f13.net

I know it's probably discussed elsewhere, but whatever.

Trailer. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZaqldqBKCZU)
First five minutes. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=3LnQyHC86I8)

At least they listened to the cries of "WTF PG-13?!" that arose from the last one.  This one obviously won't be in the same league as the first two Alien flicks or the original Predator, but I'm hoping it turns out to be fun in a Predator 2 or Alien 4 sort of way.  I mean, as long as there are aliens and predators ripping each other's shit up with lots of swearing and graphic violence, it ought to at least be watchable.

I kind of like the premise. And Predator has always, always been a guilty pleasure for me.

As I mentioned elsewhere, there seems to be very little point in watching the movie, after seeing the trailer.

Eh? It's action porn.

Yeah, but all the best bits seem to be compiled into the first trailer that they put up online.  The only thing you're going to get out of actually watching the movie are all the needless bits of plot you have to endure between the scenes with face melting, chest bursting, and head exploding.

You like the premise of Aliens and Predators in modern-day earth killing Wal-Mart customers?

Awesome.  I am totally guilt-free about my Predator pleasures.

I'll be there.

Far keener on seeing this monster-mash than Cloverfield.

Love it. Can't be disappointed.

You people have GOT to stop saying shit like this.

It looks kind of low budget.  As in "just pump out a sequel on the cheap" budget.

Yeah that movie screams CRAP whenever I see a trailer.  Probably be a nice gore splatterfest but not on par with Alien or Aliens (or either of the predators really) so I'll see it when its free. 

All they really need to do is make a damn AvP movie set in the actual Aliens universe, with a Preditor/Alien/Space Marine 3 way clusterfuck of death and awesomeness.  You know, LIKE ALL THE ACTUAL LORE FOR IT OTHER THAN THE MOVIES.

But I suppose that would take a budget.

FFS, why do they bother setting these things on modern-day earth? Futuristic space marines getting caught between aliens and predators on some distant world is about a billion times more interesting than either AVP movies.

Futuristic Space Marines is more interesting than normal people having to deal with horrible shit?

Not. Even. In. The. Least. Bit.

Generic sci-fi sucks balls.

Agreed. These have always made better horror films than sci-fi ones. Better to just play to that.

Also, space marines suck in general. I have no sympathy for them. I WANT them to die.

Hollywood always thinks they can come up with something better then other established media put out there on any subject.  They of course have their heads up their asses as usual.

Plus like what was said earlier they will do what they can to keep the budget down to nothing hoping fanbois will still come out and see what drek they come up with and turn a profit. 

This sounds like some game I've heard of.

Puzzle Pirates.

Glad to be of service.

Yes. When it comes to the Aliens/Predator movies, yes yes yes. Aliens >>>> Aliens 3 & Aliens 4 combined. Predator >>>>> Predator 2

The central characters in Aliens were "normal people". Aliens 3 and 4 were more marine centric (and Ripley was far more militant by that point).

I disagree.  Not that they weren't, er, 'better' films, but that the comparison is fair.

I'm a little drunk.  Can we discuss this when I'm sober ?  How's Never for you ?  Is Never good ?

Uhh....did you watch the movies? Aliens was marines. Aliens 3 was convicts. Aliens 4 was smugglers/criminals and Ripley.

I like to think people are missing the point.  It's not about 'space' marines, so much as humans that can go toe to toe with these monsters out of sheer badassness.  Arnold made predator great, so did the marines in aliens. A lot of alien 3-4 was about ripley being badass but lets face it, no one found her a convincing action star, a strong heroine perhaps but not an action star. 

Whether AVP2 is set in space, on land, on sea or in the phantom zone, people want to see the human side represented by some general ass-kicking. They tried this in the first AVP but it felt forced I think and no one felt the black girl made a convincing transition.

In short, three-way slugfest, if this can be accomplished the minutia of the setting matters not one whit.

That's right.  Because if Alien had been set in downtown L.A. rather than a cramped, claustrophobia inducing spaceship, it'd have been exactly the same film.  If Aliens had been set in the Egyptian desert surrounded by pyramids rather than on an alien planet with a thermonuclear powerplant about to go boom, it would have been exactly the same film.  If Predator had been set in the Nakatomi plaza rather than the jungle, it would have been exactly the same film. 

I said central characters. Ripley is the sole-surviving-central-this-movie-is-all-about-me-character in Aliens. The protagonist. And she's the most normal, feeble one of the bunch. Which is why it's that much more interesting than most action or horror heroes (especially before it). But if you think it's Private Vasquez, or anyone else, then I don't know what to say other than that you have no real appreciation for what that movie is trying to communicate.

As for 3 or 4, you're taking me too literally. Yes, they're convicts and smugglers instead of marines, but I'm just talking about militant type. Everyone in those films, including Ripley, were asskickers prepared for a fight. Asskickers. That a better word than space marines?

Shrug, it will live up to every expectation I have, I don't care if it has horrible acting/dialog/plot. I wanna see some aliens and predators duke it out. You people need to get over yourself because someone might enjoy something you would consider beneath you.

I have no issue with the setting being Earth, but I do think it is a bit silly to have random shmucks able to hold their own against the A&Ps, when in the earlier films, humans with the advantage of uber technology and military training couldn't keep up.

From all the clips I've seen (trailers, footage etc) I don't think the random shmucks are able to hold their own against the A&Ps.  There's an awful lot of exploding heads, melting faces and cheerleaders impaled to walls by oversized predator shuriken going on.  Not that I know the ending but I get the impression from the first trailer that the army agree with Ripley and that they should nuke the site from orbit as the only way to be sure.

Anyway, how can it not be good:  there are soldiers, there are aliens and there's one predator taking them all on.  It's already superceding the first one by being R-rated and there's kids getting facehugged, people getting sprayed with acid, shoulder cannon headshots and Reiko Aylesworth (as a marine back from Iraq) taking part in a wet t-shirt vest competition while firing a fucking big gun.

How can this not be good?*


*When I say good, I obviously mean entertaining-after-a-few-beers-with-your-mates good and not like oscar-worthy, philosophically-thought-provoking, analogy-for-the-human-condition good.

People want the Colonial Marines back because Aliens was the best movie in the series, and because the "regular guys who bitch about the cold floor and shitty food but still kick fucking ass" characterizations in that movie are what everything to come after has been sorely lacking.  At least that's why I'd like them back.  But then I realize that Colonial Marines by some hack director won't be as likeable as those by James Cameron.

And aliens loose in small-town Nebraska, or whatever, just doesn't feel right.  It feels like "Movie monsters go on a rampage in real life!" instead of a regular monster movie.

It's just a slasher flick with Aliens. That's what it looks like to me anyway.

The sci-fi setting was neat but more than that the overall atmosphere, setting and characterization was well-done in Alien and Aliens. The new atmosphere is pretty much your typical gore fest, just an upgraded version of what you see on the Sci-Fi channel.

Danny Glover was the best thing in any of the aliens or predators. He could not be described as a marine. Just an old black survivalist. And he fucking rocked.

*cough*

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/blain.jpg)

I dare you to say that to the Space Marines face!!


But seriously, you have to be the only person I know that thinks Aliens wasn't entirely about Space Marines.

And Predator 2 was awesome.  Danny Glover and Gary Busey fighting a killer Alien with a razor net gun?  Win.

I've liked all the Alien and Predator movies to date.  AvP would probably be the biggest suck of the bunch, but it was still fun to watch for what it was.  AvP was too watered down, compared to the rest of the other movies, and it seems like they've gone back to the old ways with AvP:R.

I think with both the franchises, when it comes down to it... People go to the movie to see the Aliens and Predators.  The people that get in the way, although they can be amusing, are just like eating appetizers, while waiting for your main course... satisfying, but not fulfilling.

I love the series; EVERY SINGLE ONE.  Except Alien 3, that just sucked ass.

Books were pretty decent also.  Great light reading.  Cheddar Jr. (First Daughter) also loves the Alien movie.  I am waiting until she is 9 to show her Aliens.


Stop judging me you Goddamn fuckers, it is not my fault that your child cannot deal with fake/reality. 

Alien 3 on its own is a good movie.  As a sequel to Aliens its a pile of shit.  Makes my favorite movie ever effectively POINTLESS.
All because Siggy was a self absorbed gun hating asshole and thought the series was about her.
So everyone else had to die, and guns were bad, mmkay?

Resurrection was another Joss Whedon pile of quippy shit saved from being a pile of butt due to Ron Perlman being completely fucking awesome.

As to the new flick?  Im looking forward to it.  Should be fun.

Totally forgot about that abortion.  Resurrection blew.  I actually erased it from my brain.

Alien 3 was not a good movie on its own. It was dreck. Poor plotting, poor camerawork, poor cast and costuming decisions.

It's really sad that people now remember the Aliens movies as "Aliens kill shit." Yes that was a part of it but the first two were genuinely good movies that put out a coherent worldview, a strong vision and strong characters and writing. They were much more than slasher flicks with cool monsters.

Alien 4 was actually a strong concept on paper IMO, but the choice of director was totally wrong for the movie, a complete mismatch of style to theme. I'm not an educated film viewer and there are few films I can point to and say "here is how the director totally screwed up" but that was one of them. And it's not that the director was bad, just bad for that movie.

Was poking around on imdb about the Aliens movies and just saw that David Fincher is set to direct Rendevous with Rama.

Elbow melting: check
Kid gets jacked: check
Lance Henriksen cameo: ???

You misunderstood.  Wilfully, it would seem.  I want the same thing you do.  I'm looking forward to the same stuff you are.  I am as stoked as you.

But you shouldn't say 'Can't' be dissappointed because all it takes is one douchebag producer or director or ending and you're left looking like a retard.  See; Schilds Legend Thread.

I didn't mind Alien 3.  It was by no means great but I never hated it as much as others (or as much as I generally hate Resurrection.  I don't know how you can call the cast poor either - the cast was superb (although I would tentively agree that they weren't the best performances that they've ever done).  Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Paul McGann, Pete Postlethwaite?  Fantastic.  I love the production design in it and some of what they tried to do in the story but yeah, the plotting and pacing was extremely questionable.  I understand that Fincher walked out before editing because of studio interference so this doesn't surprise me in the least. 

I agree about Alien: Resurrection and I agree that Jean-Pierre Jeunet, while having directed some of my favourite films, was not the right choice.  I don't blame Joss Whedon so much except for as much as he didn't like the ending that Jeunet ended up choosing, he should never have fucking written it in the first place.  Main problem with it is that there's nothing innovative about the story and it's all a little contrived.  That being said, I find it entertaining up until the whole newborn bit which is a total fucking waste of celluloid.

I also agree about the first two being in a league of their own and concur that's its because of the writing and the characters.  Alien works as a horror film because it plays to some very basic fears and delves deep into the psyche of the viewers.  At a basic level it's about the creature but there's so much more than just a chase film.  It scares you and then takes away any place for you to hide by destroying the two things most commonly associated with safety and protection: mother and god.  In "Alien", god is Science but science is represented by Ash, the Science officer who turns out to be an android and tries to kill Ripley.  Mother is the computer who protects the crew when they're asleep but is willing to give them up and betray them because they are "expendable".  Alien also benefits from some very effective direction (for example, when Lambert is killed, there's a whole "rape" and "victimisation" subtext going on.  When Dallas is hunting the alien in the air ducts, we see his demise in the form of a computer display tracking his and the aliens movements - what scares us is what we don't see). 

Aliens is less about horror and more about action.  It works because Cameron wrote some very memorable characters and also wrote a film where the stakes and the danger are constantly escalated.  Each time the cast are in a bad predicament that can't possibly get worse, it gets worse.  A lot of the conflict and drama in the film is generated between the characters rather than by the threat of the aliens.  Gorman is an incompetent C.O. who gets most of the marines killed and who the survivors hate.  Burke is more interested in profit than the lives of the people he's with.  Anyone who thinks the film is about the aliens is missing the point - they're just an extra problem.  Anyone who thinks the marines are badass arsekickers - to paraphrase Hudson "maybe you haven't been keeping up with current events but we just got our asses kicked".  The marines are ineffectual against the aliens - none of the hardware that Hudson shows off in the dropship and nothing they do can stop them.  They all die (except Hicks who waits a movie).  It's "Snow White" Ripley, the civilian, who goes in armed to the teeth and kicks ass, simply to rescue a little girl.  This ordinary, non-military woman does what the marines failed to do.  The film has a shed load of themes and issues scattered throughout it too, like, for example, motherhood. The final fight between Ripley and the Queen isn't just about human against alien - it's mother against mother.

Alien3 made a brave attempt to be like it's predecessors but couldn't pull it off.  Alien: Resurrection didn't even try.

It might be obvious that I spend way too much time thinking, reading and writing about this shit.

(EDITED again because apparently it wasn't wasted on Ironwood and I live to please.  Or something)

I don't mind anything with Winona in it. Even that Quilt movie.

Not really a great Alien movie though.

What ?

Why the fuck did you do that ?  It was interesting.

Ah, I retract. yeh it is possible to be disappointed I guess if someone decides to turn this into a arts flick with a poignant sub message about whatever. But after watching the first 5 minutes I can see thats not going to be the case.

I'm gonna hope for something as good as the Dawn of the Dead remake.

I saw Aliens when I was nine, just because I happened to be nine when it came out.  And the books were indeed fun.  I really liked the thing they had going on where the aliens got loose on Earth and eventually overran the entire planet Zerg-style.

How can so many of you think Predator 2 was good? The only good part is the end when he finds the Alien skull and the other Predators give him the antique pistol. Well that and the pregnant girl being spared showing a rudimentary honor code. Though I prefer to think of it as "hell if I wait to kill her I can hunt the kid too!"

Very underrated movie. Sure, it doesn't have the same star power, but the story itself is better imo. If you put Arnold in the second one, and Danny in the first, opinions would be far different. I like it how it is though. Danny Glover is insane.

Predator 2 wasn't in the same league of awesome as the original Predator or the first two Alien flicks or anything, but it was a solid and worthy sequel.  I especially liked the bit where Gary Busey explains his complicated plan to thwart the Predator's thermal vision, followed by the Predator going "Oh, my thermal vision doesn't seem to be working, time to switch to something else and kill everyone!"

Hmmmm...I guess I'll give my rundown on thoughts about the Alien movies.

Alien and Aliens were awesome. I almost bought the quadrilogy just to have these two films.

Alien 3 was so bad it almost destroyed any enjoyment I got out of Aliens. So, let me get this straight. Newt, the girl who Ripley risked everything for dies in the credits? Really? Seriously? Horrible, horrible script. Great Director. This movie is almost painful to watch and is #2 on my list of "I wish I knew nothing about it and could still enjoy Aliens as much without going 'they all die in the next movie' in my head the whole time." Highlander 2 is number 1 on my "I wish I could unsee it" list BTW.

Alien: Resurrection was the exact opposite of Alien 3. Good script (the original non-hacked up version) and a horrible director.

As for the Predator movies. 1 was good but not as good as the first 2 alien movies. 2 was meh.

I couldn't watch all of AvP, it never hooked me in any way.

I came real close to walking out of AVP1 during all the "Arctic pyramid, bla bla, I'm Lance Henrikson!" bullshit.  When the action finally started I managed to stay in my seat, but barely.  The horribly nerfed chestburster scene pissed me off.

The sad thing about Alien 3 was that the story was suppose to be completley different.  An early teaser trailer mentioned (it was just talk, didn't show anything) the Aliens making it to earth.  But the whole thing got stuck in production hell for what ever reason, and they went through a fuck ton of script writes and different directors.  Finally, they just pushed it out the door by doing the current plot, which could be shot fast and cheep because it all took place in one damn factory.  It had potential to be a hell of alot more awesome.

In case anybody didn't know, you can read some of the early scripts written by various authores Here (http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/alien3/)

I read the one by William Gibson, and it was actually a pretty good read.  I wasn't really a fan on his different take on how the aliens were created, but the film still would have been 1000 times better than Alien 3 actually turned out to be.

Yes, to me, what made Aliens a better film than Aliens 3 or 4 was that it was a squad of marines fighting with these facehugging fuckers. Michael Biehn's character was more interesting to me than Ripley, which is why his casual death at the beginning of Aliens 3 killed that movie for me. Narratively speaking, by the time the 3rd Aliens movie came around, there shouldn't BE any "normal" people fighting these things, because the corporation or the government should have already started wiping planets clean that had even the hint of an infection. 4 was even more forced in that sense.

The original Alien was about normal people in horrific circumstances and it was fantastic. But Aliens changed the nature of the narrative, and trying to edge it back towards the first film in 3 and 4 just didn't work. Hell, Michael Wincott's character in 4 was more interesting than the prisoners in 3.

Predator is about the universe's finest warriors trying to find the greatest challenges. In regards to fighting Aliens, the Predators only use for humans who aren't asskickers should be facehugger fodder.

Finest warriors finding the greatest challenges? Lol, they were just on a rescue mission, killing a bunch of shitty central american rebels. It doesn't really matter how much of an asskicker you are either -- 99.9% of the time, you will get your spine pulled out. And the only guy who got away ended up doing it because he finally got smart for a change.

Danny Glover, on the other hand, had many moments of outsmarting the hunter. We can all disagree on what's better or not (I don't really care), but at least understand that asskicking is not the way to fight those dudes.

Same goes for Aliens. Just about everyone who ever survived against them ended up being the smart ones, not the asskickers. Michael Beihn is an exception, but hell, he was the sensitive marine of the bunch. Ron Perlman may be the only anomaly. But he's a step above any kind of normal asskicker.

Um, Dude, he meant the Predators....

Oh.. Well what the fuckever! I'm still right :awesome_for_real:

Michael Biehn survived by being the smart one. He said "Let's nuke the bitches from orbit."

And yes, I was referring to the Predators when I spoke of the finest warriors seeking a challenge.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.  Piss-poor writer/ directors try to do scary and wind-up with "omg get out the blood buckets."   Alien and Aliens can still freak you right the fuck out when you see the 'edited for TV' version because they're damn good flicks.  This looks like it'd have a running time of 75 minutes and be utter shit without the gore.

Was Weaver talking about not signing on for the third one?  Because she spends Gibson's entire script in a coma.  Anyway, it was interesting, but the people turning into aliens and the five chestbursters all shooting out of a guy at the same time and shit didn't make any sense.  Didn't really grab me.

But anything would have been better than what we got.

Yes, actually, one of the reasons he wrote it that way is because at the time, she was committed to not being involved (or being involved only slightly) with the movie.

Which would have been great, I think.  Good to move the focus away from her so you have more flexability with plot.

And I agree that Gibson's take is continuity breaking with the aliens, and I wasn't really a fan.  Barring that though, I liked the setting, characters, and general plot development.  You can see the cyberpunk influences in his take on it, with the general gritty yet commercialized descriptions of the space station and the interaction with the The Corporation.  The effect on screen (if done properly) could have been really neat.

Also liked him throwing in the whole communist block thing, heh.

Gibson had people turning into Aliens?  That was in the original cut of the first movie. They had these pods/ cocoon things made and everything, but they decided to cut it because it wasn't working right.  Ridley Scott kept one of the 'cocoons' and slept in it during shooting because he said they were incredibly comfortable. 

If you've ever read the novelization of the first movie, you know what I'm talking about.  It's in the scene where Ripley comes into contact with the Captian after he's been taken by the critter.

I've read it as being that the producers, Walter Hill and David Giler didn't want Sigourney back so the first few versions by Gibson, Eric Red and David Twohy didn't feature her.  (I didn't realise that Twohy had ever written a draft so thanks for that previous link.  It suddenly explains a lot about why he went on to write/direct Pitch Black.  Will be interested in reading that version). 

Comparing Alien 3 to Highlander 2 is a bit fucking harsh though.  You might not like the fact that they killed Hicks and Newt at the beginning (although personally, I wrote Hicks off at the end of Aliens and if I'd have written the script instead of Cameron, Newt - the most irritating thing about the film - would never have made it through it either.) but at least they didn't fucking retcon the whole setup and say that Aliens were, I don't know, immortal scotsmen that had evolved and left earth a thousand years before or some such bollocks.

Alien 3 tried very hard: it set up the whole scenario so that there was some human conflict between the warders and the prisoners and between the prisoners and Ripley.  Ripley was as much an alien in that world as the alien was and then there was the religion thing.  Unfortunately, it was too weak - none of the prisoners beyond Charles Dutton and Charles Dance were memorable or noticeable.  The warders were ineffectual rather than malicious or self centered (Aaron calls the company because he's afraid - so unlike Burke in Aliens).  There was no exploration of the religion themes that were introduced, the character conflict never came to much, the alien wasn't scary (mainly because we didn't care about the prisoners and because it was badly shot) and the subplots were poorly developed and not followed through.  Also, there was no danger from the environment - the setting didn't matter one bit so there was no feeling of urgency or claustrophobia. That being said, I don't think this made it an awful film - just a poor one that was very disappointing after the high of Aliens.

They probably could have improved it by letting Newt survive and introduced a subplot about some if not all of the the prisoners being pederasts (including the nice doctor) which would have added so much threat and given Ripley so much more to worry about pllus the the juxtaposition between the monstrous kiddy fiddlers and the actual alien monster.  The religious theme could have then been developed to explore the nature of sin, forgiveness and redemption.

Plus the alien should never have been a dog.

Uh...no it wasn't. The deleted scene in the first movie was basically just a cocoon scene like in Aliens. The biggest difference is that the alien could produce eggs on its own which lead to a subplot in the novel of "this thing must NOT reach Earth" if memory serves.

Good post DraconianOne, I agree with nearly everything you said.

What happens with many franchises is that over time they become self-charicature. That is what happened in Terminator 3, where they figured re-using the same jokes and catch-phrases was enough. It was pale imitation.

That is what has happened with Aliens. There is a forumla now, and the formula is very reductive: Aliens kill people. Maybe they kill them with acid or sharp tails or whatever, but that's the main theme that holds them together. (Or doesn't) That's what people want to see I guess, for the simple-minded that's what the movies were about from the start. Jason Vorhees in a more elaborate costume.

The first three Alien movies had a bleak world-view and explored themes of isolation, a world turned upside-down amid unfamiliar circumstances. People being ambushed by a reality they didn't know existed. Newt explicitly makes this point in Aliens in her bit about how her mother told her monsters weren't real - but she lied. A large part of the first three movies, and especially the first two, is the notion that we live in a very different place than we thought.


My problem is that the cast plus the costuming decisions made the characters largely interchangeable and indistinguishable, especially coming from the colorful cast of Aliens. Everyone looked too damn similar.

From what I understand Alien 3 was basically doomed to fail, based on the numerous delays and problems at every step of the way. I don't think it was so much a problem with Fincher or the script so much as the entire process was a Catwoman-like clusterfuck.

Aliens 4 set the wrong tone, it was downright silly at parts. Especially the General who reaches up to feel a part of his brain, it was horror-comedy. Many scenes were played more for laughs or some sort of irony than anything else. (Like the Alien going into the egg-like escape pod and eating everyone in it)

The script was all over the place, I don't even understand what the point of Ryder's character was, and most of the other characters were cartoon cutouts.

The real problem with T3 is the same as A3.
IT SHITS OVER THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT.
Both movies basically say "You know everything these characters fought so hard for and lost so much accomplishing?  IT DIDN'T MATTER ONE BIT".
While this is pretty realistic, its also about as satisfying as eating 1 single french fry or a single potato chip. 
What's sad is for Aliens, Dark Horse comics released a trilogy of miniseries written by Mark Verheiden with awesome art by Mark Nelson (moody black and white), Denis Beauvais (outstanding full color airbrush art), and Sam Keith (not the best fit for the series, but he is a favorite comic artist of mine anyhow) that was a vastly superior sequel to Aliens starring Hicks and Newt with Ripley nowhere to be found till the 3rd series.

It made Aliens 3 that much worse on me since I knew how it SHOULD have gone down instead. 

In my  :heart: , that's what really happened and 3 & Resurrection are an inferior alternate timeline where facehuggers somehow got on board the Sulaco without any way for it to actually happen.


Blame Joss Whedon.  Everything he writes has all these cute and "clever" bits in them where everyone wisecracks and quips their way through what could have been an interesting story if it wasn't filled with this retarded dialogue RPG.net's collective posters jerk off over every 5 seconds.

(I am very happy Firefly/Serenity failed twice.  Fuck Joss Whedon.  His stuff sucks ass.)

If I want smarmy dialogue ill read Something Positive or Questionable Content which are pretty much the same thing in comic form.

.....

Damn, realizing that I now suddenly don't like either webcomic as much.. :(

Uh, I think deep inside, Whedon is a comedian. I mean come on.. Buffy. The Vampire Slayer. It's funny. Or at least it can be. It's supposed to have wisecracks. No need to take it too seriously.

And don't even call me a fanboi or anything, please! I just started watching the stuff.


All that being said, I had no idea he wrote Alien Resurrection.

Buffy's jokes were so badly written. Camp sucks about 99% of the time.

I disagree, almost everything out of Spike or Cordelia's mouth is hilarious! Or maybe that's just the actors, I don't know.

Again probably an example of the wrong person for the job. You have a very colorful director and a smarmy funny guy directing and writing Aliens?

I don't blame either Whedon or the director all that much, it's really the fault of whoever hired them trying to put a square peg in a round hole. It would be like hiring Kevin Smith to write Ben Hur 2.

I am not a fan of Whedon at all but I can't really blame him for delivering what he always delivers. A:R turned out how anyone should have expected given the names attached.

Nah, it wasn't Whedon's fault.  The movie that actually got made was very different than what he wrote.  The humor in A4 is markedly different and isn't even in Whedon's style, a fact which I suspect is due to the director.  If there's one thing that's true in Hollywood, it's that a writer has no power.

PS: Firefly was lovely.

Lovely. Now that's a good word. Hmm. I could possibly replace "awesome" with it. Fuck that "splendid" shit.

Let's not start talking about Cordelias' Mouth.

I read some more of those Alien 3 scripts.  Gibson's needed some work, but it was the best of the lot.  There was another one that had Ripley and everyone dead before the movie started with a bunch of new guys fighting the aliens, which was just totally unacceptable, but at least vaguely resembled an Alien movie.  The rest were all pure nonsense.

What Mace said is true on all counts. Also, if you don't like Firefly then you just don't like fun and want the terrorists to win!

Actually, I hate to back up anyone, but according the Alan Dean Foster novelisation, the alien could, in fact, turn human subjects into 'eggs' that produced Huggers.

It actually makes the alien lifecycle a little more believable in the context of the film (no Queen at that stage) and resulted in Dallas being cocooned and proper fucked by Brett.

I cannot comment on what the film actually intended to do with this idea, but that was what was in the script.

Disclaimer :  I thought the idea sucked balls and was glad that not only did they take it out, but that Gibsons script went south.  Unimaginative shite.  I far prefer the bees analogy, even tho it makes Aliens a TRULY parasitical organism.

Hmmm...maybe I misinterpreted then. To me it just looked like what we saw in the later movies with people cocooned, it just cut out the face hugger as being necessary.

Aliens had cocoons, but it didn't go into what they were used for.  I assumed at the time (decades ago now) that it was either their idea of a fridge, so meat doesn't go bad, or so that they could have better control over who got face-hugged and the embryo that popped out.  That was to that point the only uses for humans that were revealed.

God Bless The Wiki.

My understanding from the comics was that the "queen" produced eggs which produced facehuggers, but that it was possible for a warrior to become a queen if there was no queen to keep the colony running.  Which led to one of my favorite comic arcs where there were black and red aliens (ants lol) fighting eachother on this fucked up planet because somehow (I forget the details) there were two queens.  It was a pretty good series, where as usual the humans thought they had shit under wraps but didn't.

I have to back up everyone here who's been mentioning the Dark Horse Comics.  The three groups mentioned above with Newt being a fucked up mental patient, Hicks an on-the-edge Marine, and Ripley no where to be found are just awesome.  Even the story arc where the Aliens get to earth is well done. 

The idea of the Gov. trying to turn the Aliens into weapons from Alien 4 is stolen directly from this series. 

Wasn't the series with the black and red aliens called Hive and featured an "android" alien as well which was meant to infiltrate the hive and research it? 

The Aliens comics were far better than most of the Predator comics though - I think the first Predator spin off had Dutch Shaeffer's brother as the protagonist although, much like Predator 2, it was set in a city and he was a cop.  If I recall, rain stopped play on that one. 

Going back to AvP though, the ultimate combination would surely be Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator.  That would be totally awesome.  Obviously Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen would both have to star being the only two people to be killed by each.

I agree. I have the first three graphic novels of these series and love them. I think I'm probably with those of you who just likes to pretend that those DH books are the real sequels to Aliens.

Loved that run and I probably still have them somewhere.  Remember Hicks was all scarred from the acid and was basically a Pariah in the series.  If only they had ran with that story after Aliens. 

Nope.  That was YET ANOTHER awesome DH series.  The robot was fucking pwnage against aliens and was named Frank or Hank or something.  Meanwhile there was a sentient talking alien android who smoked cigars and hung out with the humans.  I forget how that book played out but the robot could fucking smash aliens like none other.

The black and red books were about super advanced company funded troops landing on the planet to steal royal jelly.  You might remember the landing scene, they launched these giant harpoons in a perimeter and the harpoons formed this sort of gel shield that the aliens couldn't fuck with.  The aliens caught inside were just slaughtered by these super badasses who had crazy powerful anti-alien armor.  Then the classic, human sabotaging other humans shit starts and the super badasses start getting off'd meanwhile the two queen dynamic had some interesting shit going on.  I forget the details, I may need to get my hands on those again.

If I remember right this was all because the cannon had accepted the notion that alien royal jelly made humans think they were invulnerable, there were scenes where a marine taking it has his arm shot off and still kills like 18 people before they take him down because he's super fast super strong etc.  It was a silly mechanic but the stories they did as a result were fucking cool.

P.S.  The novels were awesome too, they did a hell of a job with the aliens landing on earth and taking over.  If I remember right it was a 4 book sequence?

People being mutated into eggs makes very little sense.

The idea that a lone warrior can become a queen makes perfect sense and is common in the insect world.

I've never read the comics, but in the books I had they changed Hicks and Newt into Wilks and Billie, presumably because Alien 3 had come along and killed the former pair.  Was Ripley an android in the comics like she was in the books?

Anyway, the whole thing with them lasted three books.  Even with the hamfisted Alien 3 retcons, they were pretty good light reading.  Better than about 99% of all the Star Wars books that have ever come out, for example.


Maybe the comic was good, but the novelization was fucking terrible.  I still have it lying around here somewhere.  The author wrote in a really bizzare inauthentic authorial voice that made me think they weren't comfortable with the "Rah rah!" perspective they were presenting, and was addicted to weird corny metaphors besides.

Music of the Spears was a good one, especially considering that the alien spent the vast majority of the story in a cage.  Basically there's this drug-addled experimental musician who persuades his employers to let him keep an alien in captivity and torture it, having it kill other animals/people, so he can sample the sounds to use in his work.  The law is trying to track it down, corporate thugs are feeding rival executives to it, and said musician is becoming more and more deranged as time goes by.  Finally it breaks loose, and some action ensues.

The same basic story as the comics.  In the original comics (and possibly novels) it was Hicks, Newt, and Ripley as they actually SHOULD HAVE BEEN FUCK YOU SIGOURNEY WEAVER YOU NARCISSISTIC BITCH and no android shenanigans.

The Predator comic miniseries sets were pretty lame except for the first one which was just fun glorious 80s movie badass cheese.

Only if they tied in the "Robocop vs Terminator" comic as well.

This is beginning to sound like the Ultimate Battle for Ultimate Destiny.

I will say this, if you like comics at all, and you've never seen the Batman v Predator graphic novel?  You are fucking missing out.  That was awesome.  The 'pred keeps picking up bits of unsavory English from people he's in the process of killing so when he's fighting Batman he keeps throwing out these random phrases in English, also the fights are damn cool.

The Red and Black series was definitely bad ass.  Little things made it even more full of win.  Like how the smell of the Aliens filtered through the shield...

The Batman vs. Pred series was great.  You can pick out how it's going to end pretty early in the series, but it's awesome none the less.

What is this Highlander sequel people keep talking about ? There never was a sequel.

Terminator comes back in time to prevent a crashed Predator craft that carries captured alien eggs from obliterating John Connor's hometown, that could potentially alter the future at the same time a law enforcement officer who barely survived an alien attack was turned into a robot police?

I'd much rather go for Bruce Willis as John McClane-except-he's-not-actually-named-John McClane vs Aliens.

[edit] On second thought, no.. That McClane character needs human villains to taunt and fuck with.

no dude just think about it, predator will record his taunts and taunts him back  :awesome_for_real:

NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN.


HO HO HO

Just did a dry run of it at work.  It's pretty much what I expected, with the R-rated trailer giving away most of the good parts, although there were still some decent surprises.  It's a pretty short movie, and every minute the movie spends focusing on the humans is a chore to sit though, with acting and dialogue on par with the average after school special.  Of course people are seeing this for the 20 minutes or so of the Predator fighting Aliens anyway, and in that respect, I thought it was a bit better than the first AVP.  Sure there's still a lot of moments where you can't tell what the fuck is happening on screen (which happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to movies), but the cool shit more than makes up for it.

Pretty much what every Predator fan expected. I'd been waiting for you to post in this thread today. :)

Some friends of mine at work called me in to watch it with them, since I actually had yesterday off (good movie to watch with friends).  One other good thing I will say about it, is that there are some pretty brutal death scenes, and even kids aren't safe.  AVP was only rated PG-13, but this movie gets a pretty solid R rating.

This one sentence put it into my "avoid at all costs" category.Oh well.

I do find that kind of thing frustrating any time I see it (which is in just about every movie that has a lot of close combat action sequences).  Any time I can't figure out what I'm seeing on the screen I think is a moment that the director has failed.  That said, the majority of the action sequences in the first AVP felt that way to me (although to be fair, I haven't watched it since the one time I saw it in the theater, so my memories of that might be exaggerated somewhat), whereas in this one it's mostly limited to the action sequences involving the hybrid.

Batman Begins had shitty fight sequences. Didn't make it a bad movie.

On the flipside, Undefeatable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPNhqOT2G_k) has no blurring whatsoever.

The Batman Begins sequences were right on the line for me. They distracted me but I was able to follow them. I think that's because Nolan is talented though if I had a choice I'd rather he didn't use that kind of fight editing.  The last 2 Bourne movies are examples of action scenes that cross that line and ruin the whole movie for me. AVP2 probably will also so I won't waste my money on it.

GET TO DA CHOPPA!!

Ahem...













So anyway, I've come back from a midday screening of AvP2. How to put this. Imagine Ben Hur, or perhaps Charade but with neither the grace or the intensity. And none of the interesting parts. Or none of the Charade or Ben Hur really. Or to put it another way, if one were to transpose Arnold's Predator to the modern screen, employing modern 'cinematographic' techniques, this movie is not what you'd get. You'd get Schindler's List.

Seriously though, here is the rough outline of the film, some spoilers blah blah blah:

As seen in the previous film, a Predator with a chestburster in it is brough on-board the Predator ship. It busts out, gestates into a fully-grown Predation in like 2 minutes and then proceeds to kill a Predator. Another Predator tries to shoot it and misses which blows up and/or crashes the ship. I DON'T KNOW HOW.

Ship lands, facehuggers bust out, start taking out the townsfolk. This is done with some of the worst slasher-flick mediocrity I've ever seen. Freddy Krueger movies had more suspense. A whole bunch of people get killed (though thankfully no-one in any particularly stupid fashion), some survive, a whole goatload of cgi is spewed onto the screen whenever Aliens or the Predator (yes there is only one) are on the screen.

There is no plot. Have i mentioned this yet? Um, ok, more people get killed, it starts raining. Oh wait, i missed a part; there is about 3 seconds of 'character development' sometime in the beginning revolving around improbably good-looking university kids, and a dark brooding stranger. Eventually the military nukes the site from the lower atmosphere (lightweights).

If after reading this you feel as though I'm reaching, this is because nothing in this film makes much sense. The Alien gestation cycle is thrown out the window, the Predator has magic dissolving acid, the black guy dies first, etc...

Good parts: the homages to Aliens and Predator respectively ("get to the choppa!" and "hold on!"), the survivors hearing the national guard getting ripped apart over the radio ala the space marines in Aliens. Thaaaaaaaat's about it. Oh, there is some easy joke about the government not lying to people, and terrorist attacks.

Do not go to see this movie now. Wait for it to come out on DVD. Then wait for it to go into the $2 bin at your local Wal-Mart. Then shoplift it. It will provide you with a valuable life experience.

Final verdict: failbad.

So it was awesome?

Yes. In opposite world.

 * Edit:

No, seriously, it's not even B-movie bad, bad. It's just bad. I mean, at least the first one was somewhat redeemed by the black chick and the Predator kicking arse at the end. This one is just bleargh. 

That was pretty much the worst part of the first movie to me.  And seriously, as soon as you started talking about the lack of plot and character development, it became obvious that you kinda missed the point of why anyone would go see this movie.

They hate themselves?

Just the people that called up my theater on Christmas Eve and asked if we were having a midnight premire that night.

I entered with dirt-low expectations and left fairly entertained.  I knew beforehand that there would be no plot and that the entire movie was nothing but a vehicle for showing aliens killing lots of people and predators killing lots of people and aliens.  I also have to give the movie credit for not shying away from offing children and pregnant women.  There was oodles of stupidity of course, but I was already expecting it.

The only redeeming thing in the entire movie was the sausage lover joke, and that's in the first 15 minutes.

I enjoyed it.  Its nothing special, but its Aliens and Predators and people dying horribly.

Yeah, the Alien lifecycle is borked, but its just following the previous movie that also did it.  I just chalk it up to whatever strain of Xenomorph the Predators use in their hunts.

Its still better than Alien 3 and Resurrection.

Saw it today. It was stupid. Kinda fun, but really stupid. Lots of continuity WTFs, lots of plot holes. I avoided the trailers (and this thread), so it was all a surprise to me. Well, except for the multiple very predictable bits.


Spoilers:

But hey, at least Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Hicks' retarded kid brother made it out..

impaled recently? it's a movie impalement, so just a scratch! Interesting take on alien gestation via the maternity ward..

Little nod to the company at the end. I thought was kinda cute in concept but badly-executed.

Horrifying movie, and not in the good way.  The script was terrible.  I think the most eloquent lines were "People are dying.  We need guns"  The super special hybrid was a joke, and the fact that the climactic battle was rendered pointless 10 seconds after it started was really inspiring.  It's like they had a huge checklist of 'moments' that AvP fans would want to see. . Predators using their wristmounted nukes, Xenos emerging from stomachs, Predator camo rush impaling, blah, blah. . and they just lined them up one by one and checked them off without bothering with the whole narrative thing.  Plus there was some irritating gel on the cinematography, like they borrowed the cameras from Pitch Black and forgot to fucking wipe them off.  Love interest was smoking hot, though.  That was a high point.  Of course, casting a 27 year old as a high schooler is an always welcome Hollywood cop out.

Yeah, I felt that the initial chestburster scenes were done with those characters simply because, well, we need some chestburster-'in, and they were thinking "how can we make this many-times-seen bit seem horrifying or disturbing again?" I know.. let's do it to a kid!.

The chestburster scene was weak.  It was over too fast, looked too fake, and wasn't disturbing enough.  A proper chestburster scene should pucker your asshole with discomfort as you watch.  See the original Alien for the best example.  John Hurt fucking COMITTED to that scene.

It also helped that he was the only actor who knew exactly what was going on.  They'd been told something was going to happen, but not the details about the chest bursting. Their reactions to the bursting (and Veronica Cartwright's reaction to getting guts on her face) were 'real'.

If nothing else, the AvP movies allow me to have these:

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2246/2181711217_c0691a0180_b.jpg)

And as usual, the Dark Horse comics were better.  The original AvP comic kicked ass!
(Even if they fucked up the coloring in the Omnibus edition..)

I saw it in a nearly empty theatre. Basically, all you have to do is only watch when there's a predator on the screen.

I mean, because predators are fucking awesome and all.

Then if it's only aliens or humans, just tune out. The rest of the movie's all bullshit anyway, right?

Her reaction is so awesome, she really is about to throw up, the sound is unmistakable.

What the fuck are those toys and why are they attacking your multifunction device ?

Are those fucking Hero-clicks with Aliens??!!  Holy shit, that seriously might get me to spend cash on a collectable game again.  Jesus tits that looks like sweet, sweet, nectar of fun.

They are from a semi compatible game called Horrorclix, which apparently isn't doing all that hot.

Its basically Heroclix but better and you get to kill hapless innocent bystanders as opposed to just trying to beat some asshat's super combination team.
There are plot twist cards that do things like boost your monsters or make trap doors and shit.

The 2 Aliens sets (Aliens and then the Queen) aren't collectible.  They are sold as a set.  There is also a Predator set, and while not AvP, a Hellboy set which is also fully compatible with Heroclix.
(There are some "chase" Marvel Zombie figures that work in both games too, but they go for BIG money.)

And there is also this fellow:
http://www.wizkidsgames.com/wk_article.asp?cid=40709

Which means you can have Aliens vs Predator vs Zombies vs Hellboy vs Cthulhu.

The problem is most of the figures are generic horror instead of all the shit people want like Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers and such.

Are you saying that these two phrases are incompatible?

One is iconic.  The other not.

Its like generic vampire in a cape and Bela Lugosi Dracula.

Werewolf or Lon Cheney Jr Wolf Man.

ICONS OF HORROR MAN.

The Ghostbusters as opposed to the "Ghost Finders" which are pretty much busters in slightly different outfits and goofy looking ghost hunting gear that won't be mistaken for Proton Packs.

LAMENESS.

And who wouldn't want to fight the fuckin Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

Ah.  I see. 

Yeah, so anyway, this movie sucked ass.  It had violence and people said fuck, but if anything the acting and writing were even worse than the first one.  Mindless gore, zero tension.

This thread has confirmed two things: 1. AvP:R is best viewed for free 2. Jain Zar is King of the Nerds.

Ah fuck. They're making that Cthulhu figure one of those limited chase bullshit ones. I don't play Heroclix or any of it's variations, but I'd have liked the Great Old One for my bookshelf.

rgr that thx, is Thursday figured i better go see it now before it left the theatres up here.gonna pass, andjust go see Cloverfield friday then...

Was sorta into it but knowing full well it was going to suck, reading the descrips here truly tells me not worth trouble or worth the movie fee to pay.

You can buy the Cthulhu at local gaming shops or one the internet. It goes for around $80.

I confess: I enjoyed AvP-R

Not that it was good - far from it.  All the criticisms of it (appalling script, diabolical acting, terrible direction, so many plotholes it was transparent not to mention pure rape of everything that had gone before it) are well founded and totally deserved.  So I adjusted my expectations, had a few beers, switched my brain off and went to be entertained by teens getting their faces burnt off by acid and impaled to walls by a hard-as-nails predator. 

It was total and utter crap but just like that questionable donor kebab from the hygenically challenged take-away on the high street, goes well with a couple of beers.

Ah.  f13:  Productively lowering your expectations since 1863.

Sounds like my type of movie then.