I tend to prefer films like this and I think there are plenty of "modern" examples. I do find some older films too slow paced, but I think its only when it's coupled with weaker writing and atmosphere building. In Alien I find the pacing works for the content and I assume it was a conscious decision, and that's why I think it holds up. But I'm not an expert on this stuff so I could be quite wrong here.
I grew up watching movies with slower paces (born 1980), but some of those I also have issues watching unless I'm in the right frame of mind. I think in part it's just we've gotten used to information overload, and thus expect the faster pacing.
That said... What I really like about the original is that it has that classic look and feel of 70's sci-fi. The white paneling and bright lights on the space ships, the grainy film, red and orange stripes on things, etc.
And without it, we wouldn't have gotten Wrath of Khan.
What do you think of 2001 A Space Odyssey?
Exactly. If "modern tastes" can't appreciate this film, I feel that's more a sign of an ADHD epidemic.
There are contemporary productions that are absolutely plodding -- the recent miniseries The English [1] is full of over-long shots of oblique plaintive faces looking out over the prairies. I was twiddling my thumbs at times. Admittedly, it is a contemporary Western, which is prone to that style, and it's a deliberate effect. The same kind of tension-building as in Alien, really. It's not to everyone's taste.
And there are older films that feel very fast-paced and, well, modern -- I recently watched an old Japanese yakuza film, Battles Without Honour and Humanity [2], released in 1973 now 50 years ago, and it opens with a scene cut every 20 seconds or so, just action, action, action and it never lets up. Felt like watching something released a few years ago.
Tastes come and go, but no style ever fully goes away.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_(TV_series)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_Without_Honor_and_Huma...
Maybe part of the problem is that due to its success, a lot of the designs and themes have been copied elsewhere, so it's less captivating. Back in the day, there was nothing like those Giger sets, so people were quite happy to see a slow descent into an alien spaceship.
I think that says a lot about the latest generations and the boom in children hyperactivity disorders.
I think this says more about you than about the film.
I hate that so much of our media has become this constant mess of distraction with constant flashy lights and a million cuts, but I think a lot of it has to do with competing with our pocket pacifiers for our attention. If you dare slow down for a moment to let your audience feel the weight of what's happening, half of them will be on there phones in seconds.
Good movies become worse if you're distracted by your phone during them, and are also usually much more sedate.
Alien would be a solo but forgotten masterpiece like Man Hunter until James Cameron made Aliens.
“Mother” is kept mysterious in Alien, relying too much on 1970s zeitgeist of technology. I kept expecting a Dream Scene which were all the rage in 1960s/70s.
Good contrast with Jaws, I would also add Blues Brothers from the same period. Excitement possible even in those days.
I am aghast at this comment!
This can sometimes require more effort to pay attention so you actually do have thoughts on the material in those moments (and other times it comes easily), but that is its own reward afterward in a Type II fun sort of way, and it's generally the works that prompted you to have your own thought commentary that stick with you.
I'm not always in the mood for entertainment that requires me to do a little work for it, but slipping into this is a habit you can train (e.g. by visiting art galleries, and maybe watch some YouTube videos interpreting paintings beforehand to teach yourself a method - Nerdwriter1 is very modern and accessible), and it's ultimately very rewarding imho.
This is to say, I don't think it's the age of the piece. It's more likely taste (maybe you just didn't like it that much and/or it didn't have that much to offer you personally, which is fine, it's just a movie), mood, consumption habits, etc.
Any example of fast paced current era movie that you like?
Not to talk of the endless flashbacks. A woman sits under the shadow of a tree and they need to show us how she was there whith her grandpa planting the tree and talking some BS. It's like a gigantic Freud revival, everything that happens has roots in the past. An unhealthy trend, people are somehow trapped by their past, unable to break free.
Alien was a little long for the time it was made, in part because of the last scene. It made sense to extend it for great nightmarish effect. But the characters were trapped in their present, we don't see Ripley as a child getting scared of croaches. And I don't see it as slow. There's a build up, then action accelerates, there's tension and rhythm.
Everything Everywhere is OK, it tries to be weird and funny and moving and, at least for me, it works. But a lot of recent movies I really can't stand. They fail to tell me a story, there are scenes, stuff happens, but they're inconsistent, like justaposed without a logic or the will of characters to glue them.
Everything Everywhere is actually an example of how the main character drives the action and makes the movie feel real, even if the plot is total nonsense :)
Just don't pull your phone out while watching a movie and take some time experiencing the slowness. It might feel boring or torturous at first, but give it some time and you will begin to see the value in focus.
Sure the average audience of today has no attention span and needs constant flashy-action, but that doesn't mean you have to be a part of that.
The "for its time" is 100% subjective, and some young (18-20) people I know (very well I must say: children and nephews, etc) also enjoyed it very much. Asked to watch the sequel on our next "cinema night". Also all were flabbergasted at seeing an "empowered woman character" from "literally like 50 years ago". Came as a little bit of a shock for them. :o)
And ... I would kindly argue the opposite: today's productions are a blur of action, cgi vomit, sometimes almost non-sensical kaleidoscope of seemingly unrelated scenes and topics. I believe they reflect "their time": <tongueincheek>I want it all, I want it now and delivered to my door please. I will let Alexa answer the doorbell for me</tongueincheek>.
The interesting thing there is that the story and dialog was written for a male character and then swapped to a woman for commercial reach reasons. They'd didn't really change the dialog when they did that change though.
Had it Ripley been originally written as a woman I'm not sure her character would have been as empowered and I'm also not sure the movie would be the masterpiece that it is.
:-)
Leia is a straight-up badass the entire movie. She's the only competent one in the main 3 (Obi Wan's a contender if you expand it to 4, but he dies, spoiler alert). The other two are bumbling idiots until the very end, and don't go through half as rough a time as she does.
Then we open Empire and she's perfectly cool under fire while being the #1 person in charge of commanding a fighting retreat against an overwhelming, mechanized force, and has to be dragged away to finally leave her post as the structure is collapsing around her.
The whole thing is played like it's ordinary, no awkward asides to make sure we understand that this is a WOMAN being STRONG. 1977 and 1980 release dates.
Like... holy shit.
This is a big problem I have with modern movies; they're unable or unwilling to simply show, they need to show and tell. It doesn't matter the theme, even wholly unpolitical themes are far too often explicitly laid out, multiple times, with blunt dialogue exposition to the audience who are presumed to only be half-watching the movie.
A modern movie can't just have a bank robber kill another bank robber. They need the killer to say "hehehe, this way I get a larger cut of the profit!" Does that really need to be said? Why can't a movie just show it but not have the character explain his motivations outloud to an empty room? Because modern movies are made to spoonfeed disinterested dimwits with short attention spans. Movies are catering to people who aren't even paying attention, because in test audiences there are always a few people who keep muttering questions "what's going on? what did they just say? why is this happening?" And the worst part is, these sort of people are still confused even when the movie explicitly explains everything to them.
The smart writing (and smart audiences) have all moved to TV. The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, Better Call Saul. These are the shows that respect their audience's intelligence.
The movie business has turned into Disneyland with guns.
I've got a few relatives I simply can't watch movies with because it's like this the whole movie. It's like they can't remember anything that happened over 2-5 minutes ago. "Who's that character?" "Where are they?" "Now who's that?" "Is that the cousin or the uncle?" "What are they doing now?" "I don't understand." OF COURSE you don't understand! You've been on Instagram the whole movie! They come out of a standard brain-off romcom and they don't really know what it was about, except that the ending was sweet and romantic and they liked it. Put something like Inception or Tenet in front of them, and they're going to just sit there totally befuddled.
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the day, it still fits the meme:
"Alien is a movie where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat."
If her character was really empowered, maybe they'd listen to her?
/SPOILER ALERT
I do actually think the theatrical cut is still pretty entertaining. That said, I did like Aliens better.
Jaws, OTOH, FANTASTIC movie! I saw that in a HUGE screen theater that had a balcony. The scene where the head suddenly appeared in the hull sent popcorn raining down in the main auditorium! One of my most memorable movie experiences! That reminds me, I saw a lot of great movies in that theater!
You might as well have described Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, modern universally lauded productions.
They're swiping Tiktok videos even faster than that!
It's incredibly disturbing to me. I'm reminded of drug addicts clawing at the drywall of their dilapidated apartments, fiending for their next fix. We've used all of this wonderful semiconductor technology to turn millions of people into digital junkies. And our culture is deteriorating right along with it!
The further you go back in time, the worse it becomes. Watching films from the fifties, there's a recurring theme of
1) Protagonist decides he needs to speak to the president
2) Protagonist grabs his coat and goes outside
3) Protagonist drives to the airport
4) Protagonist boards a plane
5) Stock footage of an airplane taking off
6) Stock footage of an airplane in flight
7) Stock footage of an airplane landing
8) Protagonist disembarks
9) Protagonist hails a taxi
10) Protagonist enters taxi
11) Protagonist asks driver to take them to the President
Slow pans and long takes are important tools for a good director to heighten the mood and shouldn't be stricken from the cinematic vocabulary. The unfortunate truth is that most directors are merely average and when the mood is boredom, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging them to amplify it.
It only had step 11.
Todays movies and series really go fast into the action, and grab you from start to finish.
I was hoping by the time he gets a little older, he can appreciate the slower pace a bit more, but your comment gives me less hope ;).
Anyway, the 'classics' such as Godfather and Casablanca are also too boring for me :D.
I very reluctantly disagree. I'm in my mid-30s (born 1988), and I watched Alien for the first time about a year ago. I have to say on the whole, I didn't like it. I think it's a victim of being just on the cusp of being "too old" for modern tastes. Like much other media of its era & older, it's paced too slowly. Too many long panning cuts, too much staring at a wall, too much space between dialog, too little action. I ended up staring at my phone for the 2nd half of the movie, wishing it would be over already.
There are some other films of a similar timeframe that do hold up. I thought Jaws, released 4 years before Alien, was paced absolutely excellently, and I'd call it one of my favorite films. But Alien feels more like older media in its pacing, and it suffers for it today. I absolutely do not deny it is an excellent film "for its time." Obviously the special effects, acting, set design, and music are all wonderful and hold up on their own, and it's undeniably a very important film historically & culturally. But much like Citizen Kane or original Trek, I think it's just a bit too slow for a general audience in the 2020s. The sequels feel better today.