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Ersatz posted:Nope. jesus well, long post guy, the characters who are idiots are the ones who went onto an unknown alien planet covered in corpses without wearing any space suits. or the ones who fire a shotgun randomly inside a spacecraft.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:32
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juggalo baby coffin posted:jesus Their future scanners said the atmosphere was even better than Origae-6, dummy. Firing a shotgun at a creature who just slaughtered your friend (and also trying to kill you)? Oh my, the idiocy!
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Oct 11, 2017 06:36
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viral spiral posted:Their future scanners said the atmosphere was even better than Origae-6, dummy. its still best to take precautions, as they found out. a good atmosphere doesnt mean its not full of biological poo poo that will kill you. also the little monkey alien was stuck in the dang medical room eating the corpse, the lady should have just dipped then and gone and found the rest of the crew, instead of wildly firing at containers of pressurized gas. edit: also why did that cryo pod have a broil setting? juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 06:39
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juggalo baby coffin posted:its still best to take precautions, as they found out. a good atmosphere doesnt mean its not full of biological poo poo that will kill you. also the little monkey alien was stuck in the dang medical room eating the corpse, the lady should have just dipped then and gone and found the rest of the crew, instead of wildly firing at containers of pressurized gas.  This is some real goony poo poo. And K. Waste's post was correct about the more bizarre critiques of the film.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:53
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K. Waste posted:the alien was always just one element of an entire film that was released 38 years ago.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:54
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viral spiral posted:
the script was lazy as hell. there were plenty of ways to have the lander destroyed and people infected without having everyone behave like morons, or exist in a world where there are apparently no safety standards on spacecraft. the 'david inventing the xenomorph' poo poo made no sense at all and didn't even make sense in the context of just prometheus.
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Oct 11, 2017 06:58
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juggalo baby coffin posted:edit: also why did that cryo pod have a broil setting? so when they aren't storing humans they double as the ships kitchen, saves on appliances and space that way duh
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Oct 11, 2017 07:27
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[quote="“Hodgepodge”" post="“477257472”"] Once you start delving into the Predators’ perspective, video games are a pretty natural angle to explore as well. What is an intentionally engineered Xenomorph hunt but the ultimate game? [/quote] For all the complaints that AVP is the stupid one, the problem with it is actually that it is too 'deep'. Anderson created an entire Predator subculture, with its own detailed religion based on the plot of the alien films - and it presents a critique of this religion (given that the entire film is about a botched ritual). He also creates a human predator-cult and compares its logic to that of this corporation. Plus the whaling industry is in there for some reason. But what falls to the wayside, as a consequence, is the basic story: the (attempted) assassination of Karl Weyland by his subordinates. That's why they bring guns, and are progressively xenomorphized as in Aliens. What people miss is that these creatures aren't killing mindlessly; half of Weyland's team are secretly there to kill the pagan gods that Weyland hopes to communicate with. They're god-killers.
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Oct 11, 2017 08:55
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But what falls to the wayside, as a consequence, is the basic story: the (attempted) assassination of Karl Weyland by his subordinates. That's why they bring guns, and are progressively xenomorphized as in Aliens. What people miss is that these creatures aren't killing mindlessly; half of Weyland's team are secretly there to kill the pagan gods that Weyland hopes to communicate with. They're god-killers. 
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Oct 11, 2017 09:18
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Payndz posted:The element the entire film was named after, admittedly. Bingo. That's the point K.Waste's post misses, and why "explaining" the Alien's origin is a bad thing and was negatively received.
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Oct 11, 2017 11:15
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Xenomrph posted:Bingo. That's the point K.Waste's post misses, and why "explaining" the Alien's origin is a bad thing and was negatively received. Explaining the Alien's origin is a bad thing because of the film's title?
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Oct 11, 2017 15:12
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Payndz posted:The element the entire film was named after, admittedly. Xenomrph posted:Bingo. That's the point K.Waste's post misses, and why "explaining" the Alien's origin is a bad thing and was negatively received. "Alien" is referring to the concept of "alien," of which the second alien to appear in the film is just one aspect. What you are talking about is the franchise. juggalo baby coffin posted:well, long post guy, the characters who are idiots are the ones who went onto an unknown alien planet covered in corpses without wearing any space suits. or the ones who fire a shotgun randomly inside a spacecraft. juggalo baby coffin posted:the script was lazy as hell. there were plenty of ways to have the lander destroyed and people infected without having everyone behave like morons, or exist in a world where there are apparently no safety standards on spacecraft. the 'david inventing the xenomorph' poo poo made no sense at all and didn't even make sense in the context of just prometheus. Notably lacking from your criticisms of the script is any apprehension of characterization, or even the most perfunctory elements of the film narrative. The "unknown alien planet" is presented by the ship's scanners and perceived by the characters as a replica of the Earth. The recent captain of the vessel after a traumatic incident in which crew and passengers lost their lives is a Christian who views this as miraculous, because it is. The likelihood that immediately after this incident, that a ship called the Covenant, will encounter a planet that was better than the one that humans had planned to reach, a new home modeled on the old one, seems divinely inspired. And if this were not enough to illustrate that the actions of the characters are motivated by trauma and faith, there is literally a scene in which Daniels challenges her superior officer, and he clarifies that he's taking a conscious risk. He does not know about any alien corpses, and the information available to him points to there being nothing 'alien' on the planet, corroborated by an expedition that reveals flora exactly like that on Earth (another 'miraculous' discovery). When you are talking about a 'lazy script,' what you are actually talking about is superficial content to the exclusion of how these elements come together to form the film narrative. You conclude that the characters are either morons or there are no safety standards, but you allude to this hypothetical scenario in which the film more or less plays out exactly the same way, but just with the characters dressed in space helmets (until what point?), and don't discharge weapons indoors (under any circumstances?), or maybe even that the Weyland corporation just springs to have all surplus fuel/oxygen stored behind extra-reinforced containment units to protect the employees that they care about so much.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:42
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They did scan the atmosphere and discover that there were no hazardous contaminants in the air. The air was in fact safe to breathe, and the only problem with the planet was the effectively-supernatural monster lying dormant on it. It’s like calling the explorers in The Mummy stupid for not wearing protective curse-deflecting talismans.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:54
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Schwarzwald posted:Explaining the Alien's origin is a bad thing because of the film's title? No, explaining it is a bad thing because it undermines a major theme of the movie (the unknowability of the creature), a theme so pervasive it's even present in the movie's title. K. Waste posted:"Alien" is referring to the concept of "alien," of which the second alien to appear in the film is just one aspect. 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 15:59
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Covenant does not explain the origins of the alien. Imagine if someone literally watched the original movie, and was like ugh, they’re explaining its origins! They show us onscreen that it comes from a spider in an egg on a spaceship and incubates in a human and bursts out of their chest and the grows to full size! Why couldn’t it stay a mystery, perhaps by simply appearing on the Nostromo with no explanation or even by never appearing at all and leaving the viewer confused as to why crew members keep vanishing off camera??
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Oct 11, 2017 16:06
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Xenomrph posted:No, explaining it is a bad thing because it undermines a major theme of the movie (the unknowability of the creature), a theme so pervasive it's even present in the movie's title. The creature is not unknowable. Ash understands it quite well. Does his explanation undermine the themes of the film?
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Oct 11, 2017 16:11
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The xenomorph comes from the black goo, which we still know jack poo poo about, at least just from what's in the movies(please nobody post that stupid page from that alien book that overexplains it) The fact that David was able to, through countless experiences over the course of 10+ years, create something very similar to the xenomorph from Alien doesn't really give us any new information about what the xenomorph is or what it's origins are. We still don't even know the purpose of the black goo, as the Engineers saw it. Just because David used it as a weapon doesn't mean that was its intended use, and the opening of Prometheus would actually support the idea that they don't consider it a weapon at all, just a very special material that happens to be hazardous.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:15
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Schwarzwald posted:The creature is not unknowable. Ash understands it quite well. Does his explanation undermine the themes of the film? His explanation reinforces its unknowability. He says it's "perfect" which could mean anything because in the realm of human experience, there are no perfect organisms. He says it's unclouded by conscience, remorse, and delusions of morality, which (sociopaths aside) affects human experience because it's filtered through the framework of human conscience and morality, making the Alien's perspective unknowable and unpredictable (and thus scary).
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Oct 11, 2017 16:16
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The alien is neither unknowable nor unpredictable. In fact, prior to Prometheus, it was extremely straightforward, basically a solved problem from the perspective of the sci fi consumer. This is actually a mask for the exact opposite complaint: as of P and AC, the alien no longer fits into the neat little box that reams of comics and video games had been cramming it into, and fans no longer feel like they have mastery of the subject matter.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:22
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Ferrinus posted:The alien is neither unknowable nor unpredictable. In fact, prior to Prometheus, it was extremely straightforward, basically a solved problem from the perspective of the sci fi consumer. This is actually a mask for the exact opposite complaint: as of P and AC, the alien no longer fits into the neat little box that reams of comics and video games had been cramming it into, and fans no longer feel like they have mastery of the subject matter. That's what the backlash against the black goo was all about when Prometheus first came out. It was all complaints along the lines of "it does one thing here and then later it does a completely different thing! It's not consistent!", which is a reaction to no longer being able to recite every possible stage of the xenomorph lifecycle based on comics, wiki articles and toy lines.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:26
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[quote="“Xenomrph”" post="“477273469”"] His explanation reinforces its unknowability. He says it’s “perfect” which could mean anything because in the realm of human experience, there are no perfect organisms. He says it’s unclouded by conscience, remorse, and delusions of morality, which (sociopaths aside) affects human experience because it’s filtered through the framework of human conscience and morality, making the Alien’s perspective unknowable and unpredictable (and thus scary). [/quote] 'Perfect' is actually very, very (very) clearly defined as being 'unclouded by delusions of morality'. And then we spend half the movie watching the creature do perfectly amoral things. I'm beginning to think that Alien fans do not actually like Alien.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:30
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Ferrinus posted:The alien is neither unknowable nor unpredictable. In fact, prior to Prometheus, it was extremely straightforward, basically a solved problem from the perspective of the sci fi consumer. This is actually a mask for the exact opposite complaint: as of P and AC, the alien no longer fits into the neat little box that reams of comics and video games had been cramming it into, and fans no longer feel like they have mastery of the subject matter. No one is talking about comics and video games or that the Alien doesn't fit into a neat little box, actually people have been saying the opposite.  Overexplaining the Alien was one of the longtime fears of the comics and video games, and is actually one of the most unfounded complaints against them because they generally don't do any of that. If anything they most commonly miscaracterize the Alien as "gun fodder", but that's due to a fundamental misunderstanding of 'Aliens'. Basebf555 posted:That's what the backlash against the black goo was all about when Prometheus first came out. It was all complaints along the lines of "it does one thing here and then later it does a completely different thing! It's not consistent!", which is a reaction to no longer being able to recite every possible stage of the xenomorph lifecycle based on comics, wiki articles and toy lines. Most of the negative reaction to the goo I saw were from casual moviegoers, because the black goo doesn't follow common scifi storytelling conventions of being predictable. In sci fi movies, audiences are accustomed to being shown "the rules" of the world and then seeing the story play out within that framework. The black goo subverts that, and so it feels "off".
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Oct 11, 2017 16:36
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Xenomrph posted:No one is talking about comics and video games or that the Alien doesn't fit into a neat little box, actually people have been saying the opposite. People have been saying the opposite, but it hasn't made any sense, because Prometheus and Covenant actually made the alien more mysterious and difficult to categorize, not less. That, I conclude, is the actual complaint - that the alien is no longer predictable and obvious to wiki-trawling superfans. There are tons and tons of complaints in this thread alone that all boil down to "it didn't act like it did in other movies".
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Oct 11, 2017 16:48
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Xenomrph posted:His explanation reinforces its unknowability. He says it's "perfect" which could mean anything because in the realm of human experience, there are no perfect organisms. He says it's unclouded by conscience, remorse, and delusions of morality, which (sociopaths aside) affects human experience because it's filtered through the framework of human conscience and morality, making the Alien's perspective unknowable and unpredictable (and thus scary). That's not what "unknowable" means. The very fact you can describe the Alien using those terms (or any terms) is proof that it isn't unknowable.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:00
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Ferrinus posted:People have been saying the opposite, but it hasn't made any sense, because Prometheus and Covenant actually made the alien more mysterious and difficult to categorize, not less. That, I conclude, is the actual complaint - that the alien is no longer predictable and obvious to wiki-trawling superfans. There are tons and tons of complaints in this thread alone that all boil down to "it didn't act like it did in other movies". Schwarzwald posted:That's not what "unknowable" means. The very fact you can describe the Alien using those terms (or any terms) is proof that it isn't unknowable. Okay, what does unknowable mean to you?
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Oct 11, 2017 17:03
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The xeno itself isn't unknowable, that's not what made the imagination run wild. It's thinking about things like "Wow I wonder what kind of planet this thing would live on?" or "What would an advanced spacefaring race be doing carrying around these eggs?" and none of that is ruined by anything we're shown in Prometheus of Covenant. We still know hardly anything about the Engineers or how they live, and we don't really know anything of the true purpose of the black goo or the xenomorph. I suppose you could criticize Scott's decision to have the characters openly theorizing in Prometheus about the stuff they're seeing, because some people have interpreted that as gospel(the planet in Prometheus is a weapons facility because Janek says it is, etc.) The characters in Alien never stop to discuss what the hell those eggs were doing in that ship, or what they think may have happened to the pilot. It's 100% left to the audience to think about that stuff, which I suppose is a more elegant way of handling it.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:09
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  quote:Here's your first look at another official The Predator movie poster. Straight from 20th Century Fox' stand at the Brand Licencing Expo here in London. https://www.instagram.com/p/BaFGW6xHUNV/
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Oct 11, 2017 17:09
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Xenomrph posted:Can you cite some examples? No one is talking about the Alien's behavior or the wiki or the comic books and you've got this weird hang-up about "superfans" that's heavily muddling whatever point you're trying to make. For example, there has been repeated griping that the alien gestates faster than it did in other movies, and that the chestburster looks different than it did in other movies.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:15
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Yeah, Xeno, that "overexplaining" thing makes no sense. Let's go through the movies. In Alien, we knew that some big alien thing transported some eggs in its ship. When the eggs latch onto someone, they lay an egg that bursts out and becomes a dickhead thing. Deleted scenes say that eggs come from people that the alien takes. Aliens adds a Queen to the process to show what lays the eggs. So just adds an alternate explanation for the eggs. Alien 3 says they take on biological characteristics of a host. Resurrection doesn't add anything. AvP says that Predators take them around to hunt. AvP2 adds that a young queen can use pregnant people to create a bunch of warriors to help make a hive. So each movie adds a tiny thing that just typically adds a bit to the lifecycle and not the origin, outside of "alien race transports these things." So now we get to Scott's films: Prometheus adds that the alien that transports these things work with some kind of mutagen that has different effects depending on the circumstance. One of these effects creates a lifecycle similar to the Alien. Covenant adds that when David screws around with the mutagen and humans enough, he can create something very similar to the Alien. So...the big reveal that messes anything up is "a mysterious mutagen has something to do with the Alien lifecycle?" How does that overexplain anything? That's just adding one more layer of mystery on top of a mystery.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:53
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That's not the problem, the problem is giving the Alien an "origin story" and making it a handful of years old as of 'Alien', it really undermines the Lovecraftian themes themes of the first movie. The solution is really easy and obvious, though: David didn't "create" the Alien, even if he thinks he did.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:06
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juggalo baby coffin posted:is this a joke post? Is this? juggalo baby coffin posted:so having david make the alien makes no sense. there were statues of xenomorphs in the engineer base. it also ruins the mystique of the alien. it also makes david look like a loving idiot cause the xenomorph is weaker/worse than the neomorph in every way. So to fix it, instead have it so david made the neomorph from xenomorph samples he found in the engineer ship. have the black goo be something the engineers made from xenomorph eggs they found somewhere. that explains why the black goo creates xenomorph-type poo poo, and why they had statues of the xenomorphs. they were a pre-existing thing the engineers wanted to turn into a more practical bioweapon. then david finds their notes or w/e on the xenomorph and tries to improve it. the neomorph infects people with spores, chest bursts in like 15 loving minutes, comes out of the gate ready to kick rear end, and grows to adult human size inside an hour. it's way stronger than the xenomorph is in a lot of ways. SuperMechagodzilla posted:I'm beginning to think that Alien fans do not actually like Alien. hahahaa, yesss!
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Oct 11, 2017 18:15
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Lovecraft over-explained things all the time. You'd probably have a similar problem with At the Mountains of Madness. Alien's themes aren't really very Lovecraftian, it's more Giger's design aesthetic that puts off the Lovecraft vibe than anything else. I mean sure, you could say any movie with scary and weird aliens is Lovecraftian, but that's a pretty broad category.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:17
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Covenant doesn't give the alien an "origin story" to start with. In fact it mystifies the alien's origins, making the creature stranger and harder to categorize.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:18
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Davids behind it all!
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Oct 11, 2017 18:21
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Basebf555 posted:Lovecraft over-explained things all the time. You'd probably have a similar problem with At the Mountains of Madness. The Lovecraftian influences on 'Alien' are real well documented, the scriptwriters specifically cite him as an influence, talking about ancient alien cultures (the Space Jockey), an unpredictable and unknowable creature that changes shape and does weird and frightening poo poo - the Alien is basically a Shoggoth (and both Prometheus and the first AvP movie use them analogously in that role). I'm a little surprised that "keep the Alien mysterious" is somehow a controversial opinion. But then again we've got Ferrinus tripping over himself to say "the Alien isn't mysterious" while simultaneously saying "Covenant makes the Alien mysterious" while also complaining about these ethereal "wiki-loving superfans" and their fuckin' toylines and comic books who need everything to be codified and explained (even when said comic books often go out of their way in doing the exact opposite). That's a hell of a mish-mash of double standards and contradictory opinions. Is the Alien mysterious or not? If it is/isn't, is that a good or a bad thing?
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Oct 11, 2017 18:29
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Xenomrph posted:I'm a little surprised that "keep the Alien mysterious" is somehow a controversial opinion. It's not in itself, but most people who complain about alleged plot holes in Prometheus and Covenant are the same ones who want to keep everything 'mysterious' and 'vague.' They're hypocrites, and logically inconsistent at best.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:36
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Lovecraft explained some stuff in great detail, and left other things to the imagination. Just like Alien, just like Prometheus and Covenant. My point is that holding up Lovecraft as this icon of tantalizing mysteries doesn't work, you can point to just as many examples where he over-explained things. Some things about the xenomorph were explained in Alien, others were not. The same is true of Prometheus and Covenant. There is just as much to puzzle over and think about now as there ever was.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:36
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Xenomrph posted:But then again we've got Ferrinus tripping over himself to say "the Alien isn't mysterious" while simultaneously saying "Covenant makes the Alien mysterious" while also complaining about these ethereal "wiki-loving superfans" and their fuckin' toylines and comic books who need everything to be codified and explained (even when said comic books often go out of their way in doing the exact opposite). That's a hell of a mish-mash of double standards and contradictory opinions. Is the Alien mysterious or not? If it is/isn't, is that a good or a bad thing? The alien in Alien wasn't particularly mysterious. It's just a mean space bug. It's not until Prometheus and Alien Covenant that the aliens become particularly weird and hard to understand, where they're fluid and primordial. Nothing in the original Alien suggests the alien is fundamentally beyond the capability of technology to grapple with. It's just hard to deal with when you're a crew of space truckers because it's reasonably clever and bleeds acid. Whereas the black goo is explicitly beyond the comprehension of trained scientists and is constantly changing what it does (now it's making worms and snakes, now it's transforming someone into a zombie, now it's creating a squid fetus, now it's full of little insects that turn people to stone, etc.).
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Oct 11, 2017 18:41
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Ferrinus posted:For example, there has been repeated griping that the alien gestates faster than it did in other movies, and that the chestburster looks different than it did in other movies. Just to respond to this, I personally don't have a problem with the chestburster changing - it changed in literally every movie. I've seen complaints about the gestation period even as far back as when AvP came out (13 years ago!) and it used to seem weird, but now I don't see it as a problem. The chestburster in Covenant rubbed me the wrong way because of its execution, but if making it disarming and cute was intentional then that's another thing entirely (and mission accomplished). The gestation period in Covenant didn't bother me, but the facehugger only having to touch Lope's face for 10 seconds seemed weird at first. It's bothered me less on repeat viewings and I like some of the other interpretations given in this thread. I don't think those complaints are specific to superfans though, they got brought up in a lot of "casual" reviews both here and elsewhere. Like the black goo, it goes back to audiences expecting "rules" in their sci fi, and when those rules get broken it feels "wrong". The threshold of when things feel "wrong" varies from person to person.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:42
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The Covenant chestburster is cute because we're seeing it from David's perspective.Xenomrph posted:I don't think those complaints are specific to superfans though, they got brought up in a lot of "casual" reviews both here and elsewhere. Like the black goo, it goes back to audiences expecting "rules" in their sci fi, and when those rules get broken it feels "wrong". The threshold of when things feel "wrong" varies from person to person. This is on-point. Prometheus and Alien Covenant are when things actually got inexplicable, and lots of people hated it. They were onboard with the original alien because it basically made sense.
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Oct 11, 2017 18:44
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