I've just finished watching Aliens, the special edition - its the first time I've seen it in probably 5-6 years at least, and I'd forgotten what a damned awesome film it is! But one thing struck me throughout the film - how much better the special effects were in the film, specifically concerning the Aliens.

Although there are some quite ropey bits with super-imposed backgrounds (which were obviously difficult using model work) to me the effects in this film which is now 20 years old are better than some of the stuff which is coming out nowadays, and which has a complete reliance on CGI. Take the new(ish) Star Wars films - to me the effects in those films were utter crap. Yes they were impressive bits of computer animation, but thats the point - they were identifiably computer animation, obviously not real and looked more fitting to be in a cartoon IMO. On the other hand the aliens in the film of the same name looked real - I can see now why I used to have nightmares about the first and second films so many years ago :)

I know the films of Alien/Star Wars are opposite ends of the sci'fi spectrum, but to me little shuffling model Yoda of the original star wars > CGI Yoda anytime. I can understand why CGI is vital in some areas (things which are beyond our own experience, such as space battles etc.) but to me it looks like the industry has become preoccupied with using CGI at the expense of everything else, when someone like Stan Winston could do a much better job. The camera work also seems to be a lot more clever in these films - you can see the director has given it more thought rather than just saying "act against these tennis balls and a blue screen, we'll sort it out later"

Watch Aliens again, compare it to the CGI version in Alien 3, and see what I mean :)

CGI in Alien3? Where was that then? :P They were still stop-motion IIRC in 1993?

CGI has its uses, but it does make stuff look ropey when relied on too heavily. Compare 'Lord of the Rings' to the Star Wars prequels... Jackson only uses CGI to stuff which cannot possibly be done live. IMO, the only dodgy shot in LOTR is when Arwen sees the vision of the kid in the forest and it judders between the woodland and the palace scenes... :rolleyes:

'Cloverfield' was an excellent lesson in good CGI.

'Moon' rode the fine line between good and terrible.

I believe that organic shapes are still beyond our abilities. 'Jurassic Park' is actually very primitive if you go back and watch it now...

Alien3 defnitely had cgi - with the alien being a dogburster and therefore less suitable for the man in suit approach they went for the cgi effect instead, and it is pretty noticeable, particularly in the shots of the creature running around in the first third of the film.

I'm fairly sure T2 was pre-93/around that time and it's big draw was the use of groundbreaking CGI...

Just checked - T2 was 91 so CGI was definitely around back then.

T2 did a very good job of it though I thought. If I recall correctly really the only thing they used CGI for was the big liquid metal scenes, and even then it wasn't over the top.

I meant Brandywine etc... as in the company who made the Alien series. CGI has been around since the 1970s.

I'm fairly sure Alien3 was largely stop-motion and puppetry. I'm not totally ruling out CGI because I haven't watched it in a while, but I do recall that on any free-standing alien shot it was very green in relation to the backdrops - a classic sign of projected stop-motion.

The shot where the dogburster shakes off the bloody and goo from its birth was a puppet... the bit where he runs around the roof of the lead mould tunnels was stop-motion... the bit in the mould itself (and the chains above) was man-in-suit/puppet... but the sprinkler heat-fissures could conceivably have been CGI.

Compare Alien3 to Alien Resurrection and the reprehensible AvP films... those are DEFINITELY done with CGI. Swimming aliens in the flooded galley spring to mind.

The thing that amazes me is that the Queen Alien was a 20ft tall puppet... with TWO GUYS in hammocks inside the torso! :blink:

Bad CGI... Neo doing his pole dancing.

Good CGI... Golem! Jolie's boobs in Beowulf :)

Yeah I was going to mention Matrix 2.. quite obviously CGI (although I thought they had just dipped Angelina Jolie in liquid gold? <_< )

Thats awesome about the 2-man puppet for the queen alien in Aliens! The robotic fork lift thing was damned awesome as well, why have they not made one of those things in RL yet? :)

Alien 3 definately has some CGI, there are some open looking shots of the alien, and it looks very, very shiny.. I think perhaps where films like T2 and LoTR have done so well with CGI is to use it sparingly and seemlessly with live action shots, and not have just scenes of nothing but CGI which seems a bit like lazy film making to me..

Just corrected that comment for you Shroud ;)

no silly they dipped her in liquid chocolat and used CGI afterwards to make it look gold :P

Worst CGI of late has to be Wolverine. Best Transformers. IMHO

When you compare the quality of CGI in WOlverine to the rest of the X-Men films, infact even to the Matrix Reloaded, it looks so amatuerish.

When you campare it to the smoothness of the CGI interaction in Transformers and also GI Joe it looks like poo.

As for Yoda I prefer the puppet. Had more substance and the shadows worked better. When Dukoo was fighting Yoda it still looked like Dick Van Dyke dancing with the penguins in Mary Poppins.

Some of the best non-movie special effects I've seen in a VERY long while

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAoNdgUJoKQ

To give Halo credit, they make some amazing live action trailers!

As far as movies, I'd have to go with 300. I mean they made a movie almost completely out of CGI, and it looked pretty great!

Also James Cameron's new Avatar trailer is a good sign that you can make a movie with 99% CGI and it can still look almost real and damn-near amazing.

Alien3 is my favourite film ever.

There was cgi used; the shadows for the alien, and the final fire/lava/molten lead shot that ripley falls into.

There were serious problems with matting the puppet alien, giving it a 'bad cgi' look, especially during the final corridor chase sequence.

There is one other use of cgi in the film, but only in the theatrical cut, a very brief and subtle cameo from another sci-fi monster franchise :ph43r:

Generally speaking I find that films from the early 90s really show their age in the cgi department, and lament the passing of the handmade effects that real sold the great films of the late 70s and 80s.

RIP Stan Winston.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG ON, Pacific.

Alien3 is BY FAR the best movie in the franchise... :angry:

David Fincher directing? British scriptwriter? Uber-Gothic pseudo-medieval space colony? Everyone dies? What's not to like?!

When does the colony start a revolution against the father-country? :P :P :P

Shroud, I am deeply dissapointed :P

- The film is a copy of the first one but just with Sigourney Weaver's hair shaved off and with nothing like the terror or suspense
- They kill off possibly the coolest character in an action movie ever (Hicks) and the kid Newt (kind of like T3 in its crappiness actually damages the film that came before it - James Cameron is unlucky with stuff like that happening to his films)
- As I have said, crap CGI alien and lazy directing of it completely lacking in suspense.
- The one redeeming element of the plot is the character played by Charles Dance (although i still find it hilarious that he was cast in this film because he's so out of place). The rest of them are just hooded, faceless criminals who you feel nothing for and about and have absolutely zero development. Then, just when you think you might start to care about Charles Dance, hes killed off - you have to think just because the following sequence of Ripley being sniffed by a drooling alien head makes a great clip for the trailer. The only other interesting character was the Clements guy who is the first to die. I think of how much I went 'awwww' when the characters died in both Alien and Aliens, and how I was laughing instead when the hooded, faceless scumbags were running down the corridor being chased by the Alien while the stereotypical black preacher-type shouts "All ya gotta do is run down a corridor!" Crap.
- Holes in the plot: A face hugger that manages to impregnate not only Ripley but a dog when it arrives on the statio. Bishop (hang on - a character I feel something for in the film!) then says that the ships scanners new the facehugger was there onboard. Considering everything that had gone before, Ripley was a bit of a muppet in this case not checking them before she went into hypersleep. I'm sure there are others but its ages since I've felt in enough of a nihilistic mood to put myself through this film :)
- David Fincher. Ok, he goes on to direct Fight Club, but at this time he was a music video director and I don't think he was given much of an opportunity with the film. It already had been through 2 directors who'd both given up on it, had a really limited budget (most of which seemed to be spent on getting Sigourney Weaver to shave her hair off) and had a release date despite there not being a completed script. All of this is a recipe for disaster. I admit it was very atmospheric and as a debut its better than most (it trumps Cameron's Piranha 2 for instance ;) ), but for all the reasons I've given about lack of characters and poor scripting/plot he didn't have that much to work with, and I don't think you can even compare it to Ridley Scott's effort in the first film, which this one so desperately wants to be.

I once read that Fox rejected a script that was similar to the Alan Dean Foster book, Earth Hive, which is a real shame as that had a far more interesting story that followed Hicks and Newt some years after they have returned to earth (Newt was in a mental hospital, and Hicks a washed out Security guard). But, it didn't have Ripley in it shaved head or no, and so it was rejected. Instead we were left with a jumbled mess of a film that does nothing that had not been done before and better in Alien, and made the series seem tired. It was a universe ahead of the absolute pile that was Alien: Resurrection and the AvP films I admit, but IMO there were only ever 2 Alien films worth watching and those were the first 2!

Just my 2 pence worth and all, I know stuff like this is really subjective anyways, but to me Alien 3 is one of those films which I put alongside T3 as a wasted opportunity!

Am I the only person who thinks the Aliens franchise has been reuined by the need to keep Ripley?

If you look at some of the original Dark Horse comic series relating to the big guys, Ripley is hardly there ony being mentioned in passing if at all in most.

The same goes for the whole AVP series. It could have been much better if only they had stuck to the comic books. Why the need to have them battle it out on earth? Why not use collonies on other planets? Why try and tie in Bishops creator in the first one. No need.


Just as Predator 2 was a pile of steaming poo, because they took half the comic and changed the lead character to some random black cop. It should have been Dutch Schaffer; Arnie's characters little brother like in the comic.

Oh come now... Predator 2 trumps the original in every way other than it didn't come first! :D Even the Alan Silvestri soundtrack is FAR superior!

(On an aside, I watched Back to the Future 3 again the other day - I never realised before, but you can pick out a Silvestri brass swell any day! He's like Elliot 'Alien3/Interview with the Vampire' Goldenthal, or David 'Independence Day/Little Britain' Arnold!)

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but Alien3 is the best BECAUSE it sticks two fingers to all the action-hungry meatheads who were drooling for more pulse rifles and explosions. Oh yes, you can take out an army of acid filled insectoid gorillas with an elite team of Colonial Marines (almost!) but what happens when you're back to square one, with no technology and no weaponry? Kill off any and all ties to the second movie (*except* for Bishop, who was the best military character by far!) and get started on something a bit more intelligent right from the opening credits.

It's the perfect movie - the first one was excellent because it was a new genre concept, and it showcased the "used future" aesthetic for the first time in cinema; the second was enjoyable because it was a big action romp... the third was a fantastic study in how divided and foetid human society always has been and always will be. Clements, Golic, Aaron, Andrews... they were far more interesting characters than Hicks, Frost or the stereotypical bravo Hudson.

Alien Resurrection was passable right until the Newborn appeared. the AvP films were unforgivable, unwatchable cack... and that represents the ONLY time in my life that I have walked out of a film halfway through, purely because I was bored.

I'm wading in on this.

First, Alien3 would've been much better if they'd stuck to the original concept; A religious fraternity colony within an artificial world made of wood. And then Ripley's ship comes crashing in, literally!

Pacific; there were two Facehuggers, one that implanted the queen in Ripley and one that implanted a drone in the dog.

As for CGI, I've noticed that sometimes the older versions have a quality about them that the modern counterparts can't capture.
Like Tron. The original had that quality to it that's never been recaptured.

And I would like to point to an effect in Star Trek The Motion Picture, when they're in the 'wormhole' and taking aim at that asteroid. The computer screen in that always looks as though the image on it is 3D, and I don't know how they did it.

The best CGI effect is the one you don't see unless you're meant to.

That doesn't include some of the work they did on Star Wars the original trilogy, that scene with the Rebel Fleet near Yavin in the Last Hope could've been better.

My problem with the so called 'magic egg' in Alien 3 is this - Basically we were shown in Aliens that the queen needed its giant egg-tube thing (technical description) to lay eggs, which it doesn't have when it pursues Ripley up the left and onto the Sulaco at the end of the film.

I forced myself ( :) ) to watch the last 10 minutes again to try and explain how there is an egg (or 2) on the Sulaco - Basically there is about 20 seconds when the Alien queen isn't shown on screen. So, she would have to run off and find a hiding place in the Sulaco to lay an egg (eggs) wtihout an eggsack, then run back and hide next to the dropship in time to ambush Bishop. Lol.

Shroud I guess we will have to agree to disagree abpit Alien 3! As long as you don't tell me that you liked Terminator 3 then I'll respect your opinion :P

Have you heard the rumours of a new Ridley Scott prequel to Alien? :)

I've just realised I'm a nerd.

Pacific, I too have always had an issue with the mystery egg(s).

Alledgedly the last thing you hear on the cinematic end credits is the egg opening.

I am still at a loss as to how it got there. Didn't the Queen needed the egg sack to lay the egg according to the early part of that film?

Maybe not.

In AVP isn't the Queen chained up without the egg sack below the sacrifical chamber?

OK the Queeen may be able to produce eggs without the sack, but then what is it for? Surely then to incubate the eggs before laying them so that the facehuggers can spring out almost instantly. So then how did she incubate them on the Sulaco?

So many inconsistancies in the xenobiology. :huh:

I also agree with Shroud on Resurection. Was a jolly little jaunt until Junior arrived, then WTF? Worst alien ever.

P.S. Nothing wrong with being a nerd. We wouldn't be here if we weren't.

were not nerds! were geeks! im proud of bein a geek, but woe betide anyone who calls me a nerd! lol :angry:

with regards so special effects, my favourite film has to be Dune! it has a nice mix of a really good storyline, stop animation and cgi. (and its a really cheese steriotypical geek film to boot! ;) )

Dune in 1984 was a quality sci-fi romp... the Sci-Fi.com miniseries in 1999 (?) was excellent but fell flat in so many areas (not least of all the studio desert sets!) :rolleyes: The sequel starring the twins was much better.

Alien eggs are regularly transported from the brood chamber to where they need to be. The Alien Queen does not trawl the corridors of the hive laying eggs in front of coccooned captives... the Alien drones take them and use their secreted resins to fix them where they are needed.

So how did the drone get on the Sulaco? Or did the queen have a couple ripe eggs in her pockets / bingo wings?

Without the egg sack it still doesn't make sense. :huh:

Never like Dune though. Just far too up itself. Tremors was better.

The eggs were attached to the drop ship which went to the surface. Look at the landing legs.

:o Now it makes sense. :lol:

About as much sense as a franchise can make when each film is made by a different director! :D

Pacific - T3 is an abomination, and T:S was only marginally better, in spite of all it promised. If they'd wrapped up the future war in one film, I'd have been happy! Oh, and Timothy Olyphant for the next Kyle Reese please. Come on, seriously!



I hope Scott doesn't go back to the Aliens franchise - I think even he wouldn't be able to polish it now, and I'd hate to see his name so besmirched.

Yeah I guess he does look a bit like him!

I think I probably preferred the Dune mini series to the film, even if bits of it were ropey and despite Patrick Stewart, although I think both fall far short of the first book trilogy!

For anyone who was into the Dark Horse Alien comics, our discussion generated this advert on the page! Dark Horse Comics

I loved the Dark Horse AvP comics, might check this one out!

Just watched District 9, is well worth a watch and absolutely nothing at all like I expected! And regarding this thread, probably some of the best use of CGI I have seen in a film - its understated, and kept within the style of the rest of film and doesn't become overblown even during the action sequences.

I have to say, this is probably the first film I have seen where I wasn't thinking "thats CGI" during every representation of the effects, and its therefore perfectly timed to contradict my first post in this thread :)

I'm off to see it tongith after we finish work. Woot! :D

Has anyone seen the original short film version?

Ah right I was wondering what IMDB was referring to? I saw a couple of 'interviews' with humans and aliens about the film which was part of its marketing campaign, but I didn't realise there was actually a short film!

Hope you enjoy the film mate, its nothing like I expected it to be :)