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Release the Spaihts Cut
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Mar 29, 2021 16:42
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General Battuta posted: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. Oh, yeah, it's completely awful, and when I finally read it after like a year and a half of the Internet whining that "FUCKEN LINDELOF RUINED PROMETHEUS" or whatever, I was completely floored. Like, really? Spaihts' hundred and thirty pages of lovely fanfic is the hill y'all are going to die on? Really? I mean, you do you, Internet, but Jesus.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:44
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The internet is full of really dumb people with really bad opinions to be fair.
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Mar 29, 2021 21:20
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banned from Starbucks posted:The internet is full of really dumb people with really bad opinions to be fair. They also pretend to have seen or read a bunch of stuff they never have, instead aping other people's opinions from the Internet.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:02
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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”. I recently rewatched Prometheus and Covenant with extended materials/shorts/deleted scenes, and while they're still not great, I do like the character of David a lot and I still kind of want to see how Scott presents Awakening (if it ever gets made). I'm still curious about stuff like the Deacon, but I suspect that Scott's intent was to go all Christian mythos with it, in which case I'll pass. Eh, who am I kidding, I'd watch it anyway. But I'd complain on the internet about it!
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Mar 29, 2021 23:55
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Scott pretty obviously hates any organized religion so he's just attacking in various ways. His last like 5 projects are complaining about it.
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Mar 30, 2021 00:55
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Darko posted: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. I never said it was scary, it was mysterious. My friends and I used to talk about what that thing was when I first got exposed to it. I also remember plenty of forum topics talking about it whether it was IMDB or AVP (the game) forums 20+ years ago. I'm going to watch Alien with my friend who's never seen it before pretty soon and I guarantee he's going to ask what that thing is. He probably won't give a poo poo about the engineers from Prometheus though, we'll see.
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Mar 30, 2021 03:13
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just finished playing through Alien: Isolation for the first time since it originally came out. great game, and honestly one of the better overall Alien media plots.
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Mar 30, 2021 03:19
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Now do it again in VR and poo poo yourself.
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Mar 30, 2021 03:35
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need to talk about the bonus situation before i can go buyin VR headsets
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Mar 30, 2021 03:41
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sigher posted:I can't agree. I enjoyed the idea that the engineers were elephant people because it reminded me of REH's Conan story, "The Tower of the Elephant," in which Conan enters the titular tower to steal a sorcerer's gem and comes across an atrophied alien elephant-man whom the sorcerer betrayed and tortured for his secrets. It's one of the better Conan stories, all melancholic and strange.
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Mar 30, 2021 16:10
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I think debating elephant vs. human Space Jockey sort of misses the point which is that any further explanation was going to ruin some of that tantalizing mystery. The reason it was so great was because you could let your imagination run wild with the possibilities, I don't like the comics telling us that it's just a big elephant any more than what Ridley Scott did. In the end though it was a worthwhile trade-off for me, because Prometheus and Covenant are good enough that I'm willing to let go of the Space Jockey mystery.
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Mar 30, 2021 16:20
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Oh I totally agree. I absolutely love Prometheus and am happy to trade a minor mystery for that wonderful film. I just enjoyed the connection the elephant men drew with a great REH story.
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Mar 30, 2021 17:17
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Blood Boils posted:As someone who knows several PhD scientists and doctors irl I assure you nerds that there is nothing unrealistic in how Milburn & Fifield or Shaw & Holloway behave. every phd i know thinks at least 70% of their colleagues are morons. you could only believe a degree implies competence if you haven't gotten one david_a posted: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): This one is a really obvious reference to Nut, the egyptian sky deity who swallows the sun, which passes through her and is reborn DeimosRising fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 17:19
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Basebf555 posted:In the end though it was a worthwhile trade-off for me, because Prometheus and Covenant are good enough that I'm willing to let go of the Space Jockey mystery. See, this is where I disagree - I don’t think the Alien connections brought anything worthwhile to the table for the prequels, while the prequels actively dragged down things that I liked about ‘Alien’.
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Mar 30, 2021 17:31
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PeterWeller posted:I enjoyed the idea that the engineers were elephant people because it reminded me of REH's Conan story, "The Tower of the Elephant," in which Conan enters the titular tower to steal a sorcerer's gem and comes across an atrophied alien elephant-man whom the sorcerer betrayed and tortured for his secrets. It's one of the better Conan stories, all melancholic and strange. This also goes back to the Ganesha connection SMG brought up. Howard — and Lovecraft's Cthulhu! — almost certainly based such characters on Hindu iconography. In the particular case of The Tower of the Elephant, the "elephant" is even an ancient astronaut.
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Mar 30, 2021 17:42
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Xenomrph posted:See, this is where I disagree - I don’t think the Alien connections brought anything worthwhile to the table for the prequels, while the prequels actively dragged down things that I liked about ‘Alien’. I'm not saying that the Alien connections really were necessary, I agree with you there, Prometheus and especially Covenant could've been even better without any Alien connections weighing them down. But I still like them both enough that I'd rather just deal with that than not have them at all. Like, if this is what Ridley felt he needed to do with these movies, so be it because regardless of their flaws I still think they're some of the best sci-fi we've seen in recent decades.
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Mar 30, 2021 17:45
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And some of the most well funded. That poo poo doesn’t get made today without attaching superheroes to it.
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Mar 30, 2021 18:09
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Basebf555 posted:I'm not saying that the Alien connections really were necessary, I agree with you there, Prometheus and especially Covenant could've been even better without any Alien connections weighing them down. But I still like them both enough that I'd rather just deal with that than not have them at all. Like, if this is what Ridley felt he needed to do with these movies, so be it because regardless of their flaws I still think they're some of the best sci-fi we've seen in recent decades. I really liked the spectre of the xenomorph looming over Prometheus, even though the deacon doesn't end up serving any real purpose in the narrative it was a cool omen that the path they're on is inevitably going to end in contact with it. The only problem (for me) with Covenant was that they blew their load too early and should have given the neomorphs their film; now they've actually shown us the monster already in a retread of the Alien finale, and at the expense of mugging off the novel creatures of the film at that, it's kind of spoilted the looming cosmic horror tone Prometheus had built up by precisely not showing us the goods directly and working by implication through things like the similar but not same creatures and the xeno-christ mural
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Mar 30, 2021 18:30
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Schwarzwald posted:This also goes back to the Ganesha connection SMG brought up. Howard — and Lovecraft's Cthulhu! — almost certainly based such characters on Hindu iconography. In the particular case of The Tower of the Elephant, the "elephant" is even an ancient astronaut. Yeah, the ancient astronaut part and his story about his race's fall from power is why I felt the connection so strongly.
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Mar 30, 2021 19:07
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multijoe posted:I really liked the spectre of the xenomorph looming over Prometheus, even though the deacon doesn't end up serving any real purpose in the narrative it was a cool omen that the path they're on is inevitably going to end in contact with it. The only problem (for me) with Covenant was that they blew their load too early and should have given the neomorphs their film; now they've actually shown us the monster already in a retread of the Alien finale, and at the expense of mugging off the novel creatures of the film at that, it's kind of spoilted the looming cosmic horror tone Prometheus had built up by precisely not showing us the goods directly and working by implication through things like the similar but not same creatures and the xeno-christ mural Something I did really like about having that engineer planet already wiped out and by David before Covenant happens, is the notion that the more everyone searches for stuff the more they keep finding incredibly ancient long dead poo poo. Like there's various alien life forms scene throughout both movies but the overall message is still that humanity is like, all that's really left in a way. Like the opposite of "we are not alone."
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Mar 30, 2021 20:07
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Prometheus and Covenant actually served to make the xenomorph much stranger and more mysterious, since just going off the mainline films starting with the letter A xenomorphs are basically a kind of bug. As of Prometheus/Covenant they're a kind of demon implicit in all progenerative action.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:14
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Ferrinus posted:Prometheus and Covenant actually served to make the xenomorph much stranger and more mysterious, since just going off the mainline films starting with the letter A xenomorphs are basically a kind of bug. As of Prometheus/Covenant they're a kind of demon implicit in all progenerative action. That’s true of the Black Goo, but is it really true of the capital A Aliens in the prequels (considering they’re not in the first one, and they’re made by an Android in the second)? I view them as much more than a bug. Their life cycle might have bug-like qualities, but they have a literally “alien” intelligence that makes them adaptable, unpredictable, and incredibly dangerous. You can tell they’re thinking, but you can’t discern the thought process, especially in the first movie.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:21
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Their portrayal as bugs in Aliens never really bothered me anyway. I figure, if these are the invasive bugs that you run into out in space, god only knows the other horrors you might find out there. It hints an an extremely hostile universe that we are just very lucky to have been shielded from because we haven't ventured out into it very far.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:25
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Neo Rasa posted:Something I did really like about having that engineer planet already wiped out and by David before Covenant happens, is the notion that the more everyone searches for stuff the more they keep finding incredibly ancient long dead poo poo. Like there's various alien life forms scene throughout both movies but the overall message is still that humanity is like, all that's really left in a way. Like the opposite of "we are not alone."
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Mar 30, 2021 20:35
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Xenomrph posted:That’s true of the Black Goo, but is it really true of the capital A Aliens in the prequels (considering they’re not in the first one, and they’re made by an Android in the second)? Yes? In all cases, xenomorph-like things arise spontaneously from excesses of life and reproduction, particularly when those lifecycles intersect somehow with human beings. David concocts a "classic" xenomorph through trial and error, but we can see that it's just one particular manifestation of the hosed up impregnation monster that's the emergent result of just having too much life, too much reproductive potency. quote:I view them as much more than a bug. Their life cycle might have bug-like qualities, but they have a literally “alien” intelligence that makes them adaptable, unpredictable, and incredibly dangerous. You can tell they’re thinking, but you can’t discern the thought process, especially in the first movie. They are less intelligent and therefore less predictable than humans. If you were stuck in a room with, say, a tiger, you might have an analogous experience to facing down a xenomorph. Probably not, though, since a tiger might be full or sleepy or something while a xenomorph can be counted on to kill you given the opportunity.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:44
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Ferrinus posted:Yes? In all cases, xenomorph-like things arise spontaneously from excesses of life and reproduction, particularly when those lifecycles intersect somehow with human beings. David concocts a "classic" xenomorph through trial and error, but we can see that it's just one particular manifestation of the hosed up impregnation monster that's the emergent result of just having too much life, too much reproductive potency. quote:They are less intelligent and therefore less predictable than humans. If you were stuck in a room with, say, a tiger, you might have an analogous experience to facing down a xenomorph. Probably not, though, since a tiger might be full or sleepy or something while a xenomorph can be counted on to kill you given the opportunity. Also the Alien in the first movie ostensibly outright “killed” one person. I’m not so sure a tiger would cocoon you to have you be facehugged, or metamorph you into an egg, or... whatever happened to Lambert. Saying “it’s just an unintelligent bug” is to fall into the same trap that a lot of the 90s comics did, and to miss the point of ‘Aliens’. The movie goes out of its way repeatedly to show that they’re not “just bugs”. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 20:53
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Xenomrph posted:You’re talking about the Black Goo, not the “classic” Alien. I didn’t need the Black Goo to sideline the creature I like by saying “look at all the OTHER stuff it can make, instead of that boring dumb Alien!” They less intelligent, in that they are classically defeated by being led into traps and outsmarted - shut behind doors, blown out of airlocks, etc. Sometimes they outsmart humans, but this mostly amounts to attacking from unexpected directions. Muldoon got outsmarted by a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, but that's not because raptors have an unfathomable, cosmic gnosis. They're just clever. A tiger would cocoon you to have you be facehugged if tigers reproduced via facehugging, rather than via other tigers. Prometheus actually made xenomorphs more Lovecraftian, if not made xenomorphs Lovecraftian at all, by analogizing them in part to shoggoths and in part to Azathoth himself. Without these broader metaphysical insights into the xemomorph's very provenance, we're just left with a particularly gross and difficult-to-kill animal, "just bugs" much more so than humans are "just apes" (though both statements are defensible).
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Mar 30, 2021 21:05
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The Aliens xenomorphs are pretty much just moderately smarter evil ants though, the film takes great lengths to demystify them and present them as a quantifiable and even fairly defeatable threat that are only dangerous because of their sheer numbers and lack of self preservation. The inexplicable, perverse, physics defying demons of Alien and the prequels are a much more interesting take on the idea for me
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Mar 30, 2021 21:11
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Ferrinus posted:They less intelligent, in that they are classically defeated by being led into traps and outsmarted - shut behind doors, blown out of airlocks, etc. Sometimes they outsmart humans, but this mostly amounts to attacking from unexpected directions. Muldoon got outsmarted by a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, but that's not because raptors have an unfathomable, cosmic gnosis. They're just clever. A tiger would cocoon you to have you be facehugged if tigers reproduced via facehugging, rather than via other tigers. multijoe posted:The Aliens xenomorphs are pretty much just moderately smarter evil ants though, the film takes great lengths to demystify them and present them as a quantifiable and even fairly defeatable threat that are only dangerous because of their sheer numbers and lack of self preservation. The inexplicable, perverse, physics defying demons of Alien and the prequels are a much more interesting take on the idea for me Strongly disagree - the Aliens take down the dropship, ambush the Marines, outsmart the human’s defenses, conveniently stop rushing the sentry guns just when they’re low on ammo, there’s a lot going on there that’s more than just “ants”. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 21:16
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Okay, what? What more is going on here? Do you think the aliens can read the guns' ammo counters? You keep gesturing at some sort of mysterious, unknowable intelligence displayed by the xenomorphs in at least two of the original movies, but nothing you've listed goes beyond, like, basic pack tactics as might be employed by a stalking predator, or straightforward reproductive behavior. Don't they "take down" the dropship by... clambering aboard and biting off the pilot's head? Don't they "outsmart the human's defenses" by... springing an ambush, or just coming from multiple directions? Where's the cosmic menace?
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Mar 30, 2021 21:23
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There's enough to support that reading tbh. Adapting to the sentry guns is one thing, cutting the power in advance of an attack is another. The text explicitly questions whether they are "just animals".
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Mar 30, 2021 21:28
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Let me put it like this: if, in Aliens, you went and replaced each xenomorph with an enemy marine, the protagonists would have been in much more trouble.
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Mar 30, 2021 21:31
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All that's required of "cosmic menace" is the suggestion of an inhuman awareness. It doesn't have to be Nyarlathotep, or whatever. It doesn't even have to be sentient in the conventional sense.
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Mar 30, 2021 21:36
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multijoe posted:The Aliens xenomorphs are pretty much just moderately smarter evil ants though, As it happens, Aliens visually references giant ant movie Them! at several points. 
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Mar 30, 2021 21:37
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All the tactics they use in Aliens that supposedly make them "dumber than humans" is poo poo that's been done throughout human history in various wars. D-Day is just a bunch of dumb ants running into machine gun fire. Do you think the concept of flanking from a different angle is something only animals do?
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Mar 30, 2021 21:43
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Ceasing to rush the smartguns around when the ammo runs out actually bespeaks a lack of awareness. Cutting the power could be an accidental side effect of burrowing through the walls and nicking the right cable, or a learned environmental response thing from the original invasion on the level of pull lever-receive pellet. And here's the thing: even if xenomorphs are precogs or telepaths, that just makes them precognitive bugs. Their basic motivations and mechanism of action remain clear and straightforward to the audience. They breed in an idiosyncratic way and that idiosyncrasy informs the rest of their behavior.
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Mar 30, 2021 21:46
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Ferrinus posted:Let me put it like this: if, in Aliens, you went and replaced each xenomorph with an enemy marine, the protagonists would have been in much more trouble. All that would do is even out the attack range advantage marines have over xenos. The marines have the literal blueprints to the building they're defending and still get outmaneuvered. The only reason they arent all instantly killed by the ceiling ambush is because they have magic "bad guys r here" technology.
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Mar 30, 2021 22:07
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The intelligence in Aliens was the queen; every "smart" move they made was an extension of her directing them to do things. It's what Starship Troopers kind of pulled over with the brain bug. Its why she figured out to operate elevators and stowed away and understood Ripley enough to make a deal with her. Xenos are smart enough on their own, but when a queen is around, they fall in line to whatever she says to do as a general is how I always read it.
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Mar 30, 2021 22:12
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These things ain’t ants, estupido.
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Mar 30, 2021 22:17
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