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Mar 21, 2024 19:10
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 07:49 |
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How does Damon Lindelof keep getting work?
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Mar 22, 2024 02:58
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Kosmo Gallion posted:How does Damon Lindelof keep getting work? Some of his stuff is actually really good.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:01
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I enjoyed his Watchmen and I hear great things about The Leftovers.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:05
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I enjoyed his Watchmen and I hear great things about The Leftovers. I loved Lost and Watchmen but I tried 2 or 3 episodes of The Leftovers and nothing clicked. YMMV
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Mar 22, 2024 03:06
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:I enjoyed his Watchmen and I hear great things about The Leftovers. I haven't seen Leftovers, but Watchmen was really loving good.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:40
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The leftovers is absolutely fantastic and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
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Mar 22, 2024 03:42
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See, if he just wrote good stuff all the time there'd be no mystery about if it was gonna be good or not. Gotta keep the audience on their toes!
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Mar 22, 2024 03:57
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The best thing about the Leftovers is that it's only 3 seasons, 28 episodes total. Sleek, efficient, does what it needs to then is over.
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Mar 22, 2024 05:33
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Doctor Zero posted:It can ignore it (in the sense of just not mentioning it) and still be a prequel. Good lord this is a sweaty post 
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Mar 22, 2024 06:01
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Doctor Zero posted:This is my issue with the prequels. Aliens were created by a human-built android. Really? Then how does an ancient derelict containing hundreds or thousands of eggs end up on Acheron? Remember that the Space Jockey is loving fossilized. That doesn't happen in a couple hundred years. I have no issue with David finding the tech and loving with it, but to imply that he created xenomorphs is ridiculous. I don't think that's what happened. Rather, a human built android reverse-engineered Xenomorphs and made one, or something that was very close to one. Doctor Zero posted:Also it completely fucks up the life cycle of a Xenomorph. Oh it gestates and becomes a giant squid for... reasons? The idiot scientist that gets infected turns into a yeti for ... reasons? (in the cut scenes they had him transform into Xenomorph hybrid which made way more sense.) It's just full of dumb Hollywood "hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." moments that again, don't make any freaking sense in the context of the other movies. I think the idea is that the black goo is a bioweapon that breaks and re-writes the DNA or whatever it touches. This is shown in the movies - it splits the helix and combines with it. What results is unpredictable - it might kill something outright, it might make something really weird.
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Mar 22, 2024 15:13
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^^^ yeah. I didn't get that idea from the movies though maybe I misunderstood. I'll have to watch them again.Zadok Allen posted:Good lord this is a sweaty post Yeah I was kind of on a bender yesterday. So let me back-up and re-iterate that I quite like Prometheus and even Covenant for what they are. I was looking forward to a follow-up of Covenant in the hopes it would go how I hoped. Here's my (less sweaty, hopefully) head-canon. NOTE: +/- 4 billion years -200,000 years ago: The race of Space Jockeys that we see in Alien are expanding into the galaxy. They encounter Xenomorphs, which may or may not be natural. (Even they don't know.) To weaponize them, they experiment and re-engineer the Xenomorphs. What you would expect to happen, happens and hilarity ensues wiping out the Space Jockeys. -10,000 years ago: The Engineers we see in Prometheus rise and expand into the stars. They find the remains of the Space Jockey civilization and at first worship them, but as they advance technologically, turn to a deep reverence. They adapt the Space Jockey's tech, having to build the suits we see in the movies in order to interface with it. Of course, they find Xenomorphs (or find the Space Jockey's attempt at re-engineering them) and think it's dope. They adapt it and seed the Earth. -2,000 years ago: The Engineers lose control of their re-engineered black goo and hilarity ensues leading to them being wiped out. As a last-ditch attempt to break the cycle, the remaining few gear up to wipe out their creation (humans) so Earth doesn't become a hive world (or maybe so we don't get our hands on the goo). They fail, 'natch. The one Engineer freezes himself to hopefully wake up later in case things get hosed. Which they do. Prometheus: Humans find the Engineer welcome signs made 10,000 years ago before the Fuckening. All the stuff happens and they wake up the Engineer who is at first confused why there are Humans there, but then sees that Humans are building androids to be immortal and now have the black goo, so it's pretty loving clear everything will go to poo poo all over again. He tries to carry out the original plan but gets eaten by a squid. Covenant: As feared, David fucks with the black goo making poo poo he shouldn't be making. His drawings are the result of him studying the goo and unknowingly making a new strain of Xenomorphs. Alien: The Nostromo finds the distress beacon of the derelict which crashed on Acheron almost 200,000 years before. It's carrying a full load of natural Xenomorphs for inscrutable reasons, but ultimately with hubris thinking they have control and can use them "safely." Nope. The Company knows about the signal. Do they already know about the Xenomorphs? Maybe. Probably. They at least know about the Engineers, so it stands to reason they might have learned about the Xenomorphs (I'm ignoring AVP & AVP2 here). The Company picks up the signal somewhere else (anywhere within 200,000 light years) and re-route the Nostromo which is unfortunately closest, already knowing the signal's content. Aliens: The Nostromo is lost, and the Weyland Yutani secret program that diverted the Nostromo is secreted away. Burke is a jerk for profit, re-igniting the idea (pun intended). Alien3: All that happens. Weyland Yutani finally gets close to a live specimen, but Ripley fucks it up. Alien Resurrection: Humans experiment and re-engineer the Xenomorphs and hilarity ensues perpetuating the cycle. Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 15:47
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Doctor Zero posted:(I'm ignoring AVP & AVP2 here) Aw, don't tease me with a fully integrated head canon and just skip over stuff. Personally I like the idea from the Dark Horse comics that Terminator is canon to the Alien franchise, it's just so far in the future that it's not really common knowledge.
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Mar 22, 2024 16:09
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Honestly I think I would have liked Prometheus better if it just... didn't have anything to do with Alien except maybe being set in the same universe. Just "space is weird and hostile, exploring it will bring you in touch with things better left unknown." No Space Jockeys, no connection to Earth at all, just they find this weird hosed up planet with a weird hosed up guy and weird hosed up goo and at no point does it try to explain lore. You just end up with something hostile and horrible in a way that is completely divorced from the Xenomorph. I think the worst part is always when they try to connect it to Alien which I think diminishes both works.
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Mar 22, 2024 16:13
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i already said it itt but i think it's supported by what you see on the screen (the relief sculpture in the chapel) that david didn't "create" the xenomorphs. he pulled the github source of the long extant code and made his own fork. now, that said, it's still kind of dumb but fassbender's performance is so good i want to forgive it.
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Mar 22, 2024 16:53
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Yea, dude’s shoulders are probably still sore from carrying 2 films that hard. I think it’s a quote from Christopher Lee that said “just because you know a movie is bad is no excuse for you to be bad in it”, and Fassbender took that idea to heart* *I don’t think Prometheus/Covenant are bad movies themselves, they’re not not good as Alien movies and like someone else just said, should’ve been standalones about the kinds of weird (non-xenomorph) poo poo you start finding when you start exploring other planets.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:00
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ImpAtom posted:Honestly I think I would have liked Prometheus better if it just... didn't have anything to do with Alien except maybe being set in the same universe. Prometheus doesn’t have anything to do with Alien, though, aside from being set in the same universe. Like, they take place decades apart, on different worlds, with different characters. When the two films are viewed together, the only new plot point introduced is that the aliens have been doing experiments on Earth for a while. You also get a small amount of info on Weyland-Yutani Corporation, I suppose, but not a huge amount of detail. Strictly speaking, Prometheus might not even be classifiable as an Alien prequel because - to my recollection, at least - it’s never actually stated in what year Alien takes place. If you watch only those two films, Prometheus can be treated as a chronological sequel. Set dates for the events of Alien were not given until Aliens, so Prometheus is only a prequel in the context of the broader franchise.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:11
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Prometheus doesn’t have anything to do with Alien, though, aside from being set in the same universe. Like, they take place decades apart, on different worlds, with different characters. It has the Space Jockey and Weyland as the center parts of the plot. I mean completely divorced. Not "Here's the secret origin of Weyland-Yutani and the Space Jockey"
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Mar 22, 2024 17:16
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So were the engineers supposed to be space jockeys or not in Prometheus?
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Mar 22, 2024 17:23
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ImpAtom posted:It has the Space Jockey and Weyland as the center parts of the plot. I mean completely divorced. Not "Here's the secret origin of Weyland-Yutani and the Space Jockey" But, as I noted, the film doesn't actually provide an origin for either of those things. The alien base they find isn't even their homeworld. Like, okay: showing the founder of the company Ripley works for is sort-of implicitly an origin, I guess. But how does that actually impact Alien's narrative at all?
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Mar 22, 2024 17:27
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:So were the engineers supposed to be space jockeys or not in Prometheus? I always assumed they were as they have the jockey ships and space suits. And with the opening scene of Prometheus with them seeding life on earth I'd assume they're like billions of years old.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:30
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But, as I noted, the film doesn't actually provide an origin for either of those things. The alien base they find isn't even their homeworld. It makes it more about Earth, which is what I dislike. It goes from "A bunch of space truckers run into something fundamentally unknown and terrible" to "A bunch of space truckers run into a genetic offshoot of the same aliens who created them" and it just loses something for me as a horror thing. The more you explain something the less scary it is I think. I love Aliens and even that runs into the problem a bit.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:32
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Aw, don't tease me with a fully integrated head canon and just skip over stuff. Well, it's easy enough to slot in, but doing so raises other issues. But, I do mentally leave in the possibility that AVP & AVP2 was the first time Weyland as an organization got an idea about what's out there. ChairmanMauzer posted:I always assumed they were as they have the jockey ships and space suits. And with the opening scene of Prometheus with them seeding life on earth I'd assume they're like billions of years old.  Yes, Doctor Zero, life on Earth adheres to Biblical timelines. So, add 4 billion years to my timeline and then we're good. 
Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 17:36
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Aw, don't tease me with a fully integrated head canon and just skip over stuff. Wait like the "something fucky happened with some property damage and a bunch of dead/kneecapped cops in 1984 and then again in 1991, judgement day averted" timeline, or the "full on giant robot tanks rolling down piles of skulls littering the 405 as humanity is on the brink of extinction" timeline?
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Mar 22, 2024 17:41
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Owlbear Camus posted:Wait like the "something fucky happened with some property damage and a bunch of dead/kneecapped cops in 1984 and then again in 1991, judgement day averted" timeline, or the "full on giant robot tanks rolling down piles of skulls littering the 405 as humanity is on the brink of extinction" timeline? That’s the Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator comic, a comic series so bad that I, Xenomrph, EU apologist and completionist, don’t own it in its entirety and am telling you to avoid it like the plague because it’s dogshit.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:46
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Xenomrph posted:That’s the Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator comic, a comic series so bad that I, Xenomrph, EU apologist and completionist, don’t own it in its entirety and am telling you to avoid it like the plague because it’s dogshit. Do you know it's taken me until just now to realize there's no second 'o' in your account name? e: Jesus Christ my account is old enough to drink.  .
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Mar 22, 2024 17:55
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Owlbear Camus posted:Wait like the "something fucky happened with some property damage and a bunch of dead/kneecapped cops in 1984 and then again in 1991, judgement day averted" timeline, or the "full on giant robot tanks rolling down piles of skulls littering the 405 as humanity is on the brink of extinction" timeline? The latter. But yeah, the comic isn't anything I'd add to a reading list. The idea alone is enough for me. And it does a nice mirror between the first two films of both franchises having the android character flip from evil to good.
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Mar 22, 2024 18:10
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Side tangent nerd nitpick, Terminator 2 is set in 1995 when John Connor is 10 years old (he was born in February 1985). I’m about as big of a Terminator nerd as I am an Aliens/Predator nerd and I’ve been on a big Terminator kick lately, I’ve been considering starting a Terminator thread in GBS or Sci-Fi WiFi.
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Mar 22, 2024 18:17
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Read a lot of Dark Horse comics back in the day, did ya?
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Mar 22, 2024 18:38
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ImpAtom posted:It makes it more about Earth, which is what I dislike. It goes from "A bunch of space truckers run into something fundamentally unknown and terrible" to "A bunch of space truckers run into a genetic offshoot of the same aliens who created them" and it just loses something for me as a horror thing. The more you explain something the less scary it is I think. I love Aliens and even that runs into the problem a bit. I think that kind of broad explanation is, ironically, missing how particular aspects of the film shape the narrative. Like, this 'more information = less scary' formula. Why can't a shark-eyed, murderous giant ape-man be scary? It's like saying Jaws can't be scary because we know what a shark is. (We certainly know less about the aliens in Prometheus than we do about sharks.) A major fan complaint about Prometheus, after all, is that it paradoxically doesn't provide much exposition about what's going on. Why did these shark-apes create/influence humanity? Why are they plotting to dump this mutagenic goo on us? What is the black goo??? You can reach obvious conclusions, but you have to puzzle them out on your own. But that's the rub: Prometheus encourages you to think about the monsters as characters, with motivations and stuff. Moreover, you start thinking in terms of their material reality: these alien guys are a part of a larger society, producing their tech through work, probably because someone ordered them to. They have religious beliefs that justify their actions, etc. They're probably getting a space paycheck, just like Ripley. This marks a transition from sci-fi horror to full-on speculative fiction - and the bridge is comedy. Prometheus is the fifth movie in a multimedia franchise (the tenth, if you include Predator films). It goes without saying that not all of these stories are actually scary at all, nor even intended to be. In this context, Prometheus is specifically a horror-comedy where a guy smokes the weed in a haunted castle and then dies of a sex joke. To that end, the story is presented from the point of view of this entertainingly amoral Hannibal figure, David. And this is again grounded in the material: David is a slave owned by a deranged Thiel/Musk-like billionaire. We understand where he's coming from. So, the trouble isn't exposure to too much information, but the fact that Prometheus is a powerful artwork. Alien remains the same movie, but you've changed in how you interpret it and now react very differently to the "unknown and terrible". What I really love about Covenant is that, at that point, even the individual 'xenomorphs' are treated as characters with particular behaviors, shaped by their experiences. Covenant, presented from the fearless Walter's point of view, is specifically a gothic romance. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 18:39
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ChairmanMauzer posted:I always assumed they were as they have the jockey ships and space suits. And with the opening scene of Prometheus with them seeding life on earth I'd assume they're like billions of years old. This is what I assumed when I watched it
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Mar 22, 2024 18:40
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Paddyo posted:Read a lot of Dark Horse comics back in the day, did ya? Well yeah
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Mar 22, 2024 18:46
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MarcusSA posted:This is what I assumed when I watched it Shaw believes that the aliens are the gods responsible for creating life on Earth, but a big part of her arc is to realize “we were wrong! We were so, so wrong!” It's not really possible for the aliens to have pre-programmed billions of years of evolution into a goo. And just to produce a species of ape that kinda resembles them? Why would they bother spending billions of years on this project, when the result is just this basic-rear end genetic engineering? The reality is that they're 'gods' in the sense of gigantic assholes who live in space who gently caress around with people, not God. Today's humans are only like 300,000 years old. The oldest evidence Shaw has is from 33,000 BC.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:15
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Shaw believes that the aliens are the gods responsible for creating life on Earth, but a big part of her arc is to realize “we were wrong! We were so, so wrong!”
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Mar 22, 2024 23:18
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Peyote Panda posted:One of the things I came to appreciate more in a recent rewatch of Prometheus is how hilariously optimistic the expectations of Shaw, Holloway, and Weyland are regarding the Engineers in the context of their treatment of David. They eagerly assume they will be enlightened and blessed by their presumed creators in various ways, even though as the creators themselves of David (albeit metaphorically except for Weyland) they are at best dismissive of their creation and often treat him with outright contempt. It’s been a minute since I watched Prometheus, how is Shaw dismissive of him? Like, he saves her life during the sandstorm.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:23
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I think that kind of broad explanation is, ironically, missing how particular aspects of the film shape the narrative. Like, this 'more information = less scary' formula. Why can't a shark-eyed, murderous giant ape-man be scary? It's like saying Jaws can't be scary because we know what a shark is. (We certainly know less about the aliens in Prometheus than we do about sharks.) Prometheus would have been a 1000x better movie if they didn't include the opening scene. Covenant too.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:28
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Doctor Zero posted:Alien: The Nostromo finds the distress beacon of the derelict which crashed on Acheron almost 200,000 years before. It's carrying a full load of natural Xenomorphs for inscrutable reasons, but ultimately with hubris thinking they have control and can use them "safely."
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Mar 22, 2024 23:34
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Peyote Panda posted:One of the things I came to appreciate more in a recent rewatch of Prometheus is how hilariously optimistic the expectations of Shaw, Holloway, and Weyland are regarding the Engineers in the context of their treatment of David. They eagerly assume they will be enlightened and blessed by their presumed creators in various ways, even though as the creators themselves of David (albeit metaphorically except for Weyland) they are at best dismissive of their creation and often treat him with outright contempt. I also enjoyed how the aborted fetus metaphorically kills God. The fact its evolution resembles an unholy Trinity with Holloway —> Shaw —> Trilobite is icing on the cake. Prometheus and Covenant are so good. You’ll likely catch another layer to them on every watch. In Covenant, the religious characters receive the most brutal deaths as punishment for the hubris of their “blind faith”; Oram with the chestburster, and Rosenthal gets decapitated by a loving alien biting her head off. Scott even provides us 2 shots of her floating head in the Baptist pool for good measure. Zadok Allen fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 23:39
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Xenomrph posted:It’s been a minute since I watched Prometheus, how is Shaw dismissive of him? Like, he saves her life during the sandstorm.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:40
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 07:49 |
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There is an old Terminator CD thread I have bookmarked that I think you can still post in, Xenomrph. Although I know you said you were thinking of starting a new scifiwifi or GBS thread, which I am totally down for.
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Mar 22, 2024 23:50
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