30 years since Aliens

[Patrick Thistle]

I remember as a little kid (9 or 10) seeing the coming soon posters for Aliens. Just the word Aliens and the slogan This time it's war. It gave me chills.

Greatest sequel ever? Got to be up there. Greatest sci fi sequel ever? Reckon so. Best James Cameron movie? Probably.

So many good lines in it.

"He's just a grunt! No offence."
"None taken."

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

30 years since Aliens

"Hey, Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"

"No - have you?"

[Lang Spoon]

30 years since Aliens

Patrick Thistle wrote: So many good lines in it.

Mostly.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

30 years since Aliens

I've got a T-shirt somewhere with "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit" written on it.

[Patrick Thistle]

30 years since Aliens

I had a Weyland Yutani t-shirt for a long while. One of my favourites but it went in the Great T-shirt Cull last month.

"What's laying the eggs?"

[evilC]

30 years since Aliens

One of my favourite sci-fi films and the film which led to the comic book & graphic novel series. Those are still the definitive post-Aliens storyline, if anyone cares to track them down.

[Reed John]

30 years since Aliens

I honestly can't remember anything about Aliens, except that I saw it before I saw Alien, which I don't really rate, tbh.

Rogin the Armchair fan wrote:

I've got a T-shirt somewhere with "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit" written on it.

The only full-on sci-fi shirt I currently own is one that says "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

[Incandenza]

30 years since Aliens

I remember my mom telling me that my dad was close to hyperventilating when they saw it in the theater from the suspense.

[lackedpunch]

30 years since Aliens

I read Alan Dean Foster's "Alien" novelization on summer holiday in 1986, (I hadn't seen the film)

When I told my friend I'd read it he told me about the forthcoming sequel, and then a few weeks later I saw it.

I think it is the most exciting cinema experience I've ever had. The way the story unfolded, the range of memorable characters ( brave Hicks, slimy Burke, Vasquez, Bill Paxton) and the incredible tension and special effects made it the most exhilarating two and a half hours I've ever spent in a cinema.

An incredible film.

Was surprised how many elements Cameron lifted from it for "Avatar".

[lackedpunch]

30 years since Aliens

Favourite lines:

"Game over, man."

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast!"

[evilC]

30 years since Aliens

Favourite quote:

Bishop: "Believe me, I'd prefer not to. I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid."

[Patrick Thistle]

30 years since Aliens

lackedpunch wrote:

Was surprised how many elements Cameron lifted from it for "Avatar".

Also repackaged for The Abyss. (Strong female lead, exploring an abandoned facility, people in charge having secret agendas etc)

[hobbes]

30 years since Aliens

The theatrical release was rubbish though, wasn't it? The film was a mess and didn't really make any sense chronologically.
It's only when they released the directors cut (or special edition or whatever) that added back in scenes like the sentry cannons etc. that it worked. It really worked then, though.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

30 years since Aliens

Cameron's cut definitely contains more scenes that make it all make sense. Burke talking to the colonists (Newt's Dad), scenes like that.

Ridley Scott's cut of the original Alien contains a scene - on the Nostromo - where Ripley comes across Brett and Dallas, secreted into a wall nest and apparently impregnated by facehuggers from spent eggs. Which implies a lifecycle for the (lone) alien on board that ship that has never been explored in anything later on (in Aliens, of course, the concept of the Queen was introduced).

[diggedy derek]

30 years since Aliens

I didn't like the director's cut when I saw it – I thought the horror of Aliens, like Jaws, was accentuated by not seeing the monsters (or seeing what happened before), and when you had all those colonist scenes it gave you too much insight into what they were heading into. I think the sickening inevitability of the marines heading into a nightmare, like seeing a car about to hit a wall and knowing it shortly will do so, was part of what made it so gripping.

But you're right about the thing with the sentry guns, that didn't make much sense in the original.

I guess it was quite a clever original edit, though, in that you barely saw anything except what they saw. That was some mad claustrophobia.

[evilC]

30 years since Aliens

Rogin the Armchair fan wrote: ...Ridley Scott's cut of the original Alien contains a scene - on the Nostromo - where Ripley comes across Brett and Dallas, secreted into a wall nest and apparently impregnated by facehuggers from spent eggs. Which implies a lifecycle for the (lone) alien on board that ship that has never been explored in anything later on (in Aliens, of course, the concept of the Queen was introduced).

In the book 'Giger's Alien' (originally released before 'Aliens') there is a section where this is explained. It seems that they had come up with a couple of ways in which the Alien/Xenomorph could reproduce. One was the queen - which I think they hadn't originally planned - and the other was that only the victims of the facehugger 'gave birth' to the Aliens. The eggs were created by an adult Alien doing something to the people it had 'abducted' (remember we never actually saw Dallas getting killed) and them slowly metamorphosing into eggs! This is illustrated in the book with a series of photos (or extremely good illustrations - I forget which) of the victims in various states of this transformation. This might sound sillier than the queen idea, but it looked every bit as horrific as anything else in the film. (I don't recall the 'spent eggs', to be honest - either in the expanded movie or in the book.)

I get the impression that there were certain aspects that they (the production and writing crew) were pretty much making up as they went along. It looked like they had this idea pretty well developed, but then canned it at the last second, in favour of the queen one, which makes more sense to us, as we are used to seeing insect (and other) lifecycles similar to that, here on earth.

The book also had some early 'concept' illustrations that Giger had drawn (presumably upon request) showing a completely different setting for the original encounter. This was a ziggurat-like building - presumably built by the Aliens themselves - and it was lined with engravings of aspects of Alien culture and lifecycle. One of the engravings depicted one Alien on what was seemingly a sacrificial plinth, having a facehugger applied to its face by another Alien. This would go some way to explaining Alien breeding and proliferation in their own culture. However, this idea was scrapped early on and they went for making the Alien a more feral, brutish creature without such things as buildings and ceremonies and with a more insect-like societal structure. The use of the ziggurat would have meant there would have been no 'Space Jockey' ship to discover on the planet, so quite how the crew of the Nostromo would have been drawn to the planet in the first place, I don't know. Thankfully, that idea was another that was canned. Instead we get that iconic image of the dead Space Jockey in the chair at that huge gun-like device that was seemingly a transmitter of some kind - the transmitter of the message that the Nostromo originally picked up.

The ziggurat idea was revived, though, in the atrocious 'Aliens vs. Predator'. Of all the travesties in the Alien film cycle, that is the greatest, I think, as the original 'Aliens vs. Predator' comics / graphic novel totally explained not only the Alien biochemistry, but also their place in the broader universe and pantheon of creatures. If they'd made that version of 'Aliens vs. Predator', then 'Prometheus' simply could never have happened - it would have been rendered redundant.

Interestingly, Neill Blomkamp's new Alien film may well write the 3rd & 4th films out of history, although this had been denied, a year earlier. This may imply that Blomkamp might have been a fan of the original comics that followed in the wake of 'Aliens' and which carefully expanded the Alien / Predator / Space Jockey universe, culminating in the apocalyptic 'Aliens: Earthwar'. It'll be interesting to see if Blomkamp is working towards that, or at least an interpretation of it.

[Snake Plissken]

30 years since Aliens

Cameron, Biehn, Weaver, Hurd, Reiser, Henriksen and Paxton at a 30 yr anniversary Comic Con panel.

YouTube link

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

30 years since Aliens

evilC wrote:

The eggs were created by an adult Alien doing something to the people it had 'abducted' (remember we never actually saw Dallas getting killed) and them slowly metamorphosing into eggs!

Not only does that make sense but I've just been more horrified, by that concept, than anything in the original films.

[diggedy derek]

30 years since Aliens

Snake Plissken wrote: Cameron, Biehn, Weaver, Hurd, Reiser, Henriksen and Paxton at a 30 yr anniversary Comic Con panel.

YouTube link

Where's Vasquez? WHERE'S VASQUEZ?!?!

[evilC]

30 years since Aliens

Rogin the Armchair fan wrote: evilC wrote:

The eggs were created by an adult Alien doing something to the people it had 'abducted' (remember we never actually saw Dallas getting killed) and them slowly metamorphosing into eggs!

Not only does that make sense but I've just been more horrified, by that concept, than anything in the original films.

Yes:

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[Patrick Thistle]

30 years since Aliens

TBH I didn't think that scene in the Directors Cut made much sense or particularly added to it. Dallas just disappearing was much more effective.

[lackedpunch]

30 years since Aliens

What do folk here think about Alien 3?

I remember seeing an article a while back in a magazine that talked about it growing in cult status over the years (especially in Europe), and that some people actually chose it as their favourite film in the series!

I saw it on release and was massively disappointed, but I haven't watched it since then. I have it on the boxset and might pull it out soon to re-watch.

Any love for it here?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

30 years since Aliens

The mood, and the style, was great. But they should never have just so glibly killed off Hicks and Newt, and the ending is fucking rubbish. Paul McGann said he filmed about half an hours' worth of scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.

[lackedpunch]

30 years since Aliens

Interesting Aliens website here:

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/about-strange-shapes/

[Louis Van Faartle]

30 years since Aliens

Rogin the Armchair fan wrote: Cameron's cut definitely contains more scenes that make it all make sense. Burke talking to the colonists (Newt's Dad), scenes like that.

Ridley Scott's cut of the original Alien contains a scene - on the Nostromo - where Ripley comes across Brett and Dallas, secreted into a wall nest and apparently impregnated by facehuggers from spent eggs. Which implies a lifecycle for the (lone) alien on board that ship that has never been explored in anything later on (in Aliens, of course, the concept of the Queen was introduced).

That scene was in the extended cut. Scott insists that the theatrical release is his preferred version of the film and only released the extended version for the fans.

The 'Dallas cocoon scene' was removed from the original cut because it screwed up the flow of the third act. Scott mentions this in the directors commentary.

Having said that, if he had left it in, James Cameron may have decided not to turn the creatures into overgrown ants in the second film. Aliens is a fantastic sequel, don't get me wrong but giving the aliens an insect-like hierarchy in the second film takes away the fear and mystique of the creature from the first movie.

Rogin the Armchair fan wrote: The mood, and the style, was great. But they should never have just so glibly killed off Hicks and Newt, and the ending is fucking rubbish. Paul McGann said he filmed about half an hours' worth of scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Most of which were restored for the extended cut. There was an interesting sub-plot involving his character where he went bananas and thought the Alien was some sort of demon sent by God to kill them all.

SPOILER - HIGHLIGHT WHITE TEXT In the extended cut, after they lock the alien in the toxic waste compartment, he releases the creature /SPOILER