Alien

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Amy & Paul burst out of 1979’s sci-fi horror pioneer Alien! They learn about the film’s original darker ending, contrast it with another classic horror film Unspooled has covered, and ask whether today’s filmmakers have lost the visual imagination that made Alien feel so innovative. Plus, the eternal debate: Alien or Aliens?

Next week Unspooled’s space series continues with Solaris (the 1972 original)! You can join the conversation for this series on the Unspooled Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/unspooledpodcast, and on Paul’s Discord at https://discord.gg/ZwtygZGTa6. Learn more about the show at unspooledpod.com, follow us on Twitter @unspooled and Instagram @unspooledpod, and don’t forget to rate, review & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify. You can also listen to our Stitcher Premium game show Screen Test right now at https://www.stitcher.com/show/unspooled-screen-test, and apply to be a contestant at unspooledpod@gmail.com! Photo credit: Kim Troxall

[FictionIsntReal 79]

Amy's previous movie podcast, The Canon, already did Alien vs Aliens. The former (rightly) won. James Cameron's sequel to Alien was akin to the sequel script he wrote for First Blood: dumber & action-ized. The characters in Alien resemble real people just doing their job, they don't spout catch-phrases. I will acknowledge it's not an especially fun/enjoyable movie. It's a horror movie with an unstoppable rape-metaphor at the center of it, and committing to that means it's bleak. Carpenter's version of The Thing was able to borrow from this film, but it's still its own thing which has spawned all manner of offshoots & imitators. And that much of that is due to the set design isn't a mark against the film, because it's not as if that doesn't count.

To me one of the great things about the original is that it's NOT obvious that Ripley is going to be the one to survive to the end. They're all potential victims, with none appearing to have any "plot armor".

MAD Magazine makes fun of every big movie.

The James Bond series has gone on for much longer than Alien. Marvel could as well, but with multiple films per year that would be more demanding. The pace might slow down over time.

[Famous Treymous 0]

Just realized that Lambert is the creepy little girl from Hitchcock’s, “The Birds”…

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

A fair amount of the criticism levied at Alien in this episode seemed to be on the "character development" level, and yes I can admit that on that level The Thing or Aliens might be stronger. That's not the whole of filmmaking, though, and Alien has both of them beaten on visual storytelling and design. It fully changed the game on that level.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

I don't agree that The Thing is better than Alien, and I can't figure any reason not to send Alien up to space. 

[hahmstrung 12]

I rewatched both Alien and Aliens for the upteenth time last week (I'm going through the rest of the Alien, Predator and AvP films to complete this monsterverse) and I'm still firmly in the Aliens side of the debate. Both are masterpieces and perhaps comparing them constantly does a disservice to both films, but I do feel like Aliens gets a bad rap as a shlocky action film. If Alien benefits from the character development, world building and emotion of the later films, then Aliens is hindered by the countless Gears of War-style space marine bug-hunting games and films that took the wrong message from the film. In Aliens, the marines are super cocky until they get their asses handed to them in the very first encounter where most of the unit is wiped out. Any catchphrase-spouting and "hurrah"-ing is done in parody. There's not even that much action in the film until the final 20 minutes.

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be about Aliens. There's not much to say about Alien as I don't think anyone frequenting these forums would disagree that this film should be preserved. I agree with pretty much all of the criticisms brought up on the pod, but, much like Chungking Express, sometimes things like conventional character development isn't always necessary to tell a compelling story. We know who these people are (truckers) and all that matters is they act believably, something Prometheus got so wrong.

[SCREAMINGJOEBLADE 1]

I have decided to stop speaking sternly to my car audio system when I listen to Unspooled and just dump my comments here.

I will pass on the argument whether Alien is better than The Thing or vice versa. They are both about isolation, invasion by the other and an adversary that is both deadly and effective at hiding. They both deal with the dynamics of people living in close quarters for long periods of time. Paul's argument that the characters are better defined in the Thing and that Alien depends more on the acting ability for characters to come through is weak. The characters are more subtly defined in Alien and the cast of the Thing is heavily populated with character actors playing up to their character vs their role. The casting in the Thing has everything to do with filling a stereotype while Alien is not so obvious.

Also:  Sally Hardesty in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973) is the first fully defined "final girl" NOT Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Halloween (1978).  And yes you could draw a comparison between TCM and Alien in the way it is constructed but it would be a stretch.

 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

4 hours ago, hahmstrung said:

In Aliens, the marines are super cocky until they get their asses handed to them in the very first encounter where most of the unit is wiped out. Any catchphrase-spouting and "hurrah"-ing is done in parody.

Very much this. The criticism of Aliens being a gung-ho rah-rah military film is such an unbelievably surface-level take. (Paul and Amy don't make this argument, but I hear it a lot.)

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

Kaufman's version of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers is really good - if we're talking alien movies along the lines of The Thing. (Both are top 10 horror favorites for me). In a few more movie associations, I'm sure we'll make it to Kevin Bacon. Probably in the form of Tremors. 

And fwiw, put me in the Alien > Aliens camp. I find the former to be more of a tense thriller and the latter of an action-horror movie (Predator and Dog Soldiers both falling in this camp). The preference might come down to just preferring one genre to another (this difference is even more pronounced in my memory of The Terminator vs T2).