James Cameron's Aliens was a mistake.

The actual "story" of Aliens would've been fine had someone like RS directed it, with his visuals, and reliance on Giger for co-art direction. Cameron's treatise of the concept just is so dumbed down, it really insults the "Alien" audience's intelligence. Much like "Prometheus" over-estimated it...

How is it insulting?

@S.M. By thinking all of us just wanted to see pure action without proper characterization, dialogue, suspense, and visuals, instead going for the "full Monty" approach just trying to reveal it all and blow up lots of stuff. The "All American" way of movie making.

That's extremely broad.  I don't see any lack of characterization, dialogue, suspense and visuals.  What specifically about those aspects was lacking?

JCs movies have always been hit or miss with me. I like a lot of them but I can't say I love any. Couldn't stand Avatar. I can't say whether or not Aliens would have been better off in someone else's hands. Besides RS, I'm not sure there was anyone else in that decade that could have pulled off a solid sequel. I can say Aliens is my favorite JC movie... but it wasn't a slam dunk.

Neomorph

Yes, (SM correction)Apone was played by a real former marine NCO- similar how Lee was in Full Metal Jacket. Real deal. Cameron did not seek detailed military/combat protocols, but that level of detail may have been lost on many viewers back then. For those with military experience, (SM correction)Apone can be really appreciated considering Cameron's focus on other things.

*Apone.

Thank you, SM.

DK's Spelling of Apone Was a Mistake!

Fixed, sur:)

I owe a lot to Aliens. I was six, my mom made me sit on the floor much of the time and then let me watch the end battle scene because she knew how much I loved voltron and transformers. It was fantastic, even formative. But I digress...James Cameron is a pornographer. He makes action porn. Good action porn. T1, Aliens, T2. True Lies. Everything a growing pubescent who likes gi joe would want. Alien had substance; Something that was so underlying visceral that you were uncomfortable and felt unsafe and violating. I'd be happy if Scott turned in a Jurassic park like story with Covenant. That's my guess so far with just more gore to it. But I agree that Aliens was exhilarating and accomplished what it intended although it lost that true sense of violation and haunting horror.

I don't think porn is the right word, but your last sentence is pretty accurate.

Aliens works as an action movie but it isn’t scary, that is how I look at it. This is not to say that it is bad but it is just another genre. It was my favorite among the Alien movies when I was younger but it has dropped on the list as I have gotten older. Nowadays my favorite is Alien 3 followed by Alien, with Aliens as number three or four. One thing that I really like about Aliens is that it gave us Vasques, one of my favorite characters in any Alien movie, yay!

- Hey Vasques, have you ever been taken for a man? (Hudson)

- No have you? (Vasques)

This scene still makes me laugh even though I have watched the movie many times. Aliens probably has the most memorable lines among all Alien related movies.

I agree that they could have made the Xenos a bit more mysterious instead of a simple insect, so to speak. To have it being rooted in nature, being inspired by that is one thing but it should have been more of an unknown creature in Aliens (for example the queen). Yes, it is not lousy (the Cameron version) but it could have been better still I think that it is aright that they were trying something new. Art is interesting in the way that people can have different interpretations of it so this is where the idea of the queen comes in but that is not to say that the way that it is executed in the movie is the way that I think that they should have done it.

Bull Alien: I thought that the Engineers came off as kind of lame in Prometheus but that is me but the idea was interesting. This could have been fixed if they would have had sub-titles when Weyland and the Engineer spoke (translated by David) because it would have made the motives by the Engineers clearer but now it got kind of confused. Perhaps they can have them in another Prometheus movie but they go to make them more of a threat and also, they need to have subtitles if they will have some dialogue so it won’t be as lame as they appeared in Prometheus.

Bull Alien: At page one of this discussion you wrote: “I do love the Engineers though, I thought that was awesome we get that cleared up about who they are.” http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/43257&page=1 ------

Connors: I agree about Alien 3, it is my favorite Alien movie this far (including Prometheus). Maybe AC will be better than Alien 3 but I doubt it even though I try to keep an open mind. Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992) are those that I think are most interesting among the Alien related movies. (http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/43257&page=1)

@Thoughts_Dreams     Yeah Alien 3 is good stuff! I understand that some people hate that Hicks and Newt were killed off but that's also why it's so good. Poor Ripley always loses people she gets close to, she's such a tragic character but that's also why you care about her. And not everything has a happy ending, I love happy endings don't get me wrong but some of the best movies end on kind of a downer, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien 3 just to name a few. And that's in my opinion how Ripley's story should have ended but I also don't have a problem if they do Alien 5, right now that sounds like it could be a big if.

The original alien was iconic. It fundamentally changed the way I looked at the science fiction genre and actually made it real to me, believable. The Nostromo was a commercial vehicle but alien was not a commercial movie. Cameron took the originality and gigerish themes of alien and turned into a commercial Hollywood popcorn flick like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica etc. Alien was not filled with one and two dimensional beautiful people who were perfect, cute robots, and a screenplay that you basically already knew the recipe to. Ripley was a warrant officer who spent decades in space, Parker and Brett were working-class engineers who bitched and complained like real people.

And most importantly the alien was utterly that, alien. Did it eat, did it sleep, where were it's freaking eyes? What were those tubes sticking out of its back used for? Did it Need to breathe? Didn't inject you with something that turns you into an egg?

Then Here Comes James Cameron and turns Ripley from a chief warrant officer who would not have any reason to be attached to kids or daughter is because the time she spent in deep space into a mommy figure for newt who all of a sudden they had a little baby girl at home which made no sense because her daughter would have been in her sixties.

And all of a sudden the mystery of the alien is taken away and they're a bunch of damn termites or ants.

Like a smart man once said the best car ever built was the first car ever built, and I'm kind of looking at alien the same way its original.

Ripley was 30 years old in Alien, so she wouldn't have been in space for decades nor had a daughter in her sixties. Not sure what you're getting at with that.

The Nostromo was traveling at faster than light speed and the crew would be away from Earth for at least 40 years Towing the refinery with their tug, when they were woken from hypersleep they weren't even in our system. and if Ripley had a daughter on earth when she left she would have been an elderly woman or already passed away.  Ripley was a career military warrant officer, not a mommy in the original alien. James Cameron made her into a mommy in Aliens  and changed her character to fit in with that of a mother because now we have newt in the picture and it was done for commercial Hollywood reasons. Just like all the explosions big bangs and thousands of bugs being killed, that's the way Hollywood works dependent upon the director.

Dr. Curt Connors: Yeah the Alien movies have never been about happy endings. The deaths of Newt and Hicks followed that tradition so that fits the franchise. Sometimes things just end up in a bad way. Empire is my favorite Star Wars movie because it is different compared to 4 and 6 (ROTS was also tragic but it didn’t feel the same, too much CGI, ESB had better lines, acting, and so on). Alien should have ended with Alien 3, it has a good/fitting ending to the whole franchise if you ask me.

You mention Alien 5, maybe the Cameron fans will like it, those that would have preferred a happy family ending to the Ripley-Hicks-Newt-story but I have never looked at this as being a happy family kind of thing so I probably won’t care to watch Alien 5.

Empire is definitely the best Star Wars movie ever and then followed by Return of the Jedi in my opinion. I don't mind if they make an Alien 5, the more Alien movies the better.

"The Nostromo was traveling at faster than light speed and the crew would be away from Earth for at least 40 years Towing the refinery with their tug, when they were woken from hypersleep they weren't even in our system. and if Ripley had a daughter on earth when she left she would have been an elderly woman or already passed away. "

That's not how it works in the Alien universe. There's no appreciable time dilation connected to faster than light travel.

"Ripley was a career military warrant officer, not a mommy in the original alien."

She's not military. None of them are in Alien.  They're truck drivers.

I remember the trailer for Aliens before the movie 'Malcolm' back in 1986, with sub 'this time its war' and knew this was going to be a action/horror. 

I reckon it was a good action movie, but it was good to see that it was left at that and Alien3 took up a different direction.

Its like Terminator2 and 3, everyone poo-pooed 3 because they were expecting a repeat of T2.

@Karstenphd WELL articulated, my friend. Absolutely all are major reasons why I've come to nearly despise "Aliens".