|
Immortan posted:Alien 3's "xenomorph" in addition to being a quadruped creature, is notable for casually taking it's time on victims rather than giving a quick fatal strike. It made for some intense scenes (and screams!) in the claustrophobic catacombs of the prison when it attacked or had some poor bastard dangling from an air shaft while gauging his brains out. This is the only movie where it feels like the Alien is an actual biological creature that needs to eat. The first one was an unstoppable eldritch Space Elder God that seemed beyond the concepts of food. In Aliens they were more like bio-mech drones that turned humans into building materials and then went into low-power hibernation. In Alien3 going one-on-one with the beast was ultimately suicidal but not instant death. Dillon manages to last a few minutes with it. Doesn't Ripley even try dragging it by the tail at one point? I know, I know, it won't kill her, but can you imagine the beast from the first movie putting up with that indignity? Instant Fade to Black; that character has now been Disappeared. Alien 3 might be my favorite but a large part of that is how flawed it is and the fascinating production history. I haven't really followed the graphic novel version of Vincent Ward's insane wooden planet script but I'll be sure to read it when (if?) it ever completes (it seems to get a new section every millennia or so). I had heard of the "wooden planet" idea before I watched the extras on the DVD but I had assumed that meant a forested planet, not a planet literally made of wood. Also I feel compelled to bring up my favorite factoid about Alien 3 which is that the chemical process used to composite the rod-puppet into the live action shots was so drat bad a lot people think it was lovely CG. Since it came out in 1992 that would have been way beyond the tech of the time, but the way the compositing gave the Alien that awful green tint is very similar to how early lovely CG effects don't blend into the rest of the scene. I've been told it could have been corrected in modern times if they re-composited it digitally but there's no way they would see an acceptable return on that investment 
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 02:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:41 |
|
|
Its amazing how unorganized the production was - they actually started building sets for the wooden planet just to try to get some momentum to actually complete the drat thing. If you lock carefully in the final movie you'll see some oddly gothic architecture and stained-glass windows that seem a bit incongruous for a shithole industrial/prison planet... What's also amazing is every other idea they had for the movie was actually far worse than the final product. I think William Gibson's script is the one mentioned earlier with Space Russians. The aliens become an airborne infection in that one. And they can infect androids. Because reasons. At one point hack master Renny loving Harlin was attached to direct. I love how insanely smug he seemed in the DVD features. "Yeah I got tired of waiting for them to get organized and took my talents elsewhere." *proceeds to make one of the biggest bombs in movie history a few years later and bankrupts Carolco*
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 14:12
|
|
|
Harlin managed to direct some half-decent movies but given his overall track record those are the aberrations. Stare-Out posted:On the other hand it says a lot about 20th Century Fox at the time when even Renny Harlin goes "yeah no, this is a total mess, bye!" quote:It's maybe not the best idea to set a release date for your movie when all you have to go on are a few producers shrugging their shoulders. And release a teaser trailer for it, too. So what if it's flat-out wrong about the movie?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 16:06
|
|
|
Timby posted:I actually watched the Assembly Cut yesterday because of this thread, and honestly the part of it that makes it a Fincher movie the most is that it has incredible sound design. Stare-Out posted:Yeah, I was also going to bring up the gore aspect in relation to Fincher's style and thought about the autopsy scene in particular. The sound design in that scene is pretty gruesome and makes the whole thing so much more horrifying. Whoever came up with this should have gotten a bonus, though. RE: Prometheus I like that film but it's probably best to consider it as a separate thing. Ridley Scott doesn't give a drat about how it fits in with the rest of the franchise and you shouldn't either. When I think of the Alien universe of the first three films my jockeys are still Space Elephants 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 23:01
|
|
|
exquisite tea posted:The Prometheus was a cutting edge research vessel, the Nostromo was a basically a freight train in space. That's a really odd thing to fixate on. Going with retro 70s CRTs would have totally clashed with the sleek 60s golden age sci-fi aesthetic they were going for, anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
sticklefifer posted:I'm actually not sure if I've seen the Assembly Cut. I've seen two cuts of Alien 3; the theatrical version and some sort of director's cut that changed some things. The one detail in the latter that I remember was that the android Weyland at the end turned out to be human instead. Was that in more than just the Assembly cut? davidspackage posted:I know at least in this cut, "Bishop" at the end has a bleeding head and a hosed up ear from getting smacked in the head, does the theatrical cut make it more ambiguous what he is? I don't really like him being human either. Lance is credited as "Bishop II" so I feel like the intent was to make it a bit less clear. The part that really bothers me for some reason is that his story seems too convenient- the designer of the Bishop android is the exact same age, happens to also work for the Evil Bio-Tech division (despite constructing a robot with Asimov's Three Laws), and was instantly available to haul rear end out to Fury 161? The marines in the second movie seemed familiar with Bishop so he must have been with them for a while which makes their appearance being identical a bit odd. It feels unsatisfying, and since when has The Company been truthful about anything? I prefer to think that his story is bogus and he's just another Carter Burke-type middle manager (who didn't look like Bishop) with a serious desire to climb the ranks. It does not seem out of the question that they could have performed Future Plastic Surgery(TM) while en route to make him a convincing facsimile of the android. That could explain why his ear hangs off on that weird angle after being clobbered. Crediting him as "Bishop II" is just saying that, human or robot, he was just another expendable tool in service of the almighty Company. exquisite tea posted:I just mostly wish they would dare to do an Alien movie without Ripley in it, but that is evidently not gonna happen.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2015 16:10
|
|
|
Immortan posted:Aliens is a well made film but it's just so drastically different from the first and third films. There's just something off-putting about turning the most deadly & terrifying creature that intelligently stalked and killed members of a spaceship into exploding redshirts getting steamrolled by machine gun fire en masse. Aliens saving grace was the queen. I still love Aliens I just prefer the first & third before it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2015 00:34
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:They had the alien queen puppet on display at our science centre and I cried because I was so scared of it. Until my early teens I had a super strong fear of the "xenomorph" and couldn't even imagine watching the whole movie ever. I'd even have to overt my eyes from the Aliens arcade machines.  Somewhere along the line my fear of these things led to fascination. I think I actually read the novelizations of the first two movies before I watched them (less scary that way)  lizardman posted:I wonder how many of us 80s/90s kids that were deathly afraid of the Alien are out there.  quote:That HR Giger really hit some kind of psychological nerve with his design. While obviously I was just a kid and kids are afraid of monsters, I've never in my life had such instant feelings of terror from just looking at something before. I was terrified of the xenomorph creature on an almost phobic level. * it's black and shiny so you can't get a good grip of the details * no eyes * that inner mouth just feels Wrong on some visceral level * those weird tube things sticking out of its back muddying its shape even further * long skeleton-ish tail (every kid likes dinosaurs and knows what a skeleton tail looks like) It's like the ultimate boogeyman really.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
Snowman_McK posted:One of the major factors, certainly at first, is that it has no earth analogue. It's not a lizard, or insect or mammal or bird. It doesn't fit in any category of biology we know. Now, there's lots of sci-fi creatures in that category (Zerg, Tyranids etc) but not at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2015 00:41
|
|
|
Good point about the eyes - the seems to be the hardest part to get right in a special effect. Compare the CG Arnold from Genisys to the real thing:  Those lifeless doll eyes really give it away. Even with the dummy head from the 1984 original, it's the drat eyelashes that do the most harm to the illusion!  I know it's a small image, but try holding up a pencil or something to block the eyes and see if that doesn't make it look a million times better. Also dragonfish should stay down below with all the other unholy abominations swimming around down there   
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2015 03:53
|
|
|
I like how the related (and equally nightmarish) megamouth shark was first discovered when it tried eating an anchor on a U.S. Navy ship in the 70s. The oceans are really criminally under-explored and there might still legitimately be enormous undiscovered species lurking around out there. Even giant fish like oarfish aren't seen very often. I would be super excited about one of the Avatar sequels being set underwater if it wasn't, you know, an Avatar sequel.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2015 14:57
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:My movie isn't bad look at all the money it made!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 04:57
|
|
|
SMG: I'm curious if you think the absurdly dark color grading of Av|P:R was part of some larger theme or just an incredibly bad stylistic choice. EDIT: CORRECTED MOVIE TITLE david_a fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Jul 28, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2015 02:55
|
|
|
ozmunkeh posted:Uhmm, I think you mean Av|P:R. That 2 second lens flare in the opening titles changes the movie completely.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2015 03:23
|
|
|
Darko posted:1) The geologist and the biologist or whatever. Firstly, high on space weed. Secondly, not the cream of the crop because they were hired just to fill roles. Their appearance was purposely crafted to show they were in the "I don't give a gently caress" level of their filed.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2015 18:55
|
|
|
A:R gave me a lasting, irrational dislike for Joss Whedon. Partly for writing the awful script to begin with, but also for complaining about all the rad stuff in his script they rewrote/threw away even though all his ideas were worse than what was in the movie. He wanted a ridiculous jeep chase scene through a crop field(!) inside the giant ship that read like some kind of horrible Jurassic Park crossover fanfic.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2015 22:38
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:I read somewhere that at one point the script was going to kill Bishop and Ripley off (probably not in the goddamn opening scene) and that the climax was going to be Newt defeating the alien on her own. That sounds like it would've been a lot more interesting and acceptable as a film.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2015 13:34
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Earth Hive and the two stories that connect to it also waver on how smart the aliens are, going for a middle ground of a regular one being at the level of a smart donesticated dog and a queen being significantly smarter than a human (but how this is tested and known is left vague). However in Earth Hive there are staright up humans that ally with the aliens by kidnapping and bringing people to their hives so the aliens don't mess with them. Also one of the earlier ideas for the ending of Alien was for it to kill Ripley and impersonate her voice in the radio distress signal... That would have, uh, changed the franchise somewhat. (I can't tell how serious that idea was, because I can't imagine it not coming off as completely laughable)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2015 02:48
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Wans't some latin name thrown around or was that only in the comics? Not very catchy. You would think that in the third and fourth movies Weyland-Yutani/USM would have given them some name, at the very least something boring like Species 4582.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2015 21:22
|
|
|
The multiple levels of canon on Wookiepedia or whatever is probably the dumbest thing ever. "This is slightly more made up than this other thing."
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2015 15:29
|
|
|
Conspiracy theory: Ridley added "Alien" to the title of Prometheus 2 specifically to torpedo Blomkamp's movie.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2015 14:37
|
|
|
Yes, Michael Biehn famously got more money for Alien 3 using a grainy, low-res monochrome headshot of him than he did for starring in Aliens. I don't remember which of the story iterations that Hicks/Newt first die in. They are very much in the Gibson script. I guess it must have been the Vincent Ward wooden planet but I thought she was alone when she landed in that one.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2015 23:07
|
|
|
Yaws posted:I wasn't paying much attention to the internet reaction when Prometheus came out but was it always such a lightning rod for simps like the person above?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2015 18:46
|
|
|
Am I the only one who wasn't bothered by Weyland's makeup? It seems to be a common complaint. He has obviously gone through every anti-aging technique known to future mankind so of course he looks unnatural.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2015 22:48
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I was watching the movie very intently but I never noticed anything come out of anyone's eyes! I even remembered this exact quote before watching the movie because I hate anything eye related.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2015 04:12
|
|
|
I remember in the behind-the-scenes footage Fincher looked like he was screaming internally waiting for Jordan Cronenweth to finish setting up the lighting for that scene...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2015 19:31
|
|
|
There was exactly one CG shot of the alien when its head cracks under the water. Remember it was released in 1992; a year after T2 and a year before Jurassic Park. It is my favorite bit of trivia about Alien3, though: the rod-puppet optical compositing was so bad a lot of people assume it had to be early crappy CG. I think it's the way it has that horrible green tint that completely doesn't match the lighting of the rest of the shot. Very similar to how the lighting of early CG was incredibly off. If you look at something similar like the hellhounds from Ghostbusters they don't exactly look lifelike but at least the colors vaguely match.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm referring to the character 'Junior.'
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2015 03:39
|
|
|
Kurzon posted:The subplot with Ash in Alien raises a question: if the Company knew that there was an alien on that planet, why send a tugboat to retrieve it? Why not send a team of specialists?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2015 16:05
|
|
|
From what I remember reading about the making of Prometheus, AvP was only brought up once by Lindelof when he first started working on the script (I think in the context of "you know, AvP has a Weyland in it too"). Scott gave him a look and it was never mentioned again.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2016 18:08
|
|
|
I don't know how familiar everyone is with the details of how Alien was created but it was a very messy process. What appeared on screen is not the vision of any one person; tons of people helped shape it. There are a lot of great blogs about this - Strange Shapes is an excellent one. It will answer some of these questions about where certain ideas came from.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2016 15:33
|
|
|
Yeah, the plan was to bring Sigourney back for the fourth one in that continuity. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the Gibson scripts (he wrote two drafts). One script that I never see mentioned (for good reason!) was Eric Red's abomination. It's sort of a proto-AvP:Requiem.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2016 16:29
|
|
|
lizardman posted:Dan O'Bannon, on-screen, accuses the producers of changing all the character names in his Alien script simply in order to dick him out of royalties.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2016 05:13
|
|
|
Wow:
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 23:35
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Maybe it was bending its butt to the side too!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2016 23:43
|
|
|
Corvo posted:I think Resurrection would have benefited tremendously from not having Weaver at all. She's a great actress but bringing her back from the dead was foolish considering how perfectly Alien 3 ended the trilogy. They could have kept the same general plot/cast and worked the story perfectly fine without Weaver, and continued the franchise with new teams encountering the xenomorphs in new situations. Why couldn't the military facility have just found some eggs somewhere else instead of cloning Ripley? The writers assuming that the only aliens in the universe were on LV-426 was a huge waste of potential. For people who aren't alien fanboys like most of us are in this thread, she was probably more important than what the monsters look like.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2016 18:01
|
|
|
ruddiger posted:I loved that Prometheus reused Giger's hive concepts for the alien buildings, I really hope they use more of his artwork for the sequel. There's a great doc on Netflix about Giger that gives a peek at the mountains of work he accumulated in his life. It's really good, and makes me want to visit his hometown and check out the Giger Museum. They shot it right before he died, so it's pretty much the period on the end of his life's work.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2016 03:29
|
|
|
ruddiger posted:Exactly. Giger suffered with some personal demons but it was cool seeing him find solace and comfort surrounded by his work and his small circle of friends/family. How could you be depressed watching Giger ride around on his little garden nightmare train?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2016 18:01
|
|
|
SirDrone posted:What happens if a facehugger face hugs a fellow alien?
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2016 18:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:41 |
|
|
PriorMarcus posted:Ressurection does have the single best shot of the franchise in it though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2016 21:20
|
|