Quote from: steveperry on Nov 01, 2007, 09:02:00 PM
You read both scripts? Speaking here as a pro, Cameron's script was better, hands down, across the board, pick a spot.
Depends on two things:
Firstly, whether you mean O'Bannon's script or the Hill/Giler script. If so O'Bannon's, no argument.
Secondly, how you decide to define 'better'.
You may have 30 years' professional credit behind you - I don't even have 30 years of existence behind me, so you pretty solidly win that round - but you still define better as what appeals to you.
So how do we see better in this context? More memorable, or more realistic?
If we're going by more memorable, then certainly. The fantastical will always stick in our mind more than real things will, by and large, and it's almost always more entertaining unless you happen to live with happy drunk acrobatic circus midgets.
Cambo's characters are loud and self-important and spew cheesy one-liners like they were going out of fashion. They carry big guns and use big vehicles and blow shit up constantly. They're the cool people at parties, always entertaining, except for people like Drake and Vasquez who you avoid for fear of your life. Trivial things like physics and logic often take a back seat to the theatrical experience. His movie also leaves you feeling all warm and happy inside because everybody's saved and that annoying little thing called post traumatic stress is just something nasty people tell small children to scare them into being good.
If we look at 'better' as more realistic, then no, Cameron's script isn't better. The characters of
Alien are much more down to earth and life-like. Not every line of dialogue is some memorable one-liner which you can casually drop into a conversation. Reading the script I was given a genuine sense of creeping dread, that things were going from bad to worse and were only going to keep
getting worse until the Alien was dead, or everyone else was. The environment and the technology was given less attention and less of a chance to wander off into fantasy land. It was grounded and, largely, ignored when unneeded.
The script of
Alien actually creeped me out. Even in text form it drew you in with its realistic space truckers and shoved you into their circumstances, and made you, the reader, feel it when bad stuff started happening. Yet the script of
Aliens failed to evoke any emotion at all - Or, in fact, any other script I've ever read.
Quoteyou don't like what I write, no problem.
I liked
Nightmare Asylum ... Some bits I thought could've been left out, but I realise they were necessary to pad out the length. And I've never read anything of yours outside the Alien material, so I can hardly say you're a bad writer.
Quotegiven as how it must be so much superior to what's out there.
Never claimed to be a better writer. But does that mean I should commit genocide before criticising Hitler? I only know one Jew in my area - Would that make a good start?
