For Conservative Movie Lovers: James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and ‘Aliens’ Part 1
by Leo GrinOne of the things that I find most unpleasant about the current movie-going experience are the trailers. They’ve become slicker and louder than ever, but nevertheless a relentless homogenization has set in. The reason that a spoof video called A Trailer for Every Academy Award-Winning Movie Ever Made went viral earlier this year was because it deftly mocked a great number of the tired conventions used by modern-day Hollywood’s editors and marketers. See for yourself:
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen
The above short wouldn’t be so funny if the horrid little things weren’t so ripe for parody. To be fair, the trailers of old were just as bad in their way — if you watch classic film DVDs and take the time to run the special features, you’ll soon grow weary of seeing every film advertised as the GREATEST CINEMATIC TRIUMPH EVER! But we’re supposed to be better than that these days, we’re supposed to have evolved, right? In truth, our stuff’s just as cheesy, and will be revealed as such in a couple decades, when people yet unborn will watch them on some as-yet-unfathomed format and chuckle at how predictable and “of their time” they are.
Every once in awhile, however, a trailer comes along that’s startling in its freshness, that manages to break all the rules and become memorable in its own right. So it was with the two-minute teaser to Aliens, first spied by my then fifteen-year-old self in the spring of 1986. Can’t remember which movie I was at — Cobra probably, or maybe The Karate Kid Part II. But I’ve never forgotten that daring, brilliant bit of marketing:
YouTube -- click here to watch in full-screen
No gravelly-voiced narrator intoning exhausted platitudes. No giving away the plot of the movie. In fact, no dialogue at all, just chilling music and sound effects overlaying a brooding nightmare, all of it implicitly promising equal parts horror and action. A true teaser trailer, that manages to recapture everything audiences loved about director Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) while clearly marking itself as something much more than a pale retread.
I still remember hearing others in the theater catching sight of Michael Biehn in full futuristic military gear and whispering, “Hey, that’s Reese from The Terminator! Cool!” Blending the original Alien’s carefully measured horror with classic sci-fi author Robert Heinlein’s blistering space-marine concept was a stroke of genius. These days the decision seems obvious and inevitable. But at the time the film was being made, many thought that all the action would dilute and destroy the wonderfully creepy, character-driven atmosphere created for the first picture in the series by Ridley Scott and his talented crew.
Because of this, the movie took more guts than most to make. It was a follow-up to a treasured movie, an “instant classic” from seven years earlier. Director James Cameron recalls power lunches with various executives and agents in the wake of his success with The Terminator, where everyone was warning him away from the project. “Kid, kid, kid, trust me,” they all told him. “Don’t make this Alien II thing. It’s a losing proposition. It’s a no-win for you. If it’s good, it’ll be good because Ridley Scott did such a good first film. And if it’s bad, it’ll be totally your fault.”
When we movie-buff civilians talk about films and how we’d do things different, we often forget the pressure-cooker atmosphere that these people work under, making career-altering decisions with millions of dollars on the line. Could any of us honestly say that we’d have implacably stuck to our guns in the face of all those warnings from people with a lot more experience than us? To his credit, and to the benefit of an entire genre of literature and filmmaking, Cameron did. As he recalls, “My response was, ‘Yeah, but I really like it. I think it’ll be cool. Can’t I just do it?’”
By the time he was finished, he had “done it” all right. Costing only $18 million dollars (anyone who says we aren’t living in a time of immense, catastrophic inflation is nuts), it brought in many times that and became one of the biggest hits of the year. Anyone worried that Cameron would forsake horror in favor of gunplay, or that seeing dozens of the eponymous creatures mowed down would somehow demystify their power to frighten, had their concerns allayed in short order. Gale Anne Hurd, the movie’s producer (and, for a few years, James Cameron’s second wife), remembers one screening where “There was one woman who could not look at the screen, and she was grabbing the side of the seat so hard that she actually pulled it off. And then she started pounding the arm of the seat onto her boyfriend’s leg because she was so terrified by the film. But she couldn’t stop looking.”
Ever since its debut in 1986, it’s also been ranked as one of the best action movies ever made. Unlike the majority of films where the fights become dated, the passage of time has only made Aliens look better. BH’s John Nolte put it well in a previous column: “The one thing Cameron has always done well is to create busy, energetic, brilliantly choreographed action scenes that allow the audience to follow what’s going on. That’s not a small thing because it’s becoming a lost art in Hollywood as more and more filmmakers lazily trade coherence for the artless shaky-cam and hyper edits.” The many adrenaline-pumping fight scenes in Aliens still thrill, and even after a quarter-century they look more visually effective and accomplished than 99% of modern action movies.
“This Time It’s War,” was the tagline Cameron crafted for his own version of the Alien legend. “It’s blaster action rather than Gothic future horror,” said the Los Angeles Times in its review. David Giler, one of the film’s producers, called Aliens a cross between his own Southern Comfort (1981) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). Writing in The Futurist, her book on Cameron, Rebecca Keegan adds that, “For Aliens, Cameron envisioned something reminiscent of World War II combat pictures like Sahara or The Dirty Dozen, where a scruffy, ethnically diverse squad of soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and pull together to face an overwhelming foe.”
World War II wasn’t the only influence. At the time Cameron wrote the picture, he was also hard at work on the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II, and the latter’s focus on the pain and betrayal left behind in the wake of the Vietnam War bled over into the sci-fi script. Aliens features spaceships that drop marines off on planets with visuals eerily similar to Hueys landing soldiers in the jungle on 1960s newscasts. “It was a definite parallel to Vietnam,” Cameron admits, “to tell the story of a technologically superior military force which is defeated by a determined, furtive, asymmetric enemy.”
Also like Rambo — and unlike many cinematic stories that reference stories of Vietnam-era defeat and loss — Aliens features not just characters who are jeer-worthy but heroes who are cheer-worthy. To my mind, by far the most interesting Aliens influence is one brought up by Rebecca Keegan in The Futurist: “He also had in mind John Wayne’s film The Alamo, in which Wayne, as Davy Crockett, galvanizes his overmatched, ragtag troops against the advancing Mexican army. As Cameron saw it, Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, was John Wayne, the unflappable leader in a hopeless battle.”
Sigourney Weaver’s Aliens character as John Wayne? I like it. I also like the other great characters Aliens introduced to movie audiences: Vasquez, Hudson, Hicks, et. al. It’s amazing that, even after twenty-five years, one need only mention those curt surnames for the fully-formed personalities to come roaring back out of the past. Has there ever been a more memorable assortment of grunt soldiers in movie history?
Aliens, then, is a film that can only have been made by a man bearing a peculiar assortment of influences, talents, and an absolutely incredible amount of mental fortitude. For if Aliens is a war story, so is the tale of its making. . . .
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147 Comments
If a movie can pass the test of time and be appreciated by future generations – then it is a good movie. The New Yorker featured a piece on Cameron – he is a taskmaster, hated by many in the industry – known for going way over budget – but he delivers. Not bad for a truck driver from Canada.
SF,as it should be,one of the only movies I actually went to see in 1986,always in my top three favorites for all time.
One of my favorite films! When I lived in LA, I actually dragged a friend of mine to a screening of this film… at midnight… two and half hours away in La Jolla. We waited on line and there was a cool vibe – some guy even brought his pulse rifle replica.
Sadly, the print was old and looked like it had been run over by a Mack truck. There were literally chunks of film missing. My friend and I decided to leave. So, in short, we drove a total of five hours to see a film that I already owned.
I'm just brimming with behind the scenes factoids (the DVD's three-hour documentary and audio commentary are excellent) but I'm sure Mr. Grin will go into more detail in the weeks ahead.
He can thank this movie for being able to go "way over budget",and for the ego to match. Ever notice everything since has been a SFX heavy spectacular? Back then, he was known for bringing the good on a shoestring, as he did with Terminator and this.
I'd almost forgotten that this was Cameron! No one even suggested just hugging the little creatures.
Few sequel films surpass their originals. Aliens is one of those rare examples where "new and improved" is not just a slogan on a box.
They mostly come at night…mostly.
"They mostly come at night…mostly."
Yeah, even the bits of dialog like that are great and chilling. Now the only thing Cameron does that's chilling is look puffy while wearing war paint.
I saw this a few years later (I was to young when it was released) and loved it, still do.
I also didn't realise this was a Cameron movie, it was obviously made before he was either corrupted by Hollywood or he started to believe he was 'the king of the world' and got lost up his own backside.
OK, this is kind of open-threadish…
A Trailer for Every Academy Award-Winning Movie Ever Made is PERFECT.
Leo, you mention the loudness of movie trailers. I propose that the "BOOOOOOM" sound (a low, ominous echoy slamming effect) be banned.
People in trailers are always walking away from explosions like nothing just happened. No turning around. No crouching at the noise. Just walking away.
Aliens and Terminator must have been flukes. I was bored to tears by everything Cameron did from then on.
"This is clearly an important species we're dealing with here and I don't that you, or I, or anyone else has the right to just arbitrarily exterminate them." — Carter Burke
My first favorite movie. By the time I went to college, I could quote almost all of it by heart. I still enjoy pulling it out years later. And space marine has been one of my favorite fantasies.
Um…people seem to constantly gloss of the fact that Aliens, by and large is a lot like Avatar.
The military folks (at least they have faces in this one) are testosterone fueled, overconfident man-children, best illustrated in the embarrassingly stilted speech in which Hudson does everything but slap his chest when he talks about their weapons being 'guns, knives, sharp sticks, nukes…'
Eventually Signorny decides the aliens need to die but its at that precise moment that killing aliens becomes a good thing. Much like in Avatar its the main character deciding something is good that it becomes so.
Clearer evidence of this is that Ripely actually makes several contradictory orders in the film, both of which turn out to be morally justified. First she gets angry about the marines wanting to go in gung-ho, then she gets upset when their commanding officer decides to leave without collecting stranded marines, THEN she chides the marines for being cowards and demands that the go back to fight. Each time she throws a fit the film justifies it and no matter what the marine's do you'll find it being completely wrong every time, until Ripley tells them what to do, then its all right.
To be very frank I don't think aliens has aged well. The special effects that must have been amazing are kind of laughable now but the scenes they're in are drawn out. The writing after an excellently atmospheric beginning is stilted and trite and the plot is one long series of Ripley being right and the marines making mistakes.
Music is nice though, and yes the ending sequence is good.
But I'm afraid Aliens was the template and Avatar was James finally working out the bugs (things like giving the soldier's voices and moral ambiguity)
- “Aliens” is that rare sequel that’s as good as or better than the original. One of the best movies of the 80s, it’s also a rare melding of the sci-fi/horror genre with the action-adventure genre and it works in every area. “Alien” incorporated elements from the submarine movie and turned it into a haunted house in space. “Aliens” borrows from the “men on a mission” and military movie and becomes a metaphor of the Vietnam War. But you don’t have to see any of those elements to enjoy either one of these classics…
I think that the article was very good, well-researched, and accurate (which should be the standard for reporting, obviously, but it's actually very rare, in my opinion!)
The only problem is the title "For Conservative Movie Lovers". In the first place, James Cameron is a Canadian citizen, not an American citizen (which he has rejected). In the second place, Cameron specifically said when making 'Aliens' that he deliberately avoided humans killing humans because he thought that what he wrote in Rambo 2 was so immoral. One such quote was to Starlog magazine in 1986:
CAMERON: "After Rambo, I'm not that interested in making a film where people are running around shooting each other, and getting into the moral complications of saying 'Well, just because they're wearing a different uniform from another country, its OK….'"
Incidentally, James Cameron called 'Aliens' "anti-American" on a trip back to his home country. He told Canada's National Post:
CAMERON: "If it was directed by an American it probably wouldn't have such a strong anti-American subtext."
There are many, many other similar quotes that would make any modern "conservative" shun the movie. Believe it or not, James Cameron has never been more "conservative" (again, by the standards of modern neo-cons) than he is now in his late-50's!
There are plenty of "conservative" filmmakers, though: Michael Bay took $30m+ in taxpayer dollars from the DoD to make 'Transformers 2' not only pro-military propaganda, but pro-war propaganda. That's an American, college-educated, born-into-wealth, conservative endeavor.
(Hilariously, the Canadian from a very, very modest background who only went to junior college and had zero connections to Hollywood obliterated the DoD-financed propaganda in the free market. Now THAT'S a testament to capitalism!)
I know that modern "conservatives" (the sneering quotes are intentional!) only pretend to care about abortion – after all, Republicans controlled all 3 branches of the federal government and did 0 to stop it – but, for those select few who might actually care, there is some evidence that James Cameron has incorporated a pro-life message in his early movies, a corollary to the almost fanatical anti-military message that they also had. You can read about that by searching "the world's biggest moviemaker on america's most controversial subject".
CAMERON: "Women, who create life from their bodies, must be the guardians of life in the male-driven world where all technological advance seems to lead only to more effective ways of killing."
(Needless to say, the creepy, disgusting, bloodthirsty "conservative" women who litter modern TV don't agree with Cameron there.)
"Great! Why don't you put her in charge?"
"Time out, man! Game over!"
"I may not keep up with current events, but we just got our a$$es kicked!"
Paxton's greatest role. Hicks rocked.
You gave credit to Robert A. Heinlein, Mr. Grin! *weeps with gratitude.*
Everything about the space marines in Aliens was copied from Heinlein. The drop ship. The fact that "everyone drops" and there's no one left on board the orbiting ship. The lines about the "bug hunt."
Cameron stood on the shoulders of a giant to create this movie, and never gave Heinlein a line of credit. Thank you for doing so.
I would love to see anyone do a movie that really "got" Heinlein. One of the only regrets in my life (mistakes actually teach us something so I don't regret learning) was the opportunity to give blood and meet RAH in KC during a major sci fi convention. My friend and I had tickets to a KC Royals game, I don't remember anything about the game but we still regret not taking the few minutes to save a life and meet a literary giant. (not a complete waste however – I did buy an interesting pre release poster for movie that was scheduled for the next year. The director had filmed a couple of movies I enjoyed: THX-1138 and American Graffiti, but I was upset that one of is robots looked like a ripoff from Silent Running)
It wouldn't be the first time (or second) that he was 'inspired' by others. After The Terminator came out he was sued for stealing the idea off of Harlan Ellison's stories that were filmed for The Outer Limits and he settled out of court. There has also been a lot made out of Avatar being a rip off Dances With Wolves or some older book.
But either way it was and still is a great movie. My favourite quote.
'Have you ever been mistaken for a man?'
"No, have you?"
Thank you, Bonnie (and Mr. Grin)! I loved the first Alien, and my wife and I rushed to the theater to catch the sequel, hoping it wouldn't be too screwed up. I loved the movie, but was immediately struck with the huge pieces of Starship Troopers I saw on the screen. We sat through ALL of the credits,something we don't normally do, to see if there were any "Thank You's" addressed to R.E.H. None. Nada. Zip. Lost all of my respect for Cameron right then and there.
Well, I was going to write all of that, but you beat me to it. I agree with everything you said.
Let's also not forget about the evil corporation behind everything.
As long as quotes from a movie that the Canadian Cameron called "anti-American" are going to be used, my favorite comes from Apone:
APONE: "Another glorious day in the corps. Day in the marine corp's like a day on the farm! Every meal is a banquet, every paycheck a fortune, every formation a parade! I LOVE the corps!"
Cameron did acknowledge the 'Starship Troopers' influence. Won't bother to provide the quotes 'cause people obviously didn't like the last ones.
Aliens is one of the rarer films that used a lot of dark suspense to build up the mood. One just knew that once Ripley and the Marines landed on LV-426 not many would survive the mission. Hollywood doesn't make old school movies like this anymore. The movie remains a guilty pleasure for many who say they don't like Sci-Fi.
I liked the first clip and the TRAILER for Aliens is great, but the movie with all its PC BS (especially pro-female) made me gag. I hadn't seen it since the but trailer reminded me of the obligatory nonsensical casting of a woman as a machine gunner – it is just nonsense.
I feel the same way! Back in the 60's when I was in grade school, we got to take a "trip" to the school library (in the h.s.) and were issued our library cards. The librarian asked me what subjects I liked to read about and since the moon race was going strong then, I said "outer space". She turned me onto Heinlein's juvenile fiction and I credit her and Heinlein for giving me a lifetime of reading pleasure.
I would reply directly to GJP, but instead will include it in this post: I'd love to see movies made of "Time for the Stars" and / or "Tunnel in the Sky". "Troopers" was all right, I enjoyed it, but could've been much, much better, so on the whole it was a disappointment, esp. after waiting decades hoping for it to be made.
And ironically IIRC the movie Starship Troopers DIDN'T have the famous suits? WTF – the MOVIE technology has been there for a long time to make that come alive on the screen. They could have made one that looked fluid like the mechanics in Robocop, too! Even here in Aliens they were nearly impotent clumsy devices.
After seeing the "Piranha 3D" trailer I can only think a piranha vs Alien flick might do better than AVP. Aliens can swim pretty well under water (Alien Resurrection) but methinks they'd just be lunch for those hungry fish.
He still didn't think we should hug them. It was obvious they were important . . . for something nefarious, not for hugging.
Hudson is such a great character. Even though he's a whiner, you can count on him when the you know what hits the fan. Still kind of bugs me that Hudson doesn't survive the movie. Then again, look what happened to poor Hicks and Newt in "Alien 3". What a kick in the teeth that was.
I'm going to disagree a little, although I haven't seen the movie in a while. Ripley doesn't want anyone to go in and bother with the Aliens because she's seen what they can do. That's what I remember. When it's obvious what is going on – there are a lot of them and they are really dangerous and prolific and I think even before they find out what Carter is up to – it's best to nuke them.
I don't see how this is contradictory. And of course, human beings being filled with hubris, especially when armed, think they can take care of the alien which they think is probably just some stupid little thing. They are simply uninformed. Ripley knows how dangerous they are. That is why she admonishes them to take it seriously.
Later, they're freaked – naturally of course as I don't care how much of a Marine you are. When you see things bursting out of people and being surrounded by aliens and they have acid for blood, etc. you are going to be scared sh!tless. They suffered a big defeat, lost their leader. Ripley is the natural leader because she's dealt with them before. She rallies the troops to get the hell out and nuke the place. She never wanted to save the things; she just doesn't want to have anything to do with them AT ALL.
I haven't seen Avatar myself, but hearing about it from people who have liked and not liked it, I'm not seeing the similarity at all.
I used to bug my mother when I was just a wee thing that I wanted to watch horror movies. She was always telling me I was too young(I was about 4), but eventually she figured if she showed me this I'd be so traumatized I'd just shut up. Booooooy, was she wrong. And thus began my foray into some of the creepiest movies no kid should ever see. I actually saw The Blair Witch Project in theaters when I was barely nine and was bored to tears. *sigh*
How is that anti-American. It's a little sarcastic, but do you actually know anybody in the military? I do. My husband. He's served 2 tours in Iraq. He loves to serve and he's a patriot, but he also knows that the military, like any other large bureaucracy also can suck – the food can suck, the work can suck. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Nonethless they serve. That is the important thing to remember. It's a thankless job that many volunteer to do.
While I am no feminazi, I believe that individual women can do what individual men can do. Apparently, you've never met my mother-in-law. Sounds like she could take care of you with both hands tied behind her back.
And obviously you've never heard of Sarah Palin.
Or me.
While sometimes the casting is deliberate to placate the PC stuff, sometimes it's just nice to see women not running and screaming and waiting for men to help them. That goes against history as well, especially pioneer women. You think delicate Paris Hilton types could have survived out in the wilderness? Yeah, didn't think so.
If a woman can do what is necessary for combat, she should be allowed to do it. Ability matters not sexual organs. And that's what "equal opportunity" is supposed to mean.
Never said that line was anti-American. James Cameron said that the movie itself, "a strong anti-American subtext." So you misunderstood my post.
My dad served in Vietnam, which was 12x more lethal than Iraq. But I don't know what your husband or my dad have to do with 'Aliens' and, honestly, I don't care about your personal life, and I'm sure you don't care about mine.
But he did urge everyone to build a fire and sing a couple of songs.
Clearly, Burke was all kumbaya. (yes, I'm being tongue in cheek.)
I would point out when it comes to cockiness that a certain amount of cockiness has to be a part of your demeanor when you are going into a hyper-competitive or life and death situation. Do you think pro athletes would be very good if they didn't go into every contest with an attitude that they are going to win?
Similarly, do you think troops facing battle are going to fight very well if they don't do their utmost to project an attitude of certain victory? This may be contradictory to what they know inside or feel, but morale is going to crash if you don't at least convey some kind of confidence to your neighbor. Even in _300_ the Spartans projected an attitude of confidence even though they all knew they were going to die. They wouldn;t have fought as well as they did if they all crawled up to the fight with an attitude that they were going to be slaughtered.
Cameron may have wanted to project anti-Americanism with it, but thankfully he hadn't honed his craft very well yet.
Just because you may think your project is conveying a message doesn't mean that it's the one people are finding in it. Look at _The Expendables_. It has nothing to do with jingoistic American patriotism, but there are some lefty critics that see that message.
Look at it this way: at least one person managed to do Starship Troopers right.
Cameron said "anti-American subtext". You wrote "project ant-Americanism".
Subtext and projection are literal opposites.
Sorry I misread your post.
LOL! Of course you are. Sounds like a typical Leftist – kumbaya sounding while planning to have a woman and a child infected with Aliens "for the greater good".
No problem. Thank you for the acknowledgment of the error.
You want to tell those Eastern European women that they shouldn't be hulking shot puts and hammers like they do at every track meet? You honestly don't think they could carry a heavy machine gun?
I agree that most women couldn't physically do it, but there will always be some who are determined enough to prove that they can on a man's playing field. They may not be able to physically best their male counterparts, but all they have to do is prove that they can meet the standard.
That is young! I never really got into horror that much I remember nearly wetting my pants during Evil Dead (I was 9 I think) but I could watch any action movie with extreme violence (as long as it was with guns or fighting) without a problem.
I couldn't get into the recent (last 10 years or so) trend in the extreme horror (torture porn as I've heard it called) movies like Hostel, Saw (and sequels), Wolf Creek and others in the same vein. I just couldn't see anything in them.
The action/thriller genre has completely died. Either the movie is action or a glorified snuff film, movies like Aliens are few and far between. Though I saw the new "Predators" movie and I think Rodriguez really captured the spirit of the genre.
Blah, blah, blah, blah…
Dude…edit….
tl&dr…
You've dropped in a strong hint of self-grandising, but not much meaning overall or in regards to the what Leo was talking about. I'm trying to decide if I should be offended or laugh. I'll laugh since it looks like you're taking this way too personal.
As long as she clears my field of fire and knows how to anchor her gun to direct fire into the beaten zone…what's the big whoop…?
To quote Capt. Carter: "I'm an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside, doesn't mean I can't handle whatever you can handle."
Time for you to stop dragging your knuckles…
The original article was more than 3x longer than the correction and clarification I wrote. So I'm sorry that you thought that Mr. Grin's article was in need of editing.
I'd reply that you meant to write "self-aggrandizing" not "self-grandising". But that doesn't make sense because I haven't talked about myself at all, and therefore I couldn't have been self-aggrandizing. So maybe you did mean "self-grandising", after all. Now the problem is….there's no such word.
To answer your question, I took almost no issue with anything in the article itself. Like I said, I thought it was factual and well-written, by and large. The only issue was with the title of the post.
I'm happy to make you laugh (supposedly).
Carter Burke worked for Weyland-Yutani. Weyland-Yutani is a huge defense contractor.
Would their anchor babies be given citizenship?
Weyland-Yutani is everything as are their competitors. The Alien mythos features a corporate dystopia where nations are simply bought and paid for flags of convenience, if anything. WY manufactured everything from weaponry to atmosphere generators to entire terraformed worlds. Defense was but a small part of their overall umbrella.
I would give your point more credence if we were discussing Alien because clearly, in that movie, the company as an entity set up the crew of the Nostromo even going so far as to insert Ash at the last moment to try to ensure an android could contain the creature specimen. In Aliens, Carter Burke is more of an independent actor within the company whose greed and need to get ahead led him to chase down Ripley's story and then attempt to capitalize on it for himself. WY as an entity is at most a disinterested party to the proceedings.
Ah, so the scene in Avatar where the marines say things like 'Get You Some!' and 'Hell ya!' are meant to be bravado that's important to a soldier and not irritating cliche that paint marines as hyperactive and violent children?
I will admit the marines were better portrayed in Aliens, but James Cameron's distain dripped from every scene of them whining or thumping their chests.
'Game over man! Game over!'
Now THAT'S respect for the troops…
Well, its nice to see political correctness is still alive and well, even on Big Hollywood :/
Thank you for your opinions.
In all but the final drafts of the screenplay, it's strongly suggested that Weyland-Yutani simply covered up the incident in 'Alien'.
RIPLEY: “….Somebody's gotten to it…doctored the recorder. Who had access to it?”
'Aliens' introduced the defense contractor apparatus of Weyland-Yutani.
BURKE: Those specimens are worth millions to the bio-weapons division.
I have so far resisted the urge to view Avatar, so I'm not going to compare the two because I can't.
But as to the chest thumping. When push came to shove, the grunt marines did their job. Hudson, whose chest thumping you are mainly referencing, was obviously the least stable of the marines and lost it in the end. I would also point out that Lt. Goreman, who engages in no bravado whatsoever, is the first to completely buckle. Vasquez, Drake, Hicks and the rest do engage in some chest thumping, but it vanishes visibly as the reality of the colony sets in. The flap over losing their ammo in the hive is a sarcastic reaction to what they all know is a stupid and possibly deadly move for themcoming from someone who's not there and won't explain why. Hudson is the only one who persists throughout the movie, and he clearly needs it to try to maintain his stability. The rest do their jobs like the pros they are.
Conveying anti-Americanism is not so very easy to do when America the entity doesn't exist in the movie world. Avatar isn't even really anti-American because there is no America. It's more anti-capitalism, anti-development, and anti-military.
Btw, is Cameron pro-choice?
When I was a kid before kindergarten and even in kindergarten (half day in those days) my Dad worked early mornings, my Mom worked late nights, so Monster Matinee was my preferred baby sitter. I was never left alone, my Mom was always in the room, but usually sleeping.
To this day the site of a tarantula still gives me the willies.
Hudson lost it. His mental stability finally shattered in the final fire-fight. He didn't deserve to live because he wasn't thinking rationally only reacting with wild emotion which led him to be reckless. Hicks tried to call him back to follow the planned exit strategy, but he pushed forward.
Agreed, those shock horror movies – as I call them – don't do a thing for me. My wife loves them, so I usually end up sort of watching (while reading something else).
I don't believe the ship would technically be defined as American soil, so probably not.
Of course, that far in the future, who knows what modern liberals have "interpreted" the constitution as.
I refuse to watch those. Those aren't horror, they are just sick. And usually made by people who claim to hate waterboarding.
I don't mind gross stuff in my horror, so long as it serves a purpose aside from simply grossing people out. Horror should play on people's in-borne fears. As a gun wielding young lady, I don't find torture movies to be all that frightening for two reasons: 1, I know how to defend myself, and 2, far too often the plots of such movies rely on the inept stupidity of the characters.
Now, a hospital horror, like the j-horror movie Infection, is more up my alley as there are many things about hospitals that do frighten me even without the horror plot applied. I'm already terrified of syringes, so a scene where a nurse sticks a half dozen needles or more into her arm while hallucinating scares the sh*t out of me. A man cutting of another guy's leg for no reason? Not so much.
How is that PC? If she can do the job and measure up to the standards set for all military, she deserves to be allowed to do the job.
PC is setting up a different standard like the gender norming they attempted to set up for GI Jane..
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Hey, if B. Hussein O. Jr. can pull it off, why not Mama Of The Hive Alien?
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I'm sorry.
In my universe, there are only TWO "Alien" movies. And those would be the first two.
There are no 3 and 4.
Now, "AvP" had potential….until the human characters got in the way.
It's the refrain I will keep singing: stop with the human storylines, put stunt guys in Alien and Predator costumes – and get a real mean war going!
Most of these movies are very clear metaphors.
CAMERON: "Science fiction is excellent….because if you make a comment about the Iraq war and American imperialism in the Middle East, you're going to get a lot of people pissed off at you in this country. But you do it in a science fiction context, where you do it at a metaphorical level, people get swept up by the story and they get to the end of the movie before they realize they've been rooting for the Iraqis. (Laughs.)"
Another example of this is 'Transformers 2', made by the silver spoon American Michael Bay. $30m of our tax dollars was used to do precisely what James Cameron did in 'Avatar'. Except while James Cameron's movie celebrated the individual and private property, the welfare queen makers of 'Transformers 2' celebrated its opposite: imperialism. (Metaphorically).
Between the two, the free market preferred the movie made by a Canadian and financed by Europeans, 'Avatar' – 300% as much money as 'Transformers 2'. Again, this is an indictment of American government-subsidized filmmaking. True conservatives have celebrated 'Avatar'. It's proof that the government (the military) shouldn't interfere with the free market.
I don't know what Cameron thinks of abortion. I've only developed the theory, which you can read at the article I wrote called, "The World's Biggest Moviemaker on America's Most Controversial Subject." I also detailed the evidence in a video on YouTube entitled, "Signatures of James Cameron".
Oh, DON'T get me started on Paul Verhoeven's blunder of "Starship Troopers."
Or I'll take over and do my OWN blog on the film that should've been but wasn't even close!
Agree with krys … remember the scene in the conference room when Ripley is told they sent 50 families and her reaction is just a stunned whisper "Families …" That was when she knew she had to go despite all her prior resistance. She still didn't want to go and was scared spitless.
As for her military inconsistencies, given that she's not a military character, I don't hold that against her. THe operation went south because the military personnel were not adequately informed and because the lawyer had an ulterior mission.
I had never seen Ridley Scott's "Alien" when James Cameron's "Aliens" was released. I didn't know it was a sequel, and very much like the character Vasquez, to this day I'm a bit sheepish when I admit I thought "Aliens" was about illegal immigrants.
Boy howdee! It was the scariest movie I'd seen up to that point in my 16-year old life! I slept with the bedroom light on for thirty days (because everyone knows that lights keep monsters away).
But Hicks was just Hott!
I absolutely was inspired by Vasquez (even wanted the teardrop tattoo and enlist in the Marines).
Hudson, Frost, and Drake were awesome. Too bad that Dietrich and Apone were cocooned, "just like the others."
As a kid I knew the film backwards, every dialog, every little emphasis, every sound, every musical note, every image and FX detail, bought every magazine. Still love it. I went apesh*t when the director's cut was announced.
(Oh, and by the way: The trailer to "Aliens" is nothing more than a rehash of the original "Alien" trailer. Exactly the same concept. It even has the same music during the last two thirds. Ergo: superb.)
A sidenote: I didn't have any money to buy the piano sheet, let alone the printed score, so I actually sat down at the piano, deciphered the orchestration and wrote down James Horner's Gayaneh-ish Main Title by myself. That's how crazy I was for this film. And now look where it's gotten me: I'm a film composer.
Oh…did anyone else subscribe to the Dark Horse Comic series, "Aliens" and "Aliens v. Predator" and "Predator" like I did?
Yep. I was an "Aliens" geek.
I also hated "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection". They were just dreadful.
Never really understood the point of the "Alien vs. Predator" movies. Both of them kill humans so who does the audience root for?
It wasn't just a woman with a gun … it was a MOTHER with a gun. Or to be entirely precisely accurate (just in case you're a pedant), a mother-figure. Mama Grizzly. If you have chidren, I hope to God you understand this concept. If not, you should do a little research.
Oh, in that case I must get you started!
All you have to know about the movie of STARSHIP TROOPERS is that Verhoeven did, in fact, read the original book — and he hated it.
I see what you did there.
And you're worried about James Cameron's thoughts about Muslims because why?
Again, if you want to see a pro-military, pro-imperialism movie – made by a rich American, financed by American tax dollars – then see 'Transformers 2'. That movie must be beloved by neo-cons.
You ought to read up on a movie called The Human Centipede. Or, maybe you better should not.
Sure! Don't you think the Aliens would all vote Democrat?
I'm sorry to say that Cameron's stinky politics are starting to taint all of his older works that I used to enjoy. "The Abyss" was bad enough with the psycho navy Seals; later, I saw the director's cut where the aliens were going to kill millions of people with tidal waves because they don't like our nuclear capability. All the bad military people and bad corporate people that I thought were just sloppy Hollywood shorthand in an otherwise good movie, and more and more I realize that Cameron was trying to be preachy but used to be more subtle about it.
I'll bet they'd use only Republicans as body-snatched pods until they ran out. I wonder what the Dems would plan on doing then?
Hmm, good point and good question. They'd have to keep letting us breed lots to make plenty of pods.
Clearer evidence of this is that Ripely actually makes several contradictory orders in the film, both of which turn out to be morally justified. First she gets angry about the marines wanting to go in gung-ho, then she gets upset when their commanding officer decides to leave without collecting stranded marines, THEN she chides the marines for being cowards and demands that the go back to fight. Each time she throws a fit the film justifies it and no matter what the marine's do you'll find it being completely wrong every time, until Ripley tells them what to do, then its all right.
You were obviously watching a different movie than the rest of us. Yes, Ripley was upset that the Marines didn't take her warnings seriously. However, she never warned them to not go down into the hive underneath the processing facility. You know why? Because she didn't know any more than the Marines. And Gorman locked up, due to inexperience, which was why she drove the vehicle to help rescue the survivors. Really, was she just supposed to sulk because Gorman and the Marines underestimated the aliens? Pretty much all of her decisions are based on what she knows of the aliens. She isn't telling the marines how to set up their auto-cannons, or how to fire their pulse rifles. Your complaints are incompatible with the facts.
Cameron may have gone full bore lefty, but this film isn't it.
The effects hold up very well today. A couple of the blue screen effects don't hold up as well but that is mainly due to better TV resolution. Overall, the effects don't pull you out of the movie.rty
"casting of a woman as a machine gunner – it is just nonsense. "
They tried that BS with my sister in Police Explorers re: the tactical shotgun. The gun is nearly as big as she is so it was "LOL GIRL WITH GUN; WHATCHA THINK YOU CAN DO?!". Her response was to put all 8 rounds of the magazine into the target profiles' crotch.
Also, tell that to the Soviets in WWII. And the Israelis now….and any number of former Eastern Bloc countries. The female units in WWII were some of the most universally feared of the war on the Eastern Front. As for the movie…bear in mind, the lady who played Vasquez was packing around and firing an MG-42 that had a steel frame built around it to hide the fact that it was an MG-42 (kinda like the Pulse Rifles were just Thompsons with a shell)
I don't think most women could handle it…but then again, neither can most guys (ever try to heft an M249? It's a light machinegun and it's still heavier than hell and most people can't handle the recoil). That's why we should decide that stuff on an individual basis. And in the Aliens universe, the strength point is even more moot with the M56 Smartgun, since it's on a hip-mount that uses hydraulic jacks and servos to auto-aim based on the eyepiece and infrared, so you don't have to worry about the recoil and the upper-body strength of a modern squad machinegun. Basically, as long as your legs will support the weight and you know how to use the targeting computer, you can use it.
The way i see it, at least the women in Aliens were doing realistic things. There wasn't any 95lb girls tossing around 300lb bodybuilders like they were ragdolls.
I had AvP, AvP War, and the pure Aliens comic that was the marine backstory to War (I think it was Berserker?), and Aliens: Colonial Marines. I did, however, have all of the novels.
Mandy, the comics for AvP were actually pretty good, so were most of the games. It only really started to get stupid when they got to Aliens/Predator vs Superman and Batman and the movies.
I haven't seen the all movies in their entirety.
Could someone help me: in Alien (1979) did the company know about the derelict ship and the aliens or was Ash already programmed that way in the event that the Nostromo just stumbled on something out of the blue?
"This is clearly an important species we're dealing with here and I don't that you, or I, or anyone else has the right to just arbitrarily exterminate them." — Carter Burke
"Wrong!"
"Yeah, watch us."
Cameron may have wanted to project anti-Americanism with it, but thankfully he hadn't honed his craft very well yet.
Always a risk these progs take when trying to send a "message" in their works: they don't always get it correct and those icky "righties" ignore it and enjoy the movie.
Not exactly. In Starship Troopers, the Mobile Infantry dropped in separate capsules and a shuttle picked them up after they were done killing the enemy and breaking things. The troop ship still had its naval crew on board.
To quote Capt. Carter: "I'm an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside, doesn't mean I can't handle whatever you can handle."
"Oh, this has nothing to do with you being a woman. I like women. I've just got a little problem with scientists."
Then again, that scientist got the Stargate to work and later blew up a star so, she's good.
Alien3—even in its maimed form—was a raw masterpiece and provided a great ending for the trilogy and for Ripley's… well, passion. Just compare Alien3 to this year's blockbusters (or the years before). You won't find anything like Fincher's Alien film; not even that pretentious Inception comes close. Everything in the series that came after Alien3 is insignificant. Alien Resurrection was kinda like a Vaudeville horror show and didn't fit the series at all. (Resurrecting Ripley was a *really* bad idea anyway.) AvP was a neat film, even exerted to extend the canon, but it destroyed the franchise. AVPR was utter absurdity, totally retarded. Fingers crossed for Scott's prequels.
17 days? Hey man, I don't want to rain on your parade, but we're not going to last 17 hours. Those things are gonna come in here, just like they did before…and they're gonna come in here, and they're gonna come in here and they're gonna get us!
The way i see it, at least the women in Aliens were doing realistic things. There wasn't any 95lb girls tossing around 300lb bodybuilders like they were ragdolls.
See: any story written by Joss Whedon.
The company in question received the warning beacon signal from the ship stranded on the Alien planet. They configured the Nostrodamus to activate the crew once it received the signal. Ash was added to ensure the crew would respond to the distress signal and gather and investigate an alien specimen. At least that's my recollection..
Mr. Grin has a weekly column where he critiques a movie, usually in six or seven installments. They all have come under the "For Conservative Movie Lovers :" banner followed by the movie title. Most of the readers here are conservative and have had positive comments about this and the previous movies.
I don't go to pop politics sites, so I didn't know this was a regular column. Thank you for letting me know.
"Meat lover's pizza" implies that the pizza is especially tailored for people with that particular taste. Same as "For conservative movie lovers" implies a movie was tailored for people with a particular taste. 'Aliens' was not made for "conservatives". Although I don't view it as a particularly political film, to the extent that it is, it's the opposite, as Cameron himself unequivocally stated in the quotes I posted here and numerous other quotes I didn't post.
Instead of awkwardly trying to view somebody else's movie as for "conservatives", they should make their own movie. If somebody referred to a Harley Davidson as an airplane, it would be a lie. The same thing with calling 'Aliens' a movie "for conservative movie lovers." The implication is a lie and it's wrong.
I'm sure we all agree that everybody should enjoy the movie. But I believe it's wrong to try and attach political ideas to it that aren't there. Worse, to replace the movie's stated ideals with the opposite ones.
You said that "readers here….have had positive comments about this." Not most of the quotes that I've read.
'Avatar' is the most successful movie in American history….by an absolute landslide. This site called it, "Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge Fantasy" in the headline.
Therefore, your statement that this site is above politics and just "enjoys the movie" is absolutely bogus.
That wasn't even a good try.
It's not :Aliens, a movie for conservative movie lovers," it's "Aliens, a series of articles for conservative movie lovers."
Okay. At Google News (where I was made aware of this), the title immediately gave the same impression that I got when I clicked through.
But I understand the distinction, and I don't recall any politicizing in the actual article itself. My responses here were based off of the somewhat mistaken impression that the goal of the article was to politicize 'Aliens'.
Still, it's clear that many people here have. Again, to the extent that people want to politicize the movie, they should have some regard for the filmmaker's obvious and explicit intent. That's my opinion.
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