Aliens (1986)

[paeng]

Here's a recap, and to connect to points made here:

Alien (1979)

Yeah Specimen was entertaining. Interesting, apparent job for the dog. Harvest was decent. Neither of these brought much new, other than perhaps showing more examples of human exposure to Aliens than we might have thought, but they are good homages to Alien.

www.sffchronicles.com

If the company knew at least the location of the signal, then it would have needed to wait to obtain it from the flight recorder in Ripley's log. Meanwhile,

Salvagers find Ripley's lifeboat and bring her and the vessel to the company.

A board doubts Ripley's report, and the only thing she has to prove her case is the landing location of the Nostromo, which if investigated would have proven the existence of the derelict ship. And yet the board refuses to investigate the location.

When Burke asks for Ripley's help, he leaves a calling card showing that he's director of an interesting company division. Extra features in the DVD and other licensed works reveal that he's in charge of doing illegal things like smuggling dangerous organisms for other divisions, like bio-weapons, which is exactly what he says in the movie. This implies that the company knew a lot more about the aliens because it had prepared organizations to exploit them, and decades earlier set up special orders to let synths do similar.

As mentioned earlier, a squad is used with members that appear to about to go on R&R, with some personnel finishing their tour. Also, they don't seem surprised that their squad leader was replaced. There might be a connection between that and Gorman meeting with Burke before they approach Ripley.

That time, Gorman tells Ripley that she doesn't have to join the team on the ground and can stay on the ship, which isn't followed. Some argue that Ripley doesn't offer anything new to the team which puts to question the reason why she's asked to join them.

As mentioned earlier, the squad (or platoon? it looks like it's a team divided into two squads) journeys on a ship which has no captain and crew, and they land without leaving anyone on board the ship. They also don't seem to prepare like a regular military unit, like having backup transmitters, especially given the point that they had no one onboard the Sulaco.

Some of the weapons also look weird, like the smart gun, which is difficult to operate if one is crouching or prone because it's attached via some robotic arm to one's waist. It looks like something designed to shoot at multiple smaller creatures, which with the logo on the dropship referring to bug stompers imply that military units had been dealing with various dangerous organisms in the past.

The unit also looks like one that has been dealing with disciplinary issues, as seen in personnel who are asleep and look bored or troll commissioned officers, as well as flight officers with enlisted ranks, which might imply that they had been demoted.

Finally, what happened to the derelict ship after the colony blew up? Was it destroyed, thus necessitating company actions in the third movie, or was it not, making the same actions irrelevant?

 

[Harpo]

I think I have to disagree with most peoples' comments on Aliens. I'll quote something I wrote the other day on the actual Alien thread:



I did like the film, though I found the ending ridiculous. I mean, how the heck does somebody manage to stay holding onto a rung in an airlock that's sucking everything out into space, while a mahusive alien is holding on to your foot that also has a great big piece of machinery attached to it. What, did Ripley have a Terminator arm or something?

Sorry, but Aliens comes fourth in my ranking of Alien films:

1. Alien
2. Alien 3
3. AvP
4. Aliens
5. Alien Resurrection.

About that “hive of ants” comparison….

 

[Foxbat]

I’m more bothered by the use of sucking the alien out into space.
Alien - sucked out into space.
Aliens - sucked out into space.
Alien Resurrection - sucked out into space (through a very small hole).
I wonder if the new movie uses this same technique.

 

[Judderman]

Interesting that a lot of people who like Romulus also like Prometheus, based on some comments I have read. Which probably means it is quite popular with the young adult crowd.
Generally gets positive reviews but not seen as close to a classic.

 

[paeng]

Here's what I think happened:

In the first movie, there was an draft that used a pyramid instead of a derelict craft, but the latter was used because they lacked funds. There was also a Space Jockey. Next, there was a scene showing Dallas and Brett being turned into eggs, but it was deleted in order to keep the story tight. Finally, much later Scott said that what he liked about Giger were pictures of all sorts of creatures and his album entitled, Necronomicon, which alludes to Lovecraft.

These imply that from the beginning they wanted a franchise featuring all sorts of weird creatures made possible using goo, or chemicals found in the aliens, that could also turn organisms into hybrids, or eggs, and so on. It's just that they didn't have the budget and/or tech to do that.

So they focused on aliens, eggs, and facehuggers. However, when they had a big enough budget and more tech for special effects by the fourth movie, they included cloning, hybrids, and mutations.

From there, with even bigger budgets and more CGI, they made those discarded ideas from the first movie come through in the prequels.

Finally, Romulus was meant to be released on streaming, which is why its budget wasn't so big. My guess is that given the point that the story is mostly set in a space station, then they could use more practical effects. By borrowing that plus the production design and a lot of materials from the previous movies and even the Isolation video game, they could develop the movie faster and still keep it cheap. And by adding more action (the movie is jampacked with that), violence, and gore, they could attract young audiences who like movies like Evil Dead remakes and Army of the Dead, and make something like those set in space featuring all sorts of creatures following the prequels and the goo storyline.

And so far, it worked. The movie is said to have now earned $230m, with a lot of help from China and the rest of the international market, or $30m above its $80m production budget times 2.5 (i.e., given the point that up to half of the revenues would go to distributors and theater owners, and that up to $100m would be added to the costs to market the film to other countries).

These imply that it was a franchise not about aliens but about goo, would be so to come up with additional content for more new features (and even for the upcoming TV show Alien: Earth), and would feature combinations of action and spectacle like Marvel superhero movies but also more violence and gore, like Netflix horror movies. However, these also imply that Aliens and Alien 3, where the alien is one of the star antagonists, can now be considered irrelevant because of the power of goo.

The only question to consider is how many times viewers will accept paying, say, $20 for each person to view a movie once in a theater, and a movie that looks like it's meant to be shown through streaming, where the costs of watching it are much lower.

Also, they'll have to figure out how to explain away various inconsistencies, like advanced tech in the prequels and then the opposite in the early movies that set after them, even in places where the tech's supposed to be more advanced, like the labs in Romulus and in Resurrection.

 

[Toby Frost]

The powerloader fight is so good. It's a brilliant use of Chekov's gun, and the sight of the door opening and the camera panning up the loader is just great. The special effects stand up extremely well, but a lot of it is (by necessity) Ripley and the Alien queen facing off than actually fighting, which feels quite realistic. It's got a clumsy, hefty feel and the lack of any fancy moves (extendable mouthparts and welding torch aside) helps. And yes, birdsong is quite nice, but can it compare with the noise that the powerloader's hydraulics make? Actually, Aliens is full of cool sounds. Anyhow, for its time the powerloader scene is superb, and I don't think it could be improved much now.