I didn't really see how any of those things ruined the film either. I think chi is just a hater. I also wasn't bothered by the religious aspects. As bfun said, it's about a guy who loses his entire family in a shipwreck and ends up stranded in the middle of the ocean. I think most people would find god or at least some kind of spirituality to help carry them through a situation like that. I didn't find it unrealistic, or out of place, or preachy or anything.
I think that as a back story as to the origin of the Xenomorphs it was feasible enough, the story and action were good and the 2 hours disappeared. Probably the best sci-fi movie I have seen for a good few years.
I thought it was shit because the characters were crap and they made lots of stupid and nonsensical decisions. The story didn't really have much to it. Maybe without the high expectations it wouldn't have had the backlash it had but its got a lot of faults in its own right.
I agree with Monsly. The characters in Prometheus kept making idiotic decisions that didn't make any sense, and it really killed the movie for me. Compare that to Alien and Aliens where the characters die because they've been thrown into hopeless situations, not because they're morons.
I'm only aware of one big mistake in that movie, and it wasn't really dumb or nonsensical. It was just what people would probably do in that situation. I'm referring to the crew violating quarantine by bringing the infected crew member back to the ship and trying to treat him instead of just leaving him behind. And I can also forgive that because in Alien you're talking about a bunch of average Joe Sixpacks who work on a cargo ship. They're not the brightest people. Meanwhile in Prometheus we supposedly have a collection of the greatest minds humanity has to offer, and yet every few minutes they're making some enormous, absolutely retarded decision that doesn't make any sense and that could completely jeopardize the mission.
The original Alien was easily the best of the series, and I think half the crew was killed or endangered trying to catch Jones the cat. It got the mechanic and nearly got Ripley multiple times just on the basis of trying to catch that damn cat. It's not a series known for characters who make great choices. I thought Prometheus would be around 2nd or 3rd best in the series. Aliens was very good, but the cartoony Hollywood military mannerisms and ridiculous sight of the queen hanging on Ripley's foot over an open airlock brought it down a bit for me. Prometheus wasn't quite as good as I hoped it would be, but it wasn't terrible, either. Maybe Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus for me. The other two weren't so great, especially Alien 3.
I'll agree that the scene at the end with the airlock is a bit much. But overall, Aliens is one of the greatest action movies of all time, up there with Total Recall and Terminator 2.
The primary dumb mistake in Alien: oxygen and it's relationship to space ships outfitted with sealed doors and individual space suits. I mean, they may be Joe Schmo's but they're in space for a living...there's a movie from the 1950's called It! The Terror from Beyond Space where the characters act just as stupidly, and then they figure it out at the absolute last second.
I bought the Alien Anthology and Prometheus and watched all of them again recently. I thought Alien aged quite a bit better than Aliens. I do like Aliens, though. There were just some aspects of it that didn't seem as great as I expected after a recent viewing. I would have probably considered it nearly on par with the original Alien from memory, but watching it again recently changed my mind.
Which version of Aliens did you watch? There's an extended cut that includes about 40 minutes of extra scenes if I remember correctly. Some of what got cut is actually really good stuff, like the scene with the automated turrets or the scene at the beginning where Newt and her father find the alien ship. I also own the Alien Quadrilogy, and I thought the film had aged remarkably well when I watched it again a couple of years ago. Perhaps being a Marine yourself, the over the top, Hollywood-ized depiction of Marines was really off putting?
I watched the director's cuts on Blu-ray. I think they are improvements over the theatrical versions. The image quality was quite nice for an older sci-fi/ horror movie. I'm not talking about the technical aspects or transfer quality when I say it's aged. Those things were great. The hypermacho crap, the guy with the cigar, and constantly hearing "Sarge" did irritate me a bit. Again, I'm not saying it's bad. To the contrary, I consider Aliens to be an very good movie and a horror classic. I'm just saying I don't consider it to be one of the absolute all-time greats of the genre the way I used to and the way I still rate Alien. The lengthy anticipation and smaller scale made Alien the best of the series. Alien is more of a psychological thriller than the others in the series and really takes advantage of the unknown factor.
@aks: You'd place Resurrection above Alien 3? What madness is this. I may have to watch my blurays to see if there's any truth to your controversial opinion. @alterego: whilst the crew didn't act particularly rational in Alien, it didn't take me out if the film. They weren't trained professionals for that situation, they were ordinary people in a bad situation. In Prometheus, there was so many stupid points and decisions that it just ruined any sense of immersion. There were no characters I cared about either. It had atmosphere and an interesting premise but they felt wasted.
Ah, but there's the rub: your average space cargo schmuck is unlikely to think it's necessary to lower themselves down into a vast, empty chamber (after already discovering a giant dead alien above and no signs of life), fondle the weird alien eggs, then stick their faces directly over them after they open. And didn't they notice that the face-hugger BREATHED and kept Kane alive by feeding him OXYGEN? Just shut the oxygen off to the rest of the ship and it's...to coin an Aliens phrase...game over, man.
I was under the impression xenomorphs didn't need oxygen to survive. At several points in the Alien films we see that they survive just fine in the vacuum of space, including the end of the original Alien and the end of Aliens. The face hugger may have been trying to keep the host alive, but I never got the impression it needed oxygen itself.
I thought the aliens could survive in a vacuum too. I didn't think John Hurt putting his head over the egg was dumber than that guy trying to make friends with space goo cobra in Prometheus. Especially after that guy was easily spooked earlier.
I never saw anything in the first two films that would give the impression that they could survive indefinitely without oxygen (1st film: alien tries to get back inside ship from outside, 2nd film: queen doesn't seem happy about being blasted into space). It's a bit silly if they did that in later films due to the face-hugger breathing and processing oxygen.