From: welter@fwi.uva.nl (Richard Welter)
Subject: Re: What's wrong with Alien^3?
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 14:37:46 GMT

caruso@socrates.umd.edu (John Caruso) writes:


>	Alien^3 was, quite simply, the worst film I've seen this year,
>and possibly in several years.  When I came out of the theater I felt
>like I needed to take a shower.  And I have reasons why I felt this way.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's only a movie you know, no reason to get crazy.

>	First of all, Alien^3 was relentlessly mean-spirited.  When
>we're told that Newt and Hicks have died in the crash, my first reaction
>was surprise and disappointment. But I thought about it for a few moments
>and decided, ok, they want to take this film in a new direction, away
>from Aliens; let Newt and Hicks go and see what happens.  Unfortunately
>I was wrong...they wouldn't let them go.  Instead we were treated to
>the scene of Newt lying dead on a slab, and Ripley probing for a growing
>alien (ignore the illogic of thinking the embryonic alien could survive
>in a dead host).  Probing wasn't enough, though--now Ripley demands an
>autopsy, though it obviously would be sufficient just to cremate both
>Newt and Hicks.  Why do an autopsy, then?  So you can show the audience
>a little girl having her chest split open with a bone saw.  Because gore
>sells and the audience will love it.  For the sake of accuracy, we don't
>actually see Newt being sliced open...we just hear the crunch of the bone
>and get to watch her blood trickle out into the pan.

Ripley just needed to see for herself that Newt hadn't died because of an
alien. And why wouldn't a chestburster be able to survive in a dead host?!

>	This same ethic informs the rest of the film as well.  We see
>the inmate sweeping out the exhaust chute, and we see the giant fan
>just past him, and it's easy to put two and two together.  But that's
>never enough in this film; instead, after he's killed and takes the
>painfully obvious slide into the fan, we're treated to the sight of
>the scattered chunks of his flesh hanging from the chute.  Later there's
>the dog.  No, it's not enough that it lies down and starts to whimper
>and we know exactly what's going to happen; we get to watch the entire
>sequence of the alien bursting through its ribcage.  It makes me wonder
>how Fincher would have filmed the ending of Old Yeller.

Why was it so disturbing to see these things, I thought the original
chestburster scene in alien was much more gruesome than any of these
scenes.

>					Alien^3 pretends to be an "art"
>film, but the style of its violence reveals it for the exploitist crap
>that it is. 

What was so particularly violent about alien^3 ? So it was a bit bloody
in a few scenes, so was alien. And what about aliens with all it's guns
just blowing everything away that gets in your way?

>              Courage, sacrifice, loyalty, passion--things that were at
>the heart of Aliens--are thrown aside in Alien^3, and not with any lofty
>artistic intent.  It's just an ugly, sordid little film.

I saw lots of courage, sacrifice and loyalty in alien^3, probably even
more than in aliens.

>	Think of Ripley's near-rape (and her subsequent rescue), the
>scene where Ripley questions Bishop, the "love" scene between Ripley
>and the doctor, the "kill me!"/"fuck you!" scene with the inmate, and
>on and on and on.

So what is it about those scenes you don't like? I didn't find much wrong 
with them.

>	The dialogue was laughable.  It's a sad statement when the single
>funniest line in a movie is "Fuck!".  There wasn't a single event in the
>film that was surprising or suspenseful; in many cases, potential suspense
>was destroyed because we were shown the danger immediately, and it became
>just a matter of waiting for the hammer to drop.

Yeah, like you didn't know in advance what was going to happen in aliens!
Aliens was just as predictable.

>						The direction was painfully
>obtrusive in so many scenes, like the "looking up at the doctor through the
>cage of the elevator" or the "drifting down to the level of the prison
>warden" scene (and so many others like them).  I won't even talk about
>the one time interesting but relentlessly beaten-to-death "twirly alien
>down the passage" scenes.  The final scene, with the Christ-like backwards
>swan dive into the pool of flame, is so overbearingly pretentious it defies
>belief--and again shows that this film takes itself very, very seriously.

So what was wrong with these shots? I thought they all looked great.

>	If Alien^3 had been only a laughably inept attempt at moviemaking
>I would have just walked out of the theater, felt ripped off for a moment,
>and then forgotten it.  But it wasn't.  Alien^3 wasn't content to be bad
>on its own; it reached out and tainted the other films as well.  As people
>have pointed out, the sacrifice and struggle in Aliens is made meaningless
>by the events in Alien^3.  This is absolutely true.

Who are you to decide this is 'absolutely' true?! According to me it is not.
Why does alien^3 make aliens meaningless, aliens didn't make alien any less
meaningfull did it?

>						    You can't take Alien^3
>in a vacuum; it's part of a continuum.  And as a conclusion to the Alien
>story it falls far short, and leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

>- John

All IYHO I hope, since it was a great conclusion to me.

Richard

-- 
*                         X      Computer Science                   /        *
*    Richard J. Welter    X   University of Amsterdam           \  /         *
*                         X                                     CIAmiga      *
*      "Marshmallows! Ben, where are those hickory sticks?!"  - Jerry        *
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