NeverarGreat

Lord Haseo said:

NeverarGreat said:

Alien: Covenant

My first impression after watching Prometheus was that it felt like a prelude to revelations in the next film. After watching this, I can conclude that neither Prometheus or Covenant are worth the bother. Covenant, though it has a fascinating villain, still fails to provide any answers and ends illogically.

What the Alien franchise has desperately needed is a new type of alien. We know the life cycle of the Xenomorph, so there is no longer any dread in the face of this threat, only momentary shocks due to jump scares. Also, Prometheus was a more interesting movie than Covenant for me because at least there was some nominal change in the plot structure of ‘ship gets a signal and investigates’.

Here’s an idea, Scott: Have a ship with a bunch of competent scientists and soldiers get lost in deep space, crash landing on a planet far from Earth and encountering a threat that is entirely different than the Xenomorphs or the Engineers. It’s pretty simple.

I think a shift in storytelling would make these films better than just making a new threat. Covenant tried to balance action, horror, and the philosophical elements of Prometheus to somewhat lackluster results as the latter two don’t feel nearly as present in the film. If the film had just been scarier and answered a few more questions I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.

That it’s not scary is a structural problem though. As I said, there’s negligible mystery in the Xenomorph life cycle, so we’re all just waiting for the hapless redshirts to catch on before they all bite it. We’re not learning along with them the dangers of this threat. The other problem is the lack of answers. It’s not that we are given few answers to Prometheus, but that the person who demanded these answers is gone and with them the drive in the story to provide those answers. Therefore, the answers it does provide it provides to the audience and not to the characters in particular, making it explanation heavy while failing to satisfy our desire.

Exactly!
And for a prequel, Life is at least a better contender than Prometheus or Covenant.

I didn’t say he’s wrong, which is sort of why it’s depressing.

No, but I bet nobody would mind if we posted it in one of the 20 or so Batman threads.

CatBus said:

Here’s my odds on various things happening (no timeline) after the events of last week.

“Smoking gun”-type indisputable evidence of criminal wrongdoing by senior administration official available to public: 100%
Successful RICO prosecution of senior administration official: 85%
Presidential pardon of senior administration official: 80%
Impeachment of senior administration official: <1%
All mainstream media access to White House revoked: 10%
All mainstream media (including Fox) access to White House revoked: 1%
Dems take the Senate (meaning 51+ seats) in 2018: 0%
Dems take the House in 2018: 0%
Trump average approval rating (Gallup): 36%
Trump re-elected in 2020: 60%
Trump appoints one or more additional Supreme Court justice: 40%

I like the direction the news has been heading too, but there is still quite a hill to climb. I wouldn’t treat this like a done deal at all.

Well this is depressing as shit.

I think that the recomposite of the shot for the SE shifted the flashes 1 or 2 frames further, so there should be a way to reconstruct a full flyover without flashes. The problem would be in extracting the flashes to place in the correct locations, and this would probably take some reconstruction in Photoshop.

Alien: Covenant

My first impression after watching Prometheus was that it felt like a prelude to revelations in the next film. After watching this, I can conclude that neither Prometheus or Covenant are worth the bother. Covenant, though it has a fascinating villain, still fails to provide any answers and ends illogically.

What the Alien franchise has desperately needed is a new type of alien. We know the life cycle of the Xenomorph, so there is no longer any dread in the face of this threat, only momentary shocks due to jump scares. Also, Prometheus was a more interesting movie than Covenant for me because at least there was some nominal change in the plot structure of ‘ship gets a signal and investigates’.

Here’s an idea, Scott: Have a ship with a bunch of competent scientists and soldiers get lost in deep space, crash landing on a planet far from Earth and encountering a threat that is entirely different than the Xenomorphs or the Engineers. It’s pretty simple.

Doing it wrong, but:

ih85&

Yeah, he was a decent guy, at least to me. I understand why he was banned, but it’s a shame that there are no outspoken conservative voices in the politics thread now.

I’m sure that situation will not last forever.

Well, interesting at least.

Prometheus.

I watched it in preparation for seeing Alien: Covenant tomorrow, and I’m still unsure what to rate this. On the plus side, the visuals are polished and impressive. There was also a religious component that was somewhat interesting. I didn’t hate any of the characters, though the two guys who got killed in the alien ship richly deserved their fates.

I still have no idea what the Engineers want or what the Xenomorphs have to do with any of this. I don’t know why the Engineers created humans or why they’re different than them despite being genetically identical.

Fassbender was intriguing, the penultimate scene (which should have been the final scene) was interesting, and did I mention the set design?

Overall, it feels like a prelude to a diabolical religious service - it sets the mood while providing almost nothing in the way of plot or even worldbuilding. If Alien: Covenant leans into this I’ll be more likely to consider this movie a success, but it doesn’t hold up on its own.

Possessed said:
This post doesn’t really answer your question but I had fun making it.

This is an all-timer.

I’m sure they will be. I’m happy that they seem to be going for practical racing rather than just green-screen stuff.

Okay, just got a chance to watch this.

First of all, I like the aspect of Episode 1 that you’ve chosen to focus on. The Anakin podrace plot in TPM was the best part of the movie IMO, and I’m glad to see (almost) no Coruscant scenes and very little Gungan action.

Interspersing these scenes into ANH has promise; since there are obvious parallels between Luke and Anakin, it feels appropriate to see Anakin’s time on Tatooine. However, I don’t think their placement quite works yet. For example, the first inclusion after the Tantive scene carries with it a feeling of narrative whiplash, as we are suddenly introduced to a bevy of new characters from 3 decades prior. They are talking about Tatooine, sure, but we are never told that Tatooine is Luke’s planet in ANH, so it’s a bit strange to be focusing on this. The same odd whiplash holds true for most of the other flashbacks. The fade outs after the Droid Auction and after the Binary Sunset seem like good places for flashback scenes, but the content of these flashbacks has little to do with the previous scenes and so they still feel out of place.

Going forward, I would ask: what is the goal here? You say it is to tell Anakin’s story, and indeed it focuses on this aspect above all others, but there’s still a great deal of extraneous plot for TPM. I’d argue that the story should be told from Anakin’s point of view, so it should not begin with Obi-wan and Qui-gon. In fact, the Naboo plot should have no place here, as Anakin has practically no understanding of this conflict, and in any case the plot for TPM makes little sense.

Watching this edit, I had an idea of how you could make this more about Anakin, and tie it together with ANH. It could start with the Tantive attack as normal, but after R2 and 3PO escape in the pod, it cuts to the deleted scene of Luke watching the battle and his discussion with Biggs. This establishes Luke as a hotshot pilot risking his life early in the film. Then the first we see of TPM footage is right after the dinner scene where Luke’s parents talk about Anakin:
“He has too much of his father in him”
"That’s what I’m afraid of"
32 Years Earlier
Cut to the middle of the podrace. We see Anakin neck and neck with Sebulba, and then one of Anakin’s engines catches fire, costing him his position. The next scene is Jar Jar and Sebulba, and this is where Anakin meets Qui-gon and company. Anakin notices Qui-gon’s lightsaber, Anakin invites them to his home, and they discuss their predicament over dinner. Edit out the fact that Watto doesn’t know about the pod - in this version Anakin has used this pod in several races.
Then there is the binary sunset and R2’s disappearance.
Later that night, Anakin and Qui-gon sit outside discussing Anakin’s future. There is the scene with Watto, where the dialogue has been massively cut down to only include the bit about the ship being the entry fee. Then Anakin fixes his pod and it ends with his ‘It’s working’ line.
Then Luke and the Sand People and his talk with Obi-wan. After this scene, as the music rises, cut to the beginning of the podrace. The race happens sans the parts used in the previous race, and there is no discussion of Qui-gon winning Anakin in a bet. The scene after the podrace is Anakin being informed that he has been freed and his emotional leave-taking. This mirrors Luke’s inner turmoil over leaving, and gives us more room between his refusal of the call and his sudden decision to leave.
Cut to the Imperial officers and the film continues as is.

I don’t know how much more of Anakin’s story needs to be told in this fashion. After Luke sells his speeder and we see the dark-hooded spy character, we could cut to Maul on Tatooine, and have the lightsaber fight where Anakin meets Obi-wan. Then in the next scene Luke and company see the Falcon and it couldn’t be more different than the queen’s starship. This would emphasize the decrepitude of the ship. However, including such a villain would draw attention away from ANH and onto the plot of TPM, and this would make the film feel very bifurcated. So I think it would be best to just end the flashback scenes with Anakin’s leave-taking.

I reserve the right to be silly and childish if I please!

This is effective psychological horror.

The laugh track was in astonishingly bad taste.

Ugh, that was sooo 2009.
😉

From this: https://imgur.com/r/funny/uTemj

It looks beautiful! Wish I could donate to this.

I’m sure some sects are more aggressive than others. My childhood experience was quite mild, but since my father later became a full-blown fundamentalist, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing both extremes.

That makes a lot of sense then. The color has often been partially eaten away.

Octorox said:

That makes a lot of sense. The jump cut is nothing to loose sleep over anyway. Out of curiosity, what source are you using for the sabers? The silver screen edition?

There’s a few sources so far, including the SSE. There will probably be more before everything’s done 😉

I was a convert to Agnosticism from two religious parents, so my personal experience that there is a lot of resentment and aggression upon realizing that you’ve been fed a load of dogma your whole life. I think a lot of this has to do with the fear of Hellfire that is inculcated in every ‘Christian’ child. To combat this fear, I delved into the arguments of atheists such as Dawkins and Harris in an attempt to prove to myself that such a fear was unfounded, and I became angry that such a flawed belief system was able to inoculate itself from criticism. It’s a bit like a political ideology in that way.

Over time, fear is replaced with righteous anger and this gives way to some form of boredom with the whole affair. At least for me. I expect that Dawkins is perpetually in the anger stage.

I had made the decision to replace the sabers after seeing what happened when those shots were brightened to proper levels - they really don’t hold up in my opinion, being oversaturated and blobby due to degradation. In order to fix that, as well as the color variation between shots, I would have had to do complicated effects work anyway, and decided that I might as well have the original un-degraded elements. The same thing happened with the Star Destroyer flyover - the SE lasers and flashes were completely degraded and I replaced each one with film elements, so this is consistent with the goal of reverting degraded sources back to superior versions. I wouldn’t revert things like scene transitions because those were recomposited to be higher in quality than the original, on average, whereas the degraded lightsaber elements and blaster bolts were recomposited because the original negative had to be rebuilt and they decided that these elements were good enough. It wasn’t a creative decision to degrade these elements, and with more care they would have used an interpositive for these shots.

I’m rendering out a version of the lightsaber scenes that doesn’t have these changes, so I could make this available for everyone who wants it.

Whenever there is a difference between the 2004 and 2011 versions, I have chosen the source which is closer to the original. So for example, the 2011 version of the Greedo shootout stays, since it’s closer to Han shooting first than the 2004 version. The jump cut roll and the rocks around R2 are out, since they are changes deviating from the original.

So there is a method to this madness. Essentially, it’s merging all versions of the Special Edition (1997/2004/2011) together and showing this in the best possible light. Choices must be made.

That’s really good.

Now we just need the impersonator.

‘Oh, this is going to be easy!’
😉

During Order 66, pretty much every Jedi went out like a punk to handfuls of Clone Troopers, even the masters (One by a single starfighter, one by half a dozen clones on a bridge, one by a couple clones in a forest, one by two clones on speeder bikes). In the context of the movie, it is made to seem like Anakin and the rest of the Jedi in the temple were just overrun by literally hundreds of Clone Troops, in wave after wave. Only by ANH did Ben reveal that another Jedi participated in Anakin’s death. Arguably under this idea, Anakin lasted longer than the rest of the Jedi while sustaining attacks from all sides.

But I agree that changing things through opening crawls is inelegant, yet there’s really no other way to do it unless one was to fabricate a new scene.