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If you're upset by characters being snuffed out without fanfare and in ways they had no way to prevent, Alien might not be the franchise for you.
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Mar 14, 2016 21:40
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Also I'm glad hicks and newt are dead.
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Mar 14, 2016 21:41
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Whatever gently caress you guys. Newt and Hicks 5 ever!
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Mar 14, 2016 22:20
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Forever dead!!!!
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Mar 14, 2016 23:15
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Hicks and Newt dying doesn't make the film bad but it does make it absurdly nihilistic in a way I find personally very gross, especially its views on suicide. That doesn't make it a bad film but it does make it an ugly one. Also fortunately for people who care more about someone surviving than a good story, Hicks is alive and well as established in hit video game Aliens: Colonial Marines.
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Mar 14, 2016 23:28
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ImpAtom posted:Hicks and Newt dying doesn't make the film bad but it does make it absurdly nihilistic in a way I find personally very gross, especially its views on suicide. That doesn't make it a bad film but it does make it an ugly one. Ripley is killing herself to stop the Company from getting an Alien, it's not like she's killing herself out of hopelessness or despair. Her death has a purpose, and even if Hicks and Newt had survived the crash but Ripley was still impregnated with an Alien, she still would have killed herself for the same reason.
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Mar 14, 2016 23:39
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Toady posted:"Why? Why are the innocent punished? Why the sacrifice? Why the pain? There aren't any promises. Nothing's certain. Only that some get called, some get saved. She won't ever know the hardship and grief for those of us left behind. We commit these bodies to the void...with a glad heart. For within each seed, there is the promise of a flower. And within each death, no matter how big or small, there's always a new life. A new beginning. Amen." This line alone was worth killing off Newt.
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Mar 14, 2016 23:50
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Watching the Alien3 documentary, and I didn't realize that Michael Biehn has such a high pitched voice.
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Mar 15, 2016 00:17
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Was it different from the normal speaking voice he used in Aliens/The Terminator/The Abyss?
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Mar 15, 2016 00:22
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It seemed about the same to me. I know in Planet Terror he plays it a little gruffer but in general he's always sounded like that?zVxTeflon posted:This line alone was worth killing off Newt. It's a huge testament to Charles S. Dutton and David Fincher that that entire scene is incredible regardless of whether one is watching the theatrical, DVD work print, or blu-ray work print (the scenery is touched up a bit more and a little more fluid than what's on the DVD version) incarnations of the Alien being born in it.
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Mar 15, 2016 00:24
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Xenomrph posted:Ripley is killing herself to stop the Company from getting an Alien, it's not like she's killing herself out of hopelessness or despair. Her death has a purpose, and even if Hicks and Newt had survived the crash but Ripley was still impregnated with an Alien, she still would have killed herself for the same reason. The alien means something. Alien 3 is not a film about a random monster randomly killing people without subtext or thought. That wouldn't be true even if it wasn't a Fincher film where it is more true than many
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Mar 15, 2016 00:28
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ImpAtom posted:The alien means something. Alien 3 is not a film about a random monster randomly killing people without subtext or thought. That wouldn't be true even if it wasn't a Fincher film where it is more true than many
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Mar 15, 2016 00:38
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Xenomrph posted:Can you elaborate? I don't really see how what you're saying changes what I'm saying: Ripley literally sacrifices herself to save humanity (from the monster, from itself, take your pick). It's a pretty blatant Christ allegory. Ripley doesn't sacrifice herself to save humanity. She sacrifices herself to kill the festering monster inside of her which is basically a literal representation of rape trauma. The second film is about her overcoming that and forming new bonds and then third film opens with those bonds being shattered and her realizing she'll never be able to escape it, so she takes her own life. Any Christ imagery in the film is twisted and gross. Ripley is the virgin Mary, impregnated without sex, and when the child bursts from within her she strangles it on her way down. There's an ending without that but it's not meaningfully different. Ripley chooses suicide as the only objectively right answer to horrible trauma. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 00:45
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ImpAtom posted:Any Christ imagery in the film is twisted and gross. Ripley is the virgin Mary, impregnated without sex, and when the child bursts from within her she strangles it on her way down. There's an ending without that but it's not meaningfully different. Ripley chooses suicide as the only objectively right answer to horrible trauma. Seems about right - this is a body horror series. Material existence is terrible.
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Mar 15, 2016 01:15
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Yeah, the original Alien was deeply nihilistic and almost Lovecraftian in it's view of the universe. It feels right for Alien 3 to return to that. Aliens is the movie that doesn't fit. I could never make myself care for Hicks or Newt, having seen Alien first.
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Mar 15, 2016 04:31
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I do like Hicks and Newt. But i can't see what more they could've brought to the table. Like, love each other more? Eh.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:03
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CelticPredator posted:I do like Hicks and Newt. But i can't see what more they could've brought to the table. Like, love each other more? Eh. The real answer is that all of their stories, including Ripley's, were over after Aliens. If the franchise had to continue they should have started from scratch with a completely new set of characters and circumstances.
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Mar 15, 2016 14:03
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That's the direction that any new 'real' Alien movie should go, if it's to avoid being an asinine rehash/retcon. They already tried to undo the ending of Alien3 once; it didn't work. Each episode of the trilogy was unique in terms of tone and theme, while Resurrection was a sort of perverse amalgamation of elements from the previous films (which is something that the self-conscious script and creature effects address, but don't make up for). There need to be new characters and circumstances. I'd almost go so far as to say that, yeah, an adaptation of the Labyrinth comic would be a pretty good direction to go for a new Alien movie, but not without significant rewrites and story changes to make it a better cinematic product. The only thing it's really lacking, if I'm thinking from a film exec point of view, is a good introduction point. Any good 'reboot' of an established series needs to be a reintroduction of sorts, and the appeal of Labyrinth is that it addresses a sort of 'Aliens fatigue.' That's one of the reasons why comic readers liked it so much. But it relied on those readers to be overly familiar with the tropes of the franchise. Edit: come to think of it, you could probably take the basic structure of Labyrinth and make it into a pretty effective sequel to Prometheus, and still have classic xenomorphs. The black goo is already there, just need to shoehorn ancient alien engineers into it somehow (preferably very subtly, in the background.) SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 21:42
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ImpAtom posted:Ripley doesn't sacrifice herself to save humanity. She sacrifices herself to kill the festering monster inside of her which is basically a literal representation of rape trauma. The second film is about her overcoming that and forming new bonds and then third film opens with those bonds being shattered and her realizing she'll never be able to escape it, so she takes her own life. I understand where your reading is coming from, and it's certainly interesting, but a reading like that which actively undermines the movie and runs so counter to what's going on (aside from in satire, like in 'Starship Troopers' to name one example) just doesn't ring true at all for me. The movie isn't saying "rape victims should kill themselves, gently caress you", at best it's saying "if you're raped by the Devil, for the love of god don't let his son be born and wreak havoc". The third movie isn't about turning Ripley into a powerless rape victim who's only choice is suicide, it's about reminding her that she exists in a cold, uncaring universe where bad things happen to good people and sometimes you have no control over it, and her realization that she can make the universe a slightly better place through her own self-sacrifice.
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Mar 16, 2016 07:55
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Applewhite posted:Whatever gently caress you guys. Newt and Hicks 5 ever! Michael Biehn who played Hicks was so mad that they killed off Hicks in the opening credits he protested and recieved almost the same amount of money that he got from Aliens.
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Mar 16, 2016 08:34
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Tenzarin posted:Michael Biehn who played Hicks was so mad that they killed off Hicks in the opening credits he protested and recieved almost the same amount of money that he got from Aliens.
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Mar 16, 2016 16:01
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That's one of the best Hollywood behind the scenes stories, it was probably only made public because of those really good interviews they did for the Quadrilogy. I feel like the joke's kinda still on Biehn though, because he was a last minute replacement who probably didn't make good money at all on Aliens, so I doubt he was really sticking it to them much. "More than I made on Aliens" is probably still not a drop in the bucket for a production like Alien 3.
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Mar 16, 2016 16:08
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Xenomrph posted:But she does sacrifice herself to save humanity - that isn't even subtext, that's straight-up text. That isn't text, especially if you consider the original theatrical version where the alien bursts from her as she's falling into the lava. She was dead no matter what. It was just a gently caress you to the company and the creature. She'd already lost. Xenomrph posted:her realization that she can make the universe a slightly better place through her own self-sacrifice. She makes the universe a better place through her suicide. It isn't self-sacrifice. This is the reason why, especially in the original cut, the alien bursts from her at that moment. It's the moment the trauma overcomes her. This isn't Ripley heroically choosing between survival and what is right. She's dead. In the original script she's dead beforehand and tells Bishop that she feels it moving and there's no time. The actual filmed version has her grimacing in pain and clearly feeling it about to happen, which it either does (theatrical) or doesn't (Assembly). She never had any choice between a gently caress-you and a not-gently caress-you. Which is, again, not bad but I do find it gross. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 16:12
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She was dead no matter what, but she was given the option to let the Company try to "save" her, or possibly salvage the Alien from her corpse. Instead she chooses to incinerate herself while literally doing a crucifixion pose, in order to unequivocally deny the Company what it wants (and save humanity). The point is that her dying act is destroying the Alien and saving humanity - throughout the movie she makes it clear that the Company can't get access to the Alien, and Dillon backs her up that every single character should be ready and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to destroy it, and then she does exactly that at the end of the movie. Ripley was already a walking dead woman, but it's what she chooses to do with that fate that matters. In the original script (and comic adaptation), the Alien pops out of her as she's standing at the precipice, and her dying act is to grab it and then tumble into the furnace while holding it. Whether the Alien popped out of her before she fell, as she fell, or not at all, in all three scenarios she makes the conscious effort to destroy it because she knows what will happen if she doesn't. I think your reading might have more merit if she failed to destroy the Alien, or wasn't as accepting of her fate, or didn't have a constant narrative of "I have to destroy the Alien, even if I am destroyed in the process". Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 16:34
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Xenomrph posted:She was dead no matter what, but she was given the option to let the Company try to "save" her, or possibly salvage the Alien from her corpse. Instead she chooses to incinerate herself while literally doing a crucifixion pose, in order to unequivocally deny the Company what it wants (and save humanity). The Alien is part of her though. Both metaphorically (she can't escape it) and literally (born from her body.) The act of destroying it is part of destroying herself. You mention the Crucifixion pose but that is only one specific ending of the film. In the other she is strangling her own virgin birth as she falls into the fires of hell. Of the two the latter is the one I saw first and the one that I feel stands out more as matching the themes and ideas of the film. The Alien is presented as an otherworldly angel in the film. It is there to protect the child, the child Ripley doesn't want. There's obvious pro-abortion elements there but Ripley literally can't have an abortion due to the society she is trapped in. That leaves her with the choice of killing herself (which she does) or having the child (which she refuses to do.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 16:55
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She does the crucifixion pose in both versions of the movie, it's just that in the theatrical cut the Alien pops out as she's falling, and she holds onto it. It's less that she doesn't want the baby so she kills the baby and herself because the worlds sucks and she's sad and gently caress you, it's that she knows the ramifications of letting the baby live. Like I said, I think I'd agree with your reading a bit more if it didn't drastically mischaracterize Ripley and ignore the constant, repeated motif of "we have to destroy the Alien, no matter the cost" demonstrated by her and other characters.
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Mar 16, 2016 17:19
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I'm actually with Xenomrph on this one. I appreciate ImpAtom's read quite a bit, but I think it doesn't follow through all the way to the end, because Ripley's motivations remain selfless to the very end. If there's any moment the "trauma [nearly] overtakes her" would be when she wants Dillon to kill her right then and there - but he convinces her to keep going to help people. When she makes her sacrifice, the only way it's about her trauma is that she wants to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
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Mar 16, 2016 17:29
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I was gonna say, Ripley asking Dillon to kill her is a moment where I can see where ImpAtom is coming from, but Dillon's refusal is what counters it, and then he follows it up with his speech later on about how "we're all gonna die, but what matters is how you check out". Ripley makes good on his speech by making her final act be "destroying the devil", something that's constant in every version of the movie.
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Mar 16, 2016 17:43
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Ripley's suicide is an assertion of control. Her chestburster isn't the last one in existence--the Company has a precise surgical extraction procedure which means they've done it before. It's why Bishop II's pledge to destroy it is bullshit.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:12
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Xenomrph posted:She does the crucifixion pose in both versions of the movie, it's just that in the theatrical cut the Alien pops out as she's falling, and she holds onto it. What does the Alien represent in your reading of the film then? That's the thing I just don't understand. And while I'm not someone who says "everything has to mean something," I feel like in Alien it's kind of hard to say it doesn't have a deeper meaning. What is being destroyed by Ripley beyond the textual representation of a scary monster? Your reading is that she destroys the Alien which is heroic because the Alien is a bad monster that will be abused by the corporation, but how does that play into the blatant child-imagery (right down to an ultrasound) tied to the creature or the religious imagery present throughout the film or so-on. Toady posted:Ripley's suicide is an assertion of control. Her chestburster isn't the last one in existence--the Company has a precise surgical extraction procedure which means they've done it before. It's why Bishop II's pledge to destroy it is bullshit. Almost everything Bishop says to her is a lie so I assumed that was too. I assumed they were just gonna throw her in a safe cell and wait for it to burst out or something. They just needed it to be somewhere contained. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 18:21
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Toady posted:Ripley's suicide is an assertion of control. Her chestburster isn't the last one in existence--the Company has a precise surgical extraction procedure which means they've done it before. It's why Bishop II's pledge to destroy it is bullshit. ImpAtom posted:What does the Alien represent in your reading of the film then? That's the thing I just don't understand. And while I'm not someone who says "everything has to mean something," I feel like in Alien it's kind of hard to say it doesn't have a deeper meaning. What is being destroyed by Ripley beyond the textual representation of a scary monster? Your reading is that she destroys the Alien which is heroic because the Alien is a bad monster that will be abused by the corporation, but how does that play into the blatant child-imagery (right down to an ultrasound) tied to the creature or the religious imagery present throughout the film or so-on. It's Rosemary's Baby with a happy ending.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:30
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I find it odd that a certain CineD poster hasn't weighed in on this one yet.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:33
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Basebf555 posted:I find it odd that a certain CineD poster hasn't weighed in on this one yet.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:47
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Metaphors don't have to be perfect (and I think often when they are, such as "this character represents such-and-such", it comes off pretty trite). I usually try to go for broader, ideological reads because I find chasing perfect metaphors is like chasing unicorns. The movie is about nihilism and trauma. There's an open question of "well what's the loving point of fighting and surviving if we're all just going to die a stupid and pointless death (or get raped and impregnated against your will) inbetween movies anyway?" If there is no intrinsic meaning or narrative to life and we're all going to have to deal with pointless death and trauma and suffering, you can let that existential horror overtake you or you can do what you can to lessen the suffering of others. You may even let "selflessly help people" be the meaning you apply to life, which is just as well since that's where all meaning comes from in the first place.
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Mar 16, 2016 18:52
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Basebf555 posted:I find it odd that a certain CineD poster hasn't weighed in on this one yet. 
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Mar 16, 2016 18:54
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Slugworth posted:Sorry, I just haven't seen the movie very recently. We've all been eagerly anticipating your input, Slugworth!
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Mar 16, 2016 18:57
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Clearly you all missed the obvious message in Alien 3, and I'm rather shocked considering how clear the film makers made it. In case I need to spell it out, Alien 3 is a satire of much of the "Western" genre, not so much the classic 60's westerns such as a Fistful of Dollars (which, although many pedestrian critics saw a superficial resemblance to Yojimbo is clearly tied to Disney's original Snow White). The Penal colony in Alien 3 obviously a stand-in for a classic wild west town, and must like in a Fisful of Dollars there are rival factions at odd with each other. Ripely, the disruptive outsider plays both sides off each other resulting in the destruction of all, it follows point by point the plot but the satire comes in at the ending. Rather than "riding off into the sunset" Alien 3 subverts this trope and has Ripley dive into the smelter, a large circular fire unmistakably referencing the Sun. There is no alien in the movie, it's a fabrication of Ripley, this is obviously because there was no Alien in a Fistful of Dollars. This all isn't my interpretation, it's a clearly evident fact no one actually paying attention to the movie could ignore, if you disagree you have factually incorrect emotion-based opinions on Alien 3.
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Mar 16, 2016 21:27
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And much like the light emanating from the spotlights of the 20th Century Fox logo at the very beginning of the film, there's the EEV that gets violently ejaculated out of the Sulaco that's on fire/feverish birthing pains. This motif is obviously repeated then with the birth of the alien and dropping both Hicks and Newt's bodies out "into the light" aka "out of the birthing canal into the world". Then there's the undeniable fact that Andrews, who in his bald, chubby state resembles a baby (he even childishly plays with a red ball) (which is -- and this is so obvious it just gave me a tumor -- his father's testicle), gets "aborted" by the alien which violently yanks him into the dark hole above. Bishop's ruined state so super duper clearly is meant to represent a failed sex doll as they can't give birth and that white stuff oozing out of his ear? Yup you got it, it's PUDDING. MAN PUDDING. The alien exploding at the end? Hello? Hiroshima anyone? God you guys are so dense sometimes. Alien 3 = Kama Sutra/The Graduate/Hoffmeyer's Legacy.
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Mar 16, 2016 21:38
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ImpAtom posted:Almost everything Bishop says to her is a lie so I assumed that was too. I assumed they were just gonna throw her in a safe cell and wait for it to burst out or something. They just needed it to be somewhere contained. Also possible. Regardless, I'm not into the idea of her suicide as a heroic act of selflessness but a defiant self-assertion. Dillon didn't care about saving the rest of humanity. The motivation for fighting the beast was to die in control.
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Mar 16, 2016 22:02
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| # ? May 15, 2024 04:23 |
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I'm OK with all the messaging of the movie and I understand and agree with the assessments. It's still a bad movie on a technical and storytelling level. "Life is poo poo, here is some Christ imagery" is not a compelling story (talk about trite) and Alien 3 feels like a smaller, less imaginative film than the previous two. I like Alien: Resurrection, which is also not a very good movie (and very clearly a calculated response to the poor reception of Alien 3), a lot more.
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Mar 16, 2016 22:48
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