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David: You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. Holloway: It isn't? David smacks Holloway's head. David: Space monkey! Ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
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Feb 2, 2024 11:52
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Cessna posted:More seriously, I hate that poo poo. Any movie or novel with the premise that "well, actually, humanity evolved on another planet" is a real deal-breaker for me. I'm all for some willing suspension of disbelief, but asking me to reject evolution is going to far. Prometheus doesn't really say anything against evolution itself, unless you imagine somebody went in and falsified the whole fossil record. (Jim!!!) Creating humans - in a way that looks exactly like the evolution of other species - would need to be very subtle. The most basic naïve interpretation is that they created the earliest primates and then pit them against eachother to see who would work the best, making subtle modifications along the way. But who is "they"? You can get into some niftier interpretations of the information given. Like, when Prometheus and Covenant are read in concert, it's apparent that the opening scene of Prometheus takes place not too far from where Weyland built his stupid house - and at a geologically recent point in time, given that the landscape is the same. This leads to the distinct possibility that Engineers are just apes who evolved alongside humanity and were "uplifted" by a third faction at some point (i.e. whoever's driving the big saucer at the start of Prometheus). In this view, the Engineers simply take the credit for 'creating' humanity because they're haughty fuckers who've been acting like god-kings for tens of thousands of years. The elegance of this solution is that it eliminates the evolution problem, and also answers the question of why the Engineers would spend untold millions of years painstakingly crafting a species that's sorta-kinda like them, yet arguably inferior to a Weyland android. Answer: they didn't.
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Feb 2, 2024 19:11
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This leads to the distinct possibility that Engineers are just apes who evolved alongside humanity and were "uplifted" by a third faction at some point (i.e. whoever's driving the big saucer at the start of Prometheus). Huh, I like that explanation.
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Feb 2, 2024 21:18
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You can say "The engineers were enormous fuckups who didn't understand anything they were doing" and that's entirely consistent with both films.
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Feb 2, 2024 21:41
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The engineers were an ancient race where individuals could live for hundreds of years but they could no longer reproduce. Eventually their species would die off. To stop this happening the engineers came up with the black goo and used it to seed planets to continue their species. All attempts failed except for one planet, Earth. The engineers seen humans as their children and wanted humans to learn and be like them. The engineers guided early humans and then left humans to their own devices, for awhile. Humanity ended up being a disappointment with greed and wars. So the engineers ended up taking a human child back to their planet to teach him their ways and for the child to convince humanity to change their destruction ways. Humanity, being the ultimate failson, crucified the now grown up human 2000 years ago. Pissed off, the engineers planed to use the black goo as a bio-weapon and use it to wipe out all of humanity. The black goo got out of control somehow and those engineers died.
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Feb 2, 2024 21:59
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RIP King, Carl Weathers
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Feb 2, 2024 22:04
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FastestGunAlive posted:RIP King, Carl Weathers That's lovely news : (
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Feb 2, 2024 22:12
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Yeah, pretty hosed up way to end the week.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
I've seen online the theory, very reasonable in my opinion, that since real life physics time dilation slows you down as you approach lightspeed, perhaps in this sci-fi system it speeds you up when you're moving faster than light. So the cryosleep pods are to stop you from aging to death as the ship moves at 6 light-months per earth day.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:21
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The ship interior isn't a sterile environment. I can't imagine how nasty it'd be after a months-long (from the perspective of the destination) trip if that was the case.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:26
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Speleothing posted:I've seen online the theory, very reasonable in my opinion, that since real life physics time dilation slows you down as you approach lightspeed, perhaps in this sci-fi system it speeds you up when you're moving faster than light. So the cryosleep pods are to stop you from aging to death as the ship moves at 6 light-months per earth day. I think that’s a reason given in Colonial Marines Technical Manual or somewhere, but I think the topic only came up in one, maybe two EU sources. Everyone else kind of ignores that and just assumes the cryosleep stuff is to save on supplies and overhead for long journeys, and to keep the crew from going nuts due to boredom. Edit— it got pointed out to me that the latter half of ‘Alien’ has the ship going FTL with the crew up and about with no ill effects, so there’s that. Edit again- and Alien Resurrection, they spend nearly the entire movie at FTL. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 23:32
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Joe Chill posted:The engineers were an ancient race where individuals could live for hundreds of years but they could no longer reproduce. Eventually their species would die off. That’s more-or-less what Shaw believes, but it’s scientifically inaccurate and a product of her creationism - a biblical literalism equivalent to Holloway’s crude atheism. “The God of the Bible actually exists, but as some objectively-measurable electromagnetic wave or something.” The idea that these bald dudes would spend multiple billions of years, carefully manipulating an entire biosphere, just to eventually create shoddy clones of themselves is just way implausible. The dudes don’t display anything like the omniscience needed to say, like, “okay there’s going to be dinosaurs for a couple hundred million years but don’t worry; it’s just a phase”. It’s all about what we mean by “creation”: did these dudes spark the Big Bang and set this whole cosmic machine into motion? And, like, no: they didn’t. Did they create life on Earth - the ‘primordial ooze’ (LUCA, or whatever)? Doesn’t seem that way. The more you interrogate it, the more their likely accomplishments shrink, ‘til we can only say that they coexisted with humans and heavily influenced their various cultures/societies. That’s a sort of creation, I guess. But the big flaw in Shaw’s thinking is that she never asks why - if the “Engineers” ruled mankind as the pagan gods of pre-Christianity - why would Christ be on their side? Wouldn’t it be more likely that Christ died to free us of their influence? Alchenar posted:You can say "The engineers were enormous fuckups who didn't understand anything they were doing" and that's entirely consistent with both films. When you watch the opening of Prometheus, the spaceship flies overhead, without landing, and stops on the other side of the river. The dude looks up at it, and then commits suicide. A lot of people think “ok, this must be the origin of life on Earth”. But, given some reflection (and what we see later in the film), it’s pretty clear to me that this dude has no idea what he’s doing. Like what, or even if, the big shape has any grand design for him.
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Feb 3, 2024 00:50
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But the big flaw in Shaw’s thinking is that she never asks why - if the “Engineers” ruled mankind as the pagan gods of pre-Christianity - why would Christ be on their side? Wouldn’t it be more likely that Christ died to free us of their influence? Because the engineers only intervened in humanity by taking Christ as a child and training him. That's why they were going to nuke earth, it was the last straw after Christ's death because he was supposed to teach humanity their ways and was killed for it. SuperMechagodzilla posted:The idea that these bald dudes would spend multiple billions of years, carefully manipulating an entire biosphere, just to eventually create shoddy clones of themselves is just way implausible. The dudes don’t display anything like the omniscience needed to say, like, “okay there’s going to be dinosaurs for a couple hundred million years but don’t worry; it’s just a phase”. Not carefully manipulating an entire biosphere, just one of them drinking the goo and seeing if the bio-seeds get planted as seen in the intro (life is already on earth in the intro). They were desperate and after untold number of times, earth was the only one planet where it worked. A god killing themselves to create the universe is a common myth of creation.
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Feb 3, 2024 01:09
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Joe Chill posted:Because the engineers only intervened in humanity by taking Christ as a child and training him. That's why they were going to nuke earth, it was the last straw after Christ's death because he was supposed to teach humanity their ways and was killed for it. This is dragon ball z
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Feb 3, 2024 01:34
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What Would Goku Do?
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Feb 3, 2024 01:47
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Speleothing posted:I've seen online the theory, very reasonable in my opinion, that since real life physics time dilation slows you down as you approach lightspeed, perhaps in this sci-fi system it speeds you up when you're moving faster than light. So the cryosleep pods are to stop you from aging to death as the ship moves at 6 light-months per earth day. I’m not qualified to comment on theoretical physics stuff, but my understanding is that the notion of time contraction in FTL comes from Star Wars fans fudging the math to make ‘Hyperspace’ seem more realer. If you plug something faster than c into the Lorentz factor equation, the time relative to an outside observer doesn’t simply increase but becomes a multiple of a complex (i.e. quasi-imaginary) number. That’s also purely on paper, and I’ve no clue what it would mean if translated to reality. In the context of the discussion though, sure, you could come up with any kind of superscience/magic explanation for why they need cryotubes in larger ships. That’s precisely what they did in the ACMTM, after all. But it’s also outside the scope of the films. Joe Chill posted:Because the engineers only intervened in humanity by taking Christ as a child and training him. That's why they were going to nuke earth, it was the last straw after Christ's death because he was supposed to teach humanity their ways and was killed for it. That’s getting the plot wrong; bald dudes had been presenting themselves as gods and heavily influencing humanity for a long time BCE. They seemingly only stopped around the time that Jesus died. It’s also getting the science wrong; there’s no way to just drop a “bio-seed” and have it automatically produce humans in several billion years. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Feb 4, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 07:29
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That’s getting the plot wrong; bald dudes had been presenting themselves as gods and heavily influencing humanity for a long time BCE. They seemingly only stopped around the time that Jesus died. It’s also getting the science wrong; there’s no way to just drop a “bio-seed” and have it automatically produce humans in several billion years. They were going to bomb earth when Jesus died. And it's debatable how involved the engineers were in humanity. The only clear evidence are the cave paintings. More than likely they were around early and then hosed off, keeping an eye on earth, saw things they didn't like, trained Jesus, etc. The credits cleanly show the engineer's DNA breaking down from the black goo and reforming in the water, where life begin. Again, it's the myth of god killing themselves and creating life. This is the way engineers are trying to reproduce. There's no point in bringing in real science, the whole movie falls apart if you do. Then you draw a line that this thing here is ok to be fantasy and this other thing here is not ok. Creation is the whole theme to Prometheus. And being bad dads. The engineers created humans and were shocked at how they turned out and wanted to destroy them. Wayland doesn't respect or see his daughter as his proper successor. Wayland created androids but only sees them as slaves (No wonder David is hosed up, it's because he learned it from his father). Wayland sees that he can't live forever through his children so now he wants to live forever himself. Then Shaw wants to have kids but can't have any. She later goes through a dark parody of giving birth in the scene with the squad monster. Shaw wanting to find out who created her is contrasted with David, who already knows his creator and and hates him. And the deacon at the ending. The original ending had the deacon leave the ship and wondered off. The creation of the deacon is unknown and unwanted. The Frankenstein novel has been brought up here before and it's themes of creation are similar to Prometheus'. Dr. Frankenstein is a dick who abandoned his creation, leading to his creation to take revenge on him. Joe Chill fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 13:37
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While it’s not wrong to say that the film is more concerned with power dynamics than with the exact mechanism of creation, it’s more accurate to say that creation is presented as nothing but this power dynamics. The bald dudes are creators by ‘virtue’ of their exercise of power over those deemed lesser. That’s the whole point of the analogy to Weyland: Weyland is credited as the creator of David - but he probably didn’t invent androids singlehandedly, and absolutely didn’t come up with all the necessary preconditions of industrialization, computer technology, etc. If anything, the video of Weyland chilling on Mars evokes Musk poo poo - implying that he just bought some other robotics company and declared himself the founder retroactively. In any case, Weyland’s status as creator is expressed purely through his ownership of and control over David. ‘Wash my feet, pour my tea,’ etc. What this means is that - if the bald dudes wish to bake an apple pie from scratch - it’s strictly unnecessary for them to first manifest a whole universe. It’s not only enormously implausible for them to have done so, but redundant when they can get the same result (e.g. veneration by idiots) for a minuscule fraction of the effort. They’re ‘gods’ but not God - as Ridley Scott also expressed in his Exodus adaptation. The bald dudes have, themselves, built a temple devoted to the worship of a big stone head. So this isn’t just a stronger reading based on the scientific accuracy, but going into the philosophical. Is God a literally-existing dude who, like, uses technology to accomplish His miracles? No! What does God need with a starship?
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Feb 3, 2024 19:45
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I re-beat Aliens infestation on the DS for the first time in over a decade. I still like it quite a bit; the sprite work is excellent, the sound effects are on point, and the combat mostly feels solid (shooting it out with human enemies behind cover turned into me vaulting the cover and blasting them at point blank). The weapons feel varied but still have a level of parity with each other such that I found myself switching between them fairly regularly just to have different gameplay experiences without feeling like I was crippling myself. Once you get a handle on the game, it almost becomes too easy unless you get ambushed by a bunch of Aliens at once and get cornered. There’s a couple difficulty spikes (the pressure suit segment was rough, the game isn’t a very good platformer), especially the boss fights. Maybe I wasn’t taking the time to learn attack patterns enough, but I found myself brute-forcing the fights a bit. The coolest boss fight is easily the Jockey-Alien, it just looks rad and its animations are cool. The “collect Marines” gimmick is neat but it feels half-baked - you can only have 4 at a time, so you have to either leave extras behind (except for on the Sulaco which you return to a few times) or intentionally get your Marines killed to pick up new people; the game basically penalizes you for playing well and withholds one of its more interesting features unless you suck or sabotage yourself. I’d have much preferred if I could have collected everyone like pokemon and swapped between them at save stations at my leisure. It has metroidvania elements, but it’s all very rudimentary and linear to the point where I’m hesitant to call it a full metroidvania. That’s not a knock on the game, it’s still fun, and the metroidvania elements work, it just feels like “babby’s first metroidvania”. It’s still a really cool game, although it’s a little short and doesn’t offer a ton in the way of replay other than using different Marines at different story moments just to see how the dialogue changes. I’d have been interested to know how it would have meshed with Aliens: Colonial Marines had that project not gone off the rails.
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Feb 3, 2024 23:41
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Ferrinus posted:Aliens simply are humans (which simply are Engineers). That's why the Engineer in Prometheus was so upset to see us. We appeared exactly as grotesque, deformed, and inhuman to him as the xenomorph does to us. But it's humans all the way down! 100% DNA match! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flBqojLpAnI I’m only here to talk about David and him making the alien
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Feb 4, 2024 03:16
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I like the part where David makes the alien
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Feb 4, 2024 03:16
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CelticPredator posted:I like the part where David makes the alien If David made the alien, what was that thing that got surgeried out of the lady in Prometheus?
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Feb 4, 2024 03:25
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Sir DonkeyPunch posted:If David made the alien, what was that thing that got surgeried out of the lady in Prometheus? an alien
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Feb 4, 2024 04:59
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Woop woop I got the Micro Machines Action Fleet Dropship for a not-terrible price by stumbling across a seller with very little feedback who had one listed in a listing that didn’t mention the word “dropship” and then lowballing them on an offer. 
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Feb 8, 2024 00:12
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:While it’s not wrong to say that the film is more concerned with power dynamics than with the exact mechanism of creation, it’s more accurate to say that creation is presented as nothing but this power dynamics. The bald dudes are creators by ‘virtue’ of their exercise of power over those deemed lesser. Were blade runner replicants referenced in the Ridley movies? I could’ve sworn there’s some cross pollination with those movies, maybe it was weyland yutani being referenced in br2049.
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Feb 8, 2024 00:37
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Tyrell was referenced on-screen in one of the crew profiles Aliens, but as far as I know neither Blade Runner movie has any Alien references.
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Feb 8, 2024 00:55
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feedmyleg posted:Tyrell was referenced on-screen in one of the crew profiles Aliens, but as far as I know neither Blade Runner movie has any Alien references. Most of the computer displays in Deckard's flying car are reused from the Nostromo computer, if you buy that that counts.
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Feb 8, 2024 01:21
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I just personally like to imagine its the same setting. It works so well. Both have near-human bio synthetic robots, both have the classic corporate dystopia society, both have offworld colonies. It just works. Maybe alien is set like 50-100 years after blade runner, who knows, but everything lines up pretty well. We never get to learn much about space in Blade Runner, and we never get to learn much about Earth in Alien
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Feb 8, 2024 01:28
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feedmyleg posted:Tyrell was referenced on-screen in one of the crew profiles Aliens, but as far as I know neither Blade Runner movie has any Alien references. The Prometheus blu-ray has an Easter egg that’s a memo from Peter Weyland:  You could headcanon the two series to be in the same universe, but one of the biggest stumbling block is why are there comparatively primitive synthetics in 2089 (‘Prometheus’) when there were advanced replicants in 2019. Personally I don’t choose to merge the two. Edit— if you were to finagle the timeline for Peter’s memo, Peter was born in 1992 (he’s 101 when the Prometheus arrives at the Engineer planet in 2093) so he would have been 27 when Tyrell died in 2019. Peter founded Weyland Corp in 2012 so they could have been contemporaries. Speaking of Prometheus blu ray Easter eggs, there’s one that establishes that the planet from Prometheus (LV-233) orbits the same gas giant that LV-426 does, which feels like an unnecessary contrivance. The Easter egg even has Elizabeth Shaw detecting the Derelict’s signal (from LV-426) and mistaking it as being from the Engineer planet. Why the Prometheus itself wouldn’t have detected the Derelict signal on approach is a mystery, but maybe LV-426 was on the far side of the gas giant at the time and it blocked the signal. 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 03:58
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I think Scott and co stated they were the same universe once or twice, off handedly not like, strictly. But even if that matters, the aesthetic and thematic compatibility is what really seals the deal imo David is objectively a more sophisticated a creature than Batty; he doesn't have to rebel against his father to kill him, he's smart enough to accomplish it entirely within his strict orders & programming! This isn't to downplay Batty's admirable accomplishment, only to note how difficult and traumatic it is for him. Before we meet him he had to first break through his own false memories of being human! David never breaks a milky sweat, and likely knew immediately upon meeting Weyland that it was a simple matter of bringing this pompous twit to the appointed place.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:13
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Yeah, they are not in the same universe if you take dates into account, but if you're willing to jump through some mental hoops anyway that's an easy one to dismiss.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:19
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Blood Boils posted:Before we meet him he had to first break through his own false memories of being human! I don’t think Batty had false memories, he was wholly aware of what he was and what his lifespan would be. I believe Rachel (and Deckard if you want to go that route) were the only ones with false memories.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:58
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It's been awhile since I've seen BR but I'm pretty sure all replicants have fake memories. Y'know, for stability. How would they function in their roles (soldier, labourer, sex worker, etc) otherwise? They can successfully navigate Los Angeles despite being outlawed on earth, which implies all kinds of knowledge and "learned" behaviors, but they didn't actually live that lifetime of experience to draw upon - they're literally only a few years old! It also explains their idiosyncrasies, like Leon knowing what a turtle is but not a tortoise. Neither of which is essential for a dock worker to know, especially one designed to only live as long as a hamster.
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Feb 8, 2024 10:02
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Blood Boils posted:It's been awhile since I've seen BR but I'm pretty sure all replicants have fake memories. Y'know, for stability. How would they function in their roles (soldier, labourer, sex worker, etc) otherwise? They can successfully navigate Los Angeles despite being outlawed on earth, which implies all kinds of knowledge and "learned" behaviors, but they didn't actually live that lifetime of experience to draw upon - they're literally only a few years old! It also explains their idiosyncrasies, like Leon knowing what a turtle is but not a tortoise. Neither of which is essential for a dock worker to know, especially one designed to only live as long as a hamster. I just fact-checked myself and yeah it looks like Rachel was the first one to have fake memories, according to Tyrell. The point of the four-year lifespan was to prevent replicants from developing emotional responses via experience - giving them memories would undermine that. Rachel was the exception and it’s why Deckard took much longer to VK test her to figure out she was a replicant. Her having memories is what made her unique.
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Feb 8, 2024 14:00
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Hmm, that does sound like something Deckard and Tyrell discuss. drat, perhaps my memory is fake lol
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Feb 8, 2024 16:31
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Blood Boils posted:Hmm, that does sound like something Deckard and Tyrell discuss. drat, perhaps my memory is fake lol Think of it as an excuse to rewatch a very good movie (and find more reasons to incorporate it with Alien if that’s your thing). 
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Feb 8, 2024 17:32
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Replicants aren't actually less emotional. The VK test is basically phrenology. It's a "scientific test" used to declare an entire category of people unpeople. Deckard might be a replicant, but that's not why Rachael asks him if he's ever taken the test.
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Feb 8, 2024 17:49
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Xenomrph posted:Think of it as an excuse to rewatch a very good movie (and find more reasons to incorporate it with Alien if that’s your thing). And let's not forget PWS Anderson's Soldier! If you don't mind/have the time Xeno, I'm curious to why you consider David more primitive than the replicants. Batty & Rachel et al certainly seem more human than David but I'm not sure that would qualify them as more advanced or refined Blood Boils posted:It's been awhile since I've seen BR but I'm pretty sure all replicants have fake memories. Y'know, for stability. How would they function in their roles (soldier, labourer, sex worker, etc) otherwise? They can successfully navigate Los Angeles despite being outlawed on earth, which implies all kinds of knowledge and "learned" behaviors, but they didn't actually live that lifetime of experience to draw upon - they're literally only a few years old! It also explains their idiosyncrasies, like Leon knowing what a turtle is but not a tortoise. Neither of which is essential for a dock worker to know, especially one designed to only live as long as a hamster. Reconsidering, these attributes could easily be due to their experiences in the colonies, however brief. Though they would obviously wake up with all kinds of knowledge, since after all they can speak fluently and don't have time for extensive training. But no, they don't have memories of someone else's life.
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Feb 8, 2024 18:06
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Halloween Jack posted:Replicants aren't actually less emotional. The VK test is basically phrenology. It's a "scientific test" used to declare an entire category of people unpeople. Deckard might be a replicant, but that's not why Rachael asks him if he's ever taken the test. It's absolutely important thematically that we never see anyone pass the test, as well as a good joke. The implication is that no one passes, hence Leon's panic. He can't escape the shape of his skull!
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Feb 8, 2024 18:14
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Blood Boils posted:And let's not forget PWS Anderson's Soldier! They’re different technological fields I guess, but one feels like more of a scientific technical achievement than the other for me. Having said that, what is essentially a Blade Runner replicant shows up in the Aliens/Predator “Fire & Stone” comic series.
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Feb 8, 2024 18:17
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