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Aliens is a blast, endlessly quotable, probably even more influential than Alien. but imo Scott's films are more interesting to interpret and also straight horror which clinches it for me 3 and resurrection are not to be spoken of. albeit i have not seen resurrection since i was a child so maybe i ought to give it another chance
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Mar 26, 2023 22:39
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feedmyleg posted:At the end of the day, though, I love horror and I'm a bit bored by action. Aliens never clicked. Fuligin posted:Aliens is a blast, endlessly quotable, probably even more influential than Alien. but imo Scott's films are more interesting to interpret and also straight horror which clinches it for me Have you seen the Assembly Cut of 'Alien3'? If you haven't, it's worth giving it a shot.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:39
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Alien 3 is one of my favs. I love the look of it
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Mar 26, 2023 22:42
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Alchenar posted:In the movie the guy referring to the cave as some sort of cave has no idea what he is looking at. Kane and the other characters have already been through various rooms and passageways in Jokey’s ship. They know what ‘rooms’ look like, and they have a decent understanding of the layout. If the cave were just another room in the ship, why would Kane become confused and suddenly not know what a room is? The answer is that Kane isn’t confused. The chamber is too large and too far underground to be another room in the ship. (This is one of the few things that Alien Isolation gets right.) Kane consequently figures it must be a cave beneath the ship, and is only perplexed when he realizes the cave is heated (whereas the surface of the moon is very cold). The underground chamber then turns out to be equipped with other technology that keeps the egg-pods preserved. In summary: the underground chamber beneath the ship is a cave, but not entirely natural. Somebody’s put bones on the wall and installed a fog machine. It’s odd that people are getting upset about this. The cave is both shown in the film Alien, and referred to as such by the characters. There’s no indication that Kane is hallucinating or anything.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:46
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to be honest the reason ive avoided 3 is that the alien comes from a good boy and that is just too awful for me to face again
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Mar 26, 2023 22:46
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Then watch the other cut where it comes from an ox.
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Mar 26, 2023 22:47
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feedmyleg posted:Then watch the other cut where it comes from an ox. 
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Mar 26, 2023 22:54
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Fuligin posted:...do you think the only alternative to 'have planned it out' is 'cash grab?' No. As I've repeatedly asserted, Prometheus is a fine movie that asks important questions, but shoehorning it into the Alien franchise where it doesn't belong is a cash grab. And we know Ridley Scott could have made it its own movie, with how he lost his mind making that wack-rear end show Raised By Wolves. Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 22:55
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Mister Speaker posted:No. As I've repeatedly asserted, Prometheus is a fine movie that asks important questions, but shoehorning it into the Alien franchise where it doesn't belong is a cash grab. J. Cameron’s ALIEN$ is a totally okay film but, as I’ve proven, it retcons the poo poo out of Alien in order to do a remake of Rambo 2. So, why only cynicism towards controversial films by the original creator that don’t retcon anything?
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Mar 26, 2023 23:02
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Fuligin posted:to be honest the reason ive avoided 3 is that the alien comes from a good boy and that is just too awful for me to face again As mentioned you should check out the Assembly Cut. It adds in a new opening, new ending, changes where the Alien came from, puts in a new subplot about capturing the Alien (and resolves a plot hole from the theatrical cut where a character just... vanishes) and overall adds in like half an hour of stuff.
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Mar 26, 2023 23:06
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The idea of Alien 3 is cool.but, like, maybe if it happened to a Burke that wormed their way off planet through the only CEO Escape Pod than Ripley who's already been traumatized 20 times over before the film even gets going. I think it ends up showing that interactions with Weyland Yutani are as life destroying as getting Alien'd as well as making Ripley's whole recurring nightmares in Aliens less of a psychological market and more of a dumb plot beat.
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Mar 26, 2023 23:49
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Mar 27, 2023 00:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It’s odd that people are getting upset about this. 
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Mar 27, 2023 00:19
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I know right. It's practically a completely different film.
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Mar 27, 2023 00:20
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That’s a neat little comic (two-parter, “Advent” and “Terminus” if I’m remembering right) and is one of the earliest stories to play around with the cut ‘Alien’ content of an ancient extraterrestrial pyramid with hieroglyphics (although more along the lines of the doodles done before Giger was brought onboard). I think it was in the ‘Dark Horse Presents: Aliens’ one-shot, the second Aliens comic I ever read, shortly after Labyrinth. Good times. The first level in the Alien campaign in AvPClassic happens in a big Alien-centric temple, too. I’m in the middle of replaying said Alien campaign on the highest difficulty, it cannot be overstated how broken the Alien is if you play it right.
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Mar 27, 2023 00:41
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Xenomrph posted:He didn’t plan it that way, and he acknowledges it in his introduction to the Prometheus art book. I feel like whatever David did, he didn't 'invent' the Aliens because we see artwork depicting them in Prometheus so the aliens are definitely older than whatever he did in Covenant. I'm sure there are 'differences' but there are visual differences in the Aliens throughout the first 4 films anyway, and I just always assumed they'd come out slightly differently every time. There is also the one who pops out of the Engineer guy at the end though I guess he had David's 'help' in a way. Don't they find chestbursted dead Engineers somewhere in the temple? I haven't seen it in years. I always took it to mean that David is kind of a blowhard (like his dad) and he is just stealing other people's ideas and calling it 'creation!'. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 01:57
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Fuligin posted:Aliens is a blast, endlessly quotable, probably even more influential than Alien. but imo Scott's films are more interesting to interpret and also straight horror which clinches it for me Alien 3: Assembly Cut is loving awesome, might be worth giving another chance, I'm in the camp that it completely obsoletes the theatrical version on every level. Resurrection...still sucks poo poo imo. There are moments of it that look great thanks to Jeunet and the talented production folks though, but Whedon's script was already crap when the movie came out and definitely hasn't gotten better with age lol
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Mar 27, 2023 03:49
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Neo Rasa posted:Alien 3: Assembly Cut is loving awesome, might be worth giving another chance, I'm in the camp that it completely obsoletes the theatrical version on every level. I agree with you on both. Alien3's Assembly Cut is my second-favorite Alien movie, and Resurrection was doomed from the get-go. Much like Star Trek: Nemesis, there's no saving a movie from an utterly execrable script.
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Mar 27, 2023 04:41
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Mister Speaker posted:^ I think the SO937 question hinges on whether you accept the prequels as lore AND if you do, whether it's plausible any information from the Prometheus made it back to Earth. I think the films heavily implied that WY knew about the xeno but Ridley also made this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFP2wFHWqfM Deleted scene intended for the end of Covenant later released as promotional material, similar to this promo for Prometheus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ7E7Qp-s-8 I remember Blade Runner 2049 having a short promo featuring Bautista's character and showing us how he got the attention of K. Surprised more films haven't opted for this marketing tactic, especially Dune which I believe had an absurd amount of cut footage that was never released. Timby posted:I agree with you on both. Alien3's Assembly Cut is my second-favorite Alien movie, and Resurrection was doomed from the get-go. Much like Star Trek: Nemesis, there's no saving a movie from an utterly execrable script. Remove the Ripley clone and you have a decent standalone alien movie imo, but you sadly also lose out on the failed clones. Shame they hadn't gone with an alternate source for acquiring the xeno, and maybe still worked in failed clones somehow since the impurity is integral to the story being told. Great cast & director though, and Brad Dourif was wonderfully creepy.
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Mar 27, 2023 05:02
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SUNKOS posted:and Brad Dourif was wonderfully creepy. The Weyland Yutani Report book points out that Gediman (Dourif’s character) used to write his memos as weird haikus haha I don’t think the book had any example haikus but I’ll have to check later. As for the failed clones: https://youtu.be/wEn22-kffi0 https://youtu.be/ke62icwXJkM I’d unironically read a prequel novel dealing with the genesis of the Ripley cloning project leading right up to the start of the movie, that has the potential to be crazy.
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Mar 27, 2023 05:09
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I didn't really find the Ripley clone compelling. No fault to Sigourney Weaver, but we have the worst of both worlds in that they bring her back in a cheesy way yet her personality is so far removed from the original Ripley that she was an entirely new character. Ripley clone was a bit too edgy and into speaking in vague portentous movie trailer style lines when part of the appeal of the original Ripley was that she was entirely plainspoken and had no time for anyone's bullshit. There's a lot of great people in the cast and Brad Dourif's creepy science guy was great. He's gold in every scene. I always felt like action in the Alien films at least trended toward realistic/plausible so all the funny videogamey ricochet bullets were annoying and jarring. Winona Ryder cannot hold a candle next to Ash, David, or Bishop in weird android role. Felt like they did nothing with the fact that she was a robot but they made a way bigger deal about it. I give it points on: - Clone abortions were great body horror. Too bad the cloning Ripley idea was just a bit dumb, and her acquisition of Alien body types was precisely the sort of lame DnD character poo poo where "I look totally normal and cool but I also have these amazing powers and I'm dark and edgy about it." What would Alien Resurrection have been like if they just rolled with a hosed-up-body-horror Ripley as the only one? I would have been plenty fine with the movie not featuring Ripley at all as it kind of cheapens her sacrifice at the end of Alien 3 to just have anyone able to spin up a new Ripley complete with alien inside. It makes the acquisition of the Alien seem less important or profitable if human science can just produce hosed up monsters through the magic of cloning. - The pirates smuggling in human freezers was interesting for how hosed up it was, but then these characters have the writers desperately trying to make them 'good guy' protagonists. Like, what the gently caress did they think they were doing smuggling frozen people against their will into some black site science ship? They couldn't have imagined things were going to turn out well for them. Going with this same basic concept except in a different direction would have been much more horrifying. Imagine a movie in which the protagonists are the freezer people and they expect to wake up in Space-Bermuda or something and instead the first thing they see when they thaw is an egg opening up. Movie could follow their mission to somehow get an abortion before they pop. Other Aliens running around could be from the same group just impregnated slightly earlier. - The Alien escape scene was really well done. It was cool seeing them learning how to 'behave' and then murdering their own buddy to get out was pretty inspired. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 09:33
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Going with this same basic concept except in a different direction would have been much more horrifying. Imagine a movie in which the protagonists are the freezer people and they expect to wake up in Space-Bermuda or something and instead the first thing they see when they thaw is an egg opening up. Movie could follow their mission to somehow get an abortion before they pop. This is the premise of the video game STASIS https://store.steampowered.com/app/380150/STASIS/
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Mar 27, 2023 09:44
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Resurrection gets by for the visuals and the effects. The script and story stink like poo poo
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Mar 27, 2023 10:24
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CelticPredator posted:Resurrection gets by for the visuals and the effects. The script and story stink like poo poo Only thing Resurrection did right imo was the concept of the underwater scene imo. The effects of it don't really hold up today even, but just the idea of having to contend with xenomorphs while underwater is terrifying.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:23
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I feel like whatever David did, he didn't 'invent' the Aliens because we see artwork depicting them in Prometheus so the aliens are definitely older than whatever he did in Covenant. I'm sure there are 'differences' but there are visual differences in the Aliens throughout the first 4 films anyway, and I just always assumed they'd come out slightly differently every time. There is also the one who pops out of the Engineer guy at the end though I guess he had David's 'help' in a way. Don't they find chestbursted dead Engineers somewhere in the temple? I haven't seen it in years. He gives a whole speech about that. I honestly don't know how people keep getting "hung up" on David "creating" Xenos where both Covenant and Prometheus explicitly say they don't. The only way I can empathize this happening is if people look at movies like puzzles that have to be solved with each component as pieces, and so when outside material like interviews or books. So if there's a sequence of events and a movie only shows B,C,D, allowing you to fill in the rest for yourself, and an interview or something not in the movie fills in an A or E the person doesn't like, they get mad or vice versa if they do like it. I dont really care about scripts or interviews and just look at the movie as-is because the finished movie has more influence than one writer or director. Blade Runner (hey its Ridley again) being a huge example.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:37
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The question of David inventing the xenos is a different question than whether or not he created those specific eggs that later get found by the Nostromo. And unfortunately Ridley Scott has really muddied the waters on that issue, he's said some things that strongly imply those were in fact David's eggs on LV-426 but the films themselves don't have anything in them that would make you assume that.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:44
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Basebf555 posted:The question of David inventing the xenos is a different question than whether or not he created those specific eggs that later get found by the Nostromo. And unfortunately Ridley Scott has really muddied the waters on that issue, he's said some things that strongly imply those were in fact David's eggs on LV-426 but the films themselves don't have anything in them that would make you assume that. It's actually pretty explicitly shown that the egg-pods were derived from the black fungus through an obscure alchemical process. This is where we gotta go back to what a 'xenomorph' is. Although the term comes from Aliens, it's an accurate description of the creature in Alien as an alien form of humanity. And, of course, there are plenty of ways that a human can become (like) an alien. We're shown some half-dozen variants across the Ridley Scott films. Fifield is one example, but even Holloway becomes a foreign invader once infected with the goo. As Ferrinus and I have stressed, though, 'xenomorphs' can only be produced from something familiar. You can't have an alien-form of something that's already alien. You first need a human, or at least a dog. So, to fulfill forums poster Xenomrph's dream of a universe loaded with trillions of xenomorphs, the universe must first be populated with the familar: with humans. You also need something specifically designed to act upon human DNA. like a Cronenbergian 'creative cancer'. And you need dumb people to senselessly spread that cancer everywhere. So, we have the Engineers flying around, establishing colonies and, fighting wars, etc. - deploying jars full of black goo as weapons, or using smaller doses to manipulate the biosphere, or whatever. This is why Prometheus is the unavoidable truth of Alien. When you get to Covenant, 'xenomorphs' of many kinds have already been fairly ubiquitous. Exposure to black goo turns humans into black fungus, and exposure to black fungus turns humans into 'neomorphs', which are already a type of xenomorph. The only new wrinkle is that David isn't happy with these existing xenomorphs, because his goal is the creation of an 'angelic' super-being to replace humanity. So, he manipulates the goo and fungus to produce the alien egg-pods, which have very specific effects on humans. These egg-pods are his innovation. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 16:55
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Darko posted:He gives a whole speech about that. I honestly don't know how people keep getting "hung up" on David "creating" Xenos where both Covenant and Prometheus explicitly say they don't. The only way I can empathize this happening is if people look at movies like puzzles that have to be solved with each component as pieces, and so when outside material like interviews or books. I used to be “mad” about it, but ultimately I’ve come to the conclusion that David was mistaken - and it’s more thematically interesting if he doesn’t know it. This ties back to the bit earlier in the movie where he misattributes the poem Ozymandias and doesn’t realize it. Also there’s a well-worn adage in the Alien fan community, “Ridley Scott says a lot of things.”  On Blade Runner, I know the Final Cut hews away from this, but I think it’s more thematically interesting if Deckard is human. Off topic, but you mentioned Blade Runner (and Blade Runner is pretty Alien-adjacent, especially in light of David).
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Mar 27, 2023 17:07
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Yeah, it's text in the movies that David mimics and doesn't actually create and thinks more of himself than he is. I also prefer Declard as human specifically because he ends up loving a Replicant, which ties into the whole thing that there's no real difference.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:15
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Darko posted:Yeah, it's text in the movies that David mimics and doesn't actually create and thinks more of himself than he is. That's a weird way to describe a process analogous to dog breeding. Like, if someone breeds a dog capable of speech, you don't say that it's not real creation because its just mimicking existing dogs or people.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:21
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Darko posted:I also prefer Declard as human specifically because he ends up loving a Replicant, which ties into the whole thing that there's no real difference. That, and it’s a neat juxtaposition that Roy, a replicant, is behaviorally and emotionally more “human” than Deckard, an actual human.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:35
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I think the best way to interpret Blade Runner is that Deckard understands the possibility that he could be a Replicant, but he's come to realize that it doesn't matter. The definitive answer to that question is irrelevant, the point is he could be.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's a weird way to describe a process analogous to dog breeding. I'd say its more akin to a hypothetical scenario in which the Russian fox domestication project claimed to have invented the process of domesitication, or invented the fox. They didn't create the fox. They didn't create the concept of domestication, or the steps through which it occurs. They may have created a variety of fox, by following a series of known steps.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:11
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Basebf555 posted:I think the best way to interpret Blade Runner is that Deckard understands the possibility that he could be a Replicant, but he's come to realize that it doesn't matter. The definitive answer to that question is irrelevant, the point is he could be. I think that’s a novel way to look at it, he’s basically Schroedinger’s Replicant. Ultimately I think you can come up with interesting thematic elements whether you view it that way, or say he’s a replicant, or say that he’s not. I also really liked that BR2049 was deliberately noncommittal on the topic (but also basically said it didn’t matter, both for Deckard and for K). What I’m getting at is Blade Runner (and 2049) are cool and good. I should get around to re-reading the KW Jeter movie sequel books, the last time I read the first 3 was over 20 years ago. I only recently tracked down a copy of the 4th one and haven’t read it. It was… not cheap.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:20
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Dienes posted:I'd say its more akin to a hypothetical scenario in which the Russian fox domestication project claimed to have invented the process of domesitication, or invented the fox. You're going to have to break down your thought process here. What we're shown in the films is that a wide variety of 'xenomorphs' exist as a byproduct of human exposure to the black goo, which the engineers have evidently been using as a bioweapon for some time. The creatures known as 'neomorphs' and 'the deacon' are xenomorphs. We see pictures of them in the engineers' temples, dating back at least 2000 years. This concept is directly inspired by classic sci-fi about atomic mutants, except rendered more plausible: the black goo is a nanotechnology with healing properties (near-identical to the black goo in District 9, as it happens). It automatically reshapes people into random viable organisms, instead of simply killing them. David's innovation is to harness this random process via space-alchemy to produce a specific outcome: the creature shown in Alien.* To get that particular xenomorph, you need the specific eggpod-and-spider assemblage, which administers its goo dose in a specific way. So, David invented the alchemical process used to produce that specific 'superior' xenomorph. *As Covenant underlines, though, the creature in Alien is' feral'. David intended to socialize his xenomorphs, but this one is dumped into a hostile environment, without guidance.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:46
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sigher posted:So, I'm not really surprised no one cares about the goo. Appreciate this post for sparking three pages of goo talk.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:54
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To be clear here: It’s always been explicit that David did not invent ‘xenomorphs’. Like, in general. A type of xenomorph appears at the end of Prometheus. It’s incontestable What’s actually at stake is the notion of the sanctity of “THE xenomorph” or “capital-A Aliens”, or whatever. This has little to do with David at all, but with the fear that the creature in Alien isn’t some really super-duper special princess, but just a cosmic accident that few people really care about. Like, oh poo poo, it’s like a human - but without morality??? This could be worth thousands of (unadjusted) dollars! And the actual reason is simply that there aren’t massive real-world ad campaigns centred around ‘the deacons’. Merch, etc.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:00
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The mural also has Giger original facehuggers in the bottom corners. The only thing that's not in it is an egg, I guess. David was just sitting in there staring at the mural and then playing with the goo trying to recreate what he saw. By Covenant, he mixed Shaw's reproductive stuff with black goo to create the egg > vagina on face > penis outcome he was looking for and thought it was great, but it was still a copy of the original "Giger" stuff he saw and based on it - essentially a sequel.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:04
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Basically David came to believe he was a god(something he'd suspected since minutes after his life began when he realized he was superior to his own creator), but for 20something years living alone on that planet he was a god without any worshippers. The arrival of Walter was, in his mind, his chance to properly start the Church of David but then Walter saw through him and called him out for the fraud that he was, so he killed him.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:10
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What gets me is that the Prometheus line if anything magnifies the significance of the xenomorph because it unbinds its particular shape and qualities from just happening to be one regular alien that evolved on one planet somewhere and proved pretty hardy! When he was first advertising Avatar, James Cameron talked up some monster from Pandora's jungles—I've just done some Googling and discovered it is the "Thanator". Cameron says, according to some -ipedia covering it, that the Thanator could easily defeat a t-rex and eat the alien queen for breakfast. This is some silly-sounding schoolyard movie one-upsmanship, but it's also perfectly defensible insofar as we're talking about specific, contingent creatures. Oh your xenomorph is seven feet tall and bleeds acid? My thanator is twelve feet at the soldier and it has 100% acid resistance as well as DR 15/-. Also its neck and jaw muscles have hydraulic force behind them such that a facehugger would bounce off it. Also it breathes fire. Etcetera. Buuut, if we understand that "a xenomorph" is what you get when evolution and reproduction are simply catalyzed towards their logical conclusion, the idea of "can beat a xenomorph" becomes nonsensical. How can you defeat what you're inevitably becoming? Everything about you is just the buggy, pre-alpha version of the creature carved into the Engineer complex's walls. The Thanator might properly be a type of xenomorph itself. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 20:11
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