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Author Topic: Prometheus  (Read 85404 times)
calapine
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Reply #350 on: May 05, 2017, 01:49:13 AM

But I like plodding thought movies.

So do I, but IMHO Prometheus doesn't fit that description.

I'd call it "People suffering from hypersleep induced brain damage stumbling through impressive vista movie"

I mean even the start is stupid: Seeding a planet by drinking a liquid that dissolves the user. Who does that?

Dramatic effect overruling a sensible story.

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Reply #351 on: May 05, 2017, 03:01:01 AM

I thought was the only one who really liked this, plotholes and all.

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Reply #352 on: May 05, 2017, 03:09:22 AM

I gave it a 2nd watch a couple of months ago and liked it a lot more than the first time I saw it. I'd had a bit of a read about what was supposed to be happening in it, so it made more sense. I don't think the movie does a great job of explaining itself.

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Reply #353 on: May 05, 2017, 11:45:46 AM

This movie was terrible in every aspect other than visual.

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Reply #354 on: May 07, 2017, 01:43:57 AM

In anticipation of the new Aliens - I've rewatched all of it, and I'm now on Prometheus.

This movie is far and away the best in the series. In fact, watching them in release order really shows how incredibly poorly the old movies aged. Aliens was way worse than I remember. Alien 3 and Resurrection were essentially garbage. Alien was the best of the original 4 and still... not very good. undecided

Wait, is this some kind of subtle sarcasm I don't understand? I can't understand how anyone who appreciates things like good script writing, good editing and good directing can put Prometheus anywhere close to being in the same league as Alien and Aliens. Those movies are classics for a reason. Hell, I'd say that Alien 3 is a better movie than Prometheus and I hate the movie from the opening credits scene and it only gets worse from there. But at least it has a damn good director and some great cinematography. If nothing else, most of those prisoners are smarter than the "scientists" in Prometheus.

I'd re-watch Alien Resurrection before I re-watched Prometheus and Resurrection has that damn alien human baby thing Ripley has sex with.

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Reply #355 on: May 07, 2017, 05:33:23 AM

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Reply #356 on: May 07, 2017, 08:33:47 AM

In anticipation of the new Aliens - I've rewatched all of it, and I'm now on Prometheus.

This movie is far and away the best in the series. In fact, watching them in release order really shows how incredibly poorly the old movies aged. Aliens was way worse than I remember. Alien 3 and Resurrection were essentially garbage. Alien was the best of the original 4 and still... not very good. undecided

Wait, is this some kind of subtle sarcasm I don't understand? I can't understand how anyone who appreciates things like good script writing, good editing and good directing can put Prometheus anywhere close to being in the same league as Alien and Aliens. Those movies are classics for a reason. Hell, I'd say that Alien 3 is a better movie than Prometheus and I hate the movie from the opening credits scene and it only gets worse from there. But at least it has a damn good director and some great cinematography. If nothing else, most of those prisoners are smarter than the "scientists" in Prometheus.

I'd re-watch Alien Resurrection before I re-watched Prometheus and Resurrection has that damn alien human baby thing Ripley has sex with.
See, that's what I thought going into it. Now I feel like Alien and Aliens don't deserve any of their classic designation. Ripley simply wasn't as believable as I remembered. And EVERYONE other than Ripley, up to like, Ron Perlman in Resurrection was a stone cold fucking idiot. That's really the only thing Prometheus shares with the originals - everyone is dumb as a stump. Alien 3 and Resurrection, where they moved off practical effects, were a disaster, start to finish. And the first two just didn't create NEARLY the tension I remember, nor were they effective as horror pieces.

Predator, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street (of all fucking things) have aged better than than the Alien series.

I actually had this discussion with a friend and the conclusion we came to was that Ridley Scott and Co misjudged what people liked about Alien during the first quadrilogy. They thought it was about Ripley, that's why she got shoehorned into all the movies. No, they were about the xenomorphs. And it wasn't until the long gap between resurrection and Prometheus that he realized it was never about Ripley. Which, if you take all the dialogue and all the actors out of Prometheus, still makes for a better back story than he could've conceived of in the 70s and 80s.

Also, CGI caught up with practical effects, which helped immensely.

In short, go back and watch the originals. Maybe they aged better for you. For me, they aged like garbage.

Edit: Mega-unpopular opinion, Alien vs Predator is better than all of these movies. Though I should probably watch AVP again since it's been a few weeks since I watched it. AVP:R however, is a corpse that didn't need to exist.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2017, 08:36:04 AM by schild »
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Reply #357 on: May 07, 2017, 12:55:59 PM

AVP was legit fun.

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Reply #358 on: May 07, 2017, 01:54:40 PM

AVP was legit fun crap.

There - just a slight correction.

Both AVP movies were horribad, especially the second one. They were terrible as films, terrible as brand extensions and terrible as parts of a franchise/continuity. They weren't even fun as neither writer or director figured out what is interesting about the concept - Aliens fighting Predators. All the humans and their stupid stories got in the way.

And while I agree there is a certain aspect of "characters acting like stupid assholes for story purposes" in the first 2 Aliens, none of their actions eclipse "geologist who can't follow a fucking map" or "xenobiologist who takes his helmet off in front of unknown species" stupid.

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Reply #359 on: May 07, 2017, 02:04:47 PM

1. Geologist followed the map fine, based on you know, how humans think.
2. Xenobiologist took his helmet off in Prometheus before he knew there were things living on the planet. The other ones all got punched/facehugged through.
3. AVP was not crap. You should really sit down and watch all Alien shit - all of it - again.
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Reply #360 on: May 07, 2017, 03:04:23 PM

I've never been hugely invested in the Alien franchise. AvP and Prometheus are both terrible movies though. AvP is very much "from the guy who brought you most of the terrible Resident Evil movies". That final fight scene is embarrassingly bad. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it's always good to see Ewen Bremmer. Prometheus barely feels like a narrative as opposed to a collection of scenes and ideas that never come together to make any sort of cohesive whole. Of the handful of people in the movie who can actually act, Fassbender is the only one who gets an interesting role to play.

I won't defend Alien or Aliens at all. I rewatched both of them in the last year and like them well enough, but like I said it's not a series I hold particularly close.
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Reply #361 on: May 07, 2017, 03:30:25 PM

I've never been hugely invested in the Alien franchise. AvP and Prometheus are both terrible movies though. AvP is very much "from the guy who brought you most of the terrible Resident Evil movies". That final fight scene is embarrassingly bad. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it's always good to see Ewen Bremmer. Prometheus barely feels like a narrative as opposed to a collection of scenes and ideas that never come together to make any sort of cohesive whole. Of the handful of people in the movie who can actually act, Fassbender is the only one who gets an interesting role to play.

I won't defend Alien or Aliens at all. I rewatched both of them in the last year and like them well enough, but like I said it's not a series I hold particularly close.
See, here's the thing, I'm not attached to them at all, other than I think the xenomorphs are fantastically designed villains and maybe one of the best in sci-fi and yet they're just in garbage movies. My comments, other than the one I made about other movies that aged better, were specific to the alien franchise as they exist.

So no, I'm not attached to them either - but if I'm comparing them all against eachother, the older ones aged BADLY and as I've said, do not deserve their classic status.
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Reply #362 on: May 07, 2017, 03:48:16 PM

I rewatched Alien & Aliens within the last 6 months. You're nuttier than a fruitcake, as usual.

Aliens does suffer from a bit of 80's action flick age and a few things that have become tropes since then, but it's still a solid film. Saying a film isn't a classic because others have imitated it in the 30 years since is a very you thing, though.

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Reply #363 on: May 07, 2017, 03:56:17 PM

I rewatched Alien & Aliens within the last 6 months. You're nuttier than a fruitcake, as usual.

Aliens does suffer from a bit of 80's action flick age and a few things that have become tropes since then, but it's still a solid film. Saying a film isn't a classic because others have imitated it in the 30 years since is a very you thing, though.

Eh? What imitated it? What are you even talking about? I'm saying Ridley Scott/Co never identified, until recently, what was so fucking rad about xenomorphs. Which, if Aliens: Resurrection didn't exist, would be a weaker argument.

I just looked it because I had no clue who wrote Resurrected.

And now it all makes sense.

Joss fucking Whedon.

But seriously, what are you talking about? If I wanted to make the argument that Aliens is weaker due to movies that came out later doing the same thing, I'd have pointed to Pitch Black and ended the argument, but that entire line of thinking is absurd. Aliens, as a series, is weak on its own merits.

Edit: Also, Aliens doesn't suffer because of 80s flick bullshit - otherwise Predator and a fuckload of other movies would suffer for the same reasons. Alas, they don't. Aliens suffers because it was not a good movie. And let's state a mega fucking unpopular opinion: Weaver is a shit lead in them.

Edit 2: And Aliens - which was all James Cameron, could've been up there with Terminator 1 or 2, but he was stuck with bad actors and a - at the time - a bad property that the studio clearly completely misunderstood.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2017, 04:04:26 PM by schild »
Amarr HM
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Reply #364 on: May 07, 2017, 04:26:04 PM

And let's state a mega fucking unpopular opinion: Weaver is a shit lead in them.

At least for the first two movies, this is an unpopular opinion, because it's also not true. I can't imagine a single actress from the 70-80s who could have done the androgynous paranoid super bitch that Weaver pulled off. I thought it was beyond its years in terms of portraying an alpha female, who happened to also have maternal instincts.

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Reply #365 on: May 07, 2017, 04:38:35 PM

And let's state a mega fucking unpopular opinion: Weaver is a shit lead in them.

At least for the first two movies, this is an unpopular opinion, because it's also not true. I can't imagine a single actress from the 70-80s who could have done the androgynous paranoid super bitch that Weaver pulled off. I thought it was beyond its years in terms of portraying an alpha female, who happened to also have maternal instincts.
My slight problem with this is:
1. Androgyny does not a alpha female make.
2. I recollected the same thing until I watched them again for the first time in probably 10-15 years.
3. Tilda Swinton she is not.
Edit 4. It's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

Now, there's a more interesting conversation to be had about what would the movie look like today. Well, I guess it's interesting. Probably not though, since it would look like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Anyway, I don't actually think she was a good casting call, but that's neither here nor there, I think the bigger mistake was keeping her around for 3 more movies which made the collection as much about Ripley as it did the xenomorphs.
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Reply #366 on: May 07, 2017, 06:00:09 PM

I've never been hugely invested in the Alien franchise. AvP and Prometheus are both terrible movies though. AvP is very much "from the guy who brought you most of the terrible Resident Evil movies". That final fight scene is embarrassingly bad. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it's always good to see Ewen Bremmer. Prometheus barely feels like a narrative as opposed to a collection of scenes and ideas that never come together to make any sort of cohesive whole. Of the handful of people in the movie who can actually act, Fassbender is the only one who gets an interesting role to play.

I won't defend Alien or Aliens at all. I rewatched both of them in the last year and like them well enough, but like I said it's not a series I hold particularly close.
See, here's the thing, I'm not attached to them at all, other than I think the xenomorphs are fantastically designed villains and maybe one of the best in sci-fi and yet they're just in garbage movies. My comments, other than the one I made about other movies that aged better, were specific to the alien franchise as they exist.

So no, I'm not attached to them either - but if I'm comparing them all against eachother, the older ones aged BADLY and as I've said, do not deserve their classic status.

Yeah, I get that you're just making a comparitive statement having just rewatched all the movies. It's not one that I agree with except for the conclusion of liking the Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street movies more (Friday the 13th has so many movies and huge dips in quality that it's hard to compare). I can't argue that your personal reaction to the movies is wrong though. I think Alien in particular is just so ingrained in pop culture that it can't be shocking or scary anymore on a gut level and without that all you can do is just kinda appreciate the craft of it.
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Reply #367 on: May 07, 2017, 06:55:29 PM

I will always have Alien on my very short list of must watch movies. That was true suspense horror and projected atmosphere and dark fear with very little in terms of what is a CGI-fest by today's standards. It relied on the story and environment rather than flashy graphics and crazy visuals - chestburster not withstanding.

And yeah, it is dated and looking back on it, I have a huge nostalgic bias in favor of it. So I can understand people looking back on it more critically now. But for me, it's near the top of my list of great movies I have seen.

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Reply #368 on: May 07, 2017, 07:08:57 PM

I think it should be watched, its absolutely landmark.

I just also think it aged horribly.

Its possible for it to be both. I was stoked going back into rewatching them and was surprised by what I experienced.
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Reply #369 on: May 07, 2017, 07:49:29 PM

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Reply #370 on: May 07, 2017, 07:59:21 PM

I didn't know "coming out of a nostalgia-fueled hardon for Alien" was a thing.
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Reply #371 on: May 07, 2017, 08:40:34 PM

In anticipation of the new Aliens - I've rewatched all of it, and I'm now on Prometheus.

This movie is far and away the best in the series. In fact, watching them in release order really shows how incredibly poorly the old movies aged. Aliens was way worse than I remember. Alien 3 and Resurrection were essentially garbage. Alien was the best of the original 4 and still... not very good. undecided

Wait, is this some kind of subtle sarcasm I don't understand? I can't understand how anyone who appreciates things like good script writing, good editing and good directing can put Prometheus anywhere close to being in the same league as Alien and Aliens. Those movies are classics for a reason. Hell, I'd say that Alien 3 is a better movie than Prometheus and I hate the movie from the opening credits scene and it only gets worse from there. But at least it has a damn good director and some great cinematography. If nothing else, most of those prisoners are smarter than the "scientists" in Prometheus.

I'd re-watch Alien Resurrection before I re-watched Prometheus and Resurrection has that damn alien human baby thing Ripley has sex with.
See, that's what I thought going into it. Now I feel like Alien and Aliens don't deserve any of their classic designation. Ripley simply wasn't as believable as I remembered. And EVERYONE other than Ripley, up to like, Ron Perlman in Resurrection was a stone cold fucking idiot. That's really the only thing Prometheus shares with the originals - everyone is dumb as a stump. Alien 3 and Resurrection, where they moved off practical effects, were a disaster, start to finish. And the first two just didn't create NEARLY the tension I remember, nor were they effective as horror pieces.

Predator, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street (of all fucking things) have aged better than than the Alien series.

I actually had this discussion with a friend and the conclusion we came to was that Ridley Scott and Co misjudged what people liked about Alien during the first quadrilogy. They thought it was about Ripley, that's why she got shoehorned into all the movies. No, they were about the xenomorphs. And it wasn't until the long gap between resurrection and Prometheus that he realized it was never about Ripley. Which, if you take all the dialogue and all the actors out of Prometheus, still makes for a better back story than he could've conceived of in the 70s and 80s.

Also, CGI caught up with practical effects, which helped immensely.

In short, go back and watch the originals. Maybe they aged better for you. For me, they aged like garbage.

Edit: Mega-unpopular opinion, Alien vs Predator is better than all of these movies. Though I should probably watch AVP again since it's been a few weeks since I watched it. AVP:R however, is a corpse that didn't need to exist.

I own Alien and Aliens on Blu Ray and have popped them in from time to time.

For Alien, it is a haunted house movie on the surface. Beneath that it is about rape and sexual violence. I don't think that Ridley Scott was trying to make a point consciously but it's not accident that it is a man who gets "raped", impregnated and dies in the movie first.

Aliens is a straight up Vietnam flick that just happens to have acid blooded monsters in it. It's also a kick-ass action movie.

As for stupid decisions:

In the first movie they're basically a bunch of truck drivers who have no idea what they're dealing with or how to save themselves. Kane makes a fatal mistake that kicks it all off. But really, beyond that, I'm hard pressed to think of any major mistakes. Maybe Parker shouldn't have charged the alien to try to save Lambert but it really comes down to he just couldn't bring himself to leave her behind.

Aliens has a major stupid sequence when Gorman sends them in and tells them to disarm because of the reactor. But that was intentional in so many ways and it's no accident that most of the ones who survived were the ones who disobeyed in some fashion. (Vasquez secretly rearmed. Hicks pulled out a shotgun (not technically disobeying I suppose) and Hudson was just the guy who got really lucky.)

As for the rest of what you said. AVP is awful. Like...not redeeming in any fashion. Horrible writing. Horrible editing. Horrible directing. Prometheus at least had some talent behind it and serves more as a cautionary tale that, yes, even talented film makers can screw the pooch when they let Damon Lindledof write their script.

As for Resurrection and Whedon, he wrote it but the director changes a ton as did the studio.

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Reply #372 on: May 08, 2017, 02:26:32 AM

My slight problem with this is:
1. Androgyny does not a alpha female make.
2. I recollected the same thing until I watched them again for the first time in probably 10-15 years.
3. Tilda Swinton she is not.
Edit 4. It's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

No it doesn't, but I believe what made her the alpha was she pulled off both the strong feminine and the maternal in equal doses. Considering it was the 70s/80s Ripley was ground breaking, shame they parodied her into the ground in Alien 3 and Resurrection

Tilda is much to fey and other-worldly to pull this type of character off. Charlize Theron would be the closest thing I've seen to someone who has a mixture of all the right ingredients to carry this role.

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Reply #373 on: May 08, 2017, 04:24:59 AM

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Reply #374 on: May 08, 2017, 07:00:15 AM

I rewatched Alien & Aliens within the last 6 months. You're nuttier than a fruitcake, as usual.

Aliens does suffer from a bit of 80's action flick age and a few things that have become tropes since then, but it's still a solid film. Saying a film isn't a classic because others have imitated it in the 30 years since is a very you thing, though.

Eh? What imitated it? What are you even talking about? I'm saying Ridley Scott/Co never identified, until recently, what was so fucking rad about xenomorphs. Which, if Aliens: Resurrection didn't exist, would be a weaker argument.

I just looked it because I had no clue who wrote Resurrected.

And now it all makes sense.

Joss fucking Whedon.

But seriously, what are you talking about? If I wanted to make the argument that Aliens is weaker due to movies that came out later doing the same thing, I'd have pointed to Pitch Black and ended the argument, but that entire line of thinking is absurd. Aliens, as a series, is weak on its own merits.

Edit: Also, Aliens doesn't suffer because of 80s flick bullshit - otherwise Predator and a fuckload of other movies would suffer for the same reasons. Alas, they don't. Aliens suffers because it was not a good movie. And let's state a mega fucking unpopular opinion: Weaver is a shit lead in them.

Edit 2: And Aliens - which was all James Cameron, could've been up there with Terminator 1 or 2, but he was stuck with bad actors and a - at the time - a bad property that the studio clearly completely misunderstood.

You ignore history and are comparing 31 and 38 year old movies to more modern films. That's bad form to start off with, but then to call a sci-fi film dated when doing it is just silly. ALL sci-fi movies age badly. Every single one. Matrix is only 18 years old and has aged horribly when rewatched with a modern lens. It doesn't "hold up" when compared to any other modern sci-fi "humans vs. AI" film either, including the awful Terminator sequels.  Fuck, T2 doesn't heven "hold up" by a lot of metrics because of all kinds of tropes and bad action decisions that wouldn't fly today.

As for "what tropes" Jesus, how about the Action Female for one? Joss Whedon has no career if Alien/ Aliens weren't successful. What were sci-fi female leads prior to 1979? Typically women were running around looking pretty being rescued and typically half-naked when doing so, or simply screaming rather than being useful. Leia was the exception in Star Wars and you can look at other movies from 1977 to 1979 to see that sort of strong female was not the standard.  Try doing anything like making the female lead as useless as in the Black Hole, Star Trek, or Mad Max today. Even Wilma Deering as originally shown was 90% useless and only started to change as the series progressed and Alien/ Empire started to show Sci-Fi women could be strong and competent and useful.

Then in 1986 and Aliens was the break-in of the Female Action Lead, though. Out of Sci-Fi and into the mainstream films. It was a BIG DEAL. It's a trope now that a woman can be a hero and a badass and still be female, but it wasn't possible before that. Fuck it was so new that they only did it with Ripley, Vasquez was still a butch quasi-lesbian because TWO strong females was over the top. (The female pilot was largely useless, died early, and non-combat)

The rest of the tropes? Here you go, a lot are firsts or near-firsts that have only become tropes in the past 30 years. Particularly with Aliens which came out at peak 80's.  I can't even fathom your "what imitated" it statement for Aliens. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/AlienS  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Alien

Predator also has aged as 'badly' as you critique Alien/S.  It's machismo and also peak 80's nonsense. Nothing in the movie makes any more modern sense than the Aliens films. Fuck, Predator 2 was bad when it came out and has aged worse than any of the other three films. It's just awful schlock and would be accused of being a checklist blockbuster if made today.


Also, Whedon wanted his name taken off of Resurrection. He hated the movie, like most sane people. However he had ZERO clout at the time and was told to fuck-off. One of his more famous quotes is: "There is always going to be a shitty Alien movie out there with my name on it." http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien/38965/alien-resurrection-joss-whedons-original-endings


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Reply #375 on: May 08, 2017, 07:10:00 AM

Quote
You ignore history and are comparing 31 and 38 year old movies to more modern films.

My baseline comparisons are Terminator, Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th, and Predator.

I'll get into the rest of your post later.
My slight problem with this is:
1. Androgyny does not a alpha female make.
2. I recollected the same thing until I watched them again for the first time in probably 10-15 years.
3. Tilda Swinton she is not.
Edit 4. It's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

No it doesn't, but I believe what made her the alpha was she pulled off both the strong feminine and the maternal in equal doses. Considering it was the 70s/80s Ripley was ground breaking, shame they parodied her into the ground in Alien 3 and Resurrection

Tilda is much to fey and other-worldly to pull this type of character off. Charlize Theron would be the closest thing I've seen to someone who has a mixture of all the right ingredients to carry this role.

Tilda was purely an androgyny response.

As to your first comment, I think that's what bothered me most watching all of them basically in succession. Had Weaver ONLY been in the first one, I think the series as a whole would have been raised in quality. Had they had four different female leads, the entire thing would've been even stronger than had it just been Weaver in the first (and men in the next three). The xenomorph world (though worlds weren't really a thing until like Predator 2 / Terminator 2 - for this particular genre), would've been better for it as well as the movies would've been about the aliens. Alas, we're stuck with four Ripley stories with each one stunningly worse than the one before.
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Reply #376 on: May 08, 2017, 07:13:03 AM

This went to odd places.


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Reply #377 on: May 08, 2017, 08:22:49 AM

I was going to respond to Merusk's post but I can't get past this.

Quote
Joss Whedon has no career if Alien/ Aliens weren't successful.

Man, if only.
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Reply #378 on: May 08, 2017, 08:42:37 AM

ALL sci-fi movies age badly. Every single one.

Just an aside to this - I recently rewatched 2010 because I had just finished reading the book and wanted to jibe my memories of the film with the book (because it was the late '80's since I watched the movie on VHS - I am old). Both 2001 and 2010 actually hold up surprisingly well both as depictions of outer space exploration (though clearly Clarke's timeline for certain technology is woefully accelerated). A lot of the US/Russia conflict in the story might be outdated (though we could be going back to that) but only because how was anyone to know like 2-3 years after the book/movie came out the goddamn Berlin Wall would fall?

As for Alien/Aliens being dated, meh. They are but not so bad as to make them lesser movies than the shitfest that was Prometheus.

Now Aliens 3 and 4? Jesus fuck, those movies were bad for a lot of reasons, and could have been good except for some INSANELY stupid studio decisions. The main decision that killed those movies was the necessity to make them about the Ripley character as opposed to the goddamn xenomorphs eating the fuck out of people. So, you know, the same mistakes they made on the AVP movies. Creature features should not be about the humans, who are all mostly redshirts and should be treated as such. They SHOULD be one-dimensional characters because it's not like we want to know our steak's name.

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Reply #379 on: May 08, 2017, 08:48:49 AM

Tilda was purely an androgyny response.

As to your first comment, I think that's what bothered me most watching all of them basically in succession. Had Weaver ONLY been in the first one, I think the series as a whole would have been raised in quality. Had they had four different female leads, the entire thing would've been even stronger than had it just been Weaver in the first (and men in the next three). The xenomorph world (though worlds weren't really a thing until like Predator 2 / Terminator 2 - for this particular genre), would've been better for it as well as the movies would've been about the aliens. Alas, we're stuck with four Ripley stories with each one stunningly worse than the one before.

As much as I liked Weaver in the movies, I will concede that she was not really needed. Problem was they decided the xenomorph was probably not enough to carry through to the sequel and needed the tie in. They could have easily killed off Ripley in the escape pod and used her data records as well as the Nostromo's to figure out what was what. But they drew on the "she has knowledge of the xenomorph so she can be useful." I don't think it failed but it could have been different and still worked. Might not been as good as it would have been a straight up 80s Vietnam movie in space, but hindsight and all that. Weaver was stretched into the third on the prison planet and was not needed other than for the theme. At that point it wasn't even about her having anything more than "I know all about these things."

For me, Alien: Resurrection worked her more into a utility role. I liked the angle they took and the message about the horrors of cloning and what happens. But that movie was moving into strange days territory with Ripley having mixed DNA. Hints that THAT was the plan all along... a human hybrid and Ripley was the survivor winner of the Nostromo.

I dunno.. I still have an unbridled fondness of Alien as it was my first real adult movie I saw and hit home on a lot of things while I was growing up. But then, I still am fond of FFXI as it was my first MMO. YMMV i guess.

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Reply #380 on: May 08, 2017, 08:54:56 AM

Tilda was purely an androgyny response.

Then I guess my response should be that I find her not so much androgynous, but ethereal or strange looking.

As far as Weaver being omitted from Aliens, I had no problems with her in that movie, she plays the role perfectly. If you consider the era and the female leads available, nobody could have done a better job in my humble opinion. After that, sure, but the follow ups were so weak generally I find it hard to make Ripley/Weaver fully accountable.

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Reply #381 on: May 08, 2017, 09:03:22 AM

I don't make Weaver accountable for ANY of this. I make the studios accountable for not recognizing what was cool about xenomorphs.

Predator 2, for all of it's problems, understood it was a movie about the Predators as a race. That carries through all the Predator movies. Even the offshoots.
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Reply #382 on: May 08, 2017, 10:07:49 AM

As for Alien/Aliens being dated, meh. They are but not so bad as to make them lesser movies than the shitfest that was Prometheus.

Now Aliens 3 and 4? Jesus fuck, those movies were bad for a lot of reasons, and could have been good except for some INSANELY stupid studio decisions. The main decision that killed those movies was the necessity to make them about the Ripley character as opposed to the goddamn xenomorphs eating the fuck out of people. So, you know, the same mistakes they made on the AVP movies. Creature features should not be about the humans, who are all mostly redshirts and should be treated as such. They SHOULD be one-dimensional characters because it's not like we want to know our steak's name.


Alien 1 doesn't feel really dated in my eyes. The computer hardware of course is, but the film wouldn't play out differently if they had touchscreens in the cockpit. The rest of the film still holds up.

Alien 4 is actually  great IF a) You watch it as a standalone film (As an Alien follow-up it's not serious enough and tonally-off) b) You are OK with the mild camp.

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Reply #383 on: May 08, 2017, 10:28:14 AM

I don't see a world where Alien 4 can be great. It's pretty much a disaster from start to finish. Also, as a standalone movie it would make even less sense.
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Reply #384 on: May 08, 2017, 10:35:59 AM

I don't see a world where Alien 4 can be great. It's pretty much a disaster from start to finish. Also, as a standalone movie it would make even less sense.

I could get behind Weaver controlling a xenomorph army... but that ship sailed.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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