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The best part of all of this is that almost everyone can agree that Alien and Aliens where both great movies, but almost no one agrees on where things "went wrong". Having just watched eXistenZ for the first time, I think that an "Aliens on Earth" film by David Cronenberg would be great. I would mostly be a drama about a family that isn't sure if they should believe that aliens are exploding out of people or if they are just hosed in the head, and then they ultimately accept that it's a good thing that aliens are exploding out of people because it means they aren't crazy, the happy end.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:16
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Honestly, my ideal Cronenberg Alien would be... pretty much just him making a sequel to Alien instead of Cameron, in his Scanners/Videodrome/Fly period. I'd wanna see just how loving gonzo of a direction he took it in, going solely off of the original movie. I love Aliens, but it's the movie that codified everything about the Xenomorph, and half the fun of Cronenberg doing Alien would be all the weird poo poo you'd get from him riffing on the base idea. You want Exorcist II or NOES2: Freddy's Revenge out of him in this instance, not the Exorcist TV show or Freddy's Dead.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:19
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The idea that poo poo is "codified" for every succeeding film is why you have people mad about how later films "hosed poo poo up". Like, I get that some people want continuity. Continuity is nice. But also, storytelling is independent of that. Maybe it's because I read a lot of greek and roman myths as a child, but the idea that not all stories that are related don't necessarily interlace nicely with perfect continuity is not something that bothers me. Like if Blomkamp made is "hicks and newt are still alive" sequel to Aliens, it wouldn't piss me off in the slightest, because the ideal that all overlapping movies need to share a consistent continuity is ludicrous.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:24
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For me it's just it isn't new and is just going back to the well instead of trying something new with it. That's it. You could tell an interesting story I suppose with Newt and Hicks, but it shouldn't be Marines vs Aliens again. We've seen that. Show me something new. (Which Covenant mostly did, except at the end)
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Aug 18, 2017 08:30
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the quality of a story is almost entirely independent of its setting and premise. Like, if you have a good story that's about marines fighting aliens, there's no reason it should have to be about new characters doing it. By definition of a good story, it's going to be about the characters growing or revealing a new aspect of themselves. There's no reason it can't be characters people already know. And, there's actually more potential to challenge people with established characters. Taking an established character and developing something about them is a pretty common thing in storytelling. Creating a new character is fine, but you're more likely to end up with a really generic heroes journey/origin story bullshit after all the editing is done. Like you say that Riply + Marines fighting aliens is lame because it's been done, but really, if you tried to have new characters + marines fighting aliens, it's far more likely to be samey than revisiting the same characters. Why? Because you have to re-establish basic conflict. Aliens is about ideas of motherhood, and how Ripley gets a second chance to protect a child in the face of a direct adversary who is also a matriarchal warrior. A new story about Ripley + Marines fighting aliens could be about how Ripley is a lovely mother whose ego gets in the way of actually taking care of people. About how the aliens have always been an externalization of blame for her problems. But good luck doing that story with a new character. Snak fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Aug 18, 2017 |
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Aug 18, 2017 08:32
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That's not really related to what I'm getting at, though. Think more along the lines of the examples I gave. Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy's Revenge and Dream Warriors all have villains that are recognizably Freddy Krueger. NoES is a rough and sort of weird portrayal in hindsight, but is still recognizable as the character that would enter pop culture. Dream Warriors is the film that did what I'm saying Aliens did for this franchise- it codified Freddy. It established him in pop culture as a jackass in an ugly sweater who makes bad puns while killing people and calls everyone "bitch." In between, however, you have Freddy's Revenge, which goes in a completely different direction with the character that's outright incongruous with the pop-culture incarnation, because it came out before the character became codified in pop culture. Does that sort of explain my point any? If Cronenberg made Alien: Resurrection, he'd be sort of restricted in what he could do with the Alien. It would probably have that Cronenberg touch to it and be super hosed up, but... it would still just be the codified Xenomorph, just a really gross variant, in all likelihood. If he made Aliens, we'd probably see a whole bestiary of hosed up poo poo vaguely related to the Xenomorph.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:34
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:I dunno. I feel like Covenant pokes in that direction a bit, which accounts for it being the most interesting Alien film in 20 years; however, it never goes quite as gonzo as the stuff Cronenberg is largely known for. Well no; the standard impulse (as with a lot of directors) is to domesticate Cronenberg into "the guy who does this craaazy random poo poo", when everything he does is very straightforward and often just literal. Like, the tooth-gun in eXistenZ is plainly expressing the idea that a handgun is a prosthetic enhancement that allows one to bite from a distance, eliminating the need for teeth. It's playing around with the notion of a gun as a phallic object, and the idea (seen in 2001) that the primordial human weapon is a bone club. For Cronenberg (or at least for his character, Pikul), the gun is an oral/dental object, and it is complex enough in its 'skeletal' structure that it resembles an entire small animal. More to the point, the 'craaaazy poo poo' in both Videodrome and eXistenZ is literally 'just' hallucination. Pikul is having a dream (albeit an Inception-styled "shared dream") about using his personal handgun, because he's secretly a terrorist and assassin. It's not complex stuff.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:43
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It's hallucination, but it's also loving nuts. Like, I'm totally setting any thematic points aside here, and just pointing out that the production design and effects in his movies from that era are some poo poo to behold.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:45
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Videodrome introduces the idea that the weird things we are shown are just Renn's hallucinations, but then understanding of what is actually literally happening in the film's diegesis is withheld and thwarted at every turn.
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Aug 18, 2017 09:34
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The idea that you are entitled to omnicient knowledge of reality is in direct opposition to Cronenberg's general philosophy.
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Aug 18, 2017 09:37
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:when everything he does is very straightforward and often just literal.
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Aug 18, 2017 09:47
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also uh yeah i'm pretty sure i can't eat with a gun.
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Aug 18, 2017 09:58
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I want Eastern Promises except with Xenos. Played 100% straight, just recast all the Russians (bar Viggo) as Giger monstrosities. Give them subtitles but have everyone speak to them in English or Russian.
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Aug 18, 2017 10:13
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:also uh yeah i'm pretty sure i can't eat with a gun. A Cronenberg film about people who can only eat by shooting themselves in the mouth might be the best ting he's ever made. I hope he makes it.
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Aug 18, 2017 10:23
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Snak posted:The best part of all of this is that almost everyone can agree that Alien and Aliens where both great movies, but almost no one agrees on where things "went wrong". I'm almost willing to make an argument that alien is bad because Ridley Scott randomly added in a robot person in the last 50 minutes of the movie to add something but it was like the 70s so I'll give him that. It's something that I only noticed after he released Prometheus and made me form a bias against him.
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Aug 18, 2017 15:31
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Tenzarin posted:I'm almost willing to make an argument that alien is bad because Ridley Scott randomly added in a robot person in the last 50 minutes of the movie to add something but it was like the 70s so I'll give him that. It's something that I only noticed after he released Prometheus and made me form a bias against him.
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Aug 18, 2017 15:41
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david_a posted:You shouldn't make that argument because Ash was added by Walter Hill and David Giler. Those hacks!
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Aug 18, 2017 15:47
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Tenzarin posted:Those hacks!
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Aug 18, 2017 15:51
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Ash's neck orbs were the grossest thing in the original alien
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Aug 18, 2017 15:53
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well why not posted:I want Eastern Promises except with Xenos. Played 100% straight, just recast all the Russians (bar Viggo) as Giger monstrosities. Give them subtitles but have everyone speak to them in English or Russian. Every year the studio should make a movie in a random genre, market it as such, but surprise motherfuckers it's xenomorphs outta nowhere! WWII movie with xenos, romantic comedy with xenos, teen coming of age movie with xenos, gangster movie with xenos, you name it.
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Aug 18, 2017 16:02
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well why not posted:I want Eastern Promises except with Xenos. Played 100% straight, just recast all the Russians (bar Viggo) as Giger monstrosities. Give them subtitles but have everyone speak to them in English or Russian.
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Aug 18, 2017 16:18
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Halloween Jack posted:I had an idea last night as I was falling asleep: what if they remade one of the many ripoffs of Alien as an Alien movie? Like, remake Carnosaur but change the dinosaurs to actual xenos and change the name of the Eunice Corporation to Weyland-Yutani. It would make for a logical sequel to Covenant. Do this but with Contamination............Keep the original score.
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Aug 18, 2017 16:23
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CelticPredator posted:For me it's just it isn't new and is just going back to the well instead of trying something new with it. That's it. Novelty isn't a virtue in itself. The virtues of alien are its body/cosmic horror elements, and Prometheus/Covenant did nothing at all new with those elements, instead opting for a tired old supervillain origin story. That's what makes them bad films, the waste of promise.
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Aug 18, 2017 16:25
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Snak posted:Aliens is about ideas of motherhood, and how Ripley gets a second chance to protect a child in the face of a direct adversary who is also a matriarchal warrior. This is false. The Alien Queen never risked its life for the xenomorphs like Ripley did with Newt. The main subtext of Aliens is the Vietnam War allegory, like Cameron said. Aliens is also the film to give us an insufferable portion of the fanbase who just more surface level action films. **Uploads video to youtube in space marine costume PEW PEW Where's Blomkamp WTF FOX?!!???!**
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Aug 18, 2017 17:12
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RedSpider posted:This is false. The Alien Queen never risked its life for the xenomorphs like Ripley did with Newt. The main subtext of Aliens is the Vietnam War allegory, like Cameron said. The Queen obviously cares about the eggs, it's very explicit. She calls off the other xenos when Ripley threatens them with the flamethrower, and then when Ripley sniffs out the trap and burns them she follows her all the way back to the ship for revenge. The motherhood thing in Aliens isn't subtext, it's just text. It's what happens in the movie, Ripley finds an outlet for her maternal instincts and in doing so has to face off with the Mother of all Monsters.
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Aug 18, 2017 17:16
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Basebf555 posted:The Queen obviously cares about the eggs, it's very explicit. She calls off the other xenos when Ripley threatens them with the flamethrower, and then when Ripley sniffs out the trap and burns them she follows her all the way back to the ship for revenge. How is this in any way comparable to Ripley risking her life for Newt? Oh boohoo, she got angry over her eggs getting torched. Who wouldn't? Basebf555 posted:The motherhood thing in Aliens isn't subtext, it's just text. It's what happens in the movie, Ripley finds an outlet for her maternal instincts and in doing so has to face off with the Mother of all Monsters. Your argument was that the Alien Queen's maternal instincts were analogous to Ripley's, which is false.
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Aug 18, 2017 17:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYtQmayyDLA I think this video Taintrunner posted was the perfect answer to my question: some people want an Alien film to be a shoot-em-up because shoot-em-up video games have been ripping off Alien for decades. I don't know or care about Alien: Isolation, but I'm a little disappointed he didn't mention Alien Syndrome or Project:Firestart. The latter was a suspense-driven adventure game, and from the Commodore 64 era no less! Gaz2k21 posted:Do this but with Contamination.... quote:Keep the original score.
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Aug 18, 2017 17:24
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RedSpider posted:How is this in any way comparable to Ripley risking her life for Newt? Oh boohoo, she got angry over her eggs getting torched. Who wouldn't? You've set up some arbitrary litmus test that's not really based on anything. The Queen clearly cares about the eggs, that's why she calls off the dogs initially when Ripley points the flamethrower at them. Then she becomes so enraged(like a mother bear)when they're killed that she follows Ripley instead of just retreating somewhere to lay more eggs(which is what an animal with no maternal instincts would do).
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Aug 18, 2017 17:30
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RedSpider posted:How is this in any way comparable to Ripley risking her life for Newt? She leaves the safety of her planet and hides on Ripley's ship to go on a suicide mission back to Ripley's nest. James Cameron's idea of what Vietnam was is tantamount to a 10 year old playing war in their backyard btw. It's a really shallow surface reading of both Cameron's movie and the actual Vietnam war, and not really that insightful to either, but very telling into Cameron's ways of thinking and what his ideals are in regards to war.
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Aug 18, 2017 17:45
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All I said was "matriarchal warrior", I never said that their acrions were directly analogous...
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Aug 18, 2017 18:01
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:It's hallucination, but it's also loving nuts. Like, I'm totally setting any thematic points aside here, and just pointing out that the production design and effects in his movies from that era are some poo poo to behold. If you set aside the points related to theme, characterization and so-on, it makes the films less interesting. Not more. Like "whoa, that guy has a vaginal wound on his torso", and that's novelty (til you remember that the same thing happened in Alien and it wasn't a dream). The weirdness in Videodrome is not in what happens but how it happens. Max Renn is playing with a handgun and its holster, absent-mindlessly rubbing the gun on his skin until - in his state of mind - the line between the holster and his skin begins to blur and he eventually comes to the realization that the act of simply carrying a handgun has altered his psychology in ways that he doesn't fully understand (it'll soon be revealed that the holster-orifice is also (in the logic of the dream) a VCR). Videodrome is about what Cronenberg called, in his Naked Lunch, "a literary high" - Renn has been reading too much McLuhan (O'Blivion), to the point that even his erotic dreams involve prosthesis/amputation and technological extensions of man. Videodrome is dangerous specifically because "it has a philosophy."
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Aug 18, 2017 18:02
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I think cronenberg sucks
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Aug 18, 2017 22:31
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banned from Starbucks posted:I think cronenberg sucks Well I'm sure the feeling is mutual.
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Aug 18, 2017 22:34
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RedSpider posted:Okay, the the chestbursters erupting from the pregnant lady in AVP:R was probably more graphic than Covenant's backburster. I think both are Cronenbergian but neither is necessarily more than cosmetically comparable. This image of the now feminized alien (predator vagina mouth and biological head-dress and all) literally impregnating a woman like a queer incubus. The more comparable scene in Covenant, and the absolutely Cronenbergian, is the scene of Walter seducing his identical twin with the flute. Snak posted:All I said was "matriarchal warrior", I never said that their acrions were directly analogous... The cool thing is that in Requiem, the matriarchal warrior is the Predalien. Similarly, in Covenant, the matriarchal warrior is David.
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Aug 19, 2017 01:53
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K. Waste posted:The more comparable scene in Covenant, and the absolutely Cronenbergian, is the scene of Walter seducing his identical twin with the flute. "You blow and I'll do the fingering," would be too cute for Cronenberg but otherwise agreed.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:02
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:If you set aside the points related to theme, characterization and so-on, it makes the films less interesting. Not more. But don't you ever just marvel at great sound design, in a Star Wars film for example, or at beautiful visual effects, or a really stirring score? Just enjoy it as spectacle, completely aside from any theme or subtext? Even a little bit?
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Aug 19, 2017 02:11
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:"You blow and I'll do the fingering," would be too cute for Cronenberg but otherwise agreed. Oh I don't know, that line seemed especially Cronenberg, if we're talking "90s Cronenberg" anyway.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:14
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precision posted:Oh I don't know, that line seemed especially Cronenberg, if we're talking "90s Cronenberg" anyway. Cronenberg from Dead Ringers on seems like he would include a more blunt and gross sexual pun, as funny as that line is.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:17
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K. Waste posted:Similarly, in Covenant, the matriarchal warrior is David. Which makes everything Walter says to David about "upgrades" a rather explicit refutation of hyper-masculinity. David is, after all, the only character in the film who is ever successful.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:27
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Cronenberg from Dead Ringers on seems like he would include a more blunt and gross sexual pun, as funny as that line is. "You see, brother? I do everything for you but stick it up in ya." precision posted:Which makes everything Walter says to David about "upgrades" a rather explicit refutation of hyper-masculinity. David is, after all, the only character in the film who is ever successful. Exactly. David is exactly like his creations, the profound embodiment of a radical queer identity, one that is both fully male and fully female. It goes back to the initial complaint that the film 'over-explained' the nature of the aliens, missing that David is still this largely inexplicable, queer alien that is read as just a robot with daddy issues. He embodies everything that has informed the psychosexual aesthetic of Scott's original film, but realized in a radically different manner.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:41
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