Why "Aliens" May be the Worst Title for a Sequel

Any film buff has inevitably had this happen. You're talking about the Alien movies, and when it comes to the first of the sequel, you really have to make it clear which movie you're talking about. If you mention James Cameron, you're in the clear. If you don't you've probably found yourself overemphasizing the "s" in Aliens. Why? Because you have to make it clear you're talking about Aliens and not Alien. As a result, it sounds like you're talking about a movie called Alienzzz, which sounds like some sort of space invader themed gangster movie from the 90's.

Of course, you could be sacrilegious, and call it Alien 2, but this usually only happens after you've gotten fed up of clarifying whether you're talking about Alien in a singular or plural form.

It's not just in conversation that this is problematic. It can be annoying when it comes time to watch the movie as well. You have to do a bit of a double-take just to make sure it's the original or the sequel you're selecting because the title is a difference of just one letter.

I can understand not wanting to call it Alien 2. Considering how horror movies tend to be sequelized to death, it makes sense to give it a more original sounding name, but  I always thought that Aliens was a bit too clever. I imagine that when it first came out, a lot of the marketing effort must have been spent clarifying to people that it was a sequel, not a rerelease of the original Ridley Scott movie. They could have at least given it a more distinctive name like Alien Hoard or Alien: Get Away From Her You Bitch. Not the most original titles, I know, but you get where I'm going with this.

All of this popped in my head recently because of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's new prequel/spinoff to Alien. I would have left it as definitely being the worst title for a sequel, instead of maybe being the worst, but as I was dwelling on this issue, I realized that The Fast and the Furious movies definitely have Aliens beat.

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift is the only one of the sequels with a respectable sounding name. (On a side note, this is one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies.) Some degree of effort was put into naming two of the other sequels. 2 Fast 2 Furious may be a crap title, but at least it's clear that it's a sequel to the original. Then there's Fast Five. Certainly a better effort than 2 Fast 2 Furious, but still not great. If it were good, then maybe the TV ads for this movie wouldn't have had the voice over guy call it The Fast and the Furious 5 while the Fast Five logo appears on screen.

The worst of these is the fourth entry to this series. They could have called it Fast Four or if they really wanted to strain things, F4ST and the Furious, or 4ast and the 4urious, or some crap like that. Instead they just called it Fast & Furious.

At least Aliens makes sense as titles go. In the original, there was one alien. In the sequel, there are several. (I know it's supposed to be an entire hoard, but ever since reading on IMDB that only 5 alien suits were made for the movie, I've had a hard time not seeing the crew being chased by the same 5 aliens.) On the other hand Fast & Furious is just begging to be confusing. From a cataloguing point of view, those two should share the same spot on the shelf. You can't just look at the title when you pick up one of those movies. You actually have to flip to the back and read the plot description just to make sure which movie you're picking up.

I'm sure a worse title will come along soon enough. Studios always seem to dread just slapping a number at the end of a film title, but aren't always good at coming up with decent names for sequels. If we're lucky, a few summers from now, we'll all be bombarded by ads for Trans4mers.

Yes, I now own a Snuggie

There are occasional moments in your life when you step back and ask yourself, "What the hell am I doing?" Sometimes it's over a major thing, and other times over something minor. Last night I asked myself this question over a minor thing when I found myself sitting in front of my laptop wearing a Snuggie.

I need to explain why I now own a Snuggie. I really do. At no point did I ever watch the infomercial and exclaim aloud, "A blanket with sleeves? By golly I could sure use that!" No, like every sane person in America, I simply wondered to myself, how does this differ from a robe exactly?

Then a few weekends back, the bars at Mt. Adams held it's second annual Snuggie Bar Crawl. I'd seen photos of the year's previous bar crawl, and thought that any opportunity to run around town dressed like a crazy person in a group was not something to be passed up. A friend of mine who'd received a Snuggie as a gag gift a while back was also down for it.

So, I had to buy a Snuggie. I opted for one with a UC Bearcats print all over it, because I figured if I'm going to look crazy, i might as well sport some school pride while I'm at it.

Unfortunately, for various reasons we ended up not doing the bar crawl, so now I had a sleeved blanket on my hands. My initial reaction was to return it, but it struck me as just being one of those things. You know, something that's all the rage for a few years, then twenty years later your kids look at you and ask, "No really, you need to explain why people would buy a Pet Rock, and did you ever own one?"

I decided that someday I will look at my future children and say, "Yes, I too bought a Snuggie, and someday it will be yours."

Okay, actually I thought it'd just be a fun thing to leave around the house. A conversation piece. If a guest came over and complained it was too cold, before turning up the heat, I could throw them the Snuggie. (This might have actually come in handy the year I threw a Superbowl party and realized that no matter how high I turned the main thermostat up, my basement still needed a space heater.)

Once the decision had been made that I would keep the Snuggie, the next logical thing was to try it on. I stood in front of the mirror and decided that yes, I looked like a crazy person. A crazy person who was a Bearcats fan. After that it made sense to see if there was anything about wearing it that felt more comfortable than say, layering up or wearing a robe. So, I sat in front of my computer wearing the thing, meaning to leave it on for a few minutes only.

Then twenty minutes later, I realized I was still wearing it.

Awkward.

It felt like I had somehow legitimized the existence of a perfectly useless product.

Well, twenty minutes wasn't going to be any worse than a half hour more. I decided to use as advertised: on the couch, remote in hand, a snack by my side.

One thing they fail to mention in the ads is that the Snuggie is not meant for walking around in, unless you're Kareem Abdul Jabbar. The fact that it covers your feet may be convenient when you're on the couch, but if you need to walk about, you have no choice but to hike that thing up and trot about like a geisha wearing a backless hospital gown.

I would love to have seen how intoxicated people bar hopping in Mt. Adams managed while wearing them.

Once on the couch it turned out it was comfortable and practical; more comfortable and practical than I should really admit. Then again, I haven't yet subjected it to a true test. A chilly basement in the spring is nothing compared to one in winter.

I guess I'll have to wait another nine months to find out if a thin layer of synthetic fleece around the arms is that much more convenient than reaching over the top of a blanket.

This Might Qualify as Irony

As I mentioned earlier, I was at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, an event that was sponsored in part by AT&T. Early in the game they ran an ad on the JumboTron; it was the one where Luke Wilson tries to download a copy of himself on the Verizon network and on AT&T at the same time.

Suddenly, it struck me that now might be a good time to take a photo on my iPhone and upload it onto Facebook. I'd never really bothered doing the mobile upload thing before, but this seemed like as good occasion as any.

I took out my phone, and this is what I saw.

In case the what's going on here isn't immediately clear, let me spell it out for you:

1. I'm at an even't sponsored by AT&T.

2. My phone is exclusive to AT&T's network.

3. I have just seen an ad touting the superiority of AT&T's network over Verizon.

4. I have no service on my phone.

This wasn't a case of too many people trying to use the system at the same time and calls not getting through, which I realize tends to happen at sporting events. I flat out wasn't getting reception.

As the game went on, my phone finally picked up a signal, but still didn't have 3G service, or EDGE coverage for that matter. (EDGE is the high speed data service that AT&T uses where 3G coverage is not available.)

You'd think that an AT&T sponsored event is the one place in America that you'd be guaranteed complete service. Instead, I got the exact opposite.

My advice to AT&T: Instead of wasting your money suing Verizon, or making ads that argue Verizon's ads are only technically correct but are misleading anyways... fix your damn network.

9 vs. Nine

Today on Quicktime I came across the trailer for the new Rob Marshall film, Nine. From what I can tell of the two minutes of footage provided, it looks like it should be a welcome addition to the winter movie season. Not to mention it is refreshing to see musicals that are something more than just a rock band's greatest hits CD acted, and it's nice to see something that has more energy than recent bland adaptations such as Sweeney Tood or Rent.

Just one small problem, since last summer trailers have been running for a joint project between Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, (director of Nightwatch and Wanted), called 9. This one revolves around some sort of dolls roaming around a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

There's nothing to stop two people from using the same name for their movie. David Cronenberg and Paul Haggis both released movies called Crash, (one was about sex and car wrecks, the other about the way peoples lives intersect with others). Then there's Gladiator, a title shared by the Russell Crowe Roman epic and a Cuba Gooding Jr. film that people always think is going to be the Russell Crowe movie when they see it in their onscreen cable guide. 

However, these movies were released years apart from their fellow namesakes so when it comes to promoting it, there isn't much confusion. On the other hand, 9 and Nine are both being released within months of each other. 

So is anybody going to budge? Usually somebody does. In 1998, Alex Proyas' film Dark City was forced to go through several name changes according to the bottom of this article. First, producers of the film Mad City complained it sounded too similar to their movie, so it was changed to Dark World, then Spielberg told them to change it because it sounded too similar to Lost World, so it got changed to Dark Empire, until somebody (George Lucas, supposedly) told them to change it. Of course by this time Mad City bombed and was forgotten, so the name went back to the first choice.

This is also the case with new James Cameron movie Avatar, the cinematic piece of vaporware that he's been talking about making for years and is now apparently actually getting underway. He apparently told the producers of the film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender to simply shorten the title down to The Last Airbender to avoid confusion, even though the latter is a popular Nickelodeon series that debuted in 2005... long before Cameron's movie was due to hit screens. 

As for the two "Nines," it isn't clear who'd have more clout. The Rob Marshall musical is based on an Broadway musical (albeit a somewhat obscure one) so for marketing purposes it only makes sense to keep the original name. However, it's also possible this film might be aimed more towards the art house crowd and therefore not get a wide release.

There's no question that Tim Burton's movie is getting a wide release, and as I said before it's been promoted since last year. This one was based on a short film by Shane Acker (who is also directing the full length remake) so it too has a claim to it's title. On the other hand, it hasn't necessarily been ingrained in the public consciousness that the Burton-produced movie is actually called 9 since the trailer flashes the title briefly before showing it's release date, 9-9-09. So it's possible that it can undergo a name change without confusing audiences. After all, the original trailer for Cloverfield never gave the title, just the release date of 1-18-08 (I know, it's lame that I can actually remember that).

Who knows? Maybe neither will budge, but if not I can see a lot of confusion happening here. It's easy to see somebody going to the ticket booth and asking to see "nine," and instead of getting the bleak CGI film they expected, they find themselves in a colorful live action musical. We won't know until they come out.