"Alien Quadrilogy" - December 2003 DVD of the Month

[Morticia]

SilentBob had an idea...to take the winners of the DVD of the Month (from Software) and discuss them here. Why not give that a try? Here goes...

This is a thread to discuss the technical and/or thematic merits of "Alien Quadrilogy", the winner of December 2003 DVD of the Month. We're discussing the films just as if it were a nominated film -- ie, film technique, cinematography, music, use of color, themes, yadda yadda. Please recall that we've discussed Alien already, but if you want to compare/contrast here, that is welcome.

The purpose being to foster intelligent discussion of films without resorting to "It's a piece of crap." or "It's the greatest film ever." (And so that we all can gain a bit of a film education from everyone.)

We'll discuss a new film each week. Either slade or I will post the film in this forum in advance, and lock the topic until the first day of discussion.

Thanks everyone. We are open to any ideas about running this forum.

****SPOILER WARNING**** of course this entire thread is going to be full of spoilers.

[Surf Monkey]

I'll start things out with a quick observation (sorry if this came up in the other thread, I haven't read it yet.) In Alien, the reinsertion of the "kill me" scene seems like a mistake. It breaks up the tension in the critical final third of the film by side tracking Ripley and distracting the audience. It interrupts what was a seamless building of suspense as she runs first to the self-destruct mechanism, and then to the shuttle, then back to the self-destruct mechanism and finally back to the shuttle again. Additionally, it doesn't really add anything to the film. The plot thread (the Alien is doing something with the crew members that doesn't kill them immediately) is thrown away and not needed.

Other than that I think the new cut of Alien is good. I like the reinsertion of the Ripley/Lambert confrontation as it sheds light on their relationship and I think that other parts of the film benefit from tighter editing. In all it seems like a zero sum gain. The original release is an established classic that’s hard to criticize. The “kill me” scene mars the re-cut version but the tighter editing makes it a little better in other places. I prefer the theatrical myself but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who liked the re-cut version better.

[Notoriousaurus]

In agreement with Surf Monkey. I find the "Director's Cut" of Alien to not flow near as well as the original superior cut. It is interesting to view though and works well as a "work-in-progress" version. I can imagine Ridley Scott, looking at this version in in the late 70s deciding what to cut.

The extended version of Aliens however, I LOVE how it flows. Granted this is the same version on the previous DVD but comparing it to the theatrical version, I have to ask why this wasn't the version released back in 1986. I like the revisiting of the Alien's ship at the beginning and seeing what life was like on the colony before the danger approaches. One of my favourite scenes of the marines setting up the perimeter with the motion detecting machine guns is fantastic. The level of suspense in that scene with Ripley & Co. watching the screens as the ammo count decreases before it stops with 10 bullets remaining. I think it is a great scene that should never have been taken out of the theatrical cut. Nevertheless, this is why DVD was invented

I have yet to watch the new extended cuts of Alien 3 & Alien Resurrection.

I am very psyched to see Alien 3 though, as I really enjoyed the visual style and thought that the story and characters were very interesting, if not well-developed. Alien Resurrection - I just hope is better then the theatrical cut, which I, like many others, gound to be the weakest in the series. I will comment on those when I see them though.

[Moonraker]

I am going to take the opposite view here on reinserting the "kill me" scene in the Alien director's cut. When I view it in the film it feels like more of a payoff scene and it really doesn't break the net of tension of the film. First, the "kill me" scene is missing the dialogue between Ripley and Dallas... a good choice as she gets to the point and it makes her character stronger. It also gives that audience a pay off moment and to me, at this point, the audience should be expecting the ending as soon as she gets to the shuttle. This way, with the audience relaxed, the Alien coming back is even more a a shocker.

I would have to say that the 2003 Director's Cut is the preferred cut for me.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by Moonraker

I When I view it in the film it feels like more of a payoff scene and it really doesn't break the net of tension of the film.

I'm not sure how it's a payoff. It seems to me that it's really the opposite of a payoff. It raises many more questions than it answers. In fact, it doesn't answer any questions. I mean, is the payoff that Ripley kills Dallas rather than the Alien? I also continue to think that it presents a speed bump in the final stretch of action by taking Ripley away from the main plot thrust (self destruct) and even the feel of that segement (the look, sound and pace of the "kill me" scene just doesn't match those that surround it.)

[limacharliewhiskey]

I just watched the Alien Director's Cut last night, and I liked most of the added scenes except for the Dallas/Brett cocoon scene. Besides the pacing issue which others mention, I guess I'm considering some continuity issues which happen in the following movies, which of course were not yet filmed or even written when Ridley Scott made the 1st movie.

This is not clear to me. Have Dallas and Brett been cocooned and impregnated with facehuggers already? I don't remember seeing any alien eggs lying around. Was the alien capturing them and then hoping to turn the ship around back to LV-426 to get some eggs to impregnate them?

From Dallas' reaction of saying "kill me", this means he has been impregnated and doesn't want to go through Kane's chest-bursting experience. But then this implies that the alien has the capability to lay eggs. Could it do so in such a short time span, and could it impregnate Dallas so quickly?

In Aliens, James Cameron establishes the concept of a queen alien which lays all of the eggs, but since the 2nd movie was made 7 years later, this hasn't yet been established in the 1st Alien movie. It poses a helluva continuity issue as far as storylines go, though.

Comments on the other 3 movies will follow as I get a chance to watch them.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by limacharliewhis

This is not clear to me. Have Dallas and Brett been cocooned and impregnated with facehuggers already? I don't remember seeing any alien eggs lying around. Was the alien capturing them and then hoping to turn the ship around back to LV-426 to get some eggs to impregnate them?

From Dallas' reaction of saying "kill me", this means he has been impregnated and doesn't want to go through Kane's chest-bursting experience. But then this implies that the alien has the capability to lay eggs. Could it do so in such a short time span, and could it impregnate Dallas so quickly?

I agree with your comments. Like I said, it raises too many questions.

I've heard that the idea is that drone aliens can lay single eggs in order to create a queen. The problem is that this has never been seen in any of the films so it's simply rank speculation.

"Kill me" breaks the continuity, interupts the flow of the action and raises too many questions.

Now I'm on to watching the assembly cut of Alien3 so I'll have some comments on that soon. I've watched it once already but need a second viewing to take it all in...

[aedavela]

I'm probably wrong, but I thought I heard somewhere in the supplemental materials that the idea in the cocoon sequence was that the alien had the ability and was in the process of turning Brett into an egg that would produce a new facehugger that would attach itself to Dallas.

Anyway, I prefer the theatrical cut over the "director's" cut for similar reasons to Surf and the other posters. I do like the cocoon scene, for me it's more a matter of where it's placed in the movie. It definitely slows down the movie at a time where time is not a luxury Ripley can afford. Another scene I felt slowed up the pace is the first new scene where the crew is listening to the alien transmission. But I really did like the Ripley/Lambert slapfest, for helping draw out some of the tension the crew memebers feel towards each other.

For Aliens, I think the special edition stands head and shoulders above its theatrical cut. I had never seen the theatrical version until I picked up the Quadrilogy. On first viewing, I immediately noticed which scenes were not included, particularly the smart gun scenes, and I felt the movie really missed them.

Alien 3's new version was different, but good. I think the movie still suffers from the fact that most of the prisoners are indistinguishable from each other and I really wanted to see more developement of some of them. The one probably most developed, Clemmons, is still killed off way too early. I liked the oxen chestburster, though when Murphy is killed, he still mentions his dog, Spike, that now we don't get to see. The Golic subplot is cool, too; he kinda just disappeared in the theatrical version.

Alien Resurrection doesn 't change much from cut to cut and it's still a blah movie. Not bad, just blah.

The extras were great, not a lot of overkill. Only minor complaints would be Sigourney Weaver's lack of participation in the commentaries for the last three movies along with new interview material for those same three movies. And of course, what did Fox cut out of the Alien 3 doc?

[limacharliewhiskey]

I haven't fully watched my Aliens disc yet, but since it's the same version as the previous SE DVD, I'll comment on it now. I love most of the added scenes, the ones with the automated smart guns which do help pacing in the film, as there is somewhat of a large gap with no action between the Marines' 1st battle with the aliens, and the last stand that the group makes before getting picked off one by one.

The added scenes with Ripley's daughter add a lot of emotional reasoning in why she develops such a strong bond with Newt, as my first reaction to the theatrical version was being puzzled as to how Ripley was able to overcome her fears and nightmares of the aliens and go back after Newt at the end of the movie. This struck me as somewhat odd at the time, but the scenes of Ripley's daughter, Amanda, along with added and extended scenes with Newt, really help emphasize the mother-daughter bond that the two form.

The only added scene I didn't really care for was the scene showing the colonists working on the base and Newt's parents finding the alien egg. I think the movie works much better not seeing any of the colonists yet, and Burke just goes straight to Ripley's living quarters and reports that communication with the colonists is down. In my mind, there's a chance that the colonists could actually still be OK, and then the Marines find the aliens and cause all of the chaos. With the added scene, there is no doubt that the aliens took over the colony.

As for the movie itself, due to Aliens originally being a low-budget movie, James Cameron decided to make sci-fi somewhat low-tech and go with existing technology with slight upgrades. This meant making weapons similar to existing gun technology today, and he made it OK to not have laser ray guns in a sci-fi movie. Despite some of the fancy firepower the Marines used, they also used shotguns and regular hand pistols as firearms. This created an image of mankind not necessarily progressing as fast or as high-tech as we thought we might when we think of mankind's future, like the images that Star Trek has created, with warp drive and phasers and cloaking devices. If anything, it reminds us of how human we are, and how fragile our lives can be, and technology can't always save us from some of nature's most dangerous creations.

Aliens is easily my favorite of all of the 4 movies, one of the few movies which I know almost every line of dialogue. I can't wait to spend some time with the bonus discs to find out more about it.

[limacharliewhiskey]

I've finally had a chance to view the extended cuts of Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection and offer my opinion on both movies.

Alien 3 was a movie that I disliked a lot initially, probably because of the high praise I had for Aliens, so any sequel was almost sure to disappoint. Killing off the characters of Hicks and Newt did not help at all, and like many fans, I had considered Alien 3 the worst of the films.

One source of confusion for me about the film at first was having so many English actors with heavy English accents, which made many lines of dialogue difficult to understand for me. Shaving all of them bald didn't help me distinguish one character from another, and writing all of the characters as maximum security prisoners made it difficult to be sympathetic for any of them to survive. If rapists and murderers got killed by an alien, no big loss.

Watching it now on DVD, being more knowledgable about film-making and the lack of success for sequels, I view Alien 3 through different eyes, seeing it as its own film instead of as a follow-up to a masterpiece. There is some pretty good humor in the film, and the excessive foul language seemed a bit over the top and hilarious for a non-Kevin-Smith-or-Quentin-Tarentino film.

The bonus disc for Alien 3 tells a great deal about the chaos of the movie-making process, and how David Fincher never had a finished script to work from and had to make story decisions on the spot in many situations. When I view Alien 3 now as its own movie, it does work relatively well in its concept than most horror movies do, but of course, still doesn't match Alien or Aliens in horror or intensity.

As for Alien Resurrection, I thought the concept was brilliant, for what should have been the story for Alien 3, about humans capturing and trying to tame the alien, and then things going badly, and the chance for the aliens to come to Earth and wreak havoc.

Joss Whedon, creator of the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, has always written better stuff than most others, and he actually wrote a great script here. For me, the 1st hour-and-a-half of the movie works very well, with the scientists trying to breed a Queen alien by cloning Ripley's cells, and going through 8 iterations of cloning before being successful. It's a great concept of government running covert ops to harness an alien species, biomedical experiments of genetic cloning and breeding, and pirate smugglers unknowingly getting tangled in this web of man-playing-God.

It just got a little weird in the last 20 minutes with the Queen breeding with a human reproductive system instead of the normal facehugger eggs and hosts. I like the concept of what Whedon tried to do as a writer, give us something new we hadn't seen before and show how adaptive the alien physiology is to its hosts. Where it fell apart for me was the design of the humanized alien. We were used to seeing an H.R. Giger biomechanical design, black-colored with no eyes and these crazy teeth on a tongue. When we get the humanized alien, it's white like human bones, it's got eyeballs, no nose like a human skull, and a human tongue.

This is probably where the mistake was made in Fox severing its relationship with HR Giger after Alien 3. If Giger had been involved with the creature designs for the 4th movie, I think the final scenes would've worked much better, as the story moved along fine up to that point.

As for the rest of Alien Resurrection, I enjoyed the motley crey of the Betty, especially Ron Perlman's alpha male portrayal of his Johner character. To this day, though, it's still odd to see Winona Ryder in this movie, but I understand the casting, as it somewhat creates a kind of Ripley-Newt pairing that so many fans loved in Aliens.

I know there are many who were never watch the 3rd and 4th films ever again, but for me, I just seem to enjoy them even more through repeated viewings, as I can see what the writers and directors wanted to do. Even if they didn't fully succeed in following up the masterpieces of Alien and Aliens, I can respect their attempts to create such a vision.

[NotaNumber]

Back when "Alien" first came out I bought the "Making of" book. In it the concept of the life cycle of the alien was described briefly (from memory and it's been at least 10 years since I last read the book):

The basis was that of the solitary wasp. What this wasp does is that the adult female will sting a species of spider in the central nervous system paralyzing but not killing the spider. The spider is then taken back to the wasp's burrow where she lays an egg on/in the spider. The egg hatches and the wasp larva burrows into the spider host munching away at its innards but avoiding any vital organs. The larva grows and matures (pupaetes) and finally emerges as an adult and the cycle starts over again. Some species lay several eggs on a host, others gather multiple hosts or both.

The exact details of the life-cycle of the alien were never fully developed, however the concept was alien was fully capable of reproducing on it's own. Scott and his crew never envisioned the queen concept, at least it is not mentioned in the book. Some species of wasps have colonies but all the females are capable of reproducing - there is no solitary queen in a wasp colony.

There were several things that they did to suggest that the alien was progressing through its life-cycle. One of them is that the creature got progressively more slimey. The cocoon scene was added because Scott wanted to show that this thing was ready to reproduce, but again the exact life-cycle was never fully developed.

I should dig the book out of storage, if the bugs haven't gotten to it. Fitting end I suppose.