Spoilers Alien: Questions

[Clint_L]

Prometheus wasn't great but I actually kind of liked Covenant. I don't remember Aliens, not having watched it in 20-odd years, and I've never seen Alien 3. I did watch the original Alien more recently, and it just felt agonizingly slow and kind of boring actually.

What was with 70s sci-fi movies being so bloody tedious? Think like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Are they better if you're high or something?

The original Star Wars is probably one of the few 70s sci-fi films I know of that isn't painfully slow and boring.

The thing with theme and character development is that they take time and effort. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a bad film, but if you see the other two as "bloody tedious," then I don't think we have much common ground when it comes to cinema.

Just rewatched Alien with my 16-year-old, and it just comes across as a crappy low-budget sci-fi movie with bad lighting, weird cinematography choices, bad sound, bad haircuts, and a man in a monster suit.

Okay. I refer you to the widespread critical consensus that it is a masterpiece, with which I fully concur, but art is subjective, so your opinion is valid. It's good to have opinions.

 

[Clint_L]

[deleted double post]

 

[pukunui]

The thing with theme and character development is that they take time and effort. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a bad film, but if you see the other two as "bloody tedious," then I don't think we have much common ground when it comes to cinema.

I can put up with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but yes, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was tedious. I did not enjoy watching it the first time and have no desire to watch it ever again. I'd rather watch Paul.

If I'm in the mood for slow, I'll read a book. I like my visual media to be faster paced.

Okay. I refer you to the widespread critical consensus that it is a masterpiece, with which I fully concur, but art is subjective, so your opinion is valid. It's good to have opinions.

Thanks. I do prefer to form my own opinions rather than go by what other people think.

 

[Morrus]

If I'm in the mood for slow, I'll read a book. I like my visual media to be faster paced.

I think it's fair to say that your movie tastes don't align particularly with most of us on here.

 

[pukunui]

I think it's fair to say that your movie tastes don't align particularly with most of us on here.

Meh. Wouldn’t be the first time. I’m used to being the odd one out.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The thing with theme and character development is that they take time and effort. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a bad film, but if you see the other two as "bloody tedious," then I don't think we have much common ground when it comes to cinema.

Agree 100 percent here. Star Trek the motion picture is just not on the same level as the other two, particularly 2001. I can certainly understand how someone might see 2001 and find it slow or dull, because it really takes its time immersing you in this experience, and it doesn't explain itself the way many other movies do. But when I see 2001 it is like getting lost in the architecture of a beautifully designed building. I don't think any other movie has made me feel the way 2001 has. And the idea it is exploring requires a long time line. It is a film that makes you feel awe and terror in equal measure. Not only is every frame of 2001 beautiful, but it is one of the most influencial science fiction films. It is up there with Star Wars in that it marks a shift in how space was depicted.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I would say the only horror movie that genuinely got to me (and I don’t mean it scared me; it just made me feel weird for a while afterward) was Event Horizon.

I find body horror and gore morbidly fascinating but they doesn’t scare me. Meanwhile, I cannot watch real-life surgeries, like open heart and brain ops. They just make me too nauseous.

I quite liked Event Horizon. I definitely don't put it on the same level as Alien but I do think it is an interesting horror movie set in space

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think it's fair to say that your movie tastes don't align particularly with most of us on here.

If I'm in the mood for slow, I'll read a book. I like my visual media to be faster paced.

I like a movie that takes its time. Sometimes the way newer movies are paced makes it harder for me to get into them (that doesn't mean they are bad, I just sometimes have difficulty with that style of pacing). The book for 2001 was actually kind of a quick read, it wasn't that dense at all. It can help to explain the concepts but the movie is taking advantage of the visual and audio elements of film in how it paces that story. Alien I think needs that slower pace as well to work. It is a haunted house movie so those really benefit I think from an unfolding of the story where the horror is slowly revealed. For the chest bursting scene to work you need to do a lot of establishing situation and characters, and you need the previous mess hall scene the pave the way.

 

[Ryujin]

I like a movie that takes its time. Sometimes the way newer movies are paced makes it harder for me to get into them (that doesn't mean they are bad, I just sometimes have difficulty with that style of pacing). The book for 2001 was actually kind of a quick read, it wasn't that dense at all. It can help to explain the concepts but the movie is taking advantage of the visual and audio elements of film in how it paces that story. Alien I think needs that slower pace as well to work. It is a haunted house movie so those really benefit I think from an unfolding of the story where the horror is slowly revealed. For the chest bursting scene to work you need to do a lot of establishing situation and characters, and you need the previous mess hall scene the pave the way.

Someone who doesn't like slow burn movies should absolutely stay away from things like "GATTACA." Sometimes you just need world building and if you don't know the characters, intimately, then you can't feel what you need to for the end of the story.

I would say that a horror movie that's fast paced is typically just a slasher flic. Horror takes time to build. You can certainly have action, in a horror movie, but you need the build-up to get there.

And ST:TMP suffers from "too many cooks" syndrome.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

For the chest bursting scene to work you need to do a lot of establishing situation and characters

These days everyone is expecting it, so it can’t have the same impact.