 Welcome to Movie Poster Breakdown. I'm Adam and every Tuesday I plan on breaking down film posters by popular franchises. Sometimes they're great, sometimes they're X-Men First Class. Yeah, that's a real poster, that's an official poster. Since it's the month of scares here in October, I thought I would look back on the Alien franchise, specifically the first four entries in the saga. Let's begin with Alien. All right, so what? Ridley Scott? Oh, I should ask them to subscribe and hit the notification bell for future videos, okay. Ridley Scott wants you to subscribe to the channel. We're friends. Artist and poster designer extraordinaire, Philip Gips has done some amazing posters over the years. His most prominent, most recognizable one though, is Alien. Everything from the font treatment to the minimalist approach he uses here is just flawless. You have that one egg oozing out what I can only assume is the mutagen that turned the ninjas into turtles, falling down into the black void below, a weird alien planet ominously floating down underneath, and then some simple text in space. No one can hear you scream. This is the type of visual splendor I'm constantly alluding to in other past videos where I say, just keep it simple, stupid. You have a clean alien type base followed by an egg that spills down to lead your eyes to the tagline of the poster. Then you have that green carrying on in the background showing the audience that there's something in the distance. Hope, fear, I don't know, but I gotta get there, which means I gotta drive to the theater and watch this thing immediately. This poster's awesome. If you are a fan of movie posters, it should be up in your room already. You know it is. And if not, shame on you. It's a classic. And Philip Gips, you will be missed. Thank you for the countless amazing posters such as Rosemary's Baby, Superman, and right here with Alien. Much like the Jaws posters, which I haven't talked about yet, but I promise I'll get to, Alien peaked with the first, as far as I personally am concerned. The sequel, Aliens, phenomenal movie, I think arguably better than the first. I think I would put it above the first now. I go back and forth though. They're both so freaking good. The second poster that was very much focused on Sigourney Weaver, her giant BFG, and then the eggs below again. But now they're popping up. Now they're coming towards our heroine. She and Newt are in dire straits to say the least. You have these eggs, hatchlings, face huggers, ready to explode and take them out. Plus you have all sorts of nasty shit going on behind them. They're clearly in an alien territory now. They're not in the black void. They're very much in the fray, in the cut. And if that wasn't obvious enough, the tagline drives it home. This time, it's a war. I mean, it's pretty on the nose. It's a big step back from in space. No one can hear you scream. This time, it's war. It's so generic. Come on. Aliens deserves better than that. It's still a pretty badass poster though. You got the bloom lighting all around our characters. That blue is really tying it all together. Even if Sigourney Weaver and Newt aren't really lit up the same, they definitely feel a little bit out of place. There's also some very harsh lighting on that gun. It's very prominently displayed, isn't it? It's really telling the audience, look it, there's big guns in this movie. We're not gonna be having tea with these things. We're gonna be blowing their heads off. Much like the Film Alien 3, these posters are a complete shit show. Now, there's plenty of people that like Alien 3, especially the, I think it's the director's cut, or the assembly cut, or the director's assembly cut, or the director's assembly special edition pre-enhanced cut, or whatever, whatever it is. There's a bunch of them. This is an ugly, ugly looking photo. I mean, we got Weaver without the hair. We have three taglines on the side, really building up to not much of anything. The fugly ass Alien 3 font treatment that's blue for some reason, whose idea was this? This tagline is just trash. In 1979, it came from within. In 1986, it was gone forever. In 1992, our worst fears have come true. It's back. How can you be gone forever and then be back? That just contradicts itself. And even if that were the case, this is just a terrible, terrible set of words. I'm sure the studio bigwig said, listen, we gotta put Sigourney on the poster. She's the draw, it's her franchise. Okay, but really, is this the photo you're leading with? Is this the one that's gonna get people in the seats? A bald Weaver, pissed off, shoulders showing, little cleave showing. Is this supposed to be sexy? Is this supposed to be sons out, guns out? I don't really get what we're going for in this poster at all, which is fair because I don't know what the movie was going for. There is one other Alien 3 poster and it's definitely better. It's just the little baby alien kind of serpentine around itself kind of coiled up in the fetal position. We even have the eye strategically placed at the belly of the alien, like it's giving birth, which if we know the plot of Alien 3, it's that Weaver has got a little baby inside of her. She's growing. I also like the use of the Baby 3, kind of like it's a trademark or a registration mark. That's cute, it's fun, it's playful. Not so big on the gradient going on here, the ugly gradient, not doing it for me. Come on guys, what happened? You can just tell where the focus of these posters are now. In the first Alien, it had the bright white alien at the top. Now it's Sigourney Weaver in white. That's the focus for them. They say, look who's in it, she's back. Who cares about the xenomorphs? We got Sigourney Weaver. And I love Sigourney Weaver, don't get me wrong, but come on guys, alien, that should have been in white. Prominent, strong, fierce, sexy. Well, maybe not sexy, but maybe a little. Let's move on. Possibly the least creative of the bunch. I told you these posters keep getting worse. I'd say Alien 3's baby poster's better than this one. This definitely beats out the bald Sigourney Weaver. We have Wynona Ryder, we have Weaver on the cover. They're definitely the focus. Not an alien to be found anymore. Not a hint. Well, I guess there are some arms. Are those arms? They're like arms wrapping around the eye again, which is exploding. They're going back, they're harkening back to Alien 3's approach, where we know that there's a baby in this one. Ripley has a baby on board, and it even calls her mama by the end of the film. So yeah, we got the little alien xenomorph arms wrapping around it, doing a little mama embrace. The alien font has been changed as well. It's more futuristic. The E are just bars. The A doesn't even finish itself. It doesn't have time to kind of dig it. I kind of like it. The gradient is once again on fleek. I'm bringing on fleek back from a few years ago. I'm doing it. So yeah, I like this a little bit better, but at the end of the day, they both kind of suck compared to Alien 1 and Aliens. I guess the same could be said for the movies. These aren't all the alien movies, of course. There's a jamboree of other posters out there. You have Prometheus. You have Alien Coven Shit. You have the two AVP movies. So there's more to talk about. Maybe I'll do the ugly ducklings in a second poster breakdown for Alien down the road. We have an alien ranking video coming up where I'm gonna rank all of these films, including the crappy ones I just listed. I'd love to know your thoughts now on these beauties. Leave a comment down below. Like the video if you had some fun. Subscribe if you haven't. Notification bell, share, other things that people tell you to do. That you don't do, because you're a coward. Why am I insulting you? If you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not, leave. That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over. Yes, Ridley, I'm just wrapping up. Thanks. Oh, you're still here. Hey, if you haven't already, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at patreon.com slash adamdoesmovies. You can join for just $1 a month. And it says, you know what, Adam? You're doing a great job. Keep it going. I love the poster breakdowns. It's brilliant. No one else does these. Or you can join right here on YouTube via the join button. It's a beautiful thing for everyone involved. Isn't that right? Oh, Ridley's leaving. I gotta go.