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Xenomrph posted:Nope, sorry, there's actually multiple ways of looking at movies a) You don't know what makes a scene effective. b) That's not what deconstruction is.
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Sep 26, 2015 16:45
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Writing your own "what if..." Because you can't accept the story being presented to you is the exact opposite of deconstructing the narrative being presented to you. It's ignoring it and positing your own fan fiction as fact, or in this case "canon" as fact goes out the window when dealing with a fictional story.
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Sep 26, 2015 16:51
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Xenomrph posted:Nope, sorry, there's actually multiple ways of looking at movies All this is true. Unfortunately you aren't intellectually equipped to do any of it.
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Sep 26, 2015 16:56
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My deconstruction of Apocalypse Now is that they should not go into the jungle, and we should re-edit the film so that the jungle doesn't look as bad.
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Sep 26, 2015 17:02
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Eh I dunno containment kind of sounded okay at the time.
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Sep 26, 2015 17:25
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Well I mean, for example, the scene where the soldiers go surfing in the warzone. It would be more effective if they had a reason to be surfing, like it is part of their mission objectives. Maybe they are trying to reach the enemy base covertly, and they can't use outboard motors: "why not use surfboards!" It's still a bit silly, but i think this would fix a lot of the character inconsistencies. Either that or they could explain that this part of Vietnam is very safe, so surfing is okay.
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Sep 26, 2015 17:27
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I still hold true to the theory that Harrison Ford's character is a distant relative to both Deckard and Han Solo, I 
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Sep 26, 2015 17:53
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ruddiger posted:Writing your own "what if..." Because you can't accept the story being presented to you is the exact opposite of deconstructing the narrative being presented to you. It's ignoring it and positing your own fan fiction as fact, or in this case "canon" as fact goes out the window when dealing with a fictional story.  Yaws posted:All this is true. Unfortunately you aren't intellectually equipped to do any of it.  But thanks for agreeing with me all the same, I appreciate it. SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well I mean, for example, the scene where the soldiers go surfing in the warzone. It would be more effective if they had a reason to be surfing, like it is part of their mission objectives. Maybe they are trying to reach the enemy base covertly, and they can't use outboard motors: "why not use surfboards!"  What are your thoughts on director's cuts, or "fan edits" (The Phantom Edit, the Hobbit trilogy edited down to one movie, etc)? Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 18:41
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Xenomrph posted:What are your thoughts on director's cuts, or "fan edits" (The Phantom Edit, the Hobbit trilogy edited down to one movie, etc)? Fan edits frequently miss the point. It's funny when they end up reinforcing the complaints people had about the films, though. Like a frequent complaint about Phantom Menace is that it's full of racial stereotypes, the Neimodians being an example of Asian stereotypes. I forget if it's Phantom Edit or another one, but their solution to this problem is to dub them in an alien language and add subtitles.
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Sep 26, 2015 19:11
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Xenomrph posted:I really wish you'd recognize that there's more ways of looking at/enjoying movies than your own, because you write a lot about them and sometimes you even write interesting and insightful things about them and it's disheartening when you're so dismissive. "Dismissive" implies that I've rejected your 'way of looking' without first evaluating it. The reality is that I've read what you've written, carefully, and found it to be bad.
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Sep 26, 2015 20:19
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I'd argue that Prometheus has the one most realistic depiction of a bunch of poo poo tier PhDs in all of movie history. People who complain about their behaviour haven't spend enough time in academia.
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Sep 26, 2015 20:41
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Isn't one of the major ideas behind Alien and Prometheus to take the genre conventions, and cliche's of old sci fi and horror B Movies and present them in different ways? I feel like that right there should explain some of the sillier stuff of the films. It's not like these movies don't realize when they are being funny. Prometheus is actually really funny,
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Sep 26, 2015 22:53
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:"Dismissive" implies that I've rejected your 'way of looking' without first evaluating it. computer parts posted:Fan edits frequently miss the point. It's funny when they end up reinforcing the complaints people had about the films, though. Hell, Ridley Scott has had plenty of his movies get screwed with in the editing room - Blade Runner, Kingdom of Heaven. Even Prometheus, there have been plenty of instances where people said "yeah, this deleted scene would have made this characters' actions make more sense", or "this alternate take is scarier/more interesting/more visually compelling". Off topic but regarding your specific Phantom Menace example, could you clarify what you mean?, Wouldn't dubbing them in a nonsense language address the alleged racial stereotyping, though? Or are you saying that them "fixing" the Asian stereotype misses the point, and that the Asian stereotype is important and should be in the movie? IM_DA_DECIDER posted:I'd argue that Prometheus has the one most realistic depiction of a bunch of poo poo tier PhDs in all of movie history. People who complain about their behaviour haven't spend enough time in academia. The_Rob posted:Isn't one of the major ideas behind Alien and Prometheus to take the genre conventions, and cliche's of old sci fi and horror B Movies and present them in different ways? I feel like that right there should explain some of the sillier stuff of the films. It's not like these movies don't realize when they are being funny. Prometheus is actually really funny, I didn't really get that vibe with Prometheus, though, aside from perhaps the juxtaposition of 1950s "clean" sci-fi aesthetics (the designs of the space suits, the ship, even smaller things like David's hair) with the gritty and unsettling "reality" of 'Alien'. I vaguely remember seeing someone say in the old Prometheus thread that the movie is a 1950s "optimistic" sci-fi movie where things go horribly, disastrously wrong. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 23:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well I mean, for example, the scene where the soldiers go surfing in the warzone. It would be more effective if they had a reason to be surfing, like it is part of their mission objectives. Maybe they are trying to reach the enemy base covertly, and they can't use outboard motors: "why not use surfboards!" Haha. This desire for professionals and especially agencies/corporations to operate at maximum ruthless efficiency at all times is pretty interesting. Is it because, like, God's dead and the President's incompetent or impotent but at least the Army/Google know what they're doing?
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Sep 27, 2015 00:25
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Xenomrph posted:This is an interesting idea, could you elaborate on it? I don't spend a lot of time with poo poo tier PhDs, so the idea that the characters are literally intended to be "unrealistic" (to the layman) inept assholes is interesting. You don't need to be smart or capable to get into grad school in the first place. If your undergrad grades are not abysmal and you're willing to travel, you can always find a prof somewhere at the University of Bumfuck who is willing to take you in as cheap labour. That's why many people who can't find a job after college go to grad school, cause it's easy. Once you're in grad school, it is very hard to actually get kicked out. You can concievably sit on your rear end for 5+ years until your prof is sick of you and gives you your drat PhD. Since you learned nothing, you won't be able to hold a job in industry and might be doing endless, fruitless post-doc work with no chance of a tenure track position. Now some Weyland-Yutani HR person posts a job offer for a PhD holder in the natural sciences for a multi-year expedition to some god-forsaken planet. Who is going to apply for that? Not someone with a lucrative industry job who is finally able to settle down and have a family. Not a tenure-track scientist who needs to stay at the cutting edge of research in order to actually make it. It's the perfect job for those who slipped through the cracks of the academic system, another unfireable, multi-year position with no pressure to succeed. Charlize Theron might not be qualified or even interested in judging the merits of those people. Hell, they have a PhD, there's minimum standards that come with that! There's not, in many cases. I can see how the geologists would not be able to read a map. I have seen it. Hell, I'm a biologist and I've been bitten in the finger by a clearly agitated baby crocodile. Prometheus is 100% tactically realistic.
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Sep 27, 2015 00:35
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Once you're in grad school, it is very hard to actually get kicked out. You can concievably sit on your rear end for 5+ years until your prof is sick of you and gives you your drat PhD. Hahahhaa As someone who's in grad school I can 100% say this is complete bullshit.
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Sep 27, 2015 00:40
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The purpose of editing is not to add or remove scenes, but to construct scenes. By cutting out the jokes and characterization from the psychological comedy sequence, in your proposed fan-edit, you now have a scene that no longer has a reason to exist. And, consequently, the characters have no reason to exist. That makes you a bad editor.
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Sep 27, 2015 00:41
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Chairman Capone posted:Hahahhaa As someone who's in grad school I can unfortunately 100% confirm my story 
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Sep 27, 2015 00:42
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The purpose of editing is not to add or remove scenes, but to construct scenes. IM_DA_DECIDER posted:You don't need to be smart or capable to get into grad school in the first place. If your undergrad grades are not abysmal and you're willing to travel, you can always find a prof somewhere at the University of Bumfuck who is willing to take you in as cheap labour. That's why many people who can't find a job after college go to grad school, cause it's easy. Once you're in grad school, it is very hard to actually get kicked out. You can concievably sit on your rear end for 5+ years until your prof is sick of you and gives you your drat PhD. Since you learned nothing, you won't be able to hold a job in industry and might be doing endless, fruitless post-doc work with no chance of a tenure track position. IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Now some Weyland-Yutani HR person posts a job offer for a PhD holder in the natural sciences for a multi-year expedition to some god-forsaken planet. Who is going to apply for that? Not someone with a lucrative industry job who is finally able to settle down and have a family. Not a tenure-track scientist who needs to stay at the cutting edge of research in order to actually make it. It's the perfect job for those who slipped through the cracks of the academic system, another unfireable, multi-year position with no pressure to succeed. Charlize Theron might not be qualified or even interested in judging the merits of those people. Hell, they have a PhD, there's minimum standards that come with that! There's not, in many cases. So I guess the "problem" is less about it actually being realistic, but more about the audience's suspension of disbelief. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 01:02
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I was reminded by this thread that I had the Alien Quadrilogy lying around so I watched the Assembly cut last night and it was excellent and I enjoyed it immensely. I reckon it could do with around ten more minutes here and there established various characters, including the space, and it would be untouchable. So very sorry* to disrupt the Prometheus chat. *I am not sorry in the slightest way.
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Sep 27, 2015 01:52
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Just going to jump in with both feet here to say Prometheus was not just a disappointing addition to the Alien canon, it was also an objectively terrible movie. Had I watched it without prior knowledge of Alien I'd probably have switched off halfway through, instead of deciding to give it a chance and watch it to completion. So the characters... I can't remember a single one of their names. There's the thick one, the biologist, that infamously decides to piss around with some alien seasnake creature and quite deservedly gets his arm broken and his poo poo subsequently pushed in. There's the other guy, the geologist(?) who becomes some kind of zombie. There's Noomi Rapeface, who spouts a load of creationist bollocks (a recurring theme throughout the movie that rankles me) about ancient astronauts (another theme of the movie that drives me up the wall) and gets herself pregnant from (I think) an exploding alien head or some poo poo. Then she gives herself a C-section and a bad knockoff of the esteemed xenomorph emerges to wreck poo poo for awhile and be quite unscary and forgetable even to characters in the film. Her boyfriend for some reason just starts being an arsehole to everyone (which isn't much of a departure, none of the crew are likeable or memorable) and Stringer Bell sits around in the cockpit with his thumb up his arse for most of the movie. There's Lance Hendriksen, who's kept on ice by Magneto, presumably a callback to the real life cryogenic chamber he's kept in between AvP films and 80s nostalgia vehicles. As the driving force behind the movie's plot, he's looking long and hard at his mortality and the crumbling ruin of his career and going "I wonder if Gearbox needs a VA for Colonial Marines?" Magneto, on the other hand, is getting down to some classic Blade Runner "I'm a real boy" bum-gazing. The (other) blonde one does.... something with an aloof and icy demeanour, but it can't have been very important because I'm drawing a complete blank. The plot. We've got a strong opening. Bunch of douchebags that can just about muster a single, coherent personality between them and who are suffering from a bad case of the Wrong Stuff departs for a farflung planet on the strength of a starmap hidden in some cave or other to find their maker, some ancient precursors from beyond the stars. It's all very momentous and important and flash-frozen Lance Hendriksen thinks this'll immortalise him in some vague and ill-defined way. They reach the planet and find some giant barrow or other full of enigmatic hieroglyphs and dry ice machines. Ridley Scott obviously decides that it just won't do to rip off Planet of the Vampires (watch that movie instead. It's like a better version of Prometheus, in that it's a worthy precursor to Alien) only once in his career and brings back the space jockeys on this dead planet with it's sepulchers and tombs and ruins and derelicts. Except now they're all sleek and anthropomorphic and dull as gently caress. Because they made us in their image or something equally trite. They're a race of giant, palsied albinos. Even Star Trek managed to make its aliens more distinct and interesting to look at, by way of rubber foreheads and fake ears. And now it turns into a scattershot exercise in ticking all possible boxes. We've got the seasnake critter re-enacting a crap version of the egg scene from Alien. We've got the prototypical xenomorph (that looks more like some land-going shark critter from a bad 50s B horror movie) re-enacting the chestburster scene. We've got space zombies, because... why not? Yes, but why yes? We've got Magneto trying his best to channel Ian Holm as the sinister agent of his corporate overlord, Lance Hendriksen. It honestly has escaped me what happens beyond these beats. Not a single scene in this altogether forgettable movie (save for dumb-arse breaking his arm playing with the seasnake in the pond of fog, which is memorable only by virtue of how incredibly stupid it is) has stuck with me and while I might be chided for not paying close enough attention I'm of the opinion that the movie should have got and kept my attention by being halfway interesting. The effects and set design, while functional and all, really weren't very evocative. It was the now-standard big budget sci-fi feast of sleek, sterile and characterless iPod upholstery. In this age of ubiquitous CGI, you have to show a bit of imagination to really impress with that kind of spectacle. Having a colour palette not made entirely of whites and greys would probably help. While all the alien tech gives nods to Giger's original derelict design, everything looks too clean, too sleek, too shiny, too new. And it all looks so boring and comprehensible compared to the gothic cathedral/bowels of hell aesthetic Giger came up with in 1979. With all that said, I'll happily and wholeheartedly admit I didn't enjoy Prometheus because I wanted it to be something it isn't: a good and interesting movie. The three Good Alien Movies can stand on their own two feet on their own merits. Prometheus disappoints as fanservice and manages to be thoroughly  when taken on its own.I look forward to being exhaustively told why I'm wrong, stupid and have bad taste in sci-fi popcorn flicks.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:11
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You've confused criticism with pretending to be angry.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You've confused criticism with pretending to be angry. And it was on this day, that I agreed with SMG.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:29
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Noomi Rapeface, a classic joke worthy of any youtube channel!
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Sep 27, 2015 02:36
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TomViolence posted:With all that said, I'll happily and wholeheartedly admit I didn't enjoy Prometheus because I wanted it to be something it isn't: a good and interesting movie. You probably thought this was clever didn't you? As a rebuttal, Prometheus is a good and interesting movie. More so than the other Alien movies with the possible exception of the first. It's more ambitious, polished and overall better directed and acted and the SE are top-notch and still haven't been trumped despite Prometheus being 3 years old at this point. Dumb people don't like it because it's ambiguous and that makes their heads hurt. In closing, all your criticisms are nothing more than Cinema Sins level wrongheaded nitpicking. Lazy.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:36
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To be honest, it started as a short shitpost and then grew in length as I jotted down a catalogue of everything I remembered tutting at during the movie. I missed out on all the Prometheus chat way back when and so upon seeing it resurrected here, I jumped in in hopes of someone dropping  on some hilarious red text because I dislike a movie they like. I still stand by everything I've said, though, even if my style of critique isn't rigorous or dry (or funny or intelligent) enough to pass muster. For the reasons I've given, as well as others I can't articulate, I really did not enjoy Prometheus, and I refuse to apologise for it or see it as some intellectual failing of myself rather than the film. Guess it just wasn't my bag.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:49
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The fictional scientists in the movie have the same attitude and approach to life/work as these real scientists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocpuuaNwMSw
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Sep 27, 2015 02:58
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TomViolence posted:There's Lance Hendriksen Guy Pearce.
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Sep 27, 2015 03:20
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Noomi Rapeface, a classic joke worthy of any youtube channel! It works only if you spell it Numi. *nods sagely*
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Sep 27, 2015 03:23
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rejutka posted:I reckon it could do with around ten more minutes here and there established various characters, including the space, and it would be untouchable. There's probably a reading of the movie that looks at the development of individual identity, comparing the interchangeable myriad Alien drones of 'Aliens' who exist to die to the similarly unnamed, interchangeable prisoners from Alien3. Both movies "weed out" characters until only those with identity are left - the Alien Queen in 'Aliens', arguably the only "individual" Alien in the movie, and the prisoner Morse in 'Alien3', the one prisoner who doesn't buy into Dillon's collectivist, nihilistic religion, and the one prisoner who largely acts more for himself than for the others (and the one time he strays from that, it almost kills him). Funnily enough the nameless prisoners were less of a complaint among UK audiences, mostly because the throwaway prisoners are played by UK actors that they were familiar with.
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Sep 27, 2015 03:34
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Lt. Danger posted:Guy Pearce. poo poo, so it was. Think I must've been misremembering and somehow mashing in scenes from AvP. The two films are kind of sloshing around in the same brain-space.
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Sep 27, 2015 03:39
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TomViolence posted:poo poo, so it was. Think I must've been misremembering and somehow mashing in scenes from AvP. The two films are kind of sloshing around in the same brain-space. quote:I really did not enjoy Prometheus, and I refuse to apologise for it or see it as some intellectual failing of myself rather than the film I think maybe you should re-evaluate your position; take more responsibility for your own enjoyment of things.
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Sep 27, 2015 03:59
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Xenomrph posted:A common complaint among (American) audiences is that the vast majority of the prisoners are undeveloped, no-name redshirts, and a lot of them exist just to die (and sometimes merely offscreen, like with the quinitricetalyne explosion). Technically all of the prisoners have names in the script, and I think all of them are named in the end credits, but a lot of them have little to no screen-time even in the Assembly Cut. Even I have a hard time remembering all of their names, and matching names to faces is even more difficult. It doesn't help that a lot of them are visually interchangeable Too many words, dude. Also, being Irish. I am familiar with alla dem actors. It's quiet good casting, make not more of it because sperglord territory. Mostly I am impressed by the fact that this is a place that seems real and with many characters. You could set many a tale here and with ease. Then Ripley shows up. It is an elegant swansong to the world it lives in, even as a cludged together assembly of the original intent. The fourth movie just plain does not help.
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Sep 27, 2015 04:45
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TomViolence posted:it was also an objectively terrible movie. Is that why you made such a long objectively terrible post?
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Sep 27, 2015 05:25
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Prometheus was awesome, I particularly liked the part where Ridley Scott took the treasured nerd memories and said "God doesn't care" and just hosed 'em all up You like aliens? own every piece of merchandise? All the games? Some giant white dude spilled some black goo on a bee hive (only one of it's many household uses) and for years humans have gone on about how biologically perfect killing machines they are, died trying to capture them and got whole groups of people killed for a chance at a 'specimen'. The whole mythology is an accident created by dumb humans trying to harness something they didn't understand. They're basically just insects. The new aliens are cooler anyway. EDIT: That snake monster scared me more than anything in resurrection did. Jesus, that poo poo's brutal. DOUBLE EDIT: Prometheus is what you get when someone actually tries to make a film instead of filling out a checklist of nerd criteria Full Battle Rattle fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 07:15
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TomViolence posted:Ridley Scott obviously decides that it just won't do to rip off Planet of the Vampires (watch that movie instead. It's like a better version of Prometheus, in that it's a worthy precursor to Alien) Martman fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 08:39
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Lt. Danger posted:I think maybe you should re-evaluate your position; take more responsibility for your own enjoyment of things.  Martman posted:Can you describe what's good about Planet of the Vampires? Or maybe describe some of the characters' personalities? I think I've pretty thoroughly established that my tongue-in-cheek opinions on movies aren't very good. But I'll recommend Planet of the Vampires all the same, because it's a nice slice of good old fashioned leather-jumpsuit-and-ray-gun space opera. It's got body-hopping alien ghosts, a derelict occupied by the skeleton of a big, egg-headed creature the origins of which never become clear and it's also got space zombies. While the acting is decidedly of its day and the characters may as well be cardboard cutouts for all the development they get, the movie hits all the right notes in terms of atmosphere, with ubiquitously billowing knee-high fog, unexplained and eery noises, inscrutable psychic phenomena afflicting the crew with narcolepsy at every turn and an all-encompassing sense of dread that builds all the way to the rather boldly bleak ending. It's got a lot of the things Prometheus has, having inspired both it and Alien, but in my opinion carries them off with its own spin on a low budget and with a great deal of charm.
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Sep 27, 2015 09:18
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Prometheus was awesome, I particularly liked the part where Ridley Scott took the treasured nerd memories and said "God doesn't care" and just hosed 'em all up Also none of the movies "filled out a checklist of nerd criteria" except for *maybe* Resurrection to a small degree (written by Joss Whedon, after all  )Unless you meant the AvP movies in which case yeah they're pretty guilty of that
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Sep 27, 2015 10:19
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I've gotten poo poo for this in other threads in the past, but if I'm being 100% honest its very difficult for me to read someone's opinion with an open mind when they refer to Michael Fassbender as "Magneto", and Guy Pierce as "Lance Hendricksen." Also, people who use the term "objectively terrible" are generally assholes.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:06
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Full Battle Rattle posted:Prometheus was awesome, I particularly liked the part where Ridley Scott took the treasured nerd memories and said "God doesn't care" and just hosed 'em all up I'm pretty vanilla sexually but I love some rough play in my genre movies. Yeah, Ridley, withhold the established morphology of the creatures I like. Yeah, yeah, kill Newt and Hicks harder while Miller blows up Max's interceptor right in my face!!! Movies that give you what you want are ok, but movies that give you what you actually need are the best.
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Sep 27, 2015 15:14
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