It comes across as some cheesy B-Movie with stupid plot and characters.
Go watch films from the 1950s, 60s and 70s - You'll find the same about them, even though they were THE thing back then. Times change, people change, tastes change.
The fact that this has held up for 30 years says a lot and I think teh main reason it seems cheesy and cliched is that so much has taken its inspiration from Aliens, to the point where actual Alien/Aliens sequel films and video games suck because it's all been done before... by those that took their lead from Aliens in the first place!
1.) This has been answered many times in other threads, but basically no. The derelict was unknown until Ripley got back and unless they were looking for it, they'd not have necessarily found it... perhaps not even needed to run detailed surveys on mountainous terrain when they were seeking a big open flat spot to plonk a colony and atmo-pro.
2.) Ripley returns. Ripley tells the company about the aliens. Burke goes looking (well, sends people off to look). Beep goes down. Ripley is a plausible scapegoat if things go tits up and so Burke drags her along. More beep goes down.
Ripley is partly the cause of the whole thing. Nothing coincidental or convenient about it, as she's the only one who knew in the first place.
3.) The word means 'strange form', basically.
As I recall, only Gorman ever uses the word, probably to sound fancy and authoritative like most clueless management. Bit of Blue Sky Thinking on his part.
Frost even asks, "Scuse me, sir, a
what?", so it clearly wasn't a common term.
Fans later adopted the term and here we are now.
4.) One mastermind. A completely inexperienced commander. He's concerned only with military matters, not atmo-pro engineering.
Burke is a company rep, a manager. He knows nothing of military tactics or protocols and wouldn't think about firearms.
Ripley is a civilian advisor and former space trucker, as well as an erstwhile warrant officer of a ship. It's the sort of combination she may have no direct understanding of, but would have wondered about from a general Health & Safety Assessment point of view.
Gorman's response was a seriously bad choice, though, highlighting his utter inexperience and degree of incompetence.
5.) So many lines from Aliens have become household quotes, because they were illustrative of culture at the time.
The troops' attitudes were done to reflect the media portrayal of soldiers in Vietnam, which was still a comparatively recent event for 1986. Al Matthews, who played Apone, actually is a Vietnam veteran.
Is it just me?
Yes, this is one of the greatest films ever made, especially those of us around when it first came out. A lot of modern cinema and even culture owes a surprising amount to the 80s films that laid the foundations.
Maybe the Special Edition is just bad (and looong) and I should rewatch the theatrical version instead.
The SpecEd contains 17 minutes of footage that was cut by the studio because it "spent an unnecessary amount of time building suspense".
If you think it's too bad, or boring, you're the audience for whom they cut the runtime.
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sgillespie-23741
8 years ago
Yup, most of the complaints about this film are very easily refuted with common sense. Just because it is an action, sci fi, horror film you still have to fill in some blanks yourself, and the film makes it very easy to give it the benefit of the doubt... some people just won't though.
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