Alien: Covenant/Alien Series thoughts.
- Thread starter Gordon Cole
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- Dec 15, 2022
Hasn’t Ridley Scott spoken about the original film being a metaphor for violent sexual assault? I remember even as a teen seeing Alien for the first time and noticing how carnal and rape-y the violence was. The movies following Alien 3 seem rather tame by comparison.
I actually respect the filmmakers for making a scene so campy whilst being incredibly grisly, even if the movie itself was disappointing.
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- Dec 18, 2019
Yeah I know but it's a more apparent that the huggers are fucking em in this.
TheHarbinger
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AvP was PG-13 and a lot of horror fans complained. So AvP:R was made over the top on purpose in response. With the chest burster exploding from the little kid. And the Predalien in the maternity ward. I saw the film in theaters and everyone was laughing and cheering at how ridiculous the violence was because fans had complained that the franchise should only be rated R. It's meant to be campy and more dark comedy than pure horror.
Dan O'Bannon wrote the monster to reproduce through rape. It's not even a metaphor as the monster flat out impregnates men and women with a rape baby. And then HR Gieger designed everything to have sexual imagery as well. Even the alien ship is loaded with objects and doorways that resemble male and female genitalia. Ash refers to the alien as "Kane's son".
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- Jan 16, 2016
That movie was visually dark that you can't see everything unless you have the brightness cranked up, it's unwatchable. I think that stupid film shouldn't exist because of that.
TheHarbinger
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The test version was bright. In fact the first few trailers of the movie were taken from the test version for audiences. The trailers on the DVD release have the original brightness. At some point right before the release, the entire movie was given a massive darkening across every single scene by someone at Fox without the directors being told. To the point where you literally cannot even see anything in the film including scenes that take place during the day. If you turn up the brightness and contrast over 100% in a video editor you can still barely see anything. It's easily one of the worst examples of poor editing in movie history.
There was a full version of the film with the original lighting that has never been officially released for some reason. Who knows if there is a surviving copy anymore though. The company that cut the trailers might have it. Some theaters actually received the older brighter copies. And at least one handheld camera recording made its way to the internet with the brighter version but the quality is not great. So probably a few thousand people actually saw the original film as it was made before Fox destroyed it.
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- Oct 3, 2022
yeah spotting rape in Alien is easier than spotting the alien in Alien
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- Dec 15, 2022
For real. I think you can only watch this movie at night with all the curtains firmly closed. Just having a bit of light filtering into my apartment would reflect against the darkness of the tv screen and I had no idea what was happening half the time. I hate movies like this.
How peculiar. My guess is the studios or whoever worked on the film editing thought the sets looked cheap or gauche and tried to cover them up. It’s the lazy way of fixing a visually uninteresting, crappy environments.
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- Apr 22, 2015
This. You have to crank it up to 400% brightness in order to see the movie and it's still kind of dark. You could hear the director's bitch about this in the commentary. Although to be fair, the director's come off as massive idiots.
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- May 25, 2018
There hasn't been a good Alien movie for 38 years. I'm a broken down fan. The first two movies are some of my favorite movies of all time. I consider Alien to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and I consider Aliens to be one of the greatest popcorn movies ever made. Love them, love them, love them. It's just been downhill from there ... More like rock bottom ... But you get what I mean.
While I don't think the trailers to Romulus look bad, I just can't get excited for it. It looks like more of the same ... Except with some pretty good looking cinematography. I'll give it that.
My husband is really excited for Romulus though. Even when an Alien movie is abject garbage, my husband still finds a lot of enjoyment in it (even when he tells me it's garbage, he still watches it more than once and clearly enjoys himself lol). I consider the Alien series to be equivalent to a comfy blanket for him or something, haha. He 100% plans to see Romulus in theaters, and that's honestly the first time I've seen him excited enough to go to the movies in 3 years. lol.
Also ... Fun fact: Last year, for my birthday, my husband gifted me the first two Alien movies in 4k. First off, I seriously believe that the first Alien may be the best looking film of all time, and it is stunningly glorious in 4k. Secondly, I finally saw the director's cut for the very first time (crazy, I know). The director's cut has a lot of great stuff in it, but it's clearly for the fans who don't like what James Cameron did with Aliens and are total purists in Ridley Scott's original vision. In my opinion, the director's cut just makes Alien feel like a more standalone film. It was worth finally checking out.
While I don't think the trailers to Romulus look bad, I just can't get excited for it. It looks like more of the same ... Except with some pretty good looking cinematography. I'll give it that.
My husband is really excited for Romulus though. Even when an Alien movie is abject garbage, my husband still finds a lot of enjoyment in it (even when he tells me it's garbage, he still watches it more than once and clearly enjoys himself lol). I consider the Alien series to be equivalent to a comfy blanket for him or something, haha. He 100% plans to see Romulus in theaters, and that's honestly the first time I've seen him excited enough to go to the movies in 3 years. lol.
Also ... Fun fact: Last year, for my birthday, my husband gifted me the first two Alien movies in 4k. First off, I seriously believe that the first Alien may be the best looking film of all time, and it is stunningly glorious in 4k. Secondly, I finally saw the director's cut for the very first time (crazy, I know). The director's cut has a lot of great stuff in it, but it's clearly for the fans who don't like what James Cameron did with Aliens and are total purists in Ridley Scott's original vision. In my opinion, the director's cut just makes Alien feel like a more standalone film. It was worth finally checking out.
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- Apr 22, 2015
Fuck you, I like Alien 3!
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- May 25, 2018
You can like it, but it's the incorrect opinion. lol.
The first time I watched Alien 3, I almost punched my TV in. It did the "subverting expectations" bullshit before "subverting expectations" became a thing.
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- Apr 22, 2015
I get it. Still pissed over Hicks and Newt dying. I understand. I advise you read the comics. The first series (it's in black and white) is the Alien 3 you wanted where it continues the adventures of Hicks and Newt (but not Ripley bizarrely enough due to likeness licensing issues) but yeah. There it is.
I will defend Alien 3 till the day I die. It may be one of the only examples of subverting expectations done right and I would argue that the darker direction is appropriate for a horror franchise. Obviously it isn't the direction to take with Star Wars and other shit. But in the context of a Sci Fi Horror series that is very anti-corporate and has sexual monsters who essentially rape you to death, I think this is appropriate. Just saying. Sometimes you don't get what you want. Not everyone gets a happy ending but I would argue that Ripley faced that and in her unavaoidable death she chooses sacrifice in order to save or at least attempt to preserve humanity from -not just the alien threat- but the corporate threat of harvesting these things for their bioweapons.
That's an idea not explored in any of the movies and very few of the comics: with the future technology of the Alien universe, what weird shit can mad science create with these things?
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- May 4, 2022
The fact that Fincher made such a decent movie that still somewhat holds to the foundations of Alien, all the while fighting against the majority of shit that the utter nitwits from the studios were pushing makes it much better than it is.
Considered objectively it's just an OK movie, but still the 3rd best Alien film and so much better than everything that came after it, it's like a different species.
Considered in context of what was going on during its filming, it's a fucking masterpiece. Fincher thought he was shooting a different movie until something like two weeks before shooting.
I mean I'm preaching to the choir here, but there's an Alien trilogy, and I fully expect that's all there ever will be.
Considered objectively it's just an OK movie, but still the 3rd best Alien film and so much better than everything that came after it, it's like a different species.
Considered in context of what was going on during its filming, it's a fucking masterpiece. Fincher thought he was shooting a different movie until something like two weeks before shooting.
I mean I'm preaching to the choir here, but there's an Alien trilogy, and I fully expect that's all there ever will be.
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- Apr 22, 2015
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I didn't enjoy the Director's Cut of Alien funnily enough. It's been a while since I've seen it, but there were three edits I found unfavourable enough to remember:
1) Ripley and Parker catching up to Right Guy dying and having a little bit of blood fall on them. It was a poor edit, the cut following Jonesy's stare was much better.
2) Dallas's scene where he consults Mother about his venture into the air ducts prior to going was cut. I really hated that edit in particular - it really stuck with me on first viewing that the captain of the ship is trying to get some advice from the ship's computer about what he should do or even what his chances are, only to be met with a cold and uncaring company product going "lol too bad now get out there and get me my sample".
3) That whole added scene where Dallas was coccooned and asked Ripley to kill him. It felt unnecessary - bloat on a film that was already perfect in its theatrical format. It worked in Aliens because you had a group of Marines actively freaking out over the survivor dying in front of them in that manner, but I feel like seeing Dallas in there was irrelevant by that point.
I love both Alien and Aliens: Director's Cut. Alien 3 killing off Newt and Hicks really cursed it to fail, but outside of that it was a very good film and if recontextualised without that happening, it's probably the most faithful Alien successor you could have. If I were to make a new Alien film, it would be a colony or population dealing with the Xenomorph arriving, and 3 is pretty much that on a prison planet.
If I end up seeing Romulus, it'll be on the high seas. Besides not looking that good, I refuse to pay The Mouse so they can facefuck real children.
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- Apr 22, 2015
The director's cut is a director's cut in name only. Scott publicly said, included in the liner notes for the DVD, that he thinks of the theatrical cut as his director's cut and he agreed to a release of the alternate version as a "director's cut" purely for marketing reasons.
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- Apr 22, 2015
New trailer:
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- May 4, 2022
Everything is too fast and too fake.
The chest "x-ray" scene is retarded and, again, too fast. Just because the audiwnce knows there's going to be a chestburster, doesn't mean you have to make it IMMEDIATELY CHESTBURST.
Too much big nigger hiding behind ersatz Ripley girlboss. I assume he's the Ash replacement, and is set to pacifist mode or something.
A crew of execrable, charisma-less, antifa NEETs sets out to rob "a place with dangerous secrets." You are immediately telling me I'm supposed to root for the alien. I'm not going to care about a single "person" dying, am I.
Gay blowjob porn. Thanks guy.
The more I see, the worse it gets.
The chest "x-ray" scene is retarded and, again, too fast. Just because the audiwnce knows there's going to be a chestburster, doesn't mean you have to make it IMMEDIATELY CHESTBURST.
Too much big nigger hiding behind ersatz Ripley girlboss. I assume he's the Ash replacement, and is set to pacifist mode or something.
A crew of execrable, charisma-less, antifa NEETs sets out to rob "a place with dangerous secrets." You are immediately telling me I'm supposed to root for the alien. I'm not going to care about a single "person" dying, am I.
Gay blowjob porn. Thanks guy.
The more I see, the worse it gets.
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2015
I liked the chest x-ray bit. I thought that was cool and it recalled a scene in Alien 3 where Ripley uses the escape pod to scan her to confirm the worst.
My issue is that the film looks like a rehash of the plot of the original Alien but with more facehuggers and pulse rifles.
My issue is that the film looks like a rehash of the plot of the original Alien but with more facehuggers and pulse rifles.