MetaChat - i just watched the first Alien

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

21 September 2006

i just watched the first Alien →[More:]
Should be asleep at this hour, but it is part of the stupid meds I am taking, I wake up needing to take something for my coughing and/or head full of gunk and then can not go back to sleep for hours. It has been over a week now since I have done much other than sleeping and coughing. Getting a bit stir-crazy.

Anyway, good flick. Had not seen it in years. Will they ever manage to make a sci-fi OR thriller-type horror film that good again? Aliens was great but it was a sci-fi/action flick, Alien 3 was awful and so was Ressurection.

I had forgotten that she saves the cat. Good ol' Ripley. Saved the only other cast member that mattered. =P

post by: weretable and the undead chairs at: 03:13 | 5 comments

It was a high-water mark, we just didn't know it at the time ...

The 1980s were a pretty good run for sf/horror. The Thing ... Scanners ... Videodrome ... the Fly ... it kinda drops off after 1990 for whatever reason.

posted by stilicho 21 September | 05:00

For me Aliens did not age well, and the version available now is a good example of why the "director's cut" is not always the best one: a bunch of blahblahblah and exposition larded into what was originally a tight beginning. I cheered when Newt died at the beginning of Alien 3. Annoying little moppet.

Alien 3 and Resurrection are both deeply flawed (the latter in part because of its incessantly "clever" Joss Whedon dialogue), but I enjoy them both. Alien is still miles above any of the other films though.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 21 September | 05:59

Alien was packed with talent. Dan O'Bannon. Ridley Scott. H.R. Geiger. Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Not to mention the cast, the "truckers in space." And it was heavy on atmosphere and suspense in the classic horror tradition, yet still tossed in the blood and gross-outs at the appropriate times.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

posted by shane 21 September | 10:04

i just checked alien out at the library. i get the impression that it's enjoyable. i also get the impression that it's a true story. not from y'all though. rather, the man on the street. he saw me holding it as i walked from the library. he said, "young man, that there is a true story." i'm worried.

posted by panoptican 21 September | 15:47

I suspect Michelle Malkin and Tom Tancredo think it was about an illegal alien.

(To gank a joke from the sequel.)

posted by stilicho 21 September | 22:39

← haha! || "well, okay, but only if you're a+ certified..." →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN