Tweet
I think people dismiss the third Alien movie too readily, if Fincher had been allowed to continue the movie without studio execs interfering with it, the story would have been more readily apparent.
The prisoners had essentially adopted a monastic lifestyle and then a woman enters their world and brings the "dragon", evil enters their "paradise" and destroys their harmony. Ripley then nobly sacrifices herself to prevent the evil from spreading.
Again, it's very mythic and Lovecraftian but most of the imagery that would have brought that across was cut from the cinema release.
The Assembly Cut makes some of it more apparent but the original notion of the three movies as a tryptych was screwed up by the studio execs telling the film crew how to make the movie (because all they really wanted was a crowd pleaser to pull more money in).
The idea of integrity/continuity of story was considered less important than making money.
The fourth movie I can live without.
My big concern with this new take is that it's a fan appeaser. Apparently it dismisses anything after the second movie. Some people are obviously going to like that but there was so much more to the story with the addition of Alien 3 in its intended form.
Some of you are probably thinking why I'm against fan appeasement films They cater to the lowest common denominator so they can pull as big a crowd as possible. Any notion of crafting a movie to tell a story is generally replaced by a formula calculated to get bums on seats. They're movies made by economists, not by storytellers.
Unfortunately these days a lot of the general public don't want to think when they watch a movie, hence the general dislike for Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning - it's a horror story more than a simplistic action movie and I reckon a lot of the audience didn't understand that (I'm mean for goodness sakes, it's another retelling of Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" but then, nobody bothers to read novels anymore, let alone see the connections... )
I prefer the story, otherwise I might as well just stick my thumb up my arse, my mind in neutral and watch the latest Waste-of-Skin Anderson/Michael Bay Aliens Vs. Predators Vs. Battleship Vs. Transformers explosion-fest and believe that I am entertained.
The prisoners had essentially adopted a monastic lifestyle and then a woman enters their world and brings the "dragon", evil enters their "paradise" and destroys their harmony. Ripley then nobly sacrifices herself to prevent the evil from spreading.
Again, it's very mythic and Lovecraftian but most of the imagery that would have brought that across was cut from the cinema release.
The Assembly Cut makes some of it more apparent but the original notion of the three movies as a tryptych was screwed up by the studio execs telling the film crew how to make the movie (because all they really wanted was a crowd pleaser to pull more money in).
The idea of integrity/continuity of story was considered less important than making money.
The fourth movie I can live without.
My big concern with this new take is that it's a fan appeaser. Apparently it dismisses anything after the second movie. Some people are obviously going to like that but there was so much more to the story with the addition of Alien 3 in its intended form.
Some of you are probably thinking why I'm against fan appeasement films They cater to the lowest common denominator so they can pull as big a crowd as possible. Any notion of crafting a movie to tell a story is generally replaced by a formula calculated to get bums on seats. They're movies made by economists, not by storytellers.
Unfortunately these days a lot of the general public don't want to think when they watch a movie, hence the general dislike for Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning - it's a horror story more than a simplistic action movie and I reckon a lot of the audience didn't understand that (I'm mean for goodness sakes, it's another retelling of Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" but then, nobody bothers to read novels anymore, let alone see the connections... )
I prefer the story, otherwise I might as well just stick my thumb up my arse, my mind in neutral and watch the latest Waste-of-Skin Anderson/Michael Bay Aliens Vs. Predators Vs. Battleship Vs. Transformers explosion-fest and believe that I am entertained.
).
Comment