Unwashed Village
General Discussion => Unwashed Village => Topic started by: Loveshack on December 12, 2007, 03:21:44 AM
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Seriously, anything would be an improvement over the last one, but this one looks like everything the first one should have been.
http://www.canmag.com/nw/9880-aliens-predator-requiem-opening-five-minutes (http://www.canmag.com/nw/9880-aliens-predator-requiem-opening-five-minutes)
One gripe, isn't it a horror movie taboo to have a kid die a horrible death? They're supposed to be "off limits" unless it's some really twisted horror movie. That's why Jason didn't kill Tommy Jarvis, and why the Alien Queen didn't kill Newt (I know what the original script for Alien 3 said, it doesn't count, the aliens didn't kill Newt!)
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He didn't though.
He just got facehugged.
The death will probably happen off camera, ergo it will be fine.
Had you seen the kid torn apart, then people would start screamin and stuff.
Good to see the aliens aren't picky about hosts :)
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He didn't though.
He just got facehugged.
The death will probably happen off camera, ergo it will be fine.
Had you seen the kid torn apart, then people would start screamin and stuff.
Good to see the aliens aren't picky about hosts :)
Here's a quote from an interview with the Brothers Strause on MTV.com:
"We wanted to [go R-rated] with it," added Colin, who not only wears the same sunglasses as his 1-year-older brother, but even orders his burger the same way. "I mean, we chest-burst a little kid!"
"Yeah, he dies," Greg confirmed of the ill-fated child. "Onscreen, and very painfully. It's pretty f---ed up, but breaking some of the rules is a good thing here."
Well, according to the last movie, so long as the host can survive for five minutes or so, then everything should work out fine for little xenofetus. So apparently someone who should be dead from the shock of say, burning off their arm, would be an acceptable host.
I dunno, even implied kid death in a film usually urks people. Alien 3 had Newt's drowning and autopsy, and look how well it did. Main complaint from pretty much everyone: WAAAY too depressing. For a film series that takes place in the black hell of space where creatures chew out of a person's chest and kill everyone else in a dank leaky claustrophobic environment in every installment, that's saying something.
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One gripe, isn't it a horror movie taboo to have a kid die a horrible death?
I was surprised to see that. Kids and Animals seem to have more protection against death.
This reminds me of Independence Day.
The audience sees major cities being destroyed, the military based are destroyed, our government is destroyed (mmmmm) and it's ooooooo and aaaahhhh but no sadness.
A dog is shown in danger, people are on the edge of their seats... the fireball races down the tunnel killing humans and... will Woofy make it?
LEAP
The dog leaps into a side door and escapes death.
The audience breaks out into cheers.
:D
... I cheered too. =)
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One gripe, isn't it a horror movie taboo to have a kid die a horrible death?
I was surprised to see that. Kids and Animals seem to have more protection against death.
This reminds me of Independence Day.
The audience sees major cities being destroyed, the military based are destroyed, our government is destroyed (mmmmm) and it's ooooooo and aaaahhhh but no sadness.
A dog is shown in danger, people are on the edge of their seats... the fireball races down the tunnel killing humans and... will Woofy make it?
LEAP
The dog leaps into a side door and escapes death.
The audience breaks out into cheers.
:D
... I cheered too. =)
Woofy's just a dog. He's innocent. With adults, you know everyone of them has A. done something to kind of deserve it or really deserve it. or B. is reasonably aware of the stakes in that situation and the risks involved. I.E. Everyone on the Nostromo should have had a reasonable expectation of disaster when answering a FREAKING DISTRESS CALL from an uninhabitable planet coming from AN ALIEN VESSEL! Whereas I felt really bad for the dog in Alien 3, he didn't know any better, he was just being a dog.
Same thing with kids. Like in Hostel II ::SPOILER::when that guy just randomly decides to cap one of the Bubblegum Gang kids::SPOILER:: it was really messed up, even for a Hostel movie. At least it was off camera, but it's like, was that really necessary?
I know that pushing the envelope is sort of the "in" thing to do in horror right now. It's edgy, it's harsh, it grabs you by the balls and cuts them off with pinking shears. Unfortunately, this doesn't make a great film. It's a testament to the skills of the makeup crew for sure, but not to the writer/director/producer. Remember that most of the really good horror films left stuff up to the viewer's imagination. A classic example is PSYCHO: You never actually see the knife cut someone. If they made that movie now, Norman would vivisect Marion Crane alive in full color and then have a prolonged sex scene with his mother's corpse. What the hell happened to our society where viewers actually need to see this? I don't have a problem with it if it's necessary to the plot (I.E. Mr. Blonde cuts that guy's ear off in Reservior Dogs), but when it's just in there just to see how convincingly the effects team can pull off a WTF?!, then I hate it.
They really don't need to have a kid die in the movie, they're just putting it in there to stur up controversy and therefore publicity by proxy. They pretty much say so in their own interview. Unfortunately by ranting and raving about it online, I am playing into their hands, doing what they want me to do. And yet, even though I am fully aware of their plot and my role as a pawn in it, I...cannot...stop...those BASTARDS!!!
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I...cannot...stop...those BASTARDS!!!
That line needs pictorial accompaniment.
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My argument is "They're aliens. Like they care about killing puppies and babies. They did it in Alien 3, so lets run with it."
People might ask "Why include the kid at all? They could have had a teenager instead."
True enough. The writers could have also have had a whole bunch more aliens and the damn ship could have crashed next to a preschool. Now THAT would be tacky and disturbing.
I personally like it. Makes it more realistic. Then again, I am evil.
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My argument is "They're aliens. Like they care about killing puppies and babies. They did it in Alien 3, so lets run with it."
People might ask "Why include the kid at all? They could have had a teenager instead."
True enough. The writers could have also have had a whole bunch more aliens and the damn ship could have crashed next to a preschool. Now THAT would be tacky and disturbing.
I personally like it. Makes it more realistic. Then again, I am evil.
Well, Newt did die in Alien 3, but she drowned while unconscious; that's different from having a parasite chew out of her thoracic cavity. And really, having a 12-year-old girl on a prison planet full of violent love-starved men...probably would have made the movie more depressing is all I'm saying. They really didn't need to kill Hicks. He would have been scarred up, but otherwise hail and hardy.
Well, a dog obviously isn't an ideal host; I mean, look at that deformed alien that came out of the dog in Alien 3. The whole idea seemed kind of weak. It doesn't even seem like a faceraper could latch onto a dog what with the enlongated snout and everything, plus the dog F-ing EXPLODES and there's this full grown dog alien in it's place, that doesn't make sense even in the context of a science fiction movie, unless the xenomorphs have employed some sort of TARDIS technology in their reproduction that I am unaware of. I got the idea that the dog alien in Alien 3 was a sort of "desperate times call for desperate measures" thing where it was the only host close by and there absolutely had to be something, anything, to protect the queen, even if it was the mutant dog alien. No matter how you slice it, the movie sucked because they f'ed with the "rules" of the series. People wanted more of the same because that's what worked, you can't just shave Sigourney Weaver's head, change the look of the alien, have a face raper that lays more than one egg before dying, kill off all the characters from the last movie with no fanfare in the most blatant maguffin in cinematic history, and kill off the SERIES' HERO in one film and expect it to go over well with the fans. It was too much change too soon.
Likewise with Alien Versus Predator, they changed the rules of the series and the things that made both individual series special and the result was horrific.
Now in this new one, they break one of the cardinal rules of horror films, (to quote Bart Simpson: "KIDS DON'T DIE!!!"), and freely admit that they're just doing it to stir up controversy and shock people, basically saying "There's no level we won't gladly stoop to to get some attention." The problem is that this is the ONLY reason they're doing it. It's not to help the story, it's not in sync with the rest of the film script, it's just there as a gratuitous piece of gore meant to make people cringe. The brothers Strause are the movie industry equivalent of that goth kid in high school who fed on the attention he got from making sure everyone knew how "disturbed" he was.
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face raper that lays more than one egg before dying
How odd. I thought there were two facehuggers.
Anyway, if the kid actually dying is the only bad thing about the movie, I'll be happy. Because then its only a story with awesome action and a few plot holes for speed >.>
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Watched it and have no problem with the kid getting face hugged.
A) It's a movie
B) Most kids that age are annoying anyway
C) If kids can't die in movies anymore the next thing you'll see is people saying they shouldn't be allowed to play dodge ball...oh wait
:P
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face raper that lays more than one egg before dying
How odd. I thought there were two facehuggers.
Anyway, if the kid actually dying is the only bad thing about the movie, I'll be happy. Because then its only a story with awesome action and a few plot holes for speed >.>
I may be incorrect, but I think that there was only one facehugger on the ship. Bishop confirms that there was "an alien" onboard, but not multiples. I read somewhere that the one on the ship was a special kind, a super-facehugger that carried not only a drone embryo, but also the queen embryo. It makes sense, because what happens if the eggs laid by the existing queen were just randomly new queens every so often?
(I wonder if Bishop was responsible for that egg getting onboard the ship? Who else other than Bishop, who'd spent significant time on his own throughout the movie, and significant time studying the facehugger, would be able to obtain an egg, knowing it had a queen embryo, and get it aboard the Sulaco? I suppose the queen might have done it, but it's not like she was planning to lose that fight against Ripley and get flushed into space. Also, when you consider the trustworthiness of other androids in the series, is it all that unlikely that Bishop just had some subroutine in his programming to bring back an egg, while otherwise being the normal likeable Bishop we saw in the film? Lastly, what would be of more use to the company, a drone egg or a queen egg that would go on to lay more eggs? But, I digress...) I'll do some digging online, give me a moment.
::digging::
Here we be, from the "Alternate Lifecycles" entry in the Xenomorph Wikipedia Page.
"In Alien³, another addition was made. That of a 'super facehugger' that could impregnate two hosts with a Queen and a drone embryo. This facehugger was large and black, very different to the normal pink variety. This would explain why both Ripley and a dog were impregnated from one facehugger. The super facehugger was found by some of the inmates, who thought it a type of jellyfish."
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Huh. Well, what do ya know.
:)
And yes, either Bishop brought the egg on board or there was a special ninja alien no one saw. I doubt any of the humans had the chance to. Nor could the queen. I mean, didn't Ripley torch all her eggs in front of her?
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Huh. Well, what do ya know.
:)
And yes, either Bishop brought the egg on board or there was a special ninja alien no one saw. I doubt any of the humans had the chance to. Nor could the queen. I mean, didn't Ripley torch all her eggs in front of her?
Well, it's unlikely that Ripley torched *all* the eggs, because they were strewn all over Hadley's Hope, with the bulk of them being concentrated around her Royal Majesty's corn chute. It's not unlikely that one lone egg survived.
As for who could have put it on the Sulaco, I suppose it might have been the Queen, but like I said, she wasn't really expecting to lose the fight to a powerloader and get blasted into the vacuum of space, and the only human we know of who had any reason in acquiring an egg was Burke, but he wouldn't have just left it laying in some random part of the ship because the facehugger could have just as easily gotten him while he was in stasis as it did Ripley. Also, how would he carry the egg without opening? A synthetic like Bishop could because he's not a viable host. Plus, none of the humans had access to the drop ship to go to the Sulaco and plant the egg and come back, but Bishop did. When he crawled through the vent tunnel to hook up the satellite relay to bring the second evac ship down by remote, he had plenty of time to fly back up to the ship, drop the egg, and come back down with the cover story of the landing platform being unstable, hence his last-minute arrival to rescue Newt and Ripley. Assuming this was the one deviation in his otherwise normal people friendly programming, it makes sense that he wouldn't mention it when Ripley grilled him in Alien3. After all, being a machine he couldn't do anything outside of what he was programmed to do, no matter how human he may have seemed.
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Honestly, why the hell can't they kill a kid? Who cares? Like Sys said, they're vicious amoral alien monsters, and kids are small and slow and stupid compared to adults. Why is "no dead kids" one of the 'cardinal rules' of horror? Who wrote the rulebook? Why should they follow it?
I don't understand why you're so up in arms over them killing a kid 'just to break boundaries'. It seems kind of silly to go see a violent movie about terrifying space monsters and get angry 'cause they killed someone without pubic hair.
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It turns out (just for clarification purposes, of course) that people (including kids) are not really killed during the filming. Well sure, there was that Vic Morrow incident but that was clearly an accident.
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Honestly, why the hell can't they kill a kid? Who cares?...Why is "no dead kids" one of the 'cardinal rules' of horror? Who wrote the rulebook? Why should they follow it?
It's just sort of a taboo to kill children in a horror movie. For the same reason that if you kill a kid in real life and go to prison, some guy who killed fifty grown adults will try to shank you. Kids are "off limits". Think about your average Friday the 13th movie. Jason kills tons of people, but they're all 17 or so (or 35-year-olds playing 17-year-olds), and most of them barring the few survivors, are jerks who you're almost glad, or in some cases delighted to see get chopped.
Barring exceptions to the rule like The Bad Seed or The Good Son, horror films where children die just smack of heavy-handed sensationalism, and to me are a total cop-out on the part of the film makers.
I don't understand why you're so up in arms over them killing a kid 'just to break boundaries'.
It bugs me because that seems to be the only reason they're doing it, just to shock and disturb people. As if to say, who cares about plot and character development; look at how edgy and sick this is!!! Basically, harkening back to the 1970's exploitation films; or the Roman Coliseum. No problem with it if it serves a purpose, but if it's just in there for gratuitous reasons, then it seems kind of low.
...Like Sys said, they're vicious amoral alien monsters, and kids are small and slow and stupid compared to adults...
I don't dispute that, and if xenomorphs were real, I am fully aware that many children, puppies, elderly people, nuns, and clowns would all die horribly, but then it wouldn't be a movie. It would be Armageddon, but the real Armageddon, not the movie Armageddon.
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It bugs me because that seems to be the only reason they're doing it, just to shock and disturb people. .
Well it's not like they were out to make Alien Magnolias or a Predator Named Wanda or something. I was both shocked and disturbed by great sci-fi horror movies such as Alien or The Thing. I still don't see anything wrong with offing the kid...except he and his father aren't black and everyone knows the first person to die in a horror flick has to be black.
*nods*
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Well it's not like they were out to make Alien Magnolias or a Predator Named Wanda or something. I was both shocked and disturbed by great sci-fi horror movies such as Alien or The Thing. I still don't see anything wrong with offing the kid...except he and his father aren't black and everyone knows the first person to die in a horror flick has to be black.
*nods*
This is why if you're Black... don't have sex in the film. You'll just get a double whammy. And please... if you must do that... don't talk about what you're going to do after the adventure is over. You're as good as dead.
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...Well sure, there was that Vic Morrow incident but that was clearly an accident...
(I had to look this up since it was before my time, but I've read about it before and was like, "Oooooh, that's riiiiight." Way to use a classic reference BC!)
I dunno, though. Think about this, don't you think the publicity the film would get because someone died on the set might increase the film's box office? I'm not saying that anyone set Vic Morrow up to be decapitated by a helicopter, but then again...
Remember, it was common knowledge for many years that the guy you see get trampled by horses in Ben-Hur was a real stunt-man who was too slow and whose family got paid off so they could leave the scene in the movie. How many people went to see Ben-Hur because they heard that they could actually see a man die.
All this and more on the next episode of The Dark Side of the Silver Screen!
...except he and his father aren't black and everyone knows the first person to die in a horror flick has to be black.
*nods*
Unless it's one of the Living Dead movies. Then the black guy never dies, or at least makes it to the end of the film before dying spectactularly. Land of is a technicality because the black guy is a zombie.
This is why if you're Black... don't have sex in the film. You'll just get a double whammy. And please... if you must do that... don't talk about what you're going to do after the adventure is over. You're as good as dead.
So what happens if you're black, horny, two days 'til retirement, just christened your new boat, and are planning to sail around the world with your old lady?
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So what happens if you're black, horny, two days 'til retirement, just christened your new boat, and are planning to sail around the world with your old lady?
You're totally toast. Especially if you can see Arnie anywhere.
and clowns would all die horribly
YES!!! XD
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So what happens if you're black, horny, two days 'til retirement, just christened your new boat, and are planning to sail around the world with your old lady?
You're already dead and show up in a flashback where you die for the audience's amusement. Not only that but the director is a Rashomon fan and each character in the flashback sees your death from a different perspective.
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It's just sort of a taboo to kill children in a horror movie.
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Kids are "off limits".
really. so how about the kids in the original Dawn of the Dead and the Cooper's kid in the remake of Night? i take it they don't count since they were technically already dead?
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I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but they didn't show their deaths on screen in an orgiastic display of bloodshed and carnage just for the hell of it, they just died. (Or in the case of the kids in that airport in Dawn, they were already dead, so Peter shooting them is okay. Same thing for zombie baby in the Dawn remake.)
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well you still said
It bugs me because that seems to be the only reason they're doing it, just to shock and disturb people.
which is the WHOLE POINT of horror, isn't it?
and as a side note, i don't think i'd call AvP horror anyway. i guess they'd sneak some of it in there but it's more sci-fi-action.
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Kids are overrated. :-X
I have no real feelings either way about kids dying in movies - to purposely avoid it is as bad as including it for the heck of it. But if it's reasonably within the plot for kids to die, then what's the problem?
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We kind of have a double-standard in the US (big surprise!) because novels often have kids being killed, etc. But no-no! We mustn't do that in the movies!
*sigh*
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New task:
A horror movie... where nobody dies!
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New task:
A horror movie... where nobody dies!
I thought the Gidget movies were pretty horrific.
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New task:
A horror movie... where nobody dies!
Well, technically no one died in "Identity", just various personalities inside a crazy man's head.
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Well, technically no one died in "Identity", just various personalities inside a crazy man's head.
Not quite true. At the end it's implied he killed the people transporting him, though the viewer doesn't actually see the murders themselves. (If I remember correctly. It's been a while since I saw the thing.)
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Kids are overrated. :-X
I have no real feelings either way about kids dying in movies - to purposely avoid it is as bad as including it for the heck of it. But if it's reasonably within the plot for kids to die, then what's the problem?
Perhaps only the bad kids should die like the kids who don't listen to their parents or refuse to eat their vegetables. Kids who say please and thank you survive. This would help parents everywhere.
"Stevie... Don't scream in church... you don't want to end up like that kid in Saw 6"
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Saw the movie, and while it was better (read: leaps and bounds beyond) than the first one, it wasn't nearly as good as installments in either individual series.
SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::
Indeed a kid does die on screen, very quickly and with minimal gore and without showing his face during said chest bursting, so all in all it wasn't nearly as horrifying as I was expecting.
Then the movie takes a turn for the TRULY tasteful by having the Predalien use a hospital's maternity ward as a snack bar. It's not actually shown, but it's implied. (Closeup of bassinets full of sleeping newborns, slowly pans up to closeup of drooling Predalien. Moments later, all the babies are missing.) :o
And lastly, in a scene that seems to imply that the writers realized they painted themselves into a corner by having their star alien be unable to lay eggs and only a limited number of facehuggers surviving from the initial shipwreck, the Predalien has a specialized method of reproduction wherein it finds pregnant women and vomits multiple embryos down their throats. Said embryos eat the pregnant women's fetuses and burst en mass from their bellies. In one particularly unnecessary scene you see a writhing mass of chestbursters amid an assortment of vaguely recognizable baby parts. You know, because the audience really needs to know what that looks like. :P
SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::
All in all an okay film, but certainly not on my A-list. While it seems that the design team learned from their mistakes in the last film, meaning that the predators aren't built like pro wrestlers and all of the aliens aren't eleven feet tall and the human characters aren't all obvious cannon fodder, (which makes for some genuine "Wow, I thought they were going to make it to the end!" moments), the movie relied too much on shock and schlock but not enough on action or story, though it has its moments.
SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::
Then they nuke the city at the very end killing everyone including the Predalien and Predator, who are locked in mortal combat and have simultaneously mortally wounded each other at the time. Meaning every life or death battle you've witnessed for the last two hours was completely irrelevant to the story since everyone still dies. Meaning it was just a matter of whether or not they died a horrible painful death by one of the many ways a person could expect to die at the hands of a Yautja or Xenomorph, or whether or not they died a horrible painless death by, well, nuclear explosion.
SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::SPOILERS::
Also, in continuing the tradition of bastardizing the source material, the 10-seconds-after-host-regains-consciousness embryo births remain intact. So instead of following the original movie, where John Hurt had a facehugger clamped to his face for several hours, remained unconscious for several hours after that, and appeared fine for several hours and then give birth to that thing over the course of about a minute and a half; the new alien life cycle goes like this:
::Host wakes up::
Host: "Hey, what happened?"
::crunch/splat/dead::
SCREEEEEECH!!!
I demand consistency in the life cycles of my horror movie creatures. This is worse than when Pinhead just started randomly making cenobytes, that's not his job!