:oD

On it like a car bonnet

Best film ever. Seen it so many times. The opening sequence when the ship ‘wakes up’ is amazing.

Ta 🙂

Currently being laughed at by my better half for jumping as the egg opens.. we have watched this film a fair few times together over the years. she still finds it funny how this film scares me.

I watched it the first time in a cinema, just after it was released, pre internet so we didn’t really know what to expect, but it’s still one of the best films I’ve seen.

I rewatched it on Blu-ray prior to Prometheus’s release. Two things struck me.

1) just what a bloody good job they’ve done of remastering it, it’s amazing, and,

2) how well it’s held up over time for a 70s movie.

thing is right, like the thing is…..

The little muppet thing hatched out of John Hurt half an hour ago, Harry Dean Stantion has just gone looking for it – and its grown to 8ft tall… on a diet of nothing.

jon1973 + 1.

In 1999, a scientific study proved that the best film of all time, measured on a number of different criteria, was Alien. This was followed by Aliens and The Thing (Colour version). Fact.

This study, utilising supercomputers on different continents, has repeated the test every 2 years. Interestingly the results do not differ. Fact.

The ‘Mother’ boot-up sequence has been my ringtone for the last 5 years.

Cougar – Moderator
I rewatched it on Blu-ray prior to Prometheus’s release. Three things struck me.
1) just what a bloody good job they’ve done of remastering it, it’s amazing,
2) how well it’s held up over time for a 70s movie, and
3) just how crap prometheus was.

F, I believe, tfy.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU1MAokrrUk[/video]

Noticed Virgin rate it as 4 star, not seen them rate any films 4 star before!

Sigourny Weaver was really pretty back in 1979!

Sigourny weaver is super gorgeous, even now at 63 surprisingly so 🙂

Alien is good but ‘The Thing’ is on now, another great sci fi

Cougar – Moderator

I rewatched it on Blu-ray prior to Prometheus’s release. Two things struck me.

1) just what a bloody good job they’ve done of remastering it, it’s amazing, and,

2) how well it’s held up over time for a 70s movie.

I think art is pretty much timeless – a good silent film from the 1920’s is still a good film.

Yes, some films reflect the times in which they are made (Easy Rider, Went The Day Well? or Wall Street for example), but they’re still wonderful movies.
You could even argue that the fact they reflect a certain time is to their benefit when viewed with hindsight.

Genuinely interested as to what you mean by ‘held up well’?

I don’t have an example in mind, but plenty of films date badly. Ie, things that I thought were ace 20 years ago are awful on a rewatch now.

Any film using special effects has the potential to appear pretty bad as the technology used to produce those effects moves on and changes (dramatically). Sci-fi happens to be a genre which uses lots of effects.

I thought the Blu Ray remaster of Alien looked incredible, a lot better than the one of Aliens actually. And I didn’t think it dated badly at all, mainly (I reckon anyway) due to the use of practical effects and model shots rather than anything else.

Also it wouldn’t be the same if Mother had the Windows 8 interface…

Genuinely interested as to what you mean by ‘held up well’?

Westerns and contemporary pieces are set in a fixed point in time, and can be watched with that in mind, so they don’t ‘age’ in quite the same way as a sci-fi movie, set in the imagined future, which can shift radically in three decades.

So overall, Alien ‘holds up well’ because the low-tech haulage ship, its crew and most of its technology still seems plausible, decades later. The ropiest bit is the captain/mother interface, but we can forgive them that in the early days of IBMs…

I think Alien holds up well because they never tried to make it look too futuristic, or be some prediction of the future. The great thing about it was that the technology was very matter-of-fact, and the ship seemed pretty run down and a crap place to work. Most of them were just normal people working with the tools they had, which were largely inadequate.

I think if you compare it to more recent films like The Minority Report (only mention it because I watched it the other day) I actually think that has dated a lot more than Alien, because they tried too hard to make it look like a vision of the future, rather than a story that takes place in the future (if that makes any sense at all).

Oh! and Alien also had Sigourny Weaver 8)

Its all about new jack city tonight

The film sets a clastrophobic mood throughout. Its well acted. You can really sense Lambert’s distress when Dallas is in the pipes.

The opening sequence when the ship ‘wakes up’ is amazing.

+1

Even though it’s a bit Telex like, I think it has aged really well.

It does seem like the films where it was done with models (Alien, 2001, original Star Wars) age better than those with computer graphics.

One little thing has always niggled me about Alien, though – the tag line was “In space, no-one can hear you scream” – so why can you hear the engines rumbling at the start?

I watched this and The Thing…good.

I had to double check the release date that was on the Sky info…I didn’t believe it was released in 1979!

What annoys me about modern films is you can spot the bits that were included just for 3D but add nothing to the film. Alien was all about the atmosphere.