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I'm still catching up on this thread, because I just found it and I must read All The Things because Aliens is my joint favourite movie of all time. Just wanted to say that yesterday, in a random "hey, wonder if any of the cinemas near me show older films" Google, I discovered that in 3 weeks I'm going to be able to see both Alien and Aliens on the big screen for the first time ever just a short bus ride away in Edinburgh. I am DELIGHTED. There's nothing better, nothing at all, than seeing a movie you already know and love and have seen a million times up on a cinema screen for the first time. It's always like seeing it for the first time. I was only 12 when it came out originally, but was given a copy of it on pirate 10th generation VHS back in the day, which made the reactor room scenes borderline unwatchable, but that didn't stop me watching it like 50 times. I almost feel bad putting these into a third thread, but I spent ages painting them so eh, but here are some miniatures I've been working on for the interesting yet way overly complicated Aliens Another Glorious Day in the Corps board game.      "What do you mean they cut the power? They're just animals."  
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Aug 26, 2021 13:31
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Thanks. But I assure you, those figures there are 90% just drybrushing, which is babby's first painting technique. I promise you that you can all paint those figures to that standard. Just wait and see how badly I screw up the marines... I am going to finally give the Alien 3 assembly cut a try after seeing it mentioned in this thread so much. I don't think it'll make me actually like that film, but well I do want to see the "best" version of it at least. The alternate Aliens sequel from that first Aliens comic book series ruled so hard, and there were several things about it that I feel made it work so well: 1/ the Aliens make it to Earth, which had to be the next logical step in the story. You've done slasher horror, you've done action war, now you make a disaster movie. 2/ the Alien queen having a low level psychic ability. I really like that the Aliens are basically wasp/ant hive parallels, because those critters are already terrifying and unsettling. A basic low level psychic signal from the queen does give them back that true extra-terrestrial quality. 3/ the idea that some humans would feel that (of maybe even think they are feeling it) and buy into the idea of worshipping them, being pro-Alien. Something that felt a little unlikely 30 years ago, but in the wake of QAnon/MAGA chuds and a wave of anti-vax corona disinfo the idea that humans might be pro-facehuggers is painfully "yeah, that'd happen". For me, that first trilogy of Aliens comics, and the first AvP comic, are the canon sequels.
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Aug 26, 2021 18:56
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BiggerBoat posted:Is that board game worth a poo poo? Jury's still out on it for me. The components are fantastic, as you can see. But this game has way too much admin and fannying around for what is essentially move, shoot, and run the gently caress away. But I need to play it more before I see how it properly holds up. I'm getting my money's worth out of the models alone, PLUS if the game ends up being something I don't want to play much, I'm going to print up (or build) a map from the 1989 Leading Edge board game which 30 years later remains an absolute banger of a game and I'll uses these figures with that. Solid gold Plan B right there. e: I really want to make it work, even if I end up rewriting half the rules, because there's a ton of really nice 3rd party terrain to pimp out the game boards. I so badly want all these little office sets and science lab jars with facehuggers etc. https://combatzone-scenery.co.uk/Games/Hanleys-Hope e2: I'm still further back in the thread, so don't know if this has been discussed, but there's also a really good co-op/solo Alien game that just came out called Fate of the Nostromo which is getting good reviews. It's already up on Tabletop Simulator if anyone wants to give it a crack: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/332321/alien-fate-nostromo Parkingtigers fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 27, 2021 02:33
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BiggerBoat posted:THanks. The deal in that game is that you're creeping around the Nostromo trying to get enough mini-objectives done that you can complete one of the final objectives which gets drawn randomly. Like, prep the shuttle, or blow the alien out of the airlock. Nobody dies, but run into the alien and the morale track drops further and get scared enough and... well, everyone dies. Creeping around the rooms means running into face down "something might be here" markers, many of which are that drat cat doing a jump scare at whoever ran into him and dropping the morale down. Yes, Jonesy is technically the true villain in that game.
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Aug 27, 2021 13:36
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It’s Friday night. I have 2000 calories of unhealthy food in front of me and I’m pressing play on the Alien 3 assembly cut. Let’s do this thing.
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Aug 27, 2021 20:24
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Alright, I gave it a fair crack. Last time I saw Alien 3 was at least two decades ago. At least. The assembly cut is better than the theatrical cut, but better doesn't mean good. There are moments I liked in the middle act, which if they weren't tied to the earlier good films might have carried more weight. But the whole ending of the movie is a very tiresome and overlong chase scene where a shoddily composited alien puppet kills too many characters (none of whom I know or care about) one by one. See, that worked in Alien because there were only 7 of them in total. Kane died first, Ash goes rogue, so it's just about the remaining 5 and I've gotten to know and give a drat about all of them. When there's a dozen of them left, after already having seen a dozen die, and I only really like (kinda) a couple of them, it's just a whole lot of nameless almost identical nobodies getting eaten up one by one. The real crimes are in the opening act though. It's still impossible to get over the fact they killed off Hicks and Newt in the opening 6 minutes. For Ripley, the last time she woke up she was locked in a room with Newt and two facehuggers on LV-426. For her, that was yesterday. Today she wakes up and they're all dead. The next day (and I'm being generous in assuming it was actually the next day) she's all "eh, I'm over it" and decides to gently caress Charles Dance. That's a *wild* three days of character un-development for Ripley. Now Charles Dance is a great actor, but he's playing a very emotionally restrained dude here and it's just so baffling that she's horny for him (or anyone) at that point. The attempted rape scene should not exist at all, and while the execution of it makes it worse, it being in the film at all is just creepy AF but not in a narrative way. Somehow it's made worse because they had Ripley jump Charles Dance's bones the day after(?) burying Hicks and Newt. Far too many scenes involve convicts talking about how they do want to have sex with her, how they don't want to have sex with her, how others shouldn't be tempted to have sex with her, one actually having sex with her, a group trying to rape her, and suddenly her being the only woman on a planet of men gets so much worse than just failing the Bechdel Test. It's almost good that there's an alien monster there so they have *anything* else to talk about than Ripley's perceived fuckability. I don't even hate the film, it's more bland than bad for the most part *on its own merits*.
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Aug 27, 2021 23:56
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Biplane posted:Alien 3? Never heard of it. Anything to do with actual Good Movie, Aliens (the movie)? Sadly, they never made any sequels to Aliens, the Best Movie Of All time, which is odd considering how good and popular it was.
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Aug 28, 2021 00:17
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Having given it some time to sit, Alien 3 also annoys me because that xenomorph just shouldn't be on such a frenetic killspree. It's doing the "minimouth through the brainpan" kills more than anything, and is trying to speedrun Fury 161 kills. But it knows there are like 2 dozen people there total, Ripley even points out it's a lion staying close to the zebras, and it also knows there's an alien queen going to be born soon. An alien queen that is going to need some feeding up, sure, but which is mostly going to need cocooned victims for all those lovely fresh eggs about to be laid. Leaving the humans alive, or just webbing them up ready for impregnation later, both make sense. I can't even accept that it's trying to kill all the dudes who might be a threat to the unborn queen as they've got no weapons are just running around screaming. Hell, capturing Ripley and taking her off somewhere to web up would make more sense if that was the instinct, make a nice hive themed birthing room up in the ducts. In Alien, they cut the cocoon scenes, but as it doesn't show them dead you can easily just go ahead and assume they got stored away for later rather than just getting murked. But in Alien3 it's just frenziedly chomping through those guys and it just seems so... wasteful.
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Aug 30, 2021 22:06
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:I take issue with a lot of this. Hey, it's a discussion forum, and a thread to discuss the two good Aliens films. Nothing wrong with a bit of disagreement. I'm not super invested in my opinions on Alien 3, it took me 25 years to rewatch it and even then only because of this thread giving me that urge to go back in. Just throwing out my surface level reactions to the thing. Charles Dance is a good looking dude, and I can fully understand the idea that someone has been having a rough time and just wants to get some. I've been there, done that, got some. It's just the timing that doesn't make it work for me. Yesterday she went through hell to rescue that kid, today woke up to hear she's dead, tomorrow all horned up. Charles Dance just feels like an odd choice because, sure stoic and steadfast is one thing, but one of their major points of interaction at this point was jointly conducting the autopsy of a six year old girl and... I just feel it's too many things that should be offputting, all happening at once, on a timeline that doesn't work. More time, or fewer issues, it'd be less odd feeling. If it works for others, enjoy away. But sharing a bed with the (handsome, nice) dude she just cut open a child cadaver with feels too far into "that wouldn't happen" land for me.
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Aug 31, 2021 00:20
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I’m in the cinema. In 2 minutes I’ll be watching Terminator 2 (while thinking about Aliens)
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Aug 31, 2021 20:03
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So I'm really glad I did go to see T2 on the big screen. I've always held it as being good, but not actually great, but a combination of factors has really let it grow in my affections it seems because I came out of that going "nope, actually great after all". The two biggest factors in turning this around for me was the last time I saw T2 was the extended cut, and while I will defend The Abyss and Aliens extended cuts as being essential and definitive, the extra stuff in T2 made the middle act super baggy and really hurt the pacing. For 15 years, that's been my memory of that film. Then last year I finally watched all of Terminator 3, having seen only bits of it previously. Wow that movie is not good at all. Someone a while back in this thread described it as being an "expensive movie that somehow manages to look cheap" and that was exactly it. But I'll say this, 4 bad Terminator sequels really makes looking back at T2 and realizing just how great it was and being thankful for it. God drat did Linda Hamilton kick some rear end in that movie. Of course the real reason I'm glad I went, is this is the screen where I'll be watching Aliens in two weeks and I wanted to know where the best seats are.
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Sep 2, 2021 18:15
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Re-reading a bunch of Aliens comics. Newt's Tale is mostly a straightforward comic adaptation of Aliens, nothing special, but drat if the pages where Newt's mum straight up asks for a pistol just so she can shoot her kids rather than let them get facehugged hits right in the emotions. Also the way she gets given the gun no questions asked as they already know that's the right choice because things have gotten that bad already. That whole 6 page sequence that follows as the civilian redoubt is breached is pretty much all you need from that comic, but it's enough to justify reading that comic. Also, twice the book makes a point that the colony had livestock, to allow the numbers of aliens to be boosted beyond the 158 colonists. That's not supported in anything else I've read, but it makes sense that they would have something like that set up, and as it allows for more aliens without stretching credulity in any way, I'm all for it. Thinking about Aliens a bit more, I know some people don't like the Newt flashback bit in the extended edition, but oddly I feel like it really should have been part of the theatrical cut because without it there's a big reliance on viewers having seen Alien to know the whole egg -> facehugger -> chestburster thing. Ripley talks about it in the theatrical cut, but I do wonder how well that would land with someone who hadn't seen the first film. Having that flashback to setup the idea of facehuggers, then going to "we've lost contact with the colony" works so much better as a standalone film, I feel. But I'm an unashamed "the extended edition is perfect and definitive" defender so when people talk about any part of it not being necessary or good I stick my fingers in my ears and sulk for a bit.
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Sep 2, 2021 21:29
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The pacing of the extended cut is just so much better in so many ways. Like all the little bits and pieces on the dropship and leading up to entering the colony. Just enough linking scenes that gives it all more of an almost documentary feel as you follow the marines in. Yes it takes a little longer, but there's more immediacy and closeness so I feel more part of it than just observing. I just realised that in a couple of weeks when I go to see Aliens on the big screen, it'll be the first time I've seen the theatrical cut since the extended edition came out. I saw that version once, and decided I never needed the shorter version ever again. Just a perfect movie.
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Sep 3, 2021 01:40
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Android Apocalypse posted:The only thing I don't care for in the Aliens extended cut is showing what happened at Hadley's Hope. Letting it be a complete mystery creates an incredible amount of tension & IMO showing why the colony went dark earlier takes us away from being in the group's headspace when they arrive at LV426. If you've seen Alien, it's not a mystery. If you haven't seen Alien, you need an introduction to how an alien infestation even works. I (genuinely) don't get that it takes away from the marines wondering what happened there. With or without seeing the colonists previously, it's still "where the hell is everyone?" as the marines enter the complex. At least these days both versions of the movie are available, and for those who desire the extended cut but without Hadley's Hope flashback it's one uninterrupted scene that could be easily and neatly sliced out of the film without any rough edges.
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Sep 3, 2021 02:11
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In other news, turns out my MacBook can run a PSOne emulator after all, and I just paired a PS3 controller with it and I'm playing Alien Trilogy for the first time in a quarter of a century. Plus, with the emulator having the ability to remap controls, I was able to give it modern twin stick controls so it's a bit easier while remaining as dark and creepy as it was back in the day. Still holds up really well, surprisingly well actually. I remember connecting my Playstation up to the VCR and recording the big fight against the alien queen, and putting that on the TV at work in the comic shop I was at. Really felt the need to say "check this out" in the days long, long before it was easy to show off what you did in a video game. That Predator: Hunting Grounds is free on PS+ this month. Was it any good? I don't have access to anything other than my Switch right now, so won't be able to give it a try (hence me going full retro for Alien Trilogy).
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Sep 3, 2021 07:07
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I like the idea of that scene, but I’m so glad it wasn’t used. Newt only just being about to get ‘hugged while Burke is already impregnated and awake? Nah. Even if it was he was waiting for his turn for a big sloppy egg kiss it wouldn’t work because at that point he’s just getting a nice snooze then a reactor explosion. Over a longer timeline… sure. In this movie, the most “hosed around and found out” painful death is the instant karma of minijaws through the brainpan as soon as he shut that door to lock out the marines with guns who would have saved him.
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Sep 3, 2021 16:50
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Neo Rasa posted:We finally got to play some of the Alien: Fate of the Nostromo board game. The game is fun but having an actual cat in play makes makes accessing the cryo chamber almost impossible. I don't care what thread this is, I demand more cat photos.
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Sep 4, 2021 14:15
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Another thing that I didn't like about Alien 3 (and I honestly can't remember it being specific to the assembly cut or not), is that the company lets that one random prisoner survive. They abandon Fury 151, taking that one remaining prisoner with them (presumably to a different prison elsewhere), and even just his story about the existence of a deadly and hostile alien is going to be bad for WY at some point for a bunch of reasons. Really feels like him not getting killed makes the company seem... not so bad after all? 85 hitting not-Bishop out of the blue and getting shot is also a bit... "why?" for me. I know he's not the sharpest tool in the box, but not-Bishop isn't even the one who fired a gun at Ripley and the prisoner, walloping him just got himself killed. His constant talk about his wife and kid shows he wanted to survive and go back to his own life, and suddenly attacking the company guy who has armed commandos surrounding him is more suicidal than most of the stuff they did facing off against the alien. Yeah, people do dumb things, the last couple of years really proves that point, but still... doesn't sit right with me. Guy could do nothing and go home, probably with a promotion for being helpful to the company.
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Sep 4, 2021 17:21
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Alien ᗡ===3
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Sep 4, 2021 21:25
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http://i.imgur.com/oxAF3HG.gifv
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Sep 4, 2021 22:27
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I’ll say this for Apple, I really like how if you buy a film from The iTunes that over time it gets upgraded to whatever fancier version comes along at no extra cost. Back when I bought Aliens: Special Edition, the original and inferior theatrical cut was sold separately. Then that all got folded in together as the 30th Anniversary edition so you own both. And now it’s a 4K movie, which is new since last time I looked, and there’s a bunch of extras that I don’t remember being there before. Currently looking at: a 2003 audio commentary That 3 hour Superior Firepower making of Another hour long Superio Firepower on the extended edition A 31 minute 30th anniversary James Cameron doc on design inspiration Obviously I’ve been thinking about Aliens (the movie), but hadn’t been checking my digital film collection for magically appearing new stuff. But new stuff has been magically appearing, it seems.
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Sep 6, 2021 19:28
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Oh man, this 30th Anniversary doc is great. James Cameron showing off his original design drawings he did himself. On the alien queen: “And I wanted it more decisively feminine, and if you look at the leg it’s actually kind of sexy” Welp, hornyposting is true canon after all.
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Sep 6, 2021 19:55
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My favourite fun movie fact is that it’s James Cameron’s hands that we see sketching nude Kate Winslet in that scene in Titanic. The man is just so good at what he does. Also, with Hudson and Vasquez, and James Cameron and James Horner all involved, petitioning to make Titanic an official part of the Aliens (the movie) thread.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:25
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Pennywise the Frown posted:I'm not a fan of Titanic. But the last time I saw it was on a school trip to the theater when it came out in the 90s. You absolutely need to go back and rewatch it as an adult. It's a truly great film, with possibly the bravest and most unconventional ending of any genre romance movie. I swear to god, Kate Winslet blowing that whistle is one of the top five emotional moments in any film ever made. To be fair, she carries that entire film on her back, but Rose is every bit the strong determined heroine that Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor is. In this essay I shall
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Sep 7, 2021 02:26
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Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a mum?
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Sep 7, 2021 07:03
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Iron Crowned posted:But I can't see a gooddamned thing when you're burning me and aliens with it! Stay Frosty.
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Sep 8, 2021 12:13
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“Can I drown?” “Yes honey. I think we both can. Sleep tight.”
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Sep 8, 2021 20:23
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Ghostnuke posted:someone in the comments called it a "clicker head". They also sell clicker heads. The nature of Etsy is that reviews for all products by a seller are shown on every page for that seller, with a link to the product that was bought. I got a really nice Weyland Yutani logo tee from Etsy a few weeks back, much better prices there than those merch sites like Last Exit.
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Sep 10, 2021 03:35
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Neo Rasa posted:Chunks of Aliens' score in particular are from Horner's score for Wrath of Khan and it owns that the music is so effective in two sci-fi movies that couldn't be more different. Vasquez: you have been, and always shall be, an rear end in a top hat
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Sep 12, 2021 21:43
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The Last Call posted:Plus it knew what the self destruct meant and where it had to go to get to safety, namely the ship Ripley took. It even knew to hide from her at the start. That's just the alien going to the only part of the ship that isn't all full of steam and sirens and flashing "ohhhh this is gonna blow the gently caress up" warning lights.
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Sep 17, 2021 01:00
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What's great about Burke is he often comes across as someone who could actually be really an OK guy. When Gorman freezes he helps restrain him so Ripley can take over and mount a rescue, and then he's quick to grab a fire extinguisher when the APC gets flamed by Drake. Plus he seems genuinely supportive of Ripley at her initial hearing. There's just enough surface courage and decency that you can buy into him being just "a suit" before finding out how deep that hole of ratfuckery goes. Paul Reiser is so, so loving good in this film.
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Sep 17, 2021 04:23
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What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power? They're just animals.
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Sep 17, 2021 04:53
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Just a PSA to any UK goons, that Vue cinemas are showing Alien and Aliens for the next 7 days, starting from today. They’re alternating the showings daily, but depending upon the individual cinema there might be a day where you can see both as a double bill. Which for my local one is tomorrow.
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Sep 17, 2021 15:55
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We used to do the same thing back in Perfect Dark on the N64. You could tailor the AI bots individually. So we set up a team of identical kamikaze bots that would just endlessly rush forward, and one extreme difficulty bot who would be clad in the white trenchcoat to give an occasional “oh gently caress” when he appeared. Our only hope was to make it to one of two rooms where we could turtle up and make a last stand defence, dropping down sentry guns if we were lucky to have found any. It was so, so good. The room would eventually be breached and then it took ages of panicked running around and dying to rest things up again. We also did an ad-hoc Predator mode too in Goldeneye 64. We’d turn on invisibility, which lasts until you die the first time. One player would pick the oversized Jaws model, and the other three would all suicide to remove the invisibility. Then the three humans had to work together to try and hunt down the invisible Predator stalking them, and we’d track wins by the Pred’s kill count. Basically I’m saying we made MP Aliens games before we had access to MP Aliens games.
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Sep 17, 2021 17:32
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Got my 2nd jab today, and I’m worried I might need to take things easy the next day or two, so brought forward my Alien screening just to make sure I don’t miss it. I’ve got snacks, what looks to be the best chosen seat in the cinema, and 20 mins from now I’m going to be in big screen bliss.
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Sep 17, 2021 19:41
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I do not want this pulse rifle replica https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/621644272/aliens-m41-a-pulse-rifle-replica-hero Or this smartgun https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1037476824/aliens-hero-smartgun-full-sized-screen which means I wouldn't need this smartgun harness https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/637187891/aliens-smartgun-colonial-marines-hero or this set of marine armour https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/643984465/aliens-colonial-marines-armor-11-screen and not this helmet https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/727738395/aliens-colonial-marine-helmet-hero-prop Nope, definitely don't want any of that. No, siree.
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Sep 18, 2021 04:55
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Aw yiss, about to head back into the cinema for the Alien/Aliens double bill. My mate was up for it after all, he was also too young for these classics back in the day. I’ve got cans, a fellow Aliens (the movie) fan, and over 4 hours of good times ahead.
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Sep 18, 2021 17:56
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Man, seeing Aliens on the big screen for the first time was SO loving GOOD. Decent sized Saturday night audience, which was great because for any film not seen in the cinema you can never be sure which lines would land well. There's always the lines that you like, but that's never the same as the lines that others like. Apone waking up into a cigar: chuckle Apone angrily saying "come here" to Hudson: chuckle Hicks saying "looks like love at first sight to me" : laugh Newt giving a thumbs up: chuckle Newt giving a salute: chuckle Newt saying "she doesn't have bad dreams because she's a lump of plastic": biggest ripple of quiet laughter of the film Here's the oddest thing about seeing it on the big screen for the first time. Usually this just means seeing details that somehow never registered while watching a film on TV. So here it would be things like just how much litter was in the corridor outside Ripley's room. Just visual details. For Alien, I couldn't help but notice all the brush/pen marks from the obviously badly coloured in red "DANGER" sign on the Nostromo's self-destruct sequence. Never in my life though, has watching a film on the big screen changed a movie's entire narrative for me. I've watched Aliens at least three dozen times in my life, in full and in part, and today after watching it at the cinema I've realised that I've been wrong about it for over thirty years. The protagonist of Aliens is not Ripley. It's Newt. It's her film. It's her story. I swear to god, my entire perception of this film has been upended.
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Sep 19, 2021 03:05
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I was unfortunate enough to buy the incredibly lovely 1991 Terminator 2: Judgement Day game for PC. Graphics looked impressive on the box art. But it was both incredibly boring garbage andtoo short. This is a longplay of the game. I know the video is under 12 minutes long, but that was the entire game. All of it. And this video contains a false start, the completion run of the ENTIRE game is from 3 minutes to 11 minutes. That's it, 8 minutes of gameplay total, in almost complete silence apart from a couple of sound effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST7_WqSlQJI I spent actual money on that pile of poo poo. It's been 30 years and I'm still salty. I defy anyone to watch that 8 minutes of gameplay and find any joy in it.
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Sep 21, 2021 03:34
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Doing some laundry, and found both my Aliens (the movie) related T-shirts were both clean at the same time for once.
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Sep 26, 2021 01:37
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