Cinemiscellaney Part I

[athelind]

quelonzia and I happened to catch Aliens on one of the cable movie channels yesterday. We hadn't seen it in years, and I, for one, had forgotten most of the beginning. In fact, I'd forgotten a lot of the beginning. A quick glance at The Internet Movie Database entry revealed why I remembered so little:
not only was this airing uncut, it was the Special Edition, with additional footage that neither of us had seen before. It added a lot of depth to a movie that was already a masterwork in its own right.

Another trivia tidbit from IMDb:
The preparation for the actors playing Colonial Marines included two weeks' training with the S.A.S. (Special Air Service, Britain's elite anti-terrorist force) and reading Robert Heinlein's novel "Starship Troopers".

Pity the preparation for the writer and director of the movie "Starship Troopers" didn't include the latter.

Whatever they did, they did it right. The Marines in that movie have just the right degree of gung-ho esprit de corps without turning into parodies. Aside from a couple of Really Bad Decisions on the part of the Green Lieutenant, the tactics they used looked believable and pragmatic. You don't see a lot of that in horror/monster/SF movies, most of which, in Blish's immortal observation, rely on "problems which would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots." It's refreshing to see a group of capable, competent people fatally overwhelmed by a threat, even after doing almost everything right -- especially after two years of watching the crew of Enterprise bumble around the cosmos unscathed.

I found myself wondering what a James Cameron-directed version of Starship Troopers would look like. Sigh!

Comments

[araquan.livejournal.com]

   I think I caught part of that- I didn't watch, though, as I have the extended edition on DVD. It is a very good movie as such things go- much better than the disappointment that was Alien^3, though IMHO not quite as good as the original Alien. If memory serves, the theatrical edition of the movie never revealed the name of The Company- we do get a glimpse of the Weyland-Yutani logo on Burke's business card/data chip, but it's only there for a second and isn't really recognizeable. The extended version doesn't have much on that front either, but we do get a freeze on a logo on a box for a little while. BTW, I IMDB'd the movie too after seeing the extended edition for the first time. I was interested to see that Mac McDonald, who played the colony administrator in the restored footage in Aliens, was Capt. Hollister in Red Dwarf. I thought he looked familiar when I first saw 'im. }:>

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Aliens, in my opinion, is by far the best of the original trilogy. Not only because there is a good deal of firearms and action, but because the characters ARE rather believable, and the Aliens retain a far more...natural look, not appearing as a tall man in a suit. The 'Excrutiatingly long turn-about in the Queen's chamber' is probably one of the most well-done scenes in Sci-fi history. The Aliens series (and all things with it) have always interested me because the Aliens themselves are eerily beautiful, and Geiger did wonderful work creating the originals. While I applaud Cameron for doing this movie, I still find a certain resentment for his success, if only because he directed the far-too-successful Titanic.

[drakegrey.livejournal.com]

I always did ponder the comment about 'being on another bug hunt' in Aliens... did anyone ever explain that or reveal it as an in-joke?

And yes, one should read the source book before making it into a film. Or at least play the Avalon Hill game. :)

--Drake

Spoilers!

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

As far as I saw, their fatal flaw was that they didn't take what Ripley was trying to tell them seriously enough -- particularly the Green Lieutenant. I've long argued that had he a) taken her seriously and b) known even the first thing about tactics, he would have withdrawn the squad IMMEDIATELY upon realizing the probable nest site was under the cooling towers.

(A footnote: Ripley had seen firsthand their nesting behavior once already. In a deleted scene from the original Alien, Ripley finds most of the crew still alive, entombed in a central location, and I believe one had already been impregnated with a queen. Dallas' whispered plea to kill them all sent her running for the self-destruct mechanism)

Of course, it didn't help when the warrior drones started coming out of the walls...nor when the dropship pilot committed the same fatal error and failed to follow up on the slime trail leading into the cockpit.

-- ArchTeryx