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Xenomrph posted:Gonna have to side with Splicer on this one - Shaw doesn’t touch the head, and all the other shots of Ford with the scraper deliberately show her almost-but-not touching it. Shaw doesn’t say “let’s take a sample” until after the head pops, implying they hadn’t taken a sample yet. The post-exploded head samples might well be just as good as the pre-exploded head samples, since obviously either way you're collecting a dollop of matter that's been physically torn or whatever and then flensing it apart to get the same DNA. However, you don't know that Shaw doesn't touch the head. You just know that, when you see the head from her perspective rather than the Scottish lady's, she's passing her tweezers over the surface of the head and not touching it yet. Why are they waving the tweezers and scrapers around carefully? Are they practicing their nonverbal spellcasting? quote:It was safe to breathe the same air that the sealed helmet was in, which is an important distinction. It must have been generally safe, since they crack the helmet open while in the same room with it, instead of cracking it open using some kind of Dr. Octopus arm that reaches into a sealed chamber. Remember, the equipment of the characters in Prometheus is actually very good, and they generally don't go wrong when they trust in it. Charlie's suit's integrated analyzer or whatever determines that the air in the alien complex is safe to breathe when they're still in the elevator leading down to it or whatever, but he never suffers for breathing the air even quite deep into the caverns. If you think "no contagion present" actually means "no contagion present on outside, inside unaccounted for" and that the scientists were being willfully stupid by opening the helmet without doing a second scan, that's on you. In point of fact, it would've just been a waste of screentime to show a telescoping series of scan after scan after scan. It's not important to the plot!
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Apr 6, 2023 03:30
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, we're doing this, huh? Ferrinus posted:No! Wrong! They turned off the current well before the head exploded, and the current did not cause the head to explode. What the current did was revitalize the mutagenic infection that had been lying dormant (but not completely dead) in the alien flesh. Ferrinus posted:They got that alien head out of an entire charnel house of dead engineers. You think they should've assumed they managed to pick the only well-preserved one by sheer luck? Ferrinus posted:This isn't an apt metaphor at all for the scene or our discussion. Ferrinus posted:I'm not actually pulling a "why is this so important to you". I'm telling you why it's important to you: you've zeroed in on the question of whether the scientists took a sample (which they did) before applying electricity because it turns out you described all the other particulars of the experiment incorrectly and indeed no foreseeable mistakes were made throughout. You decided ahead of time that the scientists must be extremely bad at their jobs, but you have to keep seizing on smaller and smaller details to prove it because it turns out the big ones don't support you. Unfortunately, the small ones don't support you either! Ferrinus posted:I just wanted to bring up the fact that you've said yourself that, even if you ever do prove beyond a shadow of the doubt that all the characters of the film got such bad grades in school they never should've been allowed on the spaceship, you still won't be satisfied, because after all that would be a conclusion you arrived at by making a judgment about the facts rather than a personal assurance from Ridley Scott. Ferrinus posted:No! Samples after whatever weird mold was present inside the head metastasized and burst are obviously of interest above and beyond samples from the head before it was brought back to life. Ferrinus posted:The screen says "no contagion present", which is why it's safe for them to breathe the same air the head's sitting in.
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Apr 6, 2023 03:41
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Ferrinus posted:It must have been generally safe, since they crack the helmet open while in the same room with it, instead of cracking it open using some kind of Dr. Octopus arm that reaches into a sealed chamber. Splicer posted:"They weren't carrying any guns"
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Apr 6, 2023 03:44
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Splicer posted:I have the human standard ability to judge relative distances. No, you don't. Here's the image again:  Is Shaw touching/pinching/scraping the flesh? You can't actually know. How close or far her hand appears to the skull is an artifact, among other things, of the lens in use, so there's simply no flawless spatial apprehension you can claim to be using here. You certainly don't have an uninterrupted camera feed of her tweezers (nor of the Scottish scientist's), which means this actually comes down to a matter of inference and judgment. Would scientists who are carefully waving sample-taking implements around an object of interest eventually use those implements to take a sample? I say "yes", since they have both ample reason and opportunity to do so. You say "no", because... well, because you've decided ahead of time they're too stupid to do so, so, of course, they can't possibly do it despite their ample reason and opportunity. It doesn't seem to occur to you here that you're assuming the conclusions of your argument before bothering to make it. quote:Are you actual as well as media illiterate. You haven't replied to my actual words on this in some time so I'm going to stop trying. "shoot electricity into a head until it exploded" is just facially wrong. Its writer, if they expected to be taken literally, was confused about the words "shoot" and "until". Now, I know you know what "until" means. The thing is, you're trying to have things both ways here. On the one hand you've got your faux-breezy Youtube rant where you're exaggerating the characters' actions for comic effect, but on the other hand you're trying to make really finnicky and fine-grained complaints about the sequencing of their actions. If you were to actually write accurately, and say something like "they used electricity to revitalize an alien infection, which rapidly grew until it caused the head to explode", well, that would sound like a basically believable sequence of events in a sci fi/horror movie. But it also wouldn't suit your purposes. quote:Ignoring everything else wrong here: It's a literal outlier. It's simply not a unique sample. They got it out of a giant pile of bodies and they didn't, like, search the bodies and discover skeleton after skeleton until they found the one miraculously-preserved corpse. You're just making this up. quote:Disagree This isn't functionally different from just leaving my text out of quotes in your previous posts. poo poo or get off the pot! (Hey, do the characters in Prometheus use the bathroom?) quote:Jesus christ. Rewatch the clip. They say it's sterilised because they just pulled it out of the steriliser. Then they discover they sterilised the outside of a helmet and try to do the opposite of sterilising the contents. Seriously come on. Well, this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? They do some kind of unexplained future-science scan on the helmet. It says "no contagion." They discover the helmet is a helmet, and choose to open it. Why didn't they run a second scan first? Well, it could be that their scan, since it's being done by sci-fi futuretech, is good enough to detect that there's no contagion even on the inside of the object, so they're safe to start poking at it. Or, their scan is only capable of determining that there are no contaminants on the surface, not the inside, so they're just stupid or suicidal and that's why they open it anyway. You basically have to decide for yourself here whether their decision to open it anyway should be read as a sign that they possess, and have faith in, highly-advanced technical equipment, or that they're ridiculous clowns. When making that judgment, though, you do have to take into account: did anyone or anything get contaminated after they did that? Huh, they didn't, okay then.
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Apr 6, 2023 03:58
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Ferrinus posted:However, you don't know that Shaw doesn't touch the head. You just know that, when you see the head from her perspective rather than the Scottish lady's, she's passing her tweezers over the surface of the head and not touching it yet. Why are they waving the tweezers and scrapers around carefully? Are they practicing their nonverbal spellcasting? But again why does it matter? For real I’m just sharing my reading of the scene, I ultimately really don’t care, whether they tried to scrape samples before the head popped or not doesn’t really change my opinion of the scene as a whole. Ferrinus posted:
It’s also circular reasoning - “it must have been safe since nothing bad happened” yeah but they didn’t know that! They just… assumed. Thankfully they guessed right, but it was a hell of a dice roll. Especially when they note weird growths that are “changing” and then they don’t immediately put it back in the sterile box. Like I said, it’s like sterilizing the space suit of Major Tom when he’s got the Plague inside the suit and you don’t know it, or how other similar space monster movies handle the same scenario with more intelligence. Ferrinus posted:If you think "no contagion present" actually means "no contagion present on outside, inside unaccounted for" and that the scientists were being willfully stupid by opening the helmet without doing a second scan, that's on you. Ferrinus posted:It's not important to the plot! It’s like any of the tech in Johnny Mnemonic, or the hacking in ‘Swordfish’ - it’s all gobbledygook unrealistic bad science, but who cares because it’s still emotionally engaging and Cool. Just because the science is bad doesn’t automatically ruin the scene or movie for me. But if someone wants to use the scene as yet another example of the bad scientists being bad at science, then yeah I can see how that tracks.  Edit— here’s a thought: if sterilizing the helmet was sufficient to sterilize its contents too, why did they think applying electricity to it would do anything? I mean, it’s sterile, it shouldn’t react, right? Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 04:04
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Xenomrph posted:Alternately, they’re considering doing it but hesitant to do so (as we see Ford doing when we see the camera on her and she’s literally not touching it but making like she’s considering but hesitant). It's the claim that they're doing bad science that's circular. The scan says no contaminants are present, and the scientists act like there are no contaminants, and, indeed, there are no contaminants and nothing is contaminated. But what if there were? Well, in that case, only bad scientists wouldn't scan again, and they didn't scan again, so they must be bad scientists. (But what if that second scan said "no contaminants"? Well only fools would trust it. They should do a third scan-) You're not exactly wrong to invoke the "rule of cool" to explain the scene, but I think even that's a slightly limited view of what's going on, because there's actually no particular reason that "cool" and "consistent" are in tension. That is to say, it is arguably an invocation of the "rule of cool" that we don't see the characters brush their teeth or use the bathroom or file their taxes. That's not because we're like, taxes are boring, no one does their taxes in this universe! This is a universe of rad action scientists who NEVER have to fill out 1040s!!! It's just because plenty of things can safely be assumed to be happening without meriting screentime, and, indeed, if those things did get screentime, it would set up expectations of their narrative importance. A version of Prometheus in which we're constantly seeing Shaw fill out Weyland Industries paperwork had better be one in which Weyland's finances and legal procedures are important to the plot, or else our time is being wasted. One of the things that Splicer has very carefully never acknowledged or replied to is my pointing out that if the camera made a point of showing us and focusing on the samples being taken, like zooming in on the tweezers tearing off a bit of skin and then following that bit of skin as it got sealed away in a tube, that would set up the expectation that that very sample is narratively important and is going to come back later in the movie. So it's actually a good thing that screentime isn't wasted on taking samples that are never going to be important except because we get to see a scan taken of them later.
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Apr 6, 2023 04:19
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Ferrinus posted:It's the claim that they're doing bad science that's circular. The scan says no contaminants are present, and the scientists act like there are no contaminants, and, indeed, there are no contaminants and nothing is contaminated. But what if there were? Well, in that case, only bad scientists wouldn't scan again, and they didn't scan again, so they must be bad scientists. (But what if that second scan said "no contaminants"? Well only fools would trust it. They should do a third scan-) And yes, there were contaminants - they verbally make note of the growths on the head, and then panic and make a mad scramble to put the already-noted contaminated head back in the sterile box once they realized they’d hosed up. I’m not saying they need to make endless scans and never trust them, so please don’t use that like a silly strawman. Two would have gotten it done and made it look like they’re doing their due diligence. Even if they’d done a second scan of the exposed head and it came back negative and the entire rest of the scene plays out exactly the same, they at least acknowledged that scanning the outside of a sealed object is not the same as scanning it’s contents. You could even use it as a recurring theme of the humans’ technology repeatedly failing them - David fails to grant his master immortality, Fifeld’s pups fail to keep him from getting lost (and his helmet fails to save him from being goo’d), the med-chair nearly fails to save Shaw, the security guys’ guns fail to stop Fifeld, etc. Hell, you could even parlay it into how the Engineers’ technology utterly failed them, too. “Oh well nothing bad happened therefore what they did isn’t dumb” is some real  logic.Especially when something bad DOES happen in the scene and the characters scramble to undo it. Now excuse me while i go stick a fork in a wall socket; if I don’t get electrocuted then what I did was clearly smart. 
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Apr 6, 2023 04:52
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Xenomrph posted:That’s the part that’s bad science. It also directly contradicts their behavior upon noting that same reaction in the room where they find the head. Shaw is scared and shouts "We must leave now!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQOlsMl647E I like the headsplosion scene as well, but good grief.
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Apr 6, 2023 05:03
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That's again a very basic misreading. Shaw is worried because their prescence in the chamber is damaging the murals, not because she believes any of them are in danger. The characters, later, are not worried about damaging the head - as evidenced by how they scrape samples from it and shove electrodes into it.
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Apr 6, 2023 05:15
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Ferrinus posted:I just wanted to bring up the fact that you've said yourself that, even if you ever do prove beyond a shadow of the doubt that all the characters of the film got such bad grades in school they never should've been allowed on the spaceship, you still won't be satisfied, because after all that would be a conclusion you arrived at by making a judgment about the facts rather than a personal assurance from Ridley Scott. Splicer posted:Nothing in this paragraph is true or false because it's gibberish. Splicer posted:In most romcoms its never really questioned that the focus characters appear incapable of sitting down and having simple conversations about the main narrative conflicts, while in e.g. My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend it's explicit text that Rebecca Bunch is not well. "Why don't they just talk to each other?" -> "Because it's easier to write the film that way, there's no in-universe reason" i'm getting the impression that you don't pay very close attention to the things you write
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Apr 6, 2023 05:23
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Xenomrph posted:No, recognizing that the thing you just scanned was actually a sealed container and then verbally acknowledging that the thing inside the container is diseased and weird and then not sterilizing it (and instead trying to provoke it with electricity, out in the open no less) is, in fact, bad science. That is not circular reasoning. There actually weren't contaminants, and you can tell by the way that nothing was contaminated. Or rather, no one was contaminated. Obviously, the alien head itself was contaminated with some kind of fungus or cancer (then again, is a cancer a "contaminant"? it's just your own cells). However, Shaw and her cohort were breathing the air in that operating room for a good few minutes with the black growths exposed to the air, and those growths were already alive and kicking before they got accelerated by electric current. If that was the black fungus from Covenant then everyone in that room should've been dead by the end of the day... but they weren't because, as with Charlie's stunt earlier in the movie, their instruments were actually perfectly adequate to their purposes. Covenant isn't really about technology failing so much as technology working too well, or working just fine but being under the control of your enemies. David betrays the crew by over-identifying with his directives and following them too literally. Fifeld's pups actually create a perfectly serviceable 3D map of the complex, but it's one that's accessible to his superiors but not to him. The med-chair is a miracle of modern science, but was designed for someone who can't get pregnant and so has to be tricked into performing a reproductive surgery (which it does amazingly well given the circumstances). If you've already decided, ahead of time, that the characters are goofballs, then you're never going to be satisfied with a second scan. If, on the other hand, you're willing to take the film at its word, then you can smoothly conclude that if a second scan wasn't shown onscreen, it was either unnecessary or unimportant. If I saw you stick a fork in a wall socket, I would assume that you were either trying to hurt yourself or trying to scare me because you already knew that the power was out. That's because I've had enough dealings with you, even though they've been online, that I can trust you have a basic grasp of cause and effect, electrical safety, etc. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 05:29
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Ferrinus posted:If you've already decided, ahead of time, that the characters are goofballs, then you're never going to be satisfied with a second scan. If, on the other hand, you're willing to take the film at its word, then you can smoothly conclude that if a second scan wasn't shown onscreen, it was either unnecessary or unimportant. No there is no ulterior motive, it is perfectly acceptable to see characters do something dumb and conclude they’re dumb. Like I said, I’d have been satisfied with a second scan - it would have demonstrated the characters to be Not Dumb. I have been flat out telling you, using words, what it would have taken for the scene to be Not Dumb. There is no ulterior motive or preconception here, don’t hide behind that logical fallacy. But it’s okay, because I’m done with this topic; you read a scene differently than I did (and ultimately I’m not bothered by the scene, and in fact think it’s cool!) and that’s fine, we can agree to disagree over whether the Prometheus team did dumb things or not. I don’t think anything productive will come from me continuing to engage with this particular topic, so I’m just going to move on.
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Apr 6, 2023 05:52
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Xenomrph posted:No there is no ulterior motive, it is perfectly acceptable to see characters do something dumb and conclude they’re dumb. Like I said, I’d have been satisfied with a second scan - it would have demonstrated the characters to be Not Dumb. I have been flat out telling you, using words, what it would have taken for the scene to be Not Dumb. There is no ulterior motive or preconception here, don’t hide behind that logical fallacy. If you were emotionally invested in the characters being dumb, you wouldn't be satisfied with a second scan. After all, that scan would only apply to the surface of the head, and not its innards, so they should only be cutting it open with robotic limbs inside of a sealed container such that a third scan can confirms its brains or whatever are safe. But actually, wouldn't it just confirm the brains are safe in that moment? They might transform and become unsafe. We go on like this until we conclude that it's actually too dangerous to leave Earth at all or indeed to get out of bed in the morning. But if you are willing to allow that, at some point, it is possible for the characters to have done their due diligence and proceed in a basically reasonable way, there's nothing magical about num_scans = 2 instead of num_scans = 1. They could've even cut out the first scan! Zero on-screen scans! Then we, in the audience, could just assume they did a scan, and that's why they're okay opening up the helmet in the circumstances shown.
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Apr 6, 2023 06:11
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Xenomrph posted:it is perfectly acceptable to see characters do something dumb and conclude they’re dumb. Like I said, I’d have been satisfied with a second scan - it would have demonstrated the characters to be Not Dumb. I have been flat out telling you, using words, what it would have taken for the scene to be Not Dumb. You are saying that you would feel better - "satisfied" - if the filmmakers included a redundant scene where they performed the scan twice in case their equipment was malfunctioning. This would make you feel comfortable. What you are expressing is actually just the fact that the film is working; the scene makes you uneasy. There is a horror-movie monster lurking there, even though they can't see it. Don't go in the basement!!!
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Apr 6, 2023 06:11
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Ferrinus posted:
 Incidentally, the gap between the dialogue of "there's something weird on its skin" and "let's run electricity through the head!  " is nine seconds. SCIENCE! 
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Apr 6, 2023 12:30
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's again a very basic misreading. Shaw is worried because their prescence in the chamber is damaging the murals, not because she believes any of them are in danger. It can be both. Shaw doesn't want to damage the ceiling murals, but also doesn't want them, you know, to collapse on them or something. Which is a distinct possibility in an ancient stone ruin you've disturbed and appears to be crumbling above you.
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Apr 6, 2023 12:57
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I'm having trouble taking "the film doesn't adequately communicate that the scientists took samples because of the camera angles seriously as a complaint.
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Apr 6, 2023 14:10
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This sort of discussion is what happens when a franchise goes too long without a new entry.
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Apr 6, 2023 14:37
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Schwarzwald posted:I'm having trouble taking "the film doesn't adequately communicate that the scientists took samples because of the camera angles seriously as a complaint. It's deliberate disingenuousness to support the unfounded credentialism. Literally "Shaw did not graduate with a degree in Science because she is actually famous actress Noomi Rapace, and is only pretending." *cinema sins ding* It's astonishing that they would spend thousands of words trying to argue this. Dienes posted:It can be both. Shaw doesn't want to damage the ceiling murals, but also doesn't want them, you know, to collapse on them or something. Which is a distinct possibility in an ancient stone ruin you've disturbed and appears to be crumbling above you. It can be both, but isn't. Shaw does not believe the building is collapsing. We can tell this because she does not say or do anything that expresses a belief that the building is collapsing.
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Apr 6, 2023 14:42
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Ferrinus posted:If you were emotionally invested in the characters being dumb, you wouldn't be satisfied with a second scan. I’m not emotionally invested in them being dumb, don’t hide behind that projection. I’m telling you, again, why I feel what they did was dumb, and the very precise steps that could have been taken for it to be Not Dumb. There is no ulterior motive, stop trying to project one onto me, it’s a weak logical fallacy. Ferrinus posted:But if you are willing to allow that, at some point, it is possible for the characters to have done their due diligence and proceed in a basically reasonable way, there's nothing magical about num_scans = 2 instead of num_scans = 1. They could've even cut out the first scan! Zero on-screen scans! Then we, in the audience, could just assume they did a scan, and that's why they're okay opening up the helmet in the circumstances shown. Whatever, we’re done here. We are at an impasse and you’ve started resorting to projection and logical fallacies to try and “explain” (invalidate?) my opinion, there is nothing more to be gained by engaging with you on this. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 14:42
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Xenomrph posted:No really, I’ve told you multiple times that a second scan would be sufficient for me, feel free to stop hiding behind logical fallacies and trying to project what would or wouldn’t be sufficient for me, I’ve full on told you what the answer is. Which logical fallacy? Ferrinus agrees with you that your objection is grounded in a "feeling of lost satisfaction" and not anything to do with Startrekky space-quarantine procedures. From what you've expressed, it genuinely doesn't matter if the characters are "intelligent" or not, because the actual objection is that the film itself didn't 'do enough' to reassure you that the scanning technology is effective through X layers of material. So, it's a perfectly sensible conclusion that more Startrekky space-quarantine procedures would not make you happy. This is supported by prior assertions like that - for example, in Aliens - you don't care that the characters knowingingly walk into a dangerous environment with zero protective equipment and performing nothing like Prometheus' scans.
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Apr 6, 2023 15:08
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Schwarzwald posted:
Literally same. I think the picture smg posted is probably for dealing with large quantities. I pour like 20 mL into a beaker out of a 2 L bottle so I'm not that worried.
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Apr 6, 2023 15:29
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I get what you're saying here, but I worked in analytical chemistry for a short time regularly handling sulfuric acid and I was only given gloves and safety glasses.
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SHISHKABOB posted:Literally same. I think the picture smg posted is probably for dealing with large quantities. I pour like 20 mL into a beaker out of a 2 L bottle so I'm not that worried. Sulfuric Acid is carcinogenic. Two litres is obviously more than enough to cause chemical and thermal burns, and pouring it is the kind of action that will produce aerosols that can damage lungs and, like, gradually disintegrate your teeth. A respirator and/or a great deal of ventilation are vital - especially when you're talking chronic exposure, as you are here. You absolutely should not be in a situation it could get on your clothes or skin. In any case, the 'molecular acid' in Aliens is obviously far worse. It's as though the military have been told in advance that the aliens are, like, Demon Core radioactive. The marines' poor preparation goes beyond some kind of systemic failure (like, "you can't cut back on rubber boots! You will regret this!!!") and into fantastical implausibility. It's like the vital plot point that the marines aren't aware that space is big, and have no backup plan for if the radio stops working. If it breaks, everyone simply dies.
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Apr 6, 2023 16:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Sulfuric Acid is carcinogenic. Two litres is obviously more than enough to cause chemical and thermal burns, and pouring it is the kind of action that will produce aerosols that can damage lungs and, like, gradually disintegrate your teeth. Oh absolutely I pour it in a fume hood. And never have any open containers outside the fume hood. Fake edit: the only thing I don't use in that picture is the rubber boots. My gloves might not be up to standard either but we put on two layers when working with acid. I do use a face shield. SHISHKABOB fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 16:52
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SHISHKABOB posted:Oh absolutely I pour it in a fume hood. And never have any open containers outside the fume hood. Ok, well, good! I mean, you oughta check on the gloves and boots, because what if you spill that poo poo on your foot, but that's obviously better than the conditions Schwarzwald was describing. In any case, it's just immediately obvious that the characters in Prometheus are acting with far more caution than Aliens' marines are. What people like Splicer and forums poster Xenomrph are reacting to is not a lack of caution on the part of the characters. They are actually getting caught up in the characters' cautious behaviour. So, as we've seen, Shaw is concerned that something like the carbon dioxide in their breath is damaging the historical artifacts and says "we must leave now". SUNKOS interprets the "we must leave now" as terror over possible life-or death struggle. Meanwhile, in Aliens, characters walk right into the hive environment with nary a concern that the shitloads of unknown resin may be toxic.
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Apr 6, 2023 17:12
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As a former Marine I have to say that deploying into an environment where harmful chemicals (weaponized or otherwise) may be present without proper protective equipment or with lovely protective equipment, is absolutely realistic
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Apr 6, 2023 17:39
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feedmyleg posted:This sort of discussion is what happens when a franchise goes too long without a new entry.
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Apr 6, 2023 17:45
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MrMojok posted:As a former Marine I have to say that deploying into an environment where harmful chemicals (weaponized or otherwise) may be present without proper protective equipment or with lovely protective equipment, is absolutely realistic This scene cracked me up when I first saw Generation: Kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL7oS7COpec Look at all those sleeveless tank tops!
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Apr 6, 2023 17:55
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Not really, this exact argument came out with the movie's premiere. It's the result of haters desperation to objectively prove their dislike is correct butting up against their ignorance of film and storytelling in general
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Apr 6, 2023 17:59
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MrMojok posted:As a former Marine I have to say that deploying into an environment where harmful chemicals (weaponized or otherwise) may be present without proper protective equipment or with lovely protective equipment, is absolutely realistic In isolation, sure. But, in the film's plot, the "marines" are actually working as hunters/exterminators, so details like the fact that they're going in with flak helmets is totally nutso. Who do they expect to be shooting at them? (Why are they shocked that bugs come out of walls?) The result is a huge gulf between the plot and narrative, where we have to conclude that 'bug hunting' and everything around it is just a fantasy metaphor for racism in a film about warfare against other humans.
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Apr 6, 2023 17:59
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Well to combine the aphorism "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want" with historical analysis of american marines as shock troops to put down colonial uprisings I'd say that probably fits. I always took Hudson's line about a "bug hunt" to mean that they've been sent elsewhere by the company to look for weirdo alien life that never panned out, akin to snipe hunting. Regardless, this is the equipment that Marines have(guns, body armor, and rapid deployment vehicles) so that's what they show up with.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:05
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:In isolation, sure. But, in the film's plot, the "marines" are actually working as hunters/exterminators, so details like the fact that they're going in with flak helmets is totally nutso. Who do they expect to be shooting at them? (Why are they shocked that bugs come out of walls?) Well, as you remember, we’ve discussed this here before. I know it’s the sort of EU theorycrafting you’re not very fond of, but I think general consensus was that these people spend most of their time putting down uprisings on colonies etc. where they have other people shooting at them. Although what a flak jacket and helmet is supposed to do against exploding projectiles is another matter entirely. Then, they have probably encountered some types of dangerous fauna on other planets, just nothing like the titular Aliens.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:07
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The "Bug Hunt" refers to the organized labor they've been sent to stamp out and get the machine back up and running.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:In isolation, sure. But, in the film's plot, the "marines" are actually working as hunters/exterminators, so details like the fact that they're going in with flak helmets is totally nutso. Who do they expect to be shooting at them? (Why are they shocked that bugs come out of walls?) You get the feeling that these guys either pacify rogue insectoid cattle or do My Lai massacres in space.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:10
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feedmyleg posted:This sort of discussion is what happens when a franchise goes too long without a new entry. It’s funny because I don’t remember getting into that topic on the AvP forum even when the movie came out; I’ve been in some dumb discussions over there but maybe I’m just memory-holing this one because at the end of the day the behavior of the scientists doesn’t bother me, overall I like the movie, I like the exploding head scene, and my criticisms lie elsewhere. I even rewatched the movie in 4K for Alien Day 2022, and I’ll say I’ve enjoyed the movie more on each subsequent viewing since it came out, even if some of my other criticisms have still held for me. The way I get around discussing minutiae for too long is to just focus on something else in the franchise. To wit: NECA did the action figures for Prometheus, and their figure of the Deacon (the thing that bursts out of the Engineer in the final shot of the movie) came with the helmeted decapitated head, which you could open to reveal the (unexplored) head inside, it’s pretty neat. Tangentially related, they did a two-pack of the Trilobite and the Engineer at the end of the movie; it was a Toys R Us exclusive, and had a very strategically placed sticker to obscure the phallus the Trilobite rams down the Engineer’s throat.  
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Apr 6, 2023 18:11
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ruddiger posted:The "Bug Hunt" refers to the organized labor they've been sent to stamp out and get the machine back up and running. I really do like the read of Aliens as a labor suppression story
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Apr 6, 2023 18:17
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What I mean, though, is that this isn’t the characters being sent into a combat situation without adequate protection for potential N/B/C threats. It’s characters specifically being tasked with dealing with an explicitly biological and chemical threat. It’s analogous to if the characters’ stated job were to defuse bombs and they went in with flamethrowers - acting shocked that the flamethrowers are making the bombs “fight back”. That can only makes sense if ‘the bomb’ is not a representation of a bomb but an odd metaphor for a something-that-is-not-a-bomb-at-all.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:22
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The overall argument is rather weird to me, since the beginning of the movie establishes that Shaw is a *terrible* scientist that turns her dumb hypothesis into a theory because of a drat cave painting, and the only reason anyone paid any attention is because they are also irrationally desperate to hang on to life - so they go with any longshot. There is no reason to think that anyone from that point on is handling anything the way they should because it's a mission full of idiots (except Vickers and the pilot crew). Edit: the movie almost ends with this illustrated where the ship is falling, Vickers does the rational thing and runs sideways, while Shaw runs in the direction it's falling. Vickers is forced by debris to change and run in Shaw's direction, and dies because of bad luck while Shaw survives due to dumb luck. It's dumb luck that her hypothesis was almost correct, and everyone "rational" around her dies because of it. Darko fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 18:23
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^ Cool! I love my NECA Queen Alien and Ripley in the Loader. The Trilobite really unsettled me even if it's no secret that I didn't enjoy Prometheus. Something about the way it just kind of loosens up and settles on top of the Engineer once it's got its tube in his mouth is grosser than the comparative rapidity of the Facehuggers we know. It reminds me of some bad sex, where you get off and immediately go limp.Name Change posted:You get the feeling that these guys either pacify rogue insectoid cattle or do My Lai massacres in space. The apparent ambiguity of the 'bug hunt' line might actually be one of my favourite points of contention in the series. I think a good portion of EU content leans into the idea that the marines have encountered plenty of alien life before and had to kill it like you would apply Raid to some cockroaches. If you ignore the EU, we still have the 'Arcturians' and by Frost's excitement we can infer that they're, uh, friendly. Then there's the My Lai angle you mentioned, which some of the dialog does hint at; although none of the marines really talk much about putting down revolution it does add another twisted element to the Company. Any way you read it, it establishes the marines' cocky attitude AND their frustration with their assignment, both of which contribute to them all dying or getting implanted. Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 18:24
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The marines refer to themselves as “bug stompers” and have the motto “we endanger species” painted on their shuttle. Therefore, insectoid life is canonically rather common in the setting, and/or the marines are openly genocidal (meaning “bug” is a slur and they’re turbo-racist to the point of delusion).Darko posted:The overall argument is rather weird to me, since the beginning of the movie establishes that Shaw is a *terrible* scientist that turns her dumb hypothesis into a theory because of a drat cave painting, and the only reason anyone paid any attention is because they are also irrationally desperate to hang on to life - so they go with any longshot. There is no reason to think that anyone from that point on is handling anything the way they should because it's a mission full of idiots (except Vickers and the pilot crew). Shaw’s totally correct, though. She has her hypothesis, then works to prove/disprove it by actually visiting the mysterious planetoid & gathering evidence. Her problem is not ‘bad science’ but ideology - the assumption that the gods were benevolent.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:45
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