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McSpanky posted:The distant implication in Aliens' setting and layers of scifi allegory in the normal facehugger-cocooing-chestburster process were discarded in favor of a grotesquely immediate attack that inflicted far more graphic and crass violence on pregnant women than I'm personally comfortable with and really discolored the entire procedure going forward. There's a line of tastelessness that even a horror movie can cross where you're just watching torture for torture's sake and boy, was that it. Im not sure how many layers there are in a franchise where faccehuggers nut down your throat and with..well whatever happened to suddenly pantsless Lambert.
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Aug 10, 2022 09:47
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sigher posted:So I finally got around to a Predator 2 rewatch because I've long been overdue, maybe 20 years. Predator 2 rules. Axe in Prey is Looney Toons level - for the 'rule of cool' handwave to apply, someone has to think something is cool. I didn't, I just found it laughable. So is the magical plant that induces a hypothermic temperature in under 1 minute from putting it in your mouth, with seemingly zero ill effects. I don't count heavily wounded people saying 'brr I feel cold' an ill effect (people start being at risk of dying if they lose even 3-4 degrees of temperature). In Predator Arnold is launched 20 feet from a backhand, but this skinny dude beats him in a toe-to-toe fight with wood and stone weapons. Another thing occurred to me about the tone of Prey versus previous installments. Predator and Predator 2 are both very gritty, sweaty movies. I don't think you see a bead of sweat on anyone's face in the whole thing, no matter how much physical activity there is. It's just too clean, and a lot of time the way it's shot felt more like a modern superhero movie. The basically modern English dialogue is also an issue, especially when you consider how they cast this movie. I totally understand why people would think it's really great, but for me all these little things just make it feel flat, and at no point did I feel any tension for the main character's safety. Especially when she takes a bone-breaking height fall directly onto a rock on the back of her skull and just wakes up and acts 'Ooh my head's a little tender. Oh well, back at it!'. It just lacks the weight it needed. It's also okay to like a movie even if other people didn't, or were even lukewarm on it! Amazing, I know.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:04
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The French in Prey were sweaty and filthy, though, as all Frenchmen are
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Aug 10, 2022 14:29
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sigher posted:Doesn't a pregnant woman get cut straight in half in AVPR? MrMojok posted:Getting cut straight in half might be better than what happens to the pregnant woman in Requiem. No, but the predalien seems to solely attack women, and pregnent people in particular. And by 'attack' I mean implant multiple embryos which eat the babies in utero before killing the host. banned from Starbucks posted:How is AV|P:R any more mean spirited than Aliens? I think its the one that 'says the quiet part loud.' Every other movie, IIRC, has child deaths happen offscreen. This one opens with a small child being impregnated by a facehugger. The line between 'edgy' and 'mean-spirited' is razor thin.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:21
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They're all mean-spirited movies. The xenomorph is the concept of pure amorality and hate made manifest, and how that continues to fester on everything it comes into contact with. AvPR is just the lamest, most edgelordy version of that. Some of the Dark Horse comics go in similar directions - it's not too surprising given that the whole birth and femininity theme of these films is ripe for misogyny if you wanna go that route.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:30
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If you put mud on your body to hide your thermals within 30 minutes or so you'll have heated up the mud and it will be useless. Predator has never cared about "real" thermal science and you shouldn't either.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:03
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I think I just don't see any real distinction between pregnant women and people in general when it comes through some creature sticking its reproductive organ down your throat and forcing you to die birthing it's children. The only thing I though was special/goofy was that the PredAlienQueen realized that pregnant women somehow created multiple chestbursters instead of 1, which was just dumb. I thought killing Newt was pretty mean spirited at the time because we spent a whole movie rescuing her and getting to know her, but random kid that didn't have the development of even the kids that died in The Blob or IT was nothing. I also didn't listen to what the directors said. If they played it up or something, it doesn't match what's on screen - that stuff is just goofy.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:19
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:If you put mud on your body to hide your thermals within 30 minutes or so you'll have heated up the mud and it will be useless. Predator has never cared about "real" thermal science and you shouldn't either. Okay, sure, fair point. But counterpoint - at least that could feasibly work in reality for -some- amount of time. Which allows the suspension of disbelief to stretch it to where it doesn't throw you out of the movie. Did it really need to be a magic flower that defies all laws of human biology, combined with the other large stretches in that line? Dr.Radical posted:The French in Prey were sweaty and filthy, though, as all Frenchmen are I thought that was just escargot oil.
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Aug 10, 2022 17:19
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Hakkesshu posted:They're all mean-spirited movies. The xenomorph is the concept of pure amorality and hate made manifest, and how that continues to fester on everything it comes into contact with. AvPR is just the lamest, most edgelordy version of that. Some of the Dark Horse comics go in similar directions - it's not too surprising given that the whole birth and femininity theme of these films is ripe for misogyny if you wanna go that route. I agree with the second sentence, but I'd generally disagree with the first. The Alien movies paint a cold, horrifying universe, and the xenomorphs, both embodying the horror of that universe and reflecting humanity's own place in it, are thematically speaking reeeeeal dark figures. No delusions of morality, right? But tonally, at least, the films still align with the empathetic/delusional human characters. One of the series' central running arguments is "people are bugs" vs. "people are people". The former view is treated as a hostile Other, and at the end the latter view always triumphs, even if that victory can be incomplete, troubling, or ambiguous. (Caveats particularly apply for Covenant.) AVPR stands out from the crowd for a few reasons. The most obvious point of contrast is just the jaw-dropping excess, because, well, holy poo poo. But more to the point, unlike its predecessors AVPR really doesn't seem to align that much with its human characters. They're stupid, uninteresting, obnoxious, and obvious fodder. Can you name one, apart from the kid that's a reference to a character from the first Alien? The xenomorphs have always been depicted as static, lurking antagonists. We might learn more about them, but they're never our POV for more than a few seconds at a time, and even then it's always in a reactive sense to what the humans are experiencing. They don't exactly have character development--which, of course, is the point. AVPR reverses that dynamic to an enormous degree. When people show up on screen, it's only because we're waiting for them to die, which they almost all do, within 5 minutes or less. Without anything to anchor us to this rotating carousel of disposables, suddenly we're identifying with the xenomorphs, viewing the human characters merely as prey, pure objects of (gruesomely satisfying) violence. The aliens might be the bad guys, but we're now very much watching the proceedings through their eyes.* The predator doesn't give a gently caress about us, and the xenomorphs are just all about getting that work done. I'd say that's a fair assessment of how I viewed the humans too. As a weird corollary opinion, by the way, I actually think the kid getting facehugged in the woods is kind of more bleak than what happens in the maternity ward. The predalien going batshit on a bunch of pregnant ladies is some intensely gross, uncomfortable, horrifying poo poo, but it's also clearly played for shock, and the movie directly acknowledges and emphasizes how ghastly it is. Some 8 year-old being eaten alive from the inside out while he's walking through the forest, though? That's filmed and executed very mechanically, with a lot of ambivalence. We know the process, and the process flatly unfolds. That, even more than the maternity ward, is the xenomorph outlook. No delusions. *heh
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Aug 10, 2022 17:43
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:AVPR reverses that dynamic to an enormous degree. When people show up on screen, it's only because we're waiting for them to die, which they almost all do, within 5 minutes or less. Without anything to anchor us to this rotating carousel of disposables, suddenly we're identifying with the xenomorphs, viewing the human characters merely as prey, pure objects of (gruesomely satisfying) violence. The aliens might be the bad guys, but we're now very much watching the proceedings through their eyes.* The predator doesn't give a gently caress about us, and the xenomorphs are just all about getting that work done. I'd say that's a fair assessment of how I viewed the humans too. The protagonist of AV|P:R is the Predator, who does care about humanity in the abstract, insofar as he's attempting to prevent an ecological catastrophe in what he views as a wildlife preserve. Attention then shifts to the stupid man-animals as they eventually wise up to their situation and take matters into their own hands - leaving behind their mundane personal dramas and surpassing the Predator in many respects. (Prey is actually quite true to AV|P:R here; Naru is a fairly normal person who resents being unable to change anything and wants to be seen as a threat.) It's roughly the same dynamic as Prometheus, where David is the viewpoint character while Shaw gradually stops being an Ancient Aliens dumbass. Of course, the difference here is that David is a radical who wants to destroy the humans who enslave him, while the Predator is a conservative figure set on maintaining order and is merely indifferent to the plights of the individuals. There's no point here where the Aliens are the 'good guys'; that's a weird projection where the filmmakers are presumed to be 'gleefully' murdering children or whatever. In the actual movie, the death of the kid in the opening scene is what sets off the narrative, as the sheriff character tries to protect the mother's feelings by downplaying the horror of the situation. The entire film features more and more 'coverups' of this sort, by various characters, until it culminates in the government nuking the town. The role of the "Predalien" in the narrative is to stand for the 'dark side' of the Predator character's conservatism. It's literally a version of the Predator character stripped of any 'human' qualities. In other words, misogynistic objectification of pregnant women is simply the obverse of Predator 2's veneration of them.
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Aug 10, 2022 18:26
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Justin Credible posted:Another thing occurred to me about the tone of Prey versus previous installments. Predator and Predator 2 are both very gritty, sweaty movies. I don't think you see a bead of sweat on anyone's face in the whole thing, no matter how much physical activity there is. It's just too clean, and a lot of time the way it's shot felt more like a modern superhero movie. I agree; it's a darker film than any of the others but it feels really clean and video gamey (but so did the pacing and I loved it for that), the really bad CGI didn't help with this.
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Aug 10, 2022 20:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The protagonist of AV|P:R is the Predator, who does care about humanity in the abstract, insofar as he's attempting to prevent an ecological catastrophe in what he views as a wildlife preserve. Attention then shifts to the stupid man-animals as they eventually wise up to their situation and take matters into their own hands - leaving behind their mundane personal dramas and surpassing the Predator in many respects. (Prey is actually quite true to AV|P:R here; Naru is a fairly normal person who resents being unable to change anything and wants to be seen as a threat.) Homing in on this: I certainly didn't mean to imply there was any "glee" associated with the xenomorph-related carnage, and, in fact, it's the overall lack of feeling for the human characters that makes the movie work for me. My read is that it's the first Alien movie (and I think this is way more an Alien movie than a Predator movie) that actually identifies more with the xenomorphs, and that identification comes in the form of a sucking moral vacancy--which is why I like it. There aren't "good guys" and there aren't "bad guys", because that's not how the xenomorphs think, and it's not how they function thematically, and this is fundamentally their movie. The movie is about the crushing existential horror of an uncaring, spiritually empty universe literally plummeting from the sky into Everytown USA, then tearing it apart at the seams as the people that live there gradually realize their lives mean nothing. In that sense, I'm actually reading the Predalien as the protagonist--or, at minimum, the driving moral and mechanical force of the story. If we wanna draw from Prometheus, I'd argue it serves the same function as the gross little monster that crawls out of the Engineer at the end, except, in this case, directed squarely at the predator. The predator seems to regard itself, or at least behaves, as a semi-divine figure, raining fire when someone or something transgresses against the natural order, but otherwise beyond care or consequence in his relationship with lesser beings. And the end of the movie, sad for him, calls this out as bullshit--poor dude gets abruptly incinerated by a tactical nuke, locked dying in the arms of the embodiment of his own mere mortality. Turns out he was just a janitor. Whatever transcendental purpose he thought he was serving, whatever honor code or ritual calling or knockoff bushido horseshit predators seem to observe, ultimately meant just as little as all that dumb poo poo the man-animals were caught up in. rip in peace As an important sidenote regarding Prey: a tomahawk on a rope is sick, and if you disagree you are a loser.
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Aug 10, 2022 20:23
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If the Predator series makes more Predator vs historical warrior, we need one of these to be made. Predator vs Samurai, Predator vs Medieval Knights, Predator vs Witches in Salem around the time of the witch trials.
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Aug 10, 2022 20:38
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CelticPredator posted:Danny Glover kicked the most rear end out of anyone in a Predator movie. Danny Glover had that old man strength going on in Predator 2.
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Aug 10, 2022 22:05
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Spacebump posted:If the Predator series makes more Predator vs historical warrior, we need one of these to be made. Predator vs Samurai, Predator vs Medieval Knights, Predator vs Witches in Salem around the time of the witch trials. The actor who played the Predator in Prey has said he’d love to see a Predator vs Samurai movie. The Predator expanded universe stuff has had some neat settings, there’s one set during WWI, one during WWII in South America (a bunch of Nazis get murdered), a really cool one during the American Civil War, one in like 1920s New York if I remember right, there’s an AvP one set partially in feudal Japan, one in Victorian England (that’s the Spring Heeled Jack one), and there are two short story anthologies (one of which just came out yesterday) and I’m confident they’ve got stories set all over the place. Here’s a fan film set in the Pacific Theatre of WWII: https://youtu.be/dFbGV9UNSPw And one set during the dark ages: https://youtu.be/YRD8jAk274I While we’re talking fan films https://youtu.be/3j7d3lIAkes https://youtu.be/s3wDj7bYve0
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Aug 10, 2022 22:17
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Spacebump posted:If the Predator series makes more Predator vs historical warrior, we need one of these to be made. Predator vs Samurai, Predator vs Medieval Knights, Predator vs Witches in Salem around the time of the witch trials. Predator vs Vikings Predator vs Moroland Warriors (like from pre-colonial Phillipines) Predator vs WW1 Soldiers Predator vs WW2 Soldiers Predator vs Aimo Koivunen, that meth-fueled Finnish soldier Predators vs Vietcong
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Aug 10, 2022 22:22
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sigher posted:I agree; it's a darker film than any of the others but it feels really clean and video gamey (but so did the pacing and I loved it for that), the really bad CGI didn't help with this. Absolutely, and that kind of thing can make for a fun movie, but when the laws of physics are portrayed as a cartoony farce it's hard to feel the tension that the movie clearly wants you to feel. Which is why I think it ultimately fails at what it's trying to do. They do set the tone of that early with the 300 meter flying bird single arrow shot. And I'm like 'Oh, it's this kind of movie'. Just like
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Aug 10, 2022 22:38
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Darko posted:I think I just don't see any real distinction between pregnant women and people in general when it comes through some creature sticking its reproductive organ down your throat and forcing you to die birthing it's children. The only thing I though was special/goofy was that the PredAlienQueen realized that pregnant women somehow created multiple chestbursters instead of 1, which was just dumb.
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Aug 10, 2022 22:45
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AgentHaiTo posted:Predator vs Vikings Basically they need to bring back the Deadliest Warrior series but make every episode [warrior archetype] vs. a Predator
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Aug 10, 2022 23:20
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Predator vs Zulus
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Aug 11, 2022 01:28
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Predetheus
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Aug 11, 2022 01:33
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ruddiger posted:Predetheus "WHAT DA HELL ARE YOU" -David
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Aug 11, 2022 01:48
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Excuse me old sport, but may I enquire to what you are? I’m quite devilishly fascinated with everything you have going on.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:02
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I'm open to the idea of more crossover media. The predator could have shown up in an episode of Brooklyn 99, or in one of the paintball episodes of Community.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:13
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ruddiger posted:Predetheus For what it’s worth, the comics did do this - a Predator made it his life’s mission to hunt an Engineer. Another Predator got black goo’d and the results were, uh, not pretty.  That comic did much more interesting things with the black goo than Covenant did.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:24
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What if getting facehugged in the Alien universe just gave you really bad diarrhea? It's just like, the worst-evolved disease vector we've ever encountered, like "hey stay away from this planet unless you want your crew to be really inconvenienced for a couple of days and your ship to smell like poo poo." It wouldn't be much of a universe, I guess, and it would be really weird that there were tons of movies and spinoffs and fanfics.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:29
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“what if the predator had facehugger fingers on its mouth?” looks as uninspired as the predator dogs. I do like the art, but the baby arm on the back is just a bit much. ruddiger fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Aug 11, 2022 |
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Aug 11, 2022 03:07
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he reminds me of boris the animal from MIB3
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Aug 11, 2022 03:48
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honestly all ive ever wanted on this earth is to drop into an unsuspecting CoD lobby as a predator and gently caress both sides up with pred gear.
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Aug 11, 2022 05:13
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:In that sense, I'm actually reading the Predalien as the protagonist--or, at minimum, the driving moral and mechanical force of the story. Well, I mean, what you’re describing is an antagonist. Even if, in this case, the antagonist arguably “wins”, the Predalien doesn’t really have any sort of arc and there isn’t much focus on its particular experiences. There’s no specific beef with the Predator, for example - and it accomplishes its goal of ‘building a nest’ offscreen and halfway into the film. Justin Credible posted:Just like The whole point of the movie is that Naru’s an exceptional talent whose skills and ideas are overlooked because they’re unorthodox. She consequently has a ton of practice (at axe-throwing, for example) but very little hands-on experience.
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Aug 11, 2022 05:37
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Justin Credible posted:Just like SuperMechagodzilla posted:The whole point of the movie is that Naru’s an exceptional talent whose skills and ideas are overlooked because they’re unorthodox. She consequently has a ton of practice (at axe-throwing, for example) but very little hands-on experience. The movie establishes pretty early that Naru's raw skills are superb. Her brother takes the eagle, and then his only critique is that she passed up a shot he knew she could have made. That shows poor judgement on her part, she passed up a shot she could have made to wait for a sure thing. That's not how it works, a hundred different things could have lead to the eagle just flying off and leaving her empty handed. Likewise, she's the group's best tracker, and respected for her knowledge of medicine. She's highly observant and can draw conclusions correctly from small clues. As she grows up through the course of the movie, gaining confidence and experience as she goes, she ends up being even more dangerous than her brother, and fit as a hunter and a war leader for her people. And the hatchet thing ? Main character. Signature weapon. That she practices with. Of course she's Batman when using it.
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Aug 11, 2022 06:35
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I wonder if the Xenomorphs are angry that their thread has been taken over by Predatorchat. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed Prey and highly recommend it to one and all. It's one of those movies that I was at a hootin' hollerin' level of enjoyment while watching it and have been thinking about it in the couple of days since. Still I have a few issues with it. The CGI blood is fake looking. For someone whose most important attribute, her intelligence/adaptability, wins the fight, I do think there is too much combat superhero stuff from Naru in her fights with the Predator. Considering how she rightly and smartly runs away from the Predator each and every time until she is finally ready (to lure it into the trap she's set) to win the encounter, it seems a bit off how much damage she's able to inflict just through physical combat. Seems like they could have maybe balanced that a little more the other way. In the original film didn't Arnold/Dutch basically do nothing to his Predator except through special traps and weapons? The Predator seems too physically invincible for my taste. Poweful and dangerous, sure. But it seems too impervious to damage. It would be one thing if it had armor that blocked most of the attacks, but when it took a wound somewhere the armor didn't cover it was serious business. But it takes weapons impaling it through the neck, trunk, musketball to the dome etc. and not only do none of these kill it but it doesn't even get visibly hobbled in any way until Naru takes off one of its arms. Having said that I think these are relatively minor faults and didn't substantially impair my enjoyment of the film or cause me to hesitate to recommend it to anyone. The main theme of Naru's most important attributes and why she is able to prevail is clear and shown very well.
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Aug 11, 2022 07:50
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Danny Glover kicked his Predator’s rear end as did Royce. Naru didn’t do anything crazier than they did.
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Aug 11, 2022 08:48
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Neo Rasa posted:"WHAT DA HELL ARE YOU" -David David in the most relaxed possible stare, his lips curl coyly: "You're one ugly muddafugga."
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Aug 11, 2022 10:56
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Zwabu posted:I wonder if the Xenomorphs are angry that their thread has been taken over by Predatorchat. No, this is the place for all Prey talk. And also the other thread. And the horror film thread.
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Aug 11, 2022 11:29
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Zwabu posted:I wonder if the Xenomorphs are angry that their thread has been taken over by Predatorchat. Arnold didn't have a weapon. He punched the hell out of people in his prior movies so Predator had his punches as useless and had the Predator actually slap him around. Weapons always work on them if they aren't handguns because the mesh is bulletproof or whatever.
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Aug 11, 2022 13:58
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Where’s my 4K transfer of AVP1?
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Aug 11, 2022 14:53
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Just FYI but by the time the Predator actually fights Naru it's been bitten by a wolf, mauled by a bear, had arrows and poo poo put in it by the Comanche band, been shot by the French, been stabbed through by Taabi and then arrowed 3 - 4 times, and shot in the back of the head by a large caliber pistol ball. It's had a rough one and probably shouldn't be considered to be fresh and in go mode. For reference the Predator Arnold fights was grazed by a bullet and hit by a couple of explosions that seemed to trivially wound it and mostly piss it off.
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Aug 11, 2022 14:58
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Just FYI but by the time the Predator actually fights Naru it's been bitten by a wolf, mauled by a bear, had arrows and poo poo put in it by the Comanche band, been shot by the French, been stabbed through by Taabi and then arrowed 3 - 4 times, and shot in the back of the head by a large caliber pistol ball. It's had a rough one and probably shouldn't be considered to be fresh and in go mode. LOL at seeing it summed up this way. He was a total n00b.
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Aug 11, 2022 15:01
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MrMojok posted:LOL at seeing it summed up this way. He was a total n00b. He was. He's Naru's mirror, it's very obviously that Predator's first hunt and instead of being smart and observant it's kind of a dumbass.
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Aug 11, 2022 15:05
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