lol at koepp story
― fappy board (wins), Monday, 28 September 2015 17:33 (eight years ago) link
Didn't the original script of this leak at some point, revealing that a lot of the bad stuff was in there before Lindelof was even brought in?
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 28 September 2015 16:49 (2 hours ago) Permalink
I've read it! Alien: Engineers by John Spaihts. It's actually pretty good--certainly more coherent than the final product.
― latebloomer, Monday, 28 September 2015 20:11 (eight years ago) link
In the case of Prometheus I don't think Lindelof was called in to "fix" the script, I think he was hired to strip mine it and leave the rest for potential sequels.
― latebloomer, Monday, 28 September 2015 20:14 (eight years ago) link
This mess was collaborative
Well Alien's success was collaborative so I guess Ridley managed to capture some of the spirit of the original.
― steppenwolf in white van speaker scam (ledge), Monday, 28 September 2015 20:37 (eight years ago) link
the thing about the Alien franchise that most everyone seems to miss is that for max suspense the Alien works best as a one-on-one booga booga monster, not a rampaging horde.
― Meta Forksclove-Liebeskind (forksclovetofu), Monday, 28 September 2015 21:07 (eight years ago) link
depends what kind of movie you're making doesn't it? 3 and Prometheus only had one alien each. It didn't make them better films
― Number None, Monday, 28 September 2015 21:23 (eight years ago) link
Maybe they need a horde of dog aliens?
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 28 September 2015 21:46 (eight years ago) link
i don't think 3 or prometheus dug deep on the booga booga factor.
― Meta Forksclove-Liebeskind (forksclovetofu), Monday, 28 September 2015 22:21 (eight years ago) link
About these scientists. I would buy the idea put across on this thread that Weyland insane rich dude, using poor judgement, hand-picked a selection of lunatics for the team, if the film showed us this.
The scene would probably involve Noomi and her boyfriend waking up from hypersleep, then slowly realising that there was something not quite right about the rest of the personnel, over a few days. Or perhaps David could raise his eyebrows at all of them whilst they were talking and that would be the subtle tell. There would be various hints in their prior behaviour as to what exact kind of horrible fuck up each of them was going to cause/suffer.
As it is, it's plausible, and like, was clearly going to be a big part of the movie at some point, but what we get doesn't really do the work of realising that.
― cardamon, Tuesday, 29 September 2015 19:55 (eight years ago) link
There's another reading which would go: 'This planet is evil, the whole idea was doomed, and madness is inevitable for foolish humans who set foot on it'.
That's the reading that the film (i.e. the sheepish final edition we actually get) seems to be looking for
― cardamon, Tuesday, 29 September 2015 19:58 (eight years ago) link
i like your idea, a movie about scientists slowly realizing that all the other scientists are nuts. could even go further, noomi rapace realizes husband guy is nuts too with his garbled up version of religion and science that's hollow at the core and really about his own desire to be great than it is the search for truth. so you could like, take the paranoia/and-then-there-were-none-thing that saturates alien but make that most of the movie. maybe in this pre-xenomorph universe the black goo (or whatever) is more like The Thing. people have aliens inside them but there's no chestbursting and all that, it's really a tense claustrophobic space movie, who can you trust, who is secretly a monster literally and figuratively. y'know... what they find out there in space is really just the empty parts inside themselves, the things they were hoping to fill up. could reinvent the whole symbolic framework of the alien series from there.
i never thought i'd say the best part of this movie was the terrible characterization of the scientists as morons but really if you wrote it backwards from that and purged everything else that didn't make sense this could actually have been really fucking awesome.
― Gorefest Frump (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 20:12 (eight years ago) link
I can see that tbh
― deejerk reactions (darraghmac), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 20:14 (eight years ago) link
their biologist apparently last worked at a petting zoo
― μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, 29 September 2015 20:16 (eight years ago) link
One thing the film did work hard at was going back to the spirit of the original Alien ...
An interesting thing about HR Giger's artwork is that while the thick claustrophobic style seems to have come out of nowhere, it does belong in a family tree that also includes Viennese fin-de-siecle artworks like this by Klimt. Again the 'biomechanical' style has definite precedents in other late 19th century decadent stuff, for example this by Aubrey Beardsley is obviously in the same lineage as Giger's work. The sexual themes go without saying.
There's a lot of this vibe in the first Alien, at least while they're in the derelict at the start; with Aliens the alien itself detaches from the HR Giger aesthetic (which is also Viennese decadent aesthetic) and goes into a world which is distinctly post-war industrial, where it more or less stays throughout three and four. There's nothing mysterious about them by the time of four, they're just video game enemies of varying degrees of difficulty.
In Prometheus I thought that sense of decadence had been brought back - particularly when David decided to poison Charley in a baroque fashion, but also with Charlize Theron kissing her father's hand, and also in things like the charming little spacesuits the astronauts had dressed up in and their funny flashing weapons which were no use against Fyfield. So credit where credit is due on that score. It's just such a shame that the blatantly obvious narrative - the engineers were a great and powerful race who discovered how to create life using Ye Wonderful Alchemickal Black Gooe (this would be one mural) but then their creations i.e. xenomorphs turned against them (this would be another mural) - seems to have been more or less scrubbed out by Lindelof and whoever else it was getting greedy for themes and breaking their shoe-horn in the process
― cardamon, Tuesday, 29 September 2015 20:32 (eight years ago) link
xp by the way
― cardamon, Tuesday, 29 September 2015 20:35 (eight years ago) link
So credit where credit is due on that score. It's just such a shame that the blatantly obvious narrative - the engineers were a great and powerful race who discovered how to create life using Ye Wonderful Alchemickal Black Gooe (this would be one mural) but then their creations i.e. xenomorphs turned against them (this would be another mural) - seems to have been more or less scrubbed out by Lindelof and whoever else it was getting greedy for themes and breaking their shoe-horn in the process
― cardamon, Tuesday, September 29, 2015 8:32 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
OTM
From what I gather that still is the basic story but Ridley & co. want to stretch this narrative out over several movies, which seems so bonkers to me.
― latebloomer, Tuesday, 29 September 2015 21:28 (eight years ago) link
Perhaps they should have done something along the lines of this being very primitive, experimental hypersleep technology at this point, and it gave everyone brain damage. would have made their behaviour way more believable.
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Wednesday, 30 September 2015 00:06 (eight years ago) link
i want to see ridley scott revisit the duelists but with david carradine in an alien costume and harvey keitel in the predator suit.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 30 September 2015 00:09 (eight years ago) link
Thelma & Louise with Alien & Predator
― latebloomer, Wednesday, 30 September 2015 02:42 (eight years ago) link
Bob & Pilot & Engineer & Alice
― Exit, pursued by Yogi Berra (WilliamC), Wednesday, 30 September 2015 02:54 (eight years ago) link
So much for "Paradise Lost":
Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS — and connects directly to Scott’s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
― Resting Bushface (Phil D.), Monday, 16 November 2015 18:55 (eight years ago) link
ugh
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 November 2015 18:59 (eight years ago) link
hope it's just his head
― John Dope Assos (Noodle Vague), Monday, 16 November 2015 19:24 (eight years ago) link
fingers crossed forhttps://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimg1.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20141006210926%2Fnew-monster%2Fimages%2Fc%2Fc7%2FEgo_the_living_planet.jpg&f=1
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 November 2015 19:27 (eight years ago) link
so down
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 16 November 2015 19:30 (eight years ago) link
i kind of liked a lot of the ideas in 'prometheus,' but the execution was spotty.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Monday, 16 November 2015 19:32 (eight years ago) link
tell me more
― a silly gif of awkward larping (Sparkle Motion), Monday, 16 November 2015 19:59 (eight years ago) link
i feel that your post may not be... 100% sincere.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Monday, 16 November 2015 20:00 (eight years ago) link
no, just that your post more or less summarizes about 75% of this thread.
― a silly gif of awkward larping (Sparkle Motion), Monday, 16 November 2015 20:05 (eight years ago) link
Sounds interesting.
― latebloomer, Monday, 16 November 2015 22:48 (eight years ago) link
yeah i guess i'm just voicing the conventional wisdom.
― wizzz! (amateurist), Monday, 16 November 2015 23:02 (eight years ago) link
'Missed Opportunities: The Movie'
― a silly gif of awkward larping (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 00:03 (eight years ago) link
this movie was like watching Michael Stipe drink a tainted Pepsi
― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Tuesday, 17 November 2015 04:43 (eight years ago) link
remove the last seven letters and you're there
― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 06:49 (eight years ago) link
That's a decent sounding premise actually. Will probably still be crap.
― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 11:30 (eight years ago) link
Hoping this is just going to be a movie-length version of campy late-90s CanadianTV sci-fi The Lexx.
― canoon fooder (dog latin), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 11:32 (eight years ago) link
Has Scott made a film that people have actually liked since Gladiator?
― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 11:54 (eight years ago) link
Black Hawk Down pretty much was where I hit the pilot eject
― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:08 (eight years ago) link
Gladiator is shit tbf
― John Dope Assos (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:18 (eight years ago) link
yes it's called Prometheus
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:22 (eight years ago) link
― John Dope Assos (Noodle Vague)
I'm not a huge fan, but it is considered a classic by many. Unlike Prometheus.
― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:23 (eight years ago) link
Point is that Scott's hit rate is low enough to look accidental by now
― John Dope Assos (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:24 (eight years ago) link
Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN
Scott is obviously #3 or lower in the list of people involved in the creation of the ALIEN universe.
― ledge, Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:30 (eight years ago) link
Prometheus got me hooked on Alien. I watched it again with my OH and she loved it, then we went back and watched Alien through Alien 3 and loved those. In retrospect Prometheus only suffers from an ostensibly nonsensical plotline, but it would be amazing if this new film went on to explain some of the ostensibly random events in Prometheus. (It won't)
― canoon fooder (dog latin), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:45 (eight years ago) link
Gladiator is considered a classic by many civilians
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:55 (eight years ago) link
Prometheus, gladiator both very different types of failure at least.
― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 12:56 (eight years ago) link
In retrospect Prometheus only suffers from an ostensibly nonsensical plotline
That's a big "only." Also there's no way the 15-foot tall petrified creature in Alien is the same as the 8-foot tall albino in a suit in Prometheus. The OG Space Jockey was supposed to appear so large in proportion to humans that Scott had children in spacesuits used in the long shots.
Kinda hope Dan O'Bannon's estate puts out a hit on him.
― Resting Bushface (Phil D.), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 13:20 (eight years ago) link
imo gladiator is ridley scott making his own braveheart film without all the gibson trappings and the "hah hah, throw the gay guy out the window" scene that was played for laughs
― μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 15:05 (eight years ago) link
minus also bagpipes
― ryan, Tuesday, 17 November 2015 16:25 (eight years ago) link
My brother pointed out that both films have a near-identical scene of the main dude in battle bellowing "HOLD...HOLD.....HOLLLLD.....NOW!" and that's how you know they are a great general
― Amblyomma_americanum_tick.jpg (wins), Tuesday, 17 November 2015 16:29 (eight years ago) link