Alien Resurrection, and Firefly

[easwaran]

I haven't posted anything on here in a while, but for some reason this one feels a little too long to post on Facebook, so I'm putting it here. Matt convinced me to watch the Alien series of movies over the past few weeks. It's interesting how different they each are. Alien and Aliens were both pretty good, in somewhat different ways. Alien in

Comments

[krasnoludek]

I love Alien, for exactly the reasons you state -- the characters are all treated fairly equally, regardless of gender, etc. You just really don't know what's going to happen. The lack of music (especially screeching horror violins) is also very unsettling and maybe not something you notice on the first watching.

Aliens was good too. Alien 3 always gets a reaction, usually a negative one. Many people expect a bigger spectacle than even Aliens. I actually really like Alien 3 -- it's so barebones: they have no weapons, they're very vulnerable (again the gender flip: the strong woman is among many vulnerable men), and I felt like many of the side characters get developed so it's disheartening when they die (as in Alien and not as much in Aliens).

Alien Resurrection really rubbed me the wrong way with its comedic elements. It took the whole series and turned it into some jokey thrill.

oh, and FYI you closed an on Jeunet with an .s

[krasnoludek]

(and I just did it too). You closed an with an

[krasnoludek]

Actually, thinking about it more, Alien Resurrection was similar to Batman Forever and Batman & Robin in its thematic departure. Suddenly there was all this comedy and campiness, and the color schemes changed to involve this sickly green, flashing lights and brighter colors altogether.

[easwaran]

That's an interesting comparison - unfortunately, I'm not actually familiar with those Batman movies, but I'd definitely believe it. Certainly, the series had taken a turn for the dark in a very different way by at least The Dark Knight.

[once_a_banana]

I am commenting on this post, from the fuuuuuuuuuture! (*cue howly ghost noises...*)

I've come to agree about Alien 3, while my feelings about Aliens have really gone downhill and it's pretty much just MST3k fodder now. One of the nice things about watching these from my fancy box set on a ginormous and extremely detailed TV: you really get to critique the filming techniques, the artistry, even the quality of the film stock. And on that stage, the original Alien is just phenomenally better (not to mention being better in most other ways too). These are the things that were never apparent when watching these off cruddy VHS recordings back in the day.

[krasnoludek]

HALLO future man.

The Alien box was one of our earliest blu-ray purchases and yet we haven't watched a single one of them on our big setup. It just never gets chosen, even though I personally am really curious how wonderful these movies look.