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No Dignity posted:My man's not been in the Sci-Fi forum a week and he's already gone to reading lore books Normally I would stay far away from this poo poo, but I love epistolary fiction and the Manual technically qualifies. However, immediate observation: the book does a pretty bad job of resembling an actual document, and even messes up its own title repeatedly. It’s not a manual! Not even technically!
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Jan 5, 2024 17:59
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Corsec posted:I did some googling and it seems like Scott named the Nostromo and Narcissus more as a continuation of the Conrad references from of his earlier works, rather than for the specific themes in Alien. But I can't find hard proof and it's based on hearsay so I dunno. Interestingly, the Nostromo had two shuttles, but one was inoperative. The second shuttle was called the Salmacis, which instead of being a Conrad reference, takes the alternate Greek mythology reference of the Narcissus. The Alien Blueprints book makes an interesting error by saying the Narcissus had 3 hypersleep berths - in the movie there’s only 2, which is why Lambert and Parker were scrounging up all the tanks in preparation for one person to need to be awake for the shuttle’s journey after they abandoned the Nostromo. The post-hoc explanation is that while stock production line shuttles of the Narcissus’s model have 3 berths, the Narcissus itself only had two for whatever reason.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Aliens - Colonial Marines Technical Manual: It’s not a manual! Not even technically! New thread title, appropriate for the forum change of location. Xenomrph posted:The Alien Blueprints book makes an interesting error by saying the Narcissus had 3 hypersleep berths - in the movie there’s only 2, which is why Lambert and Parker were scrounging up all the tanks in preparation for one person to need to be awake for the shuttle’s journey after they abandoned the Nostromo. Am I misremembering the movie? I thought they didn't try to use the shuttle until the crew was small enough to fit in all the sleeping pods. Given that they'd have a multi-year travel time in the shuttle, I doubt they'd be able to carry enough oxygen canisters to last long enough, that's a huge amount of oxygen.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:10
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Corsec posted:New thread title, appropriate for the forum change of location. The oxygen they were collecting was for the third person who’d have to stay awake. You’ll notice that after Parker and Lambert die, Ripley doesn’t bother with the oxygen - she doesn’t need it, she’ll be in cryo. The blueprints book tucks the third cryosleep chamber in a corner where you can’t see it - because in the movie, there’s visibly only 2 berths. No Dignity posted:My man's not been in the Sci-Fi forum a week and he's already gone to reading lore books There actually aren’t that many lore books. There’s the USCM Technical Manual, a blueprints book (which is literally just technical drawings), David’s Drawings which is exactly what it says on the tin - a collection of David’s artwork in Alien Covenant (it’s a super cool book, I recommend it), and the Weyland Yutani Report that’s basically a coffee table book (which I’m less inclined to recommend for various reasons, but I picked the author’s brain years ago and it’s basically meant to be a casual fan coffee table book, not some kind of authoritative lore tome meant for hardcore hyperfans lol). The Alien RPG books have some lore too, of course. What it also has is wall to wall Easter eggs and references to every aspect of the franchise’s history, even the wackier stuff. Like, it has references to the old 90s Kenner toys, it’s a hoot. The author even threw in some sly references to ‘Outland’. I’m also in one of the RPG books. Like there’s a character named after me, evidently I’m “brash and incompetent” 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 18:15
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Xenomrph posted:Thank you for the tips, I don’t think I even have a techie in my ranks yet. Having noisemakers to lure Aliens is a huge game-changer. Do the Aliens destroy the drone/motion tracker once they are lured to its noise? Or can I keep using them and just clown on the Aliens? Aliens will destroy motion trackers that you activate as noise makers, I think, but they'll keep ignoring the drone even as it keeps meowing in front of them, so if you don't mind the hassle of switching back to it every few seconds, you can keep however many aliens are within earshot rooted to its position while you move around elsewhere.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:26
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Dark Descent is a marine dipping in and out of a doorway sniping eggs with a silenced rifle.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:57
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I thought there was an explicit mention of Parker & Lambert collecting coolant? IE it wasn’t oxygen canisters, it was extra coolant needed since the life support systems would be overloaded with three passengers. Which brings up the question of that the full crew was supposed to do if there was a more mundane reason everybody had to abandon ship…
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Jan 5, 2024 20:11
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david_a posted:I thought there was an explicit mention of Parker & Lambert collecting coolant? IE it wasn’t oxygen canisters, it was extra coolant needed since the life support systems would be overloaded with three passengers. Use the other lifeboat. There are two, apparently?
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Jan 5, 2024 20:25
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david_a posted:I thought there was an explicit mention of Parker & Lambert collecting coolant? IE it wasn’t oxygen canisters, it was extra coolant needed since the life support systems would be overloaded with three passengers. Even if the Narcissus had 3 berths and the other shuttle was functional and had 3 berths, it still couldn’t handle the full crew of 7. The short answer is that the Narcissus and the other shuttle can act like a lifeboat in a pinch but it’s not its intended purpose, it’s meant to be a reasonably short-range shuttle craft although it has meager FTL capabilities. It’s not like there isn’t a historical precedent for ships having insufficient lifeboats in the event of an emergency, and maybe WY likes cutting corners. I might check the script and/or novelization when I get home and see if it goes into any more detail on the crew’s thoughts on abandoning ship, the coolant, etc. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 20:48
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:So I tracked down the specific page number (142 & 143), and it turns out these characters are the source of a lot of misinformation in the thread/fandom: besides positing a Jimspiracy, they speculate that alien blood acts as battery acid, and hint that the aliens somehow fuel themselves and grow to maturity without eating anything. We've encountered both those exact claims. That's hilarious. Patients zero and one of every stupid-on-its-face yet weirdly pernicious fan theory! And it's increasingly obvious that all these theories are in fact the same theory: since every piece of EU material is basically just an Aliens remake that hits the same canned plot beats (someone stupid and greedy tries to exploit the xenomorph but fails, civilians and marines have to deal with the fallout), meta-EU material just does revisionist history to claim that even Alien was an Aliens remake. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 21:21
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Ferrinus posted:since every piece of EU material is basically just an Aliens remake that hits the same canned plot beats this is extremely false. Not the first time you’ve spoken from ignorance though. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 21:27
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Xenomrph posted:this is extremely false. Not the first time you’ve spoken from ignorance though. If it was, you wouldn't be showing us EU material that goes so far as to try to extremely clumsily turn Alien into Aliens!
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Jan 5, 2024 21:44
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Ferrinus posted:If it was, you wouldn't be showing us EU material that goes so far as to try to extremely clumsily turn Alien into Aliens! You spoke from ignorance and made a blanket statement about something you didn’t know about. Perhaps instead of doubling down, you could say “oops my bad”, kinda like I did when I spoke from ignorance on Conrad. Also worth pointing out that nearly every “theory” presented in the Tech Manual’s last chapter gets thrown out the window by the chapter’s end - the point of the chapter is that the people talking are spitballing ideas based on secondhand knowledge, they’re not writing authoritative facts about the Alien, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:50
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This is actually Thread Special Order 937:quote:the point of the thread is that the people talking are spitballing ideas based on secondhand knowledge, they’re not writing authoritative facts about the Alien, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:54
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MrMojok posted:This is actually Thread Special Order 937: I can dig it. It’s what the fandom has done for decades. It’s fun to speculate and throw ideas around and see what people think.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:57
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Xenomrph posted:You said every piece of EU is a rehash of Aliens. This is false. It's true. Structural limitations prevent it from being otherwise, even though writers and artists might have the best intentions. It's Burkes, Hickses, and Ripleys all the way down. quote:Also worth pointing out that nearly every “theory” presented in the Tech Manual’s last chapter gets thrown out the window by the chapter’s end - the point of the chapter is that the people talking are spitballing ideas based on secondhand knowledge, they’re not writing authoritative facts about the Alien, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Then... why did you post it? Like there are obvious logical problems with the Jimspiracy even if we ignore the timing and narration issues, namely that it could never succeed on the terms of the conspirators themselves. And you cite, in its defense, a source that's diegetically full of poo poo?
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Jan 5, 2024 21:59
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pls post about Aliens and not each other
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Jan 5, 2024 22:04
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Ferrinus posted:
Ferrinus posted:Then... why did you post it? That doesn’t mean the entire chapter is nonsense. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 22:05
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josh04 posted:pls post about Aliens and not each other I see you are new to this thread
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Jan 5, 2024 22:33
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Xenomrph posted:Nah Bro I am obviously making an incredible overreach here. My weak spot is flashing red. This is the best response you've got? It sounds like I'm going to get away with this! quote:The theories on the Alien are intentionally questionable, such as the ones SMG posted critically about. They’re meant to make you think and be creative, like the characters are. He was missing the point of the chapter and its representation of the Alien. Saying “oh ho ho look at these STUPID theories that are OBVIOUSLY false” misses the point of the chapter. This is actually another aspect of EU syndrome and the general flattening of the entire conceptual space into the Aliens box, which is that you're flatly not allowed to learn or even correctly speculate beyond the bounds of that specific movie, or ever actually discover something novel relative to the ants/soldiers/corpos triad, because that would transgress your contractual obligations as a writer-for-hire. But, given that everything in the manual is a priori impossible to substantiate, why is your example A) so incredibly tame (oh it was just another Burke? why not speculate about illuminati or aliens or something), B) so incredibly unoriginal (it's just another Burkes! it's Burkes all the way down!!) and C) obviously wrong and unworkable? Like, alien blood functioning as battery acid seems like an unnecessary detail, but it's not stupid on its face or obviously contradicted by preexisting material. It's not my style, but I'm sympathetic to somebody who's just gonna believe what they want because this new idea they stumbled across sounds fun, and is at least technically possible. But this is neither new, fun, nor possible, so what gives?
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Jan 5, 2024 23:09
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josh04 posted:pls post about Aliens and not each other
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Jan 5, 2024 23:11
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Had a good run but the usual suspects showed up again. Shut it down imo. See y’all when Romulus releases.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:16
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I remain confident there is a happy medium to be reached here.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:21
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Ferrinus posted:it's just another Burkes! it's Burkes all the way down!! That’s the beauty of Burke though isn’t it? He’s the ideological template of not just someone who works for the Company but the template of anyone who thrives in any company under capitalism. That he fails and is made the scapegoat adheres to that template, it’s never the fault of the capitalist institution, it’s the fault of the individual who fails that institution by not succeeding. See: Charlie Wilson’s War, the boss with hair plugs in the Cable Guy, or Venkman in Ghostbusters. ruddiger fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 23:23
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josh04 posted:I remain confident there is a happy medium to be reached here. 
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Jan 5, 2024 23:24
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ruddiger posted:That’s the beauty of Burke though isn’t it? He’s the ideological template of not just someone who works for the Company but the template of anyone who thrives in any company under capitalism. That he fails and is made the scapegoat adheres to that template, it’s never the fault of the capitalist institution, it’s the fault of the individual who fails that institution by not succeeding. See: Charlie Wilson’s War, the boss with hair plugs in the Cable Guy, or Venkman in Ghostbusters. It does neatly circle around, though. In Alien, Ash admires the xenomorph's perfection, laments that he (and by extension everyone, really) falls short of it. Pathetic human foibles like "survival instinct" tragically prevent Weyland-Yutani from realizing the profits that the xenomorph presumably represents. By selfishly and sentimentally attempting to protect variable capital rather than constant capital, Ripley and her cohort ruin everything. In Aliens, Ripley herself says that Burke is actually worse than a xenomorph, since the xenomorphs don't gently caress each other over, while Burke is loving over both the other characters and his fellow Weyland-Yutani administrative staff. Burke is falling short of the ideal the xenomorph represents, and Ripley steps into the role of Ash to lament this all-too-human weakness. Hence: pro-corporate Ripley.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:28
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It's all a bit silly because the Alien is in all films just a big warrior ant with nothing actually special about it. Oh it doesn't have human concerns like remorse or morality? So it's like literally all animals then? e: I say 'all films' except the Prometheus ones because Ridley Scott actually made the Alien special and interesting there.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:39
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Alchenar posted:It's all a bit silly because the Alien is in all films just a big warrior ant with nothing actually special about it. The ones in the second movie are more ant-like, but there's still a high degree of problem solving to the point that the characters in the movie are incredulous because "they're animals". They do similar things in Alien Resurrection, staging jailbreaks and setting traps. You're right that the "morality" thing isn't exactly as profound as Ash tries to make it out to be, though.
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 01:03
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josh04 posted:nope, any good? Dark Star has a handful of good jokes and one or two solid shots, but even for Carpenter it's a film on a budget. Most damningly, it's pacing is surprisingly languid. Not my favorite, but it has some charm and is solid entry in the "blue collar work sucks, even in space" genre. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 02:27
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Schwarzwald posted:Dark Star has a handful of good jokes and one or two solid shots, but even for Carpenter its a film on a budget. Most damningly it's pacing is surprisingly languid. Not my favorite, but it has some charm and is solid entry in the "blue collar work sucks, even in space" genre. I’ve never seen it, but Google tells me it’s on Tubi, PlutoTV, Crackle, and Peacock right now, so I think I know what I’m going to watch tonight. It’s been a poo poo day, I think I need a palate cleanser.
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Jan 6, 2024 02:32
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Schwarzwald posted:Dark Star has a handful of good jokes and one or two solid shots, but even for Carpenter its a film on a budget. Most damningly it's pacing is surprisingly languid. Not my favorite, but it has some charm and is solid entry in the "blue collar work sucks, even in space" genre. Darkstar feels like the main skit in a Kentucky Fried Movie sequel.
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Jan 6, 2024 02:35
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FastestGunAlive posted:Had a good run but the usual suspects showed up again. Shut it down imo. See y’all when Romulus releases. Look I don't like video game chat either but it's fine, I'm a middle aged adult, I have the power to skim past it! Xenomrph posted:I’d like to think this thread can find sustainability in a chill place without deteriorating into a CineD-esque shitstorm. There’s a lot of Aliens and Predator stuff out there to think about and talk about. Yeah! And you never know when a neat idea will grab you - I had never seriously thought about Bishop being the egg nabber before, but now 
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Jan 6, 2024 03:15
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Just got done with Dark Star. Some thoughts. Goddamn this was low budget, and the cramped quarters didn’t give Carpenter much to work with directing-wise. It felt like a Dan O’Bannon joint, there was a pretty solid amount of technobabble gobbledygook that was present in early drafts of ‘Alien’ that got ironed out a bit when Walter Hill and David Giler rewrote parts of the script. Speaking of O’Bannon, I wasn’t expecting him to literally star in the movie lol. I also wasn’t expecting Nick “Michael loving Myers” Castle to play the beach ball alien. Whoever said the pacing was languid was not kidding. In some ways it kind of worked in favor of the concept of “mundanity of blue collar work”, but I’m not sure it works well in terms of good screenwriting. I liked that the ship was essentially barely functional, with poo poo breaking constantly and the characters just kind of go with it with a fatigued “just another day at the office” mentality even though they’re ostensibly doing exceptionally dangerous work. Having a ship’s computer that can barely control the ship was novel, as was having sentient bombs that will argue with you or the ship computer. It feels Dr Strangelove-esque where you’d have fundamentally dysfunctional systems centered around very dangerous equipment. Doolittle’s name badge was spelled wrong, but gently caress it, that’s the standard of excellence we’ve come to expect in this operation. I don’t know if it was an intentional choice or a genuine mistake, but either way it was a fun detail. Disarming a bomb by using classical philosophy was not something I ever expected to see lol. One thing I think the movie lacked (but which ‘Alien’ excelled at) was a sense of place and layout within the ship. There are just kind of discrete rooms but with no sense of where any of it was in relation to anything else. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a problem with the movie, but it definitely highlighted how well ‘Alien’ does it. “Do you think we’ll ever find intelligent life?” “Who cares.” is one hell of a mood. In some ways it almost felt like a 1950s pulp sci-fi story, with outlandish science-fantasy that the reader would just roll with back then because they wouldn’t know any better, but seems quaint with today’s knowledge. Why are they bombing “unstable” planets, and how do they cause supernovas? Doesn’t matter, it’s just a Thing That Is Done in this future setting. What are these phoenix asteroids that show up every 12 trillion years? Doesn’t matter, they’re just a thing in the setting. It’s space-ey sounding, just roll with it. Speaking of, I liked that both the Phoenix asteroids and the surfing anecdote had a payoff at the end. I don’t regret watching it, but I’m not in a rush to watch it again. It does make me wonder what it would have been like with a bit more of a production budget though.
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Jan 6, 2024 04:43
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Alchenar posted:It's all a bit silly because the Alien is in all films just a big warrior ant with nothing actually special about it. Oh it doesn't have human concerns like remorse or morality? So it's like literally all animals then? That's exactly why Ash likes it; it's a human, but also a stupid machine. It isn't but also doesn't have to be smart. We'd all serve Mother better if we were ants with good pathfinding algorithms, and our own reproductive urges were indistinguishable from capital's hunger to reproduce itself.
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Jan 6, 2024 06:15
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Well, AliensTM Colonial Marines Technical Manual was a big waste of time. It's primarily (maybe 80%) a half-completed RPG 'sourcebook' with a handful of jokes mixed in. Maybe great if you want to know how much fictional guns weigh, but the jokes aren't really good enough to stick through it. There are basically two jokes: (1) "the colonial marines are actually very obviously the bad guys of the setting" and (2) unreliable narration, where people just make poo poo up. (A third, recurring quasi-joke is that Scientology is now one of the world's dominant religions.) The presentation is akin to an early-highschool history textbook, interspersed with fictional quotes inserted periodically to function as a sort of "commentary track". A typical joke is that the 'textbook' will state things in terms like 'projecting force to achieve national objectives', and then an anonymous marine will be quoted talking about launching white phosphorous rounds at striking workers before resigning in disgust. The author frequently gets mixed up between these two 'voices', though, and it's hardly groundbreaking stuff when it works. The casual descriptions of the marines doing warcrimes and devastating whole ecologies are interesting, but sporadic. I did get a smirk out of one bit: there's an extended monologue from some military guy, extensively praising a new "buddy system" for deploying marines that's tactically superior to the previous "triangular" formations. He just keeps going on like that, about pairs being better than triangles, when we know from the previous page that the squad sizes have been reduced by a third due to poor funding. Wakka wakka! That's the pinnacle of the book, folks. Throughout, there's continual hints that we're going to get some kind of interesting content, where all the setup involving the weight of the guns and the warcrimes will pay off as we break down precisely why the Sulaco marines failed. This never happens, because the book just stops. The final quarter of the pagecount is actually a different book. The second, shorter book is titled the AliensTM Technical Manual - sans Colonial Marines - where characters just crappily restate segments of the plot of Aliens in breathless terms like it's a drat Youtube reaction video. In the process, they add every single bad new plot point that has confused folks over the course of the thread. Like, did you know Burke had incredible sway over the military and personally ensured the marines were understaffed??? That plot point that many imagined was in the film actually comes from the Technical Manual - even though it contradicts the earlier almost-funny "buddy system" joke! In the end, it's kinda impressive that one poorly-written book was able to have this much influence and do this much damage. The book is even NON-CANON, ending with a sequel teaser that eventually led to the creation of the hated Aliens: Colonial Marines videogame. Thanks for nothing!
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Jan 6, 2024 07:25
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Jan 6, 2024 08:50
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Darkstar was Carpenter's student film, which later got a slighter bigger budget. Dan O'Bannon summed it up nicely, "We had what would have been the world's most impressive student film and it became the world's least impressive professional film." Xenomrph posted:Disarming a bomb by using classical philosophy was not something I ever expected to see lol. Yeah, definitely a product of being a student film lol
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Jan 6, 2024 15:41
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 Aliens. Tough to say which human role would be best, Ripley is obvious but Burke, Apone, and Hudson would be pretty fun
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Jan 6, 2024 16:03
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FastestGunAlive posted:
Weirzbowski. 
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Jan 6, 2024 16:12
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Predator, but only keeping the Predator.
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Jan 6, 2024 16:19
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