I feel like talking about...

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

You know the movies I'm talking about. Alien. Aliens. Alien 3. Alien: Resurrection. 2 of the 4 are classics, whereas the other 2 are looked at as simply awful pieces of trash (with a constant debate about which sequel, 3 or 4, is the worst of the series). There was so much promise in a 3rd and 4th sequel, but what happened? 20th Century Fox fucked up. Let's examine each movie, shall we?

 

Alien

Another script courtesy of Dan O'Bannon (and several other writers, but I chose O'Bannon to represent because of his equally amazing Return Of The Living Dead), and perhaps one of the greatest movies ever made. It played on simple fears, such as death, and even rape. The atmosphere was there, the acting was there, the effects were there, and the story was simply great. Nothing in this movie is at fault. NOTHING.

The crew of the Nostromo, a commercial freighter returning to Earth after mining for minerals on distant planets claimed as property of the Weyland-Yutani Network, awaken from hypersleep in orbit of unsurveyed planet LV-426 (otherwise known as Acheron). Dallas, the commanding officer of the Nostromo, intercepts what appears to be a distress signal from the planet, and the crew is then ordered to explore the planet (Lambert, Dallas, and Cain are the trio that actually go onto the planet) by said Weyland-Yutani Network. Cain gets attacked by a parasitic organism, and it is then discovered near the end of the movie that the Company (Weyland-Yutani Network) set up the crew to deliver a possibly hostile organism back to Earth for use in their Biological Weapons Division of the military. Lt. Ellen Ripley is the sole survivor (along with her cat, Jones).

 

Aliens

James Cameron's masterpiece of sci-fi action picks up 57 years after the events of the first movie, with Ripley still adrift in space in an escape shuttle launched off of the Nostromo, intercepted by Gateway Space-Station. She is "court-marshalled" (for lack of a better term) for the destruction of the Nostromo (it was set to detonate to destroy the alien creature), but is then brought back to LV-426, a now colonized planet, by Weyland-Yutani executive Carter Burke as an advisor for a platoon of the United Systems Colonial Marine Corp after the transmissions from the colony on LV-426 cease.

All hell breaks loose as the majority of the Marines are slaughtered, and the only survivors are Ripley, Corporal Dwayne Hicks, Science Officer Bishop (an android), and the sole-survivor of the colonists "Newt" (the daughter of the original victim of the parasitic organism on the stranded Space-Jockey craft). Ripley, after discovering in the beginning of the film that her daughter died on Earth by heart attack (the full scene is in the Special Edition of the film, which is among the better SEs I've seen), considers Newt her daughter. A happy ending, as the colony on LV-426 explodes in a nuclear disaster with an explosion "the size of Nebraska" (quote of Bishop), assumingly destroying all of the alien organisms on that planet, and Ripley sends the Alien Queen, the largest xenomorph of the series, into the vacuum of space via the airlock of the Sulaco (the ship that the marines were aboard to take them into LV-426 orbit).

 

Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection

I won't even touch these. Alien 3 took all of the happiness of the ending of the previous film and destroyed it all by killing off Hicks and Newt before the "action" actually occurs. An alien egg (no, 2 alien eggs) that plays incubator to the parasitic organism that begins the alien life-cycle somehow is found aboard the Sulaco, and Ripley becomes host to a Queen. The plot is too complicated, and the movie is simply a clusterfuck of events.

Alien: Resurrection takes place 200 years after Alien 3, where technology has allowed a clone of Ripley (as well as clones of the Aliens) to be formed by small blood samples off of Fiorina 161 (the prison-planet from Alien 3 that Ripley crash-landed on). Ugh...I'm not going into this any further, but this is among the worst movies I have ever seen.

 

So how, do you ask, did 2 such remarkable pieces of science fiction/horror/action films as Alien and Aliens become the pieces of guano that are Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection? I wonder this myself. The reason being:

The writers of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection did not see the actual possibilities that future sequels presented.

 

Think about it. After Aliens, what could have happened? The 3-book series presented by Dark Horse Comics could have been easily adapted into 2 or 3 more movies, each involving different characters and similar moments as those of the first 2 films. "Aliens: Book I" was a perfect way to branch Aliens and Alien 3 together, had Alien 3 been written by Mark A. Verheiden.

 

Sorry, I'm just going to go off on a rant, but I just watched Alien and Aliens again, and read a review of Alien: Resurrection, and I just want to know what the feelings of other fans of this series are as to where the sequels could have gone.

[Guest J*ingus]

I actually liked most of Alien 3, all of my problems were with the script itself; the direction and acting were just fine. Resurrection, on the other hand, is the right hand of the Antichrist.

 

And has anyone else heard the story about the alternate ending of the first movie? Supposedly, they shot footage for a different ending, where Sigourney Weaver was nude in the whole last scene, and the alien killed her at the end.

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Did ya know that the original title for Alien was Starbeast, and that it was an all-male crew (not even the names stayed the same)? The original writing team (including Dan O'Bannon) wrote Starbeast, and then the second writing team wrote Alien.

 

I think I've heard ABOUT that, but I doubt it was ever filmed. Because if it was, it would have been on the Special Edition DVD of Alien, which it isn't. But damn, Sigourney Weaver nude in 1979...that'd be some nice jerkage moments...

[Guest Edwin MacPhisto]

I like Alien 3 quite a bit--it's nowhere near the quality of the first two (two of my favorites of all time, period), but it's really fun to watch David Fincher gets his first chance at the big time. Weird-ass camera angles and a drab palette worked for me here. There was a certain appeal to this alien as well, as it was without a doubt the most vicious one we'd seen in the series so far. It's a bit trashy, and the instant elimination of the family dynamic established so well over the course of Aliens is hack screenwriting if ever I did see it, but I always tune in if it's on TNT or somesuch.

 

In all honesty, it could have been a lot worse. If you've seen some of the earlier drafts of scripts...wow. They're absolutely awful. I'll see if I can find some links to them...I remember finding a few at Drew's Script-O-Rama, but I'm not sure if that site's still open.

 

As for the fourth movie...Jean Pierre-Jeunet just didn't have it. Good visual flair, but entirely uncompelling, possibly due to the fact that Jeunet had no idea what was happening half the time except when he was dealing with Perlman and Pinon (yeah French directors, woo!), or due to the Joss Whedon script. Whedon's great for a long-running, episodic show like Buffy, but he simply didn't pack enough character into his original draft to make it worthwhile. Brad Dourif as slimy Dr. Gediman was inspired casting, though, and I really did like the bit with Leland Orser making his chest-burster go right through the other doctor's face.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

Only one I liked was the second one. My fav. scene was Hudson's death (I think it was him) when he was shooting all the buggers and cussing them out before getting killed by aliens coming up through the floor.

 

I saw the orig. Alien as a kid and HATED, just HATED the fact that black guy (he was my fav. character) died trying to save that stupid b*tch and all she did was sit there and scream...

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Black guy in Alien (portrayed by the great character actor YAPHETT KOTO) was Parker.

Hawaiian-shirt wearing hick kinda dude was Brett.

Science officer was Ashe.

Screaming chick that always overreacted and was a stereotypical woman in horror movies was Lambert.

Captain was Dallas.

British guy was Cain.

And, of course, Ripley.

 

...methinks I've seen the movies too many times...

 

Whedon sucks at writing. I fucking hate Buffy, as it took the sheer stupidity and all-out lack of seriousness of the film (a so-bad-it's-good feature) and turned it into "Dawson's Creek" with vampires, werewolves, demons, and the sort.