Alien Quadrilogy

The last set of movies I received for Christmas that I have to blog about is the entire Alien Quadrilogy (not counting the AvP movies), which I only recently finished. By "finished", I mean to say that although I finished watching all four of the films with Evan a while ago, I didn't want to let the other five discs-worth of special features go to waste, so over the course of the past six weeks or so, I watched every special feature video they had to offer. Perhaps it's unfair to lump all of these films into one blog post, as they are all quite different, but I just didn't feel like tackling them independently, especially considering I had seen all of them before. So instead, here goes a brief summary of my reactions to the films:

Alien (1979): Easily the best of the group, combining solid visual style, tension, script writing, acting, directing, and music. I have nothing bad to say about this film. It was way ahead of its time, and even still hasn't been surpassed in its genre.

Aliens (1986): Easily the worst of the group, despite people at the time thinking it was an incredible action flick. Sure, it sets out to reinvent the Alien series by taking out the suspense and adding lots of guns, but it's just got too much going against it (half of which is Bill Paxton). This said, this is the version of the franchise that I grew up on, as it was always on TV, so it's hard not to have some fondness for it.

Alien 3 (1992): The film most people say is the worst, although I've always liked it. David Fincher's unique visual style really contrasts with the other films in a way that is truly refreshing, thereby helping to break up the monotany of the franchise's bleak "used-space" environment. Sure, the story's kinda weird, but overall I kinda like it, so fuck the critics!

Alien Resurrection (1997): The Frenchman-directed dark comedy interpretation of the franchise. Possibly the second-best of the four due to its keen understanding of where it stands in the legacy. Although it was sort of cheesy to bring back a dead character, they somehow managed to pull it off, and instead made an unlikely gem for the franchise.

Now, I'm not including the AvP series for two reasons:

1.) they suck
2.) Ripley's not in them

Don't get me wrong, I love the Predator movies (especially the first), but come on...this idea was about as solid as doing Superman vs. Batman as a film. Some ideas really should just stay in the comics...

Anyway, I really love the Alien franchise, and after seeing the entire behind-the-scenes story for each film, I'm even more intrigued by the whole set. In fact, the films got me so excited about this genre that I'm now playing Dead Space again... Good stuff.