How Aliens Ruined A Franchise

[Casual Shinji]

I'm not failing to see anything, I just disagree with your reasoning.

I think the idea that they were in denial is a thin justification at best.

If the xenomorph had simply appeared on the ship, or if they had been transporting it in a shipping container or something and it got loose, you might have something, but between discovering it on an alien spaceship and the thing blowing out of a man's chest, then growing to full size in an extremely short time, it makes absolutely no sense that they would have that level of denial that it wasn't a common pest.

It's not that they're blissfully ignorant, it's that their sense of logic and their primal instincts are clashing. That moment Brett picks up the Chestburster's shedded skin you can tell there's a chill going down his spine, but he figures 'How bad could it be?' After all, people have been killed by animals before. And apart from the shocking fashion in which it happened, there's no real reason to treat Kane's death as anything else but that.

Again, they've never encountered anything like this before, so initially they equate it to something they are familiar with. But already when the crew is discussing the plan to drive it out of the vents into the airlock, you can see the fear and helplesness on everyone's face. But they still try and hope for the best that it won't be as bad as all that. It's in our nature to act this way when confronted with something all powerful that we can't understand.

 

[Coreless]

"The problem with James Cameron taking a turn on Aliens is that the film disregarded character development, just having very apt nicknames for the Marines, and story for action and more action. This did away with all of that pesky dialogue that would drive the characters' motivations. The Marines are Marines and that's all you really need to know about them. You're given two-dimensional characters with the depth of a puddle."

What a load of nonsense, why the hell do we need to know anything about these people? They each have their quarks and that is all you need to know about them why the hell do I need to know about their back stories? Who gives a damn about them or where they come from? The main character was always Ripley and she is the only person that truly matters in the great scheme of things, end of story. Adding background stories to every single character is beyond ridiculous and unnecessary, its a complete waste of time and I am not going to sit through a 4 hour movie just because you guys want to know more about Vasquez or Drake lol.

The only person that could have used some back story was the scheming company guy Burke, his motivations for Weyland-Yutani could have used more information but that is about the only character that would have made a difference imo.

Aliens is a masterpiece in every way, I love how you try to assassinate James Cameron's character to try and convince people your opinion holds more weight then it does when he has created some of the best scifi/action movies ever. If more directors took his approach to movie making the way he did in the 80s and 90s and actually tried to make something memorable instead of brainless, unoriginal action movies Hollywood would be on its way to actually getting out of the rut it is in.

The ending sequence that leads up to Ripley finding the Alien Queen's chamber, is without a doubt one of the greatest sequences in sci-fi cinema history.

 

[Eamar]

I love both Alien and Aliens, but Alien is one of my favourite films of all time, while Aliens is more of a fun but inconsequential action flick, and I certainly don't think it was a great sequel to Alien. That's fine though, I just think of them as two entirely separate movies.

That said...

Well, if Prometheus was any indication, the series was headed for ruin even if Scott remained at the helm.

This. Ridley Scott, I love you. Alien and Blade Runner are two of my top three movies ever. But... seriously, what the fuck, man?!

 

[Karadalis]

They tried to remake Alien.. in Alien 3... and it didnt crashed and burned because people went in with the expectation of another Aliens movie.

It crashed and burned because of shoddy editting, killing off characters from the previous movie with a handwave and other related production problems. Take the directors cut wich is leagues better then the cinema release.

Ofcourse the directors cut came in a bit late and the damage was done.

So that movie tanked and as with everyone in a creative medium ofcourse the producers werent the fault.. its allways either the audience who just doesnt get it or its the movies topic was just not conform with the zeitgeist.

So they tried to go back to the Aliens formula with Alien rebirth... and oh boy was that movie a logical clusterfuck that made no sense whatsoever.

It wasnt Aliens wich "killed" the franchise. It was the inability of the producers of that movie to capture the spirit and the feel of the former movies in any way or form by either trying to hard or by making the whole movie a goofy mess with plotholes the size of the sun.

Also the explanation that if Aliens didnt existed an Alien 2 and Alien 3 suddenly would be much better in quality is laughable... look at all the other movies that involve the Alien creature now that have nothing to do with the first 2 movies. Directors across the board simply dont have any clue what to do with the Creature besides dress it up as another boogyman ala Jason and Freddy Kruger

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

I don't really agree with any of the points raised in the article. And as a fan of all movies, the dismissive attitude towards certain genres is a little condescending in my opinion.

yes i felt that vibe too. Coming from a guy who's main contribution to the site seems to be the stringing together of 8 tediously linked pictures, without expanding on them in anyway; the dismissiveness seems quite hypocritical

 

[Dr.Awkward]

snip

Thanks, I fixed it now, I must have been half-asleep writing about that phrase...

 

[Fdzzaigl]

One of the big mistakes they made as well imo, is that they never really went back to HR Giger and actually listed to the suggestions he made about the creature.

They actually did ask him for Alien 3 and the guy came up with some seriously crazy and frankly messed up ideas for the Alien, but ones that showed serious genius as well. Except they didn't use his designs at all and just ended up with something way crappier. Same deal for Aliens really, Giger wanted to work on the project but he got brushed off.

There's a documentary about that. I think the designers of Isolation would do well to go talk to the original artist as well if they have the chance, that guy knows how to make some real creepy shite.

 

[Ganrao]

Nice. I appreciate your lucid and valid arguments. That article was beautifully written.

At first I thought this poster was being sarcastic. This article is garbage as many others have pointed out. You want to talk about ruining franchises, look to Aliens vs. Predator where you get two great sci-fi properties destroyed utterly at once.

Aliens and the original Predator are very similar movies, turning the action genre on its head a bit. You have a group of hardened badasses that seem like nothing could take them down, getting ripped to shreds by an opponent they were completely unprepared for. You were supposed to think the Marines in Aliens were generic action heroes that would win, the big twist of the movie was how easily they went from hunters to prey, just like in Predator. I seriously doubt you'd rip the original Predator apart, and Aliens doesn't deserve it either.

I was tempted to say you should stick to community management, but you won't get better without practice, so keep trying if you really want to be a writer. Maybe pick an easier target next time, like AvP.

 

[theApoc]

Eh, no.

I've seen this argument before, I'll probably see it again and it still doesn't make much sense.

Alien was a very good movie, but a large portion of its excellence was in the department of innovation.
The tension is nice, but most of the characters don't even have the level of depth Aliens had. In addition to that, they're all, with the possible exception of Ripley, astoundingly stupid. I was actually rolling my eyes when the captain climbed into a tight vent with a shitty homemade flamethrower, alone, hoping to take out an unknown presence IN THE DARK that had already killed several crew members.

And as another said, it's better to have a sequel that actually takes the series in a new direction rather than the first movie repeated.

I've actually come to despise James Cameron, but I've never understood these accusations of 2D characters in Aliens. Most of the marines put on the facade of these shallow baddass, but that's quickly stripped away as the squad in slaughtered. Gorman goes from the whiny incompetent idiot to realizing how useless he is and eventually saving people. It isn't a drama, so there's not a ton of characterization, but it's certainly there.

What he said. Oh and if you want character development and horror, watch The Thing(1982), I love Alien, but The Thing is far superior in terms of just about everything. Aliens is an action movie. It is an ICONIC action movie. Without Aliens there probably wouldn't BE a franchise. The original author is just plain silly.

 

[Zeke63]

the article fails to recognize how aliens is perfect complement to the original in terms of theme and character development. Ripley instead of being a hapless victim to the phallic terror that is the alien and oppressive postmodern reality takes charge of herself and overcomes various forms of grief by assuming the role of a powerful mother figure in aliens.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yea, no. Aliens did not ruin the franchise. If anything Alien 3 was the beginning of the downward spiral and Alien Resurrection was the horrific crash.

This is more or less what I was going to post:

The type of horror you get in Alien is kind of a one trick pony. Sequels that tried to duplicate its success would only have ended up as B-grade slasher flicks like every other serialized horror franchise that came out in the 80s. Aliens is memorable specifically because it isn't just Alien in a different setting.

If they had tried to make another Alien strictly as a horror film, it would never have the same effect as the first. It might still be a good movie, but it'd lose much of the tension and feel that they'd be striving for. By going to an action/horror they were able to bring something new to the table with a monster that audiences have already seen without it being a cheesy rehash.

And while Aliens had plenty of action, it also had plenty of horror. The marines were on the defensive and on the run pretty much the whole time. It wasn't just running around, guns blazing. They were constantly retreating and trying to fortify a position while trying to find a way to escape. Sure during the more action-heavy scenes the aliens were cannon fodder, but many of the marines were taken out just as easily with the rest just scraping by.

By taking the sequel in a slightly different direction, they made a magnificent movie that still stands up today. If they'd tried to make a clone of the first the series would end up like the Halloween or Friday the thirteenth franchises.

 

[Quellist]

I agree 100% with this article, i loved Alien and felt Cameron's handling of the sequel set entirely the wrong tone. Ive always grimaced when anyone says Aliens was the best film in the franchise and disregards Alien as just a prequel to the real action.

Nice to know im not the only one

 

[RJ 17]

If you ask me, though, the Alien suffers from the exact same problem that the Predator suffers from: De-Mystification. By that, I mean all the mystery is taken away from the monster after the first movie. Everything that made the first Alien movie great was summed up in this article: the dark corridors, the slow pacing, the fact that you only ever get little glimpses of the Alien as it makes each kill throughout the movie. But by the end of the movie, the cat's out of the bag. We see the alien for what it is. It was the same problem with the Predator movies. Most fans agree that the first Predator is, to this day, the best. Why? Because the pacing was fantastic. The Predator doesn't even do anything for the first half of the movie, it just stalk's it's prey, giving us glimpses of the heroes through thermal vision every now and then. But by the end of the movie we see the Predator for what it is and all the mystery is gone. This leads to the "overexposure" that I've heard a lot of people accuse Predator 2 for having.

Well of course the Predator's going to be over exposed as they go for more of an "actiony" movie rather than a scary movie...there's no point in trying to be scary anymore. We all already know what the Predator is and what it does. You have to try something new with it. Same goes for the Aliens in this case. Do you honestly believe that just having another single alien hunting down a bunch of marines this time would have made for a better sequel? Or would people have felt it was kinda the same as the first movie? You'd basically just be making Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street only replacing Michael, Jason, and Freddy with a Xenomorph. How many sequels did those movies have? How many of them were the exact same movie just with different kill scenes? Personally that's why I've never really been a fan of slasher-flick series. The first installment might be fun to watch, but after that we already know all there is to know.

So yeah, while I can definitely see some merit in the argument that going from a superbly suspenseful horror film to a balls-to-the-walls action film was a pretty abrupt change, I'd argue that such a change helped keep the franchise fresh and introduced some very enjoyable (and infinitely quoteable ) characters in the marines. I think you judge them a bit harshly. They might not be as well developed as the characters in the first movie, but each one had a distinct personality that made the movie incredibly entertaining. Bill Paxton as Private Hudson, anyone?

 

[Jaximus Decimus]

Is poppycock still a thing that people say? I'm feeling a poppycock coming on, but it just doesn't feel quite right. You know, I'm just going to play it safe and go with ridiculous.

That's ridiculous! The Alien franchise owes both its existence and its popularity to Aliens. This article feels more like a rambling post on an IMDB board. Who screens this stuff? Doesn't this site have an editor or two? This one must have just slipped through the cracks.

Also, how can anyone blame Aliens for single-handedly "dumbing down" movie audiences? In fact, this whole assertion that film audiences are getting dumber by the minute is absurd. I hear it everywhere. It's Michael Bay's fault, it's Cameron's fault, it's Ratner's fault, movies are getting stupid and making people stupid and it's my stupid fault for liking explosions. As if, up until the year 2000 or so, all movies were flawless examples of cinematic excellence and everything created after is mind-numbingly stupid and panders to the lowest common denominator.

Get a grip and watch a few movies from the 40's, 50's, 60's. Not the classics, no not them. Pick them at random from say the top ten grossing movies from a given year in each decade. Odds are you're going to wind up watching some pretty stupid shit.

 

[Ace Morologist]

A well-stated argument, though I disagree. The idea that there's only one right way to tell a xenomorph story seems suspect, as well as a little presumptuous. Alien was a horror movie... in space, with a xenomorph. Aliens was a platoon-level war movie... in space, with lots of xenomorphs. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. I thought Aliens was great. I certainly enjoyed it a lot more than Alien (or Alien 3 or Alien Resurrection or AVP or Prometheus...).

In my opinion, a movie franchise like the Alien one (as opposed to a movie series, like the Lord of the Rings) is stronger when it can showcase different kinds of stories with its recognizable elements, rather than just telling the same type of story over and over again in new locations with different characters.

--Morology!

PS: I thought The Terminator was a better movie than Terminator 2, though T2 was a heck of a lot more fun.

 

[Mangod]

There is also the problem that James Cameron lacks a human soul.

Say what you will about him, but James Cameron directed Terminator 2, which is the best action movie ever made XD

*ring, ring, click*

Yes? Yeah... yeah... sure, I'll tell him. *click* Die Hard called; he wants an apology!

On Topic: I don't believe that Aliens ruined a franchise, simply because there wasn't really a franchise to ruin at that point. Think about it, we call it the "Aliens franchise". Not "Alien", "Aliens". Without the sequel, there never would have been a franchise to begin with.

Don't misunderstand, I believe that the original is a better film, but it's sequel is the one that established the Xenomorphs as "the" things that go bump in the night... aboard spacecraft, anyway.

Off Topic: Does anyone else remember Event Horizon? That one was creepy...

 

[Gene O]

James Cameron didn't ruin a franchise. He created one.

Alien wasn't a franchise, it was a movie. The seven years between Alien and Aliens saw the occasional mention of Alien in comic books but very little else. Aliens, on the other hand, inspired video games, comic titles, toys, and everything else that makes a franchise.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I'm not failing to see anything, I just disagree with your reasoning.

I think the idea that they were in denial is a thin justification at best.

If the xenomorph had simply appeared on the ship, or if they had been transporting it in a shipping container or something and it got loose, you might have something, but between discovering it on an alien spaceship and the thing blowing out of a man's chest, then growing to full size in an extremely short time, it makes absolutely no sense that they would have that level of denial that it wasn't a common pest.

It's not that they're blissfully ignorant, it's that their sense of logic and their primal instincts are clashing. That moment Brett picks up the Chestburster's shedded skin you can tell there's a chill going down his spine, but he figures 'How bad could it be?' After all, people have been killed by animals before. And apart from the shocking fashion in which it happened, there's no real reason to treat Kane's death as anything else but that.

Again, they've never encountered anything like this before, so initially they equate it to something they are familiar with. But already when the crew is discussing the plan to drive it out of the vents into the airlock, you can see the fear and helplesness on everyone's face. But they still try and hope for the best that it won't be as bad as all that. It's in our nature to act this way when confronted with something all powerful that we can't understand.

Well, all right.

I still think it's incredibly weak at best.

Maybe it has to with the fact that I'm such a huge Sci-Fi fan that if I was on a spaceship with some murderous alien creature I didn't understand, I would be doing that scene from [i/]Community[/i] where they stand back to back in the center of a locked room holding knives.

Sometimes I just can't get into the headspace of normal people.

I'm feeling a poppycock coming on

I think there's a cream for that.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, if Prometheus was any indication, the series was headed for ruin even if Scott remained at the helm.

This. Ridley Scott, I love you. Alien and Blade Runner are two of my top three movies ever. But... seriously, what the fuck, man?!

Ironically it's thanks to Ridley Scott that movie has any quality whatsoever. The script was a mess, but dear God did that movie look amazing. And I don't mean 'amazing' as in 'expensive', I mean a true visual treat. I'd have to say it's one of the best looking sci-fi movies since Blade Runner.

But yeah, that script... Eesh!