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Isn't Bishop a military android rather than a corporation one? (I mean, textually he's made by W-Y but he's owned and directives have been set by the marine corps) Bishop and Ash are both scientists, I've always interpreted Bishop as being 'this is who Ash would have been had he not been corrupted by corporate greed'.
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May 3, 2020 10:38
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Why was Ash hidden in the Nostromo's crew in the first place? Did W-Y do that regularly just in case one of their long haul ore truckers found a useful something? Seems like crews would figure it out sooner or later when they would gossip about together about their loser science/medical officers...
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May 3, 2020 16:01
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ScottyJSno posted:Why was Ash hidden in the Nostromo's crew in the first place? Did W-Y do that regularly just in case one of their long haul ore truckers found a useful something? Seems like crews would figure it out sooner or later when they would gossip about together about their loser science/medical officers... Ash was a last minute replacement for their regular science officer, so no-one really knew him.
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May 3, 2020 17:05
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One reading is that it's a subtle hint that W-Y knew about the distress beacon and way setting up a totally loyal asset to ensure recovery of anything valuable (if so, Aliens doesn't view this as true) but I think it's more a case of the story requiring the crew not to know that Ash is an android and working backwards from that to have him be a recent addition.
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May 3, 2020 17:13
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Xenomrph posted:You can’t count ‘Alien’ twice. But you can count the cameo in Predator 2 
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May 3, 2020 17:17
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Xenomrph posted:SMG is correct that Burke was acting unilaterally, but you’re right - the reason Burke acted unilaterally is because if he hadn’t, someone else would have. The movie does frame Burke as a rogue agent though ("It was a bad call, Ripley"). Ripley doesn't even show any rage towards W-Y itself, just towards Burke (They are going to nail to the wall for this...").
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May 3, 2020 17:28
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Joe Chill posted:The movie does frame Burke as a rogue agent though ("It was a bad call, Ripley"). Ripley doesn't even show any rage towards W-Y itself, just towards Burke (They are going to nail to the wall for this..."). The reason Burke goes rogue is because the company has a bonus incentive structure ('exclusive rights') that pushes him to do so. It's still about corporate greed. W-Y technically has rules in place but incentives its agents to go rogue. If it goes well then they take the advantages, if it goes badly then the corporation can wash its hands of any wrongdoing. Western companies do this all the time in the 3rd world.
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May 3, 2020 17:49
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Alchenar posted:One reading is that it's a subtle hint that W-Y knew about the distress beacon and way setting up a totally loyal asset to ensure recovery of anything valuable (if so, Aliens doesn't view this as true) but I think it's more a case of the story requiring the crew not to know that Ash is an android and working backwards from that to have him be a recent addition. It's basic surveillance. Ash is a management stooge sent to spy on the workers - but the point is union-busting, not catching aliens. Ash is given no alien-catching equipment whatsoever. WeedlordGoku69 posted:It's also noteworthy that at no point is he ever actually shown to be individually greedy; he's simply attempting to curry favor with the corporation he works for by creating more profit for them. "Look, those two specimens are worth millions to the bio-weapons division. Now, if you're smart, we can both come out of it as heroes and we'll be set up for life. [...] I went in and made a major security issue out of it, everybody steps in. Administration steps in, and there are no exclusive rights for anybody; nobody wins." Burke's entire scheme was to obtain exclusive rights to the alien 'virus' for himself, hiding the discovery from upper-level management so that he could negotiate his way into a big payout. In effect, his plan was to sell the virus back to his employers - and that's not something he could do if the company found the virus first. Those exclusive rights are why Burke does everything covertly - and this means, depending on how much a "secure" operation would have cost, he's probably milking the company for a lot of money. In the extended cut, it's explained that Burke indirectly contacted Newt Jorden's dad, who runs his own independent "mom & pop" surveying/drilling operation. W-Y often subcontracts "wildcatters" like Mr. Jorden to do the work of searching unlikely locations in the off chance they might find something, but the wildcatters also do their own independent surveys. It's implied that, although Mr. Jorden believes that he will receive the exclusive rights to the find, Burke will likely pull some kind of contractual technicality because he was the one who sent the coordinates. In either version, though, Burke is acting against the interests of the company. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 18:13 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 18:11
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Alchenar posted:The reason Burke goes rogue is because the company has a bonus incentive structure ('exclusive rights') that pushes him to do so. Correct - Ripley might not be that outwardly hostile towards the Company, but that changes over the course of the movie (“They can bill me!”) and she’s very openly hostile in the third movie because there’s an obvious pattern of behavior - whether it’s the Big Evil Company actively pursuing the Alien or it’s a never-ending string of “rogue actors” operating within an amoral organization, the Company is the problem and it’s not going to stop. Well I mean, unless they get bought out by Wal-Mart.
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May 3, 2020 19:06
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Xenomrph posted:Correct - Ripley might not be that outwardly hostile towards the Company, but that changes over the course of the movie (“They can bill me!”) and she’s very openly hostile in the third movie because there’s an obvious pattern of behavior - whether it’s the Big Evil Company actively pursuing the Alien or it’s a never-ending string of “rogue actors” operating within an amoral organization, the Company is the problem and it’s not going to stop. Ripley is specifically pissed off at Burke in that scene, but the premise of the whole film is that she absolutely loathes the company and wants nothing to do it and only goes along with the mission because she's promised that the Marines will be in control.
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May 3, 2020 20:11
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Alchenar posted:Ripley is specifically pissed off at Burke in that scene, but the premise of the whole film is that she absolutely loathes the company and wants nothing to do it and only goes along with the mission because she's promised that the Marines will be in control. It's interesting what people will imagine. "What would you say if I told you I could get you reinstated as a flight officer? The company's already agreed to pick up your contract." Although Ripley's primary motivation is to get over her trauma, she's also going in exchange for a good job at Weyland-Yutani. This is true even at the end of the film.
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May 3, 2020 20:27
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Alchenar posted:Ripley is specifically pissed off at Burke in that scene, but the premise of the whole film is that she absolutely loathes the company and wants nothing to do it and only goes along with the mission because she's promised that the Marines will be in control. I’m being pedantic but she also goes along because of her PTSD and lack of closure, but yes you’re right.
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May 3, 2020 20:34
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's interesting what people will imagine. You are right, but I think that comes down to being pissed off at W-Y being something that can't overcome the necessity of having to work for it if you want opportunity in life. Everyone hates the company, everyone knows the company is evil. But the system requires that you work for it.
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May 3, 2020 20:37
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I'm talking about how the Big Evil Company and Burke are presented and framed in the movie. W-Y is pushed to the side in the movie with Burke taking center stage as a rouge agent. All the previous Big Evil Company conspiracy from the first movie is never mentioned in Aliens by Ripley on screen. Xenomrph posted:Correct - Ripley might not be that outwardly hostile towards the Company, but that changes over the course of the movie (“They can bill me!”) and she’s very openly hostile in the third movie because there’s an obvious pattern of behavior - whether it’s the Big Evil Company actively pursuing the Alien or it’s a never-ending string of “rogue actors” operating within an amoral organization, the Company is the problem and it’s not going to stop. The "They can bill me!" line was directed at Burke though. Burke just didn't want the placed destroyed because he wanted the alien. I know what you saying is correct in the overall picture of the Alien Universe but I'm talking about how the movie Aliens frames Burke and W-Y. Joe Chill fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 20:42
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Joe Chill posted:All the previous Big Evil Company conspiracy from the first movie is never mentioned in Aliens by Ripley on screen. I remember bringing up the topic on an AvP forum years ago and I can’t remember what the consensus ended up being.
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May 3, 2020 21:46
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Xenomrph posted:I always found that odd - she doesn’t bring up Special Order 937 at the inquest despite nearly being choked to death over it. It's a (probably not even consciously done) soft recon because LOL if you think a big budget movie in the 80s is going to have the message that "corporations are evil and kill anyone for a percentage point" and not "corporations are necessary forces for the development of civilization it's a shame there's some bad apples in there that are greedy Burke." Edit: Building Better Worlds sorry lol Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 22:42 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 3, 2020 22:39
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Neo Rasa posted:It's a (probably not even consciously done) soft recon because LOL if you think a big budget movie in the 80s is going to have the message that "corporations are evil and kill anyone for a percentage point" and not "corporations are necessary forces for the development of civilization it's a shame there's some bad apples in there that are greedy Burke." Robocop came out in 1987.
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May 4, 2020 00:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's basic surveillance. Ash is a management stooge sent to spy on the workers - but the point is union-busting, not catching aliens. Ash is given no alien-catching equipment whatsoever. On a sidenote, the tracker works completely differently between when they find Jones and when Dallas goes into the vents. Short-range audio-only "bbbbbbBBBBBLEEEEEEEE" first, then a longer-range, multi-deck detector with a screen and tension-inducing "doot-doot, doot-doot" sonar blips. It's something I'd always subconsciously registered, but never put into words until now. Maybe Ash included a mode select switch that picked whatever noise would be more terrifying.
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May 4, 2020 00:04
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Neo Rasa posted:It's a (probably not even consciously done) soft recon Right, Ripley is retconned into just being robo-racist. Ridley Scott's film is retconned to mean "robots (and other 'biomechanical' lifeforms) are bad, but the company is still good" - which is of course absolutely ridiculous and not something that any viewer of Alien would rationally conclude. But, nonetheless, it's a "necessary" retcon because the narrative of Aliens is entirely predicated on Ripley trusting and wanting to work with the good corporation to kill robots. And she does, while learning that some robots are good employees. Joe Chill posted:I'm talking about how the Big Evil Company and Burke are presented and framed in the movie. W-T is pushed to the side in the movie with Burke taking center stage as a rouge agent. All the previous Big Evil Company conspiracy from the first movie is never mentioned in Aliens by Ripley on screen. Exactly; a huge part of Aliens is that Weyland-Yutani has become more "progressive" in the 60-ish years that Ripley had been frozen. There's zero mention of Mother, androids are now friendly and longer used for covert surveillance, etc. Burke is rather explicitly presented as an unfashionable regression from the new status quo; the basic twist is that he's doing what Ash did 60 years ago, but for himself rather than for the company. Meanwhile, all the really bad stuff passes without criticism. For example: "Corporation co-financed that colony, along with Colonial Administration." Who precisely are the guys in suits at the beginning? Who precisely is Bishop working for? That indiscernablity is a feature, not a bug. Corporations and the government (such as it is) have all but collapsed into eachother. Hadley's Hope is a company town, and it's clear that the (US) Colonial Administration governs very indirectly. It's just sort of dropped in bits of expository dialogue, and never becomes part of the narrative. Nobody blinks an eye. Payndz posted:Except for the motion trackers. The crew's incredulity is because Ash was able to whip up a surprisingly complex device from scratch (because hes a robot). It's not because they think the device was smuggled onto the ship. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 00:18
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General Battuta posted:Robocop came out in 1987. Dick.......YOU'RE FIRRRED!
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May 4, 2020 00:25
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General Battuta posted:Robocop came out in 1987. From Orion Pictures, who were willing to take on risker movies.
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May 4, 2020 00:38
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I assumed everyone in the deposition was with Weyland-Yutani.
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May 4, 2020 00:45
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Joe Chill posted:From Orion Pictures, who were willing to take on risker movies. They did some good poo poo too, including Return of the Living Dead originally and Flesh+Blood and Silence of the Lambs and bringing stuff like Opera and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey out in the US. But Risky indeed, IIRC they were basically in bankruptcy in the early 90 before even RoboCop 3 came out a couple of years later. I believe they were technically dead in like 1992 and anything from them after that was produced by someone else and just distributed with the name or something like that.
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May 4, 2020 00:46
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Orion was independent up until 1988, when Metromedia, which came out of the dissolution of the DuMont brocasting company in the 50s, sold off their affiliate stations to News Corp, who would turn around and turn those affiliates into Fox Broadcasting, and started buying up movie production companies. I believe from that point they did a mixture of wholly independent releases and some distributed by major studios, up until 1997 when the company died and they sold Orion, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and the Motion Picture Corporation of America to MGM; MPCA later divested themselves and went independent and still exist today, while Samuel Goldwyn got merged with United Artists in 1999. Orion now exists as an MGM shutter for genre pictures and has ties with Blumhouse these days.
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May 4, 2020 12:10
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Groovelord Neato posted:I assumed everyone in the deposition was with Weyland-Yutani. I did too, just basically based on the conversation of the value of the freighter. And the "We call it a shake and bake colony" line.
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May 4, 2020 12:58
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C-Bangin' it 
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Does ripley's job even still exist by the time of Aliens? The Sulaco appears to be 100% automated even without something like Mother. Even Bishop just chills in the cryo fridge not really doing anything flight related.
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May 4, 2020 13:13
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banned from Starbucks posted:Does ripley's job even still exist by the time of Aliens? The Sulaco appears to be 100% automated even without something like Mother. Even Bishop just chills in the cryo fridge not really doing anything flight related. I assume they would still have truckers/merchant mariners since the Marines still had dropship pilots and robot forklifts. Fassbender is so good in the prequels, whatever you thought of the films themselves.
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May 4, 2020 14:10
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banned from Starbucks posted:Does ripley's job even still exist by the time of Aliens? The Sulaco appears to be 100% automated even without something like Mother. Even Bishop just chills in the cryo fridge not really doing anything flight related. Owlbear Camus posted:I assume they would still have truckers/merchant mariners since the Marines still had dropship pilots and robot forklifts. Yeah Ripley's job definitely still exists. She loses her flight/pilot officer license early on in Aliens which is why the only job she could get was basically a forklift driver at the docks. Getting reinstated is the first part of Burke's talk when he's convincing her to join the mission. The Sulaco seems to be running fine on its own, I got the impression from how Bishop is able to access the logs so easily even in his busted up state in Alien 3 that basically the ship's android is now the public, more humane face of the ship itself instead of Mother. I also got the impression that the Sulaco itself and the drop ship/etc. aren't typically there for running cargo or making sure $$$$$$$ worth of precious ore or whatever gets from A to B. So it doesn't have a fully networked direct line like in Alien or Alien 3 because it's purpose is to fly to a point, drop (expendable) marines off who quickly kill the poo poo out of everything, then leave. I remember in Aliens they seem stunned that there's like almost three weeks of time between "the marines aren't checking in" and "backup arrives." And they were definitely expecting to go in guns blazing. But even in Prometheus they have David clearly up and about while the ship is en route, and while the ship basically runs itself he's still checking up on stuff and definitely working too like doing tons of research and stuff (and goofing off a bit). They were originally going to introduce Bishop that way in Aliens with him walking the halls and then waking everyone up. And that all seemed fine to me, like, the space truckers in Alien aren't even seen as human by the corporation and so you can have a system like Mother running things and issuing simple orders because the financial stake is high, which makes the job less complicated and just FLY SHIP HERE LIKE WE TELL YOU, NOW FLY SHIP HERE, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.
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May 4, 2020 14:27
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Ok, then 4 went to having "Father".
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May 4, 2020 14:52
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Colostomy Bag posted:Ok, then 4 went to having "Father". I think the canon explanation for that is that Joss Whedon is not very good.
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May 4, 2020 15:23
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Neo Rasa posted:I think the canon explanation for that is that Joss Whedon is not very good. He tried to trick us with Firefly being superficially charming but then he went on to ruin writing forever.
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May 4, 2020 15:26
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I love Joss Whedon always blaming everyone else for his bad writing.
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May 4, 2020 15:30
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Groovelord Neato posted:I love Joss Whedon always blaming everyone else for his bad writing. I still lol that you got some excellent casting for these rag tag space smugglers plus Brad Dourif/etc. and somehow like, sure Joss, everyone accidentally acted wrong and that's why the movie is bad, okay.
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May 4, 2020 16:00
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What was the canon for Cole? I know she was a "recalled" version but were other models floating around at the time?
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May 4, 2020 16:01
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Groovelord Neato posted:I love Joss Whedon always blaming everyone else for his bad writing. I wonder if he could write something without the twee and/or sexy mentally troubled/haunted and/or amnesiac Sexy Fighting Badass Girl if you put a gun to his head. (wouldn't be surprised if his "feminist pitch" for Avengers wrote in Black Widow just so he could have his dumbo feather)
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May 4, 2020 17:26
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Groovelord Neato posted:I love Joss Whedon always blaming everyone else for his bad writing. Can you believe that moron blamed the A-list cast, director, and production values (all in one sentence) for Alien Resurrection’s mixed reception? The guy is a loving tool.
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May 4, 2020 17:30
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https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/why-whedon-still-upset-about-his-tty-alien-resurrection Was googling for specific Whedon comments and found this article where he calls Prometheus "Pro-meaningless". Dude is arrogant and bitter as hell.
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May 4, 2020 17:38
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Basebf555 posted:https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/why-whedon-still-upset-about-his-tty-alien-resurrection Now he’s changing his story - the cloners/evil scientists were supposed to be “morally ambiguous” until a twist at the end? That sounds dumb as gently caress. (Whedon has stated the script was adapted accurately many times)
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May 4, 2020 17:50
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A4R8 posted:Now he’s changing his story - the cloners/evil scientists were supposed to be “morally ambiguous” until a twist at the end? That sounds dumb as gently caress. When you're starting a sentence with "Now, Brad Dourif is a very good actor, but..." you know you've hosed up.
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May 4, 2020 17:54
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Colostomy Bag posted:What was the canon for Cole? I know she was a "recalled" version but were other models floating around at the time? Referring to her as Cole, you're really missing out on the nuance of Whedon's writing here. The character's name is Call. And not only was she recalled (  ), her only action in the movie is to pull an ethernet cable out of her arm to place a call into space while she sits in a chapel and wonders aloud if she counts as alive or not.Genius. Canon-wise I believe there were others like her around, there's maybe like one and a half sentence about it in the movie but vaguely it's like we started using androids to manufacture androids and the result was androids like Call who get recalled ( ) because techno-babble not as easy to program to do stuff or whatever but also all the other androids we see in the movies can do whatever anyway and it's not really spelled out in any meaningful way.
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 18:53 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 18:49
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