Quick Question! What's big, nasty, has two mouths, acidic blood and about seven movies?
ALIEN! One of the most important franchises for horror and sci-fi, the franchise has spawned seven movies and will release a few more soon, plus it has two crossovers with Predator, a bunch of games, a shitload of comics and six studio CDs, ok... maybe that last one is another Alien.
In this post I'm going to talk about the first classic movies, what they got wrong and what they got right. Oh and this post will obviously contain MANY spoilers.
Alien (1979) was directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, the first Alien film emerged from a script inspired by 50's Sci-fi films (such as Forbidden Planet and The Thing by Howard Hawks). The plot of the film is classic, the crew of a spaceship lands on an unknown planet and is attacked by a strange life form, soon they are trapped in their ship with an Alien.
Positive points: This movie is a classic and everything is right with it.
No seriously, the production design is sensational, the sets are real and the Aliens are iconic, very good direction with a tense atmosphere, great performances especially from Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm.
Rippley is a great horror protagonist, and the rest of the characters are amazing too, she has the two mechanics who curl up to fix the ship on purpose and it doesn't get more real than that.
Negative Points: The Alien sometimes seems a lot like just a guy in a costume, but this is the only thing i can say from negative, this movie is great.
Ridley Scott once said he wanted Alien to be the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of science fiction, for me it succeeded. So, we got the second movie.
Aliens (1986) was directed and co-written by James Cameron, after the success of Terminator (1984), the other writers were David Giler (Southern Comfort) and Walter Hill.
The Plot of this film is that Ripley was found 57 years after the first film, and a colony of humans was made on the Alien's planet, when the company that organizes the colonies loses contact with this colony, they send Ripley a Bureaucrat and a group of soldiers to investigate. They get there and you can already imagine what they find.
Positives points: THE ENTIRE FILM! Sorry, this is the last time I do this.
The direction is great, the action is very well shot and the cinematography is amazing, the story and script are excellent, the production design and the colony setting are perfect for 86, the special effects and the Alien queen are the best things of this movie.
The characters are all very interesting, even those who don't do much, but you can understand who's who very quickly, even the supporting characters who don't have any lines, all have some kind of outstanding characteristic.
The performances are great, Sigourney Weaver was nominated for an Oscar here and it wasn't for nothing, the rest of the cast is also sensational, Lance Henriksen undoubtedly manages to play a character without emotion with ease, this was probably Bill Paxton's best performance.
Negatives points: I'm only going to say something bad from this movie under torture, but I can say that it's more of an action movie than a horror movie, but hey, what's the problem with that? Seriously, who are these 2% who gave the movie a bad rating on Rotten Tomatoes?
