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sati_84 (467)
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Shields are useless!
My assessment of the 2023 specials
Irritating stupidity at the end... (SPOILERS, obviously)
It's disappointing how they handled Rocket's captivity friends in the story
The S3 finale was extremely disappointing
Pepsi had a chance to play this smart / cool, but they botched it with their disgusting reaction
Jake's plan made no sense!
A simple reason why i don't believe the "Bishop did it" theory
This series is completely unnecessary and did not have an actual story to tell
Had potential, but goes downhill in the second half
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The Vander-Silco falling out might be what we see at the very first scene in S1, namely, Silco wanted to go on an all-out war against Piltover, while Vander did not. The horrible consequences shown are exactly what was driving Vander to take revenge for all the lives lost, and why he felt obligated to get Powder and Vi under his wings.
I mean there could be something else, since it is not specified, but I think it would fit the timeframes nicely, and for the writers, there is no reason to think up something else - especially now that both V and S are dead... So I think it is implied that it is that, but we'll never know for sure. I see a really small chance this will be explored further in S2, provided no one alive can tell the tale.
OK, then let me defend ONE scene from T2 - the T-1000 glitching at the end, grabbing the guardrail, then snapping back to normal. By 1991 standards, it's another amazing technical achievement, how they got the guardrail's texture just right, and this bit adds to the audience's understanding, that the villaing could not 100% bounce back from getting frozen, then blown to a million pieces. It nicely ties into how "Sarah's" legs are glitching into the floor... and I think seeing that is also better if you see the guardrail bit first.
The other extra scenes, I can let go - Reese in the dream, the T-1000 figuring out the name of the dog, the smile, turning on the learning chip (although I think that one is also integral to the plot, and explains how the Terminator understands why people cry for instance), but I would die on the hill of the T-1000 glitching scene :-)
1. Rook (the android character resembling Ash from the first movie) successfully synthetized the black goo like compound, and he could use that to "3D print" facehuggers and he put them to storage for later use or something... It was not clear in the movie, that if he thought he already found the key to immortality and invulnerability in the black goo, why would he need the huggers, maybe to synthetize further goo from them later? Anyways it was not clear why, only that he created them from the "DNA" of the Nostromo alien.
2. Rain, when parting with Kay said "here, take this" - that was the "vaccine" sample Rook created from the black goo to provide immortality, etc. In fact it was mixing the alien "DNA" with the host DNA and created hybrids - but Rook didn't know that, he did not have enough time to experiment before ripped in half by the alien. However, Kay's impression and Rain's wording confused her - she had horrible injuries, so she figured she would take it to heal up, but it backfired, as it merged alien "DNA" with her fetus, created a hybrid, then accelerated its growth... and we all saw the rest. But it was because she injected herself with the black goo which tragically was known to Rain that it is not safe, but Kay didn't get the message...
3. This has been a question on the original alien boards as well - the rate of growth shown in this movie is even more unbelievable than the first movie, but the point is - we don't know, since the creature is alien for us.
And with point #3, you touched on an important point: the fast growth was conjured up by the first movie as a way to have a threat relatively soon into the movie, and it was a huge stretch, but believable if you wanted to. But the way they invent characters who are studying the aliens, it is getting more and more absurd that for example Rook is able to synthetize a "vaccine" from the black goo, before mapping out all physiological functions of the aliens...
I don't think there is evidence of this anywhere in the movie.
The Thing most likely needs cellular activity to devour and imitate a being (dog, human, etc.) - there is no indication of it doing it to corpses.
It doesn't really matter either way, because the Outpost 31 crew incinerates all the dogs and all the corpses for good measure anyways, so there is no way a Thing could have survived as a corpse - IMO.
You can read it that way, but I have two issues with this interpretation:
1. You ask if "this was Carpenter's way of subtly implying..." - well, in the commentary, both Carpeneter and Russell say that the ending is deliberately ambiguous. Their intent is unmistakably of creating vagueness as to who is who. Russell at one point says he believes MacReady to be human, but then Carpenter says that he still might be a Thing... so ambiguity is the intent of the creators here. Russell is leaning towards Mac being human, and I myself think it makes no sense for him to blow up the Blair-thing if he is the thing. There is no other hints of direct infighting between the Things in the movie anyways.
2. In-universe - suppose you are right - but how would Mac know in universe for sure that Childs is a Thing? What clues him in? Can you support it with anything - other than the fact that Childs was off to the side for quite a while and anything could have happened - but that doesn't prove it one way or the other. We are privy to all the information MacReady has, and that's not much. So if he only offers drinks to Things (which is in itself a stretch, since he offered his drink to Blair in the shed in a moment when Blair was - almost certainly - human), what makes him so sure Childs is one? You need to fill in this gap first, before we can evaluate your theory.
We are in 100% subjective territory now, but since the scenes are good and valuable, T2 cannot be "too long" for me, it is an experience, not "just a movie" :-)
I remember being disappointed by the Aliens additional scenes - more is not always better though.
Deabatable. For Terminator 2, I think the Special Edition has extra scenes that are valuable for plot and characterization and extremely well executed as well. So I am gladly watching the SE for T2, and there might be more examples...
Very quickly I looked up some articles, and found this:
<i>Giger painted a biomechanical landscape of strange shapes formed out of twisted metal and bone. “I wanted the landscape of the planet to be biomechanic,” said Giger, “a mixture of our technology and some kind of magma, so as to create the feeling that maybe something has happened before on that planet, maybe a technical civilisation has been destroyed.”</i>
Source: https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/the-alien-planet/
So the artificial, technological origins of the alien were intended right from the start. During production, the idea of the alien being a weapon used by the Space Jockeys is floated numerous times.
Also, this statement from Ridley Scott is very telling:
<i>The purpose of the derelict craft is left a mystery in the film. “I was amazed that no one asked me about this mysterious element of the film,” Scott said to French magazine L’Ecran Fantastique in 2012, “but if you would have asked me in 1978, I would have gladly explained that, in my mind, all this alien ship could be was a battleship.”</i>
Soruce: https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/the-derelictpyramidsilo/
So yes, the idea of the alien being artificial, manufactured, a bioweapon in itself - was present throughout the making of the film.
Also, with this in mind, Cameron's idea for Burke to acquire aliens for "the bioweapon division" gets a weird meta layer. Burke is thinking about how the alien's acid, or other bodyparts could be used to create weapons. But the alien itself is already a bioweapon... Bizarre :-)
The inner jaw is a great piece of biomechanical design. It is "on rails" because that is the mechanical part of the design.
You can dislike it, don't get me wrong, but there is a clear artistic intention behind how it looks and why it looks like that. In the movie, we cannot decide if the alien is a product of natural or artificial activity. And that duplicity is part of the design. It is dubbed "biomechanical", and it is a unique artstyle, that convinced Scott, O'Bannon and co. to hire Giger to craft the alien.
The mechanical mouth and the whole skull was built by Carlo Rambaldi, who is a pro in animatronics, and together with Giger, Scott and all others involved, they were all satisfied with the end result, the way the mouth moves, etc. So there is no doubt that the "on rails" nature of the movement is intended. Moreover, it is clearly offset by the vast amounts of saliva we see, which is clearly a very organic thing to include, further emphasizing the dual nature of the alien.
Well, there are two types of "makes sense".
One is the most common way of using this phrase - rational sense.
But the other is intuitive sense. When you cannot dissect the thing you are taking about, and don't understand it rationally, but it "feels right" in the sense that you have a high level understanding of it.
The alien's design is the latter. And I think you interpreted my comment from a rational standpoint, rather than an intuitive one. And I have the proof as well, as you earlier said in your OP: <i>"And what about the big smokestacks on his back?"</i>
This question is very telling. It clearly shows that you encountered something weird, something alien, and you have a need for understadning, more precisely rational understanding. So you are trying to make rationals sense of it, you are trying to compare the protrusions to something that is familiar and known to you (smokestacks).
Even from that standpoint however, I fail to see how one would consider the statement that the alien's design makes sense as "comedic". As a design of an organism - be it artificial or natural - it makes sense. When it comes to artistic intention, the protrusions are not just randomly thrown there, Giger had something in mind when he added those. We don't know what exact function does it serve? Well, that's unfortunate if you want to 100% understand everything about the alien, but the point of the movie is that the alien is alien. The artistic intention of the whole movie and the design itself is that we don't know, we cannot know everything about how it works. And that adds to the atmosphere, the creepiness, the cosmic horror.
There is nothing wrong with the need to understand everything rationally - it is after all, human nature. But this is one of the main messages of Alien: we (humanity) can often find ourselves in situations where we don't have all the information, where we don't have the chance to get the full picture. And we must cope with that somehow...
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