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Kaldor wrote:What claims? My only claim is that you're wrong. The characters motivations make total sense, no 'fanwank' required.

People don't act like the biologist acted. This is not a debatable point, it's just a statement of basic fething reality.

And yeah, you typing out a paragraph of stuff you made up in your head to explain the actions of a minor character is perhaps the definitive version of fanwank. Don't like the term, don't do it.

Thanks for playing, Sweetheart.

Seriously, it is okay to accept that part of a movie you liked wasn't that good. Just let it happen. The release you feel will be tremendous. You won't have to act like an ass on the internet any more. You can just say 'yeah, that part was a little weak but didn't impact my enjoyment of the movie'.

What a wonderful world that would be. No stupid arguments about trivial but indefensible things. You can make that world happen. Just... become a reasonable person capable of accepting that a thing you like can have weak points. From there reasoned analysis of film might even become achievable.

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:What claims? My only claim is that you're wrong. The characters motivations make total sense, no 'fanwank' required.

People don't act like the biologist acted. This is not a debatable point, it's just a statement of basic fething reality.

People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

No, not really. I liked the movie, but his behavior was not credible.

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.

LordofHats wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?"

Depends on the alien I suppose.

Ahtman wrote:

LordofHats wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?"

Depends on the alien I suppose.

True dat!

Ahtman may be right on this one @_@

LordofHats wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.

An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.

I don't understand how people can't wrap their heads around the idea that a character under extreme duress might do something stupid.

I mean, just read the Darwin Awards for some examples of people that do stupid gak. It happens all the time.

Kaldor wrote:An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.

...

If the Biologist had been established to have a bold adventuring personality (which he sort of did in the first few minutes of his intro), that might of worked. But then he turned to pudding with the geologist and wussed out, spending every moment prior to his eminent doom shaking and going "oh my gosh what is that!" EDIT: Heck, the stupidity of that has already been noted by TV Tropes under Idiot Ball: Yes, go ahead and pet the strange hissing cobra thing; we all want to see what happens. Scratch that, we've paid to see it.

It's not like they didn't just find a bunch of corpses with giant holes blown into their heads (not that them getting lost isn't silly in itself).

Also, Steve Irwin was a TV personality. Not exactly a good example of 'real' people, unless we're now counting the Kardashians as anything other than a bunch of losers who play losers on tv. And Steve Irwin never went to an alien planet either, and he wasn't a biologist. He never even went to college (he didn't look like a nerd either).

I fail to see how Steve Irwin is at all a good comparison, though things didn't exactly go so well for him either XD

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.

I've explained this to you several times now. You keep pretending to not get it, so that you can keep pretending there isn't a single little thing wrong with a movie you liked. Do you see how Mannahnin said "I liked the movie, but his behaviour was not credible"... that's because he's a reasonable, smart guy. You can be just as reasonable, you know.


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Kaldor wrote:An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.

Steve Irwin didn't run away scared from the site of a dead body, only to play with a poisonous snake an hour or so later. Seriously, give it up.

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.

There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.

There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?

The characterisations aren't one of them.

Kaldor wrote:

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.

There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.

There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?

The characterisations aren't one of them.

What, the same squid thing that has a pregnancy cycle of a few hours, implying it probably matures pretty quickly. That was the thing you had a problem with?

The only person not grasping the simple, basic idea is yourself, for days you have repeated the same point, and everyone has disagreed with you. Does that not tell you something. Stop trying to defend the indefensible, because you must be doing that, or you have very little concept of humanity and how people act.

Kaldor wrote:There's no reason they wouldn't.

The reason is that they're supposed to be people. People don't run away scared from something that isn't actually dangerous, and then go up and pet a snake a few minutes later. Those kinds of wild behaviour swings exist in whacky comedies and some of the more dreadful Victorian stuff, and in every case it was done to make some greater political point (normally 'this guy is such a jerk').

To return to your Steve Irwin example, if we saw him backing away from seeing a dead body we'd say 'that's not like Steve Irwin at all, he's normally noted as being very brave, almost foolhardy'. You claim that people would think 'oh people are irrational and that means for reasons we can invent on the spot we should be willing to expect wild changes in characteristics from moment to moment'.

There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?

The characterisations aren't one of them.

Okay, cool, we've gotten somewhere. That's something, I guess. Now we can just get over your ego admitting you were wrong on the characterisation, and I reckon we'll be well on our way to a sensible conversation.

dæl wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

I've explained to you, several times now, that the problem is that he showed cowardice in one scene, and then complete indifference to danger in the next. The issue is that people do not switch from fleeing from the site of a dead body to playing with an alien life form.

There's no reason they wouldn't. I don't see how you can't understand that.

There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?

The characterisations aren't one of them.

What, the same squid thing that has a pregnancy cycle of a few hours, implying it probably matures pretty quickly. That was the thing you had a problem with?

Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?

But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.

Kaldor wrote:
Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?

But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.

This has reached the level of farce, I shall now just laugh at you and your mantra.

Kaldor wrote:

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:What claims? My only claim is that you're wrong. The characters motivations make total sense, no 'fanwank' required.

People don't act like the biologist acted. This is not a debatable point, it's just a statement of basic fething reality.

People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

Name one instance where a biologist, after seeing a video of a bunch of guys that would make prowrestlers look like babies running from something, then seeing lots of thoe guys now dead, then being lost, then seeing some creepy ass snake thing appear which reacts just like a threatened cobra would, then think "hey no problem, lets see if it likes its neck rubbed."

In the words of the immortal bard: "sucker please."


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LordofHats wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.

Further, he got lost because he freaked out and bailed after seeing all the alien bodies. His operational mode was not "to boldly go where no man has gone before" but more "wo I'm outta here."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kaldor wrote:

LordofHats wrote:

Kaldor wrote:People act like that all the fething time. Constantly, in all walks of life. Especially when under duress.

You're telling me that when you see an alien life form, on a seemingly lifeless world (baring earthworms), you'd stare at it and say "Hello beautiful?" Genre Sauviness might be bad, but genre blindness isn't much better.

An extreme example, but I give you Steve Irwin.

I don't understand how people can't wrap their heads around the idea that a character under extreme duress might do something stupid.

I mean, just read the Darwin Awards for some examples of people that do stupid gak. It happens all the time.

Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.


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There's things I don't like about the movie, like how did that squid thing get so big?

Now this is an issue. In Alien the creautre was able to grow so quickly because in the script/book it got into the food lockers and went to town.

Squid boy on the other hand was still locked in the medical room. No munchies to grow on. Unless it feeds on rather sterile air or eats plasteel its not physically possible. Cool, but not possible.

Ok it wasn't cool. I thought that whole portion was incredibly stupid.
*Why did the surviving engineer take after her? He wasn't looking for a ship, as there were others.
*Why did the surviving engineer not have a ray gun? Its like GW scripted their HTH combat techniques. "Mmmf he's big, he doesn't even need a sword."
*How did the engineer make it to the pod. If they are human(like) he would have been susceptible to the atmosphere and died too.

OT but am I correct in that the snake thingies had acid for blood?
OT but is this Alien 1.0 life cycle?
***Engineers bomb planet with goo.
***peoples get all infecty and do the disco boogie.
***squid boy appears.
***squid boy injects other peoples
***alien 1.0 appears (looked like sharkman to me).

That seems a bit...complicated.

Kaldor wrote:
Yeah, like HOW did it get so big? What was it eating in there? Hundreds of kilos of bandages?

But the characters were fine. People do strange things under duress, and there's plenty of perfectly rational explanations for why someone would touch a penis-snake on an alien planet. It's saddening that some audience members obviously have so little to do with humanity that the behaviour of the biologist seems inexplicable to them.

In the original ALIEN the Xenomorph reaches complete maturity without any sustenance, ergo... vis a vis... concordantly it's not that hard to imagine that this Proto-Facehugger can too.

Thinking the actions of the needlessly aggressive and cowardly geologist and the non event other scientist playing with the space phallus serpent wasn't a completely fethed in the head idea is mental.
We have two guys that want to run away at the first site of dead humanoid aliens but want to interact with something that looks like a rape cobra.

The other thing I didn't understand about the scene in which the leave the ship while trying to outrun the storm is that the big covered rover vehicle is missing, yet nobody had left yet... unless there were other pleb scientists off screen that had left beforehand? This really perplexed me, although if they had been in the rover the scene wouldn't have been as tense... so... hmmm...

alarmingrick wrote:

Corpsesarefun wrote:

Medium of Death wrote:The Only problem with that is that the SJ in ALIEN is fossilised so has to be well in excess of 2000 years old.

We don't know it's fossilised, we just know it had an outer layer with a mineral-esque composition which is easily explained by it being armour.

That, and the environments are different. They could be from the same time, but due to different exposures of different air, chemicals, etc...could have a
vastly different appearance. As far as I know noone in the Aliens universe went back to the first ship and did any carbon dating or any other form of age
measurement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDRLtgr2T9E&feature=related

I could potentially agree on the fossilisation thing if it wasn't for the the fact Dallas clearly states that it is 'Fossilised'. He might be wrong as he isn't a paleontologist, but without any other evidence on the contrary why should we think he is wrong or try and explain it as something else? We now know they have been about long enough for fossilisation to occur, so it's still plausible but completely rules out an LV426 Prometheus connection.

Another thing I have noticed is that the SJ in ALIEN looks substantially bigger than the ones in Prometheus. Either this shows another type of SJ/Engineer or that perhaps their size was suitably scaled back to make it easier for them to interact with Humans.

I'm not sure what you guys made of the carved skull in the rock face near the Engineer facility. I had to double take, and wondered what it was all about. I couldn't understand why an advanced race would carve a giant skull into the surrounding sandstone.


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Frazzled wrote:
OT but am I correct in that the snake thingies had acid for blood?
OT but is this Alien 1.0 life cycle?
***Engineers bomb planet with goo.
***peoples get all infecty and do the disco boogie.
***squid boy appears.
***squid boy injects other peoples
***alien 1.0 appears (looked like sharkman to me).

That seems a bit...complicated.

They did have acid for blood, suggesting that the goo passes on Xenomorph traits. I was also thinking that is what they would do with the goo, but seems far too convoluted to be true.
The only thing I guess could be wrong is that the black goo transforms people into xenomorphs or at least a proto-xenomorph on it's own. The Proto Facehugger thing is perhaps an unintended by product. We never get to see a full transformation as both infected individuals are destroyed before the infection can take complete hold of them, although we did see needlessly aggressive ginger scientist start to do a crab walk like pose, somewhat similar to this. I'd imagine that it's somewhat like that scrapped ALIEN 3 script in which the Humans transform into hybrid Xenomorphs through being infected with Xeno-DNA. I'm very surprised that the Proto-Xeno-Hybrid thing didn't look more human, as Giger has always wanted to make something more human.

Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.

Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh

LordofHats wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.

Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh

AM I the only one who remembers the claymation spoofs of Steve Irwin? 100% win!

LordofHats wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.

Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh

What would you expect from someone who's life is ruled by Weiners?

alarmingrick wrote:

LordofHats wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Steve Irwin wasn't under duress, unless you coinsider living under the burden of being an idiot and wanting to stick your thumb up the keister of every animal you come across to be duress.

Damn Frazz. That's a little harsh

What would you expect from someone who's life is ruled by Weiners?

All tremble before the awesome might of BADGER Dogs!

Medium of Death wrote:

alarmingrick wrote:

Corpsesarefun wrote:

Medium of Death wrote:The Only problem with that is that the SJ in ALIEN is fossilised so has to be well in excess of 2000 years old.

We don't know it's fossilised, we just know it had an outer layer with a mineral-esque composition which is easily explained by it being armour.

That, and the environments are different. They could be from the same time, but due to different exposures of different air, chemicals, etc...could have a
vastly different appearance. As far as I know noone in the Aliens universe went back to the first ship and did any carbon dating or any other form of age
measurement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDRLtgr2T9E&feature=related

I could potentially agree on the fossilisation thing if it wasn't for the the fact Dallas clearly states that it is 'Fossilised'. He might be wrong as he isn't a paleontologist, but without any other evidence on the contrary why should we think he is wrong or try and explain it as something else? We now know they have been about long enough for fossilisation to occur, so it's still plausible but completely rules out an LV426 Prometheus connection.

Another thing I have noticed is that the SJ in ALIEN looks substantially bigger than the ones in Prometheus. Either this shows another type of SJ/Engineer or that perhaps their size was suitably scaled back to make it easier for them to interact with Humans.

I'm not sure what you guys made of the carved skull in the rock face near the Engineer facility. I had to double take, and wondered what it was all about. I couldn't understand why an advanced race would carve a giant skull into the surrounding sandstone.

Being exposed to different climates, as mentioned already, could be the reason for the body to seem fossilized. It's not like Dallas is an expert, as you mentioned.

I think the difference of the head/helmets of the SJ/Engineers is a bigger problem for me. It could be that they are different creatures or species.

There was an article in a cinefex in which some of the people involved were interviewed and some of the early production designs are was shown. In it there was a bit more explanation of things, such as a bit more on the goo.

The drink at the beginning is not the same as the stuff in the jars. They do actually look slightly different as well. The stuff in the jars is, for all intents and purposes, weaponized xenomorph. It turned worms into xenomorph worms, and in the pre-production art the guy infected by the snake looked more like a hybrid of a human and a xeno at that point. Holloway also was supposed to exibit some signs of transforming into one as well but of course gets torched. Why they didn't stick to that, because it looked much cooler than the crab walk, I don't know. I haven't found they better hybrid pictures online atm but I will try and find them again.



There were also more Engineers in the opening scene:



Full disclosure, I haven't read the whole article as I do not have that issue of Cinefex, but going by what someone who did read it said. It is an interesting look at some of the earlier ideas in the film that disappeared as the production went on.

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting those pics! Reading that article snippet, I always find it amazing how much work goes into even a single scene - you can definitely understand how some of these films end up costing this much.

I believe that Scott's original cut of the film, before it was reduced for the theatre version, was an extra 35 minutes in length or so. I would hazard a guess that those sequences above might well be in the full director's cut of the movie.

Cheers for posting that Ahtman, was pretty cool to see.

I'm glad the final cut decided to take stuff like that out, but keep in the completely superfluous scenes like Captain wants to sex Vickers and I'm barren *sob*sob*sob*.

If David had told her that she was Pregnant during the scan, they could have had that whole 'I can't get pregnant because i'm barren' conversation. Instead we get it shoehorned into the scene and get the impression that Shaw has some mental defect.

The more I think about this film, the more I begin to rage.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDLEY!

sebster wrote:

Kaldor wrote:There's no reason they wouldn't.

The reason is that they're supposed to be people. People don't run away scared from something that isn't actually dangerous, and then go up and pet a snake a few minutes later. Those kinds of wild behaviour swings exist in whacky comedies and some of the more dreadful Victorian stuff, and in every case it was done to make some greater political point (normally 'this guy is such a jerk').

To return to your Steve Irwin example, if we saw him backing away from seeing a dead body we'd say 'that's not like Steve Irwin at all, he's normally noted as being very brave, almost foolhardy'. You claim that people would think 'oh people are irrational and that means for reasons we can invent on the spot we should be willing to expect wild changes in characteristics from moment to moment'.

Well, Steve Irwin (for example) might be totally unafraid of animals but scared of a haunted house. That's not too far-fetched, and may be the kind of thing Kaldor was thinking of.

I could certainly believe in a character who has different responses to different potentially scary things. For example, someone who has pet spiders might be very comfortable around tarantulas and happy to have them walking on him, but have a normal fear response to other stimuli. I could absolutely see a biologist as potentially being comfortable around a scary-looking animal while being scared of something else (like the alien structure and the general situation). And that's how I initially rationalized the scene with the "cobra" xenomorph.

But the problem is that for an animal biologist to really be comfortable around a creepy-looking thing he'd have to be familiar with it or see it exhibiting behavior consonant with safe/non-aggressive animals it resembles. If the thing had acted like a calm, happy cobra (for example), maybe him not finding its appearance frightening would make sense. But instead it assumed a "confront possible threat and rear to strike" posture, which should have set off alarm bells for a biologist even louder than for you and me. If he had been staying carefully outside strike range, based on its body length, then his curious and interested attitude might make sense; he might not find its appearance creepy, so if his knowledge gave him a reasonable expectation of safely, he might not be freaked out at all by how weird it looked. But sadly that's not what the scene was; it was more a standard horror movie scene where someone stupidly puts themselves directly into harm's way despite clear danger signs. Which was disappointing.

If, OTOH, he had taken some kind of obvious precaution (like staying carefully outside its strike range based on body length/height it had reared to), but then been surprised by a) another one circling behind them, or b) the thing leaping through the air in a way no snake can, then it would look more like a scene where a smart guy gets complacent, rather than a scene were a guy who should have some sense of self-preservation takes no precautions.

The whole situation also creates an expectation of greater caution, as well. If you're x trillion miles from Earth, have only a small support crew, limited medical facilities, and a hostile atmosphere, you're not going to be as cavalier about handling an unfamiliar critter as you might be on nice comfortable Earth, where you can be helivaced to a first class trauma center with antitoxins in stock on short notice.

Mannahnin wrote:If, OTOH, he had taken some kind of obvious precaution (like staying carefully outside its strike range based on body length/height it had reared to), but then been surprised by a) another one circling behind them, or b) the thing leaping through the air in a way no snake can, then it would look more like a scene where a smart guy gets complacent, rather than a scene were a guy who should have some sense of self-preservation takes no precautions.

The whole situation also creates an expectation of greater caution, as well. If you're x trillion miles from Earth, have only a small support crew, limited medical facilities, and a hostile atmosphere, you're not going to be as cavalier about handling an unfamiliar critter as you might be on nice comfortable Earth, where you can be helivaced to a first class trauma center with antitoxins in stock on short notice.

Absolutely, it's what made that scene so annoying. We all know, and go into the film accepting and expecting, that the minor characters will get dispatched one by one, and we know that in places those deaths will be a little contrived, with people getting split off from the main crew, heading out to repair things by themselves, all that stuff. We lower our expectations for behaviour to get to the next 'minor character gets killed bit', but even within those lowered expectations the deaths were so contrived, as you say there were dozens of better ways to handle the snake attack, and I'm sure anyone here can think of at least five better explanations for why those two might have been split off from the rest of the party.

As you said earlier, it's likely they chose the set up they did because they were trying to make a greater point about humanity. The fear on discovering the body and decision to return to the ship was chosen by the writers as it made some kind of comment, and the reckless behaviour towards the snake some other comment. It's just that in each case they pushed too far, and the events ended up feeling silly and contrived.

One thing I forgot for a bit after the movie was that the lost geologist was stoned, or an equivalent drugged state. They never explicitly state what he is inhaling, he just implies that it is a drug of some sort.

True; which is a ready-made excuse for him getting sloppy and careless, once he was already scared and stranded by the storm and using it to calm down. But pretty much all oh his dumb behavior comes BEFORE that.

This has been mentioned before, but them getting lost was terrible. Fifield carries in and activates the mapping robots; refers to them as his "pups", and he doesn't have so much as an iphone-equivalent to display the map on, so they can navigate out?

I think it was only the Ginger Geologist that was 'stoned' though wasn't it?

I really have no idea why they insisted on taking on a crew of civilians on a mission to discover Alien life. I can understand the presence of Holloway and Shaw, but what is the point of the other Scientists? Surely Wayland corp. could have easily hired specialists in the field, or employed their own staff to go on the mission. It seems like they took an awfully big risk considering how much Vickers stressed the mission cost. They didn't even have that many 'company' men to secure the continuation of the mission/safety of the ship.

Prometheus would have been better served on a larger research vessel in which things start going to hell. A vessel in which the company is more prevalent and the 'specialists' seem to be out numbered/kept in the dark amongst a teeming crew that at least has an idea of what is happening. The Scottish scientist really pissed me off because she sounded like a dole warrior from the east end, barely capable of speaking English. The Ginger guy just seemed like a thug and had no air of 'Specialist in his field' to him. The Biologist wasn't needed at all. In fact those three characters could have been replaced with nameless 'company redshirts'.