IJBMer Updates

Counterclock

Aliens aren't invincible, a lot of what they can do involved needing to get in close, but once they get in close they're game.

Not even joking.

Legionnaire

I didn't see a HUD, which was nice. Unfortunately that probably means regenerating health. It's a shame they couldn't implement the visors in some form, though I don't remember them being capable of anything other than infrared. And that we didn't see any smart gun operators, though if this is after the Marines have already been decimated (which it may be) they probably went first.

MillerCross

@Alex. Dude, it's alright to find the first alien movie boring... Heck, I remember watching Twin Peaks the first episode and being absolutely bored to tears... Couldn't stand it at all :3c

You know that the objective of trolling someone is not to make them go "Wheee, a kindred spirit.", right?

@Counterclock: Anyone who thinks Alien is boring is gettin' a one-way ticket to LV-426, courtesy of my booties. 

Aliens is amazing, through and through. Alien, however, is a boring scare movie based on the idea of me being scared by a badly done mechatronic and most importantly, with a pace that would make the previously mentioned Twin Peaks episode look like lightning.

Legionnaire

Alien I quite like, but I have to make sure I'm in the right frame of mind when I watch it. Still amuses me hearing about how most people who saw it in cinemas were scared shitless though.

MillerCross

I think alien could have been downright amazing if it was more about the crew being paranoid about the person who betrayed them rather than about the alien being loose in the spaceship.

Not to mention that Ash being a robot was simply put, a dumb twist there for just for the sake of there being a twist. 

Although it indirectly gave us Bishop, so yay.

Legionnaire

Holy shit Sanctuary's end credits are long.

I agree that could have worked as an element, but I think it's quite good in its current format. And I don't recall them having suspicions about a traitor until there was just four of them left...

MillerCross

The traitor is a subplot. I think it should have been the plot of the movie. It would have made the alien less prominent and therefore scarier, and it would have developed the characters, instead of making the movie about Ripley and her crew of nondescripts being chased by a giant penis.

Legionnaire

That amused me more than it should have.

At any rate, I prefer the Alien as the main threat. Aliens (especially the Director's Cut) balanced characters and character development with the main threat of the Aliens really well, but I still think Alien did things well enough. To each his own.

MadassAlex

Ash being a robot was extremely important, because he/it was a part of the characterisation of the Company. It's a part of the whole this-was-a-bit-of-a-setup subplot. Alien isn't just a horror movie with a cool monster, but it's also a criticism of capitalism, has shades of feminism and is a bizarre acid trip through the sexy/squicky mind of HR Giger.

Alien presents the illusion of the monster being the big bad guy, but the twist is that the true evil is the abusive corporation, ect. Aliens ramps it up and it's been a consistent theme ever since. Predictable these days, though. Every piece of Alien-related media ever will have Weyland-Yutani screwing with the protagonists.

@Counterclock: Aliens being non-invincible in close combat is fine when they're fighting Predators, but for a horror context, they're better off being absolutely dominant.

MillerCross

I'm not saying here's anything wrong with Ash being a robot so much as Ash being a robot and it being so unnecessary to the plot. And the thematical angle is...well, I guess that Weyland-Yutani is indeed a criticism of capitalism, but I think Aliens did it far better than that. 

Same goes to the feminism angle. There's not much of a difference between Alien!Ripley and any other horror Final Girl. But Aliens!Ripley is definetly kickass. 

Counterclock

@Alex: I draw that mentality from the Aliens movie.

Just think about the hallways that were set-up with turrets,

MadassAlex

The feminism in Alien is largely contextual. She was a stealth protagonist in a time where leads were generally assumed to be male.

^ Well yeah, but those were turrets, presumably with the same 10mm, armour-piercing, explosive rounds the pulse rifles were using. Killing Aliens is one thing, but I just dislike them being mookified.

Vivi

Is Alien!Ripley a virgin?

Legionnaire

^^I liked how Ripley was less the protagonist and more the last one standing for the plot to focus on. It was a nice touch.

^No, she isn't. She'd had her child by that time.

Counterclock

I liked the Cat in Alien, that cat was a troll in his own right

AHR

That proves nothing!

MadassAlex

Jonsie was an asshole, goddamn that cat.

And the only one who lives happily ever after.

Legionnaire

Little shithead.

The nurse, executive board and extras on the station in Aliens probably did okay though.

MillerCross

The feminism in Alien is largely contextual. She was a stealth protagonist in a time where leads were generally assumed to be male. 

This was 1979. Halloween had been released a year before, establishing the concept of the final girl in horror before. Admittedly, Alien did help cement it, but it's not as if it was as female barren as you make her seem.

that said, female leads in sci-fi were indeed a rare sight. It's just that I don't think Alien is just a sci-fi film and should be categorized as such, so much as a slasher film in space.

Counterclock

So what's your opinion of Alien 3 Alex?

Edit: ^ being called a slasher film nowadays is extremely patronizing.

MillerCross

being called a slasher film nowadays is extremely patronizing.

I don't think genre classifications should be based on how patronizing they sound or are.

That reminds me. No Country For Old Men is a western and there's not a single word in the world that can change this. 

MadassAlex

^^^ I'd consider it sci-fi. Like most old-school science fiction, it's essentially investigates a "what if?" scenario through the auspice of an especially intelligent slasher. In this case, the scenario is first contact. It is, perhaps, the most unique first contact plot out there. Instead of finding something with conventional human intelligence that dwarfs ours, we find something so different that understanding it is impossible. The monster comes across as bestial, but it's also clever and has shades of sentient, deliberate cruelty.

A part of the reason Alien was such an amazing film is that it investigated contact with extraterrestrial life through such a bizarre creature. Lovecraft would be proud.

^^ I like Alien 3, especially as a character development film for Ripley. Sure, Hicks and Newt are gone, but the series was always about Ripley and her struggles. Having the Alien take them away from her really just cements the theme of the Alien being something a little more than purely biological, like there's some spiritual or otherworldly significance to it. It's also interesting because of how it humanises murderers and rapists, running with a redemptive theme that's all too rare.

Ripley's character arc is wonderfully completed, too. In Alien, she's a pretty simple Final Girl sort of character. In Aliens, she's a mother seeking resolution to both the matter of the creature and her own daughter's death. In Alien 3, after losing everything, she becomes more than any of that. By the film's end, she becomes a messianic figure and a hero in the truest modern sense of the term, sacrificing herself to end the scourge of the Alien.

It was a flawed, poorly paced movie, but I loved those elements of it and how well it tied up Ripley as a character.

And then Resurrection.

lol.

Counterclock

~asks Alex hand in marriage~

MadassAlex

Bring me the head of an Alien and you've got a deal.

MillerCross

Like I said, it is not just sci-fi. I think it's a sci-fi slasher film and it should be categorized as such. I just don't think the sci-fi angle is really as important as the slasher angle, though.

Counterclock

First Contact was important, like Alex said, and the futuristic point at which it's set really does cement the level of knowledge that's presented in the future.

>This is future, future is good, Alien not so much.

Legionnaire

What say you of Aliens 3 and 4, Alex?

-kicks feet up, gets popcorn-

MadassAlex

^^^ In context of sci-fi as a genre, I think it is. So many works have been influenced by it directly due to its less conventional take on the genre. Even ignoring the horror elements, the film already implies a lot about the setting. It's socially advanced, but hyper-capitalistic. Technology is likewise advanced, but takes function over form. Space commerce is a source of income. Regular people earn good pay doing a horrible, cramped job at the ass-end of space.

It's all very low-key, which was extremely important in a genre that had just experienced Star Wars. In comparison, it seemed extremely plausible.

^ I liked Alien 3, as elaborated two of my posts ago (via edit). As for Res? I can watch it for fun and enjoy it. And that's just about the nicest thing I have to say.

Counterclock

One of the things I think Alien had over alien 3 and alien res is the contrast.

expanding on Alex's post about the future presented about the future and what it offers, you have this realm.

of a Sterile crew that's working to do their job.

and this violent chaotic force that is the alien that completely wrecks that.

Icalasari

*Reads all of the conversation about a movie series I have never seen*

...

...There's a fly in my room bugging me? ?