|
I'll watch Prometheus today to see the true horror that this series has created.
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 22:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
No that's Ridley Scoffed Day.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 23:21
|
|
|
CelticPredator posted:Thanks! It's just a window fan I had lying around. I used it way more than I should've. There better be some sort of contest or job you can win with this, it's great!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2016 23:58
|
|
|
CelticPredator posted:Thanks! It's just a window fan I had lying around. I used it way more than I should've.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 04:33
|
|
|
I watched Alien3 (assembly cut) in honor of this thread and Alien Day. I just noticed for the first time that the movie actually foreshadows how they kill the Alien. When the big explosion sets the prison on fire and they turn on the sprinklers, you see the water cause one of the metal buckets to burst as it cools. I've seen this movie like a thousand times and somehow I never made that connection until just now. Also the assembly cut actually tries to make Michael Bishop (Lance Henriksen at the end of the movie) into an almost sympathetic character. Like yeah he wants the Alien, but it's pretty clear that he wants Ripley to live, too. He also freaks out when Morse gets kneecapped and literally apologizes for it, tells the cameras to stop filming, and seems to actually care what Ripley thinks of him before she kills herself. Like yeah you could argue that he's doing whatever it takes to coerce Ripley into stepping away from the precipice, but even if he doesn't actually give a poo poo, he does a pretty convincing job of acting like he cares.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 04:37
|
|
|
Emulating something accurately is very much analogous to the standards of an audiophile. It's relatively easy to get most emulation working to the point where it's fine if you just want to play the drat game and you won't notice the discrepancies unless you're a purist.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 16:59
|
|
|
In the directors cut of Alien, is there anything different about the scene where Lambert and Parker are attacked? When I watched it last night I thought Lambert's screams went on longer than I remembered, and they were more.....demonstrative if you know what I mean.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 17:08
|
|
|
Yeah I don't know if you guys have realized this but it's about equally as difficult to "purely" play any modern game. Also that article about needing a sweet rig to play SNES games is five years old, roughly two and a half eternities in CPU development. Meanwhile instead of the mostly unimportant problems listed in the article, in PSX games you regularly get moderate to severe framerate issues or compatibility glitches that make the game completely unplayable. I haven't bothered with this in a long while but it's probably still pretty bad. quote:As an example, compare the spinning triforce animation from the opening to Legend of Zelda on the ZSNES and bsnes emulators. On the former, the triforces will complete their rotations far too soon as a result of the CPU running well over 40 percent faster than a real SNES. These are little details, but if you have an eye for accuracy, they can be maddening. Calling this "maddening" is about all you need to know. It's true that these issues would be enough to make Nintendo itself wait a while to support virtual machine titles, but then we've had VM support since the Wii in 2006.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 17:11
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:Emulating something accurately is very much analogous to the standards of an audiophile. It's relatively easy to get most emulation working to the point where it's fine if you just want to play the drat game and you won't notice the discrepancies unless you're a purist. I just turn on NTSC filters so it looks like poo poo and I am happy. http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html FE: not kidding
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 17:44
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Also the assembly cut actually tries to make Michael Bishop (Lance Henriksen at the end of the movie) into an almost sympathetic character. Like yeah he wants the Alien, but it's pretty clear that he wants Ripley to live, too. He also freaks out when Morse gets kneecapped and literally apologizes for it, tells the cameras to stop filming, and seems to actually care what Ripley thinks of him before she kills herself. You notice the change in Ripley after Superintendent Andrews attacks the Bishop clone, and he damages Bishop's head showing he is just a robot. Which goes back to Ripley not trusting the robots after what Ash did in Alien. I don't remember if this part is different from the two versions but I remember in at least one of them it shows him as a robot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 19:02
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Ehhhh that's a bit more complicated than you'd think. You can run SNES games on a toaster, but doing it accurately is another matter entirely. The SNES is notoriously difficult to emulate accurately without using a very high end mega-PC or custom built hardware, it's the reason why Nintendo only just now introduced SNES virtual console games on the New 3DS, because the old model couldn't handle it to Nintendo's standards. That article is about cycle-accurate emulation, which Nintendo has never cared about and has no reason to. Homebrew SNES emulation has existed on the 3DS for some time with reasonable compabitility. Toady fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Apr 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 19:17
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:I watched Alien3 (assembly cut) in honor of this thread and Alien Day. Yeah I want a what-if machine to see what would have gone down if she had trusted him and went off with his expert team to take it out of her.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 20:52
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Yeah I want a what-if machine to see what would have gone down if she had trusted him and went off with his expert team to take it out of her. We have that movie its called Alien: Resurrection.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 21:04
|
|
|
Tenzarin posted:You notice the change in Ripley after Superintendent Andrews attacks the Bishop clone, and he damages Bishop's head showing he is just a robot. Which goes back to Ripley not trusting the robots after what Ash did in Alien. I don't remember if this part is different from the two versions but I remember in at least one of them it shows him as a robot. The theatrical cut doesn't outright state he's a robot, but it's definitely more ambiguous. He doesn't wince in pain, but you can still see that he's bleeding red blood.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2016 21:15
|
|
|
Yeah.he has red blood in both versions.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 03:06
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:Emulating something accurately is very much analogous to the standards of an audiophile. It's relatively easy to get most emulation working to the point where it's fine if you just want to play the drat game and you won't notice the discrepancies unless you're a purist. Well, one of the games the article talks about isn't completable unless you're using a cycle-accurate emulator, because it relies on a weird hardware edge case for a thing that's required to progress. That seems a little beyond "audiophile standards."
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2016 04:14
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:It's Aaron (the assistant superintendent) that does the clubbing, and the difference in the assembly cut is that Bishop II visibly grabs his bleeding head and shouts at Ripley, "I'm not a droid!!!", and you see him wincing in pain a lot more. They kind of tried to play it both ways in the Weyland-Yutani Report; apparently he was human but benefited from some cybernetic enhancement. Interesting way to address both ideas really (also like that the "book" the one surviving inmate wrote about the same experience was titled "Star Beast", nice touch that).
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2016 20:39
|
|
|
MrMojok posted:Xeno, how was the W-Y report? Overall I'm... kinda disappointed. Like it's got some neat tidbits here and there, but they're few and far between, with too much emphasis on (very) pretty pictures and not enough emphasis on actual meaningful content that expands or enhances on the movies. There's a ton (a TON) of missed opportunities in this book, from the way info is presented, to what is/isn't said, to opportunities for speculation or theorizing. It's kind of a shame because the book starts out REALLY strong, and even the Prometheus chapter is cool and has a lot of neat ideas, but then it starts to nosedive in the 'Alien' chapter, goes right into the ground in the 'Aliens' chapter, and really never recovers. Even the "practical applications of Xenomorph science" bit, which is literally a blank slate for cool and interesting ideas, starts out strong and then ends up being a wet fart. Did we really need an entire page devoted to a verbatim transcript of Apone talking in the hive, telling everyone to unload their ammo? I've seen the movie. Why not replace that with something we haven't seen/read before, like a transcript of Ripley's report that none of the Marines read, or a transcript of a mess hall conversation that the audience doesn't hear, or a transcript of Bishop's observations on the facehuggers in the medlab while the Marines are venturing to rescue the colonists? Did we really need a full two-page cutaway of the Dropship, when it was done better and in more detail in the USCM Tech Manual? I'd have rather seen a cutaway of the Auriga, or a cutaway of the Betty or Prometheus, something we haven't seen before. On that topic, did we need a two page drawing of the Sulaco? The USCM Tech Manual handled that in much, much greater detail. poo poo, if you're going to devote two pages to it, at least make it an interesting cutaway or something. The collector's edition of Colonial Marines came with a more visually interesting diagram of the Sulaco than the WY report did. As cool as the artwork is, did we really need nearly three full pages of paintings of the Dog Alien from Alien3? Why not replace one of those with something we haven't seen before, like a blueprint of the Fiorina 161 facility? And speaking of the Alien3 section, I really wish they'd gone into a little more detail on the prisoners (especially since it only lists 17 of the 22). There's a ton of unused space on those pages. It's a really recurring problem with the book - nearly every page has a ton of unused space that's just filled up with images from the movies or whatever. It's really a case of style over substance: the book is this big hard-bound tome that feels really substantial, but the pages are all unnecessarily thick paper stock, and the content itself is sparse or repetitive of things we've seen in the movies. With the $40 price tag, it feels like I'm paying for the binding rather than the content. Hell, the USCM Tech Manual's last chapter crams more interesting insight on Alien biology and applications into like 15 pages than the entire WY Report does in the whole book, and the Tech Manual is half the price. I'm just trying to figure out who the intended audience for this book really is. It's regurgitating a ton of content straight from the movies (often verbatim) without really expanding on any of it (aside from the Prometheus section, as mentioned), which tells me it's not aimed at die-hard fans of the movie because those sorts of people will already know everything the book is presenting them. But at the same time it's a $40 hardcover book, which makes it a really hard sell for casual fans looking to learn more (especially when the superior USCM Tech Manual is $20). I'm really, really glad I didn't pull the trigger on the Sideshow special edition version of this book for several hundred dollars. For those interested I could recap some of the more interesting things in the book (most of which has to do with Prometheus).
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 07:00
|
|
|
well thats kinda disappointing
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 10:23
|
|
|
Tell me about it. There's just a huge amount of wasted potential and it's really a shame. Nearly every page from the 'Alien' chapter onward had me saying to myself, "there are tons of really obvious and creative ways to use all this blank space". The book's tone is really inconsistent given its premise, and it puts a lot of emphasis on stuff regurgitated from the movies (often verbatim) and occasionally hints at things that would have been really cool to see instead. It's pretty to look at, but the content just isn't very good once you get past the Prometheus chapter.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 10:52
|
|
|
Tell us about the Prometheus chapter!
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 16:56
|
|
|
One of the interesting ideas it throws around is that the Engineers didn't create us at all, that we're "genetic cousins" of theirs (be it through natural evolution/panspermia, or both the Engineers and humans were both created by something else). It puts a different spin on why the Engineer reacts to violently when woken up - it's less of "I HATE MY CREATIONS" and more of "wtf I literally just woke up after going into hibernation after all my friends were killed by black goo, and the first thing I wake up to are a bunch of assholes asking me to save them?" It also has a translation of what David said to the Engineer, basically "This human wants more life". As in, a callback to Batty confronting Tyrell in 'Blade Runner'. It specifically pins all of the dumb/questionable things every character does on Janek (Idris Elba) for not running a tighter ship. Like seriously, it puts the blame squarely on him. Fifeld is pointed out as being a last-minute replacement, who scored poorly on social/teamwork aptitude tests. Milburn is noted as having no field experience prior to the mission. I swear there's something else I'm forgetting, I'll have to double-check the book.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 17:53
|
|
|
Disappointing, indeed. Thanks for the review.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 18:13
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:One of the interesting ideas it throws around is that the Engineers didn't create us at all, that we're "genetic cousins" of theirs (be it through natural evolution/panspermia, or both the Engineers and humans were both created by something else). It puts a different spin on why the Engineer reacts to violently when woken up - it's less of "I HATE MY CREATIONS" and more of "wtf I literally just woke up after going into hibernation after all my friends were killed by black goo, and the first thing I wake up to are a bunch of assholes asking me to save them?" This should be held up as to the people who wanted everything explained. Because goddamn the answers are stupid.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 02:06
|
|
|
To be fair the first bit about "what if the Engineers didn't create humanity at all?" is an interesting idea because the movie doesn't even entertain it in the slightest, and it's possibly the funniest answer to Shaw's questions. She goes on a hundred million mile interstellar journey and watches all of her friends die horrible deaths only to find out her "gods" are actually her cousins and they're just as stupid and clueless as we are.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 03:11
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:To be fair the first bit about "what if the Engineers didn't create humanity at all?" is an interesting idea because the movie doesn't even entertain it in the slightest, and it's possibly the funniest answer to Shaw's questions. She goes on a hundred million mile interstellar journey and watches all of her friends die horrible deaths only to find out her "gods" are actually her cousins and they're just as stupid and clueless as we are. It's the opening scene of the film.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 03:14
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's the opening scene of the film.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 04:19
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:No I mean, no one really throws it in Shaw's face and says "have you entertained the possibility that everything you've discovered about the Engineers doesn't actually mean anything?" Maybe because none of the characters in the movie are as autistic as you?
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 04:20
|
|
|
Immortan posted:Maybe because none of the characters in the movie are as autistic as you? It's a silly point anyway and I agree with Snowman McK on his larger point that mystery and unanswered questions is a Good Thing. it's one of the things I knock Prometheus for a bit, although maybe that's part of the movie's point: that when you go looking for answers to everything, sometimes the answers you get are bad or stupid and you were better off not asking.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 04:41
|
|
|
Don't Wake Daddy.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 04:44
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Fifeld is pointed out as being a last-minute replacement, who scored poorly on social/teamwork aptitude tests. Milburn is noted as having no field experience prior to the mission. Yeah, I did get a laugh out of the obvious "well yes, those two WERE idiots as scientists" write-up there. Overall do have to agree with you though, which is kind of sad; I will grant the artwork looks pretty at least. Though some of the suggested applications for xenomorph business applications kinda fell in the category of "cool idea, goofy art depiction" (I had to laugh at the acid gun, even though it's logical enough for some company goon throwing out marketing ideas).
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 06:23
|
|
|
MadDogMike posted:Yeah, I did get a laugh out of the obvious "well yes, those two WERE idiots as scientists" write-up there. Overall do have to agree with you though, which is kind of sad; I will grant the artwork looks pretty at least. Though some of the suggested applications for xenomorph business applications kinda fell in the category of "cool idea, goofy art depiction" (I had to laugh at the acid gun, even though it's logical enough for some company goon throwing out marketing ideas). The book did have a couple good choice lines from time to time. There's a bit that's meant to be something like a playback transcript from Bishop's internal memory of what he heard over the comm channels when the Marines initially get ambushed and Ripley drives the APC through the wall of the hive to rescue them, so it's depicting the scene through basically 4 filters. It says something like: "Roger, fall back by squads and use incinerators" [Ripley and Gorman disagree on tactics] "They're coming out of the goddamn walls!" [Ripley and Gorman disagree on tactics again] [ERROR: Suppressing programming initiatives to protect human life] Like that kind of stuff is almost kinda funny and interesting because even though the book is regurgitating something from the movies, you're seeing the events of the movie through the lens of an entirely different character, and the idea of Bishop overhearing the conversation and casually dismissing Ripley and Gorman's bickering while internally freaking out because his programming dictates that he can't let humans get killed is entertaining. Also in the Alien Resurrection section, it points out that most of the science reports from Dr Gediman (Brad Dourif) were written as haikus. Bit of a missed missed opportunity for comedy by not providing an example, though. 
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 08:28
|
|
|
What was the context of them doing an entire page of Apones speech?
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 09:15
|
|
|
zVxTeflon posted:What was the context of them doing an entire page of Apones speech? Edit-- I double checked, there's a brief blurb pointing out that the atmosphere processor was a nuclear reactor, and that it was Ripley who mentioned to Gorman that firing guns in there might be a bad idea. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 14:52 on May 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 14:16
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Just got done reading through the WY Report. I am Dracula, this is my grave. The D on my grave stands for Dracula.  Why would they ever choose this medium to show new material for aliens?
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 16:46
|
|
|
Because they did it once before with the Colonial Marines Technical Manual 20 years ago and it was great. The medium isn't the problem, it's how the creator executes it. There have been great Alien comic books and video games, even some of the novels bring something interesting to the table. The beauty of the Colonial Marines Tech Manual was that it didn't "explain" a single thing about the Alien, and rather raised more questions by the end. The problem with the WY Report is that for the most part it neither tries to "explain" things nor does it raise new questions or offer new insights, it just recaps the events of the movies and often does so in the laziest ways possible. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 17:34
|
|
|
I honestly never saw the point of things like that. All they do for me is devalue the impact of the source material. The original Alien was loving scary because it looked so bizarre and had a disturbingly violent sexual vibe to it. If you choose to buy into it, a third party "expanding" or illuminating the universe instantly narrows the universe where the films take place by implicating the audience's view of that same universe is invalid somehow. The same stuff coming from the original creator narrows it down even more. One of the best tools a creative person has is the imagination of the audience, and a skilled storyteller uses it to their advantage by subtly nudging the audience to fill the blanks. In the best horror films, including Alien, the monster is most often in the shadows and you can't really make it out, but what makes it terrifying to you personally is your imagination filling in the blanks. That's effective. But now we know just about every loving thing about the Aliens which eliminates so much of the original thrill and fear we felt about them. They're not our personal monsters anymore. You could also argue that the sequels do that as well, and you'd be right.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 19:38
|
|
|
I strongly disagree, largely because the best "expanded universe" things don't explain stuff away, and instead offer new questions or provide different ways of looking at what we've already seen. I'm not saying expanded universe stuff isn't rife with over-explanation and authors missing the point (Star Wars is colossally guilt of this), just that if it's done right and uses the strengths of its medium, it can do cool and interesting things and "devaluing" the original movies never even enters into the equation in my mind. I can appreciate how people can view sequels as damaging the original movie, I've seen a lot of Alien fans who vehemently hate 'Aliens' for "ruining" 'Alien'. But the way I see it, Alien still exists, and no one is forcing anyone to accept the sequel's way of looking at things. The sequel is merely using the framework, ideas, and characters from the original to tell its own story in its own way, and it has its own themes and ideas it's trying to convey. "Good" expanded universe stuff is no different, it's just in a different medium. And really in the grand scheme of "explaining away" stuff, the Alien franchise is a lot less guilty than other movie series, and has gotten a lot better about being cognizant of that sort of stuff over time. There has been a bunch of topics that FOX mandated that the expanded universe stuff literally not talk about (or if it did, to intentionally provide vague or contradictory information).
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 19:57
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:I can appreciate how people can view sequels as damaging the original movie drat you Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, and Zombi all ruining your original movie The Night of The Living Dead.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 21:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
I'm loving stoked for Alien: Covenant.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2016 02:31
|
|