Red Mosquito

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 1:38 pm**

Hypnos wrote:It was good, but one have to wonder how much of the originality is sacrifice in favour of fan service. This is almost like a greatest hits Alien written by an AI.

I really think that the only place where FS fully work is in comic movies.

The question is whether it stands on its own regardless of those elements, and the answer is a definite yes. A viewer could go in without having seen the rest of the franchise and feel like they got a satisfying cinematic experience, because the winks and nods are well integrated into the fabric of the film. I know this because I went with one such viewer.

Compare with something as garish as Deadpool/Wolverine, where the only way to fully make sense of major plot points and characters is to know decades of movies (and in some cases behind-the-scenes drama) because cardboard cutouts from other franchises, completely stripped of their original personalities, are introduced and insistently referenced.

One remains structurally sound regardless of knowledge level, the other completely falls apart if you remove the frame of reference

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 2:30 pm**

Also it looks gorgeous while Deadpool and Wolverine looks awful

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 2:57 pm**

The question is whether it stands on its own regardless of those elements, and the answer is a definite yes. A viewer could go in without having seen the rest of the franchise and feel like they got a satisfying cinematic experience, because the winks and nods are well integrated into the fabric of the film. I know this because I went with one such viewer.

I think the actual question is, “is the final product harmed or lessened by the need to incorporate all those references?” And I think absolutely yes. This could’ve been a much better movie, if it had been fully untethered from its (I assume corporate) insecurities.

No one is going to skip your movie because they find out that none of the characters are androids, or because it doesn’t call back the weird white hybrid monster or black goo or any of that shit. Are there xenomorphs in your movie? Good. Done. Fan service fully addressed.

So there’s an extra level of pathetic baked in when you include a line like “get away from her you bitch,” or have a camera linger unnecessarily on a deepfake of Ian Holm for no reason other than because it is a deepfake of Ian Holm. Theres literally nothing gained. There’s no need to mirror scenes, or in some cases individual shots, at all.

It is less of a movie than it might have been because so much of its computing power is devoted to regurgitating the past. It repeatedly goes out of its way to show us things that, in this context, are not interesting and have no meaning.

I did think the first 40 minutes of this movie were mostly pretty good. I really appreciated seeing physical monster props and people in costumes.

The second half was a profound letdown. The shift from good to bad was so jarring that I had to wonder if studio executives got involved. “Audiences like callbacks, where are the callbacks?” “What was that line about the bitch? Remember that? Can we add that here?“

Which is why I said the first movies were allegories about the destructiveness of corporate greed, and this one is just an example of it.

I agree with everything you said about Deadpool…but I guess with Deadpool I feel like it barely counts as a movie, so I don’t grade it as one. It’s almost exactly like watching Looney Tunes. They talk to the camera, make esoteric cultural references, have ironic or playful musical cues, blow up repeatedly, and survive. It’s just fucking Looney Tunes.

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 3:58 pm**

McParadigm wrote:
The question is whether it stands on its own regardless of those elements, and the answer is a definite yes. A viewer could go in without having seen the rest of the franchise and feel like they got a satisfying cinematic experience, because the winks and nods are well integrated into the fabric of the film. I know this because I went with one such viewer.
I think the actual question is, “is the final product harmed or lessened by the need to incorporate all those references?” And I think absolutely yes. This could’ve been a much better movie, if it had been fully untethered from its (I assume corporate) insecurities.

Yeah possibly, but here you're judging the film against a different movie we didn't get. This is clearly both a franchise booster and tribute, deliberately slotting into the tropes and conventions of what we know as an Alien film. A complete fresh start would have been more interesting, but we didn't get that, and I settled into that notion immediately after the first trailer. So what's left is to engage with the film we did get and examine its execution. And as far as I'm concerned what we get in terms of execution is very artful, exciting, stylish, and often powerful.

Fede Alvarez is a distinct enough filmmaker from Scott or Cameron that his turn at the bat feels like a fresh take even when it's being derivative. And I just fully disagree with how much of its computing power is spent on callbacks -- the "get away from her you bitch" line notwithstanding, which I've already conceded is the worst moment in the film, I didn't bump into them at all. They felt like bonuses, or decoration.

McParadigm wrote:I agree with everything you said about Deadpool…but I guess with Deadpool I feel like it barely counts as a movie, so I don’t grade it as one. It’s almost exactly like watching Looney Tunes. They talk to the camera, make esoteric cultural references, have ironic or playful musical cues, blow up repeatedly, and survive. It’s just fucking Looney Tunes.

That's fine. I brought it up because Hypnos talked about how fan service works in comic book movies but less so here. I think, if anything, this is an example of fan service done right -- winks and nods peppered throughout instead of hinging crucial plot elements entirely on sanded-down facsimiles of movies past.

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 4:11 pm**

There’s a gigantic Alien: Romulus banner across the top of Disney+ this week, and it’s an image of a facehugger choking someone, and my daughter’s been kind of a bitch lately so I hope it gives her nightmares.

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 5:53 pm**

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 8:05 pm**

Just rewatched the first Alien once again. Still perfect.

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 10:25 pm**

Number 1 with 108k globally.

Looks good for the franchise.

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 10:32 pm**

Blessed be the franchise

Posted: **Sun August 18, 2024 10:42 pm**

Hopefully we get a Scott´s deranged new sequel with Fassbender

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 1:11 am**

Simple Torture wrote:There’s a gigantic Alien: Romulus banner across the top of Disney+ this week, and it’s an image of a facehugger choking someone, and my daughter’s been kind of a bitch lately so I hope it gives her nightmares.

This kind of stuff is good for kids, replaces the experience of getting terrified by vhs covers in the video store

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 4:10 pm**

bart wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:There’s a gigantic Alien: Romulus banner across the top of Disney+ this week, and it’s an image of a facehugger choking someone, and my daughter’s been kind of a bitch lately so I hope it gives her nightmares.
This kind of stuff is good for kids, replaces the experience of getting terrified by vhs covers in the video store

dude i looooved going to the video store and see wild covers like Texas Chainsaw 2, Friday the 13th or all the Nightmare films.

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 4:37 pm**

bart wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:There’s a gigantic Alien: Romulus banner across the top of Disney+ this week, and it’s an image of a facehugger choking someone, and my daughter’s been kind of a bitch lately so I hope it gives her nightmares.
This kind of stuff is good for kids, replaces the experience of getting terrified by vhs covers in the video store

Not half as weird as the stuff they find on YouTube. I’ve spent this past week watching a musical live-action remake of Luigi's Mansion.

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 4:56 pm**

VinylGuy wrote:
bart wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:There’s a gigantic Alien: Romulus banner across the top of Disney+ this week, and it’s an image of a facehugger choking someone, and my daughter’s been kind of a bitch lately so I hope it gives her nightmares.
This kind of stuff is good for kids, replaces the experience of getting terrified by vhs covers in the video store
dude i looooved going to the video store and see wild covers like Texas Chainsaw 2, Friday the 13th or all the Nightmare films.

It was Cannibal Holocaust for me. The impaled lady

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 5:04 pm**

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

Posted: **Mon August 19, 2024 5:35 pm**

i had two local Video Stores that had great stuff really. Lots of direct to video sequels and very fucked up things. Then Blockbuster had other cool stuff like movies from the 70s.

And ill always remember the great Mondo Macabro for the Evil Dead movies and for stuff that wasnt around in those years.

Posted: **Tue August 20, 2024 4:51 pm**

what a bunch of pussies

Posted: **Tue August 20, 2024 4:51 pm**

jk. the nightmare on elm st. posters did it for me

Posted: **Tue August 20, 2024 5:27 pm**

VHS covers were great ways to teach kids false advertising. Renting something based on an awesome cover only to find out it's a movie about some guys driving around the desert in dune buggies, or some guys in loincloths running around in the woods, was an important life lesson.

Posted: **Tue August 20, 2024 7:47 pm**

BurtReynolds wrote:VHS covers were great ways to teach kids false advertising. Renting something based on an awesome cover only to find out it's a movie about some guys driving around the desert in dune buggies, or some guys in loincloths running around in the woods, was an important life lesson.

Truer words

Red Mosquito

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