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I Before E posted:SMG is right, saying Aliens is good because it's influential instead of talking about what's good about the actual film itself is BS. The space marines aren't exactly part of the 1% either, and they get sold out pretty hard by the token office sitter. They just pack a bit of heat along with their blue collar bravado, which is why people latched on to them more than they did to the Nostromo crew. If Parker had had a huge gently caress-off gun people would quote him up and down to this day. Tuxedo Catfish posted:You can be right without the posting equivalent of punching a cripple for his lunch money. It also feels like a rather lazy do-over of his Star Wars schtick. Aliens fans don't like Aliens, yawn.
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May 11, 2017 18:08
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 11:07 |
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The only trick CineD has is randomly relating movies to other movies, because it makes you look inscrutable. edit: that and "why would i bend to explain my train of thought? my proof is clearly obvious, you dimwit"
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May 11, 2017 18:18
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I Before E posted:Also "80s kids see Optimus Prime as a father figure" is withering If anything it'd be a Messiah figure
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May 11, 2017 18:18
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corn in the bible posted:If anything it'd be a Messiah figure Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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May 11, 2017 18:22
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Grendels Dad posted:Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. optimus prime can transform into the father, the son, AND the holy ghost
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May 11, 2017 18:25
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corn in the bible posted:If anything it'd be a Messiah figure It actually originates in the original Transformers 2 or 3 thread or whatever it was where it came up over and over again from different posters that Optimus was like a comforting dad.
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May 11, 2017 18:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It actually originates in the original Transformers 2 or 3 thread or whatever it was where it came up over and over again from different posters that Optimus was like a comforting dad. Probably just goon prosopagnosia striking again and everyone actually saw him as their dad
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May 11, 2017 18:31
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Grendels Dad posted:The space marines aren't exactly part of the 1% either, and they get sold out pretty hard by the token office sitter. They just pack a bit of heat along with their blue collar bravado, which is why people latched on to them more than they did to the Nostromo crew. If Parker had had a huge gently caress-off gun people would quote him up and down to this day. Absolutely, yeah, that class conflict is there in Aliens, I wasn't trying to say otherwise, but the heat-packing badass poo poo is part of why I like Aliens less than the first one, there's this feel good power fantasy where the individual can just put on a big suit and punch the core of capitalist ideology until it explodes instead of barely escaping one of its agents and basically consigning herself to death in the process.
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May 11, 2017 18:36
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If you replace the aliens in Aliens with black plantation workers it's basically the same movie.
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May 11, 2017 18:38
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That big suit was considered a low class poo poo job by the corporate shill. She saved the universe by using a fork lift.
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May 11, 2017 18:38
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I Before E posted:Absolutely, yeah, that class conflict is there in Aliens, I wasn't trying to say otherwise, but the heat-packing badass poo poo is part of why I like Aliens less than the first one, there's this feel good power fantasy where the individual can just put on a big suit and punch the core of capitalist ideology until it explodes instead of barely escaping one of its agents and basically consigning herself to death in the process. i mean, every single one of the marines is killed though (except for one who's just hideously maimed and dies at the beginning of the next movie)
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May 11, 2017 18:38
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Magic Hate Ball posted:If you replace the aliens in Aliens with black plantation workers it's basically the same movie. A Goofy Movie is a metaphor for fascism
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May 11, 2017 18:41
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CelticPredator posted:That big suit was considered a low class poo poo job by the corporate shill. She saved the universe by using a fork lift. She saved herself and a few other people. The universe would have been fine.
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May 11, 2017 18:45
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I Before E posted:Absolutely, yeah, that class conflict is there in Aliens, I wasn't trying to say otherwise, but the heat-packing badass poo poo is part of why I like Aliens less than the first one, there's this feel good power fantasy where the individual can just put on a big suit and punch the core of capitalist ideology until it explodes instead of barely escaping one of its agents and basically consigning herself to death in the process. The ooh-rah poo poo owns because the Space Marines get loving owned big time.
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May 11, 2017 18:50
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Sir Kodiak posted:She saved herself and a few other people. The universe would have been fine. this depends on what you think the company would do if they got a hold of an alien queen. which is of course more explicity the threat in Alien3, a movie where survival isn't even on the table.
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May 11, 2017 18:58
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:this depends on what you think the company would do if they got a hold of an alien queen. which is of course more explicity the threat in Alien3, a movie where survival isn't even on the table. I just don't buy the contention of some of the characters in Aliens onward that the aliens are some unstoppable threat if you're not either completely unarmed or wildly outnumbered. We may have lost the war in Vietnam, but that doesn't mean America would be at risk if some Viet Cong made it here. Not wanting the company to get the alien still makes sense: they shouldn't get access to anything that makes them more powerful. That they're "worth millions" is bad enough. But while them getting loose is understandably nightmarish to Ripley given her experiences, we're not given anything that sells the idea that these things are some existential threat to humanity, let alone the universe. That's part of what's nice about Alien, it's bad enough just that these people are trapped on a spaceship with this awful bug. It doesn't need to be larger than that. It reminds me of Jurassic World, really, with Vincent D'Onofrio talking about how incredible velociraptors would be in the war in Afghanistan. It's like, what?
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May 11, 2017 19:24
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Sir Kodiak posted:It reminds me of Jurassic World, really, with Vincent D'Onofrio talking about how incredible velociraptors would be in the war in Afghanistan. It's like, what? Very half baked idea.
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May 11, 2017 19:26
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The one bit of the post I object to is the idea of "reducing" a movie by talking about things like good pacing and likable characters, as if those parts of the craft aren't important. (Well, "likable" is one of those tricky buzzwords, but making characters that register to an audience and that are interesting and compelling is tricky.) Anyone can say "I'm going to make a film about the lower classes being exploited by their masters", it's actually turning that into an engaging cinematic experience that is the challenge. SMG pointed out, the characters in Aliens are often fairly basic, because this is a suspense thriller and there's not a lot of time to explain their backstories and motivations. But that's the accomplishment, Cameron using a limited amount of time to give the audience a firm hook on so many of them- to establish little things like Vazquez and Drake being buddy buddy, Hicks being chill, Hudson always being the one who has to crack wise- any little bit of texture like that helps. Cameron often gets lambasted for not being a very good writer, at least as far as dialogue is concerned, and to be sure there's a lot of stuff in Avatar and Titanic that goes kinda flat- hell, there's corny material in just about everything he writes (I still think T2 bogs down a bit when John is trying to teach the T-800 to be cool or whatever.) But in Aliens he knows how to use broad dialogue and basic elements of storytelling to get you involved with, and sympathetic to, this band of tough as nails space marines who are about to get their asses kicked. As pointed out, Alien does a similar thing- a few of the actors have commented that what they liked about the script was the clear hierarchy of the crew, the way everyone was kinda divvied up and you had the workers giving their supervisors poo poo and trying to sneak breaks whenever they can because they're not even supposed to be working today. It's very humanizing and solid and makes it all the more terrifying when their world gets disrupted and everyone starts dying, and it does tie into a theme of everyone waking up into a world which does not care whether they live or die. (There's a very "Hansel and Gretel" thing going on.) Jurassic Park is fairly similar. In my teens I used to read Starlog, and the first issue I read had an interview with Wayne Knight, and he said that when he was filming his character's first scene he was worried that he was overacting, overdoing the glee over the weird shaving can gadget and the money. But Spielberg told him that in a thriller like this, the characters have to be defined in broad strokes, they have to be just a little cartoonish. And the movie's handling of Nedry is very efficient- that scene, and the part where he's bitching to Hammond about his money problems, establish that he's the idiot who's gonna cause trouble. That kind of crafting, to me, is fascinating- the efficient detailing that conveys a story without bogging it down. I'm not against analyzing themes but there are other parts of movies that are important too.
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May 11, 2017 19:27
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I don't probate people for having different opinions on a movie, that's just stupid. I probate people who have long histories of being as smug as possible about how much better their opinion is than yours, which is why I probated SMG for that post.
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May 11, 2017 19:34
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Much like (rolls dice) Ron Howard's Parenthood and Brian Eno's Music For Airports, Alien is an exceptional exploration of the effects of (rolls dice) regulatory economic interventionism.
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May 11, 2017 19:34
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Sir Kodiak posted:I just don't buy the contention of some of the characters in Aliens onward that the aliens are some unstoppable threat if you're not either completely unarmed or wildly outnumbered. We may have lost the war in Vietnam, but that doesn't mean America would be at risk if some Viet Cong made it here. In Alien it's already larger than that though; the whole reason the alien is on the ship is because the company wants it.
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May 11, 2017 19:35
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Very half baked idea. Much of Jurassic World is half-baked. I honestly enjoy it quite a bit, because Trevorrow is really very talented when it comes to directing action sequences and I love BD Wong's performance, but he's a poo poo writer and I have absolutely no hope for his Star Wars movie, because I'm convinced it's going to bathe so heavily in nostalgia that it'll make The Force Awakens seem positively original.
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May 11, 2017 19:35
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Sir Kodiak posted:Not wanting the company to get the alien still makes sense: they shouldn't get access to anything that makes them more powerful. That they're "worth millions" is bad enough. But while them getting loose is understandably nightmarish to Ripley given her experiences, we're not given anything that sells the idea that these things are some existential threat to humanity, let alone the universe. They wipe out an entire loving colony before they can even get the word out.
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May 11, 2017 19:38
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Yeah even if saying they're a universe-level threat is maybe a stretch, it's not a stretch to assume that it'd be an extremely bad thing for an evil corporation to get their hands on them.
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May 11, 2017 19:40
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corn in the bible posted:A Goofy Movie is a metaphor for fascism I'd love to see a comeback of the subtext game contest from a few years ago, even though I never completed my essay since I couldn't adequately learn about the history of Israel enough to project it onto Wild Things in time.
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May 11, 2017 19:58
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The aliens are bad news and the company definitely shouldn't have access to them. But that's because they'll do things like set up colonists as guinea pigs for what the aliens can do. The aliens themselves aren't the problem, they're just another power for the company to abuse. The alien was on the ship is because the company wanted it. The aliens invaded the colony because the company wanted it. And Ripley didn't do poo poo to the company. If the universe was in danger from the company, it still is, so she didn't save it. And the aliens, in themselves, aren't shown to be an existential threat.
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May 11, 2017 19:59
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Sir Kodiak posted:The aliens are bad news and the company definitely shouldn't have access to them. But that's because they'll do things like set up colonists as guinea pigs for what the aliens can do. The aliens themselves aren't the problem, they're just another power for the company to abuse. Well, at least the company lost tons of money in military assets and that one office worker 
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May 11, 2017 20:06
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X-Ray Pecs posted:They wipe out an entire loving colony before they can even get the word out. A colony of civilians though, and just a little over a hundred at that. It's like a 23rd century Jamestown. In addition they were clearly dicking around with the infestation until it was too large to control. Sir Kodiak posted:It reminds me of Jurassic World, really, with Vincent D'Onofrio talking about how incredible velociraptors would be in the war in Afghanistan. It's like, what? I loved this plot point cuz once you drop the exotic biology of theme park dinosaurs he was basically arguing that, like, a pack of jackals would be a great military asset. Sure buddy!
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May 11, 2017 20:07
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Sir Kodiak posted:The aliens are bad news and the company definitely shouldn't have access to them. But that's because they'll do things like set up colonists as guinea pigs for what the aliens can do. The aliens themselves aren't the problem, they're just another power for the company to abuse. the fact that the company wants the aliens so badly is proof of what a threat they are (in addition to, y'know, everything else that shows this), if not an "existential" one in the way that you mean it.
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May 11, 2017 20:15
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Dr Monkeysee posted:I loved this plot point cuz once you drop the exotic biology of theme park dinosaurs he was basically arguing that, like, a pack of jackals would be a great military asset. Sure buddy! They'd have the element of surprise at least.
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May 11, 2017 20:16
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Dr Monkeysee posted:I loved this plot point cuz once you drop the exotic biology of theme park dinosaurs he was basically arguing that, like, a pack of jackals would be a great military asset. Sure buddy! This is basically the same argument I've heard some racist people make for having black people in the army - "if we can tame their animal instinct...".
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May 11, 2017 20:21
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:the fact that the company wants the aliens so badly is proof of what a threat they are (in addition to, y'know, everything else that shows this), if not an "existential" one in the way that you mean it. I feel like "existential" is one of those buzzwords like "disruption" that far too many people are throwing around right now. At my last full-time gig, there was a full week of sales training (that the marketing and design people had to sit through, because of course we did), and each day, the sales VP would begin the morning by asking, "What is your existential mission?" "Uh ... to help provide for my family. And, you know, not die, because I like to exist." "Not good enough." Wanted to smack him in the face but I wound up quitting after two months due to internal politics. Last I heard the firm was downsizing rapidly so I probably got out at a good time.
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May 11, 2017 20:25
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Maxwell Lord posted:The one bit of the post I object to is the idea of "reducing" a movie by talking about things like good pacing and likable characters, as if those parts of the craft aren't important. (Well, "likable" is one of those tricky buzzwords, but making characters that register to an audience and that are interesting and compelling is tricky.) That's the problem, though. It's like saying a game is fun. You gotta be specific.
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May 11, 2017 20:27
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I mean I think what "existential" is being used for here is "a threat to all life as we know it" i.e. a threat to existence, which I get why that could be debatable. I certainly think the aliens from Aliens are a more convincing planet-level threat than, say, zombies.
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May 11, 2017 20:29
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https://twitter.com/HeavyRiddy/status/862219329072398336
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May 11, 2017 20:29
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Yeah but I know what emotional reaction you got from the game. So I understand where you're coming from. I mean if you were writing a school paper I'd understand. Other wise ehh?
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May 11, 2017 20:30
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Imagine if all journalism was as whoppingly lovely as games journalism
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May 11, 2017 20:31
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Imagine if all journalism was as whoppingly lovely as games journalism That's a pretty tame flight of fancy.
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May 11, 2017 20:32
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I certainly think the aliens from Aliens are a more convincing planet-level threat than, say, zombies. I'm not entirely unsure that Ridley Scott won't make an Alien sequel with the creatures as a planet-level threat.
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May 11, 2017 20:32
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Sad he's gonna retire after the new Twin Peaks, and we won't ever see Ronnie Rocket.
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May 11, 2017 20:33
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