Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[dookiex]

Originally Posted by Jay444

Wow, I think you need to need watch the movie again because you have completely missed the biggest theme of Aliens, which was Ripley's relationship with Newt (which you haven't mentioned once). Ripley's character was driven by Newt because the Alien robbed her of her chance to mother her own daughter (see the deleted scene). To think "it was just about the Marines" is like saying "PT was about Jar Jar's journey from dofus to Senator." You need to pay better attention when watching films. This theme is NO WHERE in Avatar btw.

Also, I would LOVE to see a link showing Cameron saying 'the chicana character' to describe the woman he had in three of his movies. "Wolfies just fine dear. Where are you?"

No, I know that there are these great story arcs underneath the action, the problem was that Cameron didn't do much with them. He introduced the elements briefly but then as the film progressed, he kind of brushed them under the carpet and just made a hour and half or so of "hoo rah we're generic space marines!" That's the issue I have most with Aliens, there's a lot of waste with the narrative. Whilst the original Aliens was all about the acting and atmosphere, Cameron's Aliens came off more as an exercise in making actions scenes.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by Shaft Windu

What's there to defend? I have made my point! The battle on Naboo is a fun with JarJars mishaps and the Gungans fighting the battle droids. If this is a Video-Game than the battle Stormtroopers vs Ewoks is Halloween-cosplay-party. I have made my point about video games like "Battlefield" and "Medal Of Honor" also. I'm more interested in human drama than in military tactics and gritty gunfights.

That's absolutely right.

Both battles sucked and for largely the same reasons.

There was no drama whatsoever in either of these so-called battles and that was only underscored by the lame attempts at comic relief (what exactly was the comedy intended to relieve anyway? the mounting dramatic tension? please).

[Moviefan2k4]

I've often heard it said, and it still applies today: "There's no such thing as an original idea, just an original take on an existing idea."

[The Doof]

Originally Posted by Hatter

Luke Vader killed your father. How would he know? He just left Anakin to die as Anakin.

Darth Vader: A tremor in the Force. The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old master.

Darth Vader: I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now *I* am the master.


If you pay attention actually, Lucas hints at it several times in A New Hope. Vader admits Kenobi kicked his butt the first time as an apprentice. If Ben later faced Vader as suit Vader for the first time and beat him, why would he run off to Tatooine? He would have won. Those references don't work anymore if we use your version.

A sith lord tells you to kill everyone but doesn't assign you a name? Please.

So we're supposed to watch a prequel trilogy about Anakin for three movies just to see him perhaps die, skip all those references in ANH and still be clueless to the fact Vader is Anakin? Please. It can't be done. Accept it.

Yeah, yeah. I've actually thought about those quotes before. More than I'd like to admit.


1. BEN would of course know Anakin is Vader. WE wouldn't. Yeah, you could figure it out, but there wouldn't be on-screen proof of anything. Of course ben would know. Of course Yoda would know. Of course Owen would know. We would know Ben is LYING to Luke, but we wouldn't know why - to piss him off? Inspire him to join the fight? doesn't want Luke to know his father turned? This last one is probably what we would assume. We wouldn't know why Ben is lying - not for sure - not if we thought Anakin was DEAD. I would have just preferred an ATTEMPT was made to keep Vader's true identity a mystery.

2. I don't get it - what's the problem? Obi Wan says Vader was his pupil. REMEMBER? we wouldn't have any reason to doubt this. Obi Wan's lying (see #1) - if I had written the PT, Obi-wan would have had a group of pupils at the same time. This would have allowed you to see how much better Anakin was. And maybe more than one turned to the dark side. I hate this whole "Always two there are" crap. I hate the whole messiah thing.

3. see #2. The thing about writing is: there is always a way.

The PT would then seem to be more Obi-Wan's story - and then only at the end of Empire would we realize that it is actually Anakin's. It could have worked if there was another pupil who falls even harder and faster than Anakin and we end up assuming he is Vader. Maybe Anakin doesn't even turn fully until after he falls into a lava pit. There were a hundred better ways to do this. I would have preferred something like this over what we got. Same with Yoda - he should have been referred to, but not seen in the PT.

[Mavrick]

Pretty much everything ever is a case of "The Simpsons Already Did It" Even all the stuf the Simpsons did was taken from even older stuff before that. Nothing is orriginal. Even the argumants about the films are just the same points repeated over and over again by different people. Even at the dawn of Hollywood film makers wolud have drawn ideas from books they had read. It's practically impossible to find something that is original. So moaning about things not being original is just, so. Unoriginal. Just like this very post of mine

[dookiex]

Originally Posted by Jay444

Wow, I think you need to need watch the movie again because you have completely missed the biggest theme of Aliens, which was Ripley's relationship with Newt, or lost motherhood (which you haven't mentioned once). Ripley's character was driven by Newt because the Alien robbed her of her chance to mother her own daughter (see the deleted scene). To think "it was just about the Marines" is like saying "PT was about Jar Jar's journey from dofus to Senator." You need to pay better attention when watching films. This theme is NO WHERE in Avatar btw.

Also, I would LOVE to see a link showing Cameron saying 'the chicana character' to describe the woman he had in three of his movies. "Wolfies just fine dear. Where are you?"

Anyway, I am going to go watch Jar Jar's fun mishaps in 1080p HD with 6.1 sound!

The interview is on the Anthology set I believe. Else wise, you can youtube it here:

James Cameron on Aliens - YouTube

I was honestly shocked to hear Cameron refer to that character as the "chicana" but it's very telling as to why those marines turned out to be cookie cutter generic b-movie drop outs.

[Sponge-worthy]

Originally Posted by dookiex

Parallels between Avatar and Aliens are just too blatantly obvious to not take notice of though. Seriously, it runs far deeper than "there's a mech suit vs alien battle in both." It's almost as if Cameron made Avatar as a counter point to Aliens. The reintroduction of the mech suit in Avatar and bringing Sigourney back to do Avatar is most obviously not something where Cameron is just doing it and going "oh, why not." Same can be said of The Abyss. It's as if Cameron made his only trilogy of similar films here.

If

[Show spoiler]Sigourney Weaver had fallen in love with the Alien queen

, then you might have something. I think those two films are vastly different. In 'Aliens,' the reliance on technology is brought to the forefront (the marines' dependence on their gear, and then their struggle to overcome its absence; the heroic turn of the android character; the general questions of just how far humans can push themselves out to other worlds and our capabilities thereby), and as such 'Aliens' is pure science fiction. Whereas, 'Avatar' really is just a classic indigenous opera--all the 'mech suits,' space ships, and guns are really just a backdrop for a retelling of a classic fairytale. In that regard, I don't really consider 'Avatar' to be science fiction at all.

[dookiex]

Originally Posted by Sponge-worthy

If Sigourney Weaver had fallen in love with the Alien queen, then you might have something. I think those two films are vastly different. In 'Aliens,' the reliance on technology is brought to the forefront (the marines' dependence on their gear, and then their struggle to overcome its absence; the heroic turn of the android character; the general questions of just how far humans can push themselves out to other worlds and our capabilities thereby), and as such 'Aliens' is pure science fiction. Whereas, 'Avatar' really is just a classic indigenous opera--all the 'mech suits,' space ships, and guns are really just a backdrop for a retelling of a classic fairytale. In that regard, I don't really consider 'Avatar' to be science fiction at all.

Again, I can see how Star Wars has a lot of narrative arches to be dissected but where the heck do you people find all this "depth" in Aliens? Cameron implies a lot of it in the beginning of Aliens but it all soon gets lost in favour of the horrendous space marines action spectacle. In all honesty, the original Alien and Alien 3 both had much more meat in the bones in regards to narrative depth. Aliens just turned into a Michael Bay movie even before it had reached the midway point.

[Sponge-worthy]

Originally Posted by dookiex

Again, I can see how Star Wars has a lot of narrative arches to be dissected but where the heck do you people find all this "depth" in Aliens? Cameron implies a lot of it in the beginning of Aliens but it all soon gets lost in favour of the horrendous space marines action spectacle. In all honesty, the original Alien and Alien 3 both had much more meat in the bones in regards to narrative depth. Aliens just turned into a Michael Bay movie even before it had reached the midway point.

I guess we agree to disagree. I would put the entire prequel trilogy on a much closer level with Michael Bay's work than I would Cameron's films.

[dookiex]

Originally Posted by Sponge-worthy

I guess we agree to disagree. I would put the entire prequel trilogy on a much closer level with Michael Bay's work than I would Cameron's films.

The entire PT still had more narrative depth than Aliens. Not saying that the narrative is good, just saying that there's more there. Each of the episodes in the PT however might actually have less narrative than Aliens but as a whole (which I really feel is the only way to take in the PT), there's way more there to dissect, criticize, enjoy/hate, etc. then there is in Aliens. There's just so much more that I thought Aliens could have been especially when dealing with the Ripley character. It started off great as we got to know more about Ripley and then it's like Cameron went "ok, enough about her, let's get the marines in here and have the guns ready!"

[Shaft Windu]

Originally Posted by El_Jay

Whereas Lucas is known for original ideas and not stealing wholesale from Kurosawa, Flash Gordon, Wayne/Ford westerns, Leone westerns, Gone With The Wind, Jack Kirby comics, etc. etc.

Lucas has never had an idea even half as original as say, Strange Days, or The Terminator.

Even Cameron's "brainless action movies" like True Lies are a lot more entertaining than most of his contemporaries.

WOW! eh... just WOW!
This was certainly a "brainless action comment"

[Sponge-worthy]

Originally Posted by dookiex

The entire PT still had more narrative depth than Aliens. Not saying that the narrative is good, just saying that there's more there. Each of the episodes in the PT however might actually have less narrative than Aliens but as a whole (which I really feel is the only way to take in the PT), there's way more there to dissect, criticize, enjoy/hate, etc. then there is in Aliens. There's just so much more that I thought Aliens could have been especially when dealing with the Ripley character. It started off great as we got to know more about Ripley and then it's like Cameron went "ok, enough about her, let's get the marines in here and have the guns ready!"

You did watch the second half of 'Aliens' right?

[Colonel Kurtz]

Originally Posted by Shaft Windu

In Alien we were shown a believable and interseting future. In Aliens there are just 80s marines running around and blasting puppets as if they weren't supposed to have acid as blood. It's dumb and dated.

Oh, so what you are saying is that astronauts hauling freight in 70s overalls are more believable than marines running around in 80s uniforms. Also you must have missed the part where several people fell victim to the acid that you believe doesn't matter in Aliens.

Originally Posted by dookiex

Simple, just make a comparison with Avatar. Voila, practically the same movie. Heck, you can even just look at it this way, does one really need to have seen Alien to watch Aliens? Most people who have watched Aliens really just started off with that movie and then went back to watch the original Alien much later. So in turn, Aliens isn't much of a sequel as it was more of a reboot. Ripley was also underused as a character in Aliens, the bulk of it was focused on those god awful space marines. Hypersleep chamber and evil corporation (Weyland), how the heck do you need to be in the Alien universe for those elements to be in a movie? Heck, there's been MANY hypersleep chambers before even the original Alien introduced it. As for having the aliens, that's probably the only connection Aliens really had with the original Alien. Apart from that, Aliens might just as well been called something completely different and been just as successful. Oh wait, Cameron already did that, he made Avatar.

Let get me this straight: you believe that Aliens isn't really set in the Alien universe, because it has a plot that was used by other movies? And the recurrence of a lead character, the namegiving aliens, the comany, the planet, the downed alien ship, the birthing process, the face huggers, the eggs, the realistic approach with the dropship that is similar to the realistic approach with the freighter etc don't mean anything?

By your weird definition it can just as easily be said that Alien doesn't really take place in the alien universe. After all, most of its set design, the space scenes and even the music are taken straight from 2001: A Space Odyssey and there are plenty of movies with a similar plot where people get picked off one by one by a mysterious creature (The Thing, Doom etc.). Everytime I think I read the strangest opinion on the internet someone tops it. Ridiculous.

Oh, and just for protocol: the plot of Avatar has nothing to do with the plot of Aliens, especially not when I apply your loose definition of what constitutes (required) similarities.

Originally Posted by dookiex

Not really. Aliens is REMEMBERED as being great and many a times when people say it's great, it's based on those initial impressions of the film rather then the film standing on its own. Star Wars on the other hand, love it or hate it, is constantly being judged on what it is in the here and now more so than the "It's a great movie because I had a great time watching it when it first came out" (which is basically what people are actually saying

LOL!

Right, because no one ever watches Aliens anymore or has bought the excellent Blu-ray set that came out last year. You must be insane.

[Jay444]

Originally Posted by dookiex

No, I know that there are these great story arcs underneath the action, the problem was that Cameron didn't do much with them. He introduced the elements briefly but then as the film progressed, he kind of brushed them under the carpet and just made a hour and half or so of "hoo rah we're generic space marines!" That's the issue I have most with Aliens, there's a lot of waste with the narrative. Whilst the original Aliens was all about the acting and atmosphere, Cameron's Aliens came off more as an exercise in making actions scenes.

Do you consider the Battle of Endor (Ewoks vs. Stormtroopers) or the Battle of Naboo (Gungans vs. Trade Federation) as a waste of narrative as well? Those two battles share something very similar to Aliens, which is the technological superior force is done in by a seemingly primative army. At no point did it seem the Marines (after their first encounter with the Alien colony) were in the slightest bit "Hoo Rah!" You can't get much more defeated and helpless than being trapped and hunted like they were, which is VERY much like the first Alien. The major exception here is we got see Ripley to do what we want ALL main characters in horror movies to do. Fight back. The character of Ellen Ripley as made in Aliens turned a corner for women in cinema. I think Cameron did plenty with the character.

Okay, enough of Cameron here as he is not the most popular director (personality wise). Anyway, I think you are off on Aliens, but to each his own.

[P@t_Mtl]

Keep it up guys! We are 275 post away from catching the Criterion thread

[Gaius Marius]

Originally Posted by Jay444

Lucas should have made more a big deal about WHY the Separatists were leaving the Republic (high taxes on trade and corruption in the Senate). Hell, as it stands we hardly get that explanation. Would have created MUCH more moral ambiguity and would have also made the audience question if the Jedi were actually on the wrong side thus buying much more into Anakin's questioning of the judgment of the Jedi Console. Instead, all I thought was: "God, this kid whines a lot about nothing."

Actually, I really like that. As I was rewatching RotS, I kept thinking that Anakin's ideals could have made for a good reason to turn him. Instead of just not wanting to see Padme die, Palpatine could have corrupted him into thinking the Jedi/Senate were evil (they did this a bit, but it could have been more fleshed out) and that Anakin was acting in the 'good of the Republic' in eliminating these problems. Exploring the reason the Separatists wanted to leave the Republic would have been a great addition (perhaps giving them legitimate reasons for leaving - thus adding some ambiguity to them. Heck, that could even have made the Seperatists sympathetic!). I think that urge to 'fix' the Republic with Palpatine would have made a good primary catalyst for Anakin's turn (and helped with the animosity towards Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi), with Anakin's inability to handle loss the secondary.

I can see Anakin the 'Chosen One' having the ego believing he was right and could accomplish Palpatine's goals, which leads him to believe he is above the Jedi Order and the Senate.

[Jay444]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Keep it up guys! We are 275 post away from catching the Criterion thread

The only way to do it is to talk about James Cameron apparently. Imagine if the Star Wars films got the Criterion Treatment?!?! Both threads would explode...

[HD Goofnut]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Keep it up guys! We are 275 post away from catching the Criterion thread

I have nothing against Criterion personally, but about 80% of their films bore me to death. I am looking forward to their release of 12 Angry Men though.

[dookiex]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Keep it up guys! We are 275 post away from catching the Criterion thread

Like you've mentioned earlier. There can NEVER be any other view than the Aliens fanatics view. Just like there can NEVER be any other view than the Star Wars fanatics view. Apparently to the Aliens fanatics, there's just oh so much depth to the Aliens narrative. Aliens is NOWHERE near great and full of depth narrative in cinema history and that doesn't mean that Cameron can't do it, he's done it with The Abyss and he's done it with Titanic. Sad how headstrong the fanatics are.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by Jay444

The only way to do it is to talk about James Cameron apparently. Imagine if the Star Wars films got the Criterion Treatment?!?! Both threads would explode...

Good lord I don't even want to think about that....original version of the first three Star Wars on the Criterion collection, all restored....I swear the Internet would explode