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Alien series

Alien as a work of art, and relative to it's time, was superb. Dan O'Bannon and the folks he worked with and who he drew on...lots and lots of talent went into it as is the case with many great works.

Aliens was a rare combination of an incredible first work (Alien), being handed to someone who was adept at taking that and faithfully portraying an epic yet more mainstream, approachable action/horror using it. Rare to get these things, egos usually get in the way, but Cameron bulled through it and made a classic IMO. To me he repeated everything of virtue in the first* while adding to it incredible music, a cast you cared more about and who were not complete idiots (and yet still underclassed...that's awesome), and a tremendous amount of good writing, memorable scenes and comedic, charismatic, and dramatic acting (a few bad notes overlooked).

The others in that first group I really found to be forgettable, except for Sigourney they would have been B-movies with good special effects.
Notice Aliens did not make it the central theme that "find alien, derp what is it, omg chest burst, omg everyone dies". It weaved the chestbursters IN, but didn't just formulaic that again. THey also avoided the betray by synthetic, and used that to their advantage for misdirection.


Prometheus I found to be again, trying to just mimic Alien. Alien IMO was an introduction of the setting/protagonist/mystery. Why do so many movies of the franchise keep going back to imitating the introduction...it makes no sense to me, other than lazy and ultra-conservative where risk is concerned. It's inclusion of religion and its unnecessarily ambitious framing...I felt it was clunk overall. Still relatively good for the genre (I mean, look at the **** that Star wars became, or the lack of imagination in Star Trek)
One again, find alien stuff, egg/vase infects, then fight the crazy offspring. Yawn.

Covenant - At least they continued from Prometheus, I didn't think they would be brave enough to, so points there.
I felt Covenant was one again, "find alien, egg/vast infects, fight the crazy offspring, betrayed by synthetic. Yawn. Yawn. I do like that David was the missing link, in a way.

The fact that they all focused on different female do-gooder protagonists, is acceptable, but by Covenant it was really distracting and the movie would have needed to be about 3x better to balance that ham handedness out IMO.
 
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Mach said:
Alien as a work of art, and relative to it's time, was superb. Dan O'Bannon and the folks he worked with and who he drew on...lots and lots of talent went into it as is the case with many great works.

Aliens was a rare combination of an incredible first work (Alien), being handed to someone who was adept at taking that and faithfully portraying an epic yet more mainstream, approachable action/horror using it. Rare to get these things, egos usually get in the way, but Cameron bulled through it and made a classic IMO. To me he repeated everything of virtue in the first* while adding to it incredible music, a cast you cared more about and who were not complete idiots (and yet still underclassed...that's awesome), and a tremendous amount of good writing, memorable scenes and comedic, charismatic, and dramatic acting (a few bad notes overlooked).

The others in that first group I really found to be forgettable, except for Sigourney they would have been B-movies with good special effects.
Notice Aliens did not make it the central theme that "find alien, derp what is it, omg chest burst, omg everyone dies". It weaved the chestbursters IN, but didn't just formulaic that again. THey also avoided the betray by synthetic, and used that to their advantage for misdirection.


Prometheus I found to be again, trying to just mimic Alien. Alien IMO was an introduction of the setting/protagonist/mystery. Why do so many movies of the franchise keep going back to imitating the introduction...it makes no sense to me, other than lazy and ultra-conservative where risk is concerned. It's inclusion of religion and its unnecessarily ambitious framing...I felt it was clunk overall. Still relatively good for the genre (I mean, look at the **** that Star wars became, or the lack of imagination in Star Trek)
One again, find alien stuff, egg/vase infects, then fight the crazy offspring. Yawn.

Covenant - At least they continued from Prometheus, I didn't think they would be brave enough to, so points there.
I felt Covenant was one again, "find alien, egg/vast infects, fight the crazy offspring, betrayed by synthetic. Yawn. Yawn. I do like that David was the missing link, in a way.

The fact that they all focused on different female do-gooder protagonists, is acceptable, but by Covenant it was really distracting and the movie would have needed to be about 3x better to balance that ham handedness out IMO.
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Alien, Aliens and Alien Covenant are all good films, but Alien and Aliens wouldn't be logical stories after Alien Covenant, so the value of Alien and Aliens is dependent on their having been made before Alien Covenant; David's story in Alien Covenant is far more relevant than Ripley's story
 
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