Quote from: HuDaFuK on Jul 27, 2016, 04:09:47 PM
Quote from: Perfect-Organism on Jul 27, 2016, 02:34:40 PMHere's your recipe:
1/4 baked - The premise of an alien on the Sulaco.
1/2 baked - An actual egg that makes 2 facehuggers aboard the Sulaco.
3/4 baked - Killing off 2 fan-favorite characters in the opening credits.
fully baked - Killing off Ripley, the main character
An Alien being on the Sulaco is half-baked? The Queen got there just fine at the end of Aliens. So having one Alien there is OK, but having any more than that is half-baked?
What's so silly about a Facehugger that can implant a Queen as well as a drone to protect her? That actually makes total sense from a survival point of view. Isn't the Alien meant to be the perfect killing machine? Why wouldn't it evolve to give the infant Queen a bodyguard from the word go?
Given how their deaths and their impact on Ripley are the major point of the first act of the film, it's hardly a half-baked idea to kill Hicks and Newt, even if the actual offing is done right at the start.
And Ripley's death is probably the most beautifully executed scene in the entire franchise. Calling her death "half-baked" is a bit ridiculous.
Quote from: BishopShouldGo on Jul 27, 2016, 03:12:35 PMAlien 3 is the definition of half-baked, once you take your rose-tinted glasses off.
Actually it would be the definition of turning an almighty clusterf*ck into a surprisingly decent film.
Yes, an alien on the Sulaco is half-baked because we see the queen left the elevator with no eggs in hand. So unless you like the idea of perhaps Bishop picking up an egg, well how did it get there? It belies a level of stupidity on the part of Ripley for not checking the landing gear that is totally not in line with her character.
The whole "multiple spores from one egg" is a stretch, but one that could have worked if it was a more central theme in a movie. It could have been a moment of discovery about the alien species, but instead, the whole thing just got glanced over, because in truth the writers didn't have a real explanation.
I never said Ripley's death was half-baked. I said it was fully baked. Alien 3 was the exact opposite of what should have naturally happened in the series as far as story progression goes. We had 1 Alien in the first film. Then the second film opened up the world of the Alien a lot more with a large colony infestation, and the third film rather than building on that into something even grander, just wound the whole thing down. If the objective of Fox was to kill the series, then mission accomplished. I mean none of the mysteries of the Alien or the derelict were even addressed. Even Ridley Scott was perplexed that nobody looked into that. If the objective was to build something grander which could be built off of for the purposes of a franchise, it was an utter failure. And this is why we are having this polemic 30 years later.
To give you an analogy that you may understand, it's like if we had Star Wars, and then Empire Strikes Back, and then at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, the main characters die in a silly accident at the Mos Eisley Cantina, and then Luke Skywalker dies in the battle at the end. Yes that closes the arc, but that is it. It is a permanently closed loop. It is closing the arc with no satisfaction.
We had a set-up for a grand confrontation between the mystery of the alien and our favorite heroine, and the whole opportunity was wasted on Fox's cheap quick-profit wank, leaving few options for a continuation of the series with its heroine. That's how we got the resurrection wankery of A:R.
Contrary to what many people on this site say, the Aliens series is not just about the "aliens" as characters. It is still about the people, just as every good story is. Ripley is the core character, so killing her off is stupid. Newt gave her the reason to go on living, so killing her, kills Ripley on the inside. And Hicks, well Hicks was just the coolest space marine ever, and he was the last one left from that James Cameron crew that everyone loved. Killing him off too just closed the door on that whole Colonial Marine aspect of the second film.
You want new characters? Fine. You have them with the Prometheus series. Now the fans of James Cameron's masterpiece also want to have a film which respects the accomplishments of that film. Go Blomkamp! Go Blomkamp! (Just no Ripley / Alien face mask please)
Quote from: Kaltes on Jul 27, 2016, 07:01:22 PM
Somehow I feel like including the phrase "performs fan service" is not a good sign.
I think it is something that can really go either way. You can easily screw up fan service by pandering, or you could do it well by following what the fans really want, with a good script. I agree that it is a journey that can end badly, but there is an equal chance that it will give people something that they have hoped for for a very long time.