The third Alien movie that I saw past night wasn't that terrible; not on par with the first 2 but decent (it has like 30 minutes more than the theatrical version and some changes, it seems). I have a really bad memory of Resurrection though and I'll think about watching it. Man, I remember when I went to the theatre to see AVP. It was beyond any redemption.

I read somewhere that the Alien sequel that is on the works will be released After Prometheus 2, which won't have Lindelof writing it.

The assembly cut of Alien 3 is far better than either Resurrection or the theatrical cut of Alien 3. It's still far from great but at least develops the characters further than just making us wonder which interchangeable foul-mouthed baldhead is going to cop it next.



The reason Pinhead gets compared to Freddy is because he started spouting cheesy one-liners relating to his kills in the third and fourth films. In Hellraiser and Hellbound he's more of an executioner than anything, he lets people make their own decisions and only acts if he has proper authority, rather than just killing for the sake of it.

To paraphrase another poster here from a while back (sorry I don't remember who), there is no context in which an alien-predator WWE match makes any fucking sense other than a comedy. So just treat AVP as a comedy, watch it with some beers and friends, and you're good to go.

You reckon? I don't know, it seems perfectly plausible and even if that wasn't the case, it'd be no excuse for such a crap movie. My problem with it isn't so much that it wasn't up to par with the best of the two series (which it obviously would never have been), it's that it wasn't even that fun. The second one fit this bill (poor movie but still entertaining if you switch your brain off before hitting play) a bit better. I think largely due to the novelty of seeing xenomorphs terrorize an urban environment.

I haven't watched Prometheus and don't feel particularly motivated to either. I'll surely get around to it sometime because it's part of the Alien canon, but this is coming from a guy who never bothered to check out Terminator 3 or Salvation until several months ago (and Terminator 2 is my all time favourite movie).

I'm barely five minutes into The Cabin In The Woods, and this film is already amazing. The title screen might be my favorite, ever.

American Ultra was a rad movie. Funny, very funny, and You'll fall in love with Kristen Stewart. Eisennberg usually bugs me but he's perfect in this flick. If you've ever done acid, or gotten paranoid, or entertained a conspiracy theory, you'll find something to giggle about in this flick.

How good is the action? Is there lots of it? Is it pretty easy to follow or is it all quick cuts and shit? I saw the trailer and became definitely interested.

No words to adequately convey how shitty that movie is.

I thought Prometheus was solid and had some good ideas, but the script was really bad at times, along with the casting and I believe the main female is coming back for the sequel, which is terrible news. And yeah I really hate that it officially connects to Alien now. I was kind of shocked, even coming from Ridley Scott, it turned out to be true after all. You have no idea how worried I am about Blade Runner 2 fucking things up now too.

The new Alien sequel that is retconning 3 and Resurrection looks far more promising than another Prometheus, I'd say.

Alien > Aliens >>>> Prometheus >>>>>>>> Alien 3 > buffalo diarrhea turds >>>>>>>>>>> Resurrection

Aliens is iconic as fuck. Alien is a fantastic jumping off point for the series, but it isn't the peak.

Prometheus is pretty to look at, but I simply can't get over how astronomically stupid all the alleged "scientists" in it are in order to help the plot along. It's just not a good movie, even though I'd be kinda interested in how the Engineers thing continues.

Alien was bomb as fuck. Aside from that I enjoyed Alien 2 and I actually liked Prometheus, honestly I'm far more excited for a sequel to Prometheus than another shitty Alien whatever it will be.




Please no. One was bad enough.

Eraserhead was pure Lynchian madness. Loved it...so weird and fucked up and miasmal, just washes over you like a black wave. Eerie, moody stuff. Liked the horror-style allegory to an unwanted pregnancy, and some of this, as with Mulholland Dr and other Lynch films, was scarier than many horror films. This was short and to the point without a wasted second. No fat to trim, just exactly what it needed to be. Probably one of the better Lynch films to me, though I'd like to rewatch Lost Highway as I don't remember anything about it, and Twin Peaks as well, which I feel would be better to me a second time around.

Prometheus was crap...I remember thinking it had a great beginning, but then it just turned into this super generic, tired sci fi slog with bad characters and worse writing. The first Alien is pretty damn great, but I didn't even like Aliens much, so I never bothered with further sequels. Clearly it's not worth it...

Cabin in the Woods isn't really that great - if only because that sort of purely parodic stuff has a limited value when you're spoofing something so specific. But it is superbly entertaining if you're in the mood for that kind of stuff.

Lost Highway is a great movie. It's basically a creepier Mulholland dr. The beginning is super slow but once it gets going it's surprisingly entertaining. The "dark room with a faint source of light" mechanic that was later adapted in Inlad Empire originated here.

Blade Runner is my #1.

Aliens is my favorite James Cameron movie. I prefer it to Terminator 1-2 as well. I'm the weird guy that likes T1 the most. No lame kid and evil Arnold.

It's not often DD and I agree, but it does happen.

Granted I don't think it's as bad, but it certainly missed the mark like a hundred times and seems to get tons of love for really silly reasons that never jived with me. It's not nearly as clever as it seems to think it is.

I thought the movie was, like, 60% amazingly cool and 40% face-palmingly stupid, so totally worth watching. The cinematography is gorgeous and it built a pretty intriguing mythology in the peripheral of the movie about the engineers, but then you're left with hilariously bad dialogue and really stupid, unlikable characters. I'd be pretty interested to see where they take the sequel. It'd be better if it was a smaller-scale, more dark and creepy movie like Alien. Also, Michael Fassbender's performance was great, as always.

Those are all valid points and I did enjoy it when I watched it in the cinema. Still, it's such a waste of a gorgeous movie to have this dumb script, these idiots as characters doing all kinds of contrived stuff. Also, the xenomorph/pathogen life cycle thing seemed extremely convoluted solely for the sake of some shocking scenes.

Michael Fassbender rules most rulingly, that is true. David is the only even remotely interesting/cool character in it anyway.

What the characters do makes sense if you view it in terms of a parable - they act stupidly in accordance with their character flaws. It's hubris, in the same way that Icarus is a fuckin' idiot - he flies close to the sun and his wings melt right after his dad tells him specifically not to fly close to the sun because his wings will melt. Hubris is a huge theme in Greek myths, and the movie isn't called fuckin' Prometheus by accident. It's all about humanity's hubris, except instead of hubris vs. the gods it's hubris against the universe, the unknown, aliens; the arrogant entitlement of assuming that the whole universe is there for us, that it owes us a nice neat explanation for our existence and for the way things are in general - note that the only (human) character to survive the movie is also the only one to approach the unknown with any degree of humility.

True, they could have made it more clear that that's how the movie was supposed to be viewed, or they could have made the characters act a bit less blatantly stupid, but I found the movie on the whole quite satisfying, despite its flaws.

This, 100 times.

I think too many movies have idealized the human race as a whole when it comes to front stuff is a way too heroic/brave way than the reality shows. I think Prometheus also shows people acting like more realistic humans instead the know-it-all/destoy'em-all usual sci-fi characters. They see a fucking alien monster and go 'ok, it's a strange and horrible creature, let's kill it!' instead shitting their pants as most people would do - as the Prometheus characters did. In Prometheus, they have no information about the eggs, the xenos and stuff - as we, the audience have - so they had no reason to suspect on any of the shit they saw there.

There's the another thing to take into account: they expected to find the aliens as civilized/advanced beings that were there just to answer their questions. That notion grew once they found the atmosphere was altered in the 'caves' and the air was breathable. Only Shaw thought deeper and considered later the notion of the aliens NOT wanting them there. David was more or less a similar character as Ash - both attempted to 'implant' the alien into the crew - with a bit of more 'human' perspective.

Now, my problem with the movie is that there are too many questions and almost no answers in a way the whole movie feels too vague. The main question to me is 'what the fuck are doing and wanting the Space Jockeys?

I thought about this:

Not to mention the entire conceit is ripped from Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Next Generation...

I didn't mind Prometheus as I didn't compare it to the Alien films. I took it at face value as any number of those scifi horror films like Event Horizon, Supernova, Virus, in all those films the characters act silly and irrational, the only difference is Prometheus is thrown onto this high pedestal because Ridley Scott and the Alien tie-in. If you compare it to the above films, Prometheus is far and away better in several ways.

That's a good way to look at it. I dug it because we rarely get serious dark sci-fi like that thesedays, so I can't knock on it too much. I could go for a rewatch since I haven't seen it since it was in theaters.

I think there's a lot of nostalgia goggles that activate when Event Horizon comes up. I watched that one fresh just a few years ago and thought it was awful. The writing was a whole different level of bad and the visual effects were not good at all. It was mostly cringeworthy from start to finish. Not Alien Resurrection bad... but it's pretty low on the scale and you'll never catch me recommending it.

Maybe I'm just turning into The Guy Who Likes Everything but for all the disagreeing on the last couple of pages I gotta say I like most of the movies being talked about, to varying degrees. Alien 1 and 2 are probably equally amazing movies though I'd give the nod to 2 just for nostalgia reasons (the fucking sound effect of the pulse rifles alone turns me into a 14 year old with pure testosterone flowing through my veins) and 3 is a step down but pretty fuckin' neat I'd say. Resurrection is definitely dogshit though, and Prometheus was a solid movie if a bit unsatisfying considering it was impossible to divorce the movie from the Aliens franchise.

I also thought The Cabin in the Woods was good stuff, too.

The Cabin in the Woods was all about to paying homage to the old school of horror classics.

Maybe I'm jaded, but for me that's giving the movie too much credit. I mean, it's not like doing the hubris/"man's reach exceeding his grasp" thing is impossible in fiction without making your characters act like utter dumbasses almost all the time. It just doesn't make much sense even in the reality of the movie. This is the most important human undertaking ever, not to mention that they spent (as mentioned in the movie) like a trillion dollars on it, and the best they could come up with are these clowns? I don't see it as a clever parable, even though it may have been intended as such, I see it as lazy writing.


Not sure I can agree with "the arrogant entitlement of assuming that the whole universe is there for us". I didn't come across like that for me. These people found out that there's an alien race that created them; I think it's only fair for them wanting to ask "why?".


Well, I'm not talking about the fact that the characters aren't all heroic Mary Sue superpeople. I'm talking about the fact that they are supposed to be scientists. You mention realism, but the thing is, as scientists these people's behaviour is actually the opposite of realistic. Of course, being a scientist doesn't mean that you are beyond stupidity and making mistakes, but in the movie that seemed pretty much to be the norm.

"Air is a breathable mixture? okey-dokey, off with those helmets!"
"I'm a geologist and mapped these caves with my laserballs, but now we're lost in these caves."
"Oh, look, an alien penis snake, let's pet it! Even though I was terrified by a dead alien earlier!" (that one took the cake for me; that guy is a goddamn biologist)

I dunno, dropping the "realistic" argument is always a tad dubious when dealing with these big themes, but I guess this movie went too far for me. You'd expect some professionalism and scientific thought displayed by these, you know, alleged scientists. There is something in between blatant, near-constant idiocy and boring infallibility.

tl;dr: The general stupidity may have been intentional, but it was too crudely realised for me and seriously fucked with my suspension of disbelief.

Nah man it's very clear. Remember when Holloway doesn't want to wait to get out there? The captain's like "that can wait until morning" and he says "it's Christmas, and I wanna open my presents." He acts like a shitty entitled kid right from the beginning. Nearly all of the scientist characters have a similar attitude, except Shaw - and, like I said, she's the only one to survive. Plus, the whole secret goal of the expedition wasn't to explore, it wasn't to extend scientific understanding, it was for Weyland to ask "the gods" for immortality. I mean you certainly don't have to like the movie, I'm not saying it's without flaws, but these central themes are very clearly demonstrated.

The slow build-up in the beginning of LH is my favorite part! This scene is incredibly unsettling, as is anything involving the videotapes they receive.

This makes sense. After all, look at how impatient and childish most people are today, compared to how most people behaved 100 years ago. One can only speculate how stupid people will be in another 200 years, since even those of higher intelligence are affected by the general social zeitgeist.

@fsm: Alright, point taken.

wat

The torture of proceeding further into Hellraiser continues!!!

Hellraiser 3 was pretty bad. Pinhead pillar for the first half was lame as hell, haha wow. The tone here was pretty goofy and a major departure from the first two for sure. Kirsty wasn't the most amazing character ever or anything, but she was hot and cool, so I didn't care for any of these new characters a damn bit. Pinhead came off as some kind of anti-hero, judge, executioner to me in the first two, but with this one it's easy to see how this series turns him into a Freddy knockoff and this series becomes a laughing stock. The entire bar getting slaughtered was probably a highlight, and then the main girl running in the streets from the new cenobites. But, is this close up guy Freddy after all? Sure sounds like it. So in that light, Hellraiser 3 is not a bad Elm Street spinoff.

Hellraiser 4 was a bit more ambitious with the timelines thing. Got super boring in the middle and both the modern and old timelines were pretty lame. I was really worried that the sci-fi elements, being 1996 here, would reek of Jason X or Alien Resurrection, but this one wasn't too bad all around honestly. It features the most Pinhead by far and his lines seemed better than 3, they're just ridiculous and awesome. The gore continues to disappear though and nothing too violent stood out. I thought the skinless character parts with Frank and the stepmom in 1-2 were impressive as hell and pretty creepy. The anchors ripping faces off is just utterly hilarious to me. Overall, quite shocked this one wasn't worse for 1996 horror.

That said I still think say 2/5 stars is warranted for both 3-4. The second film had a small dose of cheese with the Leviathan and his lines, but it still had an awesome evil atmosphere to it and felt pretty serious. With 3-4, like I said above, it's easy to see how this series turns into another average slasher fest, but they really didn't seem all that bad and I think you can do much worse. It's a shame the ambiguous nature of the Cenobites is dropped along with the exploration of real human characters being the "monsters", with Frank, the stepmom, and the crazy doctor in 2, being the real villains to me in those two, not Pinhead and the Cenobites.

Apparently Ridley Scott doesn't want Alien 5 (which apparently won't be called "Alien 5") to come out before Prometheus 2 (which probably won't be called "Prometheus 2") does. I wonder why? Even though both movies will obviously share the same universe, they aren't actually related. I'm cautiously anticipating both. Prometheus 2 will hopefully expand and improve upon the first one, and I don't really know what to make of Blomkamp doing an Alien movie; I liked District 9 quite a lot, Elysium was one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life, and I haven't seen Chappie.

I watched The Babadook. It was alright.



Basically I don't quite understand how this was a controversial movie. Pretty standard stuff, decently executed but not mind-blowing. What's the fuss?

I really don't get the hate Elysium gets.

Actually yeah I should've commented on that. Razakel's mention was the second one recently about how shitty that movie is but I thought it was pretty fun? Kind of retained that District 9 feel but threw in some cool Neuromancer-ish elements. Didn't get me quite as excited as some other recent favorites but I'd say it was a solid and much appreciated decent sci-fi movie in the same sort of quality ballpark as Oblivion or something.

The concept art and his ideas for Alien look incredible, but maybe a bit more in line with how Cameron would have evolved it. I'm cautiously optimistic. Prometheus built the bridge between the two, but you can tell it still kind of wants to be its own thing, but this is finally going to be a real follow up to Aliens. I sometimes get flak for this, but frankly I'm pretty damn tired of the Xenomorphs and Predator having to both be together in everything thesedays. Alien Isolation outright destroys anything Predator related, so I just want to see the Alien-verse continue without that needless crap tagging along. Just give me space marines and Xenomorphs!

(I've even read some decent Alien / Predator novels in the past ages ago, but come on, let's end the fan fiction and separate these franchise again).