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I'm a creative type and I've just been wracking my brain over what exactly Neill could do in the new movie. All the traditional routes would be kind of boring. The problem with making a sequel to Aliens is that it ends on a high note. So you can only go down (like Alien 3) or even more up (no idea how.)
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Dec 11, 2016 09:20
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Apparently they screened both a trailer and 15 minutes of footage from Covenent for some privileged people out there. I'm surprised that they haven't announced a trailer release date yet.
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Dec 11, 2016 11:26
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I can see it coming out for rear end Creed. I think someone said a few weeks.
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Dec 11, 2016 12:37
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CelticPredator posted:Danny McBride has range. He's an excellent actor. I feel like I have seen him in a ton of stuff, including TV, and he always plays a variant on "Danny McBride" - boorish, funny rear end in a top hat in other words. Everything from Foot Fist Way to P-Express, Eastbound and Down, Vice Principles, This is the End, you name it. Granted, in the right setting it's hilarious, but I don't see Covenant being that, and he's also said he isn't the comic relief in it. What has he already done that is different? I'd be interested in seeing that. I am all for actors trying to break out of typecasting; when it works it's pretty awesome.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:38
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Ixian posted:I feel like I have seen him in a ton of stuff, including TV, and he always plays a variant on "Danny McBride" - boorish, funny rear end in a top hat in other words. Everything from Foot Fist Way to P-Express, Eastbound and Down, Vice Principles, This is the End, you name it. I was skeptical too but now that you word it like this he might actually be a great fit. Alien and Alien 3 both have a lot of humor that stems from the same.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:08
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Neo Rasa posted:It's a totally different situation beause Alien 3 "Assembly Cut" was loving awesome. A Deacon posted:The plot and setting of Alien 3 was good. It just had an incredibly lovely script and special effects.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:53
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Ixian posted:I feel like I have seen him in a ton of stuff, including TV, and he always plays a variant on "Danny McBride" - boorish, funny rear end in a top hat in other words. Everything from Foot Fist Way to P-Express, Eastbound and Down, Vice Principles, This is the End, you name it. In both Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals, he does a lot more than play "that" character. He's amazing in Vice Principals.
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Dec 11, 2016 19:31
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I can't speak for everyone, but personally I honestly didn't know about the drama beyond Fincher being under a lot of pressure and Fox rushing the movie out without a script until after I saw the making of stuff whenever the Quadrilogy DVD set came out. But I definitely liked the assembly cut waaaaay more than the theatrical one, which to me is a lovely movie, before I learned about all of the details thanks to its (also heavily edited before the blu-ray release  ) making of features. If anything learning all that just made me hate the theatrical Alien 3 even more.A lot of that information wasn't as widely known until after the Quadrilogy came out and every sci-fi/movie site had an article up with all the concept art and stuff revealed by it along with more details about the various directors attached to it and each of their visions. Before that most people only knew about that William Gibson script where it was on a space station and adult aliens explode out of people. But there were still people who liked Alien 3 even in its theatrical form.
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Dec 11, 2016 19:35
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Alien 3 gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons that go beyond Fox dicking around behind the scenes. For example killing off Hicks and Newt right at the start was a Fincher thing which led to the ridiculous plot shoehorning of A) Another Alien was mysteriously stashed on board and stayed hidden until long after everyone was in hypersleep B) it managed to "infect" Ripley without disturbing her hypersleep and C) It then went all Murphy's law and caused a chain reaction which resulted in the EEV being ejected, conveniently just as the Sulaco was flying by a habitable planet. All before the title credits were finished. In addition to completely wiping any relevance to Aliens at all beyond "whelp, we got us ANOTHER Alien to deal with holy gee" it smacks of obvious staging to get to the story they actually want to tell. Compare this to Aliens, which managed to pick up from the previous movie in an organic and believable (or as believable as a sci-fi movie about chestbursting aliens is going to get) way and not only continue the story but add to it. Alien 3 handles this in a far more jarring way and the Assembly cut doesn't help that aspect. That aside the rest of the assembly cut - more focus on the prisoners religion and why they are in an abandoned prison in the first place, the addition of the "dragon" alien, more background on Weyland-Yutani fuckery, etc. and a better death for Ripley - does make it a far better film than the theatrical version, I think. I just don't think it makes it a great movie overall.
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Dec 11, 2016 20:10
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Basebf555 posted:You can't really name a legendary, prolific director who hasn't had a few failures. Kubrick had a pretty spotless record, but he really was not prolific in the way that directors like Scott(or John Ford, Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Spielberg, Scorsese, etc.) are. I'm sure if Kubrick had made 30-40 films his batting average would have dropped somewhat. Even Kubrick has Barry Lyndon, an absolutely gorgeous film centred around, of all people, Ryan O'Neal.
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Dec 12, 2016 02:43
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Alien 3 is the best in the series. It also caused the best joke in Deadpool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0q4YiCNG2o
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Dec 12, 2016 04:35
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Anyone seen this movie?
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Dec 12, 2016 05:59
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Tenzarin posted:Anyone seen this movie? I rented this from a Blockbuster Video like 17 years ago and it was absolute poo poo. Unfortunately I can't quite remember if it was lovely enough in the right ways to be awesome, but I feel like I'd remember if it was. Despite the poster being an actual HR Geiger work that was his only contribution to the production. The movie is like Alien Warrior/King of the Streets* or Digital Man. A futuristic (in this case a guy wearing some extremely cheap sci-fi armor) arrives and befriends a nerd, who wants to use the guy to fight gangs and bullies of his frat house. IIRC it's intended to be semi-lighthearted with cheerful music and lots of exasperated "funny" complaining from the nerd character. *This one is a must watch if you want something campy with a tone that's all over the place. I'm sure the whole movie is on YouTube. Edit: LMAO IMDB posted:A couple of different stories exist as to how H.R. Giger was persuaded to design the poster art for this low-budget film. Edwin Neal, who spent the 1980s traveling extensively to science fiction and movie conventions selling movie memorabilia, always claimed that he was the one responsible for getting Giger involved; however, in Giger's book "Necronomicon II," Giger says that director Ronald W. Moore was with whom he dealt. Giger goes on to say that he felt manipulated by Moore, who told him in tears that the film would lose its financing without the Giger poster. Whatever the case, the original art did eventually end up in Neal's possession, along with numerous other prints and portfolios by Giger, lending credence to Neal's claims of involvement. This Moore guy and whoever financed them was right, because there is no way in hell otherwise anyone would know this flick existed or still notice it today (unless it was on an Episode of MST3K). Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 07:12
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I learned about it trying to find some shadowrun movies, is it at least cyber punk?
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Dec 12, 2016 22:53
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Not at all. You want an awesome fun cyberpunk movie? If you haven't seen it check out Nemesis. It's from the early 90s and stars Olivier Gruner, Tim Tomerson and Brion James (both worked with Pyun just prior on Hong Kong '97, a film which is a legit achievement because it has a scene where Ming-Na Wen is just walking around completely naked shooting people and stars Robert Patrick as a professional assassin yet is somehow one of the worst movies ever made). Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is in it for a bit too! This is basically THE Shadowrun movie to me, dealing with lots of cybernetic augmentation, bounty hunters and corporate mercenaries, police conspiracies. The plot hinges on the racial tensions between human beings who are cybernetically augmented vs. people who are robots with an AI from the ground up, it's great. It's directed by Albert Pyun so it's basically a dumb action movie but it's his best flick by far and has a few unexpected twists in it that are kind of interesting regarding how its themes play out and all that stuff. It's not super deep but it goes in a few directions I didn't really see coming at all. It also has some brief but cool cyber moments that are sort of body horror.  Also this movie has a dude that LITERALLY HAS A SKUL-GUN like Gunther Herman talks about in Deus Ex!!!!  NEMESIS!!!!! This movie has a scene where Brion James talks up and puts over a character we find out is played by a young Thomas Jane! He's introduced completely nude and already deeply infiltrated himself into the enemy's affairs like oh poo poo this guy's gonna be a major smooth player in the ensuing adventure! But he gets found out and strangled like a chump like one minute after his character is introduced. I don't know if you know the actress/writer Merle Kennedy but she plays a hyperactive spy type person, like pysical adept in Shadowrun? (Literally every single character that appears in this film looks like artwork from the first Shadowrun book) Anyway her character's name is ***MAX POWER*** how loving awesome is that. This movie owns. NEMESIS!!!! Also I think this whole movie may be on YouTube, if you can't find it on that though, it got an official blue-ray release a few years ago in the US and DVD releases too that should all be pretty cheap. It has amazingly pulpy and ham-fisted dialog but is still pretty dense for the type of movie it is. But like imagine "I didn't ask for this" from Deus Ex Human Revolution and imagine that as like the base line. This flick as exchanges like "You're not even human!" "85% OF ME!!! Is still.......human...*sad confusion*" and "It takes more than flesh and blood to be a human being." Like I find it impossible to watch the film and not have a huge grin on my face the entire time, it's just awesome and gives no fucks. This movie was followed by three sequels. The second one is worth catching for free if it's on TV or maybe if it's on a streaming service you subscribe to because it goes in a really, really, REALLY unique direction, and I enjoyed it, but it's a pretty lovely movie so don't stress it. The third film is made using unused footage from the second one because it was supposed to originally be one longer film and is completely awful. The fourth one is one of the most bizarre films ever made and is set in like just two locations, it's like peak lovely late 90s sci-fi flick like Omega Doom or Prototype X29A except the main character is a female body builder assassin to likes to have sex with her victims before assassinating them via neurotoxin injecting cables that shoot out of her nipples. The entire movie plays like Albert Pyun just put a bunch of weird sexual fantasies on screen and interspersed the same "assassin botches one last job and is now on the run" plot he made like 1,000 times, also the entire movie takes place within like a two block radius somehow. Despite their taking place in the years in which they were made and not being sci-fi movies, I think Michael Mann makes the best "Shadowrun" movies, Thief, Heat and Blackhat especially all play out pretty much exactly like some of the short stories you find in the Shadowrun game books. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 06:16
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That's, uh, a lot of words about Nemesis but I have to agree, that movie is rad as hell! It's like 4 movies rolled into one so you're really getting a good return on your time. I think I saw it on Hulu but I don't know if they still have it. Edit: holy poo poo don't watch that linked trailer, it spoils a lot of the insanity david_a fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 06:30
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Actually yeah I removed the link to not spoil any of the film's wonderful surprises. I do wish an Alien 4 had been made a LITTLE sooner after Alien 3, just because I dug the very very brief glimpse we get of Bishop and the corporate mercenary guy's looks. They'd have fit right into Alien or some earthbound cyberpunk flick and it would have been cool to see more of that look. I know it was super artistically important for Whedon to have the bad guys be the US government instead of Weyland-Yutani so that he could make a joke about Wal-Mart being a big corporation but visually we just got guys in boring military fatigue outfits and nothing like those cool body armors and suits we see in Aliens or Alien 3. Someone post a pic of those sick Alien 3 helmets that would make it impossible for someone to be facehugged except that they have a huge football gridiron taking up 1/4 of the faceplate. I mean yeah tactically questionable but they just look loving awesome so I'm cool with that.
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Dec 13, 2016 06:56
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Neo Rasa posted:Actually yeah I removed the link to not spoil any of the film's wonderful surprises. Yeah, the dudes at the end of Alien 3 were really rad. Alien 4 felt like it went back in time a century and was set in the near-future, it totally missed the rad corporate cyberpunk feel that we saw a glimpse of in 3. 
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Dec 13, 2016 07:02
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They remind me of the awesome future scenes in 12 Monkeys, I always wished there were two or three more of those scenes in that movie.
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Dec 13, 2016 15:24
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Neo Rasa posted:Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Neo Rasa posted:Albert Pyun Neo Rasa posted:NEMESIS!!!!! Neo Rasa posted:Anyway her character's name is ***MAX POWER*** Neo Rasa posted:NEMESIS!!!! Thanks, this movie sounds like the raddest thing ever!
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Dec 13, 2016 16:05
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Ixian posted:I feel like I have seen him in a ton of stuff, including TV, and he always plays a variant on "Danny McBride" - boorish, funny rear end in a top hat in other words. Everything from Foot Fist Way to P-Express, Eastbound and Down, Vice Principles, This is the End, you name it. Watch Up in the Air - he'll probably be a variant of the underachieving everyman character he played in that.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:06
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Whenever people ask variants of "why are these characters so dumb" in Prometheus, I generally turn them around by explaining the plot to them. I "didn't get it" my first time watching because it was managed against my expectations at the time, but on rewatch it made sense. And this is how I explain the plot: a) A really bad scientist that is religious and allows that to shape her understanding of evidence thinks she figured out a way to find god b) A super rich guy ultra scared of death is latching on to any way to not die, and finds her research. He sets up a gigantic trip based on bad science. c) His intelligent daughter thinks it's idiotic (because it's bad science) and since she's forced to do -something-, hires a 3rd rate crew outside of a really good captain since she's protecting that financial investment. d) Super rich guy's robot son goes around trolling everyone, partially because of his own resentment and also his own curiosity. On a plot level, that explains pretty much all the "stupidity" in the movie. The stupidity is also part of the entire point of the movie when you get to the first level of themes and such.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:16
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Stupid is as stupid does and retroactively explaining it doesn't make the movie any better. You can't tell me Scott was trying to make a movie where the subtext is the crew are a bunch of incompetent keystone cops stumbling around the outer rim, even if what ended up on screen kind of presents just that. If anything he was trying to show the consequences of hubris on the part of humanity in the face of superior, near-incomprehensible technology.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:56
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I don't really get why we must constantly assume that Ridley Scott somehow accidentally makes things. This line of reasoning came up a lot in the Prometheus thread too, like if you didn't like or understand the movie, it's because Ridley Scott just somehow let the movie "get away from him." "I went to see Prometheus, and got this instead!"
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Dec 13, 2016 17:13
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Ixian posted:You can't tell me Scott was trying to make a movie where the subtext is the crew are a bunch of incompetent keystone cops The text is explicitly that the protagonists are big "Ancient Astronauts" fans. And then they die horribly. There's even a scene where the heroine yells out that they were dumb and got everything wrong, in case this was still unclear.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:30
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Ixian posted:Stupid is as stupid does and retroactively explaining it doesn't make the movie any better. You can't tell me Scott was trying to make a movie where the subtext is the crew are a bunch of incompetent keystone cops stumbling around the outer rim, even if what ended up on screen kind of presents just that. If anything he was trying to show the consequences of hubris on the part of humanity in the face of superior, near-incomprehensible technology. Actually I can tell you this because one of said incompetent keystone cops even has dialog where she talks about how stupid and wrong they were, and Charlize Theron and Idris Elba's characters (i.e., the only competent ones) are the only ones who realize how dumb it is. Also the plot beat that you're describing where some purportedly competent bumblers are picked intentionally over the best of the best to allow for some ulterior motive to happen, like that isn't even new for this type of story. Have you see Galaxy of Terror? Dark Star? Alien 3? .......Alien? Notice how we see a recurring thing where the big advancement in technology has allowed for a setting where all the "important" stuff is pretty much on auto-pilot and the respective folks left are 100% expendable to whether or not their respective boss' objectives are complete? You're telling me that Bruce D. Clark and the other New Concorde directorial crew is a better director than Ridley Scott when you say this.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:33
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Ixian posted:Stupid is as stupid does and retroactively explaining it doesn't make the movie any better. You can't tell me Scott was trying to make a movie where the subtext is the crew are a bunch of incompetent keystone cops stumbling around the outer rim, even if what ended up on screen kind of presents just that. If anything he was trying to show the consequences of hubris on the part of humanity in the face of superior, near-incomprehensible technology. So you're determined to believe, regardless of evidence, that Prometheus was "supposed to be" something other than what it is, and failed to be that, and is therefore categorically bad?
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Dec 13, 2016 18:34
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I can't believe Ridley Scott accidentally filmed a scene where people find the equivalent of God's head in a state of near perfect preservation and their first reaction is to immediately blow it up in a microwave because they want to show off their sick science gear and then edited it into my 2012 flawless first contact simulator, Prometheus.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:38
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They beat you over the head with the fact that the crew are the dregs of their field taking the mission because it's the best/only work they can get, or they're idiot thrill seekers, or religious nuts. No one is there because they are at the top of their field and calmly work well with others.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:38
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They were just in it for the money. Talking about Ridley Scott, not awful dialogue from Prometheus.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:42
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True, no real human would ever say they're just in something for the money.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:43
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I can easily believe Ridley Scott made the movie he wanted to make and it just happened to be a movie lots of people didn't really like.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:49
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Hodgepodge posted:So you're determined to believe, regardless of evidence, that Prometheus was "supposed to be" something other than what it is, and failed to be that, and is therefore categorically bad? I don't believe that and if that is what came across then I didn't do a good job making my point. What I believe is Scott probably made a movie he was happy with, and I don't think is very good. The fact that it did or didn't end up conforming to his vision doesn't change my opinion of it.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:59
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Plus the scene with the plugged-in head is one of the more horrific in the movie. Much more memorable than "we need to follow proper science protocols, get that head in a a bag and freeze it ASAP".
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Dec 13, 2016 18:59
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Ixian posted:I don't believe that and if that is what came across then I didn't do a good job making my point. Oh. We're cool then. I hope we both like Covenant, and that it is good.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:04
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Electromax posted:Plus the scene with the plugged-in head is one of the more horrific in the movie. Much more memorable than "we need to follow proper science protocols, get that head in a a bag and freeze it ASAP". The meta-ness of "I don't understand! Why the hell don't they just freeze him! HEY! *bangs on glass* WHY DON'T YOU FREEZE HIM!" ~Parker finally sets in. 
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Dec 13, 2016 19:06
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Hodgepodge posted:Oh. We're cool then. In spite of 30 years of increasingly poor efforts (in my opinion) my enthusiasm for all things Alien is boundless. The first movie is my favorite of all time, in any genre, and as a result my optimism hasn't waned. Neo Rasa posted:The meta-ness of "I don't understand! Why the hell don't they just freeze him! HEY! *bangs on glass* WHY DON'T YOU FREEZE HIM!" ~Parker finally sets in. I love mediums (books, movies, etc.) where no matter how out-there the premise ideas work themselves out to logical conclusions that make sense in context. Alien is a great example of a movie that does this, that scene included. Parker is the guy asking what everyone watching is or should be thinking a lot of the time. Though Lambert is more of the audience stand-in, character-wise (I love how she progresses from "Christ, why are we bothering with this poo poo" to "HOLY gently caress WE NEED TO GET THE gently caress OUT").
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Dec 13, 2016 19:19
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Baronjutter posted:They beat you over the head with the fact that the crew are the dregs of their field taking the mission because it's the best/only work they can get, or they're idiot thrill seekers, or religious nuts. No one is there because they are at the top of their field and calmly work well with others. I totally get this (see my comments above) but compare this to his original Alien movie. They too are a collection of "best job we could get, no matter our specialty" types - with the same exception of the android crewmember, of course (why is it in 3 of 5 Alien movies the android is one of the best characters? You could even make it 4 out of 5 if you count Lance Hendrickson's brief role in Alien 3. I am leaving out, for hopefully obvious reasons, Winona Ryder in Resurrection). Same premise - these people flying around are not top in their fields - but the difference is in the first movie they are more fleshed out (and did a better job acting, frankly) to the point that their stereotypes aren't front and center. In Prometheus, they are pretty much one-dimensional across the board, reading their lines in whatever accent they were assigned/had naturally and hitting all the story beats by the numbers. Only Fassbender really made something out of it. I totally, absolutely believe in the characters in Alien - however inaccurate it may be in the "real" world they really sell the setting. Prometheus has the opposite problem.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:30
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Alien's performances (no really Google the shooting script for the differences) seriously do an incredible job of effortlessly establishing everything you need to know about the ships protocols, chain of command and all the odd dynamics and weird exceptions to it in a completely organic way, it's amazing. Prometheus was never going to fill those shoes. Alien is just THAT good. I'm not saying people are required to like Prometheus but to give it perspective it wouldn't be unrealistic for someone's taste to put Alien among like the top 10 or 20 films ever made. Even from the same director that's not something I'd ever expect more than once or twice ever in their entire life (and Scott already knocked it out of the park with Alien and Blade Runner). I think in our regular discussion of it we lose sight of how fantastic Alien is on every level of cinematic storytelling. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 19:30
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Neo Rasa posted:Alien's performances (no really Google the shooting script for the differences) seriously do an incredible job of effortlessly establishing everything you need to know about the ships protocols, chain of command and all the odd dynamics and weird exceptions to it in a completely organic way, it's amazing. Prometheus was never going to fill those shoes. Alien is just THAT good. Not to go on and on about it (and I could) but that is it exactly. Alien is fairly exposition free, especially considering the premise. Yet everything you need to know is sold by the characters, organically, and the setting. That took real skill to do on set; as you point out it wasn't explicit in the script (which was very exposition heavy as I remember, as was Allen Dean Fosters novelization). And then you have Aliens, one of the most perfect sequels of all time. Which had even bigger script and on-set challenges. My biggest hope (and fear) for Covenant is not that Ridley Scott creates a fan-service film - that would be awful - but that it has the same level of craft as the first one. Even if it is completely different.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:39
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