MovieChat Forums > Aliens (1986) Discussion > First Time Watching in 2023... Not very ...

First Time Watching in 2023... Not very good at all and SO so cheesey


I only saw Alien a couple of years ago but I really loved that, and can see why it's seen a s a classic for sure.

I was of course aware of Aliens, but I had heard it was more of an action (even war like) movie, and I was never really in the mood for that.

But tonight I have just watched it, and I just thought it was pretty poor really, worse than I was expecting...

1. The Special FX look pretty dated at times, the green screen stuff particularly.

2. The girl is really irritating.

3. Nothing much happens for 45 minutes, except for a Really cheesey jump scare with the cat, and an obvious revealing Bishop being a robot... and then they find the aliens in jars and the girl.

4. Then nothing much happens until.the hour mark when there's a bit of shooitng and that.then some chatting...then the movie.contiues like this until the "endings"...

5. And those endings....my gawd they were bad, and the worst of Cheesy Cameron, and the Alien being fooled by virtually a "Look over there' move, and of course he would grab her foot as she climbed up the ladder etc...
That last 20.minutes or so was dross, Cameron at his worst.

6. Sigourney and the Bishop guy gave a good performance, but that is just about the only positives I took from this movie... I can't believe Alien 3 can be much worse that this can it (?)

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The appeal is that it takes you out of the helpless horror aspect and puts you in a feeling that you are able to fight back. Prior to this the xenomorph was an unstoppable hunter. In the sequel you get a rise out of seeing these previously unstoppable creatures getting killed by committed humans.

As a sequel it increases the stakes by revealing a large mass of the adversary instead of one simple lurker. Cameron emphasizes this by having his protagonists be the military(marines) against his "army" of antagonists. Similar to how Predator has a combat elite fight another combat elite or a detective tracker fight a hunter tracker.

The marines are a delightful motely crew of clashing personalities which make you sympathize with them even more. Personally I could never see myself as Ripley, but picturing myself as Hicks or Hudson, yes.

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Great movie. One of the top 5 action/scifi films of the 80s.

Discussion over.

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Agreed.

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How old are you?

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