Aliens vs. Alien 3

[NecronomIV]

What's notable about the second movie is that it's mostly exposition across almost two-thirds of the movie, with the main action taking place only after that.

I feel like you're defining exposition as "talky bits with no guns", but that's not what exposition is.

There's plenty of plot and character-development going on. For example, Ripley having a PTSD nightmare. Ripley being suspended. Ripley telling Burke and Gorman to leave her apartment. Bishop doing the knife trick. The marines jeering Ripley.

What exposition there is is mostly woven skillfully into character development and plot beats; and even where it is obvious exposition -- eg "Because I don't have to, there have been people living there for over 20 years and they never complained of any 'hostile organism'" -- it's turned into moments of character, showing Van Luewen's arrogance and Ripley's horror at it: "Families. Jesus."

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)

As for the question of the thread: If it's Alien 3 theatrical, no question that Aliens is the better film. But if it's Alien 3 Assembly, it starts to feel like comparing Star Wars to 2001: A Space Oddysey. They're both fine films but it's not really meaningful to compare them.

Abstained from voting.

[ralfy]

What's notable about the second movie is that it's mostly exposition across almost two-thirds of the movie, with the main action taking place only after that.

I feel like you're defining exposition as "talky bits with no guns", but that's not what exposition is.

There's plenty of plot and character-development going on. For example, Ripley having a PTSD nightmare. Ripley being suspended. Ripley telling Burke and Gorman to leave her apartment. Bishop doing the knife trick. The marines jeering Ripley.

What exposition there is is mostly woven skillfully into character development and plot beats; and even where it is obvious exposition -- eg "Because I don't have to, there have been people living there for over 20 years and they never complained of any 'hostile organism'" -- it's turned into moments of character, showing Van Luewen's arrogance and Ripley's horror at it: "Families. Jesus."

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)

As for the question of the thread: If it's Alien 3 theatrical, no question that Aliens is the better film. But if it's Alien 3 Assembly, it starts to feel like comparing Star Wars to 2001: A Space Oddysey. They're both fine films but it's not really meaningful to compare them.

Abstained from voting.

Actually, I was giving the opposite argument:

What's notable about the second movie is that it's mostly exposition across almost two-thirds of the movie, with the main action taking place only after that.

From the same source:

Indirect exposition, sometimes called incluing, is a technique of worldbuilding in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set. The idea is to clue the readers in to the world the author is building without them being aware of it. This can be done in a number of ways: through dialogues, flashbacks, characters' thoughts,[3] background details, in-universe media,[4] or the narrator telling a backstory.[3]

Thus, the PTSD nightmare, the hearing, the knife trick, the jeering, etc., are part of indirect exposition and take place across the first half or so of the movie. The main action, which starts with the first alien attack on the team, takes place much later.

Finally, it's hard to compare the second and third movies because they use different subgenres, and think the reason why they did this is because writers didn't want to repeat what took place earlier. Hence, the first movie uses horror based on suspense, i.e., the creature is not fully revealed until the end. Since they could no longer do that with the second because many who saw the first film already know about the alien and would go and watch the second, they focused on action for the latter and this time used more than one aliens (to heighten the action). And since they could no longer do that with the third, i.e., have another group of armed men encounter multiple aliens, they went with something like a procedural: how to trap and destroy a creature to which they have been informed by Ripley, but with further complications.

Similar happened to the fourth movie, where they used something like intrigue (no more company, contending groups, scientific experiments) to come up with even more complications.

[kwisatz]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

[SM]

I'd argue that pretty much all the exposition in Aliens is done by the 25 minute mark after Ripley briefs the marines.

[ralfy]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

And maybe even remake one or more of the four, etc., similar to what's happening in other franchises.

It's fortunate for the young but angers the older fans who grew up with the four. But it's the franchise owners that make the call.

[kwisatz]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

And maybe even remake one or more of the four, etc., similar to what's happening in other franchises.

Maybe they even start with Alien³ to remake one and two as prequels.

(Younger) people would really wonder where this egg come from.

[TC]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

[Nightmare Asylum]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

And maybe even remake one or more of the four, etc., similar to what's happening in other franchises.

It's fortunate for the young but angers the older fans who grew up with the four. But it's the franchise owners that make the call.

Like with the Mad Max series, where Fury Road remade the other sequels and wiped them out of existence?

[ralfy]

Fortunately nowadays no one has seen these four movies so they can just repeat the first one.

And maybe even remake one or more of the four, etc., similar to what's happening in other franchises.

It's fortunate for the young but angers the older fans who grew up with the four. But it's the franchise owners that make the call.

Like with the Mad Max series, where Fury Road remade the other sequels and wiped them out of existence?

I think it's been happening across several franchises, i.e., most viewers are likely young and thus had never heard of or seen the earlier movies, and any new ones were made some time later. So producers re-use formulae from previous movies that worked and bring in new characters, and in several cases resembling previous ones.

Hence, in Fury Road, they retell the first movie briefly with some changes (e.g., they change Max's son into a daughter, and bring back the car) and then borrow heavily from the second (another main chase seen involving a rig), but to replace Max with Furiosa. Similarly, in the new Star Wars movies, they repeat the storyline of the youngster on a desert planet and the Death Star, and rehash Khan's story in Star Trek. Finally, in the Alien prequels, they repeat the storyline of the ship landing on the rock, a protagonist resembling Ripley (tall, with short, black hair, and a white shirt), crew members named in the same way as Dallas (like Tennessee), and so on.

They will obviously try to maximize profits for their IPs, and that means lots of prequels, sequels, rehashes, retcons, reboots, remakes, etc.

[BlueMarsalis79]

I only have this to say:

[Local Trouble]

I was not expecting the poll to be this close.

[SM]

It's only got 25 votes.

[Local Trouble]

I wasn't expecting it to get that many votes either.

[SM]

Fair.

[nanison]

Alien 3 has a good closure for the trilogy in terms of plot, location, look and ending but I just wish it would have been better. Most characters are forgettable, the alien looks awful.

Yet I love it. It is the end of the cycle for me. Resurrection doesn't exist in my mind nor do the Ridley Scott prequels.