|
How can one watch this "Assembly Cut" pray tell. e: also I agree that the Ripley's daughter scene is easily the most important of those added in the director's cut, and that it really helps the film's core themes. The others are kind of a wash for me, personally -- as a 12-year old (when I first saw Aliens) I would have unequivocally loved them but that version of me was mostly interested in sci-fi for the fictional spaceship taxonomy.
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2016 06:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 13:20 |
|
|
lizardman posted:I'l go a step further and say SMG's read is plain incorrect, which is the kind of judgment call I try really hard to avoid in the media interpretation game. But the alien infestation being working class revolution simply does not follow with what is presented to us on screen: corporate interests seek to possess the aliens, not quell or eradicate them. I think it is quite clear that the alien infestation represents the Viet Cong, and how the technologically superior force of the US military never stood a chance at defeating an entrenched, indigenous force whose survival was at stake unless they had nuked the entire peninsula and destroyed everything they were supposedly fighting over in the first place. Everyone involved in making Aliens has said as much, and my dad (who got drafted for Vietnam and then, in the most ironic turn of events ever to befall a member of our family in its documented history, failed the physical examination due to a bug - literally a parasite - he'd caught in the Peace Corps) realized the same thing the instant the Marines appeared on screen when I watched Aliens with him at age 10. So a Communist/Socialist signification is readily assignable to the xenomorphs, and to be honest I don't think there is as clear a distinction between possessing the workers and eradicating them - after all, isn't one of the most fundamental principles of management's dominance over labor the eradication of the personhood of labor, enabling them to become a possession of management?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2016 20:31
|
|
|
Armyman25 posted:It's not a 1:1 comparison, but think about this. Predator is about team of American soldiers, made up of minorities, immigrants, and rednecks, sent by the CIA/Military on a "rescue mission" to save good Americans from evil Communist guerillas who are being funded and advised by the Russians. The mission turns out to be a lie by the CIA, the one guerilla they interact with turns out to be pretty sympathetic, and they end up fighting an enemy who embodies the local environment, "the jungle, it just came alive and took him." Thank you for this quick read on Predator - it seems pretty solid to me, but most of the literature I deal with is Ancient Greek so  ruddiger posted:What kind of war do you think Vietnam was? Good guys vs bad guys? It was a generation of drafted poors fighting a puppet socialist country, to say "it's about Vietnam" is the laziest loving thing to say. Like, no poo poo it's about a war, but when you go out of your way and associate it with one of the most politically loaded police actions in this country's history, stopping the discussion at "it's about Vietnam" is pretty juvenile, and just goes to show how stupid we let ourselves get as a species. These ideas about movies aren't anything new, but the aggressiveness at anything other than the most basic interpretation is pretty sad. In Aliens the obsolescence of "good guys vs bad guys" is very clearly pointed out, to wit: "I don't know which species is worse etc." The rest of the Vietnam points you highlight also seem readily applicable to the film, such as the "generation of drafted poors" being the integrated (race, ethnicity, gender) Marines who really stand to gain nothing from defeating the xenomorphs, and the "puppet socialist country" as wave after wave of warrior drones controlled by a much larger organism. I don't think anyone is saying that "Vietnam was a hosed up thing that happened" is the end-all and be-all of the film, though if someone did then you are right that it would be pretty juvenile, i.e. it would be below the level of discussion I had with my dad when I saw it with him at age 10 or 11.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2016 15:18
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Side tangent - you mentioned LV426 as a moon, and it reminded me of how gorgeous the shots in 'Alien' are when we see the gas giant it orbits: Whoa, I'd totally forgotten about that shot. So much of what people (including me) take away from Alien is cramped corridors and the motion tracker, but it really does have some striking, expansive visuals.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2016 17:30
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The whole presence of the gas giant provides this really great subliminal sense of oppressive foreboding and human insignificance right from the opening shot - a colossal planet looming in the void, ready to swallow anything that ventures too close. Keeping it present in the surface shots is a subtle reminder of how small the explorers are. Even without the presence of inscrutable giant alien corpses or crazy star beasts, space is still huge and loving scary no matter how much you try and make it seem "conventional". This is good poo poo, I can't believe I'd forgotten. I should go watch it again, along with A3 - I've already seen Aliens enough not to care to re-watch it for a few more years.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2016 18:17
|
|
|
Just watched Special Edition of A3. Way better than the theatrical version, which I'd seen twice before. I have more thoughts than I can get out right now, because it's late, but the most striking thing to me is how Golic fits into the film's response to Alien and Aliens. He seems really important and I can't believe his role was shrunk so much in the theatrical release. Also, I'd totally forgotten about how Charles Dance gets killed off so early. Really effective IMO
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2016 05:09
|
|
|
HR Giger would be proud.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2016 05:34
|
|
|
Is any of the AvP movies actually worth watching? Anywhere near the quality of Alien3, say?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2016 01:42
|
|
|
Clearly Dillon in Predator and Dillon in Alien3 are the same character (hence the name) with all differences between the two merely superficial by-products of the slightly dissimilar settings of both films. I think I read somewhere that Charles S Dutton was the original first choice to play Dillon in Predator but one of the producers was too racist to allow that many black guys in one film so he wasn't cast.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2016 13:27
|
|
|
Gargamel Gibson posted:So instead Dillon was played by Carl Weathers, a white man. By the time he realized what had happened it was too far into the production to do anything about it. Charles S Dutton managed to be the magical film negro to both Ripley and Rudy, which is pretty drat impressive.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2016 05:07
|
|
|
brocked posted:I will always defend the loooong version nof Kingdom Of Heaven, it is fantastic Oh yeah, it's great. The attitudes of the characters are almost hilariously anachronistic, but that's to be expected as it's a 21st-century secular humanist response to 21st-century sectarian violence using the Crusades as a heavy-handed metaphor and also an excuse for some sick duels.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2016 15:52
|
|
|
As I mentioned earlier, I did finally get to see the Assembly Cut and, yes, it's much better. But either version of the film is just very dour - there's almost nothing fun in Alien3, from my perspective at least. It's a cool movie, especially the proper version of it, but it's very grim in a way none of the other three is.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 17:00
|
|
|
Yeah I didn't find Resurrection as offensive as some people seem to, though it's nowhere near as good as the first three. I totally get it with Alien3, though. It's good, and tonally distinct from the previous one. If they'd been able to get their poo poo sorted in production, I think it would have been even better.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 17:23
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The grim, dour tone was intentional, though. The problem is that it's not necessarily what audiences coming off the fist-pumping high of 'Aliens' were expecting, or looking for. Oh I know. And I wasn't trying to characterize it as a problem. The Assembly Cut version, at least, was a stimulating and intense film and pretty darn good from my perspective. Its thoughtfulness is much more apparent on the surface than that of Aliens, too.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2016 15:32
|
|
|
So basically It all comes back to Ridley Scott.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2016 15:23
|
|
|
I'm not sure that an intelligent alien species with whom humans can communicate would really fit into the Alien(s) world, honestly. In Aliens we learn that humans have met (and hosed) the friendly Arcturians, but they never actually appear on screen; from what I can tell the Xenomorphs are instead a malevolent force that, because of their fundamentally alien nature, stand in for whatever evil power or force of nature the filmmaker wants them to be in a particular story. Does that sound right?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2016 11:44
|
|
|
I like the average housecat's odds against an Alien, to be frank. They can move through much smaller spaces and are considerably quicker, plus their senses are better than a human's.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2016 13:03
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:And she doesn't For me this is the saddest part.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2016 20:39
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:Eh, Jones probably latched onto whoever Ripley left him with and forgot she ever existed within an hour. Pets are like that. Yes but I'm thinking of Ripley here. All of A3 - remember that she has this in mind.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2016 20:46
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:I made that video. Then I should tell you that they don't award posthumous Nobel Prizes.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2016 17:07
|
|
|
A big jungle cat could probably swipe a xenomorph quickly enough not to get burnt by the acid. And they'd be at least as good at hiding.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2016 22:02
|
|
|
Tenzarin posted:Nevermind they found her past earth, they cant find poo poo. It was really just blind luck.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2016 18:44
|
|
|
Yeah, either Burke doesn't want the company to lose all the money invested in the facility because he cares about the Company's well-being, or he doesn't want to be the guy responsible for getting the facility blown up because it will mean he gets fired (or worse).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2016 04:51
|
|
|
THANK YOU for describing the extended prologue as "where Mother becomes dissatisfied with these conversations with the empty helmets." That's exactly how I thought about it but hadn't read that description before. I like your take on Mother, generally. It's kind of weird, I feel like I'm familiar enough with Alien that I don't need to see it ever again for my own edification, yet I really am digging on this discussion of it. Maybe I can watch it with someone who hasn't seen it before as a way of getting a different experience out of it from what I've already had (plenty of).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2016 07:03
|
|
|
No doubt. But to me it's interesting to think about how much of a Company man Burke really is; RoboCop has a similar dynamic with various OCP execs.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2016 15:59
|
|
|
I saw Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in a theater and other people walked out. I was like 11 and too dumb to realize what a lovely movie I sat all the way through.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2016 01:26
|
|
|
I still hate my younger self for spending allowance money on that poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2016 00:22
|
|
|
Lord Krangdar posted:In the actual movie can you see the human skull in its head at all? If you watch it in HD and look for it, you can see the skull's eyeholes. I'm pretty sure they deliberately made it hard to tell whether it's there or not in order to keep the creature's alien-ness more ambiguous.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2017 15:33
|
|
|
Welp, glad I didn't see that post before bedtime.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 14:03
|
|
|
That does seem consistent with the way the other Predators treat Danny Glover at the end of Predator 2, yeah. Mankind truly is the most dangerous game.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2017 16:07
|
|
|
I'm looking to get into hunting and that really speaks to me on a personal level.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2017 20:52
|
|
|
Predators don't eat their prey, right? Whereas the Aliens' victims are important to their continued survival.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 23:34
|
|
|
david_a posted:A lot of the sci-fi from the Aliens era thought that corporations would become the dominant superpowers instead of countries so that is reflected in there. And they were correct.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2017 04:55
|
|
|
Make Aliens Great Again
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 23:59
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:
Others have already followed up on this, but there's a later-season episode of TNG, S7E06 "Phantasms," which deals with dreams in a manner that's actually more similar to Lovecraft's ideas than "Schisms." In S6, Data discovers a "dream" program in his brain and turns it on; in "Phantasms" it makes a connection with aliens in another plane of existence and creates all sorts of weird images like these:  
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2017 23:34
|
|
|
Well based on how the last James Franco/Danny McBride film went, I think a bunch of people are going to get stoned af and the eaten by an alien.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2017 04:49
|
|
|
DorianGravy posted:I'll probably watch Outland next time. Is that one good? Having watched it for the first time two days ago I would say that yes, it is good. I’d never heard of it before last week but it holds up. Outland is basically what it would be like if there had been no xenomorphs in Aliens and we instead saw the more mundane side of W-Y’s corporate evilness at work in Hadley’s Hope.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2021 13:30
|
|
|
That’s cool as heck. It’s an obvious fit really.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2021 19:01
|
|
|
Yeah it’s always been my impression that Order 937 was programmed into Mother before the Nostromo launched, in the event that extraterrestrial life were to be discovered. The Company didn’t know that the signal was there, but when it popped up Mother recognized it as fulfilling the conditions to implement Order 937. Presumably Ash’s inclusion in the crew was seen as a requirement to ensure the order would be followed.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2021 14:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 13:20 |
|
|
Hey y’all maybe you covered it in the last 6 pages that I couldn’t bring myself to read but “rerouted” is most clearly construed as a past PARTICIPLE in that fragment. Past participles in English can be used to form present tense forms, such as the present simple passive “is rerouted” or the present progressive passive “is being rerouted” or the present perfect passive “has been rerouted”. Any of those would be a plausible expanded reading of the order. Don’t confuse tense with aspect and/or voice 
Apollodorus fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 20, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 19:27
|
|