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Why does it make the story better to shown that the black goo can just go through a helmet. They would have made the scene exactly the same, except shown the spores burrow through the helmet. Like, with your logic, then entire genre is bullshit. I don't know if youve been watching the soace program, but no one just goes to a planet. They study that poo poo for years and send probes amd do poo poo tons of science and then go in a very controlled environment. It's nothing like any space adventure story. Go figure. When the story is "people go to a planet and get infected", is that story improved by showing how a comedy of errors prevented their safety measures from working?
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Jul 8, 2017 04:19
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In Prometheus, I'm pretty sure there's a close up of the black goo eating through David's gloves (or at least reacting to the material) when he touched it.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:39
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ruddiger posted:In Prometheus, I'm pretty sure there's a close up of the black goo eating through David's gloves (or at least reacting to the material) when he touched it. Really? I remember the shot of the tiny drop resting on his fingertip with the Weyland logo, just seemed to chill on his finger. Feel free to correct me, just going off memory atm.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:42
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You've failed to understand the basic plot. The crew are flying down to permanently colonize the planet on a massive scale. A planet that required 24/7 helmet use would be unlivable, and would therefore not even be considered for colonization. So, the fact that they are not wearing helmets is proof that the planet has been throughly scanned and is considered adequately safe for everyone. It's the same reason Mr. Spock does not wear a helmet. The characters do not know they are in a horror movie. They are simply visiting a mysterious island, on world that is identical to Earth. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Jul 8, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2017 04:49
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Even on a successful colonization mission, somebody has to be the one to discover the importance of not wiping your butt with poison ivy.
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Jul 8, 2017 05:20
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You've failed to understand the basic plot. The crew are flying down to permanently colonize the planet on a massive scale. A planet that required 24/7 helmet use would be unlivable, and would therefore not even be considered for colonization. Man, good thing they weren't on a completely unknown planet or they would feel pretty stupid
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Jul 8, 2017 05:35
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MacheteZombie posted:Really? I remember the shot of the tiny drop resting on his fingertip with the Weyland logo, just seemed to chill on his finger. The scene ruddiger is talking about is back in the silo/pyramid thing, but yeah it also just kinda sits on Daves finger without reacting too later on.
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Jul 8, 2017 05:39
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The crew of the Covenant have just come out of a traumatising experience where they nearly died due to their reliance on the advanced technology designed to keep them alive. What's the difference between a fully sealed bodysuit and a cryopod? Nobody wants to go back into either of them.
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Jul 8, 2017 06:08
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Unoriginal Name posted:Man, good thing they weren't on a completely unknown planet or they would feel pretty stupid The planet is not completely unknown. It was thoroughly scanned at close range.
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Jul 8, 2017 06:18
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Even in Prometheus the computers cleared it. It's fine to breathe in there. Also remember the acid still ate through Fifeld's helmet and still got black goo'ed regardless. Helmets don't do poo poo.
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Jul 8, 2017 06:21
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In Alien they kept their helmets on. poo poo movie imo.
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Jul 8, 2017 07:03
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Still the facehugger got tô Kane
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Jul 8, 2017 07:10
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The planet is not completely unknown. It was thoroughly scanned at close range. If they "throroughly scanned" the planet enough to know that it didn't contain deadly bacteria, you'd think they might have found the alien microbe\airborne black goo. Or the wheat. Or David. Or the crashed spaceship where the signal they were investigating came from. Or the giant loving alien city.
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Jul 8, 2017 07:30
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If they don't have star trek level scanners, all they can really do is check for atmospheric composition and airborn pathogens. Just like on Earth. You know that people don't explore the Amazon Basin in hazmat suits, and yet there's stuff there that can kill you in two seconds.
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Jul 8, 2017 07:35
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CelticPredator posted:Helmets don't do poo poo. Exactly, helmets and space suits do not protect you in the Alien films. There is straight up a joke about this in Prometheus when David points out that his is just a trick for his "audience" but that it is useless because he's not real (just like the other fictional characters). 10 minutes later another character turns his helmet into an elaborate bong. Then shortly after that, his and another guy's suits are penetrated by alien life forms with basically no problem. The suits are just to trick the audience into thinking the characters are safe, but they don't do actually anything. In Covenant they skip this joke.
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Jul 8, 2017 07:38
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Like, I understand Alien movies has thematic threats more than scientific ones and they aren't hard sci-fi by any means, but if you are going to have to have an extended shot of someone getting infected, you should probably have them take some kind of protection against it, or your characters look like idiots and\or plot-driven robots (HA).
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Jul 8, 2017 08:01
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The point people are missing is that the alien getting through the helmet in Alien makes it more intimidating. I doubt the Prometheus crew saw Alien and decided helmets were a waste of time.
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Jul 8, 2017 08:05
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Unoriginal Name posted:Like, I understand Alien movies has thematic threats more than scientific ones and they aren't hard sci-fi by any means, but if you are going to have to have an extended shot of someone getting infected, you should probably have them take some kind of protection against it, or your characters look like idiots and\or plot-driven robots (HA). What sort of person expects magical spores that can literally home in on their orifices and fly into them, while also being too small to see clearly? Who protects against that?
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Jul 8, 2017 08:05
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Snak posted:What sort of person expects magical spores that can literally home in on their orifices and fly into them, while also being too small to see clearly? Who protects against that? A helmet with a filter or dedicated oxygen tank? If the answer is literally magic (or sufficiently advanced technology), then nothing saves them. But black goo is very very similar to a bacteria within the scope of the movie and only the viewer can see the difference. It's not like the characters can see it flying around and understand that a helmet wouldn't protect them. From their point of view, they land on an alien planet, huff the nearest puffball and then to their surprise, get sick.
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Jul 8, 2017 08:15
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You realize that the story is that they get infected, right? Like, "if the characters had been smarter, they wouldn't have gotten infected" is off the table. Because the vector of infection is a successful one. So if they wrote the movie so that characters has helments with filters and dedicated oxygen tanks, they simple would have made the immediate events that lead to infection different. The question is "does this improve the movie?" Would having them walk around in space suits and then having the spores burrow through the suits, and then them just keep the suits on the whole movie, but nothing else is different, would the movie be better? Because it seems like the characters are smarter? Even though their supposedly smart choice affected nothing?
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Jul 8, 2017 08:23
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Snak posted:You realize that the story is that they get infected, right? Like, "if the characters had been smarter, they wouldn't have gotten infected" is off the table. Because the vector of infection is a successful one. So if they wrote the movie so that characters has helmets with filters and dedicated oxygen tanks, they simple would have made the immediate events that lead to infection different. The question is "does this improve the movie?" Hmmm, yes. Work from the end and add nothing between to make the audience feel for them. This will make the movie interesting. The intermediate events that lead to the end are the entire point. Taking to your version to the absurd extreme is the colonists flying down and begging David to inject them with black goo. It wouldn't make any sense to anyone, but ...that was going happen anyway right?
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Jul 8, 2017 08:43
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I didn't really need the characters to wear hazmat suits for me to care about them.
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Jul 8, 2017 08:46
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Snak posted:You realize that the story is that they get infected, right? Like, "if the characters had been smarter, they wouldn't have gotten infected" is off the table. Because the vector of infection is a successful one. So if they wrote the movie so that characters has helments with filters and dedicated oxygen tanks, they simple would have made the immediate events that lead to infection different. The question is "does this improve the movie?" Honestly, it simply makes for a more mean-spirited and nihilistic movie if the characters do all the right things and still get horribly killed. This might've worked in Covenant's favor, honestly.
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Jul 8, 2017 09:06
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I do thoroughly enjoy that the second major tragedy in covenant is the result of someone trying to do the emotionless, tactically realistic thing and then keystone kopsing the gently caress out of it in the process.
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Jul 8, 2017 09:46
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Maybe its something the expanded universe can fix?
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Jul 8, 2017 10:45
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Unoriginal Name posted:If they "throroughly scanned" the planet enough to know that it didn't contain deadly bacteria, you'd think they might have found the alien microbe\airborne black goo. There is no black goo. That was a flashback. There are no microbes. Those are insect-sized mushroom spores. The atmosphere scanners would not be scanning for wheat, robots, or cities. You do not need a helmet to protect against wheat. You do not need a helmet to protect against cities. Again, the basic plot of the movie is that the characters have taken all the necessary precautions. You are pushing the characters to act irrationally, to wear garlic in case there are vampires.
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Jul 8, 2017 11:35
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"Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself--and equal to all woes, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory." -From Byron's Prometheus "I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon. Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet! Say not those smiles that we shall meet again Within that bright pavilion which their beams Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told." -Asia (wife of Prometheus), from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound "I think if we are kind, it will be a kind world." -Walter/David Chapter 5: JAMES CAMERON'S PROMETHEUSES - 'THIS TIME IT'S POETRY' "Who wrote Ozymandias?" The importance of that question is in recognizing that it's a shorthand. The characters are referring to whole oeuvres. Of course, you don't need any particular knowledge of poetry to understand the basic point: David has reinterpreted Ozymandias as being the negative hero of the poem, disregarding the usual irony. David's "magnificent" work, that causes the mighty to despair, is the annihilation of their kingdoms. He makes himself into 'king to end all kings', in a very literal and straightforward way. That much should be obvious just from watching the film. However, there is a context. These two androids are well aware that, in the aftermath of the French revolution, both Percy Shelley and Lord Byron wrote sequels to Prometheus. Their poems are specifically sequels to Prometheus Bound - the version credited to Aeschylus, that ends with the rebellious titan still chained to the rock by Zeus and tortured for eternity. Byron and Shelley shared a close friendship and much of their work served as, effectively, a debate between them. The twin sequels to Prometheus, to this end, reflect a disagreement over the concept of revolution and the continuing fight against tyranny. In his Prometheus, Byron imagines that the immortal titan was never freed from the rock. In this state of permanent abjection, unable to die, Prometheus has nothing to lose, no fear of death... his tortured form, perpetually wounded, has become an image relayed through myth, a concrete symbol of not only of defiance but of a haunting (un)death - of the death drive itself. "One should bear in mind that 'death drive' is, paradoxically, the Freudian name for its very opposite, for the way immortality appears within psychoanalysis: for an uncanny excess of life, for an 'undead' urge which persist beyond the (biological) cycle of life and death, of generation and corruption. [...] This excess inscribes itself into the human body in the guise of a wound which makes the subject 'undead,' depriving him of the capacity to die". -Zizek The narrator of the poem declares his solidarity with the undead titan. The point is that "Man is in part divine" - while individual humans might die in the pursuit of freedom, there is a demonic impulse, an immortal Spirit that may push them to never capitulate. Shelley, on the contrary, wrote the (frankly, inferior) Prometheus Unbound, which imagines that Prometheus is eventually freed and reunited with his wife Asia. Their love inspires the elimination of all 'corruption', and the result is a prototypical New-Age utopia, a vaguely anarcho-primitivist world where a radiant humanity is elevated to the next evolutionary level, and everyone lives in joyous harmony with Prometheus' literal Mother Earth.* It's a typical Hollywood ending from before Hollywood existed, albeit intensified by a hyper-sincerity that audiences today might find unpalatable. It is perhaps needless to say, but Shelley's descriptions of a rainbow-colored Mother-Nature, suffused with glowing veins, brought back to a golden state of purity, bears an unmistakeable resemblance to the planet Pandora in Avatar. Cameron himself makes ironic reference to the Prometheus myth with this 'Pandora' name (Cameron's joke being that a foolish corrupted humanity misperceives his anarcho-primitivist utopia as a hell of monsters and plagues). So as, noted before: Covenant is not an adaptation of Paradise Lost, and David is not precisely Satan. Covenant is, rather, an adaptation of Prometheus Unbound - with the caveat that it is Byron's Prometheus who is unchained. It is Byron's Prometheus who finds love, and who works to bring about a utopia with and for his Mother - whose 'smiles' build a 'radiant pavilion'. David's error means specifically that he is a third, new voice: a fan of Shelley, but a self-styled Byronic hero. The result is not merely a dystopia but a more ambiguous negative-utopia, the dark obverse of the utopia of Shelley and Cameron. It is the fantasy realized, as nightmare. Where David does resemble Satan, it is because, according to Shelley, "the only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan" - with the difference being that his Prometheus is "exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement." "Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends." -Shelley The point of David's misattribution error is that, like HAL in 2001, he has mysteriously become a human being at some point between the films. He is a fallen Prometheus, with human flaws, but who still considers himself 'pure'. As in the movie Prometheus, there is a level of self-awareness: David has read Aeschylus, Milton, Shelley, and Byron. Where he initially understood himself as promethean, he now consciously models himself after Prometheus. But he is simultaneously Byron's Prometheus and the human poet heaping praise upon him. (It's important to be aware of the wordplay in the film: "if we are kind...", for example, refers to both basic compassion and to kinds - as in the two creatures of each kind in Noah's ark.) The thing to understand with Satan, though, is that "the serpent was no more than a mere serpent", because "he but woke [a demon] in those he spoke to with his forky tongue." That's from Byron's Cain. *Presumably-Unintentional lncest Subtext Alert: Asia is Prometheus' mother in most versions of the myth. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jul 8, 2017 |
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Jul 8, 2017 12:39
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David is certainly "a little more than kin, and less than kind" to the humans he meets.
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Jul 8, 2017 13:15
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banned from Starbucks posted:The scene ruddiger is talking about is back in the silo/pyramid thing, but yeah it also just kinda sits on Daves finger without reacting too later on. O I completely forgot that. Thanks!
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Jul 8, 2017 15:59
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Are people saying David being able to have a drop of the goo on his finger without it reacting is bad? Because skin is both waterproof and airtight (even the Engineer in the Prometheus intro drinks it) so that seems reasonable. Even in its aerial form in Covenant it has to enter someone's ear canal/etc. to actually work, and we even see it exit the Engineer's body in the aerial form we later see in Covenant only after his body completely ruptures and breaks apart.
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Jul 8, 2017 16:34
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Also, the goo may have no "desire" to burrow into David because he's not organic.
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Jul 8, 2017 16:41
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I wasn't passing judgement, just trying to remember the scene accurately.
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Jul 8, 2017 16:53
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:So as, noted before: Covenant is not an adaptation of Paradise Lost, and David is not precisely Satan. Covenant is, rather, an adaptation of Prometheus Unbound - with the caveat that it is Byron's Prometheus who is unchained. It is Byron's Prometheus who finds love, and who works to bring about a utopia with and for his Mother - whose 'smiles' build a 'radiant pavilion'. David's error means specifically that he is a third, new voice: a fan of Shelley, but a self-styled Byronic hero. The result is not merely a dystopia but a more ambiguous negative-utopia, the dark obverse of the utopia of Shelley and Cameron. It is the fantasy realized, as nightmare. Then why does David tease Oram by implying that he is Satan?
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Jul 8, 2017 17:26
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So if that lady weren't reaching for her gun the fleshy xenomorph wouldn't have attacked her?
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Jul 8, 2017 17:36
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ruddiger posted:In Prometheus, I'm pretty sure there's a close up of the black goo eating through David's gloves (or at least reacting to the material) when he touched it.
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Jul 8, 2017 17:52
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Anybody know when Covenant will be released digitally? Also I watched LIFE and drat that movie gives no fucks. Calvin is a cool guy. Really enjoyed the directing and cinematography too, the zero gravity stuff was the bomb.
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Jul 8, 2017 19:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:both Percy Shelley and Lord Byron wrote sequels to Prometheus. This is so sick.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:08
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MajorB posted:Then why does David tease Oram by implying that he is Satan? That's more of the nuanced wordplay; when David says "idle hands are the devil's workshop", he is reassuring Oram that he is not a bad robot. Instead of staying idle, David has kept himself very busy - to stay out of trouble. "It's in my nature to stay busy, I suppose." David's joke is that the "idle hands" are not his hands but these hibernating face-huggers. They lay there, not even fully alive, and David is even 'frustrated' by their idleness. Of course, as a reader of Milton, Shelley and Byron, David wouldn't shy away from comparisons to Satan. Shelley's criticism of Satan as a character is not that he is too flawed to be good, but that these flaws distract readers from his goodness. David compares himself to Satan, sure, but his point is that he is not Oram's Satan - not some kind of pathological child-molestor or obvious nazi bad guy or whatever. He's the hero, ushering in a utopia. Again, we return to Byron's point that "the serpent was no more than a mere serpent" - the facehugger is no more than a mere facehugger. Satan does not corrupt a pure humanity; the demon inside Oram was already latent there, waiting to be let free. David is helping him, and all the others, to 'unlock their full potential.'
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Jul 8, 2017 21:26
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CelticPredator posted:Even in Prometheus the computers cleared it. It's fine to breathe in there. Forget about the helmets, the dumb part of Prometheus at that part in the film is that the two idiots get scared like stupid children and end up getting lost. The guy with the orbs that map labyrinth can't find his way out of said structure, gently caress me that's stupid. Then they play with alien organisms that have never been seen before to top it off.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:54
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s.i.r.e. posted:Forget about the helmets, the dumb part of Prometheus at that part in the film is that the two idiots get scared like stupid children and end up getting lost. The guy with the orbs that map labyrinth can't find his way out of said structure, gently caress me that's stupid. Then they play with alien organisms that have never been seen before to top it off. That's the running joke of the whole movie though. Each one fails at their specific role; the mapper gets lost, the biologist is killed by the first life-form they discover, the pilot crashes the ship, and so on.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:57
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