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Your posts feel like an incomprehensible dream.
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Mar 25, 2018 19:38
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haha, "no-dreams" smg
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Mar 25, 2018 19:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:And what’s that exactly? just curious, why do you pinpoint the bear tattoo as the objet petit a and what about the locket necklace?
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Mar 25, 2018 20:33
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Sir Kodiak posted:Interesting it only ever spoke with the one voice, then. You only have one voice but eat different things. SuperMechagodzilla posted:What disagreement? I am addressing the uniformity of the responses. You're operating on the assumption that what we are seeing is mitosis occurring with the blood and that the film is making a scientific error by showing it. I see a few other ways it could be interpreted, such as this being proof that the Shimmer is taking properties of different types of cells and copying them over/swapping them with other types of cells. This would go great with the other body horror as their are implications. I don't see it as a heavy-handed and scientifically inaccurate cancer metaphor. If her blood cells are now suddenly replicating, that's a hell of a gruesome possible death. If properties of cells are being copied or moved around, what implications does this have for other specialized cells in the body (that she couldn't test in the field as readily), such as sensory transducer cells, neurons? Or the rods and cones of the eye? Or reproductive cells? The other, simpler explanation was that it wasn't and never was mitosis she saw in the blood, just the Shimmer making its own refracted copy (which would be a process distinct from the well-understood biological process). Just like holding a mirror up to myself doesn't mean I don't know how sexual reproduction works. SuperMechagodzilla posted:As a more basic example of poor storytelling, take the character Josie, whose entire persona is summed up in a line of expository dialogue and a brief effects shot of vines growing through scars. She cuts herself, the dialogue says, to feel alive. I don't see how Garland failed to convey that - we see old, healed scars and no fresh cuts. That would imply that, at least for now, she is no longer cutting. Going into the Shimmer is the substitute for cutting. She goes 'too far' with the Shimmer, which ends her life (as a human, anyway), much like going too far with cutting would have ended it. The implication is that Josie didn't really stop self-harm and perhaps never had - she just changed her method. Her veins being replaced with the vines suggests the substitution (they are even anagrams). Conveying this with a few brief shots wasn't a failure, Garland did it well.
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Mar 25, 2018 21:36
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Dienes posted:You only have one voice but eat different things. Eating is not collecting.
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Mar 25, 2018 21:54
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Sir Kodiak posted:Eating is not collecting. Tell that to my hips.
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Mar 25, 2018 23:14
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Dienes posted:Tell that to my hips. It's cultivating mass.
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Mar 25, 2018 23:16
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ymgve posted:It seemed like it was feeding on panic, which is why it didn't attack when they were all sitting relatively still. I had similar complaint when I first saw it. Like as soon as it came in in my mind I was like "oh it's going to magically not be totally berserk just a bit here so our heroes can escape." And that's a stupid thing that a lot of movies do. BUT as we see from the life form at the end of the movie, I think it was less feeding and more just legit confused. I mean it's not a bear or a person it's a thing that just started to exist recently. That's something I like about this movie though, it has a lot of action/horror beats in it that as they're happening seem like stock thoughtless things that are there because those are the beats that happen in a sci-fi/horror story where a team of folks enters a space and get picked off. But as the movie goes on all of those moments have a genuinely good internal consistency with each other.
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Mar 25, 2018 23:55
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Dienes posted:Tell that to my hips. You may well be fat, but your body is not a hamburger collection.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:05
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I refract all nearby protein into my stomach.
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Mar 26, 2018 00:30
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:just curious, why do you pinpoint the bear tattoo as the objet petit a and what about the locket necklace? Garland’s not working in a vacuum; the exact same tattoo imagery is deployed in Prometheus, with Shaw’s partner Holloway (who sports a tattoo of a cross on his arm). But I’m referring even more specifically to Zizek’s commentary on the bored-looking, absurdly-posed models of Abercrombie & Fitch: “The object of desire is hidden behind the thigh but the true cause of desire is the tattooed cross on the arm. Is it not clear that we really make love with signs, not bodies?” -Zizek The locket itself is not really interesting, especially when compared to Shaw’s cross necklace. Dienes posted:I see a few other ways it could be interpreted, such as this being proof that the Shimmer is taking properties of different types of cells and copying them over/swapping them with other types of cells. This would go great with the other body horror as their are implications. As I said before, if her blood is changing into stem cells or something, then she is dead. Red blood cells are so featureless (without nuclei, and so-on) because they need maximum space for the hemoglobin. You don’t need to be a doctor to understand that, at the very least, we’re talking anemia, hypoxia.... If Lena’s blood just stops existing, replaced with cervical cancer or a cheese sandwich or whatever, that’s literally massive blood loss. In any case, we have absolutely none of this confusion in other films. In District 9, the black fluid is alien medical AI that is attempting to repair what it perceives as a faulty insect. Wikus doesn’t die during the process because, again, the black fluid is specifically designed to keep him alive. There’s no confusion, yet the film’s body horror is far more visceral and impactful. quote:I don't see how Garland failed to convey that [Josie] goes 'too far' with the Shimmer, which ends her life (as a human, anyway), much like going too far with cutting would have ended it. Josie doesn’t die; she has a psychotic breakdown. See?
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Mar 26, 2018 01:48
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Neo Rasa posted:I refract all nearby protein into my stomach. New fad diet for 2018.
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Mar 26, 2018 01:50
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Annihilation: intergenetic vore.
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Mar 26, 2018 02:15
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
I feel this is leaning way too hard on mimesis. Like I know you're qualifying it against other instances of unrealistic SF but a visual metaphor is a visual metaphor. Blood cells acting weird = the fissure is changing the organisms inside it. If we get into this we also get into the question of how the pods in both the '56 and '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers destroy the organisms they copy without having to be in contact with them at all, but of course that's like fairies (the old school dangerous variety) changing you while you sleep, the original author was more interested in the metaphor than the mechanism.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:18
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Maxwell Lord posted:I feel this is leaning way too hard on mimesis. Like I know you're qualifying it against other instances of unrealistic SF but a visual metaphor is a visual metaphor. Blood cells acting weird = the fissure is changing the organisms inside it. The pods have vines that reach out tho?
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Mar 26, 2018 07:27
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No idea if anyone has said this in the thread, but if you liked the setting check out the book Crystal World by JG Ballard. The movie is pretty much Solaris+CW, with lots of bad in it and horrible use of a JJLeigh. There's nothing new under the sun. I'm off to the desert. i give Annihilation: "I don't Know"/10 Elijah Snow fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 07:58
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Garland’s not working in a vacuum; the exact same tattoo imagery is deployed in Prometheus, with Shaw’s partner Holloway (who sports a tattoo of a cross on his arm). But I’m referring even more specifically to Zizek’s commentary on the bored-looking, absurdly-posed models of Abercrombie & Fitch: The effect on her blood is hardly instantaneous. We may just be seeing the beginning of it. As time does wonky things in the Shimmer, she could linger and suffer, with more and more blood in her body but less and less capable of functioning. Keep in mind a dude was pretty functional despite his internal organs being replaced with snake-eels, so perhaps in addition to mitosis the Shimmer is providing other qualities to the blood we don't know. We don't ahve to have a rigid interpretation here. Speaking of Prometheus, how would you compare the Shimmer to the black oil? Shimmer, chaotic as it is, at least seems to have a rhythm to it. I don't think we could say that about the oil.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:20
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PriorMarcus posted:The pods have vines that reach out tho? Yeah but they're not always in grabbing range of the person it seems.
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Mar 26, 2018 18:51
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Maxwell Lord posted:I feel this is leaning way too hard on mimesis. Like I know you're qualifying it against other instances of unrealistic SF but a visual metaphor is a visual metaphor. Blood cells acting weird = the fissure is changing the organisms inside it. That’s not how metaphor works. The metaphor was already Lena’s fantasy of biological immortality through the elimination of cellular senescence - the dream that a dark sorcerer would intervene and ‘fix God’s mistakes’. From that expository dialogue, we can reverse-engineer the film and ascertain the original concept of the blood test scene: that the shimmer has made Lena biologically immortal. Sure enough, Garland’s screenplay doesn’t gently caress it up. In the script, Lena observes normal red blood cells under a microscope, absolutely normal except for a faint shimmer. No division. But, as a writer making a motion picture, Garland obviously ran into a massive problem: how do you visualize the difference between a senescent cell and an immortal cell? The entire film revolves around that distinction. But the simple answer is that he couldn’t. He failed. What we get in the actual film is the clumsy attempt: the blood divides into normal blood and shimmering blood, even though the shimmer has already been established as all-pervasive. It’s like illustrating the concept of ‘wetness’ by having Lena dive underwater and divide into a wet person and a dry person. Underwater. It's not only patently pseudoscientific - it contradicts the internal logic of the film. Instead of presenting the shimmer as the cause of immortality, the film (accidentally) presents immortality as the cause of the shimmer effect. The cell shimmers after it's created. We can presume that the scripted version, where everything appears normal except for the faint shimmer, was deemed too subtle for audiences. “Like, of course her cells are shimmering. So what? The premise of the film is that things inside the shimmer will shimmer. Why is she surprised?” And a subtle effect would also, perhaps, hint too strongly at the truth: that Lena is 'just' paranoid, experiencing a delusion akin to Morgellon’s Disease. That's what the movie Bug is about. Again, the concept is good: Lena being biologically immortal would explain why she doesn’t age, even as the fantasy world around her accelerates towards some apocalyptic endpoint (with trees growing ten times faster than normal, and so-on). Garland just needs a Danny Boyle to step in and execute things. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 00:09
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This thread sucks now.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:09
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Wait you have access to the screenplay? Did they publish it?
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Mar 27, 2018 01:35
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Looks like all of Alex Garland's screenplays are on Amazon. Most at least, didn't go down the IMDB list.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:46
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Rhyno posted:This thread sucks now. SMG is correct about one thing, Danny Boyle is indeed a good director.
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Mar 27, 2018 03:20
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Why does the tattoo show up on Portman's arm eventually? She doesn't have it when first on the boat (just the bruise) but the guy in the pool that they cut open had the exact same tattoo. If her account of the events are to be questioned, what does that visual misdirect offer?
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Mar 27, 2018 13:41
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Inzombiac posted:Why does the tattoo show up on Portman's arm eventually? I mean, the whole thing with Area X is literally everything being combined and remixed. Even if you don’t get literally cloned, you cannot come out as the same person who went in. Also, it’s an infinity symbol, so the meaning is pretty obvious.
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Mar 27, 2018 13:56
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The way she describes events towards the end and points out the tattoo during her debriefing made it seem like it being an infinity symbol appealed to the life form in some way or that it had some unconscious affinity for it, which doesn't mean much but for this type of story is good enough for me as it being a sort of consistent anchor of when people are starting to be effected by the shimmer.
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Mar 27, 2018 14:01
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Yaws posted:SMG is correct about one thing, Danny Boyle is indeed a good director. Danny Boyle's a great director.
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Mar 27, 2018 15:12
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Neo Rasa posted:The way she describes events towards the end and points out the tattoo during her debriefing made it seem like it being an infinity symbol appealed to the life form in some way or that it had some unconscious affinity for it, which doesn't mean much but for this type of story is good enough for me as it being a sort of consistent anchor of when people are starting to be effected by the shimmer. I don’t think it’s about intent - it’s about Area X being inherently a breakdown of barriers between everything. She’s been literally and metaphorically exposed to and branded by the infinite, just like everyone else touched by the Shimmer.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:05
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Its a post-relationship tattoo. Shes getting back in touch with her early-20s self.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:43
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:Its a post-relationship tattoo. Shes getting back in touch with her early-20s self. giant back-phoenix didn't work with the backpacks
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Mar 28, 2018 00:21
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I rewatched this last night and all I could think when seeing Benedict Wong's character was that he was sideways making fun of people that need everything explained away. I think that's just from reading this thread a lot though.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:43
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Elijah Snow posted:No idea if anyone has said this in the thread, but if you liked the setting check out the book Crystal World by JG Ballard. The movie is pretty much Solaris+CW, with lots of bad in it and horrible use of a JJLeigh. There's nothing new under the sun. I'm off to the desert. or you know annihilation, authority, acceptace and roadside picnic
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Mar 28, 2018 01:01
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, the whole thing with Area X is literally everything being combined and remixed. Even if you don’t get literally cloned, you cannot come out as the same person who went in. Also, it’s an infinity symbol, so the meaning is pretty obvious. More specifically it is an Oroboros. Still, there is no other instance of one person copying parts of another person. So why does she develop the exact same tattoo as someone she never met? It's just such a weird writing choice with no real payoff. In fact, you could easily miss the tattoo on the spore guy. It is assumed that the bear melded with the one dead lady but there isn't any real evidence of that. It screams like a person but it's so distorted that they assume it is her at first out of panic. It has a partial human skull fused to it but there is no indication it came from her.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:07
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This film really needed to freeze frame on the eye shimmer, play the Thriller laugh, and fade to black. Missed opportunity if you ask me.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:25
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I kinda feel like this movie did to movie references what the Shimmer does to lifeforms within the plot. I kind of like that idea as a gimmick; like, by the end you're dealing with such a mishmash of references that maybe I can buy SMG's idea that it is intentionally obscuring the meaning beneath that pile. That doesn't necessarily annoy me though.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:36
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Rhyno posted:This thread sucks now. It's the way of CineD. Discuss movie, pick up some cool things about it... then the inevitable SMG waffle post appears and it's time to check out. Every. loving. Time. (yes, I'm a philistine)
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Mar 28, 2018 09:01
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Inzombiac posted:More specifically it is an Oroboros. I mean, I suppose you could count the clones, couldn’t you? Plus the mention of fingerprints changing suggests that other people’s fingerprints are running interference. Besides, the payoff seems pretty clear - so that we see a human and an alien embracing at the end, and even after seeing their origins, we’re not sure which is which.
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Mar 28, 2018 09:42
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I'm not expecting a prestine explination, considering the theme of the movie. People having their biology shift as they are exposed to the Shimmer is totally fine, its great even. My hangup is that we only see one example of a person supposedly partially morphing into another person and it means absolutely nothing. Maybe if the oroboros was a common mark within the Shimmer that could be an early sign of mutation (that would be really db, though). It's like an anti-Chekov's gun. There is setup, "payoff" and no impact whatsoever.
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Mar 28, 2018 12:37
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Inzombiac posted:My hangup is that we only see one example of a person supposedly partially morphing into another person and it means absolutely nothing. Oscar Isaac's accent and hair is quite different from how he looked and sounded when he went in but he's still looks like a human rather than exploding into a plant. They put both what's left of the original him and the new him on screen at the same time for a bit too. The bear merging with its victims, I mean it's not a person becoming another person but drat that was awesome.
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Mar 28, 2018 13:50
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Inzombiac posted:I'm not expecting a prestine explination, considering the theme of the movie. Anya got it as well, and she didn’t have it when she came in (she didn’t have it when she was lifting up the alligator head), in addition to Kane Josie didn’t have it, though maybe it was because she was destined to turn into trees, not people or whatever
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Mar 28, 2018 14:27
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