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Icon Of Sin posted:I know we’ve had this conversation before in this thread, but William Hope played an incompetent/in-over-his-head LT to absolute perfection. Probably in part to Al Matthews’ Vietnam experience with the exact same, but he did real good. Fun fact: while the rest of the Marine actors were training and practicing and rehearsing together, James Cameron intentionally kept William Hope segregated from the others so they could all build camaraderie and trust with each other while William Hope was literally an outsider and not part of their “group”.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:25
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The lesson we should learn from Prometheus is that Dan O'Bannon is a better screenwriter than Damon Lindelof & Jon Spaihts.
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Oct 19, 2023 19:10
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Android Apocalypse posted:The lesson we should learn from Prometheus is that Dan O'Bannon is a better screenwriter than Damon Lindelof & Jon Spaihts. A reminder that Lindelof was the one who pushed hard for Prometheus to be distanced from the Alien universe, thinking that a prequel works better if there are no identifiable links to the film it's supposed to be preceding. From the EW interview he did about the film: quote:They were just looking for someone to say to them, Hey, we don’t need the Alien stuff in here. It shouldn’t be about that. It can be a part of this movie, but it shouldn’t be what it’s about. quote:Yes. The job that I was hired to do was to scale back the familiar tropes or symbology of what we think of when we think of an Alien movie. When I say Alien to you, you think face-hugger, chest-burster, eggs, acid blood, queen — the concentration of those things was much higher in Jon’s script than they are in Prometheus. quote:I hadn’t really heard the word “prequel” before Phantom Menace. If your definition is: this is a series of events that precedes an existing movie, then, yes. This series of events that happens in Prometheus precedes the series of events that occurs in Alien. However, one of the other definitions is that the ending of the prequel leads you right up to the beginning of the preceding movie. The Thing prequel ends with a dog running across the Arctic landscape being pursued by a helicopter…. quote:Everyone wants to know what the relationship is between this movie and Alien. And one could argue that we’ve set ourselves up for an inevitable disappointment. But look who you’re talking to right now. If there is anybody who is known for inevitable disappointment, it’s me. I’m Mr. Inevitable Disappointment!
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Oct 19, 2023 19:34
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Sydney Bottocks posted:It really is shocking how Ridley Scott went from making a very believable science fiction/horror film in Alien, to just constant I don't think the issue is with Ridley Scott's directing, Alien just had much better writers. Despite quibbles/glaring issues with the story and writing of both Prometheus and Covenant I think its fair to say that visually both films look absolutely spectacular.
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Oct 19, 2023 19:44
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with Prometheus and Covenant.
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Lord Ludikrous posted:I don't think the issue is with Ridley Scott's directing, Alien just had much better writers. Despite quibbles/glaring issues with the story and writing of both Prometheus and Covenant I think its fair to say that visually both films look absolutely spectacular. Yeah, but to paraphrase one of the Red Letter Media guys, nowadays you expect big-budget movies to look spectacular, so that's not really as much of a point in a given movie's favor as it used to be.
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Oct 19, 2023 20:26
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Lord Ludikrous posted:I don't think the issue is with Ridley Scott's directing, Alien just had much better writers. Despite quibbles/glaring issues with the story and writing of both Prometheus and Covenant I think its fair to say that visually both films look absolutely spectacular. I actually hated how "good" Prometheus looked. You go from 1970s old rear end computers in the future which they made look great and very blue collar and believable to loving Tony Stark computer poo poo in the past. It doesn't make any sense to me and ruins the feel. Everything was way too clean and perfect. Futuristic full body suits and all that. Exact same thing with the Star Wars prequels. Everything is super clean and pristine and doesn't look real at all. I understand our movie making technology has improved but if you are telling a story you should probably keep the entire world you created somewhat linear. Whoever writes this poo poo is garbage. There's probably a loving snapchat filter that makes everything look more grungy and dirty. Nope! Gotta keep up with Marvel!
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Oct 20, 2023 00:43
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Pennywise the Frown posted:I actually hated how "good" Prometheus looked. You go from 1970s old rear end computers in the future which they made look great and very blue collar and believable to loving Tony Stark computer poo poo in the past. It doesn't make any sense to me and ruins the feel. Everything was way too clean and perfect. Futuristic full body suits and all that. Exact same thing with the Star Wars prequels. Everything is super clean and pristine and doesn't look real at all. Star Wars prequels makes sense though. We're seeing the 10,000 year old Galactic Republic, the peak of civilization. The OT is after years of war and oppression and now outright rebellion. Things are falling apart.
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Oct 20, 2023 00:51
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Damon Lindelof posted:If there is anybody who is known for inevitable disappointment, it’s me. I’m Mr. Inevitable Disappointment! His name is my name too!!!
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Oct 20, 2023 01:00
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Mister Speaker posted:His name is my name too!!! And mine!!!!
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Oct 20, 2023 01:12
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redshirt posted:Star Wars prequels makes sense though. We're seeing the 10,000 year old Galactic Republic, the peak of civilization. I definitely thought about that but it's still just not realistic in the way that intelligent beings live unless it was a perfect fascist society where if you litter or get a smudge on the wall then you get executed. It all looks fake and with CGI being so big they can make everything absolutely perfect instead of... you know... real. Just look at LOTR and the Hobbit trilogy. They used almost all CGI for the Hobbit and it looks way more clean and sterile. It has nothing to do with it being a prequel or the passage of time in the made up universe; it's just what your eyes physically see on the screen. Your brain knows. Well, at least mine does.  edit: this is probably getting more into how modern movies are made in general Pennywise the Frown fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Oct 20, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 01:16
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My favorite Damon Lindelof story is still the one where he figured he'd just contact Alan Moore out of the blue to ask him some questions about the Watchmen comic for the miniseries Lindelof was doing for HBO, and he started his letter (or email, or phonecall, whatever it was) with "I'm one of the people currently destroying Watchmen". To which Moore replied "I have no interest in talking to you or anyone else affiliated with DC Comics. Please don't ever contact me again."
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Oct 20, 2023 01:17
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If anything I actually liked the Watchmen miniseries. Alan Moore being a cranky old comics weirdo should not be surprising at all though.
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Oct 20, 2023 02:10
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Android Apocalypse posted:If anything I actually liked the Watchmen miniseries. It's absolutely not surprising, when you read up on how DC hosed him over re: Watchmen, and have continued loving with him re: Watchmen, almost to the present day.
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Oct 20, 2023 02:52
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Android Apocalypse posted:If anything I actually liked the Watchmen miniseries. No, this is the correct take. The miniseries was one of the best things to happen to television (and I'd also say "to superhero comics" but I don't really have much to back that up) in the last ten years, and Moore is a crank.
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Oct 20, 2023 03:18
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Mister Speaker posted:No, this is the correct take. The miniseries was one of the best things to happen to television (and I'd also say "to superhero comics" but I don't really have much to back that up) in the last ten years, and Moore is a crank. I won't continue the Alan Moore derail any further, beyond saying that while I couldn't disagree more with this post, this isn't really the right thread for a deep dive into this topic.
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Oct 20, 2023 03:31
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Pennywise the Frown posted:I actually hated how "good" Prometheus looked. You go from 1970s old rear end computers in the future which they made look great and very blue collar and believable to loving Tony Stark computer poo poo in the past. It doesn't make any sense to me and ruins the feel. Everything was way too clean and perfect. Futuristic full body suits and all that. Exact same thing with the Star Wars prequels. Everything is super clean and pristine and doesn't look real at all. Ya, but you're comparing the world's richest man's brand new personal mega yacht to a decades old space big-rig truck.
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Oct 20, 2023 03:48
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ChairmanMauzer posted:Ya, but you're comparing the world's richest man's brand new personal mega yacht to a decades old space big-rig truck. "Holy poo poo! An old Lockheed-Martin CM-88B! Haven't seen one of those for a while. My grandfather serv-" "Shut up and get the gently caress out of the fuel line if you wanna talk about it! loving baby spacers. 30,000 light years and they still don't know the most basic poo poo." *slightly out of frame, 12,000,000 W-Y branded milk jugs full of piss coalesce into an ice ball and slowly succumb to the gravity of a class-B red dwarf*
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Oct 20, 2023 05:28
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I just watched Alien yesterday. Ian Holm is absolutely amazing as Ash. You can see his barely concealed excitement in the infirmary when he's studying the face hugger on Kane. And then Ripley sneaks up on him because he's so focused that he withdraws and just gives her the shortest, coldest answers possible. It's an incredible performance that feels off the first time you watch the movie, but is so cool every viewing after.
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Oct 20, 2023 05:54
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I did a Do Now with one of my classes, where my students had to fix the grammatical errors. I used films and shows I like, and one of the things they had to do was rewrite this sentence with all the mistakes fixed: “Ripley and her friend’s, asked Ash for some advice, but they found his responses’ did not fill them whith optimizm.”
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Oct 20, 2023 07:34
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mllaneza posted:There's plenty wrong with Covenant, but everything about David, especially Fassbender's performance, was superb. And oh gently caress, that ending. They were setting up some dark poo poo for the sequel. I feel that both Prometheus and Covenant would've worked so much better as movies if they hadn't slapped the Alien tag on it, part of the charm in both the 1st and 2nd movie is just how little we actually know about the xenomorph and are just as in the dark as the crew about just what the heck they're up against, and that poo poo is scary af
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Oct 20, 2023 23:46
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Damon Lindelof is one of the two showrunners behind Mrs Davis so I certainly can't hate him. forgot he was on Prometheus tho
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Oct 21, 2023 00:25
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Greggster posted:I feel that both Prometheus and Covenant would've worked so much better as movies if they hadn't slapped the Alien tag on it, part of the charm in both the 1st and 2nd movie is just how little we actually know about the xenomorph and are just as in the dark as the crew about just what the heck they're up against, and that poo poo is scary af That too.
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Oct 21, 2023 01:45
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I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point?
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Oct 21, 2023 02:43
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Arson Daily posted:I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point? My theory is that at some point companies began to get such obscene amounts of money while the common worker suffered uprisings happened. This resulted in the companies "revaluing" what a dollar meant including what things cost, in short, poo poo like the cost of the Nostromo sounds relatively cheap but in reality that 42 million is a lot more than that listed value while keeping the masses ignorant and having them getting paid not all that much better what we get now. Sounds crazy huh, to brainwash such a large amount of people and keep them ignorant but do I got to point out how the worlds been for the last good number of years. Ignorance isn't just a thing that happens, people take pride in it. By the point Alien takes place, the company and others screwing with people is mastered and easily done. It's why despite Aliens keep getting discovered every so often it's a non thing for the masses. The stuff in Aliens is likely on the smaller list of really screwed up things that happens. As for why the Nostromo is so backwards looking in tech, my view is two fold. It's cheap and it works. Unlike newer more fancy complicated stuff they can make ships that some blue collared bozo can fix along with a helper and things will keep running. Where as more fancy tech requires bigger crews, more people, more repairs, more cost etc. In other words, less profits for the company and hey, why do that when you can do it cheap and earn all the money. Why do it any other way. Got squeeze every dollar.
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Oct 21, 2023 03:00
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Yeah, but adjusted from what? Aside from the company shenanigans, what even are the currencies? I’ll have to look at the RPG books, but north and south America are the United Americas and there is the Three World Empire, so some craziness had to go on when they were establishing or consolidating their currencies. I’m sure some insane inflation has gone on as well, so they might be saying ‘dollars’ as shorthand for kilodollars since it is functionally the same to them.
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Oct 21, 2023 04:14
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Arson Daily posted:I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point? Maybe that’s just the spaceship insurance deductible that W-Y has to pay out of pocket.
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Oct 21, 2023 08:40
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Arson Daily posted:I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point?
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Oct 21, 2023 09:22
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Arson Daily posted:I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point? You sometimes read about how an asteroid has 5 trillions worth of iron or such. If humanity can make it to other stars, they can definitely make it to the Kuiper Belt which would have spurred a new boom economy of mining and hauling. Seeing the Nostromo is actually mining from such a far system, implies that they have already scavenged all the good poo poo already, and need to find it from other systems.
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Oct 21, 2023 09:36
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Arson Daily posted:I'm curious about the economy in aliens since they say the Nostromo is worth 42 million in adjusted dollars. Does that include the refinery it was towing too? And how is a 68,000 ton interstellar spacecraft from 150 years in the future worth less than a 10 year old narrow body airliner from today. Was there some major deflationary event at some point? This post and the following discussion reminds me of something I saw on Facebook last night (which was probably written by one of you): quote:I have a friend who is a mechanical engineer specializing in designing & building nuclear plants. (He has 3 Ph.D's; Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Physics & Materials Research & Engineering w/ a specialization in Exotic Materials. So I think he knows what he is talking about.)
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Oct 21, 2023 09:59
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Oct 21, 2023 10:21
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Greggster posted:I feel that both Prometheus and Covenant would've worked so much better as movies if they hadn't slapped the Alien tag on it, part of the charm in both the 1st and 2nd movie is just how little we actually know about the xenomorph and are just as in the dark as the crew about just what the heck they're up against, and that poo poo is scary af Covenant though, no. That film is just aggressively stupid and lazy.
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Oct 21, 2023 10:40
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MrMojok posted:This post and the following discussion reminds me of something I saw on Facebook last night (which was probably written by one of you): They were armor-piercing too, iirc. And the heat exchangers would probably need to be thinner, so they can actually do their thing and not just be a gigantic thermal mass instead 
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Oct 21, 2023 13:27
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If we're going to nitpick the weapons of Aliens even as a kid I recognized that a pulse rifle holding about 100 rounds in a magazine that size was kinda ludicrous. You can see a 10mm round near the middle. You're not jamming 100 of those in a magazine as seen in the film. Also it should be noted that the bullets in that pic are handgun rounds (the 5.56 at the far right is a rifle round) so in essence the M41A pulse rifle is actually just a sub-machinegun. 
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Oct 21, 2023 13:45
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Just finished the assembly cut of 3 over two sittings. Thoughts: A3 might have the best setting/set pieces of the entire franchise. Props and wardrobe did an AMAZING job making everything seem dirty, grungy, and rundown in a way that was incredibly grounded and really helped flesh out the setting. The cinematography was fantastic, and there are a number of truly phenomenal shots throughout. He can disavow it all he wants, but the slow pushes/pulls, careful tracking shots, staging, and framing all reek of David Fincher. I don't remember if it was Siskel or Ebert who said it was the best looking bad movie they'd ever seen, but that's not an unfair appraisal. The effects were, as many people have pointed out, quite terrible. I actually liked the puppetry approach, as the creature's movements were really fluid and natural (but also appropriately uncanny), but good god did the poo poo-rear end compositing ruin everything. I'm not sure there's a single comped shot in the film with matched lighting or color keying. Weaver and Dutton offered incredibly solid performances, but I was particularly impressed by Charles Dance cramming a shocking amount of character into his short amount of screen time. This film really made me nostalgic for the days when virtually every part in a film went to a prolific (or at the very least new and talented) character actor. The cast's interactions throughout the film are really believable; you don't question that this crew has been through a lot of poo poo together because their dynamics reflect it. Contrast this with Covenant or Prometheus in which the characters' interactions feel forced, trite, and clumsy. All in all I think it's a pretty mixed bag. The assembly cut fixes a lot of pacing issues and fleshes things out a bit more, but the awesome performances and sets just weren't enough to offset the nightmare production. 5/10.
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Oct 21, 2023 13:47
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Android Apocalypse posted:If we're going to nitpick the weapons of Aliens even as a kid I recognized that a pulse rifle holding about 100 rounds in a magazine that size was kinda ludicrous. Yeah, I think we discussed that in here a few months back. Even with caseless ammo, you aren’t getting anywhere near a hundred of them in that mag. The smartgun, which canonically uses a round slightly bigger than that of the M41A, is supposed to have a 500-round drum which you can see on the left side of the gun. And there is no way it holds that much either. But rule of cool, and all!
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Oct 21, 2023 14:05
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Android Apocalypse posted:If we're going to nitpick the weapons of Aliens even as a kid I recognized that a pulse rifle holding about 100 rounds in a magazine that size was kinda ludicrous. 10mm rifles do exist, but they’re all older models now as far as I can tell. German Mausers were designed in the 1870’s, then another version in the early 1900’s (both with 10mm calibers available). The kick on those would probably be phenomenal, though.
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Oct 21, 2023 14:14
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You're right about 10mm rifle rounds existing, but they'd be even bigger than 5.56 so the idea of 100 of them in something the size of 5 iPhones taped together is  .
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Oct 21, 2023 14:29
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I won't continue the Alan Moore derail any further, beyond saying that while I couldn't disagree more with this post, this isn't really the right thread for a deep dive into this topic. gently caress that miniseries and gently caress what it did to Watchmen. Garbage rear end television.
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Oct 21, 2023 14:31
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MrMojok posted:Yeah, I think we discussed that in here a few months back. Even with caseless ammo, you aren’t getting anywhere near a hundred of them in that mag.
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Oct 21, 2023 14:31
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Improbable Lobster posted:gently caress that miniseries and gently caress what it did to Watchmen. Garbage rear end television. I really enjoyed it. It was weird and strange and different. What did you hate about it?
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Oct 21, 2023 14:35
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