FT3 Hey! Hans! They gave you a pitchfork already!
HRG [laughs] Yes, I'm pretty much in charge down here!
FT3 What's hell actually like?
HRG Well, it's better than Switzerland! It's honest. No filthy, rotting secrets hidden under a blanket of snow. And I have to say the place looks like it should after I redesigned it. That Hieronymous Bosch look was so passé!
FT3 You have some albums for us?
HRG Surely! They're later, solo albums from Tommy Roe, Andy Kim, Ron Dante ... you don't see these so much, a change from the usual Kassenatz-Katz material.
FT3 You play these over the Tannoy down there, Hans?
HRG Heck, no! They get yodeling, and alpenhorn, traditional Swiss accordian folk songs. Mostly yodeling. For eternity! [laughs] Hey - got to let you go, Farq - busload of Chinese just came in. Always a laugh to see their reaction!
Ron Dante appears thru th' auspices of JCC, to whom our thanks!
Giger you say? I always found this interview with him chucklarious https://voca.ro/1hJjjnGmlN7g
ReplyDeleteThis is great! Who is it?
DeleteSuperego podcast, series 3 episode 5 http://www.gosuperego.com/podcast-episode-3-5/
DeleteAlien.
ReplyDeleteLikewise I'm sure! I never really understood my friends' enthusiasm for Aliens. Great Foley work on that movie, though. We had a tape of the soundtrack (everything but the visuals) running as background ambience in the studio I worked in. There was this bit where a spinning metal pipe whomped across a concrete floor ... we liked that.
DeleteWhat a write up.
ReplyDeleteAlso: you're wrong.
It's Aliens all the way.
What a fun, fabulous movie that is. As a matter of fact, I just rewatched it last week à propos de nothing, just because it's so awesome.
We technically shouldn't need to make the choice as they're both great and are both renewing their respective genres. Because of cause one thing in your preferance of one over the other might be genre. One is, as famously noted by, well, everyone, a haunted house in space movie. The other is essentially a war movie in space.
For me, it ain't even just that. I'm all for horror movies, much more than rah-rah-war films. The difference really is in the replay value that that switch of genre brings. The grunts in Aliens might all be dumbasses and cobbled together from cliché, but they are such fun to hang out with. Compare that to the miserable, morose group of glorifies space truckers in Alien and tell me honestly who's more fun to hang out with?
Because hang out with these folks you do, a lot. So you better check the company you keep. When I was younger I had a hard time getting into Alien because of its - ahem - meticulous pacing. And of course since there are so many fabtastic and memorable action set pieces in Aliens you remember it as this long all thrills action extravaganza.
But Aliens is structurally almost designed as a companion piece to Alien, in that we don't get to see the titular beast until way, way into the movie.
In the director's cut of Aliens (the best way to see it, though debates rage about that as well), I checked the timer, it's more than 70 minutes before the first alien attack. But you feel like it might've been 30 to 40, as everything just flies by. Whereas in Alien you can feel every minute of that first hour.
So forget about the fabulous matte painting and miniature work, the amazing sound design that Farq pointed out, or the aforementioned action scenes.
Aliens is the most fun of the franchise and easily the most rewatchable. So, there.
OBG, it's rarely - if ever - that something I read on the internet - especially a comment on a blog - causes me to re-evaluate a long-held opinion to the extent of ditching it completely and adopting a totally new stance. The densely-argued and persuasive case you make for Aliens being the better movie is not, perhaps predictably, that rare event. Your view that we "shouldn't need to make the choice" however, demonstrates a keen and waspish sense of humor! Of course we need to! In order to WIN WIN WIN this bumper pack o' gum! But you knew that, you rascal!
DeleteAlien is the better movie, because it's more good.
No Alienz as part of this debate?
ReplyDeleteAlso, No Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, no care re bubblegum music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozqfOzqMvlQ
Alien, not a fan of the franchise.
ReplyDeleteI never saw Aliens. Was never a big fan of the horror or space genres.
DeleteNot a fan either, pmac.
DeleteNot to mention the nerdgasm of Star Wars, Star Trek, Comic-Con, Cosplay etc. etc.
They make so dizzy, my head is spinnin'
Like a whirlpool, it never ends.
Yep. I rememebr when the first Star Wars movie was released. I enjoyed it but a few weeks later, I ran into a guy who literally was trying to make a religion out of it. That's when I first realized that people were wound just a little too tight about this.
DeleteCheck this out: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38368526
DeleteGood lawd!!!!
DeleteAnd meanwhile in the Yewessay:https://www.templeofthejediorder.org/
DeleteUh...guys. We can agree that the "Star Wars" and the "Alien" sagas are officially both classified as science fiction, but couldn't be more apart from each other, right?! I mean, "Star Wars" is sci-fi in name only (where's the science?) and is famously a swashbuckler in space clothes.
DeleteThey're fine for wht they are, which is adventure movies for kids. It gets ridiculous when all these fifty to sixty year olds who grew up with them treat them as if they are high art or some sort of masterpiece.
As for the Alien franchise, if it ain't your cup of alcoholic beverage of choice, that's fine, but there's no denying the craftsmanship nor influence on the genre that the first two have. It's a shame that parts three and four can not hold that level. Number three is such a cynical bummer after the fun times (well, relatively speaking...) of "Aliens"...
Agreed, One Buck Guy.
DeleteI prefer science fiction books to films.
Star Wars sci-fi in name only? That's all a genre is, a name, a category. Star Wars has space ships, aliens, ray guns, distant galaxies - if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI grew up reading science fiction. There's always been an element of trite escapism in it, but the good stuff was written by smart people for smart people.
ReplyDeleteStar Wars stuff is fun but has virtually no science fiction content shaping it's narrative. It consciously draws from archetypal heroic literature and that's why some people find id so compelling.
At the time the portrayal of the crew in Alien was seen as refreshing because it didn't consist of standard issue heroic types.
I like James Cameron movies a lot and he has obvious strengths as a storyteller, but he also has obvious weaknesses. Consistently strong and uncliched character development is among them.
Psych, you're right on that last point, but at the heigth of his power - which for me was the double knockout punch of The Terminator and Aliens - his characters could overcome the clichés and the thinly sketched character work mainkly due to the strength of the direction and the way these films propulsed themselves forward.
ReplyDeleteCompare that to the character work in "Titanic" and especially "Avatar" where the clichés are so thick and horrible that the movies can't overcome them. It also doesn't help that the movies are three hours long, so the energy of his first films simply isn't there and the dialogues and clichés stand out so much more.
Here's a very good article on why the minor characters in "Aliens" overcome the limits of their simpke characterisation:
http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/1069-how-aliens-set-the-gold-standard-for-supporting-ca/
Doesn't matter that his characters are clichés. What matters is the story. My wife, a Thai, and as blessedly remote from Western culture as it's possible to be, loved Titanic and Avatar (huge success world-wide, only the public loves him, etc.) and was surprised when I told her the same man made them both. Cameron is the story-teller Lucas believes himself to be. As to their length - the audiences didn't notice, stayed riveted in their seats to the end while the critics got antsy.
DeleteIt's not strictly an issue of running times, but there's a difference in enduring short bursts of clichéd dialogue in a snappy 1h45 movie or enduring lengthy bad clichéd dialogue in a movie that's running three or three and a half hours.
DeleteAs for the point of universal stories making "Titanic" and "Avatar" such huge sucesses - yes, indeed. But is that really that great? These films aren't antipodes to "Star Wars", they're more or less a direct continuation: find an archetype of story and don't stray too far from it.
In many ways, the universality of Cameron's two biggest (but clearly not best) paved the way for the superhero spectacles you so abhore: Make a movie that can be seen and enjoyed by anyone anywhere from Texas to Toulouse to Thailand. Sand off any edges that might not appeal to someone somewhere.
The fact that nowadays it's +200 m $ tentpoles or nothing has a lot to do with how "foreign" box office has become so important that you basically only can tell simple, universal stories at that price tag, so you can literally sell it anywhere.
Unfortunately, it is. That's why we get ten films of Fast and Furious, five Transformers (when no one asked for more than one, if even that) and endless superhero movies. Not to mention tentpole action movies like "The Meg" where you have your token Chinese character so your new blockbuster audience is happy.
DeleteYou can't import Martin Scorsese movies into China, but you sure as hell can import the aforementioned franchises...
Alien, leave us not forget, wasn't part of any "franchise" when it was made. It did something remarkable for its time - fused horror and SF successfully, something not often accomplished. The dirty, untidy, irritable, sarcastic crew was a new thing (as Psychfan notes) and made the setting that much more real. The matte paintings and monster-suit (pre-CGI) were brilliant, and the shock on seeing the monster was enjoyed world-wide. Good, old-fashioned movie-making. Aliens was something else again, and where the "franchise" (actually a plain old series) began. Brilliantly made, it lacked the shock value of the first because it echoed it, and assumed that two monsters are twice as scary as one. It still stands on its own as a fine movie (I'm a big fan of Cameron's work), but the rest of the series leaves me (and just about everybody else, apparently) cold.
ReplyDeleteBoth movies are better than Star Wars, during which I fell asleep. It's notable for paving the way for the endless rubber-head CGI superhero movies that effectively killed off cinema as an art form. Pointless being snooty about cinema as art - during the seventies, it got there without sacrificing entertainment. The Raging Bulls and Easy Riders became Happy Meal toys for a brain-dead generation, thanks in large part to George Lucas, one of the worst film-makers to waste celluloid.
The dirty, untidy, irritable, sarcastic crew was a new thing (as Psychfan notes) and made the setting that much more real."
DeleteNot sure they were dirty but Psychfan's point
"At the time the portrayal of the crew in Alien was seen as refreshing because it didn't consist of standard issue heroic types."
is true, in that you can't peg the hero two minutes after meeting everyone. As a matter of fact, Ripley is essentially a background character for the first part of the film and Sigourney Weaver was unknown at the time, so audiences couldn't know that she would end up as the heroine of the film. She only gradually becomes the heroine mainly because there is no one else left.
I think this worked like gangbusters at the time and less for later audiences who knew what was up. It's not quite the same deal, but a little like the shock in "Psycho" where the protagonist gets offed a third into the movie.
Perhaps I was ill-advised to use the word "dirty". Woould you accept one of the following, as a replacement?
Delete- Scruffy
- Skunky
- Grubby
- Soap-dodging
- Inattentive to personal grooming regime
We're SO close to reaching an agreement here, I'm prepared to compromise.
The Nostromo itself was dirty, in contrast to the spotless spacecraft of yore (yore what?)
DeleteI will probably regret wading into this debate. FWIW, I love both Alien and Aliens, and I quite liked Prometheus. I'm not defending Lucas as a filmmaker. But in terms of Lucas vs Cameron, it seems like Farq wants to have it both ways.
You can decry "the endless rubber-head CGI superhero movies that effectively killed off cinema as an art form," but aren't Avatar and Terminator equally culpable?
"The Raging Bulls and Easy Riders became Happy Meal toys for a brain-dead generation, thanks in large part to George Lucas" ...and to blockbusters like Terminator, Titanic and Avatar.
of yore or over jonder?
Deletewell, it's true that on one hand defending Avatar, on the other decrying rubber-head CGI is...delicate, considering 98 3/5 of the film is CGI'd and about 93 1/7 is either cliché or stupid...
Just leave Terminator out of it. The first and best has obviously no CGI, but shows like Aliens what to do with matte paintings and miniatures. Only the stop-motion Terminator cyborg at the end looks a bit iffy, but hey, The Terminator cost absolute peanuts.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is what you're thinking of when you think blockbuster and CGI, but to Cameron's credit that is where he used CGI to really bluff and impress people...and in really small doses, too. Other than the transforming (transmorphing?) T-1000, everything else in that movie is practical, including crashing semis and helicopters...
And since that series ALSO should've stopped after the second entry (I sense a pattern here), let's not mention the unfortunate other entries in that increasingly sad Terminator "franchise"...
It may seem hypocritical, or at elast imconsistent, to despise superhero movies and praise Cameron, who certainly in some sense paved the way for them, but Camron's movies fall into established cinema genres that have been around for what - a hundred years now? Monster movies, fantasy movies, spectaculat drama - you can't blame him for producing more of the same. Superhero movies, which are neither monster nor fantasy movies, exist in a self-defining universe which expanded to dominate the business. And anyone lamenting Cameron's lack of character depth will be hard-pressed to find it in a Marvel or DC movie.
DeleteI'm a script maven, mostly. Words and pictures. Character, motivation, and even action are secondary when it comes to me being gripped by a movie. It has to have sharp lines and look good, like a suit. Cameron I enjoy because he's a skilled populist, old-school tentpole movie-making. And he's never, unlike Lucas, lulled me to sleep in my chair, nodding over my popcorn.
One Buck Guy: you're right, I was thinking of T2 -- as well The Abyss, Titanic, Avatar, and Alita Battle Angel (which I haven't seen yet). Cameron's budgets can buy cutting edge CGI, camera technology and massive sets that are unobtainium-able for other directors. Thankfully, great movies (like the first Terminator and the first Mad Max) have been made on small budgets.
DeleteFarq, I appreciate your thoughtful response. I was thinking more about Lucas vs Cameron, less about superhero films vs Cameron films.
Lucas' shortcomings as a script writer include his dialogue and his pacing. I think the X-Men, Iron Man and Avengers movies have many fine moments when well-written lines are delivered (with moxie!) by skilled actors. I agree that Marvel and DC are too dominant.
Superhero movies are neither monster nor fantasy movies? A world in which superheroes exist is a fantasy realm of good against evil, and superheroes often battle (and sometimes become) monsters. Am I being too literal-minded about the genre distinctions that you are making?
Superhero movies - and this is a blog comment, not a think-piece for Cahiers du Cinema - started with Superman, I'm guessing. The shorts (and the cape) and the cartoons. He was the defining "super hero", and only a distant relation (at his comic book inception) to Frankenstein or Flash Gordon. The whole deal started with that leap over a tall building, which takes a leap of faith, a suspension of belief, to accept. Every super-power since is a variation on that archetype. Superhero movies are not SF, not fantasy, not war, not romance, not drama, not comedy, although of course they can appropriate what they need from any genre. My interest in super-powers exhausted itself back in the late 'sixties. And I'm not impressed by the ironic meta-knowingness of the self-referential speeches typed into super-hero scripts in the absence of the harder-to-achieve dialog of say, [YOUR FAVORITE SCREENWRITER HERE].
DeleteJonder, I would say there's a clear divide in Cameron's use of CGI - he used it extremely sparingly in both "The Abyss" and "Terminator 2", for one thing because the technology wasn't evolved enough.
DeleteBut I think the evolution of CGI hasn't done his work any favors. "Titanic" is still okay, there's still quite a bit of practical work in that. But "Avatar" was for all intents and purposes as real as a video game - CGI in every singkle frame. Now, if you do that, why not show us something that we really haven't seen, rather than eight feet tall natives and beautiful landscapes in Dances With Wolves meets Pocahontas!
That is a good article and makes a strong case for your points. The real problem here is that Farq asked a trick question; the two movies he's asking us to compare are completely different from one another.
ReplyDeleteNah, it's a fair question. They're directly related, and it's the differences between them that make a comparison interesting. If I'd said Gone With The Wind and Porky's, the debate would have been less worthwhile.
DeleteThe latter two would make a good double feature..........
DeleteI was working in Hollywood (for David Hayman, just before he picked up the rights to Harry Potter and dropped my project) when the remixed Star Wars was released. I was with some UCLA students at a screening, during which I whispered to the girl next to me that I thought the texure of the CGI was jarring. She later delivered her critique, during which she said she found the texure of the CGI to be jarring. It was a glimpse into how the movie business worked. I got a lot of those.
ReplyDeleteTricia, tell your daddy! What a waste of words from such a beautiful melody.
ReplyDeleteDoes none of youse bums want these swell elpees? Seems a shame to consign them to th' Dumpster O' Doom™, presently occupied only by Slayer.
ReplyDeleteWell at least it would lead to a Trivial Pursuit question no one saw coming:
Delete"What do Andy Kim, Tommy Roe and Slayer have in common?"
What did Ron Dante ever do to you? Rhetorical question.
DeleteDon't know who that bum is...
DeletePrometheus, obviously
ReplyDeleteI've been waiting patiently for the link (stealth or otherwise) to manifest itself. I can't move on to evaluate Tom Pacheco until this bubblegum post is resolved...
ReplyDeleteYou are a great man, John. Will you be my pen pal?
Delete🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔇🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈🔈
Gee Farq, that's a serious commitment. Let me give it some thought...
DeleteSorry, John , but I've been flooded with offers in the interim, and I've decided that Nelda Schnörrblatz (Silt Flats, AZ) will be my pen pal!
DeleteWhy Chur ? (was 'only' birthplace)
ReplyDeleteGreyerz a.k.a. Gruyere has (had) him
https://www.la-gruyere.ch
http://www.hrgigermuseum.com/
... bought his first poster before "Alien" ! (about 1978)
(something like this: https://www.amazon.com/mmwin-H-R-Giger-Decoration-Decorative-Picture-20X30/dp/B08F7T8FMQ )
Hope I live long enough for transatlantic travel to become safe again, so I can visit the Giger Bar: https://hrgiger.com/barmuseum.htm
DeleteAnd speaking of posters, I love the Polish poster for Alien:
https://polishposter.com/0212-alien-polish-movie-poster.html
There's a place called Chur? I made it up.
DeleteChur is where Churls come from, obv.
DeleteI have their albums.
Delete... don't forget the cheese ...
ReplyDeleteGiger album art (ELP, Magma, Debbie Harry, the infamous Frankenchrist poster, and a ton of heavy metal bands):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.discogs.com/lists/Artwork-H-R-Giger/357837
Man, that Debbie Harry album with the spikes through the face....
ReplyDeleteHe had "issues".
Delete