptwriter would dream up without knowing a thing about how marines talk. And I was not a marine, either, I just found the dialog cloying.
There are cool aspects to the movie, though, and Sigourney Weaver is awesome as usual. The aliens are awesome. The stroyline is kinda cool. Except (for me) when they talk.
The dialog was very fake to everyone. What an insight. Although it certainly would have been possible to do it better, and they should have, who cares in a movie like Aliens? Get to the action.
ReplyDeleteI am guessing that none of you were around when this movie came out in the mid-80s or when the original came out in the mid-70s.
ReplyDeleteIn the original Alien, they did a number of tricks with the sound that could only be experienced in the theater, mainly having to do with varying the volume. On the original print the sound started getting weak as they left the space ship, and you sort of thought the projector was screwed up, and you were on the edge of your seat trying to follow the story AND trying to hear when the first baby alien leaped out of the egg and through the glass of the first victim's helmet. There were other things that were done that you just couldn't experience the same way on VHS, DVD, or even BlueRay where the viewer has control of the sound and can skip around. Also, viewers today have seen Predator and probably a dozen other psy-horror films that have de-sensitized today's generation. When the first movie was experienced in a decent theater, it was a different experience.
When the sequel came out, everybody had seen the first on on VHS or cable about a billion times, so the monster really didn't do that much. So like Eolake says, the film had to rely more on action. Also, we were a little over a decade out of Vietnam, and we were doin Grenada, Fauklins, some mid-east nonsense, Phllipenes a little bit, and middle east dictators and terrorists were by and large a minor joke. People's perception of the military and the marines was different, with some serious thought that the foot soldier was becoming obsolete, and the dialog was closer to what we expected at the time for ignorant grunts. Also, the depiction played to our experience in Vietnam, amplifying certain stereotypes of that era where junior officers were morons, noncoms were gruff drill sargeant characatures, and everybody was motivated by machismo and adrenaline.
This movie was trying to be futuristic by depicting a co-ed front line military, but with the stereotype that the fighting soldiers all came from the lower classes, such as hispanics. As we can see from looking at every futurist's pontification of what tommorrow will look like, they get a few things right, but they are 180 degrees wrong on a lot of stuff. We have women in the front lines, but they are not the macho street-wise cunts that were depicted in the futuristic movies of the 70s and 80s, but more like super-patriotic brainyacs. Besides, if the Aliens movie were to be a more accurate picture of a future military, knowing what we know now of the direction of the military, there wouldn't be any machine-gun toting women, but the group would have been about one third patriotic flaming queers.
So sure, today the dialog and the limited complexity of the characters seems hokey, but it worked at the time the film was made.
The monster of the first film, however, is already a classic in an esoteric sense. It was an unstoppable force bent on your dismemberment and death in an environment where you were trapped, you could not see it, you could not fight it, you could not trap it, you could not kill it, anything you did to harm it made it worse, it was unlike anything else in your experience or frame of reference (totally Alien), you could not bargain with it, buy it off, meet its needs another way, and it could not be stopped. In this sense it has become the prototype of other monsters, such as the terminator, which also could not be stopped, bargained with, trapped, etc, and its only purpose was your death.
I've watched the first one a time or two in the last twenty years, and mainly for the future spacecraft stuff, but I've watched the second over and over again. The second is more fun, but I'm not really into horror flicks that much. And Bill Paxton's dialog is still my favorite part, except for the cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska part. Oh, and the boobies in the shower scene.
I am guessing that none of you were around when this movie came out in the mid-80s or when the original came out in the mid-70s.
ReplyDeleteI suspect almost everyone who comments on Eolake's blog was around at least for Aliens.
So like Eolake says, the film had to rely more on action.
It had to anyone because no one wanted a re-tread of the original.
People's perception of the military and the marines was different, with some serious thought that the foot soldier was becoming obsolete, and the dialog was closer to what we expected at the time for ignorant grunts.
It's just standard 80s action hero dialog.
Also, the depiction played to our experience in Vietnam, amplifying certain stereotypes of that era where junior officers were morons, noncoms were gruff drill sargeant characatures, and everybody was motivated by machismo and adrenaline.
That's been standard in war movies since John Wayne. It was only with movies like Saving Private Ryan and HBO's Band of Brothers that things changed.
We have women in the front lines, but they are not the macho street-wise cunts that were depicted in the futuristic movies of the 70s and 80s, but more like super-patriotic brainyacs.
We have women in the military but how many countries allow them in combat? Not many. In the UK they're not allowed on tank crews. I would have thought their inferior physical qualities would make them a liability in combat.
but the group would have been about one third patriotic flaming queers.
They'd be closet queers, maybe. Maybe. Of course, in the future they could have a cure for that.
So sure, today the dialog and the limited complexity of the characters seems hokey, but it worked at the time the film was made.
I would be willing to be that if you read reviews of it from the time, most critics would say the dialog was bad, but whether audiences would have thought so, I don't know. They would have forgotten it after all the wall-to-wall blood-and-guts action.