Movies to look forward to

Definitely stoked! I think he can pull it off. District 9 was cool, Elysium was a big disappointment and Chappie looks solid so far (new clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFN16ynoSaA). Ridley Scott's producing it and Prometheus 2.
 

Johnstantine

Skibbidy Boo Bop
IncantatioN said:
Definitely stoked! I think he can pull it off. District 9 was cool, Elysium was a big disappointment and Chappie looks solid so far (new clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFN16ynoSaA). Ridley Scott's producing it and Prometheus 2.

Agreed. Elysium was aesthetically pleasing, but the story really sucked. Also, Sharlto Copley's character did more damage to the movie than anything else.
 

Lithrael

Remember, always hold your apple tight
Really? More than Jodie Foster's extra terrible performance? :troll: Well, OK.

I do like the look of Chappie but I can't look at it without thinking of Short Circuit.
 
Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal just came out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CG7WUfILv4

Over the top goodness ^_^

Welcome to me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z251mQl-OLI
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
NightCrawler said:
Glad that Chappie bombed. I hope he never touches the Alien franchise.

Nighty's back! :ganishka: Based on your comment, I was curious about how badly it performed, and I found this, via AV Club:

Chappie opened with only $13.3 million, or less than half as much as the disappointing Elysium debuted to a couple of summers ago, and close to three times less than District 9 made over its first weekend.

Ouch!

While I likely won't bother with Chappie, and never saw Elysium based on the poor reviews, I thought District 9 was alright. Still, it does make you wonder who at 20 Century Fox sees these performances and thinks "That's our guy."
 
Read about Chappie last week and was disappointed by the news of it bombing. It looked promising, I'll still give it a shot, maybe not at a theater.

It'll be an interesting year with Tomorrowland, Avengers 2, Mad Max, Ex Machina, Star Wars, Jurassic World, Fantastic Four, Mission Impossible 5 for which we don't even have a trailer yet, (I'm blanking out) ...

John, your signature is a spoiler! Just realized it as I approach volume 9.
 

Johnstantine

Skibbidy Boo Bop
Walter said:
While I likely won't bother with Chappie, and never saw Elysium based on the poor reviews, I thought District 9 was alright. Still, it does make you wonder who at 20 Century Fox sees these performances and thinks "That's our guy."

When Blomkamp has someone above him I think he does alright. He didn't have a script editor for Chappie or Elysium, so it may be why they sucked so bad.

But even though he's on Aliens, he has Shittley Scott above him and his track record hasn't exactly been fantastic for the past...25 years or so.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
NightCrawler said:
Glad that Chappie bombed. I hope he never touches the Alien franchise.
Walter said:
While I likely won't bother with Chappie, and never saw Elysium based on the poor reviews, I thought District 9 was alright. Still, it does make you wonder who at 20 Century Fox sees these performances and thinks "That's our guy."

It's a good match really; each movie he makes is worse than the last, just like every movie in the Alien franchise (Prometheus doesn't count). Call it a perfect opportunity for nadir synergy, or "Alien: Synadirgy."
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Joe Chip said:
Do you think that Alien > Aliens ?

I think a lot of people may be divided on that question. For me - Alien > Aliens. Aliens is no doubt a pretty good action movie but I love the soundtrack, atmosphere and a lot of things about Alien more.
 

NightCrawler

Aeons gone, vast, mad and deathless
Joe Chip said:
Do you think that Alien > Aliens ?

By far. Alien is a masterpiece, absolutely flawless. Watch both in a theater and you'll see the difference in quality. Every frame in that movie is a painting, every tiny detail meticulously crafted. It helps that the acting is the best in the series, with one of the best ensemble casts a genre movie has ever seen.
Alien 3 is a better sequel to Alien than Aliens, even though its an inferior movie. Aliens is amazing, reinvented the action genre in terms of pacing and sheer excitement, but it's basically Cameron's version of Starship Troopers. The whole simplification of the alienness seen in the first movie kinda tarnished the whole series forever - a good example of that is the imdb boards for the Blomkamp (fanboy wet dream) Alien movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4462546/board/threads/
What people want is Aliens 2, what they deserve is Alien: Colonial Marines the game, the movie.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Joe Chip said:
Do you think that Alien > Aliens ?

How could one think otherwise? Every frame is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, every note Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, every twist or syllable Hamlet. Alien is a cinematic masterpiece that gets better every time you remember watching it. Aliens is merely just a more entertaining movie.
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NightCrawler

Aeons gone, vast, mad and deathless
Griffith said:
How could one think otherwise? Every frame is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, every note Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, every twist or syllable Hamlet. Alien is a cinematic masterpiece that gets better every time you remember watching it. Aliens is merely just a more entertaining movie.
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I'm glad you finally saw the light. :griffnotevil:
Yes, everyone has seen Aliens far more times than Alien, and i've only watched 2001 two times, but it still is one of the best movies i've ever seen.

How good is Aliens compared to Alien? Actually, beat for beat, Aliens follows the same structure as Alien. Cameron is clever in crafting sequels to the point that it looks and feels like a totally different movie but retains the familiarity of the original. Lets see:
- First 1/3 of the movie is slow until a major event: chestbuster/hive ambush (the "kill me" scene on Aliens is actually almost a copy of the cocoon scene that was scraped from Alien)
- Everyone regroups to think what to do next until Brett's death/Ferro's death which makes them rethink their options which leads to another event that alters plans: Dallas's death/Atmosphere Processor
- The group realizes one of them was trying to sabotage them to keep the alien: Ash/Burke
- The pace picks up, action doesn't let go after Lambert and Parker die/Operation ambush, Hudson and Vasquez die
- Timer closing while Ripley goes back for Jonesy/Newt, barely escaping the explosion
- Fake ending, all is well
- Final confrontation between Ripley and the alien, which gets thrown into space

Throw in more action, make Ripley a mom, replace the cat with a kid, and where is the improvement? The only thing in which Aliens tries to expand on Alien, the actually mythology, is by reducing the alien to that of an opposing, numerous and expendable form of disposable infantry akin to the bugs in Starship Troopers. Fun, yes! Giger's nightmarishly sensuous bio-mechanoid is narrowed to that of a hive of insects, suggesting that if one well-armed grunt had been aboard the Nostromo there never would've been a threat.
Lets even remove more interesting things in Aliens about the whole ALIEN thing, because eventually, the ultimate peril is not the terrifying otherness of the unknown, but the damaged cooling system of a nuclear reactor, caused not by the conflict between humanity and a life form completely extrinsic to our own, but by stray bullets from the marines themselves.
It's definitely a good allegory on the Vietnam war, i give it that.
 
Very interesting conversation. I like them both, but i were to choose one, it would be Alien. I've had this conversation with a few people, some seem to enjoy Aliens more.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
We've had this conversation before, but there's worse things to talk about! On the improvements in Aliens, I don't think effectively giving Ripley more layers, pathos and humanity to connect to (both good and evil) is a lateral move with, say, the cat (as you point out, Aliens gives you everything Alien did, and more). Aliens has a much stronger emotional core and resonance, and better if still arctypical characters, unless we're again talking in the realm of ideals and unicorns Alien resides in where it clearly embodies the purist emotion... TERROR (say it in the voice of Diablo). Speaking of which, all this mythology of the extrinsic dread unknown... it's Michael Myers in space! It's a humanoid rubber suit that has arms, legs, a head, human teeth for some reason, and in fact a human inside. Also, for the perfect invincible killing organism it sure was conveniently groggy at the end, perhaps its expedited life cycle found it geriatric and confused by that point (btw there's a beautiful out of focus painting of the rubber suit floating outside the pvc airlock exterior that spoiled the mystique long before they became bugs). My Alien hot takes burn like acid blood!

Good natured Alien roasting aside, I feel like I'm almost using different criteria here, like Alien isn't being judged merely like a great movie as Aliens is, but like the idea of a perfect one. I get that there's both significant and subtle elements that put Alien in a special class, but sometimes the perceived greatness of it seems to trump the reality that it's also just a movie with it's own shortcomings. It's like Secretariat vs. the aforementioned unicorn. However great, one (Aliens) is still considered just a horse by comparison, even though on some level that's crazy. Take that as you will; is Alien's perceived prestige compared to Aliens (thats not confusing =) at least in some part bullshit, or is it truly a "unicorn," and am I trying to subliminally work Blade Runner into the conversation?
 
Trailer for Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation - Fate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPZGc0WmfM

Didn't use a stuntman for the last scene in the trailer. Overall - looks fun. Same MI formula.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Hahaha, they're still making these...?

They really shouldn't bother with titles for these sequels. Should just be like Madden games or car models: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2015.
 
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