ALIEN: The best Sci-Fi movie ever made? (1 Viewer)

[Jay E]

I prefer my Sci-Fi harder edged (2001, Solaris, Forbidden Planet, Blade Runner, Quatermass & the Pit), but that being said, Alien is definitely right up there as one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Scott was able to create a tense & claustrophobic atmosphere that you can cut with a knife. And he didn't overexpose the alien creature on the screen which fits in with my outlook that sometimes less is more (which Hawks also used so effectively in The Thing). Your mind is a much better producer of nightmare than anything special effects can come up with.
Definitely one of my all time top 10 Sci-Fi films.
(P.S.: IMO, Contact is overrated )

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Let me start off by saying that Alien is easily one of my favorite movies ever made. Like TOP 5 favorite.
But I'd classify it first as a horror flick. Chuck best summed up my thoughts when he called it a 'haunted house flick'. But what makes Alien so cool (and here's where the sci-fi argument seems a bit more valid) is that there's basically no way out of this haunted house.
(OK, Ripley does indeed find a way out, but the escape shuttles go wisely unmentioned until the third act. )
It's funny that this thread started up just now, because I recently say through Ridley Scott's commentary for Alien. Man, does that guy love his stogies...
Bottom line: Alien is yet another example of why "forced genres" simply don't work. The argument could be made in either direction, but the important thing is that it's quite simply an excellent movie.
For half-a-dozen personal reasons, this will always be one of my favorite films and one I watch at least once a year.

 

[Brian_J]

Did anyone else find it boring and almost fall asleep during it?

Micheal, you must not have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I find it interesting that someone would make this complaint about Alien and then follow it up with their love for 2001, considering that this is the primary complaint about 2001!

Yes, I believe Alien is a great film, and yes it is probably more horror than science fiction...and that's probably what makes it so great. Unfortunately, most science fiction is pure crap.

Brian

 

[Marvin Richardson]

I completely forgot about Contact, which in my opinion is definitely one of the best science fiction films ever made.

I guess I always thought that when one said "sci-fi" they were referring to the popularized futuristic movie that really didn't make you think about anything, or could have taken place in another setting, be it fantastical or mythological.

To me, "science fiction" films are few and very far between, especially today. These films use a scientific premise or future advancement to make you think about some fundamental idea. In Blade Runner it was the advancement of sentient androids to bring up issues of existence and the rights of sentient beings, whether natural or artificial. In Contact it was the search for meaning in existence and whether the idea of other intelligence in the galaxy precluded God.

Alien, while a great, exciting movie, dealt only peripherally with such ideas, and was mostly a haunted house movie that happened to be in space. That doesn't make it any less a movie, just different. I'd consider Alien sci-fi horror, but not science fiction.

And I'm probably arguing semantics anyway. If you look at written works, I'd say that "science fiction" would be like the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. "Sci-fi" would be more like Piers Anthony.

But that's just my opinion of course.

 

[Jack Briggs]

For the record, the third film in this series is not Alien 3, but Alien to the Third Power or Alien Cubed; note that the "3" is always superscripted when the title is listed by the studio. The second film was called Aliens, and there can be no "Alien 3."

The first film is a hybrid of sorts, as has been mentioned in this thread, a monster movie melded with SF elements. Yes, it can be considered SF in a sense--but one would think that Ridley Scott might have imagined settings a bit more advanced for the time period in which the film is set--computers with 1970s-style keyboards? using 20th-century binary computer language? control panels with pushbuttons instead of "glass cockpits"? and on and on.

It's a good, moody film with strong sexual undercurrents (note the organic look of the ancient alien spacecraft at the beginning--more than one film writer has commented on its similar appearance to female genitalia).

There's much to recommend the film.

But is it the "greatest science-fiction film" of all time? Hardly. In fact, if you polled fans of written science fiction, it might not even rank in the top twenty. That doesn't lessen the film's merits or its appeal, however.

Finally, Ridley Scott took some very obvious ques and stylistic touches from the Stanley Kubrick film, including the faux Khatchaturian music.

Solaris, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and other select films rank much more strongly as science fiction.

Again, though, Aliens is good for what it is. Scott's next foray into what many would consider SF, however, is vastly superior (if flawed--i.e., the Deckard-as-Replicant controversy).

 

[Artur Meinild]

(note the organic look of the ancient alien spacecraft at the beginning--more than one film writer has commented on its similar appearance to female genitalia)

Would you expect anything from Giger that did not resemble genitalia of some kind? Gotta love that guy!

 

[Marvin Richardson]

*Nobody* refers to it as anything else than "Alien 3", including Fincher and everyone else involved with the production.

Really? I'll have to tell myself to stop calling it that. What was I thinking?

 

[Terrell]

Well, I can't type it like that Jack.

 

[Zen Butler]

Science Fiction: n
A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.
I'll side with Miriam-Webster and "The Empire Strikes Back" as the best.

 

[Terrell]

Well, under that definition, I'd agree. ESB is the best. Under the other, if there is another, Alien is up there near it. Regardless, Alien is a great film.

 

[Marvin Richardson]

I'll side with Miriam-Webster and "The Empire Strikes Back" as the best.

If you're going to side with "Merriam-Webster" you might want to at least spell the name of the DICTIONARY right.

 

[Zen Butler]

Marvin- I know how sick was that, and it was Dictionary.com not Mirriam(Miriam) just for the record. Basically, no validity in my post whatsoever.

 

[Marvin Richardson]

Oh no, it had validity. The definitions of "science fiction" versus "sci-fi" that I like came from some article I read at some point (can't remember who wrote it or where it was published) but it came down to comparing something like Blade Runner to something like The Fifth Element (my examples) isn't really fair to either film, as they are trying to accomplish different things, they both just happen to take place in the future.

 

[Micheal]

Wow! Quite a lot of opinions.
Maybe we can steer away from the "what is Sci-Fi" debate and just judge the film on it's own. In my opinion it ranks up there with every film mentioned in this thread. They all differ (Contact vs Alien for example) but we can still compare them to some degree.
Out of all the "Sci-Fi" movies mentioned Alien is a movie I can watch time and time again and still get lost in it.
I can also do this with JC's The Thing and Blade Runner as well. One thing is for sure, Alien is Science Fiction! You can add Horror in ( ) after the Science Fiction tag if you want.
Great conversation guys.

 

[TheoGB]

Well, I can't type it like that Jack.

1. Finger goes on the ALT key
2. With the other hand (or, if one handed, after weighing the ALT key down) type 2, then 5, then 2 again on the number keypad to access ASCII extended character number 252.
3. Realise you have just printed ³ and
You can now always write Alien³ - even in Notepad.
I always called it Alien Cubed personally...
I think Star Wars isn't Sci-Fi because there is no use at all of 'science': lasers fire bolts, etc. are really just flashy versions of normal items. There is an explanation of all this in my Star Wars 1st Edition RPG book. I'll pick it up at mum's tomorrow and read off what it says...
Alien does use science (air-locks, hypersleep, etc). Any story could be redone without the science bit because a story can be broken down any way you like.
(2001, for example, could be a historical epic involving people travelling a great distance to investigate something. The wisest member of the group could go mad and kill all but one of the others, etc. I'm not saying it would be good but then Alien would be average if only set in a haunted house, wouldn't it?)

 

[Terrell]

I wouldn't classify Star Wars as sci-fi either, other than slightly. But if I had to go with that definition by Webster, then I guess nothing listed as sci-fi either.

 

[Marvin Richardson]

Any story could be redone without the science bit because a story can be broken down any way you like.

True, but that's the whole point of calling it science fiction. It uses some kind of advancement in science (or according to the Webster dictionary anything futuristic, alien, or fantastical) as part of its plot. The only difference is "how" it uses that. Just as two movies based in the old west like Blazing Saddles and Unforgiven use the old west setting to explore different themes. Or in the case of Blazing Saddles just act darn silly and make you laugh, which sometimes is even better.

 

[Holadem]

I really disliked Alien and it is far from being the best sci-fi film ever made. Did anyone else find it boring and almost fall asleep during it?
Micheal, you must not have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sorry, nothing insightful to add, but the above was a classic!
--
Holadem - I like 2001, don't even go there.

 

[Terrell]

Well, I hated 2001, and fell asleep watching it. But I fully understand it's importance to the genre.

 

[Steve Christou]

Did anyone else find it boring and almost fall asleep during it?
Micheal, you must not have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Oooooh! Jack Briggs must be spinning in his chair.
Alien, definitely SF in my books, and one of the very best, its in my top 20 SF favorites, but I have to admit to a preference for James Cameron's follow up movie.
I saw Alien a number of times at the cinema when it first came out, and I remember the audience screaming, unusual for a space movie to scare the crap out of you, but it did.
I'm happy to see that a fellow Brit went from making commercials for Hovis bread to what some of you are calling one of the best SF films ever made.
Strangely enough its Ridley Scott's second SF film that is now sometimes regarded as THE greatest SF film ever made, Blade Runner , ignored at the time of release by critics and audiences, now it has been reborn as the Citizen Kane of SF. Wow!