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The engineers aren’t uncaring Lovecraftian gods, they’re just one of those elder races that left a lot of cyclopean ruins behind after they were eaten by shoggoths.
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Oct 12, 2017 06:46
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This thread has inspired me to rewatch the series. For some reason i noticed that there are those novelty drinking birds in a couple of the movies, including prometheus and covenant, is there any significance to this because it seems like an odd thing to include.
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Oct 12, 2017 09:19
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The aliens were born from clouds.
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Oct 12, 2017 11:23
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Uncle Wemus posted:This thread has inspired me to rewatch the series. For some reason i noticed that there are those novelty drinking birds in a couple of the movies, including prometheus and covenant, is there any significance to this because it seems like an odd thing to include. There was a drinking bird on the Nostromo, and people can't help themselves from making dumb callbacks.  On one hand, it bothers me that they pop up all the time in Alien movies/games. On the other hand, space truckers and weed scientists would bring drinking birds everywhere.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:24
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Xenomrph posted:It isn't the other human contact with the Alien that I took issue with in Covenant, it was the possibility that David was the sole creator of the Alien and that the creature was only a few years old as of 'Alien' that didn't sit well with me. Granted the movie gives ample wiggle room for alternate interpretations, so it's much less of a "problem" now. It just seems like your love of the franchise is working against you here, like you're going into these new films just waiting for them to contradict Alien in some way that you don't like, and as a result you end up jumping at shadows. I mean, you yourself said that it's less of a problem now that you've thought about it more and considered other interpretations.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:26
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You're right about that but I like that Xenomrph is at least willing to think through some stuff and doesn't just treat it as all mindless and meaningless.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:35
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:You're right about that but I like that Xenomrph is at least willing to think through some stuff and doesn't just treat it as all mindless and meaningless. Agreed, he's cool in my book.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:37
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For all the complaints that AVP is the stupid one, the problem with it is actually that it is too 'deep'. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/enjoyment-of-trash-films-linked-to-high-intelligence-study-finds-a7171436.html I don't actually have anything smart to add because I haven't actually seen the first AvP. And only half of the second (the half I could see because it was too dim; in this case the high intelligence is figuring out how to brighten up the screen so you can enjoy the film I guess). (Also the article concludes that the being smart is liking things 'ironically' which is actually the opposite of you. However if there is one group of people who aren't as smart as they think they are, it's journalists who write about entertainment and/or science). Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 15:27
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Ferrinus posted:The engineers aren’t uncaring Lovecraftian gods, they’re just one of those elder races that left a lot of cyclopean ruins behind after they were eaten by shoggoths. Technically, Cthulhu is one of those races' high priest and not a god either 
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Oct 12, 2017 15:32
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Cthulhu is a loving noob who lost to a boat.
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Oct 12, 2017 16:43
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Basebf555 posted:It just seems like your love of the franchise is working against you here, like you're going into these new films just waiting for them to contradict Alien in some way that you don't like, and as a result you end up jumping at shadows. I mean, you yourself said that it's less of a problem now that you've thought about it more and considered other interpretations. Ehh it's not like I walk into every new piece of Alien media gripping the chair in anxiety, thinking to myself, "What are these idiots going to gently caress up this time?" I mean the EU has had plenty of goofy, retarded, half-baked, poorly executed nonsense over the years, and I generally approach it with the mentality that I'd rather have people try and fail rather than never try at all and just keep repeating the same formulaic stuff over and over. That doesn't mean I like the outcome every time, but overall I'm pretty tolerant of it. With Prometheus and Covenant it just so happened that Ridley Scott chose to mess with the two very specific things that I felt were 'Alien's most interesting ideas.  Prometheus messed with the Space Jockey, and I don't think the movie benefitted from it. Like, Prometheus has interesting ideas that I like seeing explored, but I feel it would have been better served by not linking it to 'Alien'. Had it not been an Alien movie, I think it would have given the filmmakers more creative freedom to do really "out there" and even more interesting stuff without the franchise baggage of being tied to Alien. Likewise it wouldn't have messed with what I feel is one of the most interesting and visually compelling things about 'Alien', the Space Jockey. Learning that the weird, seemingly ancient alien-thing that's fused to its own ship is actually a giant albino proto-human in a suit instantly makes the Space Jockey less interesting to me. Likewise, Covenant even approaching the idea of the Alien's origins felt like a misstep. The origins of the Alien was a topic that even the often-goofy EU knew to steer clear of at all times, because no matter what you do with it, you're going to end up diminishing the creature.
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Oct 12, 2017 16:44
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The Alien games/comics/tie-in novel/etc. universe is fundamentally stagnant and conservative not because its writers "know better" than to do anything new or interesting with it but because they can't. Those writers just don't have the legal clout to subvert, expand on, recontextualize, or otherwise change the alien - all they're allowed to do is rehash the movies over and over and over again. So it's just an endless waltz of marines dying or barely surviving, secret corporate projects seeming to work until they don't, etc. However, all of this material together does end up serving to teach us something "new" about the alien - that it's just a weird kind of bug, and an unusually common one at that. This imagined taboo of never, ever, EVER revealing The Origins of the alien is a storytelling cargo cult - it's mistaking the innate limitations of corporate-sponsored fanfic (that you are simply not allowed to do anything they don't let you, or that they are saving for themselves) for some kind of carefully-considered literary decision. In reality, not a thing would change about the EU if there was a canonical comic out there in which we found the planet that xenomorphs evolved on, or if we discovered the ancient alien facility in which xenomorphs were first genetically engineered. Where the alien comes from has never been an important setting mystery in the first place - it's just irrelevant to every story told about them. Prometheus and Covenant know this, and that's why they also don't tell us where the xenomorph comes from. What they do tell us is that the xenomorph isn't just a kind of animal. It reflects the grotesque horror of being alive in a more essential way.
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Oct 12, 2017 17:10
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Ferrinus posted:Those writers just don't have the legal clout to subvert, expand on, recontextualize, or otherwise change the alien - all they're allowed to do is rehash the movies over and over and over again. So it's just an endless waltz of marines dying or barely surviving, secret corporate projects seeming to work until they don't, etc. Like yeah the EU has stories with mad scientists and Marines with guns, but at best they're a plurality, not the majority. quote:This imagined taboo of never, ever, EVER revealing The Origins of the alien is a storytelling cargo cult - it's mistaking the innate limitations of corporate-sponsored fanfic (that you are simply not allowed to do anything they don't let you, or that they are saving for themselves) for some kind of carefully-considered literary decision.
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Oct 12, 2017 17:51
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Xenomrph posted:Except that wide swaths of the EU do in fact recontextualize the Alien, or use those tropes in ways to analyze or be critical of them. Throughout the EU the Alien has been shown as a cosmic force, a space bug, a religious allegory, a bioweapon, a deus ex machina, a symbol of corporate greed, a motherly figure, an icon of salvation, a source of creative inspiration, a symbol for change, an otherworldly intelligence, a contrast to humanity's various qualities, and a bunch of other interpretations, and that's just off the top of my head. It wasn't actually shown to be those things. Like there's a comic where a guy goes on and on about how the xenomorphs are destroying angels, but he is speaking metaphorically - we don't see the clouds part as vengeful aliens descend on shafts of light. Nothing new happens, it's just endless rearrangements of the same action figures. I'm not saying that fan fiction and collage are degenerate art forms or something, but they do have unique structural limitations as well as unique strengths, especially when they're actually locked to their source material by legal force. quote:Not really - the authors have acknowledged that bringing up that topic doesn't do the Alien any favors. It actually has been a conscious choice. If I wasn't allowed to leave my bedroom I might theorize that terrible danger lurks on the other side of the door, too. Could those authors have put their foot down and declared that the alien crawled out of an interdimensional portal at the heart of the universe, or was a space jockey bioweapon gone rogue, or evolved in the harsh jungles of alpha centauri's second orbiting planet? Would they have been allowed to? I'm betting no. But, like I said, Prometheus and Covenant don't actually tell us anything so pedestrian as where the alien comes from. What they tell us is that the alien isn't a discrete, predictable species of bug, and that the space jockeys are just as helpless and ignorant in the face of the destroying cosmic truth as we are. In this way, they are actually much more Lovecraftian than the preceding movies, and certainly than anything in the EU.
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Oct 12, 2017 18:10
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Ferrinus posted:It wasn't actually shown to be those things. Metaphorical recontextualization is still recontextualization. quote:Like there's a comic where a guy goes on and on about how the xenomorphs are destroying angels, but he is speaking metaphorically - we don't see the clouds part as vengeful aliens descend on shafts of light. Nothing new happens, it's just endless rearrangements of the same action figures. Saying it's just a rearrangement of action figures is a profoundly reductionist and simplistic viewpoint to take. quote:Could those authors have put their foot down and declared that the alien crawled out of an interdimensional portal at the heart of the universe, or was a space jockey bioweapon gone rogue, or evolved in the harsh jungles of alpha centauri's second orbiting planet? Would they have been allowed to? I'm betting no. quote:What they tell us is that the alien isn't a discrete, predictable species of bug and that the space jockeys are just as helpless and ignorant in the face of the destroying cosmic truth as we are. For an EU that just "rehashes the movies", the bulk of it came out before 'Alien 3', and generally didn't just retell the first two movies. poo poo, even the "mad scientist" trope had been used in myriad ways in the EU before Resurrection put it on the big screen. quote:In this way, they are actually much more Lovecraftian than the preceding movies, and certainly than anything in the EU. Like, the Alien EU is really different from, say, Star Wars or Star Trek EU because it really does tackle a ton of different tones, stories, themes, and styles, much like the movies do. They've got a wide range of quality or successful execution (just like the movies), and statements like "the EU does ______" or "the EU is like ______" is about as accurate (or useful) as saying "the Alien series is like _____". I'm not saying the EU is all good, but discounting it all out of hand just because it (correctly) avoided one topic or because it's not a movie is a really bizarre criticism to me. Sure the EU avoided the topic of Alien origins, but it introduced a ton of other ideas, interpretations, alterations, and other things outside of the films (with varying degrees of success).
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Oct 12, 2017 18:35
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Genocides aren't carried out by angels, they're carried out by material beings just like you and me. It's like, imagine I was a writer with a contract to produce a series of realistic fiction about cats. All I can do is write things that could plausibly happen to cats. That gives me an IMMENSE amount of leeway and flexibility - just by putting people and cats into novel situations, I can portray cats as our fuzzy friends, or sinister manipulative parasites, or transgression-enabling witches' familiars, or guardians sent from on high to help get us through the bad times, or whatever. What I can't do, though, is actually change what the reader knows about cats - just change the light they see them in. That's what the EU does. It's not bad that it does that, and it doesn't necessarily do it poorly, but it simply does not have the power that new movies have to change what we know. There is most certainly not a decade-old EU comic that teaches us, the readers, that rather than being a particular species of alien the xenomorphs are actually manifest avatars of bubbling, seething, pandoric chaos. It can say they're like that. But it can't say they're that. It takes someone who isn't actually bound by the contractual strictures of being an expanded universe writer for an existing, branded property to do that. That's why Prometheus and Covenant render the Alien more Lovecraftian, more inscrutable, more emblematic of maddening cosmic maleficence, than anything that came before. Because it can actually show us something new about the alien, and shake up our understanding of the alien, rather than reinforce it and at best remix it.
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Oct 12, 2017 19:20
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Ferrinus posted:
If anything, I'd say that Covenant attempting to say "the Alien is _____, and was made by/from ____" makes the Alien less inscrutable, not more. In my view the capital-A Alien in Covenant takes a huge backseat to the real show-stealer of the movie, the Neomorphs.
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Oct 12, 2017 19:45
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Xenomrph posted:If anything, I'd say that Covenant attempting to say "the Alien is _____, and was made by/from ____" makes the Alien less inscrutable, not more. But do you think that's what it's attempting to say or not? I know you've said that you're immediate reaction was that it is, and you didn't like that, but then before I thought you said you had thought about other interpretations and that the problem had been solved in your mind. Because that's the root of the disagreement, you're operating from a different premise than some other people in the thread like myself who don't think those are questions that Covenant or Prometheus are really concerned with answering in any definitive way.
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Oct 12, 2017 19:53
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It’s actually just ideology. You can say the creature is a symbol of corporate greed, or religious fundamentalism, or ‘excess creativity’, and so-on. All and none of those things are true. What everyone agrees upon is that they need to be eliminated in order to restore harmony and balance. Nobody actually cares about the origins or removing the mystique. That’s something invented retroactively, to explain away the funny feeling that you get. What they care about is that Prometheus and Covenant are radically Christian films that say the creatures are our brothers, and killing them is both unethical and unjust. The stupidly-named space jockey is just another pagan god, whereas Christ is Lord. You can give these things any origin you want, but so long as Scott is brutally critiquing ideology, fans will be upset. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Oct 12, 2017 20:03
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Basebf555 posted:But do you think that's what it's attempting to say or not? I know you've said that you're immediate reaction was that it is, and you didn't like that, but then before I thought you said you had thought about other interpretations and that the problem had been solved in your mind. My initial problem was with it attempting to answer that question because I don't think it's a question worth answering or one that benefits the Alien creature conceptually or thematically. The saving grace for me is that it doesn't answer it in a way I find definitive, and offers plenty of groundwork for multiple interpretations. Was it TRYING to answer that question? Ridley Scott certainly seems to think so. He's straight up said in post-release interviews that David created the Alien, and that Covenant answers the question of the Alien's origin. Does that mean I agree with him on any of that? Certainly not. A well-tread truism in the Alien fan community is, "Ridley Scott says a lot of things."
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Oct 12, 2017 20:07
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Oct 12, 2017 20:08
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Xenomrph posted:I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I get what you're saying, and I agree that the EU (or any "branded" fiction) can potentially have limitations, but I don't see anything innately unique to the movies that the EU couldn't do, or literally hasn't already done. The EU can't say "there's no 'xenomorph' species or even group of related species; rather, the xenomorph is a cosmic archetype that all reproductive life struggles to achieve, because hideous death and explosive growth are inextricably linked if not literally the same". The EU can tell us that aliens are so horrible it's as if they were put here to punish us, but it can't tell us that aliens are actual, literal outgrowths and emanations of our own deepest drives. What the EU can do is capitalize on this. As of Prometheus and Covenant, there's actually vastly more ground that alien media can cover and vastly more things that aliens can be seen to do or be, since now we know they're exponents of an endlessly-adaptive alchemical catalyst rather than, well, a kind of alien. quote:In my view the capital-A Alien in Covenant takes a huge backseat to the real show-stealer of the movie, the Neomorphs. I completely agree here, but it's all bound together with what I'm saying up above. Now we know that the egg->facehugger->chestburster->black shiny carapace guy thing is only a small sliver of what aliens can be, because aliens are more than that specific sequence of things with maybe a queen involved. Indeed, that specific sequence of things is the product of one madman's obsessions but really only one piece of the puzzle.
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Oct 12, 2017 21:12
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As a comparison, a book was recently released that told a bunch of stories in the Colonial Marine universe. Half of the stories had xenomorphs, some had marines we knew, and others had other aliens. And those other aliens were basically the level of random Pitch Black stuff. It was pure pulp, and a few of the stories were okay, but they never stretched beyond pulp because they weren't allowed to change/question the nature of the alien or that universe or recontextualize anything. Nothing was actually INTERESTING, for that reason.
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Oct 12, 2017 21:31
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Darko posted:As a comparison, a book was recently released that told a bunch of stories in the Colonial Marine universe. It wasn't that they weren't allowed, it's that most of the authors didn't choose to. The book overall isn't very good just on a technical level, and because it's a huge waste of potential. Compare it with a similar Predator anthology that just came out, which by all accounts does take risks and explore new ideas, and is better for it. Edit-- I don't want it to seem like I'm defending 'Aliens: Bug Hunt'. I'm not. It's a bad book littered with grammatical errors and uninteresting stories, but the stories aren't uninteresting due to some kind of contractual mandate. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 21:41
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I don't care about them revealing stuff, I care about the reveal being boring
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Oct 13, 2017 00:12
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David's workshop was an awesome reveal. To paraphrase MHB's negative review of the film, it's like Willy Wonka.
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Oct 13, 2017 00:17
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My take away from the past few pages is juggalo baby either doesnt read or can't comprehend words. Also I've been arguing for months in here that nothing about the films (Covenant and Prometheus) requires that David be the architect of the xenomorph at large, in fact it appeared that some of you have even latched onto the idea that all he's done is follow a blueprint or run with the black goo as a map towards something he imagines is original and unique when it really isn't. IMO they still haven't resolved the actual origins of the creature and we've just been shown one path to get towards it. The two films have centered on the hubris of the creator and the pitfalls that come with it so I hope the next film continues to extrapolate that story with David.
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Oct 13, 2017 00:26
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The workshop was cool, especially its low tech, alchemy feel. The engineers being white guys was not cool. ^^^ I can read just fine, I'm just ignoring stuff where people have been disregarding the content of the movies to make up a more interesting story around them juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 00:27
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K. Waste posted:David's workshop was an awesome reveal. To paraphrase MHB's negative review of the film, it's like Willy Wonka. The workshop was awesome, I wish we'd gotten to see more of it. It felt very 19th century Victor Frankenstein. For those interested in seeing a bit more of the concept art for the workshop, including pieces of David's notes, the Art of Prometheus book has some of it. There aren't long explanations of what you're looking at or what it's supposed to be, it's just pages of weird poo poo and it's one of the highlights of the book.
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Oct 13, 2017 00:46
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Oct 13, 2017 01:26
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juggalo baby coffin posted:The workshop was cool, especially its low tech, alchemy feel. The engineers being white guys was not cool. Can you please stop saying this bullshit because it's not true.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:36
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viral spiral posted:Can you please stop saying this bullshit because it's not true. they're literally big white guys 
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Oct 13, 2017 02:38
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You know what I mean. You're intentionally being obtuse.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:39
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Yea I see guys like that on the street all the time, they're a dime a dozen.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:39
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viral spiral posted:You know what I mean. You're intentionally being obtuse. they're aliens who happen to look like big white guys and also are the origin of all human white guys. it's dull. it's a lower effort look than star trek rubber forehead aliens
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Oct 13, 2017 02:40
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juggalo baby coffin posted:they're aliens who happen to look like big white guys and also are the origin of all human white guys. it's dull. it's a lower effort look than star trek rubber forehead aliens This is what a troll looks like. 
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Oct 13, 2017 02:44
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viral spiral posted:This is what a troll looks like. i apologise for expecting compelling creature design from the alien franchise. edit: i mean really, do you not understand how finding out that this:  was actually just a costume for this:  is disappointing? juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 02:48
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I wish there was an Alien movie every year instead of a Saw or Star Wars. The amount of stories you can tell are pretty high. The Alien can represent almost everything and it's a shame people won't push it in weird directions. I'd totally watch a procedural about Weyland Yutani studying Xenomorphs and making things with them.
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Oct 13, 2017 03:15
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juggalo baby coffin posted:i apologise for expecting compelling creature design from the alien franchise. Yeah, thats pretty awesome because we never expected that and they look like living Renaissance sculptures, which, given their relationship to humanity, is awesome.
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Oct 13, 2017 03:30
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Michelangelo's David vs Weyland's David Whoever wins, we lose.
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Oct 13, 2017 03:36
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