Very good film, but I prefer Alien

Well, without Alien there would have been not Aliens after all.

I liked the feeling of the Alien movie. I remember the day I saw it when it came out with my girlfriend in one of the Century domed theaters. The screen was so big and the theater was so packed we had to sit in the front row. In the opening scenes I felt like I could have gotten up and walking into the corridor or the ship when the lights flickered on.

Then the elevator down to the planet surface, the ship landing and busting that boulder, and finally making it to the Alien craft, and what the hell was it? Great movie.

BUT, the thing for me that knocks Alien down a peg or two was the haunted house mentality. Let's go off alone. Let's do the dumbest thing imaginable. The movie was so tense and unusual that I completely ignored it. It was a great movie, but it was a haunted house movie.

Aliens, true, it did not recreate the same mood, but it was different, just like Terminator 2 was different from Terminator. Both excellent movies. I could not choose a favorite between any of them.

Do you mean the rescue sequence in the beginning of Aliens? I'll always remember the thunk of that door falling in. If I had to go to a deserted island, I'd either want both movies or neither.

I can see that. I personally "prefer" Aliens but Alien is a flat-out amazing movie and probably objectively the better made of the two. Just masterful on all levels, from the gorgeous art direction and cinematography to the tense atmosphere and realistic performances.

Which I'd rather watch differs day by day for me. Both are in my top twenty favourite films, though Aliens is the one I'm probably more likely to pop on to be honest and I'd seriously put it in my top three "desert island" films. I also love Alien 3 despite its obvious and glaring flaws.

I saw Aliens as a kid many years before i even knew it was a sequel and liked it well enough. I eventually saw the original Alien and re- watched Aliens and I'll say that I can totally see why many people prefer one over the other as both films are very different. I personally prefer the first for it's ambiance and tense build up but I still greatly enjoyed Aliens and felt it had more memorable characters as well as expanding Ripley as a character.

I see your point.

The reason is that to me, fun and brilliant as Alien was, it was essentially
a horror movie, a kind of haunted house movie with a science fiction setting.
Brilliant visuals and that dreamlike quality was amazing. I still remember
vividly the landing on the planet, and the landing pod crushing the rock,
and then the elevator down to the surface with all that wind. It was
transporting us to a new world in a way that had never been done before.

And so I cannot say I really like one movie more than the other. Aliens was
more of a Science Fiction movie. A whole intergalactic universe was created
with humans moving out into the strange unknown. Personally I like the
Science Fiction genre much more than horror. I won't really watch horror
movies, unless they are mostly or strongly based on science fiction.

I thought one thing about Aliens that still bugs me is how stupid the people
are, a trait that was kind of missing in Aliens, but picked up again in anything
that Ridley Scott does. I wouldn't say it ruined the movie, because Alien
is just so good, but it is like a glaring flaw for me. What kind of an idiot
goes down alone inside of the air vents with a flame thrower, alone!?
And then all do that basically. And then there is the oddness of the
android Ash ... but it was just the right amount of creepiness to add
to the movie ... something I doubt was even planned, it just seems like
luck that it worked out so well.

Not even close to being recreated with Prometheus or Covenant, or whatever
silliness lies ahead.