Worse than Aliens???...

[JOE SOAP]

I've seen it on the big screen & as I said it's really only influential because of it's visuals & it definitely deserves credit for that, even the Dredd film made over a decade later couldn't beat it.

Ghost in the shell does a better job with the same kind of themes though.

[Funt Solo]

Fuck, Jim - that's a bit too weird.  Most of the opinion I spouted about why the Aliens Director's Cut is worse than the original is (heavily) influenced by an article I read in a magazine - and I have a stack of Aliens magazines sitting in the back room.  It's just possible that I'm repeating your opinions, only to have you agree with me.

I feel amused and slightly ill.

---

Pan & scan is just depressing - the amount of the intended shot that is lost is awful.  Thank Grud for DVD.

[johnone]

Starship Troopers A satire that the Americans didn't get?????

Ok I know it's easy take the piss out of them at times but the Yanks are not completely thick you know!

I was in Film School in New York when Troopers was released , it was being pushed by everyone involved (Including Verhoven!!!!!) as an action adventure , I actually came home to Ireland about the same time it was released here in Europe to find Verhoven claiming it was supposed to be a  "Satire!", I guess he only realised it was a comedy from the thousands of Americans who came out of the cinemas laughing in derison!

As for Blade Runner ... I first saw it when I was 11 years old , it was  the big St Stephens day Movie (Boxing Day In the U.K) on RTE , It blew me away , I had never seen a Sci-Fi filmm like it , over the years My opinion has slightly changed as I do think it is flawed however I saw the 1992 Directors cut in the cinema and all I can say is  if there is a new cut coming GO SEE IT!!!! Shallow it may be to some but visually on the big screen , still one of the most beautiful films you'll ever see.
   

[JOE SOAP]

++Ok I know it's easy take the piss out of them at times but the Yanks are not completely thick you know!

Well they gave us Curb your enthusiasm and may other dark comedies so it's a bit of a misrepresentation on our part.

[Buttonman]

I hate the arrogant supposition that we are smarter than the Americans. They gave us Seinfeld, Larry Sanders and Curb Your Enthusiasm. We have produced 'My Hero' with James Dreyfuss. Who's the spanners?

[Funt Solo]

But they elected Bush, twice.  You can see where the confusion comes from.  (Don't mention Blair.)

[Art]

Cough. Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair.

[Buttonman]

I think it was proven that he didn't get the most votes the second time. So well done George for having Jeb in position together with your pals in the supreme court.

[I, Cosh]

I don't think a lot of those ideas are actually presented visually in the film or exlored in the story in any substantial way that works dramatically. They are ideas that people have read into the film by it's conjunction with the source material and Philip K dick's own obsessions.

If they aren't presented in the film then how on Earth can anyone ever pick up on these themes? Anyone who doesn't grasp that Roy Batty is the main character and the question "what constitutes life?" is central to the story would probably be certified dead. For sure, these things  become more evident with repeated viewings, but the same could be said for any book/film/whatever.

As everyone's said, see it in the pictures if you get the chance. I remember seeing it when the Director's Cut was briefly released: what I loved then and still remember it for is primarily things that can be seen in just about any Ridley Scott film. Those amazing shots of the city are echoed in the descent into Osaka in Black Rain and the pan into the Coliseum in Gladiator.

Just thought I'd add that I've never understood what the problem is with the original gumshoe narration. For me it adds something to the whole that I find lacking in the Director's Cut.

[Emperor]

To be fair, I read the book adaptation long before I saw the film, which made the film a bit of a letdown. The book was also based (as far as I can tell) on the director's cut as well- which reduced the film I saw to a caricature of the original 'Alien', and felt like a bad adaptation of a pretty good book called 'Aliens' (yes, I know it was the other way around), with lots of gung-ho, crappy overacting- particularly by the female marine and wotsizname that was in twister (Bill Paxton?).

Yes the spin-offs are often better than the films. ADF's novelisations are great and his Aliens is probably the best of the bunch. The AvP comics are all better than film but that probably didn't need saying. A lot of people also felt that the story in Mark Verheiden's comics was a better continuation of the story than Alien 3 turned out to be although it did go through developmental hell (I quite liked the sound of some of the madder ideas they had for it like a group of monks on a wooden moon that was shrinking as they used up the wood).

[Steve Green]

Regarding Aliens...

I always thought that the colonist was infected by a Queen Alien, which escaped and then laid eggs.

The problem is how you get more curious colonists to stick their head in an egg - I guess you could get a couple of maintenance workers stumbling across the new batch of eggs in the reactor, and it escalates from that.

- Steve

[JOE SOAP]

As I've said I have seen it in the cinema, it  makes no difference to the story which has been inflated somewhat over the years by comparisons with the book, a completely different thing and all it's own mess of ideas. The themes are only paid lip-service in the film, that's my point, you don't need repeated viewings of the film because it ain't that rewarding storywise. It's not Chinatown, although it has attention to aesthetic detail.

And Scott's seeming afterthought that Deckard is now a replicant confuses matters even more. It strikes me he never really knew or cared what the film was about and was more interested in how it all looked.

I've read so many contradictory statements he's made about the film over the years, as the cult grew, that I just don't trust what he says. There was always a voice-over intended for the film as can be seen from early scripts written before production no matter what he claims to have intended afterwards.

[Buttonman]

Not worth it's own thread but I saw Deja-Vu today and it was quite enjoyable.

Spoilers>>>>>>>>>>>>>

For a while I thought they were going the Alpha route of 'time claimimg his own' with lots of avaoided events becoming true through different means.

But then...

BIGGEST SPOILER>>>>>

Denzel saved the day and everyone's lives. Except his own. Except 'future' Denzil showed up as present Denzil and all was well. Entertaining but the folding space and seeing 4 days and six hours in the future once only and you can't record it McGuffin took some swallowing.