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ImpAtom posted: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!!!" Like the first film.
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May 22, 2017 15:36
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Schwarzwald posted:Like the first film. ... What? That's the exact opposite of the first film where W-Y is just trying to get their hands on some weird-rear end poo poo. There's nothing in any version of Alien that suggests they created the Alien. The original they're a crappy malicious company that tries to sacrifice their space truckers to get their hands on an alien. That's it. The Aliens and Alien 3 continue that trend and by A:R they're bought out by Wal-Mart. It's not until the prequel/EU stuff that they have a Long Storied History with the Alien which is the most important thing in the universe to them.
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May 22, 2017 15:38
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Intel&Sebastian posted: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. I disagree that it was a "bad version" of Prometheus, I thought the characters were mostly well developed and those scenes were very effective. But I do think that the template of "crew of a space ship land on a mysterious planet and things go to poo poo" is now somewhat played out and needs to be put to rest, at least for a while.
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May 22, 2017 15:38
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My main complaint is that it was really clear (and supported by interviews) that Ridley got shook by people being mad at prometheus for not having enough Alien movie dna and its obvious that he was working with that in his head. There's just way too much time on screen that looked like he was trying to fix prometheus for those critics when he could have been doing something better.
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May 22, 2017 15:43
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ImpAtom posted:... What? That's the exact opposite of the first film where W-Y is just trying to get their hands on some weird-rear end poo poo. There's nothing in any version of Alien that suggests they created the Alien. Weren't you talking about theme and not canonicity?
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May 22, 2017 15:44
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Hot take: he IS the queen I'm not so sure that's quite it. I think when Oram asks him what they are waiting for and he says "mother", I think it has a double meaning: not just a host for the facehugger to impregnate...but also, literally, MUTHUR. I know I'm just making wild claims here but I really think that he plans to co-opt MUTHUR to eventually create his queen as part of giving his creation its biomechanical nature, eusocial behavior, and connected consciousness.
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May 22, 2017 15:45
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For the record I really like prometheus, and resurrection for that matter. I like the idea of Alien as a showcase for different directors and their styles, with the first movie as an inspiration, a lot more than it being a continuous plot and another nerd universe.
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May 22, 2017 15:46
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ImpAtom posted:... What? That's the exact opposite of the first film where W-Y is just trying to get their hands on some weird-rear end poo poo. There's nothing in any version of Alien that suggests they created the Alien. No, but they are "the most evil and awful thing" in the film. The alien is just potential capital.
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May 22, 2017 15:47
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Weren't you talking about theme and not canonicity? This is true thematically as well, yes. Ash is the personification of the human shittiness in Alien, but even then it's worth noting that he's an android who exists on his programming. He is human-but-not and the crew can communicate with and even understand him, while the Alien is beyond their ken. Schwarzwald posted:No, but they are "the most evil and awful thing" in the film. The alien is just potential capital. Ash's dying speech suggests otherwise. This is going back to the "oh gosh the Alien is just a poor space bug" stuff.
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May 22, 2017 15:50
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Intel&Sebastian posted:For the record I really like prometheus, and resurrection for that matter. I like the idea of Alien as a showcase for different directors and their styles, with the first movie as an inspiration, a lot more than it being a continuous plot and another nerd universe. It's too late for that for the nerds pervert all.
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May 22, 2017 15:50
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Intel&Sebastian posted:My main complaint is that it was really clear (and supported by interviews) that Ridley got shook by people being mad at prometheus for not having enough Alien movie dna and its obvious that he was working with that in his head. There's just way too much time on screen that looked like he was trying to fix prometheus for those critics when he could have been doing something better. I don't understand people being upset that Prometheus was not Alien. How many times do people want to watch the same movie over an over? Given that no one seems to like the Alien portions of Covenant, apparently not very many times. I want to see MORE of this setting, not the exact same: "humans encounter xeno -> humans dumb -> alien ravages xeno -> surprise xeno is still around at the end -> repeat forever" loop.
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May 22, 2017 15:54
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ImpAtom posted:Ash's dying speech suggests otherwise. This is going back to the "oh gosh the Alien is just a poor space bug" stuff. Ash is an extension of the company's interest, it would stand to reason that Ash's beliefs and observations do not necessarily reflect those of Weyland-Yutani and its subsidiaries. Ash is a corporate creation, so I don't really accept the reasoning that he's the worst of humanity when the reality is that he's just a vessel for behavior that also has external musings about his own existence. Which effectively brings us back to W-Y.
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May 22, 2017 15:55
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Huzanko posted:I don't understand people being upset that Prometheus was not Alien. How many times do people want to watch the same movie over an over? Given that no one seems to like the Alien portions of Covenant, apparently not very many times. I think an issue is that people did genuinely dislike Prometheus but were bad at articulating why and tended to voice the most superficial complaint. ("Not Alien enough!") and not what actually bothered them about it, and that got taken at face value.
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May 22, 2017 15:55
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Even though yea, I'd have loved if Scott had not felt the need to include a certain amount of classic xeno, I think in the end he succeeded in integrating it into what still very much feels like a Prometheus sequel, so I'm ok with it.
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May 22, 2017 15:57
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ImpAtom posted:Ash's dying speech suggests otherwise. This is going back to the "oh gosh the Alien is just a poor space bug" stuff. Ash is a corporate stooge and a murderer. The Alien is just a poor space bug.
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May 22, 2017 15:57
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Schwarzwald posted:The Alien is just a poor space bug. That is to say, a human being. This is literally in every single Alien movie.
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May 22, 2017 16:03
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Schwarzwald posted:Ash is a corporate stooge and a murderer. The Alien torture-rapes a woman to death. The fact that people keep dissolving it down to "There has to be one bad person!!" works to lessen the horror of the fact that this horrible malicious corporate worked to unleash an entity who is arguably even worse than they are. They want a profit and in turn created a horrible monstrosity that kills and worse. It doesn't have to be either/or and both have their own level of horror.
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May 22, 2017 16:04
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Huzanko posted:I don't understand people being upset that Prometheus was not Alien. How many times do people want to watch the same movie over an over? Given that no one seems to like the Alien portions of Covenant, apparently not very many times.  Not saying you're right or wrong or they're right or wrong, but nerds tend to re-watch the same movie 1 billion times in their lifetime. How many people have bragged about watching Star Wars over 1000 times?
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May 22, 2017 16:07
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The xeno isn't good or bad, that's part of what makes it scary, and why Ashe considers it a "perfect organism". If you took a wild lion and set it loose inside an office building, the fact that it eats some people wouldn't make it good or evil. It simply eats because that's what it needs to do to survive. It represents life at its most basic level, which is a very scary thing.
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May 22, 2017 16:10
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Basebf555 posted:The xeno isn't good or bad, that's part of what makes it scary, and why Ashe considers it a "perfect organism". If you took a wild lion and set it loose inside an office building, the fact that it eats some people wouldn't make it good or evil. It simply eats because that's what it needs to do to survive. To put it another way: "many things seem evil when you're on their menu. Or did you think your bacon loves you?"
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May 22, 2017 16:12
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Covok posted:
Yes but you don't need a movie remade several times in order to rewatch it. Nerds basically ruin everything with their obsessive behavior, is what I'm saying.
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May 22, 2017 16:14
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ImpAtom posted:The Alien torture-rapes a woman to death. The fact that people keep dissolving it down to "There has to be one bad person!!" works to lessen the horror of the fact that this horrible malicious corporate worked to unleash an entity who is arguably even worse than they are. They want a profit and in turn created a horrible monstrosity that kills and worse. It doesn't have to be either/or and both have their own level of horror. Ash is an employee who's doing his job. He does not dissolve the evil of the company to "one bad person," he is just one cog of a greater machine. The alien is just a predator with a funky life cycle, which the movie compares to Ridley's pet cat (a species which frequently tortures it's prey before killing them). The corporation is the horrible monstrosity that kills and worse.
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May 22, 2017 16:16
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Huzanko posted:Yes but you don't need a movie remade several times in order to rewatch it. Not going to disagree with that, but, then again, "Special Edition", "Premastered Edition," "Blu-Ray version." Let's be real here: the world would be better if Copyright Law was set back to 20 years so these studios couldn't just endlessly turn out the same garbage over and over again and would have to be more like pharmaceutical companies who are constantly research and developing new things because their old stuff is in the public domain.
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May 22, 2017 16:17
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I found it ironic that this is one of the rare Alien movie where folks AREN'T loaded up with flame throwers but we see two people get burned to death on screen.
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May 22, 2017 16:22
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Basebf555 posted:The xeno isn't good or bad, that's part of what makes it scary, and why Ashe considers it a "perfect organism". If you took a wild lion and set it loose inside an office building, the fact that it eats some people wouldn't make it good or evil. It simply eats because that's what it needs to do to survive. "It does what it needs to do to survive" doesn't mesh with Parker and Lambert's deaths. Ash calls it a survivor but he also mentions "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. " It's a survivor but also a hostile creature. Schwarzwald posted:Ash is an employee who's doing his job. He does not dissolve the evil of the company to "one bad person," he is just one cog of a greater machine. Nobody said he dissolved the evil of the corporation to one bad person. He is the representation of it. Like the Alien he is a creature unclouded by morality or compassion. He acts as a pale imitation of the alien. (He attempts to kill Ripley with a porno magazine, mimicking both the facehugger and the themes of Lambert's death.) Everyone who works for the corporation is not an evil hate-monger but the Corporation as a whole is a terrible 'creature' and Ash is its avatar. And Ash admires the alien's purity. It is what he wishes he could be. (Something that later gets mirrored by David.)
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May 22, 2017 16:24
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Just re-watched part of Prometheus on TV by chance, and I've got to say it's really obviously better than Covenant. It just has more genuinely crazy poo poo going on to hold your attention, and the characters are... I hesitate to say more fleshed out, but at least are distinct from one another and have clear motivations. I also think it was written something like this:  "This captain character doesn't actually have much to do..." "We just got Idris Elba to play him, it will coast on his general coolness. We don't need to write it anymore." "..." "Now let me tell you how God is going to get raped in the face by an octopus..."
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May 22, 2017 16:28
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While A:C definitely has it's problems, I'm really enjoying the direction they are taking David - pretty flawed, damaged, and tragic, all told. He's incredibly naive and deluded, and the audience gets to see this; that's probably the most interesting thing about him. It's been touched on in other comments, but: He's unoriginal - he copies hairstyles, movies, and frames pretty much everything that happens to him in relation to some form of human culture/art. He quotes things that the audience know are sophomoric and pretentious because he thinks they are, and therefore he is, profound and important. He 'composes' a tune that he thinks is original but the audience know it is from Prometheus. He 'creates' life but really he's just dicking around with something someone else made. He thinks he can control the xenos, pretty sure that's not going to work out too well for him. For all his posturing as a creative/creator, he's a product and reflection of Weyland. He transcends nothing. Nobody is justified in deciding who deserves life or death. Nobody wins. There's just servitude, confusion, denial, horrible, violent death and oblivion 
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May 22, 2017 16:28
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ImpAtom posted:The Alien torture-rapes a woman to death. And that's why I've said what I did about David and the Aliens. Because I think it's folly to say the Alien is "rape/raping" in the same way someone sees the color white in a movie and automatically thinks "innocence" or "purity." I don't think the imagery necessarily doesn't resemble rape, but I don't think that's quite right. That's why folks are bringing up Ripley's cat observing murder and drawing a correlation. The Alien isn't "torture raping" anything, it's that we associate an indifference to human life as torture and rape when the reality is that, as others have already said, "That's just how life seems to roll at dinner." The motive is survival, but the means by which that happens can often be expressions of actual instinct/nature and those are quite often foreign to us, even as we or others exhibit that behavior. The Alien comes from humans, quite literally bursting forth from one, but that doesn't make the Alien the embodiment of humanity but rather a characteristic of it. So it goes with David in his own way. I think what gets nerds hot and bothered about having an "answer" is that they want sponsorship/go ahead/endorsement to have their own dreams while indulging in the fact that when there isn't an answer, they're free to imagine that "that's how it could be" as being real. You can still imagine an Alien without David, but having to acknowledge that he exists poisons the fan(atacism)tasy. Corrosion fucked around with this message at 16:33 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 16:28
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Covok posted:Not going to disagree with that, but, then again, "Special Edition", "Premastered Edition," "Blu-Ray version." I don't think you understand what I was saying. I am saying that wanting Promethus to be like Alien is stupid because Alien and the sequels which are iterations on the same original story themselves already exist. It is cooler and better to see different parts of the Alien setting than to see the first movie retold forever. I am not saying people have to like Prometheus but for the chief complaint to have been that it was not Alien or Aliens is pretty stupid and pretty typical of nerds.
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May 22, 2017 16:31
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ImpAtom posted:"It does what it needs to do to survive" doesn't mesh with Parker and Lambert's deaths. Ash calls it a survivor but he also mentions "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. " It's a survivor but also a hostile creature. Nature seems just as hostile when you're on the receiving end of it. It follows its instincts, one of which is survival. Another is procreation. As others have said, there's nothing that the xeno does that isn't represented by humans as well. It's organic life boiled down to its essence, and when you do that there's some really scary poo poo there.
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May 22, 2017 16:38
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Xenomrph posted:It happens, but rarely. In 'Aliens: Labyrinth', a character has a diseased, sickly chestburster die inside him, and it gets surgically removed. In the 'Alien Resurrection' video game, it's actually a gameplay mechanic that if you get facehugged and you get yourself to an Autodoc in time, you can remove the embryo. Thanks! I think they had an autodoc in Passengers.
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May 22, 2017 16:46
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Are we just ignoring the fact that the Xenomorph is hilariously flawed because it burns through its food/procreation supply in a month in Aliens? Like, we can say he's biological life boiled down to his essence, but he sure acts like pretty stupid life. He just kill/eat/gently caress everything nearby him with no regards for sustainability. Huh, having said that, though, what usually limits other organisms is just the effort it takes to hunt. The xeno is just what happens when you introduce a sufficiently advanced creature into an environment without natural competition or predators. I guess I kind of rescind my statement a tad: it's just acting like we all do when nothing is stopping us, in a sense. Just consume, consume, consume. Huzanko posted:I don't think you understand what I was saying. Well, that's what I'm saying it'd be better if people were free to explore stories as they wished and studios weren't dragging out old IPS and forcing them to be "safe." We'd get those different snapsnots on the Alien universe by many different writers with different perspectives if the Alien was allowed to be like Dracula or Frankenstein. Unfortunately, corporations own the United States.
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May 22, 2017 16:47
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ImpAtom posted:"It does what it needs to do to survive" doesn't mesh with Parker and Lambert's deaths. Ash calls it a survivor but he also mentions "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. " It's a survivor but also a hostile creature. So cats are evil then? Even though they are animals? I saw a cat once play with an injured mouse but never enough to kill it. When it saw me looking it gently picked up the mouse in its mouth and went to a more private location. I'm sure the mouse is fine.
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May 22, 2017 16:49
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Xenos are largely amoral, much like David himself and that's part of the reason David considers them to be perfect. David considers morality to be a human affectation.
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May 22, 2017 16:52
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I think the question of whether the derelict should be ancient or not is one of those ‘“if you have to ask, you’ll never know” things. When you contemplate the vastness of the universe and humanity’s tiny and ephemeral place in it, either you get that special frisson or you don’t. If you get it, it can be powerful enough that you can hang entire stories off it (e.g. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out Of Time”). I’m guessing a lot of posters itt don’t get it, since they seem pretty keen on taking the ‘alien’ out of ALIEN and putting it into an anthropocentric box where literally the most evil entity in the cosmos is a limited liability corporation. Clipperton fucked around with this message at 16:59 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 16:56
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Corrosion posted:And that's why I've said what I did about David and the Aliens. Because I think it's folly to say the Alien is "rape/raping" in the same way someone sees the color white in a movie and automatically thinks "innocence" or "purity." I don't think the imagery necessarily doesn't resemble rape, but I don't think that's quite right. That's why folks are bringing up Ripley's cat observing murder and drawing a correlation. The Alien isn't "torture raping" anything, it's that we associate an indifference to human life as torture and rape when the reality is that, as others have already said, "That's just how life seems to roll at dinner." The motive is survival, but the means by which that happens can often be expressions of actual instinct/nature and those are quite often foreign to us, even as we or others exhibit that behavior. Ridley Scott specifically calls it a rape in the commentary for that scene. Also there's nothing survival about what it does to Lambert. It isn't a threat and it doesn't seem to eat her either. Shaocaholica posted:So cats are evil then? Even though they are animals? I saw a cat once play with an injured mouse but never enough to kill it. When it saw me looking it gently picked up the mouse in its mouth and went to a more private location. I'm sure the mouse is fine. Considering Alien goes out of its way to emphasize that there is a literal cat on the ship who views the creature with angry hisses and disgust (and in turn the creature largely ignores it), I think the constantly "It's a big space cat" stuff isn't really backed up at all, no. Jones is a cat. The Alien is not a cat.
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May 22, 2017 17:00
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Clipperton posted:I’m guessing a lot of posters itt don’t get it, since they seem pretty keen on taking the ‘alien’ out of ALIEN and putting it into an anthropocentric box where literally the most evil entity in the world is a limited liability corporation. "Why are we sending colonists into space?"
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May 22, 2017 17:01
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ImpAtom posted:Ridley Scott specifically calls it a rape in the commentary for that scene. Also there's nothing survival about what it does to Lambert. It isn't a threat and it doesn't seem to eat her either. You're saying the author knows what's significant or apparent about their own work, this is often not the case. Authors can lie, or what I think is the case in this instance, be wrong about their own creations. Notice you went from talking about the scene to what "the author thinks about the scene", and guess what my response is? I think the author in this case is wrong. But notice I didn't say "It doesn't resemble rape at all", I'm saying that the motivation behind it isn't purely sexual predation, because there's plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. Ridley Scott is interpreting his work as much as anyone else here, if you've ever been in a writer's workshop, other people are there precisely because you might think something about your creation/writing/whatever that other people don't see. This doesn't stop once your movie gets made.
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May 22, 2017 17:05
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ImpAtom posted:Considering Alien goes out of its way to emphasize that there is a literal cat on the ship who views the creature with angry hisses and disgust (and in turn the creature largely ignores it), I think the constantly "It's a big space cat" stuff isn't really backed up at all, no. Jones is a cat. The Alien is not a cat. Incorrect. Jones watches the alien with quiet contemplation. The only time it hisses is at Harry Dean Stanton. It only observes the alien. One hunter watching another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqTA7c3s94
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May 22, 2017 17:06
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Clipperton posted:When you contemplate the vastness of the universe and humanity’s tiny and ephemeral place in it, either you get that special frisson or you don’t. If you get it, it can be powerful enough that you can hang entire stories off it (e.g. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out Of Time”). I think that aspect is still intact though, because we still know so little about the Engineers, their culture, and their technology. It's seeming more and more like Xenomorphs(the CineD poster) theory about there being a progenitor race that came before the Engineers is probably true. The flashback scene really looked a lot like you'd imagine it would be if the Engineers had come for their once every thousand year visit to the Aztec empire on Earth, its exactly the scenario that is the bread and butter of those ancient alien guys like Von Daniken. It's likely that the black goo is ancient and not fully understood by the Engineers at all, which would make sense considering they basically worship it and are susceptible to horrific outbreaks if they aren't super careful in storing it. The issue of David and the Company discovering it and meddling with it is a separate thing that doesn't necessarily take away from the mysteriousness of where it all came from.
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May 22, 2017 17:06
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