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Alien 3 was the first Alien movie I ever saw, and remains my favorite to this day. I like that it's very pessimistic but not cynical; I adore it as a conclusion to Ripley's character arc, and I vastly prefer the skittering, animal-like quadruped alien to the more humanoid ones in the other films. I like the prison setting and the way the alien takes on the role of the Devil, not as a sentient tempter, but as a force so terrifying and predatory that people will do anything to escape or possess it. I like that they made Sigourney Weaver look harried and exhausted (and, of course, bald) -- it's such a departure from where her character started in Alien, but it makes sense for someone who's been through hell like that.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Jun 28, 2015 |
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Jun 28, 2015 12:18
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Stare-Out posted:James Cameron said the point of horror films is to frighten, not disgust, While I wouldn't commit to the reverse either, what a narrow and untrue thing to say.
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Jul 10, 2015 17:03
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Stare-Out posted:Would you not say though that the suggestion of gore can be considerably more effective than explicit, visible gore? I agree with the rest of that analysis, I just found that particular line to be a sticking point. The point of horror is catharsis, to see the things that terrify or revolt you in a context that's safe (but not too safe!) so you can understand them. Subtlety and gross exaggeration are both valuable tools. I don't demand that a horror film frighten me, because if I did I would enjoy very few of them (and the ones I enjoyed would often have more to do with my personal phobias than the craft of the filmmaker.) I just expect that they have something to say about fear. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 17:53
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PeterWeller posted:I think one of the reasons why Prometheus works so well is precisely because it's such a disappointing prequel to Alien. "Woohoo, we're gonna get some answers to our burning origin questions! Wait? What the gently caress? Those aren't answers!" All Ridley Scott films take place in the same continuity. The black goop and the Darkness from Legend are the same thing. Aliens is, naturally, non-canon.
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Nov 1, 2022 19:16
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Raised by Wolves owned and its cancellation was criminal
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Nov 26, 2022 21:28
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Dawgstar posted:Was that part of the Great Purge? I'm not sure. I want to say it happened a little earlier but I don't follow behind-the-scenes industry stuff that closely, maybe there's overlap.
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Dec 1, 2022 14:24
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Alien vs. Goose whoever wins, we lo(o)se
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Feb 2, 2023 14:58
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General Battuta posted:They should let David bomb Earth with black goo and see what happens. pretty sure this is just the remote backstory of Raised by Wolves
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Feb 2, 2023 16:35
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there's a lot of more overtly erotic Giger art but usually there's something to the context that undermines it, that makes it uncomfortable to desire. it's full of people being penetrated by machines or giving birth to baby-bullets or holding up ribbed dick-cables the size of steel beams. that cover is simultaneously too sexy, and not pornographic enough.
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Feb 15, 2023 16:59
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Xealot posted:I assumed they did make the goo, but it'd be way more interesting if they didn't. The intro to Prometheus presents it like some sacrificial sacrament; if the black god cum isn't even their invention, the religious aspect to it gets way more esoteric. I like it. there's not much to base this on but given how the other Engineers react to learning humanity exists, i tend to read the Engineer at the beginning of Prometheus as some kind of rebel or heretic; what he's doing is presumably taboo or perverse in some way; a god voluntarily dying for the sake of beings who are somewhere on a scale of "slaves" to "microorganisms" compared to themselves and yeah I miss Raised by Wolves too, if the above didn't already make it obvious 
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Mar 14, 2023 23:33
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I think it's kind of funny that through a series of contextual changes and overall cultural drift, the Lovecraftian read on the Alien and the presumably uncaring universe that created it is seen as comforting and signifying potential and wonder, while the (ambiguously sincere) Biblical imagery that Ridley Scott likes to play with, with the Alien as sort of the ultimate slave / leper and the Engineer as something like a man, is upsetting "forbidden knowledge" that threatens the viewer with irreversible contamination just by knowing about it. Even the talking point about them being "just wasps" is kind of perfect -- when Ichneumon wasps were (re-)discovered in the 19th century, a number of naturalists had a sort of crisis of faith because their life cycle was so utterly horrifying they couldn't imagine them being the creation of a loving God. (Ichneumon wasps not only parasitize their hosts like the Alien, but in some cases exert a sort of neurochemical mind control that makes the victim protect their young right up to the point where the young eat them.) So you have this sort of existentialist reversal where the scary wasp stands for the reassuring(!) notion that above is not as below, if God exists at all he is assuredly not a man, and so on -- and then Ridley Scott, joker that he is, comes in and makes a movie about how Jesus and Moses are more horrifying than Cthulhu.
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Mar 20, 2023 18:51
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ruddiger posted:I haven't read it in awhile, but aren't the monsters in At the Mountains of Madness giant skinless penguins? Nah, they're more like big weird sea cucumber things with wings and tentacles and star-shaped faces. Basically a mashup of a bunch of different types of sea life. (And then also the shoggoths, which are just formless shapeshifters.) There is however an extended aside where the protagonist discovers that one of the Elder Things (monsters) has dissected one of his crewmates, and his reaction as an explorer and scientist (once he realizes they did it and it wasn't just human infighting) is "omg they're just like us."
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Mar 23, 2023 00:04
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