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Lord Krangdar posted:I find the Xenomorph way more interesting and creepy when it moves like a human than when it moves like a Jurassic Park dinosaur. The former is nightmarish, the latter is just boring. I find it more creepy and interesting the less it's explained. Prometheus and Covenant don't seem to understand this concept. A lot of horror movies don't, for whatever reason. I don't need a Michael Myers orign story, thank you very much. It's no accident that the more they explain the Aliens and their origin, the less scary they get and why the first two films were so god damned terrifying. Like, the Space Jockey was way more intriguing when it was just there.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:42
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The aliens were never scary to me so I don’t give a poo poo about if they tell their origin. Just make it a good story, and that’s what Covenant and Prometheus get. Those movies are great stories.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:51
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Blood Boils posted:Ok, Milburn and Fifield are just in grad school then. That explains why Fifield is so excited to get paid And why Milburn is so excited to get laid.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:09
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BiggerBoat posted:I find it more creepy and interesting the less it's explained. Prometheus and Covenant don't seem to understand this concept. A lot of horror movies don't, for whatever reason. I don't need a Michael Myers orign story, thank you very much. Neither Prometheus or Covenant give an origin outside of some even more mysterious black goo. We still literally know nothing about where they came from or the Derelict.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:12
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i just want more contradictions in the canon and wild space body horror. black goo > alien bug queen to me, but it's all a matter of taste i guess
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Mar 28, 2021 23:27
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Well I mean, Covenant seems to show that David made the Alien. And the Space Jockey goes from some eldritch inhuman creature fused to his chair to a pale giant human in a suit.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:30
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Xenomrph posted:Well I mean, Covenant seems to show that David made the Alien. And the Space Jockey goes from some eldritch inhuman creature fused to his chair to a pale giant human in a suit. The former is definitely not definitive on screen and doesn't align with the timeline. Or if you were paying attention to Prometheus, figure the xeno is a unique thing entirely and not intrinsic tied to the goo in some manner in the first place. Nobody cares about Space Jockeys anymore, and them being Greek God statues only adds to the mystique.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:33
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the only plot hole i care about is, why did Shaw put David's head back on his body
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Mar 28, 2021 23:35
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Darko posted:Neither Prometheus or Covenant give an origin outside of some even more mysterious black goo. We still literally know nothing about where they came from or the Derelict. Both films tell us that the Jockey are proto humans (and not strange bone creatures fused to the ship) that developed/found the black goo then David harnesses it's power, tinkers with it and seemingly develops what will be the eggs/Facehugger/Xeno in Alien. That's a lot more backstory than what you get in Alien which is just "Weird dead being in a weird organic ship has a cargo of horror eggs for no reason." Don't they even say in Prometheus that the ship was headed towards Earth to wipe it out?
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Mar 28, 2021 23:40
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alf_pogs posted:the only plot hole i care about is, why did Shaw put David's head back on his body He convinced her to.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:45
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sigher posted:Both films tell us that the Jockey are proto humans (and not strange bone creatures fused to the ship) that developed/found the black goo then David harnesses it's power, tinkers with it and seemingly develops what will be the eggs/Facehugger/Xeno in Alien. That's a lot more backstory than what you get in Alien which is just "Weird dead being in a weird organic ship has a cargo of horror eggs for no reason." Prometheus does a weird trick of kind of telling us human origin but not Xeno origin outside of black goo - and its the same origin. Covenant strengthens it with a whole "black goo either breaks down and seeds/evolves or create a parasitic life cycle" explanation. The movies just shift the mystery one step further which solve nothing.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:47
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Darko posted:The former is definitely not definitive on screen and doesn't align with the timeline. Try telling that to some Alien fans  For the record I agree with you, but the movie even hinting at/attempting to show the Alien’s origin is dumb as hell.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:08
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Darko posted:He convinced her to. "i promise i won't harvest you for parts"
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Mar 29, 2021 00:26
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Xenomrph posted:Try telling that to some Alien fans You can't discuss film with people still trying to harvest Hardy Boys mysteries.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:43
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to repeat a point I made in the general horror thread, the arc of black goo and David's experiments in Prometheus and Covenant read far less to me as an origin story for the xenomorph and more, in line with the bleakness of those movies, showing a sort of metaphysical carcinisation to be in effect - all forms lead to the xenomorph sooner or later, be it alien bug, black goo, android experimentation or just plain self-inflicted dehumanization through technology. remember: you see a mural of a xenomorph in prometheus, which predates any sort of fuckery by David.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:51
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ruddiger posted:Steven Spielberg's dAvId You shut your loving mouth. I hate nothing in cinema more than what Spielberg did to Kubrick's vision in AI.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:56
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mllaneza posted:You shut your loving mouth. I hate nothing in cinema more than what Spielberg did to Kubrick's vision in AI. Huh? It was absolutely perfect. More bleak at the end than most things Kubrick ever did and viewed humanity as horrendously selfish to the point of horrific.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:02
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Darko posted:You can't discuss film with people still trying to harvest Hardy Boys mysteries. What do you mean?
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Mar 29, 2021 01:39
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Darko posted:Nobody cares about Space Jockeys anymore, and them being Greek God statues only adds to the mystique. As someone who agrees with the first part and I'll go further saying that no one ever cared about them, but not knowing anything what we saw in Alien made it great. But there's also absolutely no mystique to the Engineers in Prometheus, I like the idea of them and the look of them and their tech but it's a goatse sized stretch to say that there is anything interesting about them.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:42
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:to repeat a point I made in the general horror thread, the arc of black goo and David's experiments in Prometheus and Covenant read far less to me as an origin story for the xenomorph and more, in line with the bleakness of those movies, showing a sort of metaphysical carcinisation to be in effect - all forms lead to the xenomorph sooner or later, be it alien bug, black goo, android experimentation or just plain self-inflicted dehumanization through technology. remember: you see a mural of a xenomorph in prometheus, which predates any sort of fuckery by David. Carcinisation is a very good analogy. I think the big takeaway from the Prometheus line of films is that the xenomorph is just implicit in the generative process. As for the difference between Prometheus Engineers and the much bigger, fused-to-the-ship Space Jockey, I bet that's just what happens to those biomechanical suits if you don't give them the proper maintenance + maybe die while wearing them so they've got your corpse to feed on.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:54
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Even if they just ended up as elephant aliens, nothing Ridley Scott would have done with them would have satisfied fans.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:54
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Invalid Validation posted:Even if they just ended up as elephant aliens, nothing Ridley Scott would have done with them would have satisfied fans. Most fans wanted them just left the hell alone - they’re scarier and more interesting when you know nothing about them other than “weird, old, dead”.
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Mar 29, 2021 02:08
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Xenomrph posted:Most fans wanted them just left the hell alone - they’re scarier and more interesting when you know nothing about them other than “weird, old, dead”. They were never any more interesting than they are now. They were big unknowable things in the 70s and they're big unknowable things now. It's telling that the few times they were imagined, people made them big stupid elephants. Also, I personally find giant marble Greek statues coming alive creepier than big elephants, personally. Closer to us, but "off" is creepier than what they were imagined as. The reason other stuff in the universe were creepy because they were walking dicks or two hands pushed together with a vagina in the middle. The pilot was never creepy and always seen as a victim (possibly of their own hubris). Darko fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 02:19
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Darko posted:They were never any more interesting than they are now. I can't agree. Darko posted:Also, I personally find giant marble Greek statues coming alive creepier than big elephants, personally. The human thing is definitely better than the elephant thing but the latter was just in the comics.
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Mar 29, 2021 02:34
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sigher posted:I can't agree. The only thing we got in the original Alien was some big thing that was transporting them and screwed up somehow. When I was a kid and saw alien in the early 80s or whatever, nobody saw them as scary from people that saw the original in the theatre. Just some doofy transporter alien that may have been interesting. It being so flawed it was killed by its own transport weakened it away from "scary" on a viewing. Them being ultra religious us is a more frightening prospect, especially the fact we only survived via luck. When did it become "scary?"
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Mar 29, 2021 02:38
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It’s always been weird and scary to me, largely because we don’t know about it. It hints at a larger, older, more dangerous galaxy that humans can’t comprehend and are barely even a part of. Making them giant pale humans and intrinsically linking them to humanity kind of undoes that. I’ve said it before but Prometheus and Covenant are interesting movies with cool ideas, I just don’t want them anywhere near the Alien franchise. If they’d been totally divorced from Alien and Ridley Scott had been let off the chain and just done something totally original, it could have been way wilder and scarier than what we got. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 02:43
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Even if Space Jockeys were big, skeletal elephants, they would still basically be big dudes who drive around in vehicles and gently caress up sometimes. They were always linked to humanity.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:03
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No? How were they linked to humanity in ‘Alien’? In the first movie they were explicitly and distinctly “other”. We didn’t know who they were, what they wanted, where they came from, only that they’d encountered the Alien before and it went badly.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:15
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Alien is about some guys in a spaceship who find another spaceship that has a dead guy in it. The dead guy has a hole in his chest, foreshadowing the hole-in-the-chest that one of our guys is soon to die of. At first blush, the Space Jockey seems unknowable. It turns out it's all too human, as fallible as we are.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:19
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That’s an interesting reading, but it’s not one I agree with. The Jockey being fallible (whatever that means in this context - was it intentionally transporting the eggs as a weapon? Was it carrying them away from somewhere as a suicide mission to protect someplace else? We don’t know) doesn’t make it human. It just means the Galaxy is a weird and dangerous place.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:31
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Yes, but New York is also a weird and dangerous place. You can come across a corpse on the road and not know who they were or where they were going or how old they are and still recognize a basic commonality between yourselves and them. We actually don't know a lot of stuff about the Nostromo's human crew, either - what kinds of families are they going home to? Why did they initially sign up for the mission? Are any of them sleeping together? The xenomorph actually has a universalizing effect, bringing us together with both the human protagonists and the ancient, dead pilot by showing that we're all entangled with the scary psychosexual forces that the titular alien represents. The Jockey's even got a head and arms and a chair and stuff.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:37
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Too be fair, Ridley didn’t want to attach aliens to them to begin with. That’s was more a studio thing wasn’t it?
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Mar 29, 2021 03:41
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Invalid Validation posted:Too be fair, Ridley didn’t want to attach aliens to them to begin with. That’s was more a studio thing wasn’t it? Yes. Prometheus was originally going to be its own thing, and he got talked into bringing it into the Alien world. And then when Prometheus didn’t have any actual capital-A Aliens in it, the studio told him to put Aliens in the sequel; he was quoted as saying “They want Aliens? I’ll give them loving Aliens” (or something to that effect, but it’s close to a direct quote) and made Covenant.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:47
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Alien's spaceman is very obviously based on the god Ganesha. It's one of several references to hinduism in the film. In most versions of the myth, Ganesha is born with a human head and then gets stuck with an elephant's head after a battle with Shiva.
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Mar 29, 2021 04:32
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The dead one in the chair was scary as hell to me when I saw the film at ten years old. Actually every single part of the film was scary to me then, including the opening credits.
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Mar 29, 2021 04:44
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Giger’s other illustrations at the time make it fairly clear the “trunk” is just the hose from a weird rear end suit of some kind (I’m not dismissing that it could symbolically be a trunk): He made two versions of this mural; I think this is the second one. On the first the helmet is slightly more conventional. This one looks closer to his Space Jockey paintings. They couldn’t pull this off in the movie, but there was supposed to be a translucent dome over the Jockey’s head which you can make out in the paintings of it. Supposedly this mural is in the movie but it’s virtually impossible to make out. On some of Giger’s paintings of the egg chamber you can see it on the walls above the, uh, wall rear end:  This doesn’t mean I think the Space Jockey is an Engineer because it’s like 12 feet tall, the proportions are all wrong, and all the biomechanical stuff is way more integrated.
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Mar 29, 2021 05:03
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It's probably about time I watched Prometheus again. I haven't seen it since the cinemas. I recall really enjoying it right up until it started aping Alien. It was awhile ago, but I recall that I didn't know going into it that it was going to tie into Alien, and being super bummed that this interesting new and different sci fi story from Rodley Scott took a right turn back into something I'd seen a bunch of times before. Subsequently I never saw Alien Covenant, assuming, perhaps wrongly, it was another take on Alien.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:39
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Xenomrph posted:Yes. Prometheus was originally going to be its own thing, and he got talked into bringing it into the Alien world Isn't it the other way around? Jon Spaihts' original script for Prometheus is very much Alien / Aliens 0.5, with the last half of the thing basically being a straight Aliens redux. Then Lindelof came in and, at Scott's request, like 98 percent of the Alien lore was dropped outside of the focus on the Engineers.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:04
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Timby posted:Isn't it the other way around? Jon Spaihts' original script for Prometheus is very much Alien / Aliens 0.5, with the last half of the thing basically being a straight Aliens redux. Then Lindelof came in and, at Scott's request, like 98 percent of the Alien lore was dropped outside of the focus on the Engineers. It see-sawed back and forth in the planning stage, but you’re correct that the first script draft had much more connection to Alien than the Lindelof version.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:15
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The Spaihts script is more “logical” but also quite dire. A bunch of chest bursting and alien shooting like we’ve seen a thousand times. There’s an ultramorph (do not steal) and David reprograms himself to be mustache twirling evil by learning trinary instead of binary.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:35
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