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mind the walrus posted:I complained about that poo poo in 1999 with The Phantom Menace too. I can let it go if the movie itself is good, but sci-fi prequels are basically never good.
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Feb 18, 2020 21:27
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Say what you will about The Thing prequel. It's derivative, and the pacing, acting and tension will never match John Carpenter's film. Not to mention the terrible CGI the studio boneheadedly decided to use to cover up the really cool practical effects. That all being said it's clearly a labor of love from a team that really, really respected Carpenter's film and I simply can't hate it for that reason. Even though the one new idea in the film hinges on a shapeshifting master mimic being too dumb to simply stuff the fillings back into its teeth after it assimilates someone.
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Feb 18, 2020 21:43
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Ehh it may not have thought they were important, or that the host species it was infiltrating for the first time would pick up on it and exploit that to detect it.
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Feb 18, 2020 21:59
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Prometheus... Meh. Except for this scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqE0GT0echE I had nightmares after seeing that the first time.
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Feb 18, 2020 22:06
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Yeah that was the best scene of the movie. Terrifying. PhotoKirk posted:It does add some credence to the line about A2's being a bit twitchy. That's the exact line I was thinking of. He was referring to Ash but it obviously gives the impression that the earlier models had a lot of not-so-good features. Like emotions. That just seems like an all around bad idea.
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Feb 18, 2020 22:12
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Model A3 patch notes: - Added Asimov style behavior inhibitors. - Fixed an unexpected bug that caused emotion emulation engine to generate resentment.
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Feb 18, 2020 22:33
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I'm not nearly as kind to The Thing prequel for two basic reasons: 1. Women and misogynistic paranoia 2. The language barrier between Norwegian/non-Norwegian scientists at the outpost Those two things were very easy low-hanging fruit to seize on in the screenplay, and neither was capitalized on at all. That and little lines like "leave it in" really contributed to such a high derivation factor that no amount of practical effects was going to salvage that movie for me, and I find it really hard to believe that "studio fuckery" would have kept those elements out.
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Feb 18, 2020 22:34
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I agree that there were less clunky ways to handle the axe in the wall, but the language barrier thing does come up (briefly) when the American pilots take the dude hostage and they shoot the guy with the flamethrower. I do agree that they should have leaned on it a bit more, though.
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Feb 18, 2020 22:43
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mind the walrus posted:So go watch Covenant The ship in my alien movie doesn’t look like the other one i want more of the same 
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Feb 18, 2020 23:15
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k
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Feb 18, 2020 23:20
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It's actually cool when production design uses the same consistent visual language for films set in the same "world."  The Used Future aesthetic is part of what makes Alien Alien.Now if there's anything to the story that Ridley wanted to tell a different sci fi story and the studio held the checkbook shut till he said he'd tie it into Aliens that would explain some of of the dissonance.
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Feb 18, 2020 23:24
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mind the walrus posted:I'm not nearly as kind to The Thing prequel for two basic reasons: Despite all the little gear teeth that don't quite mesh, I try to give a little benefit of the doubt to the people directly involved with the production and creative work, writers/director included. I just picture doing a CONSTANT triage juggling act with all the bullshit flying around from the studio. I can't imagine all the cheery-toned pitch meetings about adapting a classic sausagefest for the modern era, while embracing a more Alienesque female body sovereignty/rape horror subtext, while updating all the tooooootally lame practical FX to show everything immediately gross and spooky in CGI for teens on dates, and oh by the way we have more notes about thursday's notes and wait where are you going *waves huge check with YOUR CAREER on the 'for' line*
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Feb 18, 2020 23:25
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I can't imagine any studio suit being so simultaneously attentive and broken that they would have seen hypothetical scenes of the characters breaking across national/gender lines during the "suspicion" phases of the movie and going "NO NO NO THAT WON'T DO AT ALL IT HAS TO BE MORE LIKE 1982." It's possible, but not probable. I don't believe in making GBS threads on the people who made The Thing (2011). I got out my impotent nerd rage and cynicism over a decade ago. But there's a limit to how much good faith you can extend someone before you're just excusing incompetence. Is that unfair? Kind-of. That's what happens when you don't do your job well-enough, even when circumstances make your gently caress-ups understandable.
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Feb 18, 2020 23:42
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Ornamental Dingbat posted:Some of those teasers were pretty cool Man I really wish they had left all of the alien stuff out of Prometheus and Covenant. Fassbender makes a loving great android and I would have loved a movie or two like this that sort of slowly ratcheted up the existential dread of watching him learn the "wrong" answers about life and creation and ethics that we have (mostly) sidestepped but that would be perfectly obvious to a robot. Also yeah keeping the same visual language from movie to movie is good. There's lots of room to expand on the Alien aesthetic while still appearing to be in the same "universe"
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Feb 18, 2020 23:51
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Picked up that Alien RPG that came out relatively recently. Seems fun. People who wrote it are super fans. It regularly references and name drops things outside the films, from the Dark Horse comics to the Kenner toy line. I like these Aliens.
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Feb 19, 2020 00:03
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Beet Wagon posted:Man I really wish they had left all of the alien stuff out of Prometheus and Covenant. Fassbender makes a loving great android and I would have loved a movie or two like this that sort of slowly ratcheted up the existential dread of watching him learn the "wrong" answers about life and creation and ethics that we have (mostly) sidestepped but that would be perfectly obvious to a robot. Mutant Headcrab posted:Picked up that Alien RPG that came out relatively recently. Seems fun. People who wrote it are super fans. It regularly references and name drops things outside the films, from the Dark Horse comics to the Kenner toy line.
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Feb 19, 2020 00:06
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mind the walrus posted:
The film still belongs to the studio and the inexperienced director got battered around because the studio wanted to defend/control an IP that was old, didn't have a huge footprint, but was beloved by internet people. I get what you're saying and it was a failed endeavor, but the fact that he got all the practical FX stuff basically done at great expense/time before being scrapped suggests being battered down in the background by a massive studio machine. Yeah, the movie sucks. But it sucks because of the studio, not in spite of them. How many times have you been browbeaten and turned under by management in the same way? The director is the scapegoat in an untenable position as a neophyte in ostensible charge of a rad but aged property. He hosed up but with specific, forceful, irresistible direction to gently caress up in those specific ways. There came a point where he could either finish the movie and put his kids through college or walk and waste it all and burn his career. I view the movie as an interesting artifact. Not good, just... there.
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Feb 19, 2020 00:17
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I wish I could get my friends to play the Alien rpg. Nobody is interested because they assume it's just a gimmick
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Feb 19, 2020 00:20
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Mutant Headcrab posted:Picked up that Alien RPG that came out relatively recently. Seems fun. People who wrote it are super fans. It regularly references and name drops things outside the films, from the Dark Horse comics to the Kenner toy line. You can thank one guy for that, Andrew Gaska - I’ve actually been picking his brain on Facebook and there’s a lot of crazy references to stuff. I’ve caught three separate Kenner toy references so far, two of the rejected Alien3 scripts get referenced, there’s an ‘Outland’ reference, apparently there are references to both ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Soldier’, some of the Marine hardware is from Aliens: Colonial Marines, there’s a reference to the first AvP FPS for PC (although apparently that was meant to be removed because technically it’s AvP material and that’s a separate license), there’s a bunch of references to the *old* Aliens RPG (including pretty much half of the star chart in the new RPG), all kinds of poo poo I’ve spotted so far. There are more campaign books coming and apparently those will include references to even more stuff, like the old “Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure” PC game.
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Feb 19, 2020 00:21
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mind the walrus posted:I complained about that poo poo in 1999 with The Phantom Menace too. I can let it go if the movie itself is good, but sci-fi prequels are basically never good. Did you see Elysium?
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Feb 19, 2020 00:24
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"Well actually the Nostromo is just a bunch of space truckers and it's actually even more realistic if the tech for a super secret mission is advanced but the working class people are stuck with retrograde analog technology"
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Xenomrph posted:You can thank one guy for that, Andrew Gaska - I’ve actually been picking his brain on Facebook and there’s a lot of crazy references to stuff. I found most of those references, but which one is the AvP reference? One of the planets?
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Feb 19, 2020 01:28
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ruddiger posted:Did you see Elysium? I don't remember much of that movie but I remember the exoskeletons being sort of janky tech. Yeah, I think that whole movie was "dirty" in a really good way.
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Feb 19, 2020 01:33
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Xenomrph posted:You can thank one guy for that, Andrew Gaska - I’ve actually been picking his brain on Facebook and there’s a lot of crazy references to stuff. If you or anybody would want to do a brief write-up/list of the references it would be really cool for... lurkers who aren't me but love EU poo poo and are thinking about getting the game. Just looking out for those other folks, you know
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Feb 19, 2020 02:12
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I liked the Thing prequel, sure they screwed up by not using the practical effects but overall despite a few issues it wasn't too bad. The greatest problem it has is that there's almost zero way to ever match the original due to peoples perceptions of that film so it's always going to come off as a poor follow up. Speaking of the Thing, I remember hearing once someone wrote up a story from the Things perspective, it even won an award. Anyone ever read that?
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Feb 19, 2020 02:18
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Keltar posted:I liked the Thing prequel, sure they screwed up by not using the practical effects but overall despite a few issues it wasn't too bad. The greatest problem it has is that there's almost zero way to ever match the original due to peoples perceptions of that film so it's always going to come off as a poor follow up. The Things
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Feb 19, 2020 02:25
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Sent by my friend in Salem, OR: 
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Feb 19, 2020 02:42
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It's just so loving cool
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Feb 19, 2020 02:51
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Awesome, thanks.
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Feb 19, 2020 02:54
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Mutant Headcrab posted:I found most of those references, but which one is the AvP reference? One of the planets? The write up for LV426 mentions that it’s orbited by Odobenus Station, which is from the Marine campaign level “Orbital” from AvPClassic. Pissed Ape Sexist posted:If you or anybody would want to do a brief write-up/list of the references it would be really cool for... lurkers who aren't me but love EU poo poo and are thinking about getting the game. Just looking out for those other folks, you know I haven’t gone through the book page by page yet so I know there’s a shitload I haven’t found yet, but I’d like to do a full list at some point. I didn’t like that story because it changes up a bunch of the “rules” established in the Carpenter movie, undoes the effectiveness of the blood test, and makes nearly every character a Thing. Android Apocalypse posted:Sent by my friend in Salem, OR: No joke it was the old Kenner toys that got 9-year-old me hooked on Aliens, and it’s amazing to see a new line of Aliens toys aimed unironically at children to start the cycle all over again. 
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Feb 19, 2020 02:58
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Xenomrph posted:No joke it was the old Kenner toys that got 9-year-old me hooked on Aliens, and it’s amazing to see a new line of Aliens toys aimed unironically at children to start the cycle all over again.  Hell yeah toys-getting-you-hooked on the best movie buddy!
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Feb 19, 2020 03:01
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Pennywise the Frown posted:
The first Aliens toy I ever got was the Snake Alien, which I specifically chose because my mom is afraid of snakes. 
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Feb 19, 2020 03:05
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Xenomrph posted:I didn’t like that story because it changes up a bunch of the “rules” established in the Carpenter movie, undoes the effectiveness of the blood test, and makes nearly every character a Thing. I don’t like it much either tbh, because for me the effectiveness of The Thing is that you can never really know for sure which of the characters aren’t things. It’s the ambiguity which is never resolved that makes it work. It’s ok as an addendum to “Who Goes There” though.
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Feb 19, 2020 03:07
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skasion posted:I don’t like it much either tbh, because for me the effectiveness of The Thing is that you can never really know for sure which of the characters aren’t things. It’s the ambiguity which is never resolved that makes it work. It’s ok as an addendum to “Who Goes There” though. Speaking of Who Goes There, the executor of the Campbell estate came across an unpublished manuscript for an expanded version of “Who Goes There” called ‘Frozen Hell’, and recently published it via Kickstarter. The Kickstarter campaign’s stretch goals led to a spin-off collection of Thing-inspired short stories written by a bunch of professional sci-fi and horror authors called ‘Short Things’, which is pretty neat. The success of the Kickstarter also got the Campbell estate to get a faithful Who Goes There/Frozen Hell movie adaptation going backed by Blumhouse Pictures, so that’s in the pipeline.
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Feb 19, 2020 03:13
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I only ever had one alien toy. It was the Flying Queen Alien and it whipped so much rear end. I wanted the others but I had a weirdly difficult time finding them.
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Feb 19, 2020 03:22
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I had the flying queen and the regular queen which was awesome because she had a little air reservoir on the back of her head and when you squeezed it her second jaw would come out. 
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Feb 19, 2020 03:24
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I purchased this Alien Queen a few months ago: It's great.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:12
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Kind of weird that big box stores are stocking toys from a 35 year old R-rated movie. There hasn't been much lately that's refreshed the cultural cachet of the Aliens. I mean I get the deluxe figures for the adult collector you see by the vidya game department, but these are clearly designed to give to little timmy to smash together.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:19
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Those Walmart toys are new? What sparked the (good) decision to make Aliens toys?
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Feb 19, 2020 04:25
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Pennywise the Frown posted:Those Walmart toys are new? What sparked the (good) decision to make Aliens toys? Apparently launched in 2020 by a company called Lanard Toys. I absolutely love the technicolor 90s action figure style, it really looks like an actual, y'know, toy. Plus, check out the APC:  No idea why they decided to launch them now. Lanard doesn't seem to have a lot of real high profile brands it represents, mostly like NERF knockoff stuff (and Rampage: The Movie  ), but big thumbs up to whoever approved the sorta low-fidelity comic-book throwback toys, they're cool as hell.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:47
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I'm not a fan of the solid bright color for the aliens for the same reason you like it. It makes it look like a toy. Not as cool.  That sentry gun is awesome though. Someone did their homework.
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Feb 19, 2020 04:51
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