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exquisite tea posted:Renny Harlin is redeemed in my eyes for directing The Long Kiss Goodnight. Nah, he directed Exorcist: The Beginning. He's beyond redemption now.
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Jun 29, 2015 15:24
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There's nothing I' d enjoy more than a three page derail about Prometheus( I watched it again this weekend, FYI its still amazing), but I think I'm probably the only one. I never get tired of discussing that film.
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Jun 29, 2015 16:47
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Baronjutter posted:The map maker got lost. The space jockey's are just large humans. It is garbo. Nuh uh!
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Jun 29, 2015 16:55
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Baronjutter posted:Maybe I need to give Prometheus another try but I didn't just not like it, it made me angry. There just seem to be way too many "deal breaker" things that don't make sense and seem like lovely writing/characterization. I get the plot, it's just a lovely plot. All of the stuff that typically bothers people about the characterization can be explained pretty simply if you give the movie the same benefit of the doubt that every other sci-fi film gets. Its the kind of stuff you can explain using a little imagination combined with what the film actually gives you. I consider that a strength of good sci-fi, not a weakness. Like, yea Milburne and Fifield(the two guys who get lost during the storm) are not very good at their jobs, but you can put together why that is very easily based on what we're shown. The crew attending to Weyland barely blink at Shaw stumbling into the room all bloody, but they absolutely don't give a gently caress about her and the reason why is fully explained.
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Jun 29, 2015 21:05
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Baronjutter posted:The only excuse I could think of was that most of the crew were not actually top of their field but were hired because they would be dumb and expendable and maybe the whole mission and employer had a really bad reputation so only idiots signed up. Pretty much, but its more spelled out than it seems like you noticed(perfectly understandable, I've seen the movie like 6 times now so I've noticed smaller details). The mission was put together by Weyland's daughter, who as you come to find out as the film goes on has no personal investment in it, and really just wants to get it over with so she can get on with her life running the company. She thinks the mission is bullshit, but she also explicitly says that she hired most if not all the crew personally. Also the mission entailed being put to sleep for two years, only to be told what the goal is after you wake up. I doubt it would be easy to get the best and brightest to sign up under those circumstances. Baronjutter posted:I also just didn't like the plot. Aliens were, well, alien before. They and their creators really felt like something that come from beyond the stars, something eldrich and almost lovecraftian, something absolutely in no way related to humans, no shared history, no shared anything. Now we find out that the totally awesome and totally alien looking "space jocky" from alien was just a suit and inside was a creature just like a human but bigger who for some reason seeded life on earth and some how installed a mechanism to make humans evolve. Which is again lovely because I always like it in scify when humans are not created in god's image, have no special destiny, are not the long-lost ancestors to some glorious ancient race. We're lovely less-haired apes encountering alien horrors beyond our reckoning. But now, no, we were magically guided by space gods to evolve in their image making humans, the engineers, and the aliens all one big family. Prometheus managed to make humans the product of godly creationism and one of the most interesting, alien, and mysterious races in science fiction be "basically just humans but bigger". This stuff is perfectly legitimate but its your personal preferences, what you like to see in sci-fi. If you can let go of that a little bit you might see the movie differently. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 21:27
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david_a posted:RE: Prometheus Yea, this was my biggest obstacle to enjoying Prometheus. I was too much of an Alien/Aliens fanboy and went into it looking to connect every little detail to the previous movies in the franchise. Its not a satisfying movie to watch in that mindset.
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Jun 29, 2015 23:05
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Tenzarin posted:Space jockeys are just clumsy huge people and have reverse napoleon complexes. Wouldn't that be disappointing?
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Jun 30, 2015 00:29
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I wouldn't mind if a reboot went with a completely new visual style and got away from the Giger aesthetic all-together. Come up with a new type of alien that is also terrifying just in a different way than the xeno.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:18
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Baronjutter posted:In Prometheus it felt like a bunch of disconnected separately conceived effects-shots that they thought would be totally cool or gross or scary strung together by a lovely plot to barely string them together, and the primary motive of each character was "move the plot to the next cool scene". While in Alien 1-3 all the big "setpiece" scenes very much felt like a natural result of the plot , and the plot felt like a natural result of the actions and motives of the characters. I don't care about the intention of the film maker. Maybe Aliens was actually conceived as just a but of cool action and scenes and strung together with a basic plot, but it works. Maybe Prometheus genuinely tried to have a good plot and characters, but it didn't work and is poo poo. Can you be a little more specific why you think Ripley is great but Shaw is bad? What is it about Shaw that is different from Ripley that makes her a lesser character? Why is it a good thing that Paul Reiser plays the perfect corporate stooge, yet you complain that you cheered when characters in Prometheus are killed? Isn't Burke just as unlikeable as anybody in Prometheus? Didn't you cheer when he finally got his? You really don't think the characters in Prometheus had motivations? David had no motivation to do what he was doing? Shaw? Holloway? Vickers? Come on.
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Jun 30, 2015 17:32
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Baronjutter posted:A movie needs all those elements to be good, but if any of those elements are made from stringy or beady poo poo it's going to be a poo poo movie. I'm only talking about what makes a movie bad. A bad plot can make a movie with really cool design or scary monsters lovely. A movie with a perfectly reasonable plot and characters that act in a believable way but garbage design is going to be lovely too. Alien isn't good because it has a good plot or characters, those are simply the minimums needed as a foundation to build a good movie on top of, which Alien does with its absolutely stunning design, with effects that still hold up today, with just the right blend of gore/horror, suspense, and action. But if you don't have that foundation of a serviceable plot or characters, no matter how good your design or effects or cinematography is it's going to be a bad movie for a lot of people. Of course a lot of that is subjective. People don't go into a slasher movie expecting a good plot or believable characters, and a lot of people go into scify just for the design and general concept rather than nit-picking plots or characters and can actually enjoy fun things. As you said, its subjective and nobody knows what your personal definition of a "serviceable plot" is. Alien doesn't really have all that much of a plot anyway but the point is you speaking in generalities.
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Jun 30, 2015 18:48
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I have to pick that up at some point. I held off because I didn't have a PS4 and it didn't look quite worth it at the full $60 price. Now that I have a PS4 and the game is cheaper I have no excuse.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:20
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A big part of the mysteriousness of the xenomorph is also that you only ever get short glimpses of what its actually doing to people when it catches them. That was obviously due to the creature being a dude in a rubber suit for the most part, but it works in its favor pretty much throughout the series. That principle is used to great effect in Alien 3, where you have dark corridors and tunnels, and there are some awesome shots of prisoners getting mauled in the background while someone else flees in terror. The creature and the guy getting ripped apart aren't in complete focus but you can get a gist of what's happening. Much scarier that way.
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Jul 10, 2015 15:50
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It was pretty funny reading a few articles about how Scott has three additional Prometheus sequels planned. The entire article is written sarcastically as if the writer assumes nobody reading it will think Prometheus sequels is a good idea, but I'm sitting there pumping my fist that I may get more Prometheus.
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Sep 24, 2015 19:11
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I still have complaints about Prometheus, but they all are related to the marketing of the film, so in the end they are pretty meaningless complaints. I do feel that the marketing campaign for the film was deceptive though.
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Sep 25, 2015 14:39
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Xenomrph posted:In what way? I felt the movie largely delivered on what the trailers showed, and I really liked the viral/ARG stuff for its subtle (and not so subtle) commentary on corporate culture, brand image, etc. The trailer was purposely very similar to the iconic Alien trailer, it even had the same music. Most of the pre-release material went out of its way to emphasize the Alien connection. So I went into it expecting a straight-up Alien sequel and I think that effected my first viewing of the film. It was only after I watched it again, having put those expectations behind me, that I could really see it for what it is.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:13
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MrMojok posted:Can you explain a little? I think what you're talking about is the stupidity of the scientists, who do very un-scientist type things, right? How was this the point of the plot? I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly feel the same way about the movie, and never understood half the things these people do and why it was written this way. Weyland funded the project because of his fantasy of immortality, but by the time the everything was reaching the final stage where people needed to be hired for the crew he was already in stasis. Vickers, his daughter, is the one puts the crew together and she is simply going through the motions because she doesn't believe in the project. She just wants to fulfill her father's final wish so that he can just die already and she can move on with her life as the head of the company. The film makes a point of telling you that she personally hired the majority the crew, and that's the reason. Thematically the film is about hubris, so people making mistakes is a major part of that. These scientists probably get away with their lazy practices in their normal work, but they fail to recognize they've entered a world that is not at all forgiving and WILL kill them for the slightest oversight. Its a very important aspect of the film.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:19
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I don't agree with the complaints about the stupidity of certain characters, but what I really don't get is when I hear people say they couldn't follow what David was doing and what his motivations were. People who say that clearly didn't pay much attention to the film.
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Sep 25, 2015 18:51
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Darko posted:Playing around with the worm things as they were was definitely stupid out of context, as they resembled snakes and people have a natural aversion to playing around with snakes like that, especially when showing aggressive behavior. However (a) space weed, and people do dumb stuff on space weed, and (b) a deleted scene explains the kind of motivation that would make someone act more irrational about that, and shows it was thought about. Oh yea, its stupid alright, I'm not trying to argue that point. I just don't have a problem with the characters making a stupid mistake like that, it didn't come across as contrived to me, it felt very realistic. Re: the space truckers in Alien. I don't think its an appropriate comparison because those characters worked for a major corporation that had established policies about space travel like the quarantine issue. The crew of Prometheus is slapped together in secret in a very haphazard way, and there is no precedent yet for the kind of voyage they are taking. All of the rules and regulations that existed by the time of the Nostromo aren't in place yet. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 18:58
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Xenomrph posted:The problem isn't that the characters did dumb poo poo, it's that the movie executed it so poorly that it undermined an otherwise interesting theme ("the hubris of man"). We agree that its an interesting theme, so lets discuss the execution of it. The kind of mistakes that the crew make in Alien are not about hubris. Breaking protocol by allowing an injured team member back onto the ship isn't hubris, its being a human. Kane staring at the egg too long and getting face-hugged isn't hubris, its a dude who doesn't really want to be there being overcome by a moment of natural human curiosity. If the scientists in Prometheus did everything by the book, and then maybe slipped up and made one mistake, that's not furthering the theme of hubris. Its exactly that "gently caress it, lets discover some poo poo!" attitude that hammers home the point about the hubris of man and its results.
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Sep 25, 2015 23:59
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Xenomrph posted:I disagree that the characters in 'Alien' aren't exhibiting hubris, they're just doing it in a different way. The people in Prometheus are on the cutting edge of discovery, while the people in Alien are just doing blue-collar jobs. With Prometheus, the idea is "we can tame the unknown", and that's an arrogant stance to take. With Alien, the idea is "we have tamed the unknown", and as far as the characters are concerned, they have - everything is documented, there's procedures for everything, they just go out and punch a clock and it's all commonplace even though they're literally working in space and visiting other worlds, something that would be mind-blowing to us. The arrogance is in the notion that they've tamed the unknown and that they've seen it all, and that there are no dangers lurking in the dark, and that The Book has a procedure for everything. The characters in Alien aren't arrogant when it comes to acknowledging the dangers of space exploration. That's why the policies are in place, why they're so hesitant to investigate the signal, and why Ripley is so adamant about the quarantine rules. The company knows they can't just say "oh hey, on your way back shoot on down to this random planet and check out a mysterious signal." It has to be made clear to the crew that they will forfeit their shares if they refuse to go. I think what you're saying here is more relevant to Aliens. Xenomrph posted:The scientists in Prometheus didn't need to do everything by the book (because as you mentioned earlier, there is no book yet). But I feel it's possible to express the awe and wonder of discovery and exploration without having the characters be reckless. The recklessness of the characters is exactly the point of those scenes, not the awe and wonder of discovery. You want the scenes to be about something different than what Ridley Scott wanted. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Sep 26, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2015 02:32
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Xenomrph posted:Wait what? You were the one saying the characters were acting out of the excitement of exploration, I was just saying there are better ways to show that. Both things are true. They are being reckless because of their excitement. I'm not really interested in anyone's alternative ideas for what they would have done with those scenes. I don't feel like that line of discussion is ever really productive, this is the movie we have and its not changing. I think its basically perfect, you think it has flaws, I'm fine with just debating that without getting into "the snake should have acted less aggressively" and "this character should have said this to that character".
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Sep 26, 2015 15:23
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I've gotten poo poo for this in other threads in the past, but if I'm being 100% honest its very difficult for me to read someone's opinion with an open mind when they refer to Michael Fassbender as "Magneto", and Guy Pierce as "Lance Hendricksen." Also, people who use the term "objectively terrible" are generally assholes.
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Sep 27, 2015 14:06
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The Weyland/David relationship is really complex considering how little screen time Weyland actually had, I know a lot more was planned with Guy Pearce originally. That hologram scene with Weyland is so fun to rewatch and interpret and reinterpret every time you see it. What exactly is David thinking in that half-second shot? Once you've seen the whole film and know more of David's deal, its easy to see any number of things. I think of it as David learning about jealousy and hypocrisy. Weyland first praises him as one of his own children, then in the same breath invalidates him because he doesn't have a "human soul". But David knows what this mission is about, he knows what Weyland is after. David will never grow old, he'll live forever, isn't what Weyland is striving to be already embodied by David himself? I like to think of that moment as David coming to the final realization that a creation can actually be better than its creator, and that he in fact is better than a human.
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Sep 29, 2015 02:29
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Clipperton posted:that said the movie was trashy fun and i'm down for a sequel assuming scott lives that long (unlikely) Is he sick or something? I think the Prometheus sequel is his next project, or at least the one after that. He works fast these days.
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Sep 29, 2015 03:39
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What it comes down to for me is that I really don't care if a particular person "likes" a movie or not. If they don't like it, but their reasons for not liking it are interesting and informative, I want to hear what they have to say. If their criticisms are rooted in unfair, unreasonable, or wrong expectations then I'm not interested. Going into every movie experience with the same expectations is limiting yourself. Even something basic like "the characters should act like realistic human beings" will hold you back in terms of enjoying a lot of high quality films.
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Sep 29, 2015 21:30
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Xenomrph posted:
What people are trying to get across to you is that your expectations have(in this case) have made your thoughts and opinions uninteresting and not relevant to any discussion we're looking to have about Prometheus. You're right that "change your expectations" isn't really contributing to a discussion, but that's because the discussion should be over already. Either change your expectations or continue disliking the movie, nobody really cares which. I've written some fairly detailed explanations of the way I see the characters in Prometheus, and why I don't agree with your criticisms. At this point you know the other side of the argument, I'm not sure what else there is to talk about.
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Sep 30, 2015 14:35
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It's the story of Ripley because Sigourney Weaver was the breakout star of Alien, and therefore the studio wanted her back for a sequel(s). Especially once it got to Alien 3 and Resurrection, I don't think the studio was going to put nearly as much money into the project as they did if Weaver wasn't involved. They must have felt like audiences needed to see her for it to feel like a true Alien movie because they kept increasing her pay exponentially every time she decided to come back. Of course if you listen to Weaver herself talk about it she'll always emphasize that her hesitations were about the scripts, and her protectiveness of the Ripley character. The fact is though Weaver was given huge pay increases every time she came back to the role.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:51
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Tenzarin posted:Except AvP was good. I agree. Prometheus was better though.
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Oct 1, 2015 22:59
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AvP was awesome at the time just because I never thought it would ever happen. I guess it competes with Resurrection as the worst of the "series", but I think I'd say Resurrection is slightly better because of the cast. Ron Pearlman, Brad Dourif, Weaver, the short dude that Jeunet puts in everything. Some people really hate AvP:R but I still like it a lot. I can still rewatch that and enjoy it, whereas I have a hard time sitting through AvP.
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Oct 2, 2015 00:16
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Xenomrph posted:The best part about the chest bursting is the other actors' reactions, because they hadn't been told what was going to happen, how, or when, so all of their reactions are genuine shock and surprise. When Lambert is freaking out and waving her hands around because she's been sprayed in the face with real blood, that's Veronica Cartwright 's real reaction to having no idea that was going to happen to her. Her "Oh Gooooddd" is way to genuine to be acting.
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Oct 9, 2015 23:33
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I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. They were told something was going to happen, I'm sure they could only assume it would be something bad, but I don't think they were given very many specific details.
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Oct 9, 2015 23:39
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Baronjutter posted:The predators seem to have controlling/using the aliens for sport down to a science, which sort of defeats the whole "oh the hubris of man thinking they can ever hope to control the unstoppable alien!" theme. Predators routinely mess with the aliens, seed planets, capture and hold queens, all without their civilization getting wiped out. I'd think they probably don't let the Xenos anywhere near their home planet. AvP:R showed an outbreak scenario that probably isn't all that unusual, but I assume that's why the Predators set all this poo poo up on backwater nothing planets.
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Oct 13, 2015 17:57
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I'm not sure why Jesus being an Engineer would be insulting to Christians. Its a fictional story not being presented as true in any way. I mean, is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter insulting to Lincoln biographers because he wasn't really a vampire hunter?
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Oct 13, 2015 22:55
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The Alien queen is pretty smart. She and Ripley come to some sort of unspoken agreement when Ripley points the flamethrower at the eggs. She's at least smart enough to understand the basic "just let me take my kid and go or all your kids are toast" message Ripley was trying to get across.
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Oct 13, 2015 23:05
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Hodgepodge posted:e: way back, I think there was some discussion of the relationship between the black goo and the Xenomorph. When the Xenomorph form emerges from the frieze at the temple after the black goo is leaked in Prometheus, I read that as a warning: this is coming. The Xenomorph is Tiamat or Typhoon emerging from chaos of the black goo uncontrolled, and a religiously-laden biohazard symbol. I go back and forth about the issue of whether the Engineers created the Xenomorph from the black goo, or if the Xenomorph already existed somewhere and the black goo is a byproduct of the Engineers experiments on them. Right at this moment I lean towards the Xeno as a creation of the Engineers. It fits into the themes of fatherhood/godhood and what it means to be a creator, which are so important to pretty much every character in the movie. The Engineers created a being that is better than they are, and so they put it on a pedestal and even maybe worship it. That is contrasted by Weyland who has accomplished the exact same thing, he's created a lifeform that is superior to himself, and yet he can't recognize it or give any validation to it because he is more concerned with personally living forever. The very thing he's striving for, he's already given to somebody else but he doesn't even realize how amazing that is because he's so self-centered.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:44
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Baronjutter posted:Has anything been "officially" said regarding the Space Jockey from alien? Was it just a dead engineer in a suit? I can take everything else in Prometheus, but not that. Its never been officially stated because its self-explanatory. The Engineer in Prometheus is piloting a ship that looks exactly like the derelict ship from Alien, and he's wearing the same type of suit sitting in a very similar position as the Space Jockey. Its hard for me to come up with any other explanation. The Engineer in Prometheus was in a life-support pod for those two thousand years. The Space Jockey just died in his chair so his body fossilized, much like the corpses the crew of Prometheus find laying around, although they don't seem to have been there as long as the Space Jockey has. But hey if it makes you feel better to think up some other explanation, more power to you.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:59
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Xenomrph posted:I mean we're talking Ridley Scott here. If he wanted the Engineers and Juggernaut to be absolutely identical to the Space Jockey and Derelict, he could have. But he didn't, and I don't think that was an accident. I guess I have to concede that point because I was just having a very similar conversation with my roommate the other day where I was on your side of the argument. He was trying to say that the Xenoish thing that comes out of the Engineer at the end is clearly meant to be the same as the classic Alien, and that doesn't make any sense at all because it took a pretty wacky sequence of events to create it, so its quite a coincidence that the same exact thing happened hundreds of years later in Alien right? I tried to explain to him that no, this is clearly something genetically related to the classic Alien, but you can see differences in the texture of its skin, the mechanics of its mouth, etc. Since my roommate is a very casual movie fan and maybe has only seen each Alien film once, he's like "whatever man, just because the skin is a little different doesn't mean poo poo, that's clearly the thing from Alien!". He just wouldn't take my word for it that no, Ridley Scott didn't just accidentally change all that stuff about the Alien, if it was changed it was for a very specific reason. He just rolled his eyes because to him I'm a movie nerd who reads to much into these things.
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Oct 14, 2015 19:23
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Xenomrph posted:Also did you strap your roommate to a chair and force his eyes open Clockwork Orange style and make him re watch Alien? He's really not a movie person at all, the only reason he even watched Prometheus is because it was on one Sunday morning when he was hung over. He's not looking to re-watch Alien or any movie ever, he'd rather go out with friends or play guitar or something(he's a much more functional person that I am). From my experience the idea of re-watching movies is a bizarre concept to a lot of people. The topic of Lawrence of Arabia came up at a family dinner the other night and without thinking I said "Oh man I love that movie! I watch it every few months!". This drew worried looks as my extended family all collectively wondered just how much of my free time I spend sitting on my rear end watching movies.
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Oct 14, 2015 20:24
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Xenomrph posted:It's a unique-sounding word that's convenient and easy to recognize, so you're not saying something clunky like "capital-A Aliens" or "the Aliens from the Alien movies". I'm pretty okay with it. This is exactly why I use the word. Normally I wouldn't use a nonsense term like that if I could just say "alien", but when the franchise is named "Alien", it makes for some confusing sentences.
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Oct 15, 2015 20:41
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JeffLeonard posted:My son watched the first 3 alien movies with me this past summer. He's 13 and a sci-fi fan. We watched Alien Resurrection last night. He didn't want to watch it because he heard it was terrible. I feel like a 13 year old should want to see something like AVP. That's when you're supposed to be into that kinda thing.
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Oct 16, 2015 14:31
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