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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Which Alien film is best?

  
  

Page: (1)2345

 
 
Bed Head
12:59 / 12.05.04
A knock down, drag out ‘lith ultrabrawl to decide once and for all.
 
 
The Falcon
13:03 / 12.05.04
Oh, I saw this in the Astonishing thread.

I like Aliens best.

My order is thus: 2,1,4,3.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:04 / 12.05.04
Alien is the best one. Hands down. I'm amazed that anyone would ever question that!

Aliens is okay, but it's more intense and over the top, whereas the original is beautiful and genuinely frightening.
 
 
MJ-12
13:16 / 12.05.04
It's a toss up between the first two, depending on my mood. Subsequent films in the series don't exist in my world.
 
 
_Boboss
13:31 / 12.05.04
the first one gets better and better every time i see it, the others don't really. my child-love lies with part 2 but i feel that i know it all inside out now and may not gain much from any more viewings. three is pretty good just because of all the shouting bugfood northerners and the cool (cunningham-designed?) beastie.

the fourth one, with the human-alien-baby? that's just fucking bollocks though
 
 
gummi
15:16 / 12.05.04
In the order they were filmed.

Alien is fantastic. Aliens is pretty good, Alien3 is fair-to-middling, and Alien4, well, I just wish they weren't so desperate. They even dragged down Jeunet with that one.
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
15:26 / 12.05.04
"Get away from her you bitch!"
Says it all for me. Many a time I've used that phrase in conversation. At my Bar Mitzvah, during job interviews, and hopefully after the imminent birth of my sister's femme sprog. Difficult to say which part is my favourite. "Get away from her" or "You bitch"...
 
 
eddie thirteen
15:37 / 12.05.04
1, 3, 4, 2. Ridley Scott, circa Alien and Blade Runner = Pimp. Alien 3, albeit apparently tampered with by the studio, comes closer to capturing the vibe of the original than any of the others, and is cool as (in retrospect) a warm-up for Fincher's Seven, if nothing else. Resurrection had some pretty crappy moments (the afore-mentioned human-alien baby), but was sweet in lots of City of Lost Children-visual ways (and you gotta love the swimming aliens and Ron Perlman launching a warcry at and subsequently capping a spider with a ridiculously huge handgun). Aliens...dude, fuck James Cameron.
 
 
thestrongarm
15:43 / 12.05.04
Sorry to be so wishy-washy, but I can't seperate Alien and Aliens. I love the both the same but for different things. I love the whole concept of Alien, the chest bursting scene, the contrast of the Space Ship and the planet. I love watching the wise-cracking space marines, all hand slaps and macho humour and then, hald hour later they are all beset by panic and any discipline or cockiness is long gone. Alien 3. Hm. Alien Ressurection: Can I pretend that it didn't happen?
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
17:21 / 12.05.04
Yeah, Aliens is such complete garbage. I'd label it the worst, simply because he completely abandoned the artistic creepitude of the Alien and made it a ridiculous and stupid action film.

3 and 4, their relative merit aside, at least tried to bring back a sense of artisticness to the alien itself.

Guys running around in really awful Alien suits. Ugh. James Cameron totally sucks.
 
 
sleazenation
18:31 / 12.05.04
depends what you like - each of the films does different things - which is why its such a great franchise - the aliens are infinitely maliable and, depending on the quality of the script - could probably fit into any setting.
 
 
gummi
19:15 / 12.05.04
Alien is Conrad's Nostromo.

Aliens was supposed to be Vietnam (+wish-fulfillment).

Alien3 has been interpreted as "HIV" run Riot.

Alien Resurrection was the mortgage payments, in dire need.

That's why I think they decrease in value.

How about the best quote from the movies:

"I say we grease this rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch right now", and Burke deserved it, right?
 
 
Hieronymus
21:34 / 12.05.04
I gotta say compared to other franchises, this one is one of my all-time favorites. I mean damn even Ressurection, which is the flatest of the bunch, saved Ripley in a way I never imagined... by merging her with the Aliens. I mean acid blood in a bad-ass Sigourney Weaver. How sly is that?

But Aliens 2 still gets my adrenaline pumping. No matter how many times I've seen it. Ripley is Kali, folks. To the bone.
 
 
Triplets
21:40 / 12.05.04
I just love Ripley. The way she turns everything in that film to her own ends, her pulse rifle training to protect herself becomes a tool to force her way into the Alien nest. She puts the beacon on Newt instead of on herself. Gets a squad of marines behind her despite the fact that they regard her as a bugfuck looney.

So

Good.

(Also, Alien 4 is good, told you!)
 
 
Saint Keggers
22:45 / 12.05.04
1,2,3,4. Quality control goes down the tube. 4 was the equivalent of T3...crap we're gonna put out to milk the franchise until its dryer than the gobi.
 
 
Foust is SO authentic
23:15 / 12.05.04
Aliens is hands down one of the most quotable movies of all time. It's right up there with The Big Lebowski.

"Get away from her, you bitch!"

"I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." (I love shoe horning that into casual conversation)

"Game over man, game over!"

"In case you haven't been keeping up with current events, we just got our asses kicked back there!"

"Eat this!"

"Hey Vasquaz, anybody ever mistake you for a man?"
"No, what about you?"

Alien was top notch atmosphere. So was Alien3. Resurrection wasn't bad, but doesn't stand up to repeat viewings.

2, 1, 3, 4.
 
 
The Falcon
23:58 / 12.05.04
Aliens: [they] made it a ridiculous and stupid action film.

I know. It was great; 'specially when she goes back for the kid.

Soo exciting.

I also like - or perhaps love - Stallone's Cobra.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
06:01 / 13.05.04
Cobra I can get behind. It's not like it was the sequel to a Jim Jarmusch film.
 
 
Seth
06:41 / 13.05.04
Why don't you put her in charge?!
 
 
Lord Morgue
10:19 / 13.05.04
What gets me about Cobra is how they manage to make Stallone look taller than Brigette Neillson. Oh yeah, and Brian Thompson is sooo badass in everything he does- the alien bounty hunter from the X-files, Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat, although in drag as Buffalo Bob in Joe Dirt was a little TOO scary...
Back to Aliens- can you believe Jeanette Goldstien (Vasquez) isn't even Hispanic? She is such a chameleon- I bet nobody here even realised she was John Connors' stepmother in Terminator 2! That line about "She thought they meant illegal aliens and signed on" is pretty close to the truth- she showed up for casting in ethnic drag, no idea she was going to play a space marine... And the guy who played Sgt. Apone was a real drill instructor.
Ooh, tenuous James Cameron link- Brian Thompson was one of the three punks Arnie mugs for their clothes in T-1.
 
 
_Boboss
10:37 / 13.05.04
and hudson was one too

but everyone knows that, so pretend i never said it.
 
 
Triplets
16:58 / 13.05.04
Nice night for a walk
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:27 / 13.05.04
Bill Paxton is the glue that holds James Cameron's world together. Lance Henriksen, of course, played both Bishop in Aliens and a policeman in The Terminator, and starred in Millenium, which was created by Chris Carter, who also created the X-Files, which had alien bounty hunter played by..

It's all about Henriksen, man. Actor. Potter.

4 was the equivalent of T3...crap we're gonna put out to milk the franchise until its dryer than the gobi.

Yeah, but think about the implications of that statement. Terminator 3 is a sad pastiche of the cool moments of the previous film - what was played for drama in the first and familiarity in the second becomes farce in the third - where a lack of invention leads to the reprising of entire scenes with a higher budget. Alien Resurrection had Brad Dourif breeding a gigantic baby, lesbian cyborgs and a French midget in a wheelchair. One thing you can't accuse it of is a lack of invention or too much reverence for the source material...
 
 
Saint Keggers
20:02 / 13.05.04
Maybe I can't accuse it of a lack of invention but invention doesnt necessarily mean quality. Having the queen alien attacking the world with pixie sticks while riding a pogo stick and playing the bagpipes is quite inventive too.

And the alien halfbreed looked like total complete absolute shit.
 
 
The Strobe
20:10 / 13.05.04
Alien, the original, by a country mile as it were. I'm not sure if I prefer the Director's Cut or the original, but given it was the DC I last saw - and the only form I've seen at the cinema - I'll go with that.

Aliens is a great film, but it's a lousy sequel to Alien. That's the easiest way to express my feelings; I enjoy it, it's got great moments, Weaver's fantastic, but it seems as if it came from a parallel universe to the original. Never mind.
 
 
A beautiful tunnel of ghosts
20:34 / 13.05.04
I love Aliens - saw it when it came out on video after the Glasgow Evening Times ran an article entitled 'THE SCARIEST MOVIE EVER'. I saw Alien years before on TV and watched it again on video a few years after I saw Aliens and was disappointed by it - like The Exorcist, everything that followed Alien tried to outdo it and 15 years after it came out I'd seen other movies that had done the same thing better.

Aliens *is* an action movie and my only complaint is that there isn't enough of the aliens themselves - the Special Edition's reinsertion of the robot sentries scene highlights this with its surprising lack of onscreen targets. Aliens is only surpassed by Robocop in my cinematic canon, and matches it for quotability.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:34 / 13.05.04
Having the queen alien attacking the world with pixie sticks while riding a pogo stick and playing the bagpipes is quite inventive too.


Where do I sign?
 
 
MJ-12
21:56 / 13.05.04
It's all about Henriksen, man. Actor. Potter. Slayer of Snakes.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
23:16 / 13.05.04
Aliens is the best. When it first came out I thought doing the whole thing as an action movie was a betrayal of what I loved about the first... but I think it's aged better. It's certainly the one I watch most often. Phrases like "Hudson, we're LEAVING!" and "dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure" are now common building blocks in the big (well, okay, medium-sized) box of Lego that is my conversational vocabulary.

Saw the Director's Cut of Alien a couple months back (the first time I'd ever seen it on a big screen) and it was wicked. But I still prefer Aliens.

Alien 3 I thought was vastly underrated... I liked it a lot.

Alien 4- well... it would have been a much better movie if all the stuff after she gets dragged down through the floor hadn't happened. I was prepared to accept everything up until that point... but the Firstborn sucked so many varieties of ass than even an assologist would have trouble naming them all.
 
 
eddie thirteen
00:20 / 14.05.04
I will admit that Aliens is one of Cameron's better movies, but that (need I say it?), in my opinion, is not saying very much. Like Lucas, Cameron is the master of the one-dimensional-character-having, shit-reading-screenplay-sporting, visual spectacle school of Hollywood filmmaking that is, directly or indirectly, the reason why almost every film you will see all summer long will be an unwatchable piece of shit that cost two hundred million dollars to make. Therefore, fuck James Cameron. For real.

However...

In the execrable James Cameron canon, Aliens certainly towers head and shoulders above The Abyss, True Lies, and T2, which, by the way, I *also* think is a total shitfest. Actually, I think the only James Cameron movie I completely, unreservedly like is the original Terminator. So...y'know. Make of this what you will. I know a lot of people really like these movies, and several of them are otherwise intelligent, sane, taste-having individuals. So maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's like that friend you have whose taste in all matters is impeccable, only he really likes wrestling. I don't know. I just...I don't know.

Anyway. My hatred for Aliens begins with the totally shitty and pointless redesign of the aliens themselves. I mean, when you have a movie that everyone remembers most for its unprecedented creature design, whose dipshit idea was it to change that design? That's right. It was the IDEA OF JAMES CAMERON. Nice one. And what is happening with this bizarre closet case of a director that every woman in every movie he makes needs to be transformed, by the end of the film, into a steroidal monkey-man? I'm sorry, but this creeps me out. And...well, anyway. It's also not very scary, unintentonally laughable in places, features a very annoying child, and is about an hour too long. And it's got that guy...the little weasely guy whose name escapes me. God, I hate that guy.

But it does have Lance, man! Lance rules all. And the action itself does put you on edge; I love those scenes where there's just guns going off all over the place and you have no idea where the aliens actually are. Ditto the first scene with Ripley. I also like the alien coming up out of the water to say hey to Newt. Very cool shot.

Overall, though...no. It's definitely down there on the bottom of the Alien pile. Cameron's McDonald's style of filmmaking simply lacks the class of the other directors involved. But I do think the influence of the original brought out the best in him.
 
 
gummi
06:06 / 14.05.04
Anyway. My hatred for Aliens begins with the totally shitty and pointless redesign of the aliens themselves. I mean, when you have a movie that everyone remembers most for its unprecedented creature design, whose dipshit idea was it to change that design?

Actually, this started with Ridley Scott. I think he was the one who asked for the appendages placed on the back of the Alien, in the first film.

The Alien in the third film is supposed to be a closer image of what Giger (the creature designer) was going for. I think Cameron's decisions were more logistics, and yes, equally unforgivable.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
07:09 / 14.05.04
Bear in mind, though, that unutterable arse he may be, Cameron does do corridors well.
 
 
Lord Morgue
12:52 / 14.05.04
Lance Henrickson is God. You know he was up for the role of the Terminator? He was in character for weeks, climbing around on fire escapes and frightening people. He had tin foil in his mouth to make it look like his mouth was metal, and he showed up, in character to see "Mr. Cameron" and scared the living christ out of Cameron's office staff just sitting there being all Killer Robot Method Actor in the waiting room. And Arnie was going to be Reece... that would have been a different movie. The original script had the Terminator dissecting all it's victim's left legs with a knife trying to find a metal pin Sarah Connors had in her leg from a motorcycle accident, to confirm the kill. And we never got to see the four-legged Arachno-Tank H.K.!
Ah well, I hear Cameron's working on a live action Battle Angel Alita movie. Yay Gally!
Ooh, check out Knights, with Kathy Long, for some fine Henrickson going nucking futs footage- drooling, looking at the camera, waving a big robot arm around and generally freaking out.
 
 
Axolotl
15:30 / 14.05.04
Lance Henriksen is so cool. I watched the DVD version of "Near Dark" recently and it explained how in his crazy method way he rode around the south-west of the US in character, picking up hitchhikers and scaring the shit out of them, and generally fucking with peoples' heads. With regard to the actual thread topic, I love the Alien franchise and repeatedly watched them all as a teenager. Looking back on them I feel Alien wins out for it's grimy industriual feeling and just generally being a fantastic movie. Aliens is also very good, though in a completely different way, it's like testosterone on celluloid, and was almost certainly every teenage males' favourite movie.
Alien 3 I feel is under-rated, and I've always wondered what the William Gibson treatment was like.
Alien Resurrection was inventive, but to be honest it was also fairly shit. The under-water bits were good though.
Altogether now: "game over man, game over"
 
 
Bed Head
15:55 / 14.05.04
Ah, but Lance Henrikson gives his very best performance in Alien3, both as the previously-mangled Bishop from Aliens and as another evil Bishop right at the end. He’s even creepier than Ian Holm in Alien. Gives Ripley a blast of his maximum flirt mode and almost tricks her, the monster, before he is revealed to have been lying through his satanic robot teeth.

And Alien3 has more great lines than Aliens:

‘Trouble?’
[bored] ‘You could say that. One of the prisoners has been diced.’ [/bored]

‘Because they won’t kill it. They might kill you just for having seen it, but they’re not going to kill it. What makes you think they’re going to care about a bunch of lifers who found God at the ass-end of space? They think we’re- we’re crud. And they don’t give a fuck about one friend of yours that’s died. Not one.’

‘This is a maximum. Security. Prison. And you have no weapons of any kind?’

‘Don’t be afraid. I’m one of the family.’

‘Hey, Bishop, how’re you feeling?’
‘My legs hurt.’

‘You’re all going to die. The only difference is how you check out. Do you want it on your feet, or on your knees, begging? I aint much for begging. So I say, Fuck that thing.’

Yeah! Man, Alien3 rocks. On toast. And Pete Postlethwaite is more convincing as a sex offender than podgy Bill Paxton is as a marine.
 
  

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