Alien is steak, Aliens is a burger
Alien still holds up,.....Aliens is a cheesy 80's movie
I'm not saying its bad,....I love cheesy movies & burgers,....but it's not the same quality
J
I rather think the opposite. Alien has a lot of great camerawork- some of it is still very beautiful, but there are a lot of dodgy FX-shots in there that ruin it. The chestburster scene is (sorry to say)
comedic today, the sound it makes... the stiff way it looks around... and the hilarious way it zooms off the table. The scare-shot of when the Alien gets Dallas is just... dumb, with the floppy fingers going "Tah Dah!". Then there's stiff shot of the alien "floating" forward like it's on a skateboard. Or things like when Ash goes nuts, where it also becomes comical. (And lets not talk about the cheap panty-shots of Ripley.) It was groundbreaking at the time and much of it still holds up, but much of it doesn't either. (Apologies if that's tantamount to blasphemy.)
Aliens on the other hand is structurally, a masterclass in movie-making in spite of the occasional 80's schlock and dodgy FX shot (I'm looking at you Dropship landing). Aliens gets away with a couple helpings of cheese because it has humor and is kind of self-aware. (It's actually one of the few 80's movies where the cheese factor doesn't kill it.)
Alien got the ball rolling, there's no taking away from that, but the sequel is the one that made the series what it is and should be credited for creating one of the best female characters in movie history. (Ripley had little personality in the first one.) I will never get tired of watching Cameron's film, but have little incentive to watch the first too often. Scott is a Visual Master, but he's poor at creating "character" and humor. I know I've written this before but I still can't really recall a character in one of Scott's films that I really
care about, with maybe the exception of some in Blade Runner. Cameron, on the other hand, is (or at least
was pre-Avatar) just a Master, full-stop.