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Alhazred posted:Cameron really did design the Queen though: The guys is amazingly talented, who would argue that? Cameron was very involved in developing and realizing the Alien queen, just as Ridley Scott was very involved in every aspect of making Alien. They also both worked collaboratively with others who were extremely talented in their own right. Why we should chalk up the success of one to happenstance and the other to the directors vision?
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Jun 1, 2016 20:25
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Sir Kodiak posted:Nice job, Cameron. You design a female alien, so naturally she's got to be sticking her butt out. And cartoonishly huge boob arms. Imagine how many little girls watched Aliens and came away thinking their breasts were jointed enough.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:28
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boom boom boom posted:And cartoonishly huge boob arms. Imagine how many little girls watched Aliens and came away thinking their breasts were jointed enough. And like two feet of thigh gap. I just don't get how people can call Aliens a feminist action movie.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:32
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Ridley Scott really wasn't anywhere near as involved in the creature designs as Cameron was, but that tended to be a good thing. Ridley Scott knew to just let Giger do his thing and to facilitate his work, and Cameron knew to (generally) not mess with Giger's designs for the adult Alien except for minor changes that served the image he wanted to portray. Both directors are accomplished artists who will often storyboard their own movies (Scott with his "Ridleygrams", and Cameron with his incredibly detailed storyboards), but if I had to pick a director known for their "singular, unwavering vision", it's absolutely Cameron. When you look at Cameron's storyboards, for any of his movies, the finished product tends to match it extremely closely. Scott's "vision" tends to go through various iterations, sometimes changing due to limitations in technology, etc (the Prometheus concept art book demonstrates a good portion of these kinds of changes). Cameron flat out says "my movie is going to look like X and contain Y, even if I have to literally build new technology to achieve it", and then he does it.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:37
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Basebf555 posted:
I don't agree that Alien only happened because of lucky happenstance (its not like Scott never made a great movie after Alien). But Aliens is very much the vision of one guy (Cameron wrote, designed, directed and produced the movie) while Alien is the visions of a bunch of talented guys (they even found a way to make Moebius do some art desings).
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Jun 1, 2016 20:42
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Alhazred posted:I don't agree that Alien only happened because of lucky happenstance (its not like Scott never made a great movie after Alien). But Aliens is very much the vision of one guy (Cameron wrote, designed, directed and produced the movie) while Alien is the visions of a bunch of talented guys (they even found a way to make Moebius do some art desings). See the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune to see how those talented guys got together.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:02
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Fun* fact: Ridley Scott was going to design the Daleks for Doctor Who back in 1963 but he was off that day *(may not be fun)
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Jun 1, 2016 21:31
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Biomute posted:The Aliens franchise has always been a product of luck and circumstance, I think. The first movie was written by some pretty sketchy dudes and could easily have been atrocious if Ridley Scott had not come across Giger in a good mood and also turned out to be such a great director. Although, we now know that without everything coming together with the script and the casting as it did he's not talented enough to have brought it home on his own shoulders (Prometheus). I've come to really love Prometheus for all its spiteful refusal to make sense or obey tactical realism, but even among people who hate it all the complaints I've ever heard are about the script. It's a really good-looking movie. The sets are awesome, the camera does interesting poo poo, the landscapes they use for the opening vignette and the flydown to the weapons planet are gorgeous, and it's got a cool ultraclean-tech-meets-ancient-aliens production design, which is most effective and creepy when you get a squealing bloodspattered squid encapsulated in a luxury suite. Ridley did a good job. I'll forgive it for the Rubik's Cube.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:54
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Sir Kodiak posted:The first one is probably the low point of the franchise, but the second one (which I just watched for the first time a couple nights ago) is surprisingly good and pretty, once I cranked up the brightness on my TV. I like that it presents the xenomorphs as being really nasty fuckers, which I think was a smart way to make them still intimidating given how overexposed they are. And the predator as an anti-hero protagonist was great. Even the humans were surprisingly enjoyable for this sort of thing. Seeing the guy who played Mark Fuhrman in American Crime Story again was fun. I got what I wanted out of the first one, aliens and predators fighting. I was laughing so hard during the fight scene it was so pretty, a friend told me its not a comedy. People in movie theaters just don't have fun. Xenomrph posted:Ridley Scott really wasn't anywhere near as involved in the creature designs as Cameron was, but that tended to be a good thing. Ridley Scott knew to just let Giger do his thing and to facilitate his work, and Cameron knew to (generally) not mess with Giger's designs for the adult Alien except for minor changes that served the image he wanted to portray. 
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Jun 1, 2016 22:31
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Biomute posted:I can see where you're coming from and I don't think it's only about talent either, but it does seem like the first movie was very much a case of lucky happenstance, with a bunch of different visions coming together and somehow managing to congeal into a near perfect piece of art. I know, you can say that about every movie, but it stands out in interviews and such they seem surprised it even worked. I hesitated responding again because I think you mostly just want to say that you think the best bet for an Alien movie going forward would be to give a lot of room for a talented director to execute a specific vision, and while there's room for debate it's a certainly fair opinion. It's mostly all this (unintended?) side business where it seems Ridley Scott can't lay claim to Alien's success since it was all just a happy accident (a fluke, essentially) while James Cameron merits nearly all the credit for Aliens that is making people scrutinize your posts. "The point is that (Cameron) got it done," sure, but Scott also got 'er done. It's the director's job to "congeal" "a bunch of different visions coming together". Just like any quality production, both movies benefitted from the good fortune to have a talented team of individuals behind it - the only difference with Aliens was that multiple roles in that team happened to be filled by the same guy. Scott and Cameron both did the best with the resources their circumstances allowed. Biomute posted:I think its fair to blame Ridley for Prometheus not being a good Alien prequel. Whatever he's saying now, that was what he originally sold it as and he has both clout and talent. His vision was lacking. It's a stupid hypothetical to argue for sure, but Cameron seems like he had all three, and I think it's going to be vital for the success of further Aliens movies to find someone who also has that. Or get lucky, I guess. Something to consider is Ridley Scott doesn't subscribe to auteur theory: Ridley Scott interview posted:I always believe when you’re given X amount of money by someone to f–k around with and make a movie, you can’t draw lines in the sand. If I was an investor and you did that to me, I’d remove your ankles. So don’t do the auteur s–t. I respect the guy for giving the money and I respect the studio for saying, “Yeah, you want to do this, here we go.” Now this might just reinforce your opinions on Scott's direction and what approach works best for an Alien movie and that's fine, it's just a reminder that not everyone agrees where a movie gets its "vision" from and that includes the filmmakers themselves.
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Jun 2, 2016 23:10
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lizardman posted:Something to consider is Ridley Scott doesn't subscribe to auteur theory: He may not subscribe to it, but you would be incredibly hard-pressed to miss all the Prometheus references in Exodus and The Martian.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:44
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:He may not subscribe to it, but you would be incredibly hard-pressed to miss all the Prometheus references in Exodus and The Martian. Yeah man I swore I saw an Engineer walking around in the distance on Mars.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:47
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Auteur theory suggests that a director's creative vision will shine through the studio process. It doesn't demand that, as the quote is saying, a director should expect to be entirely free of the constraints of working within a studio process.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:48
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Immortan posted:Yeah man I swore I saw an Engineer walking around in the distance on Mars. Thematic references you troglodyte.
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Jun 3, 2016 02:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:He may not subscribe to it, but you would be incredibly hard-pressed to miss all the Prometheus references in Exodus and The Martian. But you'd also have to note just how much crew all three movies share, and of course Scott isn't saying he has no impact on what's filmed, only that "his" films aren't his alone and untrammeled. Seems like a weird position for you, maybe I'm misunderstanding you
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Jun 8, 2016 21:26
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Lots of sources reporting that the lead female in Paradise Lost is Ripley's mum.
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Jun 9, 2016 22:41
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PriorMarcus posted:Lots of sources reporting that the lead female in Paradise Lost is Ripley's mum. Glad they're going the starwars angle that every character of any importance in the history of the galaxy has been related. Ripley wasn't just some space trucker in the wrong place at the wrong time who got mixed up in these hosed up aliens, nah it was destiny based on her blood line. Also it turns out Brett was related to one of the background marines from Aliens, and Parker is actually the lost unknown grandson of the scientist who first discovered the cave paintings in prometheus. That dock worker you briefly see in the hallway in Alien 2? Yeah he's a pretty big deal, he was actually a corporate spy that ended up setting the events for Alien 4, and it turns out has a rich backstory that some how repeatedly interweaves with the families of every other major and minor character in the franchise. This dock worker's great uncle's actually was the father of ripley's grandmother's best friend, who's son went on to invent the pulse rifles we all love from Alien 2. It's all connected, it's like poetry. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jun 9, 2016 |
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Jun 9, 2016 22:44
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Baronjutter posted:Glad they're going the starwars angle that every character of any importance in the history of the galaxy has been related. Ripley wasn't just some space trucker in the wrong place at the wrong time who got mixed up in these hosed up aliens, nah it was destiny based on her blood line. Don't forget the ice cream maker.
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Jun 11, 2016 21:18
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PriorMarcus posted:Lots of sources reporting that the lead female in Paradise Lost is Ripley's mum. Ahhh stop! Please god stop! Leave the poor women and her family alone already.
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Jun 11, 2016 23:48
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It made sense (to me) to use Ripley's daughter due to how her mom's mysterious disappearance could have drawn her in. She's still a normal person stuck in a situation way beyond her and she got involved mostly through bad luck. Ripley's mother, on the other hand, creates an unneeded "specialness" in the bloodline, kind of betraying the working-class origins of the character.
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Jun 12, 2016 07:15
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General Battuta posted:I've come to really love Prometheus for all its spiteful refusal to make sense
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Jun 12, 2016 08:00
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Yaws posted:In what way does Prometheus not make sense? How did the guy with a MAP get LOST? Why was the crew so panicky and unprofessional? How come a crew of useless bottom of the barrel gently caress ups on a mission no one cared about did a dumb thing? How come the old man makeup was so bad?
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Jun 12, 2016 08:03
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Baronjutter posted:How did the guy with a MAP get LOST? Why was the crew so panicky and unprofessional? How come a crew of useless bottom of the barrel gently caress ups on a mission no one cared about did a dumb thing? How come the old man makeup was so bad? The answer to everything there is hubris. GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 14:34
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wipeout posted:The answer to everything there is hubris. I'll buy that that was the intention, but if so they didn't do a very good job of it. Every time this comes up, people chime in with real-life examples of scientists doing stuff way dumber than a mapmaker getting lost, and I completely buy that. But when that stuff happens, it doesn't make you nod your head solemnly and say 'O the hubris of man! In our foolish endeavour to comprehend an incomprehensible universe, truly we are like unto toddlers exploring the cutlery drawer." It just makes you go "pffffft what a fuckin tool, Darwin awards lol". Same with Prometheus. The 'hubris' theme just doesn't come through.
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Jun 12, 2016 14:46
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^^ I agree with everything there. Rewatching Blade runner really shows how much worse Prometheus is at exploring some similar themes. Not just themes, even. I feel sorry for Ridley.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:05
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Yea poor Ridley Scott. He made a movie that wasn't as good as Blade Runner. What a loser.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acYl2lpq1YI
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Jun 12, 2016 15:37
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Yaws posted:In what way does Prometheus not make sense? Please don't troll
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Jun 12, 2016 15:40
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Why is Harrison Ford so inept at hunting replicants when that's supposedly his job, and why doesn't Rutger Hauer just kill him in the end?
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Jun 12, 2016 15:49
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Why does Chu just do eyes?
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Jun 12, 2016 16:14
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Yaws posted:In what way does Prometheus not make sense? Actual clip of the movie. 
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Jun 12, 2016 16:20
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Clipperton posted:I'll buy that that was the intention, but if so they didn't do a very good job of it. Prometheus is a comedy, about hubris. Who told you to nod your head solemnly.
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Jun 12, 2016 17:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Prometheus is a comedy The Wiseau Countergambit. Awesome
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Jun 12, 2016 21:18
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Prometheus is a really funny film, David is constantly ripping the piss out of the whole crew but they're too wrapped up in their own petty distractions to ever notice.
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Jun 12, 2016 23:06
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Party Boat posted:Prometheus is a really funny film, David is constantly ripping the piss out of the whole crew but they're too wrapped up in their own petty distractions to ever notice. Hey there was that guy who was totally only interested in rocks!
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Jun 12, 2016 23:10
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I'm not here to make friends! I'm ONLY here to do rocks!
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Jun 12, 2016 23:13
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General Battuta posted:I'm not here to make friends! I'm ONLY here to do rocks! Before the movie on earth, they were planning everything out. Had one more cyropod and figured they should have someone study the rocks. On their trip to find aliens. Couldn't they just of bought like 2 security teams? They didn't actually need the scientists there.
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Jun 12, 2016 23:17
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I went to see Aliens in the cinema a couple of years ago. It was the directors cut and it was the first time when I noticed it does drag in places compared to the normal version but the alien queen was amazing on such a large screen. You do also become aware that you know the movie far too well and it's no longer very exciting which is a bit of a horrible realization because I love aliens. I needed to pee half way through and some dude in the aisle refused to move his legs. I guess he was offended by me blocking his view for 2 seconds. I don't think he appreciated how much I needed to pee, I'd been holding it for like 30 minutes, so I had to push through his legs until he moved. When I came back he still wouldn't move his legs so I just stepped on him to get past. He never said anything  it was really weird. A couple of months ago I had to miss a double bill of Alien/Aliens because of a job interview. I got the job but still regret missing alien in the cinema 
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Jul 9, 2016 11:10
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hemale in pain posted:I went to see Aliens in the cinema a couple of years ago. It was the directors cut and it was the first time when I noticed it does drag in places compared to the normal version but the alien queen was amazing on such a large screen. You do also become aware that you know the movie far too well and it's no longer very exciting which is a bit of a horrible realization because I love aliens. Although these days I stick to the aisle seat of the front row I have had a similar situation, in my case it got more embarrassing as I turned my rear end to the guy as I tried to squeeze past, lost my footing and sat on the dudes lap.
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Jul 9, 2016 12:41
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I forget, what do you gain from the director's cut of Aliens? I never cared for the remade beginning; it takes out the suspense of the entire movie. What's changed besides the family picnic and Burke scenes? Edit: Ah, yes, the turret sequence, that was awesome! THE BAR fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jul 9, 2016 |
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Jul 9, 2016 18:17
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