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If anyone hasn't seen "Jodorowsky's Dune" they really need to watch it asap.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:43
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MacheteZombie posted:Same but for Prometheus, so Weyland could demand immortality from Gods. Tenzarin posted:What if they weren't gods or even created the humans? Maybe they just were a bunch of aliens that liked to make maps. Whenever I see posts like thsi I'm reminded how amazing Galaxy of Terror is. A must watch for ANYONE that likes Alien or/and Prometheus.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:41
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Galaxy of Terror is amazing.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:56
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I am cautiously optimistic about Covenant. I am flabbergasted at SMG saying Lovecraft doesn't write about cosmic horror.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:42
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:I am flabbergasted at SMG saying Lovecraft doesn't write about cosmic horror. It's not exactly a new idea that Lovecraft's fiction was a thinly veiled screed about minorities.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:45
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Not thinly veiled at all. Also, it's about cosmic horror and being insignificant.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:53
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The original discussion was less about Lovecraft's work as a whole, and more about At the Mountains of Madness, and how so many people reference it without actually having read it. The person who posted about it was holding it up as an example of how the Mysterious Beyond is so compelling and that Prometheus should have maintained an air of mystery like At the Mountains of Madness did. In fact, we learn a whole lot more about the precursor civilization in At the Mountains of Madness than we ever do in Prometheus.
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Dec 29, 2016 22:00
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:Not thinly veiled at all. Also, it's about cosmic horror and being insignificant. Specifically, about how Lovecraft knew the ideas about racial and culture superiority he cherished meant nothing to the cosmos and would be swept aside by time and nature, just as he himself was wasting away in poverty. Robert E. Howard's suicide played a big role in a lot of Lovecraft's most popular works. Howard was Lovecraft's friend; one he saw as more masculine, stronger, and better fitted to survive. Lovecraft couldn't even imagine himself as Conan the Barbarian. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 22:04
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Collateral posted:What I found utterly unbelievable about Aliens was that, for an expensive expedition with a really big military spaceship with room for multiple squads with several dropships, not only did they only sent one squad, but that the ranking officer was a green lieutenant. And they left nobody on the Sulaco. Maybe in the future really big military spaceship is the equivalent to a city bus. They just logged that they were taking the space ship.  They also only had 2 dropships, one was the backup. It would make more sense for more squads.
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Dec 30, 2016 00:28
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Yeah the Sulaco felt very empty. At the very least it should have its own crew. A captain, engineers, people who's full time job it is to run the very large ship. The troops are just the cargo. And for a mission like that it really should have been multiple squads and probably a whole science team. The dudes at the end of alien 3 should have been there.
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Dec 30, 2016 01:10
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah the Sulaco felt very empty. At the very least it should have its own crew. A captain, engineers, people who's full time job it is to run the very large ship. The troops are just the cargo. And for a mission like that it really should have been multiple squads and probably a whole science team. The dudes at the end of alien 3 should have been there. Are you surprised that the Company went with the cheapest bare bones option?
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Dec 30, 2016 01:43
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:It's not exactly a new idea that Lovecraft's fiction was a thinly veiled screed about minorities. That's not what SMG said tho. Basebf555 posted:The original discussion was less about Lovecraft's work as a whole, and more about At the Mountains of Madness, and how so many people reference it without actually having read it. The person who posted about it was holding it up as an example of how the Mysterious Beyond is so compelling and that Prometheus should have maintained an air of mystery like At the Mountains of Madness did. In fact, we learn a whole lot more about the precursor civilization in At the Mountains of Madness than we ever do in Prometheus. I'm going to guess you mean well, but implying that people have not read the works they are talking about is obnoxious as poo poo. It's a non-criticism and the best you can hope for is a picture of the person holding the book and giving you the finger. thotsky fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 02:05
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The Sulaco running a skeleton crew seemed like a deliberate choice that was intended to convey the nature of the mission that they were on being suspect and the marines themselves being so arrogant as to think they could handle the job with what they had. I don't think it was an oversight on Cameron's part.
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Dec 30, 2016 02:14
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SUNKOS posted:The Sulaco running a skeleton crew seemed like a deliberate choice that was intended to convey the nature of the mission that they were on being suspect and the marines themselves being so arrogant as to think they could handle the job with what they had. I don't think it was an oversight on Cameron's part. Baronjutter posted:Yeah the Sulaco felt very empty. At the very least it should have its own crew. A captain, engineers, people who's full time job it is to run the very large ship. The troops are just the cargo. And for a mission like that it really should have been multiple squads and probably a whole science team. The dudes at the end of alien 3 should have been there. I don't know, the ship in the first movie is pretty drat huge for the size of its crew as well. Hell, even the alien ship has only a single crewmember and is enormous. Maybe that's what it takes to travel through space in a cost-efficient manner in this universe. Also, it's kind of shown in Aliens that a lot of the military gear is automated and the rest remote controlled by the single (robotic) crew member qualified to do so. The crew really do literal grunt work such as operating souped up fork-trucks. Hell, even their weapons are partly (the smart-guns) or fully (turrets) automated. From a conventional military perspective it makes no sense to have 2/3s of a squad as the only manpower, but I do like the implication that these people are basically custodians of this huge automated armory that is floating above the colony. It's a bit like Revelation Space.
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Dec 30, 2016 02:19
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Biomute posted:I don't know, the ship in the first movie is pretty drat huge for the size of its crew as well. Hell, even the alien ship has only a single crewmember and is enormous. Maybe that's what it takes to travel through space in a cost-efficient manner in this universe. Ehhhh, the Nostromo is a pretty reasonable size, most of the bulk you see in space is the giant unmanned mining platform it's towing.
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Dec 30, 2016 02:41
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I think it's justified because the company is cheap and also because Burke knew something worth finding was there because of the timing of him asking the colony to check out the derelict and then their communications going down right after. The rest of the company already dismissed Ripley's story because the colony has been operating without a problem. From the company's standpoint Burke basically did them a favor and was like "hi I'll manage the absolute cheapest skeleton crew trip out there that's legally possible so we can fix their broken transmitter and get home as cheaply as possible."
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Dec 30, 2016 03:04
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Burke specifically requested Gorman lead the recovery mission, it was a freaking setup to put a green guy in charge so Burke (and, making a reasonable inference, whoever his higher ups in the company that are interested in the Alien) could try and harness the things.
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Dec 30, 2016 07:12
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The Sualco doesn't have more crew for the same reason the mining ship in Alien doesn't - no desire for a bunch of random redshirts on the part of the film makers. The cast is small and each member has their own distinct character traits and rapport with eachother. In-universe it's probably because so much is computerized.
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Dec 30, 2016 08:54
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:I am cautiously optimistic about Covenant. I did not say that. I am saying that Lovecraft fans misunderstand cosmicism.
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Dec 30, 2016 15:15
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Huzanko posted:The Sualco doesn't have more crew for the same reason the mining ship in Alien doesn't - no desire for a bunch of random redshirts on the part of the film makers. The cast is small and each member has their own distinct character traits and rapport with eachother. In-universe it's probably because so much is computerized. That wasn't the point I was making. Cameron wanted a lost patrol movie, and didn't even try to have a convincing setup for them getting lost. They started lost. Corporations and especially military minds don't work like this. Vested interests would have made the entire venture a circus.
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Dec 30, 2016 15:37
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Collateral posted:That wasn't the point I was making. Cameron wanted a lost patrol movie, and didn't even try to have a convincing setup for them getting lost. They started lost. Corporations and especially military minds don't work like this. Vested interests would have made the entire venture a circus. They just didn't expect to find 8 foot tall monsters that have acid for blood and are generally unpleasant.
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Dec 30, 2016 15:50
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There's a line at the briefing that's always confused the issue, because I think the sarcasm is almost too subtle. Its the one where Hudson says something like "Hey Vasquez, Ripley here said she saw an alien." A lot of people took that as him making fun of Ripley for being a whack job who would report bullshit alien stories, but I think the line is intended to read as him sarcastically teasing her for thinking that running into some stupid bug is a big deal. Its the kind of thing they do all the time, they show up to a terraforming project that's run into a "bug" problem, clean things up real quick, and get out without breaking a sweat.
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Dec 30, 2016 15:55
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Basebf555 posted:There's a line at the briefing that's always confused the issue, because I think the sarcasm is almost too subtle. Yes, and even more subtext to the joke is that Vasquez is hispanic
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Dec 30, 2016 16:15
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Somebody said "xenomorph", she thought they said "illegal xenomorph!"
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Dec 30, 2016 16:32
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Yeah, the line has nothing to do with Ripley. It's a tease of Vasquez being Latina. It does, however, give more characterization of how common 'bug-hunting' is used as propaganda to attract the special kind of psychos to be colonial marines ("We Endanger Species" and all).
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Dec 30, 2016 16:46
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I always wondered in the alien universe if they've encountered other life before. Is the alien a huge deal because it's the first time they've encountered aliens of any sort, the first time they encountered an alien civiliation? Obviously in the comics and poo poo it presents this universe where every other planet they find has a bunch of dumb earth-like plants and animals and poo poo. And I guess in covenant they find another earth-like planet as well. I like scify where life is ridiculously rare and humans have been exploring and colonizing for centuries without finding anything but barren rocks. Space is a desolate place humans were never "meant" to go, not some fun galactic community teeming with life and cultures.
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Dec 30, 2016 17:09
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Alien is pretty ambiguous, but I think there are several things going on in Aliens that would pretty strongly suggest that humans have encountered many different types of alien before. Maybe not intelligent life, but some sort of extraterrestrial life beyond just microbes. The Company has been terraforming for decades, and they have ready-made squads of soldiers who seem very casual about encountering alien life. The deleted scenes with Newt's parents also seem to suggest that terraformers are used to the idea that they can potentially find weird poo poo out on these planets, and they even seem a little bit excited as if they are prospectors who may have hit the big one.
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Dec 30, 2016 17:14
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Baronjutter posted:I always wondered in the alien universe if they've encountered other life before. Is the alien a huge deal because it's the first time they've encountered aliens of any sort, the first time they encountered an alien civiliation?
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Dec 30, 2016 17:16
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Baronjutter posted:I always wondered in the alien universe if they've encountered other life before. Is the alien a huge deal because it's the first time they've encountered aliens of any sort, the first time they encountered an alien civiliation? Obviously in the comics and poo poo it presents this universe where every other planet they find has a bunch of dumb earth-like plants and animals and poo poo. And I guess in covenant they find another earth-like planet as well. Iirc in the Colonial Marines Handbook it's mentioned that they have found "bugs" of various sizes, the largest being the size of a rhino, but they were all generally uninteresting. What makes the Alien interesting is A, it's clearly a bioengineered weapon, B, it automatically terraforms its environment and takes on traits from its hosts. Burke saw an opportunity to replace Marines with a cost-effective alternative, is the general read I got off of it.
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Dec 30, 2016 17:19
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Kulkasha posted:What makes the Alien interesting is Why is it?
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Dec 30, 2016 18:33
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Baronjutter posted:I always wondered in the alien universe if they've encountered other life before. Is the alien a huge deal because it's the first time they've encountered aliens of any sort, the first time they encountered an alien civiliation? Obviously in the comics and poo poo it presents this universe where every other planet they find has a bunch of dumb earth-like plants and animals and poo poo. And I guess in covenant they find another earth-like planet as well. I think in the Prometheus background material, it mentions that humanity had not encountered anything more sophisticated than bacteria to that point.
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Dec 30, 2016 19:00
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If anyone's not read Planetary, you should. Re: lovecraft, negro eggs. 
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Dec 30, 2016 19:13
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willie_dee posted:Why is it? Because "canon," by its very nature, has to ruin everything. The only time the aliens are clearly bioengineered is in Alien: Resurrection - it's there that you notice their design shifting away deliberately from 'robo-skeleton space-penis' to 'space velociraptor.'
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Dec 30, 2016 19:31
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Basebf555 posted:Alien is pretty ambiguous, but I think there are several things going on in Aliens that would pretty strongly suggest that humans have encountered many different types of alien before. Maybe not intelligent life, but some sort of extraterrestrial life beyond just microbes. Actually, the ambiguity itself is the point. In the context of Aliens, human and nonhuman life is treated as interchangeable. There's little meaningful distinction. So while it's 'canon' that marines are occasionally called in to kill threatening rhinoceros bugs (or whatever), those bugs have always stood in for native peoples, insurgents, etc. Any people that pose a threat to the colonies. That's the logic throughout. Remember, Aliens' imagery of conflict against evil cyborg-bugs is employed as a metaphor for the putting down of a labor revolt. This is another reason that the characters do not wear NBC suits. You don't need those if you're just killing other humans.
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Dec 30, 2016 20:05
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I always assumed Arcturians were just humans who lived in the Arcturian system or planet or colony and that "bug hunt" was possibly slang for "wild goose chase". I could live with some planets humans have colonized having some bug-like lifeforms that can annoy or cause problems. But I always imagined 99% of all those weapons being geared towards fighting other humans and almost all violence in space is still human on human violence. Mercenaries busy protecting corporate assets from protesters and "economic terrorists". Being sent in to clear out the ore processing plant WT shut down putting an entire colony out of work so the former workers occupied it, stuff like that.
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Dec 30, 2016 20:21
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Ferro's sarcastic "Apparently, she saw an alien once" (and Hudson's dismissive rejoinder) could be taken to mean that discovering extraterrestrial life became commonplace in the past 57 years. Finding alien life in the Nostromo's era was a big loving deal; after dozens of planets had been explored and even colonised, much less so. Kind of like Fry going to "the Moon Moon?!?"
Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 20:34
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I'm sure the Colonial Marines have encountered alien life forms, maybe some that were even dangerous. They are used to just blowing these lifeforms away. But I expect most of their time would be spent combating piracy and offworld uprisings and the like.
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Dec 30, 2016 20:39
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K. Waste posted:Because "canon," by its very nature, has to ruin everything. I am a masochist. For what it's worth, extraterrestrials aren't particularly common even in the EU. Like yeah the occasional space-fish or space-cow shows up, but to date I think there have been maybe 8 "sentient" species introduced across all of the comics and novels, and four of them are humans, Aliens, Predators, and Space Jockeys/Engineers. The others have either been one-off cameos that never get expanded on and never show up again, or are primitive (roughly stone-age technologically) or are long-extinct. This ain't Star Trek or Star Wars where you have bustling federations and dozens of races hanging out getting drunk together, or even Warhammer40k where there's a handful of races but there's billions of each and they all hate each other and butt heads every other Tuesday. And on the tangent of Aliens and other species, NECA (the toy company currently doing Aliens and Predator figures) is doing remakes of the old wacky Kenner Aliens and predator toys from the early 90s, and this poo poo would have driven 9-year-old me absolutely loving insane. Here's the old-school Gorilla Alien and Mantis Alien:  And here's the new versions:  I mean holy poo poo
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Dec 30, 2016 22:07
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I've been rewatching Aliens and I think I get why the characters of Newt and Hicks are so loved now. I appreciate the movie a lot more. It's a really good movie. It's really unfair to compare it to Alien because, well, Alien is way better than really good. On almost every level, Alien is better: script, sets, costumes, cinematography, music, sounds, etc. Alien is one of the most well-crafted movies of all time, with all teams firing on all cylinders. Aliens, by comparison, comes short and I think that's why I didn't appreciate it until now. It's really good! On its own, without comparing it to anything else, it's a very intense ride with likeable characters, some cool one-liners and a few well-acted performances. It's important, I think, to learn to like things for what they are instead of hating them for not being what you wanted them to be. Also Lance Henriksen is one of my favorite underappreciated actors now so there's a lot of love there too.
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Dec 30, 2016 22:19
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This is true. There's a few rare moments of humility on James Cameron's part in the commentary at certain points that basically amount to "We went in this direction here because there's no way in hell this was going to be as good or look as good as Alien." The other commentaries are similarly reverent about the entire build up and execution of the egg hatching and hitting Kane and the chestburster scene. Just I thought it was interesting that even someone as infamously full of himself as Cameron is humbled by Alien. Aliens really does look incredible for its time though and the look still holds up now. Like they never fully built an APC and all the colony installations were just that one side we see? There were only six alien suits used for the entire movie (and they only use every suit at once for the brief part where Hicks peaks into the ceiling) but we clearly perceive massive hordes of them attacking? The miniature spitball delivered via eyedropper to make everything look really deep? It's amazing. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 22:24
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