Is Alien the exception to the rule?

Anyone who watches movies knows that several things are almost always true:

1)If it's based on a book, 9 time out of 10 the book is better.
2)Sequels are usually bad.. sometimes funny bad, but almost always bad. There is the occasional exception (thank you Godfather II fans), but generally speaking the higher the number (II, III, etc) the worse the movie is going to be.

I think I might have found the exception to the rule with Alien vs Aliens. Maybe because I watched them out of order (by accident!) I subconsciously found myself favoring Aliens, but however it happened I think I actually liked a sequel more than an original.

Not that Alien was bad- far from it- I just think that Aliens was better. In Alien we meet Sigourney Weaver's character, Ripley, and see the first installment of human vs alien. Although humans technically win the encounter, I kind of found myself annoyed by a lot of the crew members. I do have to admit that the first time one of those things bursts out of a chest it's both unbelievebly gross and pretty darn interesting, but this does not make up for the fact that the begining of the movie is rather slow. Maybe I'm showing my propensity for crass disaster movies.. but I was not all that enthralled by the ode to 2001 (lack of dialogue, slow start). Once the action gets going there are some pretty horrific death scenes, but I never found myself as scared or interested in the outcome as I did in Aliens. I did think it was interesting that there is an entire thread on imdb discussing whether an alien sexually assaults Lambert..but only becaue I found people's preoccupation with the idea kind of appalling. I don't think that the scene is question is meant to depict a sexual assault, I think it's just Lambert crying out as an alien scares her, slithers up her leg and then murders her. Do we really need to make murder somehow even worse?

Anyway, som things I learned from Alien:

1. Space food is gross. If you complain about it a lot maybe you'll put off imminent death..or maybe you'll just be lucky enough to die at the table!

2. I think that Dallas and Lambert might have been engaging in a torrid space affair. Maybe they snuck into those little space sleepers together. Anyway, based upon Lambert's totally hysterical reaction to Dallas's death I think they broke the sex rule and paid with their lives.

3. Aliens need oxygen to breathe just like we do! Thus sending them out into space is a surefire way to kill them despite knowing absolutely nothing about their anatomy or physiology.

4. Acid will drip through several stories of metal in a spaceship, but will conveniently stop right before puncturing the hull or injuring any of your crew members.

Aliens isn't scary..yet!

I'm about a half hour into Aliens! So far, so good! I don't know what I was expecting, but it's definitely way better than most of the other awful sequels I've been watching lately (not that I'm surprised!).

So far we've only seen a little bit of an alien, but Ripley's nightmares make it clear that they are really gross when they pop out of people's chests. It looks like some colonists discovered the remains of the old alien ship (from movie 1) and are all either dead or infected. I think it's interesting that colonization strategy used here is also found in Firefly/Serenity. It seems that terraforming colonists get the short end of the stick in every movie and tv show. They get dumped on hostile planets and are practically abandoned to death and disease by the large corporations that fund their work. Sounds a lot like miners....hmm...

Anyway, it's now over an hour into the movie and I've now seen lots of dead people dripping in some kind of alien excretion (their words, not mine), a few aliens, and at least one person burned alive. I'm not sure how many Marines died in the last scene since there was a lot of blood and smoke, but the body count is pretty high. Bill Paxton is still alive, but he's kind of a dumb hick in this movie. He's also really whiny, and I think I wish he was being cocooned along with the other unfortunate Marines.

Some things I have learned:

1. Bill Paxton plays a super irritating Marine.

2. A small girl is able to survive in the air vents in the colony, but no one else is able to find a good hiding spot in the whole area.

3. Even if you have been encased in alien gook for 3+ weeks, you will still be alive and able to die horribly in front of the Marines. Who needs food or water when you're suspended mid-air anyway?

4. The aliens attack mostly at night..on a planet that is always dark. Hm. Doesn't that mean it's always night? Clearly the aliens know how to tell time.

Up Next: Aliens

James Cameron has a history of being pretty darn feminist. Not as awesome as Joss Whedon perhaps, but definitely all for women being powerful etc. I'm looking forward to Aliens, although apparently I'm watching the movies out of order. I didn't realize that Alien is the first, and Aliens (one measly letter different) is the second. Oh well!