Haven't watched in a few years, holds up very well tbqh. We all know the basics so here's a few notes on details:-The timing of the death of Ripley's daughter is very precise, to make Newt's role as surrogate daughter line up exactly. Amanda would've been 68 or so upon Ripley's return 57 years later, except she'd died two years earlier, at 66. Per the dialogue, Amanda was 10 going on 11 when Ripley last saw her, pretty much exactly the same age as Newt (Carrie Henn was born in 1976 and would have been around 9/10 during filming).-In the special edition wildcat scene which totally fucks up the pacing and was rightly cut, Newt's brother refers to her as "Newt", contradicting later dialogue that he's the only one who calls her by her given name, Rebecca. When Newt's dad has a hand-like facehugger, a moment later, there's an extreme close-up of Siggy's bony, claw-like hand holding a very pathetic cigarette. These two "hand" visuals rhyme with each other.-Gorman shows himself as green when he's the one who knocks over an object as the squad stalks a target (which turns out to be Newt). This also slightly foreshadows how he gets knocked out, below.-Gorman doesn't see himself as a grunt (or as being in a combat zone himself), and he pays for it. If he'd been wearing a helmet like the others, he wouldn't have been knocked out when the crap fell on his head inside the APC. OTOH the story requires him to be knocked out so that Ripley (and Hicks) can assume command, hence etc.
>>214997092I don't think it's "rightly cut". I think it's rightly saved for special features and to be seen on a subsequent viewing as it greatly enhances the experience. It is literally the perfect 'prequel'. Just the right amouth shown to enhance the current story. We see the colony, the conditions there, the staff, the kids, the rovers and the families driving them around. We see that they received another annoying communication from some faceless dork in corporate and they don't question it as it's more trouble than it's worth plus takes ages with their time difference. That demonstrates why they went out there with no concerns and why everything could go so totally to shit before people back on Earth could hear anything. Any prequel now would need a Ripley clone, it would copy the events of Alien/Aliens to a T, would need a dozen of the stereotypical character archetypes, etc. It'd be a contrived shitshow that no one could take seriously. Unlike this short scene in the special edition.
-The humans create or exacerbate most of their own problems. The gunfire inside the power plant didn't help matters, Gorman should have extracted his team, gotten in a huddle and reset with buy-in, but he got mentally "locked in" because again, he's green. The drop ship crashing into it (the plant) seems to have pushed it over the edge into overload status, but that's not really on Ferro desu. When Ripley panics and smashes multiple elevator buttons, she calls down two elevators, allowing the queen to follow them. She can hardly be faulted for panicking in the moment, but if she'd only gotten one elevator, that would at least have bought them the seconds they needed for a clean escape (the queen would most likely have figured out how buttons work anyway, like velociraptors and cats manipulating door handles, but too late to stow away).-Since Dietrich is the medic, there's a good deal of irony in the fact that her friendly fire is the thing that kills a bunch of guys right off the bat.-The film is pretty good about technical details, but it seems to have taken some liberty with the amount of available ammo. Hicks announces there's four rifles with 50 rounds each (apart from 15-ish grenades, the automatic guns and some other gear). The pulse rifles are the primary weapons in the film. The number of grenades that they expend during the escape seems about right at a quick watch, but it sounds to me like they get off a few hundred rounds on their way out, a good deal more than the 200 or so that Hicks had announced. That could be a fake-out by the foley sound of the report though, the timing of the digital counter's reduction is moderate-fast, not super-fast. Of course, once Ripley gets into the other drop ship she has access to more weapons and can stock back up.
>>214997301I watched the theatrical release a few weeks ago and I'm coming round to liking it better. Faster pacing and build up getting to the intense combat and escape scene in ops.The wildcat scene cut is also good because it means you as the viewer are not sure if the colony has been infected or not, have to think at the time it came out and first time you watched it you might think other possibilities, not necessarily the colony has already been wiped out.
>>214997448Hicks says short bursts, maybe they have a switch like modern assualt rifles for 3 round bursts. That would give each of them 17 shots which is not that beyond what we see, though vasquez definitely looked like she had more tucked away somewhere (like she did earlier in the nest scene).
The film does a very clever, subtle thing in setting up exactly how the aliens attack, which builds on the first film. In the first film, the Nostromo has three decks, A, B, and C, A on top, C on bottom. The alien runs away and hides in the "basement" or the lower deck, in the air shafts etc, where it does most of its dirty work. Again, the alien hive is in "sub-basement 3", down below. So we associate the alien with lower ground. They spend a lot of time focusing on floor-level and underground schematics, tunnels, and doorways etc, so they never really consider the possibility that the aliens could simply... walk outside, climb onto the roof, find a weak point and enter that way, which seems to be what they did. Ripley is smart, but she doens't have military training, and so they made a slight tactical error, not anticipating that the enemy would always like to take the high ground whenver possible.-We make a reasonable assumption that there's about 150 adults at the time of mission start. Almost all colonists are dead, and the colonists probably successfully picked off a few during their last stand. Something like 5-10 adults or so are picked off during the first battle, the automatic guns seem to have been extremely efficient, mowing down something like several dozen warriors (perhaps about 70-90), during the escape they variously kill another 5-10 adults, and when Ripley confronts the queen, she kills some of the few that are left, the queen's "inner guard", another four or five. The adults inside the roof (and the others around) during the escape are shown/inferred to be a few dozen. I imagine that there's about 40-50 adults running around at the time of the escape, based on what's shown and heard.
>>214997687The report sound is a kind of muffled "toot-toot-toot", or a "toot-toot-toot-toot". I don't really know whether to interpret that noise as one round, two, three or four.
We'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night... mostly.
Like most films, the movie wasn't shot in sequence. But for added realism, James Cameron filmed the scene where we first meet the Colonial Marines, one of the earliest scene, last. This was so that the camaraderie of the Marines was realistic because the actors had spent months filming together.
>>214997092Dumbfuck contrarians will tell you that this is ''hurr durr cameron-slop, hurr durr action-slop''
When filming the scene with Newt in the duct, Carrie Henn kept deliberately blowing her scene so she could slide down the vent, which she later called a slide three stories tall. James Cameron finally dissuaded her by saying that if she completed the shot, she could play on it as much as she wanted. She did, and he kept his promise.
>>214997873Another "hand" rhyme just occurred to me. Hicks and Ripley reach into the grating when they first encounter Newt, and they try to pull her out. During the climax, the queen's very large and very creepy hand also reaches under the floor, trying to grab Newt.The Ripley/Hicks/Newt surrogate family. Lots of little cues showing that they're a family unit. the actor who played Newt's dad looks fairly similar to Michael Biehn. Hicks is the one who shows concern for Ripley as she enters the building, and of course the rifle training scene is intimate and has a little tension. Hicks calls Newt "sweetheart", and IIRC he picks her up so she can see the map and participate in what's going on.
>>214997989Thats wholesome af. People say that Cameron was quite a tyrant most of the time though.
>>214998104She never worked in the industry again. Jimmy got the last laugh.
>>214997092Why would you wear a helmet in the APC? There's no reason to think something would fall on his head otherwise everyone in the APC would be wearing one. No one would do that without hindsight so it's a useless point to bring up.
>>214997960I didn't really pay attention to exact movements, but I tried to track the various squad and sub-squad formations in a bit more detail as they initially enter, that might warrant a re-watch. Like A-squad with Vaz, Hudson and Apone enters at North Lock and B-squad with Hicks, Drake(?), Frost etc enters at South lock. Then they split up further.There is a screen which establishes the squad's names as they wake up from Cryo. The marines are a group of 12 humans, complemented by one robot, and Ripley and Burke are the extras. So a group of 15, soon to become 16 when they get Newt. IIRC the one name that you can't see on the computer readout is Hudson.
>>214998065>The Ripley/Hicks/Newt surrogate family.They made it. fuck alien 3: non canon
>>214998158Newt was a shit actress and was only good at screaming. She would have ruined A3 which is already a near masterpiece.
>>214998134>She never worked in the industry againThat seemed to be the case for most 80s/90s child actors. Some ended up as wrecks like Furlong
>>214998180There is no A3 in any form only A1+A2, maybe you are referring to Ripley and Newt hyper-sleep dreams?
>>214998104He had to be because he was dealing with a bunch of lazy fuck British union workers who very nearly ruined his film. But of course, you have to play nice with the kid. IIRC Kubrick used to tell one of his people (his old producer-collaborator, Harris I think) that as the director, you can't afford to be nice because at the end of the day, it's your name on the thing, and the success or failure will be all on you. No one will remember Ricky the grip, or whatever.Something cute that I didn't realize before: Newt boops Ripley's nose when she takes a nap in Medical. Then at the very end, Ripley boops Newt's nose, in rhyme.Speaking of Kubrick, Horner's score quotes the "Gayane Ballet Suite", a piece of music heard on the spaceship in 2001. I also believe that a foley noise used for a door in Medical or thereabouts is the same foley noise used for a spaceship door in 2001.
Good thread OP, come here to say I appreciate before the spergs will flock.
>>214998180>which is already a near masterpiece.Not even its own director likes that movie.This is terminal contrarianism.
>>214998371>you can't afford to be nice because at the end of the day, it's your name on the thing, and the success or failure will be all on you. No one will remember Ricky the grip, or whateverThat is a stupid fucking philosophy desu. Totally justifies Kubrick abusing and bullying Duvall on the set of shining too.
>>214998453>t. nice well-behaved Timmy who will be forgotten at the moment of his death
>>214997092It ruined the franchise. Original is better. Terminator same thing. T2 destroyed it in pursuit of big budget summer blockbuster. Only retards spout nonsense about sequels being better.
>>214998488There are plenty of decent people who are remembered, and Kubrick was a pretentious hack anyway. Stop being acting like an edgy kid.
>>214998149Pretty sure you're always supposed to wear flak jacket and kevlar helmet when around or in military vehicles in operation.
>You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, an M class star freighter, a rather expensive piece of hardware.>42 million in adjusted dollarskek
they used to have to put effort into these kinds of details so that people would be interested in buying it after discussing all the detail, theories and motivations when it released at home years after the movie release. Now they only need content to fill up streaming services. So much effort taken for granted because depth like this were the normal expectations
>>214998689Call back to Ripley saying "they can bill me" after burke objects to nuking the colony and expensive reactor.
According to Lance Henriksen, when he saw the movie at the premiere, he was so impressed by the effort that James Cameron had put into the making of the movie as a director, writer and designer, that he was left speechless to the point that he promised Cameron that he would write him a letter to properly express his feelings on it. He never ended up doing this, and Cameron misinterpreted all this as a sign that Henriksen hated the movie. Eventually, they cleared it all up.
