Ripley basically cuts a temporary deal with the queen – which means that the queen can reason as we reason, and so that communication is possible. One of the great things about the organism in Alien is that it’s not presented that way at all… it’s simply a force of nature, doing what it does remorselessly. Ash pegs that about it. You certainly don’t get the idea in Alien that you could reason with it somehow if only you had the right leverage. That’s part of why it’s so scary… there are no deals to be cut. If it finds you (and it will come looking) you’re in big trouble, guaranteed.

I feel that having the alien’s life cycle and motivation be largely incomprehensible (and Ridley barely even shows us the whole creature) makes it all the more psychologically terrifying, and the more aspects of it that are made relatable and understandable simply dilute its power to frighten.

As for those 50′s flicks, I guess I always considered those sci-fi and/or fantasy, not horror. Perhaps that’s just because they seem so quaint to my modern sensibilities.

1) I do not agree that “Aliens” is poorly-written. You address this point twice, but since you focused on the dialog further down, I’ll talk here about the structure and plot. “Aliens” excels as an action-thriller, and has probably never been surpassed in terms of execution. The tension is set up early on, and is slowly cranked, incrementally, until the shit finally hits the fan. The early comedy gives way to fear and paranoia, and the interpersonal dynamics of the characters become increasingly frayed as the cast gets smaller and smaller. The threat level increases while the playing field slowly shrinks. The characters’ plan is clearly laid out, and every event follows naturally from the preceding events or from set-ups earlier in the film. There are no, “WTF are they doing?” moments. As released in the theatres, it’s a very tight, and brilliantly-constructed screenplay.

2) The Director’s Cut. I agree, it’s terrible. This was the first time I remember seeing a director’s cut and realizing, “Oh, sometimes the theatrical version is better.” The mother/daughter stuff with Ripley is superfluous, the early scenes on LV-426 undercut the tension when the marines arrive, and they are also redundant of what we’ve already seen in the first film.

3) I agree with you that the first film is “dripping with sexual subtext,” but do not understand why you hold this against the sequel, which, as noted, is a different kind of film. Ridley Scott was making a creepy horror film, designed to make us squirm in our seats, and squishy, Freudian, sexual allusions are some of the tools he used to do that (and very effectively). Cameron was not going for that. He was making a thrill-ride, and therefore chose a different set of tools. Different flicks, different vibes. (I might point out that “Alien 3″ was also dripping with sexual subtext, and it’s a pile of garbage, so sexual subtext isn’t a virtue, in and of itself.) With this point, you seem to be criticizing the film for not being what you want it to be.

4) This point is a re-hash of why the Director’s Cut is inferior, and I agree with all of your points. Nevertheless, I don’t watch the Director’s Cut, so none of this is relevant for me.

5) The dialogue. “Aliens” is one of the most quotable movies of it’s era. “Get away from her, you bitch,” “Game over, man,” “It’s the only way to be sure,” “They mostly come at night, mostly,” “Why don’t you put her in charge,” “Have you ever been mistaken for a man? No, have you?” These are all memorable lines, well-delivered. No, it’s not naturalistic. Yes, it’s movie-speak. No, I don’t mind that.  :)

6) The special effects are a bit dodgy in some places, including, yes, the rear-projection stuff. You can’t, however, hold that against the film, given the era in which it was shot. The Star Wars films, long held as the standard by which special-effects films were judged, also have some very dodgy looking shots, including miniatures and compositing. The first “Alien” film didn’t suffer from this, because it wasn’t nearly as ambitious as the sequel, but it does suffer from it’s own special-effect inadequacies — including the two bits you pointed out, but also including the full-grown creature, which looks very much like a guy in a rubber suit.)

7. The kid doesn’t bother me. She doesn’t have enough lines or screen time to ruin the film, and some of her scenes are actually quite good, considering.

8. This bit is debatable. I don’t know the first film as well as you do, but do we have any reason to believe the alien would be impervious to bullets? I know Ash says something like, “It can’t be killed,” but I always assumed he was speaking from a natural perspective (i.e., there are no evolutionary predators for the alien). Obviously, anything living can be killed.

Both agreed that it isn’t awful but both were surprised that Aliens was made so long after Alien, especially as it looks so dated compared to Alien.

And heres my thing, it’s not so much that it stinks (which I firmly believe it does, but then the only film by Cameron that really doesn’t is Terminator), but by as Jeb Delia says ‘the high regard for it’, and in particular comments here and everywhere when the films are discussed that Aliens is in some way a superior movie.

Captain Mal, could you see any of the points I was making after watching them back to back? –

1. Aliens is poorly written. You can feel the actors trotting out bombastic line after bombastic line… it never feels like real dialogue. Not a problem in itself, plenty of films suffer this, but after the naturalistic dialogue in Alien it feels incredibly jarring. 

2. The Directors Cut is SOOOOOO long and repeats so much of Alien, poorly. The Scene where Newts family finds the derelict is a classic example. It reduces what was an awe inspiring scene in Alien into pretty much nothing, ‘oh, we can make loads of money out this… don’t argue kids’.

3. Cameron utterly de-sexes the movie to the point I get he’s really not comfortable with subtext, which of course he his… you’ve all seen Terminator 2, True Lies, The Abyss, Titanic and the hideous Avatar… every film is on the nose and 100% surface. ‘

Alien on the other hand quite literally is dripping with sexual subtext –

- The Nostromo computer is called Mother and the crew sleep in a womb like room, being born as the movie opens.
-  The Derelict is formed in the shape of falopian tubes.
- It has three vaginal openings (also totally exorcised from Aliens… same ship but the parents enter via a torn hole in the side… couldn’t possible have then enter via a vagina… what would that say?)
- The ship itself is wet, coated literally in KY jelly. 
- The Space Jockey is fused with a chair with a massive phallus sticking almost directly out of him.
- The face hugger face rapes Kane, forcing an intubebational penis down his throat. 
- He then gives birth to the Alien in a shockingly violent manner.
- The alien has a big smooth cock as a head.
- The cock head has teeth, an inversion of vagina-dentata .
- Again, the alien is dripping wet with KY jelly. 
- The duct system the Alien hides in is punctuated CLEARLY with opening and closing sphincters 
- Ash bleeds cum from his head
- Ash tries to mouth rape to death Ripley with a fucking porn mag…
- The Alien rapes Lambert to death, possibly anally. 

So much… it’s filthy really and a beautiful representation of nightmare sexual imagery of H R Giger. 

In fact the only place sex isn’t present is between the crew, with only one innuendo from Parker. 

Aliens on the other hand only has sexual reference when grunted by the cardboard characters in a weak attempt to develop them…

4. The theatrical version of Aliens with the marines finding an already destroyed colony is admittedly pretty cool. Very very similar to MacReady and Doc investigating the ruins of the Norwegian camp in The Thing… again it’s all about letting out imagination fill the gaps. But as it turns out this one cool moment is more due to financial pressure to cut the horribly bloated film down to a size which can be shown more times each day at the cinema. The directors cut has that horrible stilted exposition scene at Hadleys Hope where the director says something along the lines of, ‘I just follow orders and if i’m told to send a family out to a location as dictated by the company then i do it.’

This of course ultimately undercuts any suggestion that Burke may be legit. It’s already established BEFORE THEY EVEN LEAVE FOR LV427 that the company sent Newts family to its doom.

5. Did I mention the dialogue?

Alien dialogue –

“i just wanted to mention the bonus situation, this has never been on what you may call an equitable level”" You get what you contract for” “yeah but everyone gets more than us”

“Quit gripping” “I like gripping”

“Complete forfeiture of shares… no money”

“Has anyone got anything to say? (before they launch Kane into space)…” No one says anything. 

Aliens dialogue -

“God dammit that’s not all, because if one of those things gets down here, then you can kiss all this goodbye”

“A day in the corp is like a day on the farm…”

“Have you ever been mistaken for a man?” “No, have you?”

“I’ve told you I don’t want you playing in the ducts…” “Everyone does it mommy” (subtle…)

“Stop your grinning and drop your linen”

In fact anything any of the marines says is painful… 

Great to quote but not a patch on beautiful Alien script.

6. Special Effects.

Alien has only really two moments where the effects are a bit ropey -

- Ashes decapitated head looks a bit dodgy to be fair, but once it’s Ian Holm again it looks terrific.
- The post chest burst Young Alien dash across the dinner table doesn’t look great and slightly undercuts the power of the scene… only very very slightly mind you. 

Everything else in a movie almost 35 years old is amazing. The model work is bliss, the landing of the Nostromo on the planetoid fantastic, the derelict and space jockey, the descent into the cave, the fucking alien… just exceptional. 

And here’s the thing, two very different artists creating two very different worlds was just genius. 

The effects in Aliens from the ‘oh it’s a dream’ Ripley chest burst scene to ALL, and I mean ALL of the shocking rear projection stuff looks like a 1970′s cop show

The model work is awful, they contain zero weight and look like Cameron just borrowed some thunderbirds to get the point. Even the derelict looks rubbish… and don’t even mention the drop ship… 

7. That kid. 

8. The Aliens in Aliens… look I can kill it with my hand gun… 

Okay yes I can clearly go on and on…

But my point remains., i wouldn’t give a shit about all Aliens weaknesses if it wasn’t a sequel to Alien and it wasn’t held in such high regard. 

I feel like the geek community (of which I am a paid up member) has such a massive blind spot for James Cameron that they can’t see what a B-grade special effects artist hack he is… 

I would be the first to cheer (I wouldn’t really) if there really was a half decent sequel to Alien but there never has been because NO ONE really gets what made Alien so remarkable. 

And that ‘no one’ most definitely includes Ridley Scott. 

My list of Alien films in preference -

1. Alien
2. None of the others… 
3. Maybe a bit of Alien 3 
4. Alien 7 
 

I think your primary beef is that it’s not “Alien,” but you can’t fault the movie for that. You must judge it for what it is, not what you want it to be. A decision was made to create a different kind of sequel, and as far as I’m concerned, it  was the smartest thing they could have done. They were never going to match the first film’s atmospheric dread. Going full-tilt action-horror was the perfect solution.

By the way, did “Aliens” invent the action-horror genre? 

Anyway, both films are terrific, classics of their genres, and I’m happy to have them both. I kind of hate myself, so today I’m going to watch 3 and 4. But I will not subject myself to the AvP films, sirs. I will not do that. 

In addition to the incongruities/retcons from movie to movie, and the superfluity of much of the Extended Edition, Aliens really began to lose me right after the introduction of the Marines– there’s some charm and cheese here and there in the performances, but after five minutes you realize that the film has no intention of even trying to make this incompetent clusterfuck into plausible foes for the creatures; then their ammo is taken away, and they might as well be teenagers being stalked by a slasher. I realize they need to be taken off the board so Ridley can have her final showdown, but if you’re going to make the shift from horror to action movie, with all that entails, a more well-matched battle would have been welcome.

I certainly don’t hate Aliens (just finished watching it again tonight), but it seems significant that what sticks with me about Alien are haunting images, while my memories of Aliens consist mostly of catch-phrases.

i’ve read a lot of speculation about the derelict and whether it was carrying the eggs as a form of weaponry. Now I’ve seen Alien hundreds of times and it has always seemed to me that the Space Jockey got infected and somewhere along the way an Alien was destroyed and melted through the hull into the cave beneath. 

The ship looks big, but not large enough to have that MASSIVE cave that contains all the eggs. Kane describes it as a cave as well and as he descends into it t looks like it’s carved from rock. 

So… and taking into account Lamberts question about what happened to the rest of the crew of the derelict and the cocooning life cycle suggested in the Directors Cut, do you guys think it’s possible that the rest of the crew fell victim to the Alien a la the Nostromo and all the eggs are the remains of the space jockey crew? 

Look, I know what Ridley Scott has said about the ship and the space jockey and that but judging by the crappy directors cut of Alien he really has forgotten what was good about Alien in the first place… want an example, he adds in a bit of Parker and Ripley seeing Brett being taken into the ducts so it makes sense when in the next scene they tell the rest what they saw… BUT IT IS COMPLETELY REDUNDANT… no one ever wondered how they knew… we used our brains, plus it dramatically undercuts that beautiful moment when Brett is lifted away and she the cat watching it happen… 

AND… as for Prometheus Scott has repeated said, “I was always surprised that no one asked about the space jockey” – YES WE DID, we just knew it was so wonderfully bizarre and ALIEN that no explanation would ever match our imaginations… 

Until now…

Last word I promise… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE re-watch Alien and then Aliens and just see how miserable Aliens is in comparison…terrible acting, cliched characters, piss poor special effects (so much horrible rear projection),a basic retread of the main plot beats of Alien and yet ZERO ZERO ambiguity…
 
Micro changes in air density my ass…  

I fully agree with you here, Herge. Years back, I commented here at CHUD in the “I’ve Outgrown Aliens” thread saying that, in my opinion, to quantify a logical life cycle for the Alien is to largely miss of the point of Giger’s work. He’s not a Terryl Whitlach (although she is also an amazing artist), he’s drawing nightmares directly from the underside of the human mind. Giger’s Alien is meant to disturb and upset at a primal level, not to stand on a sensible scientific foundation at an intellectual level.

The Alien not having eyes is perfect example – it’s not particularly sensible, but it’s so much scarier and unsettling. A sightless monster that can still see you…

In the case of the Alien, I think that the more incomprehensible it can be, the more terrifying it becomes. Most of the franchise heads firmly in the opposite direction, though…

I’m also aware that at one time the alien was going to have eyes, but again the decision not to use these makes the creature.

My comparison of insects in Aliens is valid… and by making them more understandable and relatable to us with the queen /egg / drone dynamic removes so much of the otherworldly-ness of the alien.

Having a not quite clear life cycle in Alien (with or without the cocoon scene) is genius.

You make some really good points though.   

Regardless, its not something that ALIENS has to explain. Seems like a bigger problem for the sequel, which goes to lengths to get Ripley herself, instead of just going back to LV426, so i guess that means according to canon, that the ship was destroyed.

“…they’re morphing, metamorphosing, they are changing into…being consumed, I guess, by whatever the Alien’s organism is…into an egg.” – Ridley Scott

Alien is a sublime movie, almost perfect in tone, style, acting and most of all design. It holds up so well, the semi-improvised dialogue makes it sound totally contemporary. The interplay between the classes of workers is timeless and the Alien…

The Alien is… and I can’t over state this enough is INDESTRUCTIBLE… it does not die in Alien. Ripley blasts it out the airlock into the vacuum of space and it tries to get back in. It finds shelter in the rockets of the Narcissus and survives a blast that should vaporise it. Ash states clearly that it can not be killed. it is perfect.

And then in Aliens it falls to bits when a bullet hits it. Total rubbish.

And the terrible stereotypes at play in Aliens is insulting… evil corporate goons, macho soldiers.. and Ripley… Ripley that went from being a three dimensional WOMAN, who at times is terrified, furious, confused, desperate… becomes defined by her maternal instinct. SHE’S A WOMAN SO SHE WANTS TO PROTECT THAT AWFUL NEWT. She is entirely defined by her sex…it’s so sexist and old fashioned it makes me sick. 

Don’t you guys see it at all? It’s a studio wet dream sequel -

Only one alien in alien… now we have loads

What? No guns? GUNS GUNS!!

A surrogate mother protecting an innocent child? Lets have her take on another mother!

Lovely semi-improvised, realistic non-speechy dialogue, fuck that! We want catch phrases!!

Slow subtle build… we’ll have that for a bit but lets get to it.
A showdown where Ripley slowly straps into a space suit whilst desperately try to stay as calm as possible by nervously singing a song to herself – er… GAY! GUNS! CATCH PHRASES, MUSCLES, Robot power loaders that have been foreshadowed with sooooo little subtly.  

Man sized Alien that doesn’t die? FUCK THAT I want to see them EXPLODE!

That acid is a threat but no one is ever killed with it? What’s up with that. ACID ACID!

As for the special edition… even worse, over long and tedious… our Ripley’s suddenly a mother and thats why she likes Newt…  

And here’s the main flaw – Ripley, no matter what, would NEVER EVER GO BACK! 

I hate what they do to the Alien so much, they have absolutely no understanding of it. They utterly de-sexualise the movie. Alien is dripping with sex, from the womb like state of the Nostromo and computer called mother, to the derelict that has three vaginal openings and is constructed in the shape of a fallopian tube… and then the Alien itself… a fucking monster with a penis on it’s head that has teeth. Absolutely amazing. 

And in Aliens they’re weak assed insects that fall to bits super easy but wait, there’s a bigger one… so that’s okay. Except the design is awful, it never looks like a threat. 

Urgh… are you all so blind to this?

Plus Alien has a black guy that almost makes it to the end, and this film was made in the 70′s.

Aliens is so shockingly dated, horrible acting and terrible terrible special effects… crap models and dreadful blue screen… Alien has only maybe two slight special effect weakness, both of which are split second shots, one which is the head of Ash. 

The planet is Alien is meant to be tiny… TINY! And they build a shake and bake there and no one notices the the derelict… well they do because Aliens is basically a piss poor BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER copy of Alien.

C’mon people, grow up and stop loving a load childish crap that Cameron shits out. He has no subtly in his work, and it ages terribly. Everything in Aliens is EXPLAINED… EVERYTHING. Nothing is a mystery. Nothing, for a nano seconds even comes close to the awesome majesty of the Space Jockey… 

And don’t get me started on Alien 7 (Prometheus)… pointless… beyond pointless… 
 

Also, Newt’s presence is a big signal as to how this movie is going to be different from ALIEN: it’s survivable. The first movie is pretty grim and fatalistic– it’s just barely possible to escape alive from one of these things. That implies that if you went to a planet full of hundreds of them, you’d all be be dead in five minutes, guns or no guns. Newt having survived this far makes it seem like there’s more hope.

2. Burke’s plan for Alien “smuggling” is laughable and is really, really goddamn awful.

3. Thanks almost solely to Ripley’s hair, the movie remains the most easy to place in the time it was made.

4. People harp on the plothole introduced in the first five minutes of the third film, but I find it’s no less implausible than the Queen somehow hitching a ride in the landing gear of the drop ship. I mean, are we really expected to believe she somehow curled up inside of that space in the brief moment the landing gear got hooked on the debris?

Anyway, I find as I get older that Aliens increasingly becomes the weakest of the first three for me.