It is eerie how much the crew in Alien: Resurrection is a prototype for the crew in Firefly.

I've been reading the Aliens Original Years omnibus recently and it's always struck me as weird how the Alien movies have never gone to Earth.

> Whedon fought to set the film’s finale on Earth. It is the Alien series’ ultimate dramatic question: what would happen if xenomorphs came to Earth? “The reason people are here is we’re going to do the thing we’ve never done,” Whedon argued. “We’re gonna go to Earth.” The studio, however, wanted to spend the money elsewhere.

Well, shit.

There are a few novels based on aliens and one of them has a secret lab on earth they are experimenting with them and guess what inevitably happens !

The original script for Resurrection is pretty great. What we got was a portion of it. Ripley and Call battle the newborn with a futuristic harvester on earth. And the scene with the hole in the hull was originally a crew member.

Was Earth Hive a thing in the comics?

Resurrection has some very cool ideas and imagery, even the overall plot is pretty clever considering where 3 left off. The thing that keeps it from being good is tonal goofiness that just doesn’t fit. I hate to say it because I love Pearlman but his character is horribly written. The culmination of which is when he gleefully exclaims “Hey everyone! Ripleys back!” Which has to be the cringiest thing in the film. He’s giving a blade 2 performance, which isn’t in and of itself bad, but just completely out of place in this film (edit: or rather out of place in a better version of this movie).

That line always bugged the crap out of me because I could have seen a delivery where it might be sarcasm, but that’s now how it is delivered. Just really weird choice that is symptomatic of a lot of the tonal problems the movie has.

It’s a pity because I also love Jeunet, but resurrection always missed the mark for me.

[removed]

[removed]

Not to mention the crew of The Betty seems like a dry run at Firefly.

I like Alien Resurrection. It is weirdly all over the place, but while Aliens remains my favorite of the franchise, Alien Resurrection is usually 2nd when it comes to rewatches. Alien is great, but gets slow, now that we know the monster for so long now.

100%. Johner is Jane, Christie is Zoe, Elgyn is Mal, Vriess is a Wash-Kaylee.

This was the most disappointed I'd been for something I was so excited to see...the trailer blew me away.

Then the movie just didn't fit with me, from the very start of the title sequence...the cameramen all had ants in their pants, yellowy green, frustrating editing and cuts, did I mention the colours yellow and green, the guy who shoulda been the hero guy gets killed far too early, that guy taking a part of his brain out to look at it while the alien allows him this consideration, I struggled to even cling to the frenemy situation with hellboy and wheels, who was I expecting? SANTA CLAUS?

Sorry. I hated it. Scattered throughout the moody music video masquerading as an aliens installment however were some cool things...Brad dourif.

Winona is River.

I felt like it didn’t get credit for being beautifully gross. You can’t remake the original over and over.

Unsuccessfully trying to move past the cliche’ like attitude. He’s almost a French cartoon. Hard to take him seriously. Meh.

“I am not the man with whom to fuck” is the line that does it for me.

It’s just such an awful line. The writing and delivery are bad in equal measure.

“Dont fuck with me”.

See how easy that was to fix?

I’ve always thought JPJ was a terrible choice to direct this movie. His abstract tone doesn’t fit in with Aliens real-world stakes. What I loved about the first two films was how the characters felt so relatable while dealing with such an unimaginable situation. Alien Resurrection gave the whole thing a fantastical quality that took me out of it.

Alien 3 the worst in the franchise?

Bold claim imo.

I like them all - my Alien blu-ray box set is one of my most treasured movie possessions. Sure 3 and 4 don't compare to 1 & 2, but neither do any other movies.

Lightning in a bottle that happened to strike twice.

This film has aged like milk. The dialogue is dreadful and the whole thing just feels cheap.

He shouldn’t have killed off the heroes of the 2nd movie. Genuinely ruined the movie for me

I do like his line:

"Just for the color."

The directors cut of “Resurrection” in the Quadrilogy boxset ends with a shot of Ripley & Call on a devastated earth. I haven’t seen it in years but I think it’s implied that the aliens had already gotten to earth. I forget.

The studio had that ending cut because they intended to beat the dead horse in space as long as they could. Which is weird because the famous teaser trailer for Alien 3, released a year earlier, had the tag line, “On earth everyone can hear you scream.” So clearly, the plan was to move the series in that direction.

I'd rank 3 far below anything that came before it, but also far above anything that followed. Especially Jeunet's entry in the series, which is the worst. Unless Prometheus 2 is as bad as I suspected it was going to be; I didn't bother going to see it. Or AvP2, now that I think on it. But of the ones I saw, none annoyed me as much as Resurrection.

But then again I've hated pretty much everything of Jeunet's. His twee style is like late-career Tim Burton without early-career Tim Burton to justify the paycheque.

That was in Alien 3, directed by David Fincher.

Whoops thank you. It was a long time ago …

Sounds like he's responsible for the best parts of the film

Whilst I don't rate Prometheus as highly as Alien/Aliens, I still really love it - and it was the single best experience I've ever had in a cinema bar none.

Hadn't smoked weed in about two years - decided to get some to have before going to see it - at BFI IMAX in London.

Smoked... started sweating and feeling really, really bad...

Walked into the screen room and was overcome by how big it all was - like a colosseum - made it to our seats with my buddy and was confronted with the biggest screen I'd ever seen.

Then all of a sudden I perked up and was in perfect movie-watching headspace.

The film started and I watched Shaw's gigantic head appear on the screen and then I was totally immersed in this visual masterpiece for the length of the entire runtime.

It was so epic...

Resurrection was one of the worst films I've ever seen. Definitely the worst alien film. 3 was pretty bad but made alittle sense

Don't think the original has ever really be redone... still probably one of if not the finest thriller/suspense/horror of its ilk. Much like Terminator, the first film is above, the 2nd is just action. Apples and oranges in terms of genre.

4 is worst imo. I actually enjoy 3 more than 2. I take prisoners without weapons over hoorah marines with unlimited firepower. Not saying 2 is bad, I just find 3 more interesting.

A4 took place far into the future based on the timelines of the original movies being set over about a 100 year span. I always thought that by the time A4 came out earth was basically a polluted planet that either no one lived on or only the poor who couldn’t leave because they didn’t have the connections or cash.

We saw that in AvP and AvP 2.

So A4 is an outlier amongst all the Alien films. The director took on a more campy horror vibe which doesn’t match any of the other films. While it’s def the worst of all the movies it had some redeeming value, I mildly enjoyed it.

Doesn’t he drop some sort of one liner after Ripley burns the failed clones? Been a while since I saw it but seem to remember the scene being relatively good until Pearlman has to interject something goofy when she leave the room.

I might need to rewatch this

Personally I think the idea is shite and I'm not surprised Whedon thought it was cool. The idea of 'Xenomorphs on Earth' and how that would have to be executed is basically the opposite of what made the first Alien film so good.

I just think it becomes a very mundane story at that point, pure action, because you know it's just trying to make things 'bigger and better' than AlienS. It's basically just 'Starship Troopers on Earth', only done without any satire or self-awareness..

“Gorilla alien! Snake alien!”

I feel attacked.

Sounds like bad fan service.

"Smells like chicken."

> I take prisoners without weapons over hoorah marines with unlimited firepower.

Why?

Also, the Marines didn't have unlimited fire power.

Regardless of what you think about this movie, it gave us this glorious moment.

TIL! that’s fantastic

It's funny because the teaser trailer for Alien 3 hyped up aliens coming to earth...and the movie took place on a completely different planet.

I’m always here to dunk on Whedon. Resurrection doesn’t work 100%, but I love the weirdness.

I love Jeunet’s other work. Maybe it’s not your thing, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that’s he’s not the right director for an Alien film. They’re not supposed to be charming or endearing, which is kind of his whole thing.

Sigourney is the Queen

I hate 3, Resurrection, Prometheus, and I never saw AvPR or Covenant. I think my gut feeling is that 3 is the most frustrating entry because it takes a great movie (Aliens) and completely ruins the ending of it by killing off every single surviving character. It also does so in a way that makes NO SENSE (seriously Google the massive amount of fan arguments and retcons that attempt to explain how that egg got on that ship and how many there were. There straight-up is no good explanation.) The only way I can enjoy that ending now is pretending 3 doesn't exist, so that's what I do.

Resurrections requires me to already accept 3, and by contrast it's much stupider and on paper it's the worse movie, but it's less aggravating because at least it doesn't really fuck up anything that I care about. So I hate it way less than 3.

Prometheus is just a dumb movie. I don't particularly like any part of it, it billed itself as a prequel to Alien and yet has basically nothing to do with it, doesn't explain where the Aliens come from, doesn't explain really why the Engineers are evil bastards, and every character is a complete imbecile. I was genuinely confused by the positive reviews after I watched it.

AvP on the other hand...is dumb fun. The fact that it's not canon anymore makes it easier to swallow as an entry in the series. Turn your brain off and it's enjoyable.

Controversial take, I like it! I can't possibly agree, but don't let the inevitable downvotes make you think your taste should conform to anyone else's!

If you don’t watch it as an Alien film, it’s actually a huge amount of fun. I caught it on TV when I was a kid and started 10 minutes in so I had no idea what I was watching. So for 30 minutes I was like “WTF is this? This is amazing!” Then an Alien showed up, but I was already sold on the silliness.

Aliens on Earth is completely different type of story than an Alien killing a crew one by one which is the same damn shit we've gotten in literally EVERY SINGLE ALIEN MOVIE. Literally every single one follows the same template, Alien 1, 2, 3, 4, and even the shitty last two movies.

The comics have stories set on Earth and they're vastly more interesting than Alien 3 onwards for exploring how a traumatised Newt and Hicks living in a cyberpunk world deals with aliens, plus there are stories set on the Alien homeworld which are more interesting than anything Ridley's done with the shitty prequels.

This is why I'm still astonished the franchise hasn't gone to Earth yet, it opens up new narratives, but instead they just keep repeating the same damn formula, it's mind-boggling.

EDIT: for all the sad people who watched AvP, no those movies are in their own timeline and don't count.

[deleted]

Soft spot for this movie because it was the first Alien i saw and I thouroughly enjoyed it as a kid.

Trust me, I'm aware of the flaws.

Hate is a strong word. You do you but I can appreciate them even if they didn't hit every mark.

Did we though? Because I couldn’t see shit in AvP 2. One of the darkest movies I’ve ever seen with regards to lighting.

This was a back door pilot for FIREFLY

A far bolder claim than made above haha!

Each to their own, naturally.

Isn’t Ripley on earth early in Aliens? Like, when she wakes up in that hospital bed and Paul Reiser’s character comes to visit her?

Absolutely hated this film. Hard to even admit this, but even though the Alien v Predator movies are broadly terrible, I'd still probably rather watch them over this.

Horrible article defends this pile of crap and try’s to dunk on alien 3. Alien 3 is far from good but it is surely leagues better than resurrection. Alien resurrection sits below Prometheus and alien covenant as the worst alien movie of all time (excluding AvP).

Because I think it's more interesting watching regular people having to outsmart and trap one xenomorph than watching several marines empty their mags at countless xenomorphs.

I know you're very eager to defend Aliens since you're correcting hyperbole.

No I think she was living on a space station orbiting Earth.

Ah my mistake. Thank you.

Just make 'earth war' with some respect for the story and it will be a 3 movie money printer.

Saw it in the theater in a college town over Thanksgiving so most of the students had gone home. The theater was abnormally small and there were only two of us there. Still enjoyed the movie more than 3 but then I liked Whedons humor.

It would be be amazing. If Hollywood could just pull it's head from its arse this would be a billion dollar trilogy.

Waste of ammo

When you break formula and release the cool beasts from scary isolated environments, you get shit like the end of The Lost World and all of JW: Dominion

One of the worst you’ve ever seen? Feels weird to say, but you should watch more bad movies.

I don’t get it, waste of ammo

Fucking waste of ammo.

There's a lot more going on in "Ridley's shitty prequels" than just crews being killed by an Alien one by one. Making a movie where Xenomorphs are let loose in a Wal-Mart just sounds like Alien Vs. Predator 2.

This is one of my all time favourite movies. I saw for the first time when I was 12, and it stirred emotions in me that I still don’t know how to name. It was so bizarre and…sexy?

Movies like this almost always become self parody. The stories are inherently anti corporate. There is nothing ostensibly wrong with setting Alien movies on Earth. There is also nothing ostensibly wrong with the scientific study of an dangerous aggressive alien species, but we know the inevitable outcome when corporations have control of these projects be they entertainment or dangerous alien research.

The comics do not go down the AvP route at all. Apocalyptic cults start forming around the world worshipping the aliens, which hastens the breeding process. After a few story arcs, once Earth has been retaken many years later, humans start wearing mech suits which counters acid blood, which gives the whole franchise a new aesthetic instead of characters stupidly getting acid all over their face. Mega-Corporations start looking for 'royal jelly' from the alien queen and turning it into a designer drug.

There's so many routes you can go by allowing Earth into the mix, instead of repeatedly having stupid ass characters running down spaceship corridors being chased by ever-increasingly shit looking aliens that still haven't rivalled the ones in Alien 1 and 2.

Covid-19?

Not as bad as Alien 3 but still not anywhere near the quality of the first 2.

It gets a lot of shit but I liked it. Sigourney getting some real powers was awesome.

The only thing to remember from this movie is when the girl is getting a foot massage and her ass is amazing.

it's essentially a Firefly prequel

Mmm... what's always been interesting about Alien to me is the Xenomorph as this terrifying, unknowable and practically unstoppable force, when you outfit your protagonists with mech suits to fight them and then have people getting high off the alien's bodily fluids you kind of kill that.

Alien3 is better if you don't watch it immediately after Aliens. Aliens is such a PERFECT movie, and really gets you invested in everyone and the triumph.

Alien3, is a bummer (in tone/plot). But it's got some great performances, and it definitely has a style in its set decoration and general aesthetic. Charles S Dutton is probably my favorite Alien character. And Charles Dance has that quiet performance that the other films just don't seem to have (or make room for)

Great movie.

Unlike Ripley's previous two movies, the comics have not to my knowledge given an origin for what the aliens are. Humans adapting to them however gives our species a modicum of intelligence.

One of the best lines in a recent comic I read was something like "imagine what kind of predator there had to be, for the aliens to evolve acid blood as a defence mechanism..."

Wuhanmorphs

They’re in the process of making Alien series for FX right now that takes place on Earth…before the Alien movies. Which makes absolutely no sense.

It really is bizarre how dark that film is.

This franchise hasn't made sense since Alien 3. :|

That’s beside the point. Each new attempt has a chance at being interesting.

You just told me they're making an alien movie on earth set before Alien. These ideas are getting less interesting.

Sad thing is they have a blueprint for compelling ideas in the Dark Horse comics written decades ago.

I have a dear friend who worked on Jeunet's Alien Resurrection set. He had nothing but praise for Sigourney Weaver, and most everyone else. But Jeunet often mistreated the crew, while giving preferential treatment to his own French crew. It sometimes got so bad that Sigourney had to stand up for the crew against Jeunet.
Reading how Jeunet talks about the production - I can see how his "us vs them" mentality affected everything.

I really like Dutton in 3. Sometimes there is just perfect casting and I couldn't ask for a better fit for his character.

His eulogy for Hicks and Newt gets me every time.

I want to forget that movie so much

OK. So when do we get the Alien/Bladerunner crossover, beings as they have both been confirmed to exist in the same universe

Love that sick freak

Alien vs predator 1 & 2 are on earth

They're not part of the Aliens film series, but offshoots. No Alien movie will ever reference them.

I saw this when I was 7-8, and the violence, the grotesqueness, the way it was filmed, swimming aliens, and that whopper of a finale with the human/alien hybrid thing were so striking to me that I have no choice but to love it. I don't think I've seen it all the way through since then but it's been held in high esteem as a high (not THE highest obviously) point in the franchise for me. Guess I should see how it holds up as an adult now.

They're alien movies on earth, that was the criteria

If anything I love how the film looks like an industrial metal music video,like some Fear Factory shit

I still find it wild that in this film the scientist casually talk about how Wallmart owns them, and how they took over Wayland-Yutani, becuase they went bankrupt or something like that.

Lol I knew it was gonna be that

I love the last paragraph of the article:

> Alien Resurrection is often pegged wrongly: less a sequel than it is a comic book-like “what if?” – a standalone adventure from an alternative Alien-verse, one that imagines what could happen in the more excessive corners of Alien lore.

That's exactly how I felt about movie. It's its own thing, and on those terms it's pretty good.

“Earth, what a shithole”. One of my favorite movie quotes

Everything works out fine and everyone lives happily ever after??.......

I really liked ALIEN3. The opening scene alone is amazing. Charles Dance is great. And the setting is incredibly unique.

I can understand why people have felt bothered by the off screen death of the characters from the previous movie though.

It was definitely a bold choice. The movie's dark tone definitely do not suffer from it though.

youtube has his rallying speech, as well as his final moments. i rewatch those a lot.

"FUCK THIS THING! LET'S FIGHT IT!"

Earth?! What a shithole

They integrated and brought us delicious food and beautiful women

https://i.imgur.com/3eACC3e.jpg

So then Independence Day counts?

Problem is, it makes no sense that Earth has become an unlivable wasteland by the year 2381 when it is canon that by the year 2179 terraforming tech is commonplace. Hell, it retroactively makes less sense now that the backstory to Prometheus has Weyland solving earth's enviromental woes using large scale geoengineering in 2017.

Alien 3 is uneven and kind of badly-made, but I've always loved that it drives home the message that against the Alien, you cannot fucking win. It's just such a relentlessly bleak movie.

25 years ago? Time sure flies

Amen re: the Dark Comics run. To me it’s still the definitive concept for a sequel (to Aliens, ignoring / disregarding Alien 3) that I’ve seen.

IIRC it did however do a weird thing where Hicks and Newt weren’t Hicks and Newt… until they suddenly were?

Resurrection is total asswater as an Alien film. Everything about it is so tacky, silly and shit. It’s like nobody involved had watched an Alien movie. By a distance the worst of the series (including Prometheus and Covenant, not including the AVPs).

Alien 3 being better than Aliens is a brave take on here

It's better than the third one. It's very much it's own thing though and I kind of like it. Very weird and stupid a lot of times. A lot of the sets I remember looking like music video sets to me. The colors and costumes and such.

Tonic, Days Of The New, The Prodigy, Counting Crows, Collective Soul, NIN-The Perfect Drug in particular. Those band's video right from that time.

Saw it when I was in high school so all that was my thing at the time. Good god I can't believe that was 25 years ago.

I was in fifth grade when this hit theaters and I was a huge Alien nerd. Of course i wasn’t allowed to go see cause my parents where huge evangelicals who though the theater was satan’s playground. One of my nerd friends saw it and she told me all about it and I was hyped. It wouldn’t be another year or so when I finally got to see it. I thought it was pretty awesome back then but rewatching it later in life I can see its flaws. But one thing I still enjoy is the chemistry of all the crew members. The characters felt realistic and I enjoy them interacting with each other.

This seems like a great way to enjoy this film, and all I'll say is that I wish I had your experience watching Prometheus instead of my experience watching Prometheus.

3 and Res are so much better than anything that came after. Who gives a shit is Newt dies? Do you think anything good happens to anybody in the Aliens universe? The continued survival of humanity at any cost is the only protagonist.

If people could get past that (and the weird special effects), they’d see that 3 is absolutely dece. And Res is super fun, especially Brad Dourif.

Alien 3 is a good movie. people just dont like it because it killed off characters from Aliens. Resurrection is just trash

right. just give me a new xenomorph hybrid and im there.

No, because they said the alien movies, meaning a specific type

It would be too expensive to create a set of Earth

Wasn’t it written by Joss Whedon?

She is totally Americas hot Aunt 🥵🥵

>Alien 3 the worst in the franchise?

Without a doubt.

Resurrection isn't good but it is fun.

I don't think Ridley Scott gave a fuck about keeping continuity with Alien Resurrection when making his prequels. Didn't he also break continuity with Aliens in some major ways? Like the concept of a queen?

Who cares if it makes sense timeline wise? What are you, a Xenopedia editor?

>I don't think Ridley Scott gave a fuck about keeping continuity with Alien Resurrection

He didn't even need to, it's a non canon deleted ending.

Even Dominion barely bothered to have dinos loose and immediately put them back in a park

The premise of Alien and all its sequels revolves around elite humanity wanting to get their hands on the xenomorph, which is unknown to most people. In what realm of imagination does it make sense for there to be xenomorph stories taking place on Earth pre-Ripley…even pre-Weyland and the Prometheus.

I agree with you, but I don’t think what you’re talking about is Perlman’s fault. The problem is that the decision was made somewhere along the line (I don’t know if it was the director or what) to give the film that sort of heightened, goofy tone.

Damn I’ve only seen the movie once and that was the ending I got. I didn’t know I was watching a directors cut haha

What was the other ending?

I feel like, whenever there’s a movie that’s as heavily disliked as Alien 3, there inevitably comes a contingent of people 20 years on who try to argue that It’s Good, Actually.

But Alien Resurrection is not good. It’s a complete tonal mismatch for the franchise that’s filled with insufferably corny writing. Maybe if you took the Alien branding off it could work as its own sort of quirky sci-fi horror thing, but even then it’s just totally forgettable and by no means a good film.

It does have two great ideas for scenes, so I’ll give it credit for those. The scene with all the Ripley clones is legitimately unsettling and there are some really fucked up designs there. I think a version of this film that utilized those things as the antagonists instead of the Xenomorph would have been far more effective. The other good idea is the underwater scene. I don’t think the movie actually executes on this one that well, but the idea of putting the characters in a body of water with xenomorphs swimming around could potentially be some of the scariest shit ever.

In the 30th Anniversary edition of the original Aliens comics that issue has been corrected.

Well, I think so as it has been some time since I last read through it.

If I recall correctly, it had something to do with licensing or the writers believing there was.

This article is farcical. Talk about blowing smoke up the ass of the interviewee.

Some of the blame for the direction that the Alien franchise took has to be laid upon Weaver and two of the producers, Hill and Giler.

I remember reading articles about the making of Alien 3 and one of the justifications for Weaver to return (and get a producing credit) was she insisted that there would be no guns in the movie. She was anti-gun and a new mother, and used her clout to influence the development of the script. She didn't like the amount of weaponry in Aliens.

When the star of the movie lays down edicts like that at the story development phase it does wonky things to the production. I always thought that Weaver's insistence about no-guns was why the studio commissioned two scripts where Ripley was sidelined in Alien 3 (the William Gibson draft and the Eric Red draft).

Alien 3 and Resurrection are good film school examples of what happens when too many cooks are in the kitchen.

I love Alien and I love Jeunet, but man is this a bad one. It throws the cool, serious and classic tone out the window and goes full on goofy. The Whedon effect is total trash, and I’m still mystified why Jeunet was the guy they attached to it. I almost prefer Alien 3, and Prometheus is LEAGUES better than this. RIP

Interesting thanks for the tip. Certainly in the collection I have they randomly change identities halfway through.

What a silly laugh I just made.

Here is a piece of trivia for you. AVPR's DP intentionally made this decision to avoid what its predecessor did. I.e. showing too much of the creatures due to too much lighting thereby defeating the horror element. Of course his efforts went too much in reverse instead, and what we got was very dark and very shaky.

A specific type of movies that includes aliens? Like The Abyss?

Edit: you people can't take a joke?

Beverly Hills Chihuahua 4 really is the exception to the rule though.

>but I think it’s implied that the aliens had already gotten to earth. I forget.

No it was just that earth had become a really shitty place.

I like it. It's not high art or anything, but it's got people running from aliens on an abandoned spaceship, the set looked good, decent action and effects, and some funny and bizarre moments(Brad Dourif trying to make out with an alien lol). Anyone who complains about resurrection must not have seen number 3.

It had Charles Dance!

[deleted]

You're missing the key word

That DP made a horrendous mistake. I can only imagine the production cringing at the dailies haha

What would that be?

Edit: Anyone wanna cue me in what they're talking about?

I am not your school teacher

God damn. Excuse me for being Swedish...

That's not my fault either

Learn to take a joke.

Alien 3 Special Edition (formerly known as the Assembly Cut) is genuinely a good movie. It adds so much that was absent from the theatrical cut.

Look in the mirror

Mind explaining your joke? Really trying to learn here.

If they didn't want to do the same formulae and wanted more Alien stuff they could being a couple of xenomorph eggs back to a space station, contained. Then it becomes a hot potato amongst factions where they try to get access to this weapon. A bit like The Expanse and the protovirus. Basically make more episodes of The Expanse, please. But without the imaginary people giving exposition dumps.

This was the first of the show-the-whole-alien-because-CGI-is-awesomely-awesome style of filmmaking that killed the horror aspects of this film for me. The first two films let you barely see the xenomorphs for most of the film, and let your own imagination terrify you best. A3 was a hot mess. And then this thing. When I saw that xeno swimming through the water, I thought, "this is beautiful, and not really scary at all".