Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Alien: Covenant – Contemporary Horror of AI (2020)
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Theres also Ethernaut, an Argentinian series that I think just has one series so far. People enjoy it, I didn't find it that interesting til the end. I just really dislike stories stretched thin over dozens of hours. I prefer Xfiles, Outer Limits, or aimple movies, that sort of scifi.
"I'm ready, man. Check it out. I am the ultimate badass. State of the badass art. You do not want to fuck with me"
"Well, that's great. That's just fuckin' great, man! Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now, man!"
"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over!"
"What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals man!"
"They're coming outta the walls! They're coming outta the goddamn walls! Let's book!"
Mostly.
But when success comes they become too big, rich and influential and their next movies are pretty much whatever they want them to be. And they are crap, because pinch of salt of their madness becomes whole dish.
It happened with Ridley Scott, George Lucas, Neill Blomkamp, probably some others.
It's also said that a director makes the same movie for entirety of their career. It's very visible in case of Ridley Scott. His later movies hit again and again the same perverse things that he consistently finds exciting.
How is it a scientology ad? Not being facetious, I really want to know.
The last few films were of similar ilk. Prometheus started it with their David narrative. Just terrible writing.
A handpicked team of professional astronauts on an interstellar mission being a bunch of complete incompetents over and over again for plot convenience is the real headscratcher that eventually makes it feel like the plot is an afterthought and makes you disengage from the film as a story rather then just pretty pictures.
It's a pattern you see a lot especially in sci-fi and action, and it's annoying because it's not like you couldn't have the glossy visuals or set-pieces if you also had coherent plots.
Lets take our helmets off in a unknown hostile enivroment?
Lets play with giant worms with teeth, as if in real life those things wouldn't scare the crap out of you even if they weren't alien.
Because 90% of the average moviegoing audience got it right. You can invent tortured reasoning for why a biology officer on a spaceship with a bunch of fancy tech would be dumber than the bottom 10% of humans, but the real explanation is just lazy/incompetent writers.
Xenobiologist is tired of eating with the rest of the crew and eats in the lab instead seems reasonable. We didn't see the leadup to see the deviance normalized, we just get to see the end of it.
Alien:Earth isn't the best writing, obviously, but we're how far into the series, the writing just has to be enough plot to get to the xenomorph rampage scenes. It's like plot in a video game or an adult film; you have to have it, but it doesn't matter.
People above have already stated the obvious. It’s a popcorn series and a check box. That’s it. No staying power. No one wants to watch robot children who talk to xenomorphs make them pets. No. Just no. These creatures do not follow instructions from a tweenager. Get away from her you bitch.
These are the same creatures that almost wiped out the predators… c’mon man!
Compare it to how they didn't follow the rules in Alien 1 then: they weren't supposed to let the facehugger victim into the spaceship due to quarantine rules. Ripley, acting as interim captain, tried to enforce that, but was overridden by Ash, the science officer [1]. A perfectly understandable action due to human empathy, but in this case, it is doubly justified since, as we later learn, Ash was an android, acting on secret orders to retrieve the alien specimen. Smart, reasonable actions from everyone involved, that didn't make anyone scream at the movie in frustration. And this was just a mining crew of ordinary workers, not the best scientific minds a multi-billionaire was able to assemble for a research expedition.
Meanwhile the only justification for sticking his face into that evil-looking alien snake in Prometheus is that the guy was just a moron because he had fancy science equipment??? Also, Prometheus was written by Damon Lindelof - who also wrote Lost. The same Lost where all those mysteries turned out by series end to have been just random nonsense, with no explanation or justification ever given. Another point in favor of the incompetent writer thesis.
This phrase is all the reason I need not to bother watching something, after having seen "Prometheus".
I don't assume all characters are human just because they walk and talk like a duck. Blade Runner, after all. Half are synths and some are transhuman consciousness uploads. The plot continuity is shit like AI wrote it. ;-D
> Lets take our helmets off in a unknown hostile enivroment? [sic]
Yeah, but there are plenty of people with character traits who do do stupid shit and take stupid risks. Besides, who would volunteer for a risky mission unless they really needed the money and didn't care so much about their personal safety?
This was one day ago. For this to happen that guy would have to have tied off the safety switch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntr8kCLSxqk
People get really dumb/lazy when they get complacent. That is half the message of the franchise. Life has become routine labor, corporate control, and handing over oversight to someone else (synthetics) because everyone is on cruise control and only doing their little piece because they are on their 500th boring space trucker run.
I think the worm thing (I thought of it as a snake, which just goes to show) is the result of an even worse sin than bad writing. I think the scene was deliberately written this way to pander to a certain type of audience member who enjoys watching dumb movies just to point out how dumb they are and thereby feel really clever. It's fan service really.
I'm ... guilty of indulging in that kind of thing myself (calling out movie characters' decisions for being stupid) and I've often stopped to wonder whether I'm not being baited, after all. Sometimes I certainly think I am and in Prometheus the bit with the worm/snake was one such instance.
It's set up in the future. Observing current trends it's quite realistic for everyone to be really, really dumb by then.
For an in-depth list for 'Prometheus': "Red Letter Media talks about Prometheus" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0]. (To what extent were those due to Lindelof, not Scott?)
We reached the stars, but became alienated from both exploration and ethics. We lost the wonder and lost control of our fate. Life has become routine labor, corporate control, and synthetic oversight that isn't looking out for our best wishes even though we assume it is.
Yup, here for it.
>The missing piece with that show is inconsistent and shallow character development.
To say the least. The whole series reeks of a movie stretched out to a series for TV. And the ship landing in the city? Right, how convenient… it’s just terrible writing. Made for teens so they can #metoo when we talk about how utterly terrifying that universe is.
Too bad; after seeing the recent Disney mary-sue-iffied, everyone-carries-the-stupid-ball, hey-look-new-big-bad-with-no-explanation-of-where-he-came-from movies, my estimation of the prequels went up by a considerable amount.
In light of the newer movies, those prequels are actually very very good; a very mature take that approached mature themes ("So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause", and many more I can't think off right now).
Maybe your 12yo mind was not sufficiently mature enough[1], but your middle-aged mind might be - you should seem them again.
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[1] Hell, I saw them in my mid-20s, and even then I was not mature enough to appreciate the subtext and themes. When I saw them again recently in my mid-40s, I was much more aware of things in the world, especially how impressionable Annakin was, because now that I am older I see how actual adults are easily impressionable at that age (mid-20s).
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[1] Swordfights! Intrigue! Romance! Cute robots! Cool races! Only You Can Save the World!
Well, yes. My initial viewing was colored by expecting the same sort of story that the original trilogy had. The prequels ended up being a very different sort of story.
> or that it's all a bunch of half-arsed tropes that panders to the lowest common denominator[1]?
Doesn't this apply to all the movies you like too? What's different in the movies you liked? Are the tropes all full-arsed?
You're quite correct; that is hard to believe. Any mainstream movie (i.e. one that was available on a streaming channel or on TV at some point) you have in mind that isn't filled with tropes?
It started off so well. The first few episodes were good/interesting/promising and the series seemed destined for greatness ( if they could stick the landing ). Unfortunately, it fizzled out in the latter half of the series as they turned the xenomorph into a silly pet.
What is it with "queens" in SF ? Off to a rant :)
IMO, adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg. I was really intrigued by the Borg as presented in their first appearance. If you remember, they had a nursery with Baby Borg and a collective conscience, no individuality. Then came the queen, the ruler of all with some people having a "higher rank". Totally made the Borg irrelevant to me.
There was a TV show about an invasion of Earth, it went along fine until the last season, a queen was added, I could tell it was rushed and doing that changed its direction.
Same can be said about Independence Day, even though I did not like the queen addition, it did not take away from the whole movie and in a way a "queen" in that context made a bit of sense. The only thing is, if the Queen was killed, wouldn't that end these Aliens ? To me, a queen should not leave the home planet.
Alien movies were too much for me, things popping out of someone's belly would be a "close my eyes" type scene. But I really liked Promentheus. I did not realize until much later that was a prequel to Alien :) And I still think it is a good movie.
A queen in Alien universe doesn’t operate like ants do. She is just the largest most vicious female amongst the brood.
?
Sure, but this movie is aimed at a general audience, who don't have an exact understanding about ant society.
It's more important for the movie to conform to what the audience thinks ants are like than to conform to what ants actually are like.
You think that people who don't know precisely how ant colonies work are dumb?
I'm sorry, how did you expect this to be interpreted?
>>> Okay sorry. Aliens operate exactly like ants for anyone too dumb to grasp that they’re not but need an EILI5 description and may have stumbled upon this comment section.
Your original response to a clarification is that it’s just easier to tell people they work like ants. Which is fine if that’s the point you’re trying to make but it’s irrelevant to my clarification.
How did YOU expect your first comment to be interpreted?
Insects. Queen bees, queen ants, queen termites. Feels nice an icky to humans.
Now, SF mostly gets this wrong as isn't that much of a leader, more of a 'starter' and many species have multiple queens and when one gets killed another is promoted from larva. This and the vast majority of behaviors are self organizing, and not ones from a leadership position.
Agreed. The Borg used to be scary because they seemed unbeatable. They were like grey goo that could adapt to whatever you threw at them.[1]
Having a queen gives them a single point of failure. Suddenly they are a lot less scary.
[1] I kind of felt the same way about the Boogieman from Ghost Busters when I was a kid. Teleports between closets and the regular ghost trap doodad doesn't work on him! Shit!
Having more than one episode about the Borg destroyed the Borg.
1st appearance: there are some things out there that human civilization isn't ready for. You wanna see an example? You really wanna see? Okay, you asked for it. OMG it's the Borg!
2nd through Nth appearance: Demystifying Borg Internal APIs