I first saw Aliens when I was 12 or 13 on cable in the late 80s and it blew me away. Perfect movie in every way. I could watch it every day and never get tired of it. Funny thing was that our local cable network showed the "extended version" (with the sentry turrets, scenes with Newt's parents, etc) and for years I thought I'd imagined some of those scenes because the extended version wasn't available on video until much later.
Fun fact: Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez) runs several bra stores in the Los Angeles area that cater to women with difficult-to-fit sizes. She is a total sweetheart. If you have a small group and contact her via email ahead of time she may be willing to make accommodations for your group. We had about four couples and she opened the store a bit early for our group. The women got fitting sessions (she personally fitted my wife) and she chatted with us for a bit afterward, including answering some questions about Aliens.
Please be respectful of her time and the fact that she's running a business, obviously. The bras are fairly expensive (but worth it, according to the women in our group) and they don't carry anything smaller than a D cup. So if you're not a potential customer, this is not the way to meet "Pvt. Vasquez!"
> Funny thing was that our local cable network showed the "extended version" (with the sentry turrets, scenes with Newt's parents, etc) and for years I thought I'd imagined some of those scenes because the extended version wasn't available on video until much later.
Wow. So there WERE sentry guns. For years (pre-Google years) I used to argue that there was a scene with sentry guns, though I don't think that's what I had called them. Those guns were awesome and they had made a huge impression on me. Problem was, no one else could remember seeing them. My family and friends swore I was crazy. So I asked for the uncut version of Aliens for Christmas one year (probably around 91 or 92) and I was so disappointed. No sentry guns. So I just figured everyone else was right. I must have imagined it or was mixing up my films. A few years later I purchased a "special edition extended version" on VHS which, sadly, also had no sentry guns. So that was that. I was wrong, there were no sentry guns, and that was the last I thought of it until now. I knew I saw those damn guns!
Holy crap! I'd never seen that before! For its time, that's masterful! It also makes the sci-fi facet of the screenplay much more intelligent. (Of course the Colonial Marines are going to use lots of automated weapons!)
It sounds like we had essentially the same experience! I know it definitely made me feel crazy!
What threw me off is the the "extended cut" with sentry guns was seemingly shown on cable television right off the bat - like as soon as Aliens was shown on cable, it was the extended (or at least an extended version). I don't think that was very common, so it never occurred to me that's what might have happened. They usually saved the special editions for home video sales.
they're on the DVD version with the director's cut. I bought that a few years ago. my guess is they're on the Blu-Ray equivalent now also. but I mostly just buy stuff from iTunes now, and I don't think they have the director's cut (aka "special edition") on iTunes. they might.
Did you ask her about the auditioning gaffe where she turned-up thinking it was a film about illegal aliens?
Hence the Vasquez recruiting joke that made it into the film.
Anyway, I have found that it's pretty much impossible for a group of adults to sit and watch Aliens. Everyone wants to shout Hudson's lines, at least after dubbing-over Frost for the first 30 minutes. Completely spoils the atmosphere.
Did you ask her about the auditioning gaffe where she turned-up thinking it was a film about illegal aliens?
YES! In fact, this was the only thing I asked her.
She said that she did mistakenly think it was a movie based on resident aliens going into the audition, but it was her understanding that the joke was already in the script and was not specifically based on her audition.
The way she phrased her answer suggested that she was pretty sure of this, but perhaps not 100% sure.
My personal and completely uninformed speculation: even if the joke in the script was inspired by her misunderstanding, they may have told her otherwise for politeness' sake. I have no idea how likely that is.
It always bugged me that one of the more important scenes was cut out of the shorter version: the two-minute scene where Ripley learns her daughter grew old and died while Ripley was in cryosleep. It's short, and it provides the entire motive for Ripley in the last third of the film - saving Newt as a surrogate for her own daughter.
My dad took me and my sister to see Aliens in the theater, when I was ten or so. At about 15 minutes into the opening scene I suggested to my dad that maybe we didn't need to see it, and we left. When I was a little older we rented it as a video, and it's been one of my favorite movies ever since.
The first time I saw Aliens - it was one of the strange TV edits that included the sentry guns, but lacked the other salient bits - holy fuck, it immediately gave me the sense of "this is what films should aspire to."
Roughly seventeen years later, I always experience the same thrill that I did the first time I saw it.
On an unrelated but personal note, which I feel appropriate given the subject matter: it took me YEARS to figure out what the fuck was wrong with my memory, because that strange cut that had the sentry guns (CBS edit, I believe?) was not readily available until the director's cut came out on DVD - I was not fortunate enough (keks) to own a Laserdisc player, so I spent a good number of my formative years thinking I was insane for insisting that "ALIENS HAS SENTRY GUNS! IT'S BAD-ASS!"
Further unrelated note, because I'm that much of nerd, and couldn't afford it, but went nuts anyhow: I purchased a $4,100 replica of the M41A pulse rifle built by Phil Steinschneider, and while I no longer have it - wow. What an amazing piece of film history, even if to only have a meticulously researched, almost exact replica of an item that defined a good chunk of my existence.
TL;DR: Aliens is the greatest film ever, and I hope every future generation (and those that show it to them) have the same enthusiasm that OP and I do for the film. Masterpiece.
The sentry rifle purchase is impressive! Next time you have disposable income, you could always get one of the sentry gun computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass
There's one in the Smithsonian Air & Space museum in Washington DC if you're in the area and prefer to window-shop without buying. :)
Hah good info. So far Fredericks is the only resource for my girl. Jenette was also in T2 and that odd ball vampire movie where some of the crew from Aliens were re-united. Don't recall seeing her in anything else.
Invariably whenever we run into a dev problem, somebody on my crew will always blurt out, "Game over man, we're fucked!" We're an agile shop of course.
That's actually how I found her bra shop. A friend and I were geeking out over Aliens and we realized that Pvt. Vasquez was such a memorable character but seemed to almost totally disappear after that movie. So I Googled her and saw her current venture. In an unbelievable bit of good luck, we were actually already planning to visit LA in a couple months' time, so we knew we had to find a way to make that visit happen.
In Germany the film is rated 16+, so this story strikes me as really odd. I wouldn't have thought of showing the film to children any younger than 14, personally.
But I guess this is a cultural thing. We tend to be more prudish when it comes to violence but are a lot more relaxed when it comes to nudity or sexuality.
I do remember watching Alien under age (no idea at what age exactly) and thinking it's the scariest thing I had ever seen, though. However I think it's difficult to tell whether that did me any harm or not. We tend to overestimate our own psyche, just as we tend to overestimate how "adult" our children really are.
Agreed, I'm actually pretty shocked that they reduced it to a 15, there's some pretty strong stuff in there.
11-year-olds are young enough to get terrible nightmares from films like Aliens - if it was my child who wanted to watch something age-appropriate and got shouted down, I'd be pretty furious.
Happened to me with A Nightmare on Elm Street. I was 6. Also didn't learn my lesson, but never again in my life I had a nightmare. Freddie was really scary, all else can said to be a dream if Freddie isn't there. :)
My mother took me to the theater and watched it with me. I was 11.
No nightmares.
If anything, I was the weird kid at school, because everyone else was watching Nightmare on Elm Street when they were 8 and 9, and mom wouldn't let me.
It's almost the same for all movies with just violence/blood in it. When I was 11, I used to watch a lot of them. I guess it's okay if the parent is there watching the film with them.
Speaking of movie ratings, is there actual evidence that watching "adult" movies at a young age is really bad for you? Kids watch pretty much whatever they want on the Internet these days, anyway.
Reason.com reports that this consensus is cracking [1]
And the correction at the end begs a fascinating question about
whether the media should present both sides of an issue. If
99% of research says A and 1% says not-A, is the media being
misleading by reporting both views? If the media doesn't
present not-A, then is it censoring opposing views?
Actually, they published an article highlighting the different view of a single researcher (ok - he had a co-author in one paper). Note that the paper showing the decrease in violence makes no claims for the reasons behind it.
I find his argument compelling, but that doesn't mean the consensus is any different.
I can only speak for myself. Being exposed to pornographic images at 9-10 years old had a negative effect on me. It made me want sex far earlier than I would be ready for the physical and emotional consequences.
Speaking for myself, I was exposed to pornography at 8 until about 10 pretty consistently (friends' dad worked until dinnertime, they were home alone, they found his porn stash [not stache]).
I can't say I wanted or didn't want it, but I turned down some opportunities in high school and was fairly old, compared to the average in my circles, by the time I had sex.
I don't think the pornographic images (movies, not softcore, in my case) had much effect.
It's a complicated topic. Being exposed to porn at a similar age definitely affected my attitude and desire for sexual encounters, though I still didn't get one until being in a serious relationship at 24.
Maybe these children are going to want to shoot aliens at an earlier age now. Wait...
Edit: Am I wrong? What exactly is the concern with Aliens here? Kids already like guys shooting aliens. Is there some sort of "alien-violence puberty" that I am not aware of?
I've upvoted you because I'm noticing a pattern on this topic where anyone questioning the "think of the children!" attitude is being downvoted.
Before you guys downvote me; I'm a parent. The boy is now 13yo and has been growing up with Star Trek, Dr Who, and whatever other sci-fi I like to watch. Even some Dr Who and Star Trek had material some of you would consider to be a bit 'iffy' to show kids. Doesn't seem to have done my son any harm - he's growing into a well balanced kid who goes to the Air Cadets, is popular, and does well at school.
As a parent, I see no harm in showing 11 year old boys Aliens.
Listen - you cannot wrap your kids up in cotton wool. The reality of life is way more brutal and uncaring than is shown in a mere film.
As long as these kids understand that it's just a story, that it involves plastic and latex models, these are actors, and so on and so forth - where's the harm for these 11yo kids?
Like I say - life is hard. I for one don't want my son growing up to be some limp-wristed little snowflake because I shielded him from all sorts of things. Seriously guys, get real.
> Even some Dr Who and Star Trek had material some of you would consider to be a bit 'iffy' to show kids
No, people are arguing against films like Saw or their 1980s equivalents.
> Like I say - life is hard. I for one don't want my son growing up to be some limp-wristed little snowflake because I shielded him from all sorts of things. Seriously guys, get real.
What life lessons is a child going to learn from watching "Hostel"?
I'm specifically talking about whether it's 'bad' or not for 11yo boys to watch Aliens. Keep to the subject. Why mention some other film when I'm talking about Aliens?
I despise people who try to 'win' their argument by constantly shifting the goalposts.
Other people are talkig about films like Saw. Why are you trying to win the argument that nobody here is having?
But, if you want to talk about Aliens: plenty of people in this thread have spoken about the distress they felt when watching Aliens as teenagers. What life lesson is an eleven year old going to learn from watching Aliens?
Other people may be talking about Saw, I'm not. I'm specifically talking about the film that was mentioned in the first place and is being talked about in the original post.
I'm also not trying to win any argument. I'm presenting my opinion - on that one specific topic of the original post.
A small selection of posters say they were 'distressed' when watching Aliens? What they call 'stress', I call 'being thrilled' - exactly the intention of the film.
"What life lesson is an eleven year old going to learn from watching Aliens?" - you learn whether or not you like watching these types of films or not. Don't like it? Don't watch another one. Lesson learned. Think you got traumatised over it in some way? Go find someone to talk about it and help you through it - nevertheless, a lesson was learned one way or the other.
I kind of had the opposite reaction to the same effect- I was exposed around 10 years old to pornographic images (Playboy) and also read the articles about sex. I wanted it far earlier than I was ready for but I felt like it had a positive effect on me- more at ease with the idea of it, my body, how others might react, how to communicate what I want and figure out what my partner wants.
I don't think kids will reach puberty earlier because of what images they view. From everything we know about growth and hormones, exposer to images has never really been suggested to have an impact.
If by "adult" you mean horror/grotesque movies, then yes. I watched them from a young age with (I have no idea how) my parents blessing.
To this day, I struggle being alone at night. I'm jumpy, imagine all sorts of weird and nasties creeping and crawling around the dark recesses of whatever room I'm in. It's not debilitating, as I've learned to consciously reason out of my fear of irrational things, but it still pops up in my head. Still makes me jumpy. Still makes my heart-race, and still pisses me off that my mind would do that to me.
Needless to say, I'm not showing any such movies to my kids until they're at-least mid-teens.
To counter your anecdote, my parents never really censored what I viewed as a kid either. Aliens was (and is) one of my favourites as a kid. My babysitter used to "force" me to watch horror movies, she and my parents thought it was funny or something. I don't feel I'm any more or less uncomfortable in the dark by myself than the average person is.
zo1's anecdote shows that at least some kids get lifelong anxiety issues from watching horror/slasher movies at an early age.
Your anecdote shows that at least some kids do _not_ get those lifelong anxiety issues from the same.
How does yours "counter" zo1's in the slightest? That would be like the tobacco industry saying "but look at all the smokers who never got cancer!".
I'm (honestly, as a human being to another) glad you don't seem to have been affected (overly) by your caretakers abusing you, but you can't seriously be advocating this kind of behavior, enough to argue for it?
> zo1's anecdote shows that at least some kids get lifelong anxiety issues from watching horror/slasher movies at an early age.
No it doesn't.
It shows that at least one person has lifelong anxiety issues that they attribute to having watched horror movies.
I don't have anxiety issues and I watched horror movies at a young age, maybe I would have anxiety issues if I hadn't? Maybe on average it has a positive effect on anxiety? Maybe it's completely unrelated. You can't draw any conclusions from a couple of anecdotes
Anyway, I think so too. Humans seem to have an innate fear of the dark, and any recent memory of danger will increase that effect. Heck, I'm an adult and still after watching something like Aliens I get seriously stressed when going to bathroom at night. And my closest friend openly refuses to watch scary movies when she expects to be alone home at night.
This is not evidence, it's an anecdote. It's speculation on your part that this is the reason you're scared. It could be, and maybe it's even likely--but it takes a wider study to have any kind of assurance that you're correct.
Fair enough, of course. I guess I am just assuming the link between the two. But it's a little hard not to see a link as the things I imagine/see are based on the things I saw in those movies.
Also anecdotally: as a young teenager I'd remember scenes from movies like Aliens in order to psyche myself up for doing things that were scary. Like: "Okay, self. You can go into that dark basement. It's scary, but not as scary as a bunch of marines going into an alien-infested death trap."
Don't get me wrong: Aliens was really freaking scary to me. Probably the most a movie has ever scared me. As soon as they encounter the first xenomorph it's pretty much sheer terror for the next hour.
> To this day, I struggle being alone at night. I'm jumpy, imagine all sorts of weird and nasties creeping and crawling around the dark recesses of whatever room I'm in.
That is one of the reasons that I got a dog. Having another being in the house is a massive difference from being alone, even if that being can't talk and is a bit of a scaredy cat himself.
And hey, before Internet they also were watching anything they wanted anyway - it only takes one kid who gets a VHS from somewhere (e.g. from an older brother)...
Using a smartphone to watch a horror or porn flick without adults noticing is much easier than what it was to sneak to someone's home with a CRT TV and a VHS recorder and a cassette to watch.
Not that kids didn't see bad things in the bad old times - they probably saw more of it in real life - but the ubiquitousness of these devices is not necessarily only a good thing.
I agree. The point is, kids back then (which includes myself) had their ways. You want some porn or horror/action movie? That's what older brothers are for ;).
Some kids react poorly to things. I love movies and want the kids to enjoy the experience.
Personally, I'm pretty unflappable, although things like horror movies don't do anything for me at all. My wife cannot tolerate gross stuff at all. Criminal Minds (prime time TV fare) kills her appetite.
My son is too little to develop preferences, but my one nephew hates movies where someone pops from an off camera to attack somebody. Freaks him out, even in a not scary movie.
As a kid in the 80's, there was a pretty big disconnect between the movie rating and what we would eventually watch on VHS at home. Over time I effectively saw every popular 80's movie, every martial arts movie, and a good chunk of horror movies before the age of 12 on home video.
Talking about disconnects in movie ratings, the DVD releases of "Little House on the Prairie" were rated 18+ in Finland.
This was because the State Motion Picture Inspection Agency got greedy, and wanted to collect a new fee from the distributor who had already paid for the VHS releases.
Distributors had to pay to get a rating, but were allowed to release stuff as 18+ without paying. So the distributor of Little House just told the agency to go climb a tree and released this horrible nightmarish series with a 18+ rating, and since everyone now realised how the inspection agency had made itself completely ridiculous, they gave up and changed the rules.
To clarify for those not from the US: an MPAA "R" rating means that children under 17 are not admitted unless accompanied by an adult. http://www.mpaa.org/film-ratings/
In other words, it's movies we're okay with kids seeing - but they need to see it with an adult, presumably one who knows it's something this specific child will be able to handle.
I read this and thought "I'd be amazed any parent would let their child see any movie by themselves".
Then I realized I did it all the time with friends when I was 10-16 and we had a cinema 3 miles into town we would walk to, and I am only 24 this year. Its like the American Family went over-protectionist deep end in just this decade or something, because my brother who lives with his mother can't even walk to the school bus stop down the street by himself without it potentially resulting in a police call.
Making sure that children are ready for something is a valid concern but I did want to quote the first sentence of the third paragraph:
“some of them had seen the first one anyway, and nearly all had seen at least one film with a xenomorph in it”
I'm sure there are plenty of kids who aren't ready for this but based on that and some of the other comments about recognizing cliches from similar movies, it sounds like these boys weren't pushing the boundaries too far.
Your logic makes sense, but there's something special about visual imagery - the way the images go directly into our brains without being filtered through our imaginations - that gives it true power.
When I was a kid, I read a lot of horror. Mostly Stephen King, and Clive Barker, which were far more than my 8-year-old self should have been reading, but for the most part, I could handle it, just fine. (Stephen King's It was really the only book that scared me beyond the moments I was reading). On the other hand, the violent films I saw (Aliens, Robocop, etc) proved much harder to shake off. Remember the end of Robocop where they guy gets toxic waste dumped all over him, and his flesh starts dripping off? I spent weeks trying to get that image out of my head. Hell, even the end of Raiders, or the Ceti Eels from Wrath of Khan disturbed me far more than anything I read.
As an adult, I watched Devils Rejects - a truly great film that I cannot recommend to anyone because of how disturbing I found some of the imagery in that.
Or, to take a real life example - plenty of us are fine with reading accounts of terrorist beheadings but purposefully avoid watching the videos of the events.
Just to show how different people are, my experience was the opposite. My parents never censored anything (within reason), but reading let my imagination fill in the blanks to a more disturbing level than movies could offer. Even stories from pretty silly books like "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" would leave me freaked out for days, and then of course I would go back and read them again like an idiot. Audio tapes by Jackie Torrence, a great storyteller, would also get me good. Meanwhile I could watch all the classic horror movies, Freddy, et al. without as much issue...still scary as hell but in a more superficial, short-term way. It also could have something to do with the fact that I watched movies with other people, whereas reading/listening I was usually alone in my bed at night.
You have a point about terrorist beheadings though...can't watch them. I guess cause I know it's real life and the empathy is too much.
Oh, man. I totally forgot about "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". Yeah, those freaked me out. Granted, the drawings in those books were pretty gruesome, but the stories themselves were pretty scary. Totally forgot about that.
No movie ever scared me as much as stories. Because you can always close your eyes. But horrible story gets straight into your brain before you even know it's scary and stay there invoking horrors.
My kids love the really 'German' tales - but I won't let them watch Aliens (just yet). The difference is that the reading gives us the opportunity to discuss the tale, allay fears, and try to find a moral message within the tale.
A movie tends to be presented without an ongoing parental filter as the images go directly to the psyche without pause.
Ratings systems aren't really anything to go by, at least in the US. My rule is: it's gotta be good. I'd prefer my own kids to watch something good than to watch something crappy. The children aimed stuff, for the most part, is junk.
The only stuff I skip is really when there's a explicit sex act talk only because I don't want to explain jokes regarding specific sex acts and slang. My girls are 6 & 8, so I figure that's reasonable for another 5-6 years. Is that prudish? (I've only got cultural input from North America, which seems to recoil at stuff everyone sees in showers everyday, so all I know is that their scale is off, not where it should be.)
I like Common Sense Media. I didn't think I would like any media monitor for parents, but I think this one provides enough depth of information to put decisions into parents' hands. They rate and discuss several factors including not only sex and violence, but also consumerism, "is it any good," and "will kids want it." On the other hand, they also offer simple summaries. A parent who has specific criteria can generally just get a list of current products that meet those criteria.
The thing I like about CSM is if you hover over (or click on, I can't recall exactly) the ratings for each category they outline why which helps you make your own mind up how flexible you want to be with their recommendation.
Also gives good age ranges, not just the broad certificates.
I love Common Sense Media. My kids don't like to be scared, it negatively impacts their sleeping and frankly their general well being but I'm not really concerned about bad language or minor innuendo - CSM is the best way to get an idea if my kids are going to enjoy something.
If it's as I recall, it was rather boring, but otherwise rather tame. Edit: I just rewatched the trailer, and it looks fine. I just recall not enjoying the movie a whole lot.
The last 20 minutes of it are realistically violent. I cringed watching some of the scenes as an adult. I don't think kids would appreciate the build-up to it, either, the fact it's boring is what makes it so damned good when it finally releases the tension it's built to that point.
I'm not saying the ratings are always inaccurate, just that they aren't calibrated to most things I care about. Compared to some folks that go "Oh I would never let my child watch a movie rated R" as if that was some kind of determining factor.
People swearing, using drugs, and nudity will get an R rating even if the movie is fantastic. Those three things I'm annoyed that people find objectionable for children, as it only increases the stigma as they get older, for what should be very positive things. Violence, meh, so long it's not deliberately cruel or scary, I don't see why it'd be disturbing. Over-the-top stuff like you say sounds more funny than anything else. (The children's shows, Golden Compass, and RWBY, both contain scenes where the jaw/head of an enemy is blown right off.)
As another poster mentioned, Common Sense Media is a far better rating system. They address specific points so you can make a good determination. Even then, I find my kids often enjoy stuff that CSM rates well over their current age.
Indeed. I saw Sin City (an exceedingly violent movie) in a theater. A woman (presumably the mother) and two young boys (~8 and 11) were seated in the row in front of me. She didn't bat an eye at the violence, but yelped and shielded the boys' eyes when breasts appeared. I still don't really know what to make of that.
I've not seen it at all but you're right that there are some strange attitudes with some people and letting their children watch horrific things at a young age. Even on this very topic, some of the comments are "meh violence isn't a problem, I don't see why it would be disturbing to my child" which is clearly a case of desensitisation influencing the stuff they show to their children.
I have same many films that I wish I had never seen as I can't "unremember" things or wipe bits of my brain out. The incessant flow of violence in films only serves to desensitise: something is truly shocking the first time, not so the next time, and repeatedly it isn't shocking anymore.
To see that some people use their own level of how shocking a film is to THEM to decide whether to show it to their children is distressing; "I wasn't shocked, so why would my children be??". Very sad.
It is interesting that nudity is considered so bad, as it is part of healthy and normal relationships between adults. Whilst violence isn't. I think I'd rather have young adults be tolerant about nudity than violence.
I totally agree. American cultural norms are strange in that regard. To be clear, i was not being judgemental, but just relating shock at something i was not used to having been raised in the US.
I live in China, and it's not uncommon for people to take their very young kids to the movies. Japanese 'bad guys' in movies can be stabbed, shot, dismembered and blood flying everywhere, and tge parents don't bat an eyelid. A PG-rated kiss however and the parents are covering the kids eyes with their hands :D
It's normal for humans of all ages. Does no one look in a mirror or take showers? My kids bathe together, sometimes with my wife. It's, uh, not a big deal, nor should it be.
And who said there's a "need"? Might as well why do you need TV at all? Nude bodies can look cool, so it seems as valid to show that as someone wearing sunglasses.
People don't have aliens bursting out of their chests in the street so why do you need to show aliens bursting out of people's chests at peak TV times on public television?
Well, my parents did, for example. I was pretty "rational" at an early age and my parents misinterpreted that as maturity, which at some points got me into situations I shouldn't have been expected to be able to handle at that age.
It's not unheard of for parents to want their children to consider them peers rather than parents. The problem is that you can't really be both. The roles and responsibilities of a parent and a peer in a child's life are very different.
Also, if you signal to your child that you would prefer them to act more maturely, that child can become pretty good at faking maturity without the emotional and psychological stability that would come with it if it came naturally. As a parent you have to look past that superficial behaviour.
And for a less personal example, just look at child prodigies, child actors, child pop stars, or for a particularly disturbing example, child beauty pageants. That a child shows a particular trait normally associated with maturity or adulthood doesn't mean the child should be treated as an adult. Yet, this is exactly what happens to many such children who happily play along because their make-believe is positively reinforced by the adults around them.
There are plenty of people willing to believe an eight year old is "very mature for their age" when they should know better. Heck, the entire premise of NAMBLA is a reflection of this (simply taking the illusion to its disgusting logical extreme).
For all the "think of the children" commentators here and in the blog - why is it that kids who have parents that hide them from everything "bad", wind up so messed up, narcissistic, and are generally unable to cope with life?
The answer is of course right there, by putting them in a "safe place" you've removed every adversary and every challenge - right when the mind needs those things the most so it can form abilities necessary to deal with and move forward in life (a life that will throw all kinds of issues, disasters, and curve balls at you).
Its kind of like the peanut allergy study that was posted here a day or two ago... The infants and children that don't get exposed to peanuts at an early age - so their systems can get familiar and use to it, are most likely to end up in the highly allergic group. [this is just an analogy]
I'm not suggesting that children should be constantly exposed (or made to watch) graphic and horror movies to prepare them for life.
And I'm sure there are cases of children who just can't handle these things at the age of 10-15... Though most will be fine - and won't need therapy, will not have their lives ruined, nor will their well-beings be negatively impacted.
I am also not suggesting that they should have no supervision.
What I am suggesting is that there are too many over-protective and helicopter parents who are making "special children" that can only live and function inside bubbles.
And if the child get's broken by watching "Aliens" at the age of 11, then the problem is with the parenting - rather than the friend's dad who let them watch it.
In which case, please, attach a note to the child with all the rather available things that he/she should not be exposed to or is allergic to (like peanut butter).
We live in a society where a child would have to sit on a park bench for 700,000 years before he/she would get kidnapped, but if you leave him/her in a car to pay the gas station clerk, someone can take a picture of that child being untended and send it to the police, which will then charge you with a misdemeanor.
In my parental opinion, there's more meaningful adversity for parents to give their children than terrifying movies. For my own childhood, a diet of passive and disjointed media led to learned helplessness.
My own children are forced to hike adult distances and work hard on tasks they find unpleasant. Hopefully this will lead to strength in the face of adversity.
> there's more meaningful adversity for parents to give their children than terrifying movies
I grew up in a (relatively) rough part Chicago and in spite or because of the depressed nature of the place never saw a lot of horror movies growing up.
Now working with a lot of people who grew up and live in suburbia on a steady diet of horror movies, I am amazed at the amount of fear and anxiety they demonstrate when dealing with anything vaguely paranormal or the thought of an intruder.
I know numerous people who sleep with a gun under their pillow even though statistically crime (especially violent crime) is stunningly low in the places we now live. They take precautions I never even considered growing up even though break-ins and muggings happened regularly in the neighborhood.
This is 100% idle conjecture on my part, but I always wondered if horror movies played some part in such behavior.
I've got to say, I've never actually met anybody that admitted to taking paranormal nonsense seriously. People understand that "Freddy" isn't real, and that kind of slasher-fic is not why people own guns for home defense.
Isn't that the point of a horror movie though? The audience is supposed to know that it isn't real, and are supposed to be scared of what it symbolizes.
If kids aren't scared by Aliens, then the movie failed. Being scared by Aliens even though they know it isn't real doesn't mean that the movie inappropriate for them, it means that they are handling the movie as adults do.
Well you can still be scared by something while knowing its not real, eg there are parts of Alien that always make me jump even though I've seen it many times (I personally prefer original Alien it to the more shoot-em-up sequel).
Sticking with your original context of people owning guns for home defense, while I would never assert that they do so directly in response to horror movies or suchlike, I would argue that such movies often serve an ideological function of embodying our social fears so as to domesticate them, and that this can heighten the perception of risk.
Drop me a line about this if you'd like to continue the conversation. I'm very interested in psychoananalytic approaches to film theory and would be happy to discuss it further.
My uncle back when I was really young showed me and my cousin "Full Metal Jacket". I still remember some scenes, the film traumatized me, literally. I don't know what age I was but I was way too young for that.
Kids can get terrified by horror and violence. Sex? Not so much. I don't understand why we hide nudity from kids.
Because we are afraid of harming them, because we are conditioned to be afraid of ourselves. !Kung Bushmen often lived in hand-made temporary huts. Therefore it was basically normal for couples to make love in front of the kids. !Kung Bushmen brides were also once prized by neighboring agricultural people, as they were thought to be particularly uninhibited and enthusiastic sexually.
The US is still very much a puritan culture in some weirdly sublimed ways.
Making love in front of someone is different though. I think it's for the same reason someone doesn't like to be sober around drunk people, or the reverse.
I got "traumatized" by Baywatch (something with a ghost on the beach) and the short (2-4 sentences) teaser texts of mystery/horror-books in a book catalogue (with very broad sortiment) that came to our house.
On the other hand I coped well with Mad Max and Missing in Action. You just can't predict what hits.
I saw Event Horizon when I was like ten or eleven. I saw IT when I was about the same age. I used to stay up and watch old reruns of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with my dad.
When I saw Event Horizon I thought, "that... SUCKED!" But then, I was an adult at the time.
I wonder if it was like seeing Salem's Lot as a kid vs as an adult? As a kid it terrified me (well, the floating kid in the window scene anyway) but as an adult I wondered how such horrible acting and filmmaking could ever get green lit. I've heard the same from others in my generation.
I saw Event Horizon in the theater when I was seventeen or so and I was traumatized. That movie was pretty twisted. I felt completely exhausted when I came out of the theater.
Yeah. I think I'm gonna rewatch it soon as I've been tasked to bolt on WSDL support to a REST API app just because the top can save some money on an outsourced mobile app, whose developers have automated class generators for WSDL...
A bit offtopic but relevant to your post: When I was an SGI customer support engineer, I repaired an SGI system for one of the film video production companies in SOHO in London - one of the SGI's was being used to render a scene in Event Horizon in which a fire extinguisher was being blown past the camera by an explosion.
More than the simple fact of whether the child has access to 'adult' material or not, what's important is how it's presented to them. Whether they see a film with friends who got a copy from another friend, or whether their parents actually show it to them makes a big difference in how they analyze what they see. So not putting your child in a bubble and not wanting to show them disturbing media aren't mutually exclusive at all.
why is it that kids who have parents that hide them from everything "bad", wind up so messed up, narcissistic, and are generally unable to cope with life?
Precisely because!
As the Japanese say, "You only know true kindness through suffering."
If you drove your car into a tree and became paralyzed, you might become much kinder from a firsthand understanding of deep suffering. (You might also become angry and bitter. You might even do both these things at the same time!)
No. I'm thinking more along the lines of stuff that happened to members of my family and their friends in Korea under the Japanese occupation. Yours is indeed a first world perspective. To borrow your phrase: "To truly appreciate how good your life is, you must first 'drive' one that is a lot worse."
Strawman much? I didn't argue for complete prohibition. That's silly, even if it seems to be popular in some parts of the world (e.g. state-sponsored sexual abstinence programs in the US).
Could you expand on this? As someone with no kids yet, your parent's comment resonated with me as I often feel that kids are being shielded far more than I recall from my childhood, to their detriment, but I'd love to see it from the other side.
Well, provide any data at all? What percentage of kids that are being shielded from stuff end up being messed up? And what does it even mean - do you mean kids should not be protected from anything at all? Or what, specifically, should they not be protected from?
I tend to agree. The biggest problem I have is that movie ratings for all practical purposes carry the force of law even here in the US, despite the lack of anything resembling valid evidence of harm that kids under 16 or 17 might undergo by exposure to a movie. The Germans in particular are ridiculously overprotective in this sense. Um, guys, I'm pretty sure Hitler never saw Aliens. Lighten up already.
The second, more serious criticism I have is that the moral panic associated with exposure to children to onscreen violence, sex, and drugs can only diminish the real outrage that we ought to feel when kids in war-torn countries, inner-city slums, and refugee zones actually experience real-life violence and horror beyond anything Hollywood can conjure, and on a daily basis. If most of those kids don't grow up to be serial killers, I somehow doubt a movie is going to do it.
> If most of those kids don't grow up to be serial killers, I somehow doubt a movie is going to do it.
1. Anyone in those conditions isn't seeing violence glorified the way it is in movies, where the guys you were rooting for win at the end and you rarely see prolonged consequences. Someone in a refugee camp knows all too well that the bad guys can leave people broken and pay no consequences for it.
2. Perhaps not serial killers out of a horror film but it's not like the concept of cycles of violence is unknown: children who grow up in horrible conditions do have a higher rate of either becoming gang/cartel/etc. members, soldiers, etc.[1] or have escalated rates of suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse, etc. because they've never recovered from what happened.
1. either because they have no choice or because they're all too familiar with what happens when you don't represent enough of a threat to deter violence. Closer to home, This American Life had a great interview with kids talking about how they had to join gangs because they'd be getting attacked either way so it was a question of either being afraid to leave your house or having enough allies to be relatively safe most days:
> If most of those kids don't grow up to be serial killers, I somehow doubt a movie is going to do it.
That's not why most people want to restrict the amount of violent content their children watch.
See, for example, the "You've been Tango'd" ads in the UK. There's a soda called "Tango". One advert showed someone drinking the can, than a fat near naked man painted orage runs in, and slaps the drinker's face with both hands. Children imitated this, causing several perforated eardrums. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_%28advertisement%2... (see controversy section). That's one example of children imitating what they saw on tv, and other children being harmed as a result.
EDIT: i'm not saying children copy everything. But this example proves that children do imitate some behaviours; that children are influenced by some things they watch. Ask any parent about the children's show "Caillou" and the change of their children into whiners. Parents realise that some content will cause mild behaviour changes or nightmares and they want to be prepared.
So how are half of the children, who play violent video-games all day long, not imitating the behavior they see and do in those games?
A lot of those games involve hardware the children do not have access to. The games also often portray consequences in a way which the kids still know to be very bad. (As much as children play "war," they know viscerally that being in pain and bleeding is generally not fun.
We should be at least overrun by car-jackings at this point thanks to Grand Theft Auto.
There was one young man who enacted a GTA scenario and shot his way out of a police station with a gun he stole from a police officer. However, he is very much the exception.
What the orange advert did was to portray an activity with bad consequences as a trivial and harmless one, in a way that specifically worked around the built in understanding that otherwise deters kids from doing things like that. (Unless they mean harm. That's also within the possible range of behaviors of children. However, it's not so common in many places for children to want to really harm their playmates.)
> A lot of those games involve hardware the children do not have access to.
You mean things like fists, feet, pipes, kitchen knives, crowbars, hammers, that kinda thing? Like others said, if video games made normal people violent you'd see a lot more violence.
That anecdote about the 'enacting a GTA scenario' would also have happened just like that without the GTA link. Then it becomes a guy with a gun in a police station.
You mean things like fists, feet, pipes, kitchen knives, crowbars, hammers, that kinda thing?
Yes. Actually, there was an incident I was personally witness to involving someone's 8 year old son and an ordinary clawhammer. There is clearly such a thing as "desensitization," and opposition to the notion is usually the kind of unconscious bias one generally sees in politics. < http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ > Note that my position is not so simpleminded as to be simply placed on one side or another of the typical Internet argument.
If you believe that widespread gun ownership generally increases the incidence of gun injuries, then you are subscribing to the same general theory, that availability increases likelihood. Do I believe that's a justification for banning things? No, but we should be honest about the existence of such effects. (Also, fists and feet are an entirely different category, as they are naturally part of your body. And while I said it wasn't common in some places, in others kids do use those to enact violence.)
Like others said, if video games made normal people violent you'd see a lot more violence.
I would put good odds on your repeating what lots of people angrily repeat on the Internet in defense of their hobby. In the grand scheme of things, people are violent! We are extraordinarily violent as animals. In particular, we have an ability to band together in groups and murder each other in a coordinated fashion, one that probably predates our getting language! We also accomplish fantastic things living together, so we also have fantastic mechanisms for coexisting. Seeing things in media does have the effect of reinforcing the portrayed actions and scenarios in our minds. However, human minds are very complex and robust. We have mental defenses, much as we have homeostatic mechanisms.
That anecdote about the 'enacting a GTA scenario' would also have happened just like that without the GTA link. Then it becomes a guy with a gun in a police station.
Read up on the incident and honestly tell me that GTA had nothing to do with putting the idea into his head. Of course, one could also find other pieces of media he was exposed to conveying much the same message. The systemic problems resulting in his violence are probably more serious and of greater import to society than the content of some video game.
I am sure that Hitler never had a diet of fast food and burgers, yet if he ate them constantly he'd get fat.
The same goes with what you put in your brain; if you watch slime, slime is more acceptable to you and what comes out of you is only a product of what goes in - slime. Just because someone in the past did horrific things doesn't mean we need to expose ourselves to a barrage of horrific things.
movie ratings for all practical purposes carry the force of law even here in the US
?! Is this some leftover trauma from not being allowed in to an R-rated film when you where 13? The only people who are constrained by ratings are producers, and then only in the sense that producers push for an R rating (thereby pushing the envelope of what's acceptable for an 'R') because many theater chains refuse to show NC-17 movies for commercial reasons.
the idea that you could somehow prevent your child (edit: teenagers, middle/high school aged) from seeing sex, profanity, violence by restricting their movie watching choices is just completely laughable to me. i can understand why people try, i just think it seems rather futile.
since the advent of the internet, the world is now completely uncensored to everyone, and imposing these arbitrary and anachronistic restrictions on your child will only undermine your own credibility for the things that actually matter.
Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom.
You certainly don't want to give your children free reign to watch all the sex and violence they want (Will I sit down and watch a porn with my kids? Heck no!) but I think that discussing sex and violence with them is probably a lot more valuable than simply shielding them from it.
I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13, along with a bunch of other dumb 1980s action movies. I didn't grow up to be violent, because my parents gave me a strong moral grounding and I understood the line between fantasy and reality - blowing things up and doing martial arts on people was okay in a movie, but not okay in real life. I understood that, so no movie was ever going to be able to change me.
I also watched Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers somewhen around 13 and those movies deeply touched me. Yes, I was pretty much crying and trying not to vomit on the D-Day scene, but it left me with deep impression about horrors of war, something that school never gives you. I didn't become more violent because of that - on the contrary, it reinforced my wish for peace and compassion for people living in places trapped in war.
Funny. All the fake violence I saw as a child on TV desensitized me to the real violence I now see in the news.
I'm not even disturbed by beheading videos or actual raw footage of violent murders (i.e. whatever's new on LiveLeak this month). I don't seek them out directly or find them entertaining. I just don't have any more visceral reactions than to a video of a guy getting kicked in the groin.
I think some part of what my parents taught me about TV got lodged in the wrong part of my brain: "What you see on TV isn't real, it's just make believe." I do have very strong (and natural) reactions when seeing violence or cruelty in person. I just barely react to seeing these things on tape (beyond the ick factor). Except for (real) violence against animals, that is.
It's actually pretty gruelling what's considered acceptable to show on the 8 o'clock news these days. But I'm not sure whether this is a cultural thing again -- I hear American news channels have a policy of never showing dead US soldiers.
For me it's exactly the opposite - while I'm pretty desensitized to the TV violence (but not completely, I still feel bad about unnecessary killing, like poor guards getting executed because they were just in the way), I'm still extremely sensitive if I know what I'm seeing is real. The cry/try-not-to-vomit/get-angry-afterwards kind of sensitive.
> Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom.
So, I agree that over-protecting your children is probably a bad thing.
That doesn't mean that reducing the amount of graphic violent or sexual content your children are exposed to is over-protective. I might be happy for a teen child to watch Aliens with me at home, and less happy for them to watch it with their friends with no adults around. I might be okay with full nudity but less happy with sex.
But, as soon as someone says they want to restrict the content available to their children people just leap to the assumption that that person wants some fucking weird over-protective most restrictive cocoon where the child doesn't get to experience anything but Wholesome Christian Content of good people singing their praise for The Lord.
Yea, I went to two public high schools and a private catholic high school in four years in the same county. Parents thought their kids were sheltered from drugs and whatnot at the catholic private school, but it was the exact opposite?
It was almost like the kids at the private school thought they were missing out on something, and went buck wild?
Well, obviously it's about moderation. Too much exposure to sex, drugs and violence is bad, but no exposure is bad as well. Think of it as inoculation: if a child is sheltered completely, it doesn't know how to deal with these things when it is eventually exposed to them in the real world.
Isn't the problem that children have unrestricted access to the Internet and various parts of it that are pretty much cesspools? If you jump in muck, you're going to get dirty.
I was surprised to see how little monitoring / filtering there was available on modern smartphones/tablets! Is there any filtering available on an iPad / iPhone? If so, I couldn't find it.
I certainly wouldn't want to give an iPad to my child and send them away for private browsing. The problem would lie with me in that I wasn't monitoring them; in the older days when you needed a PC, at least the PC could be in a public area of the house and everyone could see what was going on but it isn't so easy now.
I still find it disturbing at how early an age children these days have Internet-enabled smartphones. I'm a techy myself and well-aware of the "back in my days" factor, but knowing what this can expose a child to, I still find it pretty shocking.
Not just that, but more often than not I see children with expensive high-end devices. I don't think a child needs the most recent iPhone, peer pressure or not. I realise it's a fashion accessory in addition to its utilitarian purposes, but I don't think a child needs a Giorgio Armani suit or Louis Vuitton handbag either. If they buy it from their own money, sure, but I wouldn't buy a child a new $500 smartphone every two years.
TBH it's not about preventing, it's about teaching them morals and normality. It's fine if they watch, idk, videos of randomly slapping people in the streets, just as long as they realise that's not normal or desired behaviour.
It's almost a crime to be a writer on RogerEbert.com yet not reference Ebert's classic review of Aliens, so well written that I can still remember his characterization and nod my head at it:
> It's here that my nerves started to fail. "Aliens" is absolutely, painfully and unremittingly intense for at least its last hour. Weaver goes into battle to save her colleagues, herself and the little girl, and the aliens drop from the ceiling, pop up out of the floor and crawl out of the ventilation shafts. (In one of the movie's less plausible moments, one alien even seems to know how to work the elevator buttons.) I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops.
> I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.
It sounds like all of the kids were boys...It'd be interesting to hear the perspective of girls watching it for the first time. Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female). Only years later have I realized that Alien and Aliens (never watched the other Alien movies) were unique among blockbuster movies in how the heroine is both the savior and not written as an object of romantic interest (beyond a brief flirtation with Cpl. Hicks)...Unlike movies like "Kill Bill" (which I love), the woman isn't written as an oddity, but a down-to-earth character who happens to be strong and resourceful. I never even thought Sigourney Weaver was beautiful until seeing her in other non-action movies.
Edit: speaking of watching Aliens as a kid...I think it's the movie that caused the longest-running movie-inspired-phobia in my life...hearing something under my bed, and then not wanting to look under my bed for fear of a facehugger attacking me.
My daughter was almost scarred for life by it. I think she was about 8 and she had a friend living in our building who was 4 years older. The older girl was into scary movies and I mentioned how Alien, the first movie, was one of the scariest I had seen. I explained the whole plot to them and then showed them the movie and they said it wasn't that scary at all. Long story short, I then showed them Aliens. Unfortunately I'd only seen it once and didn't have a strong memory of the plot, in particular I had completely forgotten about Newt. She ended up a number of phobias for the next year or so that she completely blames on me.
"I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."
There's an interesting thing called "The Bechdel Test". A work of fiction "passes" the test if it has 2 named female characters who talk to each other about something aside from a man. It's a simple little thought experiement, and it's shocking how many films don't pass it.
It was first mentioned in a web comic, and Aliens is the example given.
> Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female).
That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
> That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
That doesn't make sense to me. Martin Roby was the original character for "Alien" and in the first movie, for the most part Ripley wasn't the bad-ass character she would be throughout the second movie.
But the OP was anyway talking about "Aliens" and there Roby could no longer have been an influence for her character.
No. That's because whoever wrote the script(s), wrote strong women characters. Some earlier script version may have had strong male characters but that is not automatically the reason.
The biggest challenge was dissuading kids from trying to predict every single thing that was going to happen. This is a generation of talkers. They have to comment on everything. No thought can go unexpressed.
This is, unfortunately, why I so rarely go to the movies anymore. I honestly don't remember if it was this bad when I was a kid, but I don't think I've seen a movie in the last 2 years where I didn't want to (or actually have to) tell some kids (late teen or younger) in my radius to stop talking. A few times other people even had to chime in when they scoffed at me, like I was somehow out of place telling them to not talk during a movie.
For what it's worth, I worked in the cinema industry (as a projectionist) for a few years, and even the old-timers had spotted this trend over time.
Apparently it's much more common to need staff to intervene with talkers in shows than it was thirty years ago. One memorable case had a staff member explaining to some kid that he couldn't record the show on his phone. The kid seemed confused by this, taping things on the phone and sharing them with friends was just normal, how they engage with every experience.
Another fun thing I noticed from the vantage point of the projection booth: if you look down into any screening more than about one-quarter full, at any time during the show you will always, always see at least one mobile-phone in use. There is never a time when the full audience is giving the film their full attention.
>There is never a time when the full audience is giving the film their full attention.
There is probably also never a time when the full audience actually wants to be there. I would guess that for most couples attending a given movie, one person wanted to see it a lot more than the other.
It's not just kids. There was a middle aged couple next to my wife and I the last flick we caught. I asked politely if they could save the discussion until after the movie and the woman told me in a loud voice to fuck off... seriously.
I told my wife "I think I can take her..." but she, being the voice of reason as usual, told me to stand down. :)
There's a theater that I like to go to that has a policy of no talking and no cell phone use. First offense is a warning, and second offense they are removed from the showing. Those rules are made really clear at the beginning of every movie showing. It's fantastic.
It's a place called Alamo Drafthouse. They made news a while back by posting one of their disgruntled customer voicemails on the internet: http://youtu.be/1L3eeC2lJZs
where do you live? the most of the theaters I go to in LA and SF people mostly don't talk. The theater runs stuff before the movies, no talking, no texting, no phones. etc..
I live near SF. Where are these theaters?! Coming from Austin, and it's Alamo Drafthouses, I've been really disappointed with the talkers in films around here. Most movies that I've seen in the SF area have been filed with talkers.
A friend of mine has a fairly effective response to this phenomenon. He turns around and asks, "Hey, did you get in to this movie for free?" When they say, "no" he replies, "Neither did I. Shutthefuckup." and turns back around.
I don't think this problem is limited to just kids. This is something that annoys me about a lot of adults, lately. It often seems like conversations lately are devolving into people tweeting at each other in the physical world. Something I've noticed for the past several years, but seems to be gradually becoming a common way for people to communicate with each other "in the real world."
This is a big selling point for the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain. They will escort you out if you talk or text during the movie. That, and they don't pillory you with inane commercials before the movie.
Sometimes it enhances the movie for me! Depends on the genre.
Comedies are the obvious one - they're funnier when laughing along with others. I also have no problem with audience comments during action or horror movies. For those kinds of movies I will actually tend to watch them in theaters where I know the audience is a little more lively.
If it's a more serious movie like Gravity or a Terence Malick movie then yeah, I don't want a lot of audience chatter. I'll see those kinds of movies at a stuffy arty theater where the audience is likely to be quiet, or I'll simply wait to watch them at home.
> I'll see those kinds of movies at a stuffy arty theater where the audience is likely to be quiet, or I'll simply wait to watch them at home.
Yes, there's a class of movies I watch alone in my home (at night, to avoid random people disrupting) (and it also works for some series; e.g. I always schedule watching Person of Interest episode when everyone is sleeping). In case of cinema, I choose the other end - I go to the one with sound turned up to eleven, so that most of the time it simply drowns all ambient noise.
I remember watching "There Will Be Blood", and some person kept laughing and making jokes out loud. It's like one of the most tense movies I've seen, and they ruined it.
> This is, unfortunately, why I so rarely go to the movies anymore.
I hate people talking around me as well, but the other thing I hate is people eating a whole bag of popcorn during a good half of the movie. It makes so much noise, for me it's as disturbing as someone chatting next to me. Yet seems like nobody has any problem with that. It just sucks.
Funny, I just read this article [1], which sounds a lot like what you are saying. I personally don't hear popcorn in movies, but I do hear people talk.
And as we watched, I realized again that while unfortunately you can't see a great movie again for the first time, the next-best thing is to show it to people who've never seen it.
The third-best thing is reading a well-written account of that fresh showing of the movie. Now I want to watch Aliens again with my kids.
> "This movie has so many cliches in it," a boy said (...) My son told him, "This movie was made in 1986. It invented all the cliches."
The first boy was right. It felt full of cliches even then. I watched it in eighties as soon as it was distributed to my place and I all the time I had that feeling of "boring 'we're the marines' movie." And I still can't understand why would anybody consider Aliens an interesting movie. The first Alien is however something else. And I was always amazed to later watch "The Dark Star" made before the Alien and find it (among the other things) an Alien parody made before the Alien(!) It's really so thanks to Dan O Bannon. Now that's something. Aliens... not even worth mentioning.
Watch Alien, watch The Dark Star. Forget the boring Aliens.
Disclaimer: I'm old enough that I've watched the Star Wars in seventies in my movie theatre. And Mad Max. And and and.. Of course Aliens were already cliches and cliches.
I'm old enough that I saw Aliens in the theatre, with my Dad. I remember he had a similar perspective to you. His comment was how the original alien was smarter than than the crew, but in the second movie the aliens are just dumb animals. This may be true, but for me the second movie is one of my all-time favourites.
Don't forget the instances where they display intelligent behavior. Such as turning off the power, operating elevators, the alien queen telling the drones to back off.
I don't think operating an elevator (etc.) compares to hunting down and decimating the entire crew (almost) one by one. Such behavior is so far more advanced than anything we see in the second movie. There is a real sense that the alien is just plain smarter than everyone in the crew, and in the end ripley just has to run for it. None of this happens in the second movie, where it's just a slaughter fest.
> His comment was how the original alien was smarter than than the crew, but in the second movie the aliens are just dumb animals.
In the first movie, there was only one Alien and it acted more like a lone hunter. In the second movie, there were lots of aliens and they acted like a hive. I think that it's possible for both of these to be consistent with each other.
Part of the problem is James Cameron reusing the same themes and tropes in all of his movies. The Abyss and Avatar are pretty similar to Aliens thematically.
Read the article. The younger viewers complained about cliches in Aliens, probably from seeing the same cliches reused in movies they've already seen, like Avatar.
Perhaps you'd care to elaborate on exactly what the cliches were? Cameron intended to make the early parts with the colonial marines feel like a Vietnam movie, where you worry that the soldiers' lack of discipline and seriousness is going to lead to tears. I'm not sure I'd call that a cliche. Honestly, I think the sound the pulse rifles make is sufficient to earn Aliens a place in cinema history.
I'm not sure I'd call them cliches, but the kind of one dimensional portrayal of the various marine characters. For example the Bill Paxton character--he starts the film the most outwardly bloviating and macho, and becomes the most (annoying) scared. It was played to 11 which made it feel very shallow to me. The company man was also a pretty one dimensional character. I also felt the mothering at the beginning and with Newt kind of cliched. I was very glad both Hicks and Newt were killed off for Alien 3, which in its directors cut version, I liked much better than 2.
I guess not liking Aliens much puts me well in the minority.
I was born in 1980, I didn't have an awesome home life but some of my fondest memories are watching films like Aliens (and Blade Runner and Terminator) with my father.
There was and is something undefinable about movies of that era (maybe everyone feels the same about the movies of their era) that modern films rarely capture for me.
I suspect it's a combination of the cold war inspiring powerful story lines and atmospheres in a way that today's messy conflicts can't, and physical special effects reaching their zenith. The digitization of special effects led to a step back in many ways. Compare for example digital yoda versus rubber yoda. Sure, the digital one is more lively, but at the same time he isn't fully alive, and looks more dead with every passing year.
Sci-Fi movies of that era - the good ones, anyway - used to have great atmosphere. And they were about telling a story.
These days, many movies seem to be about expensive special effects and little else. While there is nothing wrong with special effects, using them as a substitute for a story or atmosphere ruins a movie.
The other big change is pacing. A couple years ago, we needed a Christmas movie to cover some baking time and picked Die Hard. Everyone commented on how much slower it was than modern movies and how much better it was as a result.
I think the main problem is that VFX has become so cheap that there's no check on including another action scene; neither the writers nor directors appear to worry about justifying the expense the same way they would if it involved paying people to build something real which could only be used once.
Yes yes yes! Absolutely breathtaking. One of the best intros to a sci fi movie. And that is with 80's special effects!
Looking back at it, special effects, the mood, is still so distinctive and well done. And that was probably the pinnacle of non-digital special effects. And we'll probably never get back to it but even after so much investment and so much advancement in computer technology, digital effects are still not quite there (thinking of modern Star Wars, Avatar...). At some point they'll be outmatched but we are still not there.
Ha, crossed comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9128083) I too was thinking about dark scifi movies of this era[1], am very very often questioning how subjective this is, but some things do stand the test of time and these don't fade.
[1] something I can't find anymore in nowadays movies.
Many of the sci-fi action films that have persisted are about ideas, and this elevates them far about the sort of films that pass for most science fiction these days. Just like in twenty years people will watch Inception and Pan's Labyrinth and everything Michael Bay has done will be wiped clean from memory.
Inception will be remembered in part because it's overrated. (Birdman does better incidentally what Inception tries to do.) Pan's Labyrinth will be remembered for its style. Michael Bay will be remembered as an example of the excesses of technologists in art.
Great write-up. But why did I read the comments? Immediate conjectural descent into the harm inflicted on the children without parental consent. This is a more egregious reality today than kids needing to verbalize all the things.
Personally, if I'd sent my 11yo over to Roger Ebert's house I'd expect him or her to watch whatever movie was on offer and thoroughly thank me for the experience years later.
I just watched Aliens for umpteenth time last week. The harsh language line still gets me. And I always am just a little more on edge when I walk outside after watching.
Fun fact: Jenette Goldstein (Pvt. Vasquez) runs several bra stores in the Los Angeles area that cater to women with difficult-to-fit sizes. She is a total sweetheart. If you have a small group and contact her via email ahead of time she may be willing to make accommodations for your group. We had about four couples and she opened the store a bit early for our group. The women got fitting sessions (she personally fitted my wife) and she chatted with us for a bit afterward, including answering some questions about Aliens.
Please be respectful of her time and the fact that she's running a business, obviously. The bras are fairly expensive (but worth it, according to the women in our group) and they don't carry anything smaller than a D cup. So if you're not a potential customer, this is not the way to meet "Pvt. Vasquez!"