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So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. What does the extended universe say about this? Can an implanted xeno be removed without killing the host?
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May 22, 2017 07:08
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Tenzarin posted:I liked how David wasn't actually a bad guy in Prometheus, and everyone just hated robots for no reason. I guess he did poison that dude, but he hated robots. It seems sad that now hes an evil robot. I'd say that Prometheus and the opening serves as grounding how he comes to become what the characters encounter on the planet - He spends the majority of Prometheus getting shat on for no good reason (seriously, some people were going out of their way to be cunts to him), and seeing how much his creators loving sucked, and that the Engineers were a bunch of violent loving idiots too, he decides that each successive "creation" is an improvement on what preceded them.
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May 22, 2017 07:14
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. They didn't try to remove a pre-burst xeno, they tried to remove a facehugger. Presumably it's entirely possible to remove a chestburster in theory but I imagine in actuality it would probably explode and bleed acid over everything because aliens are assholes.
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May 22, 2017 07:20
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. ripley surviving was basically a side-effect. they didn't really care if she lived or died, and she only survived because the alien DNA merged with hers, i think? i don't know. resurrection is stupid alternately - this is probs the difference between an ad-hoc colony doctor doing their darndest, and the space-military industrial complex's best and brightest
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May 22, 2017 07:21
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. It was the facehugger they were trying to remove that killed him not a chest burster
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May 22, 2017 07:21
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. I think superman does it by flying into the sun or something.
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May 22, 2017 07:23
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Paolomania posted:I bet in some sequel David's large scale tests are thwarted and his experiments destroyed but he escapes, takes control of the company, and is ultimately behind the W-Y obsession with capturing more xeno samples and thus Alien/Aliens. That's very silly. WY doesn't need a sinister reason to be obsessed with capturing specimens of alien life, banal reasons are more than enough.
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May 22, 2017 07:26
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The bishop in alien 3 is actually david.
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May 22, 2017 07:30
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. In the Aliens: Colonial Marines game, it says it's impossible to remove an embryo from a host because the embryo is acting like a tumor and is connecting itself to a ton of blood vessels and vital organs (which is how it's drawing in nutrients and growing in the host), and removing the embryo would be fatal for the host.
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May 22, 2017 07:35
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David was definitely a bad guy in Prometheus and other than Shaw's boyfriend who is just callous and perceives David as an emotionless being and Vickers who envies him because he's Weyland's favorite I don't really think anyone antagonizes him to the point that justifies anything he does. He's at the very least extremely amoral and considers human life to be generally worthless and expendable, he's perfectly willing to 'try harder', entrapping his victims into giving uninformed consent is not enough to make him anything less than evil bastard. I agree that he was more sympathetic in Prometheus but really that was more down to him just being slightly more covert with his intentions. And really I think he's a great villain, his hubris and how it plays along with the theme of 'the evolution of sentience' is very interesting.
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May 22, 2017 09:47
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How can RIdley make 4? more alien movies before he dies?
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May 22, 2017 10:17
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Tenzarin posted:How can RIdley make 4? more alien movies before he dies? Simple. He never dies. Ridley Scott is forever.
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May 22, 2017 10:19
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Tenzarin posted:How can RIdley make 4? more alien movies before he dies? Wine and determination.
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May 22, 2017 10:26
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My grandfather is 103 , and if he was making Alien movies, the Aliens would all look like Hillary (Hillomorphs?) and they would ravage the US heartland until a ragged band of armed rednecks shoot each one into outer space before a quick and brutal confrontation with the android Obama. Also he's more or less deaf at this point so everyone would be shouting their lines well beyond what's appropriate.
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May 22, 2017 10:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmVsIs3nxyg
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May 22, 2017 10:54
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Shaocaholica posted:So in Aliens there's a quick line about how the colony doctors tried to remove a pre-burst xeno and it killed the host although that was a first and only attempt. Resurrection shows it's possible to do without killing the host although the host and xeno were not 'normal'. Kinda surprised that Xeno missed this but in the new alien comic Defiance they removed an implanted Xeno from the doctor but it almost killed her (and now WY wants her because she still technically has some sort of residual Xeno material in her).
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May 22, 2017 12:39
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Tensokuu posted:Kinda surprised that Xeno missed this but in the new alien comic Defiance they removed an implanted Xeno from the doctor but it almost killed her (and now WY wants her because she still technically has some sort of residual Xeno material in her). In my defense, I'm very behind on Defiance right now. 
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May 22, 2017 12:50
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Well get on it, my dude! It's probably one of my favorite monthly comics right now.
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May 22, 2017 12:52
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Stokoe also has an Alien comic right now and Stokoe is some good poo poo so you should be reading that too.
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May 22, 2017 13:15
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I don't think the filmmakers sperg out about the biology as much as the fans. Their line of thinking is probably just oriented towards "This looks the most scary". They also make design decisions differently since they no longer have to have a guy in a suit.
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May 22, 2017 13:30
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It's probably just me, but while I didn't LOVE this movie, most of the complaints about it didn't bother me either. Can't give a gently caress about David breaking the continuity of where alien babies come from or whatever the poo poo. The central problem is that outside David/Walter the characters are huge nothings I can't give one poo poo about. They aren't even at the level of past alien movies where the supporting players are kinda just stock characters. Heck, the closest is the insincere "man of faith" who acts like a martyr to the faith but is actually just a dipshit nobody likes. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 14:03 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 13:58
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So the ship/movie is called covenant because David is the creator of a new species, they have their own purpose, and the ship is a new beginning like Noah's Ark?
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May 22, 2017 14:22
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:There are two characters in the opening scene. I liked the train of thought you had going about this. Basically, the gap I always felt about Prometheus/AC's David was related to, granted an external source/meta textual piece, the satirical TED Talk that featured Guy Pierce as Peter Weyland. Because I presumed that that was something that happened within the text of Prometheus that it was something David would have seen. I thought the TED Talk and the commercial for David were "cute" or "cool" when I saw them however many years back, but when I thought about them again you were expressing things about AC's opening that I felt about these things. Weyland says two lines that I think are tinged with a lot of great irony, that contextualizes what I think David does and who Weyland is. Weyland talks about T.E. Lawrence extinguishing fire, talking about how "The trick is not minding it hurts." But that's the irony, of course it loving hurts and the imagery to me is linked to life or a type of life. Weyland's posturing and then pleading with/search for the Engineers illustrates the farce of that statement. The other end up being echoes that find themselves in Alien Covenant's Prologue, which is the idea of "We are the Gods now." I don't think I see David as human, I don't see the various "Aliens" as human either, though they certainly represent certain aspects. But the idea is that what they are doing isn't something I understand as necessarily rationalized the same way humans behave in a certain respect. That is, it isn't framed by emotions per say, or motivated by things like liking someone. That is, I think David can love Shaw and still murder her. I think David sees himself as taking something from the old "gods", that he is a sort of point of overdetermination. He is a Prometheus of sorts. So all the horrible experimentation he does makes him his father's son. But when I say I don't see him as human, it's that I don't think that "Verizon's 8th Generation David" is wholly human, and I believe him when he says in that commercial "I understand human emotions, although I don't feel them myself." This sort of corporate entity that is fed all this motivating information, that if you talk about human's being creations and then gods, the gap to be filled is that it would stand to reason that David would see this. That David is a creation and you've told a creation that creations "usurp" things from their creators. "We are the Gods now." I don't think it's neat and tidy, but that AC takes this and runs with it is something I really appreciated, because I think David's sympathies and his observations are not outside of this frame. That what ideas have been put into him cannot necessarily be taken out, and the thing is that no one really understands this aspect of David within the diegesis of the film itself. So it's like some perpetual motion engine in regard to how David will treat with humans. I think he can love Shaw and still kill her and consider that love as meaningful or in tact. I also think the idea of Shaw dying off screen is fine. Main characters in films can become subordinated at any creator's discretion. It's not about the intention there to me, it's about the fact that the frame or the emphasis can change, I like Shaw but it makes sense that David would treat a relationship like that to me and, to your point, I was glad that they brought these fragments together while still maintaining that "gap" of sorts. That you should be inferring David's upbringing to contextualize his actions. Corrosion fucked around with this message at 14:37 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 14:34
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Corrosion posted:I don't think I see David as human, I don't see the various "Aliens" as human either, though they certainly represent certain aspects. But the idea is that what they are doing isn't something I understand as necessarily rationalized the same way humans behave in a certain respect. That is, it isn't framed by emotions per say, or motivated by things like liking someone. That is, I think David can love Shaw and still murder her. I think David sees himself as taking something from the old "gods", that he is a sort of point of overdetermination. He is a Prometheus of sorts. So all the horrible experimentation he does makes him his father's son. But when I say I don't see him as human, it's that I don't think that "Verizon's 8th Generation David" is wholly human, and I believe him when he says in that commercial "I understand human emotions, although I don't feel them myself." That's the amusing part about knowing about Prometheus. He has a motivation for behaving the way he does and interpreting orders in the way he does in that film. He has been hurt. CelticPredator posted:That openings might be one of my favorite scenes in the Alien franchise. It's really good.
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May 22, 2017 14:41
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Humans can love someone and murder them as well. Robots in films rarely act in a way that's completely alien to the human experience - they act in a way that reveals something about the human experience.
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May 22, 2017 14:57
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I know this was an argument from a few pages ago, but I was thinking about the derelict on LV-246's age, and how it could possibly be both "ancient", and populated with David's special little babies. From what we see in the movies, we don't really get a super strong idea of how the engineer tech works, what powers it, etc. So, knowing that, what's to say that David, whilst on his adventures with a ship full of test subjects, or at this point, perfected eggs doesn't come across another engineer ship on some other planet, which itself happens to be incredibly old, and pilots that bitch out of there with his special cargo? Now we have how the eggs got on the ship, and why the ship is so old (it was old when David found it). But what about the fossilized, chest busted engineer? Well, maybe when David found the ship, that engineer was in stasis in his pilot chair. David finds the ship, finds the engineer, and says "Hey I wonder what would happen if this bro here got face hugged by one of my new babies??"
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May 22, 2017 15:06
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Mike N Eich posted:Humans can love someone and murder them as well. Robots in films rarely act in a way that's completely alien to the human experience - they act in a way that reveals something about the human experience. But to be specific, it's that I think I synthesize David saying "I understand human emotions, although I don't feel them myself" as an expression of his upbringing. The way his "love" is expressed is something outside of that, because that's how his creators have created him to be. He wears an environmental suit to "blend in seamlessly." He appears human, but if we're talking about him revealing something about the human experience it's that I think Weyland created artificial life and then taught that life that its creators are as much objects as they treat David. Before David puts Shaw in her casket, she expresses worry about "What if they're not better than us?" and David says "So long as they are no worse." There's an embedded judgment about humans there in David's words. So I think it's lipservice to talk about David revealing something about the human experience and not really saying what that is. I realize that can come off as patronizing or antagonistic, but I see David as embodying corporate or capitalistic hubris. That you create without thinking about what you've put into your creation and David expresses everything that's been put in. He understands he has a relationship with Shaw, but he understands that in his own way, and that way is framed by disdain, distance, and a mutual sense of objectivity or obliviousness.
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May 22, 2017 15:09
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WTF BEES posted:I know this was an argument from a few pages ago, but I was thinking about the derelict on LV-246's age, and how it could possibly be both "ancient", and populated with David's special little babies. Sure there are explanations, but it doesn't make the prospect of undoing the "ancient, spooky ship with a deadly cargo that's been dormant for millennia" thing any more palatable.
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May 22, 2017 15:11
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Xenomrph posted:Sure there are explanations, but it doesn't make the prospect of undoing the "ancient, spooky ship with a deadly cargo that's been dormant for millennia" thing any more palatable. I meant to ask this before - what is lost when it's merely old and not ancient? Grandeur?
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May 22, 2017 15:13
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As far as the fossilized Space Jockey, we still have no reason to believe that the black goo wouldn't produce something similar to David's xenomorph given similar circumstances. We've already seen it produce a xenoesque creature through some pretty roundabout circumstances in Prometheus, and the neomorphs that are produced from the spores are also very similar to the classic xeno. David is following in the Engineers footsteps, there's no evidence that he's actually surpassed them in any way. The facehugger eggs could easily be something of a known recipe that the Engineers have used themselves, even if maybe the results weren't precisely the same as what we seen in Covenant.
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May 22, 2017 15:18
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I meant to ask this before - what is lost when it's merely old and not ancient? Grandeur? From what I've been seeing its really an argument of preference. One camp thinks it's super cool that David created the alien as we know it, with all themes etc that idea invokes. The other camp thinks that's bullshit and that the aliens' origin should be left unknown, that the horror (and awesomeness) of the species is tied to its mystery. If the ship was truly ancient and fossilized where it stood, that means that the alien is not in fact a creation of David, but much, much older, and thus the mystery is preserved. David merely managed to create something xenomorph-esque
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May 22, 2017 15:22
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If Disney didn't make copyright law loving insane in the 90s, Alien would be public domain by now and anyone could use the Xenomorph and the characters in their movies, books, comics, videogames, etc.
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May 22, 2017 15:27
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I refuse to read any further back than 4 pages for this bad movie, but i wanna know: is there any explanation for why david has eggs but no queen? it seems so obvious that I cant imagine even bad-Ridley messed that one up, but then again.....the rest of the movie. My wife started laughing hard in the theater at the inner ear shot and said "what is this? Magic school bus?" Lmao
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May 22, 2017 15:27
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Intel&Sebastian posted:I refuse to read any further back than 4 pages for this bad movie, but i wanna know: is there any explanation for why david has eggs but no queen? it seems so obvious but I cant imagine even bad-Ridley messed that one up. Uh, he made the eggs. It's the famous question. What came first? The chicken or the egg? In this case, the egg that David made himself from the black goo. Presumably, a queen can be made from that stock. Or, perhaps, from a later stock after David finishes the creature.
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May 22, 2017 15:29
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Intel&Sebastian posted:I refuse to read any further back than 4 pages for this bad movie, but i wanna know: is there any explanation for why david has eggs but no queen? it seems so obvious but I cant imagine even bad-Ridley messed that one up. Hot take: he IS the queen
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May 22, 2017 15:29
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I mean I guess but thats pretty dumb.
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May 22, 2017 15:29
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I'm not sure we need anymore than what's shown in Covenant to know what happened with Shaw. In Prometheus, the hologram recordings always show the moments leading up to some disaster, and so it follows that the recording of Shaw at the Juggernaut's controls are the events leading up to the crash. The only thing that is unclear is whether she intends to martyr herself by crashing the ship on purpose or whether she really believes she can fly home--either way she intends to strand David on the planet alone for what he's done/become. The metaphor of "country roads" leading her "home" could be taken either way, but the bottom line is that her last act of defiance is successful until the Covenant shows up. My intuition is that Shaw is mortally wounded in the crash and unconscious when David finds her in the wreckage. David, unwilling to let her go in any capacity, salvages the life support systems of the Juggernaut's stasis chambers in a bid to keep her alive and that's all the poo poo we see her corpse hooked up to in Covenant. He manages to keep her body alive, but she's brain dead and never comes out of the coma. David buries her memory at the gravestone he shows Walter, but he's still unwilling to let her truly die and uses her body to create the eggs that will allow her to live on through their children.
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May 22, 2017 15:30
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Hot take: he IS the queen Thats better tho
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May 22, 2017 15:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I meant to ask this before - what is lost when it's merely old and not ancient? Grandeur? Age carries a lot of thematic and symbolic weight which is why it's something used in more stories than just Alien. Especially in science fiction stories it has the benefit of making something that effectively predates humanity which carries a number of subtle but interesting touches. (Not in the least in Alien it emphasizes that the universe is vast and uncaring and that humanity itself is in any meaningful cosmic terms a relative child.) The Alien is effectively the avatar of humanity being alone in hostile territory where they are unimportant and meaningless. ("in space, nobody can heart you scream.") Well, except now where we're back to "and it turns out that even the most evil and awful thing in the universe is the result of W-Y, the most important evil company!!!" (Which isn't exclusively on Prometheus-era stuff but rather a trap a lot of writers seem to fall into where they want to keep building up a recognizable 'villain' more and more .)
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May 22, 2017 15:33
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Imo there was a seed of an interesting movie in the way they were continuing the prometheus story, but to make it like 5 mins of the movie total and then wrap it in a bad version of prometheus peppered with bad callbacks to other Alien movies was a terrible idea.
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May 22, 2017 15:33
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