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Xenomrph posted:Definitely disagree on that one, I wouldn’t even consider Predator a “war” film. Do you consider Aliens a war film? The two movies have essentially the same plot, a group of soldiers are sent on a rescue mission by someone who is withholding information from them and run afoul of an extraterrestrial. Predator has a better score, a leaner story, better production value, and Arnold Schwarzenegger at his peak. Besides, these guys would absolutely clown on the Colonial Marines.
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Apr 23, 2022 02:14
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PeterCat posted:Besides, these guys would absolutely clown on the Colonial Marines. They are the same thing, it'd be a tie Edit: actually I'd give the edge to the space marines - Dutch and the boys were taken out by a single sneaky dude. Hicks and the gang would just lauch grenades everywhere, killing everyone including themselves lol Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 02:57
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One big difference is who has the nuke.
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Apr 23, 2022 03:03
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Schwarzwald posted:One big difference is who has the nuke. Dutch laughs at your puny nuke.
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Apr 23, 2022 03:22
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PeterCat posted:Do you consider Aliens a war film? Predator has a group of (ex?) soldiers engaging in an off the books clandestine operation specifically to avoid sparking a war and avoid direct American involvement. Their mission isn’t to deal with an alien, one happens to show up and ruin their day. ‘Aliens’ has literal soldiers with machine guns and adorned with American flags on a warship intentionally deployed to deal with an extraterrestrial threat and rescue the colonists. Saying their plots are the same, or even similar, is a bit of a stretch. In ‘Aliens’ the extraterrestrials are the mission, in Predator it isn’t. Saying “they’re both withheld information” is a bit of a stretch - in ‘Predator’ it’s kind of the crux of the plot before the Predator shows up, in ‘Aliens’ they’re still intentionally deployed by the US Government as an open military action, with full knowledge of what they might face via Ripley’s briefings. They aren’t misled about their mission or directed to do anything untoward. Burke’s unsanctioned “catch an Alien” scheme doesn’t even begin to materialize until they’re on the ground, because he isn’t even sure they exist yet until they get to the medlab and find facehuggers. Dillon’s plan isn’t to catch a Predator. As for production values, both films had roughly the same budget, but ‘Aliens’ does far more with it. It replicates an extraterrestrial world and a believable human colony (and a space station, and a warship) and all of the practical set design that entails. Between the miniature work, puppetry, sound design, props, costuming, special effects, soundtrack*, and stunt work, ‘Aliens’ puts every dollar of that budget to incredible use. What it does with less than $20million would cost easily 5 times that today; for the record, $18mil in 1986 dollars is $47mil today. As a comparison, ‘Alien vs Predator’ cost more than twice as much (adjusting for inflation from 1986 to 2004) and was deliberately set on earth in the present day because setting it in space would be “too expensive”.** As a benchmark, ‘Underwater’ has some pretty solid and aesthetically similar set design; it came out in 2020 and cost $50-$80mil. *I love Alan Silvestri and I love the soundtrack to Predator (and I do prefer it to the Aliens soundtrack), especially the end credits theme. I actually prefer the Predator2 soundtrack but that’s neither here nor there. But the Aliens soundtrack is great, there’s a reason why movie trailers used clips from it for like 15 years after it came out. **I think just about all of the Alien movies have strong set design; ‘Alien’ is an incredible masterclass in a functional practical set design that’s so strong that they made an entire videogame based around it (  ), and even Alien3 and Alien Resurrection have memorable and distinct visual styles via their sets. Even AvP, with its shifting ancient pyramid achieved via practical effects, is really cool. AvPR is arguably the weakest because it’s literally just “Colorado small town” but I mean I guess it serves its purpose since the movie is “what if xenomorphs invaded a Colorado small town” so it manages to pull that off.Prometheus has some solid set design (I think the Engineer stuff is more interesting than the Prometheus ship stuff) but I don’t think Covenant is nearly as good with the exception of David’s bestiary, that set is fantastic. I do agree that the team from Predator would probably clown on the squad from Aliens in a fair fight (Aliens team with modern conventional weapons, or Predator team with future tech). Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 04:23
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Reminder that the US conflict in Vietnam was not a war, and illegal secret military operations that crossed the borders of Vietnam into its neighboring countries was commonplace for the US military.
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Apr 23, 2022 04:27
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ruddiger posted:Reminder that the US conflict in Vietnam was not a war, and illegal secret military operations that crossed the borders of Vietnam into its neighboring countries was commonplace for the US military.
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Apr 23, 2022 04:32
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Do you think the war on drugs is a real war because it’s called the war on drugs
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Apr 23, 2022 04:51
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ruddiger posted:Reminder that the US conflict in Vietnam was not a war, and illegal secret military operations that crossed the borders of Vietnam into its neighboring countries was commonplace for the US military. Reminder that it was also illegal for North Vietnamese Communists to use Laos and Cambodia as staging grounds for their actions in South Vietnam, and the Communists in Cambodia were responsible for the worst auto-homeo genocide in modern history.
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Apr 23, 2022 05:00
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Xenomrph posted:Aliens is absolutely a war movie, it’s Vietnam in space. It’s right in the movie’s tagline. Could we agree that Apone and Dutch would chill over a couple of cigars? The problem with James Horner is he steals from himself too much. That trumpet trill he does shows up in Aliens, Willow, and Windtalkers. They did create a bunch of nice environments in Aliens, but Predator is a much prettier movie to look at. Maybe that's intentional, lush jungle vs ugly prefab colonial buildings, but Predator feels more real to me. As far as information being withheld, it doesn't really make the Marines look that great when they knew they were going up against aliens and didn't take it seriously. My point though was they probably would have been more on guard if they had known that Burke had sent a team out to look into the alien ship prior to losing contact with the colony. I'd say a movie about soldiers doing soldier things in war zone counts as a war movie. Dutch and his team are former soldiers hired by the US Army and the CIA to perform a rescue mission. The Colonial Marines are being sent on the request of the company to see what's up with the colony, and I'll be the company has a certain amount of pull in the government. Predator is a mixing of genres, alien horror and war movies mashed together. If we're defining war as a formal declared thing then Aliens isn't either as there is no formal declaration of against the Xeno's either. Don't get me wrong, I love both movies, but Predator > Aliens, even if Aliens better lends itself to world building and games.
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Apr 23, 2022 05:08
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I’m not condoning or condemning what happened in Vietnam, just pointing out there’s little difference in the US military’s actions and goals when it comes to either East Asia or South America
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Apr 23, 2022 05:09
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ruddiger posted:I’m not condoning or condemning what happened in Vietnam, just pointing out there’s little difference in the US military’s actions and goals when it comes to either East Asia or South America Saying Aliens is Vietnam in space is pretty lovely because it's equating the North Vietnamese with a hive of space bugs. Predator is also a Vietnam allegory, but it makes the US's adversary into an intelligent being with its own agency.
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Apr 23, 2022 05:18
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PeterCat posted:Saying Aliens is Vietnam in space is pretty lovely because it's equating the North Vietnamese with a hive of space bugs. That's kind of the whole point, yeah? The United States absolutely dehumanized the North Vietnamese (and the Chinese, and the North Koreans, and the Japanese, and...) during the conflict. Aliens just took that seriously.
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Apr 23, 2022 05:26
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Schwarzwald posted:That's kind of the whole point, yeah? The United States absolutely dehumanized the North Vietnamese (and the Chinese, and the North Koreans, and the Japanese, and...) during the conflict. Aliens just took that seriously. So it's saying the US was correct in trying to remove an infestation of insects and the only problem was that the US underestimated them? I never thought that Cameron was making Starship Troopers just played straight. George Lucas made the Ewoks an NVA/VC allegory, but still gave them the agency to decide to help the Rebel Alliance. And he cast the Evil Empire in the role of the US forces in the jungle.
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Apr 23, 2022 05:48
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ruddiger posted:Do you think the war on drugs is a real war because it’s called the war on drugs No but Wikipedia sure thinks the Vietnam War is a real war PeterCat posted:Could we agree that Apone and Dutch would chill over a couple of cigars? PeterCat posted:The problem with James Horner is he steals from himself too much. That trumpet trill he does shows up in Aliens, Willow, and Windtalkers. )PeterCat posted:They did create a bunch of nice environments in Aliens, but Predator is a much prettier movie to look at. Maybe that's intentional, lush jungle vs ugly prefab colonial buildings, but Predator feels more real to me. PeterCat posted:As far as information being withheld, it doesn't really make the Marines look that great when they knew they were going up against aliens and didn't take it seriously. PeterCat posted:I'll bet the company has a certain amount of pull in the government. Full disclosure I do think the Company has a fair amount of pull. PeterCat posted:Don't get me wrong, I love both movies, but Predator > Aliens, even if Aliens better lends itself to world building and games. PeterCat posted:Saying Aliens is Vietnam in space is pretty lovely because it's equating the North Vietnamese with a hive of space bugs. While I agree that framing Vietnamese as insects is wack, that kind of isn’t what the movie’s doing and it’s not what James Cameron was trying to say. He was making an allegory about Vietnam in the sense that a militarily superior and overconfident force gets wrecked by an “inferior” foe they don’t understand who uses unconventional tactics they can’t respond to. I’ve never thought of Predator as a Vietnam movie, what do you mean?
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Apr 23, 2022 06:05
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Leave the xenomorphs alone imo
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Apr 23, 2022 06:58
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PeterCat posted:So it's saying the US was correct in trying to remove an infestation of insects and the only problem was that the US underestimated them? 
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Apr 23, 2022 13:05
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I dont think Aliens is saying it is good to kill Vietnamese people
16-bit Butt-Head fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 13:11
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Predator is about US hegemony in Central America. The Predator is the good guy.
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Apr 23, 2022 13:40
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I like it when they all stand their shooting the jungle, looking badass
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Apr 23, 2022 13:52
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Aliens’ legacy has been the dozens of movies making fun of its stupid blockbuster spectacle: Starship Troopers, Godzilla 1998, District 9, Jurassic World, Army Of The Dead, etc. These are all satirical films where a sympathetic equivalent of the ‘Alien Queen’ gets smacked around for no benefit. The closest thing to an unironic Aliens is probably 28 Weeks Later - which is super bleak and uncommercial. Even Battle: Los Angeles flips the Aliens narrative so that the baddies are explicitly American imperialists. Otherwise, you’ve got that weird brief trend of crap like Bruno Mattei’s films and Carnosaur 2.
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Apr 23, 2022 14:04
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PeterCat posted:So it's saying the US was correct in trying to remove an infestation of insects and the only problem was that the US underestimated them? I'm saying that W-U the bad guy in Aliens in the same way that the Company is the bad guy in Alien.
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Apr 23, 2022 15:16
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Schwarzwald posted:I'm saying that W-U the bad guy in Aliens in the same way that the Company is the bad guy in Alien. That’s not true, Aliens portrays Burke as being a rogue actor who starts the mayhem by telling the colonists to check out a coordinate for his own purposes. It makes it pretty clear he’s not going through proper channels since he wants “exclusive rights” to anything they find.
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Apr 23, 2022 15:58
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david_a posted:That’s not true, Aliens portrays Burke as being a rogue actor who starts the mayhem by telling the colonists to check out a coordinate for his own purposes. It makes it pretty clear he’s not going through proper channels since he wants “exclusive rights” to anything they find. Yeah but the implication isn’t that WY wouldn’t do similar shady stuff, it’s that Burke comes from a corporate culture of sociopaths and if he didn’t act first, someone else would have done what he did and then he misses out. He’s a rogue actor, but he’s not unique.
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Apr 23, 2022 16:09
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david_a posted:That’s not true, Aliens portrays Burke as being a rogue actor who starts the mayhem by telling the colonists to check out a coordinate for his own purposes. It makes it pretty clear he’s not going through proper channels since he wants “exclusive rights” to anything they find. That framing is a major difference between Ridley and Cameron's films, but just because the film obfuscates doesn't oblige us to be taken in by it. Burke is a bad actor, but WU is still in the business of building better worlds and the Colonial Marines are still marining the colonies.
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Apr 23, 2022 16:41
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Hey now, Paul riser is a p good actor!!!
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Apr 23, 2022 16:44
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it was a very bad plan that was poorly thought out imo if the chestburster burst out of newt and ripley earlier than expected the marines would have killed them and burke would have looked like a real dumbass
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Apr 23, 2022 16:46
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Xenomrph posted:Definitely disagree on that one, I wouldn’t even consider Predator a “war” film. I think this says something about modern day liberalism.
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Apr 23, 2022 16:58
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I got bad news about using wikipedia as a source of authority of what gets labeled a war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs
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Apr 23, 2022 17:00
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Schwarzwald posted:That framing is a major difference between Ridley and Cameron's films, but just because the film obfuscates doesn't oblige us to be taken in by it. Burke is a bad actor, but WU is still in the business of building better worlds and the Colonial Marines are still marining the colonies. While that’s true, the film is not at all conducive to being read that way. There’s effectively no information about what the colony was like pre-Burke. Ripley is vaguely implied to be underpaid as a dockworker because of her tiny apartment. But, then again, this is a tiny apartment on a motherfuckin’ space station and Cameron presents Ripley’s career setbacks as primarily a result of her literal fear of going back to Earth. In other words, the narrative says that all Ripley needs to succeed in the corporate world is to overcome her trauma.
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Apr 23, 2022 17:21
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CelticPredator posted:Hey now, Paul riser is a p good actor!!! He’s really an okay guy once you get to know him. ruddiger posted:I got bad news about using wikipedia as a source of authority of what gets labeled a war. That article doesn’t say the war on drugs was a war. The Vietnam War article on the other hand… This is also a pretty silly semantic derail but whatevs  Like you’re technically correct but it kind of doesn’t change my point, or what the Vietnam War was, or what ‘Aliens’ was doing.
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Apr 23, 2022 17:23
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CelticPredator posted:Hey now, Paul riser is a p good actor!!! I'm mad about him
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Apr 23, 2022 17:28
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BiggerBoat posted:I'm mad about him I wish I could find a clip of it but if I remember right there was a bit in one of the episodes of Mad About You where Helen Hunt was watching ‘Aliens’ and Paul Reiser walks in and she asks Paul Reiser if he’s seen it, and he says he’s only seen the first one.
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Apr 23, 2022 17:34
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It’s important to use words correctly if you’re dictating which fictional stories get to be labeled a war story or not.
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Apr 23, 2022 17:41
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CelticPredator posted:Hey now, Paul riser is a p good actor!!! I've been told it takes a great actor to portray a bad one!
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Apr 23, 2022 17:47
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Edit— not worth it, this is dumb
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 17:49
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“Technically correct”, otherwise known as just being correct.
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Apr 23, 2022 17:52
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The best kind of correct 
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Apr 23, 2022 17:58
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I actually watched aliens for the first time a couple weeks ago. Had all the hallmarks of Cameron's other post Terminator work for me. Incredible spectacle, and production design that's kind of negated by messy plotting, and just generally dumb, schmaltzy writing.
lurker2006 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Apr 23, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 18:07
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lurker2006 posted:I actually watched aliens for the first time a couple weeks ago. Had all the hallmarks of Cameron's other post Terminator work for me. Incredible spectacle and production design that's kind of negated by messy plotting and just generally dumb, schmaltzy writing. Not that it makes a huge difference or would really change your opinion based on what you said, but did you watch the theatrical cut or the director’s cut? The easy way to tell is, did the movie have scenes with the colonists before they all got murdered by Aliens. Speaking of Terminator 1, that’s another Cameron joint where he really, really milks his budget for every penny it’s worth, a trait that carries into most* of his sci-fi movies. *I haven’t seen Avatar
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Apr 23, 2022 18:16
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