As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
One of my favorite movies is Alien 2, and that is after hating Alien 1. Put it this way in Tom Skerritt was in the first movie and he destroys anything he is in.
2 though was fantastic as it rescued the movie from the English. Ridley Scott is unimpressive as the director in 1, and in 2, James Cameron turns out an Americanized masterpiece. It is one of the best powerful female and child roles ever directed and scripted.
That is why 3 which takes place on a penal colony without weapons is such a disappointment as it returns to the boring English cinema.
4 though is a Joss Whedon revisit of 2. Whedon plagiarizes things well, but 4 does not match the gift of Cameron's screenplay. The cast of 2 was stellar, but 4 is weak and almost comic book, until enough of the cast is killed off. All of that combines with a weak finish by Whedon in his attempted to ramp up to the level of 2.
There are always holes in Alien. The holes in the first was the not inclusion of the Cocoon scene which explained everything, and Cameron evolved and expanded to perfection in 2.
In 2, as in 1, we never quite have it explained in the life cycle of the alien. We have a queen who lays eggs. The eggs hatch into something that looks like a crab, that then finds a host to implant an embryo into to grow, and it destroys the human. These seem to be future queens.
In 2 there appear to be alien drone males which guard her, and that seems to be what the species is like bees, but the crabs die after implanting There are a finite number of humans, so we never in 2 find out where these hundreds of aliens come from which are hunting the humans and killing them.
As I stated, there are holes in these stories.
3 has like holes in the alien which is burned by fire in 1 and 2, suddenly can survive molten metal and needs to be cooled of by water to be shattered.
3 also is horrid in killing off characters from 2 in making them expendable.
4 likewise has hole in it, as Sigourney Weaver is some clone, but a hybrid with the alien and the alien is a hybrid human. Whedon fails miserably as you have a queen which can lay thousands of eggs, but she devolves to having only one offspring. That is inefficient and we never find out where the 12 aliens come from on the ship Ripley is on, as she is Ripley 8, and only 2 Ripleys are hosts, so again where do the other 10 aliens come from who will not kill her as they think of her as mother.
Again in going back to 3, the alien on 3 is from a dog host. Ripley has an embryo in her so is not killed by the alien, so where does this Ripley Alien clone come from in DNA, as the science is wrong, as it would be like cloning Melania Trump and Barron would be inside just from her DNA.
Holes are what Alien is full of in questions which should have been asked, and demanded of by these lack luster writers in 1, 3 and 4. James Cameron did the best teleplay and directing, with a cast which made 2 the best.
Anyway in this review, I am pleased I got to watch this as an after Christmas movie, as 2 holds a special place for me as it was a hellish day. See the mother was hell bent for leather to go see her new grandchild before her sister got to see the kid. So she took her week off from school to take a road trip by bus. It began horrid in her car would not start due to the cold. I had to beg her to leave a check in case something went wrong, which it did in a hydraulic pipe broke on the loader, so I got to chop out that pipe in 18 degree weather in wet snowy cold. My pickup would barely start, and I had to track down who could cut a new pipe. When I got there a horny old man was following the woman around who cut the pipe and would not get the hell out of the way. When I paid for the hoses at another place the clerk there made me feel like I was kiting a check that the mother left. I spent my last 60 bucks cash on a battery, and got home, got the tractor together, fed cattle, put the battery in by 6, showered and made it in to record Alien.
Sounds like a better movie than Whedon wrote, but all the same Alien was a pleasurable time in a most horrid ass Christmas week which was the mother's making.
I would recommend the Quadrilogy, but I doubt I will watch 3 ever again. 1 might be for nothing else to watch, 4 to review again, but 2 is the movie I will return to like other favorites. It is a shame that this series could not have had James Cameron doing all of the screenplays and directing, and asking the questions Joss Whedon should have answered as a writer.
It would be nice to do a 5 in answering these questions and putting the stupid parts to rest, but that will probably never happen as Whedon killed the franchise in his incestuous scenes with Weaver and her grandson alien and of course the humanizing and murder of the alien grandson in thee most psychopathic way.
Oh well, Alien Quadrilogy.
Nuff Said
agtG
