alien

I think part of the problem is prequels instead of moving forward or just leaving it alone as the masterpiece that it is.

having seen Prometheus and AC, given the answers,or lack of, that we have been given so far, would u want to see a prequel series or just leave the franchise as it was and have the mystery left in tack? forget ur opinions on the actual movies

I would leave it be. Making what amounts to a mini series on the big screen can dilute the original. Just my two cents.

yea I get what ur saying. sometimes its best not to look behind the curtain

It certainly is a cinematic Master Class!! A well-paced suspense building narrative full of Sci-fi lore and ambiguous mystery. An A class creature feature that does it right. Gives you just enough of a glimpse of the Xeno, and lets your imagination do the rest.

Brilliant

For instance, I thought Pitch Black was excellent on its own and got bogged down with Chronicles. For that matter, Jaws was great and became a laughing stock with its sequels. 

Im probably going to cop it for this, but so is James Cameron's Aliens. Aliens is just a Master Class of a different kind. As a fullbore heroic action film of the 80s variety it is full of guns & explosions, over-the-top bravado, patriotism and one-liners. And the films owns that era of cinematic style. We might not all enjoy it, especially the more bug-like xeno's in it, but its still a great addition to the Alien franchise and is a logical progression for the Ripley story arc. 

The biggest things Aliens got right was to massively expand its scope and universe from the claustrophobic confines of a stalk-and-kill creature feature film. Cameron grabbed it by the balls and opened up a whole new environment.

Look at the Predator franchise. It is stunted and has always struggled because no-one has taken the risk of expanding the Yautja premise. Every film in that franchise re-hashes the exact same premise.

Im full of rants today lol

I still think the franchise could be good if it forged ahead after Resurrection. To me, it doesn't have to be Ridley Scott.

ALII81 - The beautiful dream and the horrible nightmare - both last within our memories and can not be replaced. :)

It has to be in the writing, maybe egos at the studio or finding that talented writer is just too difficult. The prequels have good ideas but there are just too many cooks in the kitchen. Great cooks together can't make a great meal if they're not unified. Alien 1 just seems so solid and so does A2, like the dialogue is just so real and believable. It must be pride and this lust to go after pet project ideas like Scott is all about 'style' to me or 'his' narrative. Which many of that is kosher I just diabolically rage hate most of his characters and their dialogue. Jordan Peele could do it comparable to the first two I bet or Denny V. if they assembled a cohesive team w liberty from Fox to pursue something original or wrap things up. Rambling on now but......the talent is out there it's just finding and nurturing it into something special. The sky is the limit

@dk,

"Pitch Black" and "Jaws" - you nailed it!

Some background. Coming from a former communist country I first seen all the first 3 movies in the early to mid 90s. The forth one i have seen in the cinema. Then I liked all with exception of the forth, but of course the impact was not that powerful like it must have been in '79 and I clearly don't wear rose tinted glasses. I've re-watched the first two some ten years ago ago and I still liked them. After watching Covenant, and hating it, I've revisited the series and I realized that I don't like either movie as a whole. The first one of course is the best and the second has some good parts.

For me, Alien has not aged that well. First the characters, I don't like none of them (Ripley became likable only in Aliens), and their mannerism so '70s. I sincerely don't understand how such a giant ship should be maintained by a crew of 7. 3 of them (Brett, Kane and Parker) are not that different from the crew of Covenant. Further insult Parker is a living stereotype of an african-american thinking only of money. Dallas is more or less Janek. Why they have a cat on a spaceship? why they smoke and have cans of beer on it? 

The Nostromo is completely ridiculous, with completely non functional shape and why is full of pipes. Is it powered by steam? If it transports ore why does not look as an giant silo? And why does the screen displays 0s and 1s, even the binary data would have been edited in hexadecimal and some offset data would have been displayed. Analog video transmission in 2122 will never happen as they predicted.... And why is there gravity on the Nostromo or are their Converse shoe magnetized? And why all the flamethrowers in the series are so unrealistic? After one jet all would have been empty.

The science part was not great that crucial part of the series, and it never aged particularly well. For me only 2001 aged well as a sci-fi, most probably because people thought about the science part.

I like the first hour of the movie or so, until the xenomorph appears. The mood is excellent until then, after that the slasher part is boring and by now is full of cliches. For me as a horror movie Carpenter's The Thing aged much better (with fully workable flamethrowers). I also loved Prometheus because it expanded on parts of the original that I liked and the technology in it was slicker (with new absurdities like the dream helmet, there is no sleep in cryo sleep, or in the Alien there is?).  

red0guy@gmail.com Nostromo was a cargo ship and the similarities with today's cargo ships (waterborne) are obvious. You have cans of beers and cigarettes and crew who is doing the job only for the money.

Sometimes I prefer this kind of straight forward approach instead of the pretentious holographic images and black goo.

daliens

Do you have beers and cigarettes in modern submarines where air supply is limited?

Sorry i see no similarity between the two. The Nostromo was only 4 towers joined together, with a labyrinthine interior. 

red0guy@gmail.com US banned smoking on submarines only in 2011, however sailors were still allowed to smoke on deck. And Nostromo was not a military ship.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343689/US-submarines-smoking-ban-comes-force.html

And until some years ago smoking was permitted in airplanes as well. In 1979 smoking was cool, so if you really want to be picky and look for flaws try something else. If you don't like Alien, fine, but get over it. Same I am trying with Aliens.

daliens

You got me there. The analogy was wrong.. but that is some major stupidity on behalf of the us navy... they had the idea to ban smoking in submarines after 16 years after regular ships? And it seems that the soviets smoked on the MIR (https://www.quora.com/How-do-astronauts-smoke-in-space ). We as a species are so dumb.

To conclude, I was not looking for flaws I was pointing out that the Aliens series is rather shitty to predict things from the future as a good Sci-fi should and that's why they did not age well.

red0guy@gmail.com the Alien is a love it or hate it thing, there no way in between. It's like the Greshka thing from the short "A song for Lya" by George R.R  Martin. It grows on you.

Only look at the passionate debates on this forum.

daliens

Look, I said that i liked the atmosphere of the movie until the xeno appears. I liked the same loneliness in space feeling before the marines wake up in Aliens.

RED0GUY - If you had been in charge of creating Alien, how would you have presented the Alien itself? I would have kept it slightly more mysterious than it was. :)

I got it, you like Alien but you hate The Alien.