Strange_Bundle (Level 18)

When Aliens first game out, it blew me away. Great setpieces, great-looking equipment, cool story, a group of people who worked together even when they fell apart. It's been the model of many films since, often lesser imitations that try to hack through group dynamics with over-arching, unbending cliches that make Aliens' cliches seem like nuanced portrayals. 
 
It's really a smartly-constructed action picture, but because it fits into what became the Alien franchise, it demands comparisons with what came before and after. I didn't care a whole lot back when I first watched it, wearing out that pan-and-scan VHS tape, watching it over and over alongside Predator, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Willow, Robocop, and a few other fantasy and science fiction films. Ridley Scott's Alien was not on that list; even though his own Blade Runner wasn't exactly a pulse-pounding action picture its ambition and complexity were always fun to visit, but Alien seemed ponderous to me by comparison, and not nearly as interesting as Aliens.
 
Some years later I revisited Alien and realized I'd changed quite a bit from that bloodthirsty kid who got excited by Aliens' military drums, all that hardware, all that splatter. Alien had no pretensions of being higher on the silly genre ladder we like to hang films from --it was a gothic slasher film to Aliens' action thriller-- but what  wowed me once I'd had the patience to look for it was its sense of place, isolation, and scope.  
 
Beyond that, probably the thing that impacted me the most had nothing to do with its science fiction or horror trappings. I marveled at how real the banter between the crew felt. You have the class conflict between the men keeping the ship running and the rule-driven corporate officers, and every one of the seven characters in the film have distinct personalities, including some of the old horror tropes, some of which were there just to be subverted.
 
It's hard for me to look at Aliens as its own picture with a legacy like that, but its banter seems much less natural, its weapons-empowerment diminishing the horrifying mystique of the titular monsters, and its scope seems much more narrow.  I watched it so many times that Aliens is now a cliche in my head, something I use internally to judge just about any diverse-team-goes-into-the-dark-hole movie, and though most such movies are weak compared to Aliens, I can't for the life of me bring myself to watch Aliens again. Not only is it so thoroughly ground into my psyche, but its prequel feels so much more interesting to me now that I wonder if it's spoiled me against liking Aliens with even a fraction of the fervor I had as a kid.
 
Really, the two films don't have as much in common as they seem, despite their direct story and character connections. If seen back-to-back it might seem a bit ridiculous how different the tone of the two films are.  But it's been more than ten years since I've seen Aliens, possibly quite a bit more, and I wonder how I might feel about its relative bombast. The version I have comes with the extra footage excised from the theatrical cut, stuff I'd only been dimly aware of when I caught bits of the heavily edited television version, with some interesting, if possibly unnecessary, additions to some of my favorite scenes.
 
Yet I can't do it. It's not that I don't have trouble watching other films, old or new, but Aliens feels like a friend that didn't manage to grow up alongside me, and thus threatens to be a potentially embarrassing portrayal of how much I've changed. It's not like I don't like action pictures, but I don't even think of Aliens as entertainment anymore-- it's too well ingrained.  I guess I'll see if I can manage it, because at the very least it will be an interesting experiment.
 
Of the other Alien pictures I don't have a lot to say. Alien 3 was disappointing in several ways, although I've heard multiple assurances that the workprint is leagues better than the film I'd seen.  The fourth film had some cool ideas but its tone, something very important to films like this, felt way off, making me reevaluate my dislike of 3 when that was over. I never saw any of the Alien vs. Predator films; that idea was cool when Dark Horse first started talking about it a long time ago, if only because the idea of a new Alien movie sounded great then, but even if I get back into Aliens, I jumped ship on that idea long before it ever saw the light of day.
 
Anyone else out there reluctant to visit old favorites?