Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)
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oliverclaude
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The same goes for Cameron's Aliens. Showing the happenings on the colony at the beginning of the film drastically destroys the suspense curve in the Extended Cut and the Shining reference is downright ridiculous, just like making Ripley a mother. Not even film buffs will care.
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I've seen Terminator: Dark Fate. It was good, you could see that James Cameron had a lot of involvement in making it. It wasn't just all action throughout, like a lot of action movies have. There was a decent story to it.
I think it's always good to have extended versions of films, because directors sometimes cut scenes that should have been left in. If it's just deleted scenes on a DVD, that's not as interesting.
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Caught 1917 last night. Some truly striking sequences (the bridge/church and way light is used during the nighttime firefights are both incredible) and the "one continuous shot" gimmick really ratchets up the tension in a way I didn't expect. Absolutely captures the mundanity and cruelty of war (and WWI in particular). I'm generally not one for war movies and some of the cameos kind of took me out of it but it's absolutely worth watching. Plus it has a Thomas Newman score which is pretty much an automatic for me.
Something about this being based (loosely) on a story that the director's grandfather told him really drove it home as well. Powerful filmmaking even if the subject matter doesn't particularly interest me.
Something about this being based (loosely) on a story that the director's grandfather told him really drove it home as well. Powerful filmmaking even if the subject matter doesn't particularly interest me.
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I think Aliens benefited from the addition of the scene where Ripley learns her daughter is dead because the theme of motherhood is so intricately woven into the entire plot. The story keeps going back to that theme time and time again and I think acknowledging it is an improvement.
But the rest of the footage only needlessly extended the running time. The colony scene, I'd agree, damages the mystery for first time viewers but for those familiar with the film it's a nice little addition (although wholly unnecessary).
The scene where Hudson is bragging to Ripley about his 'squad of ultimate badasses' is painful to watch. Paxton was clearly told to just go in, chew scenery and make up a bunch of macho military bullshit on the fly. The scene stumbles and actually diminishes Bravo Teams appeal and makes them less likable.
I like the idea of the sentry gun scene because it shows the aliens are smart, a species that learns and adapts to challenges as they occur. Even as a collective, they have some regard for their numbers. Having them outsmart the marines right from the get go seems a bit much, whereas having a bunch of them die forces them to adapt and develop a new approach. This makes them more frightening, in my opinion, since this movie isn't a haunted house film but an action thriller and it gives the bad guys a nice wrinkle. But using the sentry guns to force a retreat and regroup, while a nice bit of payback for the processor SNAFU, is kind of a low effort way to go about it.
There are also some minor extensions to scenes that worked better without padding their length, such as where Hudson theorizes about the queen alien and he just sounds like a buffoon at a time when gravity is required for the audience to consider what could possibly be worse than the threat they've faced to this point.
But yeah, ultimately I feel you can discard most of the extra footage from the extended cut of Aliens. But for me, the scene with Ripley in the projected arboretum is a must keep.
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oliverclaude
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This is an important argument and it sounds convincing, the way you described it above. Yet, the filmed result was not only poorly executed - an inactive scene, which doesn't fit the rest of the film and reminds me more of a stage production rather than a big budget action thriller - it also provides more problems, than benefits.
What about the father? What about the rest of the family? Who was that daughter anyway? Leaving those questions unanswered, makes this scene feel like a hollow tool of artificial symbolism. Answering them would kill the pace and needlessly digress. Then there's that major motif of the first film, the angst of motherhood. If Ripley already was a mother and at that, one with affection, this motif would become kind of absurd.
Motherhood themes are present in the first film, but always as a negative contrast: a callous AI being a "Mother" to humans, a human forced to become a parent to an Alien, a cynical corporation being a family to its employees, a disclosed android trying to rape a human etc. In the second film, this contrast is leveled with Aliens on one side ans humans on the other. The process of negative interaction is reduced to fighting and only one short burst scene is shown.
Making Ripley a mother, who lost her child due to long-term hibernation in space, wasn't about strengthening her connection to the Aliens, it was probably intended to strengthen the motivation to become a foster parent to Newt later on in the film. But since Ripley's affection for a savaged, traumatized, orphan child obviously doesn't need any further motivation, the scene was seen as redundant and got cut.
I see your point, but *they* did outsmart the marines right from the get go, nesting deliberately near the fusion-powered processing station, thus making them unable to use their firepower. They also cut the power, right? What do you mean *they* cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals! ...poor Hudson. The point is, that there are already multiple events, which show how smart the Aliens are. Some felt repetitive and, probably because of its low visual appeal, the Sentry scene was among those that got cut.
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It looks exactly how it's supposed to look-like a cheap, low effort escape for space station denizens offered at a bare minimum by a soulless corporation that runs a sterile orbiting business center.
As for the scene 'not fitting in the rest of the film', that is just flat out wrong. As I've said, the entire theme of the film is motherhood. Establishing Ripley as a mother who had her opportunity at a return to normal life stolen from her by corporate machination gives us a different dynamic entirely. And a better one.
What about them? The fact that Ripley only seems to be concerned about having lost a life with her daughter should tell you everything you need to know about what mattered to her. Maybe the father was a deadbeat. Maybe Ripley wasn't careful enough when she was young. It doesn't matter. The loss of the daughter is what matters, and that is the heartbeat of the movie. It isn't an examination of every single thing she lost. It isn't a full character study. It's a motivation for the character that makes the conflict and resolution more personal and fulfilling.
The point is that only by going back into her own personal hell can she reclaim what the creature and the corporation stole from her. It makes it about more than 'getting over it'.
Wbhat an odd question to ask. Ripley clearly loved her daughter. She didn't resent her or have reservations about being reunited with her. If the character needed to be more complex, she probably would have been. But the character isn't the point. It's what Ripley's lost that is the point.
It absolutely wouldn't make the motifs of the first film, whatever you claim them to be, absurd. That would mean you are somehow suggesting that Ridley Scott's vision is somehow beholden to what Cameron did in the second film.
The 'characters' of Alien don't exist as anything but to be sacrificed to the creature in service to its themes. There is no reason to want any of them to survive because there is no stated reason for them to live beyond the audience's expectation that they have lives to get back to and in order to escape their cruel fate. We sympathize with them on this level solely, and that works for that film. Saying that 'Ripley was once a mother' doesn't diminish or invalidate the first film at all because none of those ideas are even examined in the film so I have no choice but to dismiss the argument entirely.
Cameron's stated intention in the second movie was not to repeat the first movie or even honor any of its intended themes but create something new out of the ideas of the first film that appealed to him. He specifically set out to make a movie that had a strong female lead. That was his major interest in bringing Sigourney Weaver to the production, something that he refused to budge on even though it was going to cost Fox a lot of money to do it and she originally wasn't even interested. He wanted to explore what being a woman in this world, wit her experiences, meant and to Cameron, exploring the idea of motherhood and juxtaposing that with the alien queen is the core of the film and its evident at every possible turn. Stripping Ripley's status as an ailing mother removes an important contextual aspect of their entire conflict, as well as the mythological concept of Ripley metaphorically 'descending into hell' to reclaim what had been taken from her.
It's a different film with different ideas so none of this matters as it regards the execution of Aliens or the sanctity of Alien. Cameron wisely didn't try to imitate Scott.
And as for the scene getting cut due to being 'redundant', it's not. Ripley rescuing Newt without any stakes besides 'it's the right thing to do' is fine but it's clear that her motivation isn't rooted in heroism but out of a need to heal herself and give this child something which, like her, has been stolen by Weyland-Yutani. It's two people that suffered the same injustice finding something in the other that makes them whole again. It's mythic and uplifting, not merely a standard heroic action beat that you seem to think is all it needs to be.
The creatures didn't nest there because they knew they'd be safe from Colonial Marine small arms fire. It was an ecologically sound place to build a nest. And even if that wasn't the reason, it most definitely was not to be safe from the soldiers. I'm not sure where you're getting this notion from. This would require them to understand how atmosphere converting thermodynamic engineering functions. Are you willing to go that far simply because their actual intellect is never expressly established? If they're that smart, why aren't they making their own climate controlled environments to live in and simply bringing their prey back there? Or does their intelligence, absent a need to adapt to new challenges, only permit them to outsmart the protagonists when the plot demands it?
oliverclaude
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Thanks for your extended cut on this matter, Taiso. It gives a well researched understanding of Cameron's declared intentions, with which you seem mostly in agreement. Still, what it ultimately comes down to are personal preferences, and sharing a similar preference for a film version as its director or leading actress doesn't make that preference the only "right" one. The intentions of a director can still be amiss and seen as such by a part of his audience, to which part I include myself. For the rest of our arguments, we both base them on our own interpretations, which may largely differ and make our arguments respectively feel unconvincing for the other side. After all, interpretations are not a purely logical science but emotions. Rights or wrongs won't apply here.
Personally, I still prefer the pacing and editing of the Theatrical cut, and further agree with studio executives that Cameron's longer version adds "too much nothing" and spends an unnecessary amount of time building suspense. Cameron's well-meant intentions to add depth and extend information on certain characters are in my opinion not well transferred and/or included in the movie. I agree that the initial ideas for these extra scenes are valid and well justified by Cameron, but personally I feel their execution is everything but. Now we could keep on exchanging polemics, yet, it's not about convincing the other side anyway. It's about learning a different opinion/interpretation and I'm glad to have learned yours. Made me feel like watching both cuts of Aliens again.
Burning Blade
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Who’s the master!?
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I mean it's Villeneuve and whatever master of photography he has with him.
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I hate the idea of Dune as a feature length movie. Make it a limited miniseries in 4 parts, like The Stand. Don't try to compress it to 2.5 hours. The film format is dead, and was always stupid. like trying to write poetry in meter.
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The Lynch short they just put up on Netflix is fantastic
Naika
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Am I.....the MEANEST!!!????
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As it should be, for once.
I think it can be done well when it's split in half like this. The set up of Arrakis / the political angle, Paul settling into life and being trained, then the shitstorm, with a hopeful cliffhanger ending of Paul and his mother finding the sand people and vowing revenge.
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If that film had been made then nothing would really be the same in the film world, at least in that segment
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Alien is my third favorite movie ever. TBH I'm not sure I'd make that sacrifice.
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I'd never sacrifice a great original for the sake of an adaptation of any quality.
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Thanks for the heads up! Against all odds, this has been put on Netflix Japan at the same time as well. Can't wait.
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:-D any time.