fear

Fear: The motion tracker, or something else, starts telling you there's Something In The Area.

Terror: When you've run, hid, and in the end you see it Coming For You.
Particularly applicable when you're hiding in a locker and it's Right There just outside the door peering in at you through the vents...and you DON"T KNOW if it saw you, or if it's just looking in that direction.

It's The Cliff analogy:
Fear: you see the edge of the cliff coming up
Terror: you've just gone off the edge and your brain is denying it's happening while flailing around desperately for a solution, trick, 'fix' to stave off the inevitable.

It helps if there's no time to run and it's very claustrophobic.

Thanks BWW- interesting answer. I guess a tertiary question is if the movie series has gotten away from those elements.

The first one, specially if you are at the intersection of some ventilation tubes and they tell you "wait a minute, I lost the signal", so you have to flip the coin and decide if you go up or down. You feeling lucky today?

Blackwinter-witch Ridley forgot the lessons from the "master"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md6folAgGRU

dk

YES I would say that the franchise has. In Alien when they discover the hole in the deck, that was Unease with a bit of fear, cuz dark unknown holes are scary by definition.
Then down below, the eggs, the slime dripping Upward, then it becomes transparent and opens...and there we have Fear rising from Unease.
Then well, Facehugger-surprise-shock, so not really 'terror' but a decent substitute. Terror would have come in had it been a longer and more protracted struggle on Kane's part vs it.

joylitt

Yes, he has, but I for one hopes he remembers. It's not too late, for him or the franchise.

joylitt Thanks for sharing. I think the key was at 1:00-1:05. It told about letting the audience figure it out. Interesting since although true, it was a pre internet time when we can now go on in real time. At any rate, I wonder if the Alien series has lost its way since that 1979 vibe. I am not knocking it but it seems we cannot get that vibe again. I suggested in a different thread that maybe it should end when it connects to Alien and go out on a good note. Better to leave them wanting more than to over stay your welcome.

dk

I have to agree with you about the principle of 'leave them wanting more'.

Actually what Hitchcock says in that video about his mistake in letting a bomb explode is very similar to what Ridley Scott did with the backburster scene. The only other attempt at suspense was the twist at the end involving David/Walter, but its predictability ruined it.

And here another quote from another heavy weight:

“These days, movie trailers practically tell the whole story. I think it’s really harmful. For me, personally, I don’t want to know anything when I go into a theater. I like to discover it, get into that world, try to get as good of picture and sound as possible, no interruptions – so you can have an experience. And anything that putrefies that is not good.” David Lynch

joylitt

Good quote from Lynch!! Exactly!!!

'Twist' endings...I stay away from them as they can so easily go wrong.

joylitt Lynch is right imo. It seems that trailers are made to entice audiences to watching movies anymore. I have to go back to the Matrix- I only knew it was a cool sci fi movie by word of mouth. Other than that, I went and saw it and was blown away.

I think we get a lot of trailers and teasers for more economic reasons. The fan base is already locked in. Gotta appeal to the non fan base to ensure everyone is payed and the studio turns an acceptable profit I suppose.

Fear not,be confident in life and should be content and thankful to everything happened in life. wedding photography Kerala like this article so much.

the tracker would scare the absolute s***s out of me, knowing its heading right for me and thers nothing I can do about it. at least if I can see it I can attempt to run

The thing about the tracker is that you know something is there but not exactly what it is. Is it safe or not? Probably not but maybe so. If you actually see the Alien as terrifying as it is, you know for sure. The not knowing seems more fearful.

I don't think Ridley Scott believes traditional suspense works anymore.

joylitt

It'll keep working fine until a fundamental change happens in the human brain structure species-wide. :)

the mind is more powerful than anything they show us on the screen, that's why alien is so terrifying. u have to imagine the persons death. its why the tracker to me is more frightening. if something is standing infront of me I can run or fight. but if that bleep is moving towards u and u cant see anything then ur mind is going haywire

ali81

Watching Run Silent, Run Deep last night, this one character was crushed when a torpedo broke loose from it's storage rack...we're looking up, his POV, we see it roll to the edge, hesitate, then it slips fully off...
NO blood seen at all...and it's actually all the nastier as your brain fills in the details.