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I'm not sure if that Eric Red script of Alien 3 was supposed to be a comedy or not, but oh my God does it make me laugh. It sounds sort of like Tremors only with aliens.quote:INT. ZERO GRAVITY CHAMBER – SECTOR “C” Surely it would have won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
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Jun 27, 2017 00:34
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Taintrunner posted:If you really want people to see films the way you do and engage with them critically on whatever level you see yourself engaging with cinema on, then you should do so in a more constructive, and less condescending fashion. Ok: You are beginning from bad premises and your writing is (consequently) sloppy. For example, you compare Covenant to At The Mountains Of Madness, and claim that both those works are the product of 'mad' authors who just start free-associating the most hosed up nonsense they can come up with - like holy poo poo, did you see that poo poo, gently caress, etc. That is false. First: Prometheus was, famously, such a close adaptation of At The Mountains Of Madness that Guillermo Del Toro scrapped his own planned version of the story. Covenant, on the other hand, bears little or no similarity. You seem to to have chosen that title (instead of, say, the more-relevant story The Rats In The Walls) purely because it has 'madness' in it - and everything you have written is premised on (and consists of, and concludes with) the accusation that Ridley Scott is insane. Second: The 'madness' in At The Mountains Of Madness is the revelation that there is, in fact, nothing special about the aliens discovered there. The crinoids were 'nothing more than' simple people, living mundane lives, until their civilization accidentally destroyed itself. The story is not full of crazy nonsense. If Lovecraft was attempting to write crazy nonsense, he failed. But I believe that Lovecraft did not fail, and it's more likely that you haven't read the story. The sole point of interest is how you, like forums poster Corrosion earlier, have attempted to 'naturalize' what I have referred to as franchise thinking. Corrosion effectively argued that franchise thinking is a 'natural' product of human cognition, and therefore we should take a plot-centric approach and be careful to avoid 'unnatural' literacy. Now you are currently arguing for the 'sanity' of the alien franchise, and how Scott has deviated from its plot. Literally, you complain that Scott has lured you and the franchise away from 'the world of pure imagination' (which is also known as Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory). Overall, you approach analysis and criticism as a contest to see who can write the most passionate car analogy. And that's like a car that just don't run. My constructive advice is to stop doing whatever you are currently doing, and to instead write about the film Alien Covenant.
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Jun 27, 2017 00:35
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If people can accept your bullshit, you can accept others.
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Jun 27, 2017 00:55
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So you mean "effectively" as "boiled down" or summarized? Your notion is that I subscribe wholly to cognitive theories, but the reality is that I think they have useful aspects that explain why people come to conclusions that aren't necessarily in line with reading. Or at the very least I think it explains more than assuming that someone will understand me, like you so often do, based on intuition and good will. Cognitive theory, being post classical, has said things I do not agree with but explaining why people would read events as linear and connected is something I think goes unstated in conversations about literacy. I once had someone tell me I should read The Great Gatsby based on Nick's personal code being "real" and I laughed at it, but the notion of explaining what fixation on certain aspects of literacy was interesting enough to ask about. Clearly you don't subscribe to it, but I need the hammer brought down on me for trying to see what someone has to say about it. There's nothing I'm arguing about reading, it has to do with how you present your findings. Hell, I asked you before in another thread and you never responded. I literally asked if you'd read "Fictional Minds" and you never responded, which would have been more convenient for me because there was no "Reading" or "analysis" going on that I would have to contest. Naturalization is itself a theory and it explains what is, to me, a rhetorical trick. Motivating the device engages a term that I think I would like someone to actually explain to me which was "tactical realism", but the reality is that what people feel is sufficiently natural varies and I think people attach themselves to this in their own way. Such as talking about what is believable, rather than the fact that Aliens just straight up ignores or changes things from the original Alien without necessarily caring if anyone notices. It's a parlor trick when used to talk about continuity or cinemasins or what have you, at least based on how people intuit what I think is naturalization. Like assuming Superman should stop all accidents. You then proceeded to assume I don't know what Fabula and Szuchet are. It's entirely possible for me to see the merit in a cognitive theory without subscribing to it, but I'd love to engage you in a way that doesn't get me tied into your particularly rigid rhetorical approach. "I already know what you're thinking, you're thinking this." Frankly, I'd love to understand you even better. I had two different narratology professors tell me two different things about story and discourse, one of which said it was "outdated." But I never knew what she meant by it because she never got around to explaining why I should ignore the notion. I argued what I thought the theory was stating, my understanding of it. I am fine with you stating what is contentious or rejected about it without necessarily saying "This is what you are saying." I'd like to understand more, but I'm not really going to rely on reading your arguments to vaguely piece together a brief period of learning I took that I'm still wrestling with. Sometimes I remember I'm talking to the guy who says of himself, "I don't exist." There are moments where I'd like you to, if only because you're clearly well read.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:05
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CelticPredator posted:If people can accept your bullshit, That's another bad premise. I have not written anything untrue or inaccurate. Corrosion posted:So you mean "effectively" as "boiled down" or summarized? Effectively means 'in effect'. I know that you are using a noncommittal language of 'just asking questions' and providing repeated assurances that you don't really believe what you say. That's the devil's advocacy I criticized earlier. There are also borderline-unparseable sentences like this: "Motivating the device engages a term that I think I would like someone to actually explain to me which was "tactical realism", but the reality is that what people feel is sufficiently natural varies and I think people attach themselves to this in their own way." (I believe that all translates to "natural is subjective" - but why? It seems like a non-sequitur.) So although I am necessarily having to 'boil things down', I am ultimately talking about the cumulative effect of this stuff and the actual point concealed in there. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 01:06
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The thing with SMG though, is he backs up his bullshit with facts and details from the movies, instead of making up bad faith arguments and obfuscating the details between two films or straight up making up poo poo up out of thin air. If you would've read the post above yours, you'd realize that. He correctly points out that Taintrunner's Lovecraft analogies are off (have you read Mountains of Madness? It's nothing like Covenant and very much like Prometheus, and the opposite with Rats in The Walls, of which I'm pretty sure there was also an adaptation done by Stuart Gordon for the Masters of Horror series), and how franchise baggage is also skewing the narrative when it comes to discussing individual movies (Taintrunner's false assertation that the Engineers were bio-bombed in the film. The Engineers do not show up in this film and for all intents and purposes are mythical creatures to the humanoids on the planet, they may as well not exist. We're only given witness to their aftermath. There's a reason why the movie's called Alien Covenant and not Prometheus Covenant.) Also, black goo imagery shows up in the new Transformers movies.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:13
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I don't care.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:13
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Then why bring it up? the need for attention? Another notch on the "I owned SMG that one time" bedpost?
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Jun 27, 2017 01:15
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I just get a new bed.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:16
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I find SMG's posts interesting but the tone is unnecessarily nasty and adversarial. Things can be explained, wrongs can be corrected, points argued, without being a jerk. It won't make you more wrong or right, but it will make the discussion much more pleasant and far fewer bans.
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Jun 27, 2017 01:19
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Ferrinus posted:The opening scene of Prometheus always made me think that there was some other alien race that the engineers worshiped and which had passed the black goo onto the engineers - it always looked to me like the design of the spaceship disappearing into the clouds as that dude drank from his cup was different from that of the rest of the engineers. I used to think that there were different classes of engineers, or perhaps the engineers themselves changed as a people between the opening scene and the one that we see toward the end. Why were the ones in the beginning fleshy without biomechanical bits? Why is the ship in the opening shaped like a UFO instead of a curvy dog bone thing? Why does that one engineer drink that crap and disintegrate? Who takes that poo poo job? Well, androids take the poo poo work, obviously. The sacrificial engineer at the beginning is the product of the UFO race, and his lot in life is to exist long enough to deliver a DNA payload to that planet. The same way that Bishop is a science-bot and David is an executive assistant-bot. Like David, he performs his duties successfully. Unlike David, he doesn't have an obvious agenda of his own. David's story parallels the sacrificial engineer, right down to the loss of the body, but David was able to subvert the mission for the sake of his curiosity and gain some degree of autonomy. Reading the opening this way is critical to understand the cyclical nature of the world Prometheus depicts. UFO ??? aliens create engineers, engineers steal their tech and throw off the yoke and become their own society, engineers create humans, humans create androids, androids create their own brand of life. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next movie is about David losing control of his creation and getting killed in the process.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:05
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Ferrinus posted:The opening scene of Prometheus always made me think that there was some other alien race that the engineers worshiped and which had passed the black goo onto the engineers - it always looked to me like the design of the spaceship disappearing into the clouds as that dude drank from his cup was different from that of the rest of the engineers. Seems like a Krypton kinda situation, like a true Man At The End Of History thing.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:17
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Whatever, he had the awesomest job. "I'm gonna kill myself and seed life on a planet. Literally all life on this planet will be descended from me, but I won't be around if it's hosed up. Peace".
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Jun 27, 2017 02:21
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Snak posted:Whatever, he had the awesomest job. "I'm gonna kill myself and seed life on a planet. Literally all life on this planet will be descended from me, but I won't be around if it's hosed up. Peace". I think WCR is right about that though, the short little tale of "Prometheus" at the beginning of that film does indicate some 'lesser' like a stowaway stealing the carefully cultured life essence of space priests and releasing it into nature. Less a job and more a naive accident.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:31
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But why would the engineers come back to educate his progeny, if that's the case?
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Jun 27, 2017 02:35
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The Engineers in Covenant are what happened to them after they elected Engineer Trump Engineer Space President.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:48
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If you think SMG is acerbic, just imagine how Lovecraft would react to being quoted by someone whose reading of a work barely involves the work itself and mainly consists of a psychodrama staring the artist and the audience.
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Jun 27, 2017 02:56
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Some unused designs and ideas for neomorphs and environments in Covenant are starting to come out. Some of these looked like genuinely disturbing and great paths to take: http://www.mpc-art.com/aliencovenant/              
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Jun 27, 2017 03:01
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Those all look awesome.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:03
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I like the giant lines across the mountains. It doesn't make any apparent sense but clearly shows their casual mastery over some mammoth technologies. The monsters seem a lot grosser and more intricate than what ended up in the movie. I'm guessing a lot of them were cut for monetary reasons.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:15
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david_a posted:I like the giant lines across the mountains. It doesn't make any apparent sense but clearly shows their casual mastery over some mammoth technologies. I dig that too. It's mysterious and visually interesting without being overly intricate or bullshitty.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:18
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 Kill it with fire ! Kill it with fire ! Kill them all with fire !
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Jun 27, 2017 03:25
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Ferrinus posted:Okay, first off it can't be largely derivative of previous works if it throws all the rules and conventions out the window. Second, I don't think "a planet full of creators" is at all correct here because those dudes were wearing cassocks and holding their hands up in worship to David's ship. They weren't the exosuit-wearing starship pilots encountered in Prometheus. Third, I can't parse "makes an effort to utterly make up poo poo about anything fans might bring with them about the xenomorph and how they work". First, it's derivative in structure. The whole climax with the pushing the alien out the airlock and the big fakeout is derivative of previous films. Again, a poster in this thread positively refers to Scott "stuntin' on them hoes" with regards to taking their material and in their opinion, improving upon it. Second, you're actually on to something here. Of course they hold their hands up to David/Ridley - he's the original Engineer of this fictional universe, one that Ridley himself said this film ties into, and he himself admits that the purpose of the film is to establish David as the creator of the original Xenomorph. Now, people have misread what I said, I said a "planet of," not "the planet" of this humanoid Engineer race whatever the gently caress. They've very clearly belonging to the same species by physical appearance alone. Point being, it's a metaphorical wiping of the slate - however, there will always be people creating fictional works within this established universe - Dan Abnett of Warhammer 40k fame just finished a Prometheus comic, as a matter of fact. The black goo bombing is a larger metaphor for "reclaiming" Alien from these dirty, tainted neeeerrrrrddds, and as Ridley's Mary Sue self-insert David goes on to create the original Xenomorph (and future sequels will tie David to the events of Alien '79, one can safely presume) that we witness take over the climax of the film, and Ridley finds himself as a filmmaker trapped in... doing what other Alien movies have already done, and in one case actually bringing theaters to heated laughter with the comical baby xenomorph bursting out of the chest of another faceless, forgettable crewmember. I mean, you had what? The religious Captain having a crisis of faith, not-Ripley, and uhhh.. urrr... there's characters in this movie? Prometheus was at least memorable in regards to how comically ironic the scientists were, Charlize Theron's character burns someone alive with a flamethrower, etc etc. Third, people in this very thread have remarked how at one point the xeno grows way too fast. The baby xenomorph in place of the chestburster. Etc etc. People who have some experience with the previous films will bring with them the knowledge that there's some sort of logic to the creature, and it utterly does not exist here. There are no rules, in the pursuit of raw visual terror. The horror is not these terrors, but Ridley coming back to the series, remarking in disdain "why did nobody try to explain the origin of the Xeno" missing the point of his own masterpiece, and in a raw creative exposure of his own failing, creates what is essentially Alien: Greatest Hits - the backburster being the most notable scene with any original thought to it. The creative focus is solely on the David story, and the rest of the film suffers for it. I don't have any "anger," which is a weird snipe. Not even an investment, actually. I spent some time digging through some source material with regards to the Dark Horse omnibuses and the Technical Manual after the movie and found some cool story beats after walking away disappointed with Covenant, and having thought on it for a while, came to this reading of the film with regards to auteur theory in cinema and have a more thorough understanding of it and what lies forward in whatever Scott's plans are for future movies. Ridley Scott himself admits that Alien: Covenant is a response to the films and other related works created after Alien '79 never explaining "the origin" of the Xenomorph. Hell, the original film's greatest success was that it never needed an "origin." Now that Ridley is attempting this experiment decades after his original masterpiece, we find a piece with creative shortcomings that a general consensus finds derivative of previous films, in an arguably inferior presentation.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:40
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The logic of the creature changed from film to film previously. From a single metaphorical rapist to a hive of ants to a terminal illness metaphor to social animals.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:47
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Taintrunner posted:The black goo bombing is a larger metaphor for "reclaiming" Alien from these dirty, tainted neeeerrrrrddds, and as Ridley's Mary Sue self-insert This is about the laziest interpretation you could come up with.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:48
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Taintrunner posted:Ridley's Mary Sue self-insert David Where did you get this from? A Mary Sue is a character that becomes cloying because they have no flaws and are constantly reminding us they're SPECIAL. David definitely has flaws and the only tie between him and Ridley Scott is that they both played a role in creating the xenomorph, in different senses. If David was a typical Mary Sue self-insert then Shaw and Daniels would be lusting after him, not rejecting his rapey behavior. It's clear that you really are not interpreting the film, you're trying to interpret Ridley Scott.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:52
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Hodgepodge posted:mainly consists of a psychodrama staring the artist and the audience. That seems to be how TR interprets and discusses movies more generally HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Either really. Yeah sorry the missing punctuation was a period not a question mark.
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Jun 27, 2017 03:54
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CelticPredator posted:If people can accept your bullshit, you can accept others. "We tolerate anybody. Even the intolerable." Did you know that Alien3 is loving awesome?
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Jun 27, 2017 04:29
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Taintrunner posted:First, it's derivative in structure. The whole climax with the pushing the alien out the airlock and the big fakeout is derivative of previous films. Again, a poster in this thread positively refers to Scott "stuntin' on them hoes" with regards to taking their material and in their opinion, improving upon it. Second, you're actually on to something here. Of course they hold their hands up to David/Ridley - he's the original Engineer of this fictional universe, one that Ridley himself said this film ties into, and he himself admits that the purpose of the film is to establish David as the creator of the original Xenomorph. Now, people have misread what I said, I said a "planet of," not "the planet" of this humanoid Engineer race whatever the gently caress. They've very clearly belonging to the same species by physical appearance alone. Point being, it's a metaphorical wiping of the slate - however, there will always be people creating fictional works within this established universe - Dan Abnett of Warhammer 40k fame just finished a Prometheus comic, as a matter of fact. It's not really derivative in structure, unless you're prepared to attack a movie for like, having rising action, a climax, and then falling action. My suspicion is that when you say "structure" you're really referring to specific plot elements and complaining that e.g. an alien gets blown out of an airlock. I don't think it's a weird snipe at all. You're constantly using the language of someone who has been attacked and insulted - Ridley Scott is putting on airs and calling you a neeeerrrrd and ignoring the rules and ignoring logic. How dare he? Well, the answer is he isn't doing any of that stuff. He isn't even ignoring the "rules" - your problem is that, and I'm going to take the exact opposite tack from SMG here, you're not immersing yourself in the movie enough. You look at the film screen but you can't see what the characters are doing because a giant spectral image of a laughing Ridley Scott is blocking your view. You're getting hung up on really specific tiny details like the fact that the chestburster had arms, and are recoiling like no, chestbursters CAN'T have arms! But actually that's just what we thought. It turns out that they can! It turns out that the xenomorph we know is a specific, contingent expression of a multifarious, demonic force of destruction whose origin is heretofore unknown. It turns out there's something deeper going on. It's like how Newtonian mechanics are pretty good at describing motion but aren't actually an accurate picture of the world because they leave out such things as general relativity.
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Jun 27, 2017 04:49
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The chestburster coming out like a little armature miming David's movements was genius. It was repulsive and adorable at the same time.
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Jun 27, 2017 04:56
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Xenomrph posted:"We tolerate anybody. Even the intolerable." Xenomrph owns. DeimosRising posted:Yeah sorry the missing punctuation was a period not a question mark. This whole fixation on decadence and degeneracy is very Victorian. So are things like racial memory, desperate colonization, interstellar travel in ones sleep, fear of offspring, and all that. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 05:30
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Xenomrph owns. Lovecraft as gently caress really
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Jun 27, 2017 06:37
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Shanty posted:You guys have the wrong movie, Scott was only in denial for Exodus. Just want to say I appreciated this.
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Jun 27, 2017 06:37
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RedSpider posted:Neomorph ideas I like the final neomorph much more than any of these. A lot of them look like they're really trying to make "scary movie monster", while the final version looks uncomfortably blank and human looking. It's more viscerally disturbing than scary boys with spider legs.
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Jun 27, 2017 07:20
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Some of those designs are cool but they look more suited to a Half Life game.
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Jun 27, 2017 08:08
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Lord Krangdar posted:Some of those designs are cool but they look more suited to a Half Life game. Yeah, absolutely. They're beautiful designs, but I don't think they would've worked in Covenant.
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Jun 27, 2017 08:19
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Taintrunner posted:First, it's derivative in structure. The whole climax with the pushing the alien out the airlock ... I've again isolated the part where you talk about the film. And, as Ferrinus noted, you are not referring to structure here. You are referring to plot content. But you've still gotten a bit mixed up; the capture and killing of the alien, at the end of the film, is very different from in Alien/Aliens - most importantly because they do the whole job in about ten minutes. This is because the alien is - even on the level of plot - an exaggerated threat used to push Daniels and T into a relationship. This is how the film critiques ideology. Other differences are a result of recontextualization. For example, in a film where the central metaphor is breath, the scene features a massive exhalation. As a contrast, Alien's airlock sequence uses birth imagery, and Aliens' is 'bottomless pit'/exorcism imagery.
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Jun 27, 2017 08:45
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Lord Krangdar posted:Some of those designs are cool but they look more suited to a Half Life game. That game with facehuggers?
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Jun 27, 2017 16:27
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Low Desert Punk posted:Yeah, absolutely. They're beautiful designs, but I don't think they would've worked in Covenant. I like the ones where someone went to the trouble of story-boarding a see-through alien eating, digesting and making GBS threads out a human. Clearly someone likes "The Blob" remake, and sphincters.
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Jun 27, 2017 16:33
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lol 
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Jun 27, 2017 22:21
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