With Prometheus coming out, I was just wondering what everyone's ranking off all the Alien movies are. You can include anything w/ Predator.
1) Aliens - Probably the strongest case after the Godfather 2 and The Empire Strikes Back as a better sequel than the original movie. Just a lot of Great lines, and great action
2) Alien - In space, no one can hear you scream. It was boring for the first half, but the movie had great build.
3) Alien vs. Predator - I don't know, I just liked this movie, I think it was the background story.
4) Alien 3: A very different concept. Thought that the idea of one alien (dog) was really different. But Newt not surviving the trip was a downer.
5) Alien Resurrection: Ms. Ryder and the weird bunch as well as a cracked out Ripley. Really odd.
6) Alien vs Predator Requiem CRAP!!!!!!!!
WE are DEVO
Posts: 4228 | From: Home of the big landfill | Registered: Jul 2003 | Site Updates: 8
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1. Aliens: No doubt the cream of the crop in the series. Great action, superb cast, and one of the most bad-@ss female characters. You just can't ever go wrong with this one.
2. Alien: Only slightly falling under the sequel. Still a classic.
3. Alien Resurrection: Odd indeed, but I like odd. Sigourney Weaver was still bad@ss in this, but in a more creepy kind of way. And I dig it.
4. Alien 3: While this is definitely the most dreary film of the bunch, the action sequences and suspense is still pretty darn good. A mediocre thumbs up at this point to me.
5. Alien vs. Predator: This one does have some good action scenes, (horribly edited ones.) But overall, the storyline was a snore to me.
6. Alien vs. Predator Requiem: I haven't even seen this one. But I will believe the hype that it's crap and place it last on my list.
[ 08. June 2012, 18:09: Message edited by: Pyro ]
Posts: 1802 | From: Planet Druidia | Registered: Jan 2009 | Site Updates: 3
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Valley Dated Julie From 'Valley Girl' (allegedly!)
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1. Aliens.. one of the best sequels ever .. stands far above any other film in the Alien series. Incredible script with amazing characters. The interaction between Ripley and Hicks was just awesome stuff.
2. Alien.. the original was a very good film with some very memorable scenes. And that ending is legendary.
3. Alien Resurrection.. like Pyro I actually enjoyed this film. Not a huge fan of Winoa Ryder, but thought she was good in this film. And the return of Ripley was creepy cool.
Cancel the rest .. they added nothing for me:
4. Alien vs Predator - great action sequences .. uh.. but no substance.
5. Alien3 - just horrible on all levels.. destroyed everything that we loved about the first two films. Nuke it! Definitely not Newt it!
6. Aliens vs Predator Requiem - fell asleep watching it and forgot to go back to finish it.
I will say that I have high expectation for "Prometheus" .. I'll let you know my thoughts soon!
[ 09. June 2012, 04:26: Message edited by: Valley ]
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aTomiK
.... has green eyes as well....
Member # 6575
Perhaps because it was the first Alien movie I saw in the cinema, but also because the story combines the dark, thought provoking aspects of 'Alien' with the action and wit of 'Aliens'. Sigourney Weaver was brilliant as usual, and Ripley 8 was an emotionally complex and fascinating character. Happy to see Winnona Ryder is this, arguably the last good movie of her stalled career, as android Annalee Call. Ryder's scenes with Ripley are brilliant: Call's fighting to embrace her humanity as Ripley struggles to reconnect with her humanity in the midst of a conflict in which the sides become blurred early on. Ripley's harrowing encounter with her clones (1-7) is an incredibly tense and well-directed scene whilst her relationship with the Alien also comes full circle in a poignant and aptly visceral manner.
I thought Kim Flowers (played Sabra Hilliard) would've gone onto become an action star, maybe a pre-Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie but for some reason it didn't happen. And though Sabra was eaten by those underwater Xenomorphs in the flooded kitchen scene, she bought a lot of depth (no pun intended) to a minor character and her subtle breakdown after the death of her lover made Sabra more of a real person then, say, a standard badass like Vasquez in 'Aliens'.
2. Aliens
Awesome action movie with an interesting subtext: Ripley externalises her inner strength from the original, voluntarily returns to face her phobia and scratches together pieces of the life she feels was robbed from her during statis cryosleep aboard the Nostromo. Militarised action replaces unarmed human ingenuity as Ripley reinforces her vindication on Earth (i.e. her Nostromo report is no longer considered a conspiracy) through action on LV-426. And we actually see the beginning of her alienation (pun intended) from humanity as Ripley's disgust & indignation with the corruption that's come to define her country on Earth begins to take its toll: betrayed again by the corporations, beginning to respect androids, facing the prospect of a deep rooted conspiracy etc. And yet despite all this, Ripley's still human, feels she has no where else to go and retains a modicum of hope that life will get better.
3. Alien
Atmospheric and suspenseful, looking back, its only natural that Scott's 'Prometheus' should take its directorial cues from this as opposed to the saga that developed around 'Alien' in the sequels. Hard to imagine that the studio wanted Scott to axe the giant engineer fossil (i.e. space jockey) and scrap the last act altogether (when Ripley faces the Alien alone in the shuttle). Requires some patience, but a master class in characterisation and slow burn suspense.
4. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
I actually thought this worked quite well, not on a par with the Alien films above but a pretty decent movie nonetheless. Good mise-en-scene, Antarctica being one of the most isolated places on Earth, the next best thing to outer space, I suppose. Establishes itself in the timeline as being before 'Aliens': Lance Henrikson was great as the real Weyland (his image to live on as Bishop the android in ‘Aliens’) Sannaa Lathan was also an engaging and charismatic heroine. Makes good use of David Icke and Erich von Däniken's theories about aliens as inter-dimensional demi-gods worshipped by the ancients and so on. AVP often gets a bad rap, but I think its an entertaining film and a perfectly acceptable part of the cannon.
5. Prometheus
Well, so here it is: A good film, not quite what people were expecting or indeed hoping for; H.R Giger's universe is hinted at, seen in prototype form if you will. Some of the mystery is lost by explaining aspects better left to the imagination e.g. we all kind of knew what the space jockey / engineer was about first time around—it represented the relative insignificance of discovery, in that, each new discovery is only new to those who make it, and that others; perhaps better, perhaps more advanced than us, have been here before. Scott takes you into a world and leaves you there with the crew, Naomi Rapace is, for all intents and purposes, the new Ripley, Charlize Theron the company woman / corporate sleaze, Michael Fassbender the sympathetic android, Idis Elba the cheeky chappie and so on. Prometheus is a film that effectively transports you to another world and then steps back allowing the narrative to breathe, a lot like old school PC games 'Riven' and 'Myst'. There are a tonne of issues in the film and I may well have to see it again to look into them all:
****************** SPOILERS AHEAD**************
One revolves around references to Lawrence of Arabia (Fassbender watches the movie a lot when he’s bored): T.E. Lawrence once said that "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
Since the space jockeys/ engineers are portrayed as both the creators and the potential destroyers of humanity; they rely on mankind’s inherent curiosity combined with our fatal inclination towards excess & arrogance, as a means with which to orchestrate the elimination of the human race. The space engineer who first creates life on Earth by consuming the black liquid (i.e. Abiogenesis) is the Prometheus of this story: But whereas in myth it was Prometheus himself who suffered the fate of gifting fire to humans, now, its both humans and the ‘gods’ who must bear the consequences: Humans, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the ‘invitation’ to another world is actually a convoluted death trap, the god’s because the ruthlessly efficient weapon (i.e. Alien) they built to kill us is simply too effective, and has no qualms about turning on its inventors.
The Xenomorph alien represents a turning point in engineered evolution: for the black liquid that created humans is the elixir of life: and its the black liquid which results in Naomi Rapace becoming a host to the birth of what will later become the face hugger. The engineers want to create a heterotic creature capable of contaminating the human gene pool to the point of extinction (which is why the Alien reproductive system slowly evolves with each film). And since the Alien takes on the characteristics of its host (e.g. cow, human, dog etc) the engineer’s wish to produce the most capable Xenomorph (i.e. the one birthed from humans). But since the Alien is not fully under their control, the android represents the attempt to balance both sides of the equation. For the android is sent to create an equilibrium of sorts and moderate each encounter between Xenomoprhs and humans (e.g. Ian Holm, Lance Henrikson, Winona Ryder were only the ones whose covers was blown, who knows how many more there were). But just as the Alien surpassed its remit, the android too “dreams in the day” and ultimately oversees the direct cross breeding between Alien and human being (i.e. Alien Resurrection).
"There are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armour and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, "Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it"
Ridley Scott on the themes of 'Prometheus'
We presume the Xenomorph will eventually breed out humanity, but that humanity will be so changed by this encounter and struggle that it will emerge as something else entirely. A new creature that’s absorbed the characteristics of its intended destroyer.
What Prometheus lacks in excitement it makes up for in mood and visuals, its closer in tone to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Tree of Life with a little bit of Star Trek V and Event Horizon thrown in for good measure. By no means a classic or on a par with the original series, but an eminently watchable and well-constructed movie.
6. Alien 3
Sigourney Weaver does a great job once again, but is encumbered by a deadly slow pace and, to a certain extent, her insistence to make it a gun-free film. There’s no one thing that’s terribly wrong with Alien 3, its just that nothing quite works as it should; the prison setting should be quite unnerving what with aliens running around, but maybe its the it’s complete disregard for pace and a lack of suspense that makes it a very dismal affair. I’ll give this movie another chance someday, but as it stands there’s not enough material to warrant its running time and by the time the commendably dramatic finale takes place, you’re almost beyond caring.
7. Alien Vs. Predator:Requiem
No idea what they were trying to do here, the Predalien crossbreed (who memorably exploded onto the scene via the chest of an impregnated Predator at the end of AVP) ought to be have been a cool enough creature make this sequel somewhat interesting. Alas, someone, somewhere; be it the directors or the studio, somehow managed to kill a goose. Now not many people liked AVP so they could’ve gone anyway with this movie, instead we’re confined to small town America and a bunch of human characters who’re all but ciphers, you simply don’t care who gets it because they’re all rather stupid and non-descript. Not that the aliens or predator get much screen time either, and their sporadic scraps are filmed in such a way that you can barely make anything out. Aliens and Predators are slumming it like never before, its as if they’re trying to make their SAG hours and are almost embarrassed to be a part of this debacle. There’s about 10 minutes of good footage here (i.e. Predalien in a maternity ward, and the infuriatingly brief glimpse of the Predator’s home world) but the film runs for an hour and a half.
[ 12. June 2012, 03:54: Message edited by: Kash ]
Posts: 2041 | From: The Ice Planet Hoth | Registered: Jul 2001 | Site Updates: 0
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This is the only series I can think of where the sequel was better than the original.
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Zigyma7ik
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Alien vs Mansquito. Is a matter of time.
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