Neill Blomkamp's Alien Sequel

[YellerDog]

Yet the theatrical 3 is better than the workprint. I'll take missing the Golic scenes over the CGI they added.

I'd argue theatrical 1 and 2 are cleaner cuts, but I like the colony scene too much in Aliens.

[Josh]

You know that doesn't count. The work print is like listening to rough mixes. I wish there was some way to see the movie that Fincher was trying to make. I liked the non-hero shot ending.

The colony scene is cool, and I like it, but the movie doesn't "need" it. Ripley having a daughter is important. It explains the way she acts with Newt without it being "she's a woman, ofc"

[Josh]

Mostly.

[arjue]

Good insight, but that guys vocal fry makes me want to throttle him.

[BerringerX]

I think they'll probably go with them aging in real time and the story taking place many years later. CG'ing Weaver and Biehn throughout the whole film would probably be expensive and look weird.

They could cgi them up for the beginning and then do a time jump, like Xmen 3.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Criticizing Ripley for taking on the "traditional mother" role is a bit much too.

Yeah. When the only roles for most women characters in movies are "fuckdoll" or "walking womb," that's a problem, but we can still talk about motherhood for God's sake.

Plus, these movies do not insist on or normalize a woman's duty to be at home barefoot and pregnant. Does conception really look like something Alien urges women to drop everything for in the chest buster scene or in Lambert's death? Does woman-as-baby-factory seem like something Aliens endorses in the queen?

[A Robot Bit Me]

The Alien movies are so good that sometimes I get angry just thinking about them. It's like I run out of room for Happy and my feelings spill over into nearby emotions.

[Dolemite]

Aliens is one of the most pro-feminist films ever made.

And as for the whole Director's Cut/theatrical version thing, as far as Aliens goes I prefer the theatrical version for a number of reasons:

1. Like Josh, I didn't need to see what the colony was like before. I personally found it more creepy and mysterious to have it unseen until the Marines get there, only to find it to be a ghost town.

2. I do agree that establishing Ripley as a mother is important, but I didn't think the scene itself was that well-done. I know the fake garden was supposed to look cheesy (at least I hope it was supposed to), but Ripley looked like a horrible mother for going off and leaving her kid alone for what I assume was months or more at a time. It wouldn't have bothered me if they left in it the theatrical version, however, as it does explain Ripley's protective urges towards Newt.

3. Everyone jizzes about the sentry gun segment in the Director's Cut, but while I appreciate the idea behind it, in reality it's just a terrible scene. First of all, the Aliens are established as being intelligent enough to circumvent complex barricades and are able to shut off the power just prior to an attack, but then they rush headlong into the automated gun turrets over and over and over again? You could argue that the Aliens were simply testing the humans' defenses, but they should have figured out in seconds that those guns down the hall would shoot and kill them. Clearly, there were other ways into the complex other than that one hallway, as evidenced by the big attack at the climax of the film.

But the worst thing about the sentry gun scene is that every shot of an Alien getting hit was recycled footage from the previous battle in the nest. There were no new shots of Aliens blowing up, and in fact they re-used some of the same shots from the nest battle more than once, and tried to disguise it by cutting quickly and so on. It just looked cheap and amateurish. Cameron did the right thing by cutting it (unless that was a call by the studio).

If done right, it could have been a very tense scene. It still had its good points, but the film is better without it.

[YellerDog]

The "I'm Dwane, I'm Ellen" scene stops the Queen buildup cold, too.

[Anthony]

Wow you guys know your aliens.