Alien (movie franchise)

[Jean Valjean]

It has a few miracles of cinema, and a few stinkers.  It's amazing that such a franchise can encapsulate two extremes as it does.  It also has some movies where people debate whether or not they're good and get all passionate about it, which to me means that you're basically in Star Wars territory as far as cultural significance goes.  I think it says a lot about a franchise when a legitimately good sequel/prequel is released, and people start complaining about how it's the worst film ever because it doesn't live up to the original.

 

Anyway, speaking of comparing originals and sequels, let's start the question with a simple question: Alien and Aliens are the most acclaimed in the series, with the claim for both being nearly universal, but if you had to choose one, which do you prefer?  Which is nearer to your heart?

 

I wrote about this in my blog.

 

 They're both so perfect. One is the perfect horror movie, and the other is the perfect action movie, which also manages to stay pretty horrifying at many times.Aliens is one of those movies that is in contention for being the best sequel of all time, because it's so good. I love how it evolves Ripley.

Both films manage to do something incredible. I think that one of the hardest things to ever do is to come up with a legitimately scary horror movie that gives you nightmares. Alien is arguably the only horror movie to do that. Although personally, I actually find Aliens to be even scarier. Aliens managed to do something almost just as rare, to come up with an action movie that had just the right amount of acting, just the right acting, just the right effects, just the right tone, just the right music, just the right cinematography, just the right editing. You do a side-by-side comparison with other actions films, and you'll see that others simply don't nail the style that James Cameron somehow perfected so early on in his career. He managed to master the feel without even being stylized, which is what really impresses me. Alien is a work of art, but it's stylized, and I think that sometimes it's a little bit easier to great a magnificent work of art that's distinguished from everything else if you stylize it a bit.

For those reasons, I used to prefer Aliens. However, I've noticed that I actually tend to watch the original Alien more, and just appreciate the film making that went into it. It's interesting to think that it was actually Ridley Scott's second film, and his first to gain any recognition, so he wasn't a prestigious director at the time. I also just love the original H.R. Giger design of the alien. It's just so entrancing compared to the aliens in Aliens. It's also so mysterious, and if you ignore Prometheus and Covenant, you can marvel in the additional horror of how little you know about it, how mysterious it is, and get a tingle from the theme that there are some places, far enough out in space, where man simply isn't meant to go. There's an element of H.P. Lovecraft cosmic horror to that. I think that that's why it's my favorite.

But I still love Aliens. The queen is simply so good, and like everyone else my heart melts for Newt.

 

 

I also really liked Prometheus and Covenant, but it isn't fair comparing them to those two.  The original two were perfect, considered some of the greatest movies of all time, whereas these two are really good (I think that they're better than most sci-fi and horror movies released today), and works of art in their own right, but they they aren't monumental culture-defining phenomenons.  It's like trying to compare Jurassic Park to Jurassic World, or A New Hope to Rogue One.  They're generally well-received sequels/prequels, but not too many people would actually say that they're better than the original.

 

That's how I feel about Prometheus and Covenant, although personally think that the former comes awfully darn close to being as good as Alien.  For various reasons, I like Prometheus a little more than its sequel, but I've heard plenty of people say that they much prefer this one.  So, as a follow-up question to the Alien vs. Aliens debate, which of the two prequels do you prefer/  Prometheus vs Covenant?

 

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[CHTrilogy]

I've only seen Alien, a superb film - even though some of the thrill has worn off on me. If I can get my hands on a copy of Aliens, I'll see about watching that, too.