Quote from: [cancerblack] on Aug 29, 2021, 08:38:36 PM
Some of us like the "suicide of a broken woman" aspect but I get why a general audience does not.
OT, you getting up to anything else in lockdown? Pretty much just beer and yardwork for me.
The only comparable film I can think of is Mike Figgis'
Leaving Las Vegas. Basically, Nicholas Cage decides to drink himself to death and gets involved in a relationship with prostitute Elisabeth Shue in which she agrees not to criticise his choice of suicide, of which, by film's end, he succeeds in. Yay for him.
Lots of critical success and Oscars all round. But (and I guess this says as much about me as it does the sentiments of the filmmakers) I hated it. You might like it though.
Yard work. Yeah, a lot of that. Also taking the time to watch lots of movies and streaming shows I missed.
Quote from: SiL on Aug 29, 2021, 10:09:06 PM
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As much as Alien3 is about nihilism the film's final conclusion is to reject nihilism. The universe is unquestionable shitty and uncaring -- but there is still value in moral action.
Yep, I'm with you. I do not understand the belief that Alien films teach us that, nihilistically, nothing in life is worth fighting for.
Quote from: Kimarhi on Aug 29, 2021, 10:46:05 PM
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I will also maintain that the death of Ripley has less to do with the film being disliked than the abandonment of the Hicks/Newt/Ripley nuclear family storyline with their character's deaths.
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So the opposite of what I think, then.
Well, your thoughts have some validity. After all, many well-liked and successful films finish with the death of the main character.
Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Braveheart, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Million Dollar Baby... What's the main difference between them and
Alien 3? Well, as you say,
Alien 3 gets off to a bad start with the unceremonious deaths of two loved characters (and never really recovers). But also
Alien 3 defied audience expectations of a happy ending, unlike the other films I mentioned in which audience's were more open about how it would end.
Alien, and especially
Aliens, had established a prior formula in which the movie ends in victory.
I know what some people are thinking: defying audience expectations is a good thing. But this is only partly true. Every story brings with it a "genre expectation". The Hollywood maxim is, "Give the audience what it wants, but not the way it expects." Would
Predator have been a better film if Arnold had died like a pathetic dog? That would certainly have defied audience expectations! But no, Arnold had to win. This is the genre expectation we are set up with going into the movie. But he had to win in a way we couldn't exactly predict.
Alien 3's ending was not what we expected.
This also explains why repeated viewings make the film seem better and better. By this point, we have no mismatched expectations. We already know how it ends.
TC