#androids in the alien franchise are my WHOLE THING

[whattadroid]

apparently there are TWO androids in alien: romulus and I am so fucking excited

[silverskye13]

Silver I know next to nothing about the alien franchise and movie, I am giving you full permission to use this ask as an opportunity to spread propaganda to get me (and anyone else) to finally watch it

So it's, so like, the thing is, right. I'm not a movie tech kinda person [though it is technically impressive, the funny little tricks they did, like not having the budget for a Big Space Ship Derelict so they are a scaled down model that the director's kids in space suits walked up to so it would look bigger, and it was shown to the audience on a shitty CCTV because they didn't do a big matte painting of the set they filmed the tiny one, projected it onto a wall, and then filmed that.] So my rant isn't going to be about how technologically cool the movie was for 1979 on a less than optimal budget. But what I do like, what I excel at, is breaking down themes and tropes. And my god. My god. Just. Ugh. [Flails my arms.]

So a basic rundown for the movie, spoilers ahead, and my analysis of how fucking cool it is:

Basic gist of the movie: The crew of the commercial mining vessel Nostromo are awoken halfway through their trip back to earth by a mysterious signal, calling for help on a far away planet. Upon going down to investigate, one of their crew members is attacked by a strange alien parasite which attaches to his face. This kicks off a tale of increasing horror as the new alien kills off the crew one by one, culminating in Ripley [the main character] blowing up the ship and fleeing in an escape pod, not sure if she'll ever be picked up in the vastness of space -- with the ships cat, who miraculously also survives. [We all know Jonesy is the real main character 💜.] Along the way a plot by the Weyland-Utani corporation is revealed, one of the crew is discovered to be an android, and there is a lot of alien screeching.

Now! The themes that I go absolutely feral over can commence.

The horror of the movie, the reason why the alien is scary, and lethal to humans specifically, is it is a creature built for efficient survival, and this is a trait that Ash, the ship's science officer [and resident hiding android] highly praises in the critter. He describes it as beautiful, elegant, pure in its efficiency. The perfect organism. Efficient.

Humans, by comparison, aren't efficient. We are social. And efficiency preys on social needs. For example:

The xenomorph eggs can survive for ages [in the derelict they're found on, the dead alien who drove the ship is described as fossilized. These eggs have been here for thousands of years. But they activate immediately when a curious human pokes around them. It isn't a fast process. Kane is poking around for a few minutes, looking at the movements of the creatures in their eggs, making observations. Curious. Curiosity is an inefficient trait -- he would have survived if he had climbed out of the hole the eggs were in and left, or even waited for the rest of his team to enact quarantine and investigation procedures.

Speaking of quarantine! When Dallas and Lambert bring Kane, newly infected by an alien parasite, back to the ship, Ripley locks them in the airlock. There are quarantine procedures. We can't risk the whole crew. But they are scared for Kane's safety. He might die without help. They break quarantine. If they hadn't broken quarantine, the baby alien would've been born in the airlock, where it would get spaced the moment it was born.

When the face hugger parasite dies and Kane seems to return to normal, what they should have done to attempt to reinstate quarantine was put him in hyper sleep. His body would have been frozen in a stasis which might have frozen the parasite or, if it hadn't, would have left the new baby alien trapped in a stasis pod. But Kane, haggard and scared from his ordeal, asks can we please have one more meal together before I go to sleep? And that one meal is long enough for the new xenomorph to be born, and release terror on the ship.

There is more. Parker would have lived if he hadn't gone to find the cat by himself, leaving the safety of his group. Dallas would have lived if he let Ripley go through the vents, but he was the captain and he didn't want to risk someone else's life so he went instead. Brett would have lived if he'd left Lambert behind when she was being attacked, or if he'd hit the xenomorph with the flamethrower instead of insisting Lambert get out of the way first. And Lambert would have lived if she'd run instead of being paralyzed in fear by the creature killing her friends. And the xenomorph? Wasn't even eating it's kills. No gore. Little blood. It was killing them because it knew they would kill it, and it was neutralizing threats. Efficient.

The xenomorph is very clearly engineered for survival, and it's survival depends on killing the inefficient organisms around it. Even it's acid blood is described as a survival mechanism, not an offensive mechanism.

Okay Skye, we hear you talking about how scary the critter is because it's not a social creature. That's an interesting observation, but it's still just a monster story, right?

Well, let me tell you an alternative story. Just a little to the left of the original, but one I would argue is still very very canon.

You are an android built by Weyland-Utani, a company which is jealously hunting alien tech to use for its many space programs. You are placed on the Nostromo because there is a known anomaly in the area, and they want to find it. Your job is to get a specimen back to the company, all other protocols expended.

You are programmed to be efficient, so you get to work.

You wake the crew when you find the signal. You give them only the information they need to investigate: it is a signal that repeats every 12 seconds. You let them make the conclusion it is an SOS. Humans are social creatures. They want to help other social creatures in need. There is some arguing about whether they should go, but in the end an extra push from you sends them. Ripley, one of the more efficient members of the crew, keeps asking you why you haven't decoded the message.

"Mother [the super computer running the ship] is still working on it." This is true. She has only translated part of the signal. By the time Ripley realizes it's a warning, the crew is already on the way to the derelict. You tell her if she walks out there, they will have already figured out if it's a warning or not by the time she makes it to them. She agrees.

When they return with a specimen, Ripley [efficient, following protocol] doesn't want to let them on. But Ripley doesn't know you're an android, so when you break quarantine, and you tell her you just wanted Kane to be safe, she begrudgingly believes you.

When the alien is loose, it is easy for you to keep them from killing it. Humans are social, inefficient creatures, and you feel no empathy for their deaths. You do pity them though. Between you and the alien, their chances of survival are slim.

If only they were more efficient.

The horror in Alien is not the xenomorph. The horror in Alien is when anything, primal creatures, androids, a particularly greedy corporation, preys on human social needs in order to get what it wants. There is significance in that Ripley, despite everything, chose to save the cat. She needed companionship. All humans do. She needed to save that cat. A cat that was cantankerous and mean, and hissed whenever it was held, was better than the cold efficiency of empty space.

Any system that prioritizes absolute efficiency will be inhospitable to human life.

[reliquiaen]

i've slept on it. here's my alien romulus review

Alien Romulus

Starting with the callbacks and references to other movies, I have to say: I don’t tend to enjoy that, personally. It makes it feel like the movie wasn’t confident in itself enough to be able to stand on its own and the references often come across as a crutch. That said, the only reference in Romulus that felt gratuitous to me was when Andy saved Rain and said “stay away from her, you bitch”, but that moment was cool enough, and I liked Andy enough, that I just enjoyed it. Plus it’s a cool line and David Jonsson’s delivery was perfectly in character so it came off more fun than insecure.

The set design was very visually similar to Alien and Alien: Isolation and the opening scene with the ship coming online was, if not a shot-for-shot recreation, a clear reference to the opening of Alien. This could’ve felt like a bad way to start the movie – being too similar to something else runs the risk of failing to establish its own identity – but frankly, it was so nice to see the same chunky tech tying everything together, and it utilised the atmosphere super well to set up that creeping, slow terror, especially with the combination of close-up shots on the computer screen and the wide, empty shots of space – it perfectly juxtaposed the two scariest parts of the Alien franchise: the claustrophobic interiors where anything can be hiding, and the vast uncaring space outside. A lot of the shots inside the Romulus station were clearly inspired by the game Isolation, too, but not to the movie’s detriment. Isolation was fucking terrifying  and the movie capitalised on that nicely. There was a shot looking down an escalator that launched me back to playing Isolation and the fear of not knowing what was around the corner, or up the hallway, or in the next room and the movie used these hallway shots to the same effect.

Ian Holm’s cameo was fun. The special effects and CGI were not. Obviously they couldn’t get him back (rest in peace), and they wanted to use the same android model for effect, and it worked! But yeah, yikes, the CGI was bad, especially at first. You can say the slippery way his face looked like his skin was sliding around was an artistic choice to show how damaged the android’s body was but I don’t believe that for a second. What I will say is that they used this new android, Rook, really well. His explanation for what happened to the xenomorph they found (and I have no idea how that xenomorph was within the wreckage of the Nostromo when Ripley ejected it from the Narcissus pretty far away from the Nostromo and also after it had self-destructed but whatever) and, importantly, WHY THEY WANTED IT. Oh my god, the vague “they want it for the military uses” is super annoying and that was the only logic we’ve ever gotten about why Weyland-Yutani was so interested in the alien in like forty years. But the set-up and pay-off of this reveal was beautiful. We saw in the opening scenes of the movie that life on other worlds was hard and dangerous and thousands die and people are exploited and it’s horrible. And then giving Weyland-Yutani this “we actually want to help people adapt to harsher environments” as a perfectly noble goal that got twisted by capitalism, but this movie is set like… in the in-between. Before the capitalist dogs ruin the science. This movie is the beat before the fall and that’s… so great. So different.

This reveal did two things very nicely: it tied together the stupid and ridiculous genealogy crap from Prometheus and Covenant (I don’t like those movies and I won’t pretend to) with the other, better movies. If we disregard David’s attempts at playing god (and believe me, I do my best at this every day) then this whole ordeal with the alien was simply that they are highly adaptive due to the black goo (chemical [stupid designation here] – 15) and the company wants to use that to help humanity (be easier to exploit) survive in space. Makes sense! Alien mutations are a nasty by-product, unfortunately, just need to perfect the science.

The main thing that bothered me with this movie was the… white man alien at the end. It was very inspired by the Newborn in Resurrection which I also did not like. (I enjoyed the CONCEPT of the Newborn, but the visuals were just… not great to my mind, not even in the satisfying body horror kind of way, either, just… kind of ugh and meh and wtf did you do to his nose?) This was the same but reversed: a human gives birth to a part-xeno-part-human child and faces the consequences. (And why did Kay even inject herself anyway, she was going into cryo she didn’t need it, she’s just fucking stupid.) Given what happened to the rat in that box, I was expecting (and hoping) Kay would have some sort of horrendous lumpy mutation burst out of her skin and ruin her but leave her alive in this Scorn kind of way (trapped in a fleshy and dysfunctional body, aware but unable to do anything, knowing you did this to yourself and also that you have no way to revert it, perhaps even hurting those close to you and having to watch that happen, helpless to stop it). But no. Birthing an acidic vag-pod was… fun and distressing, obviously, but I didn’t find the slenderman looking white-boy very scary at all. It landed squarely in the uncanny valley, for sure, but idk the design just didn’t do it for me. And I understand the fun part of this: the horror of childbirth (Kay had a lot of that going on, after watching Navarro give birth from her chest and DIE, she was not having a very nice pre-childbirth experience), the visceral rejection she felt, the child eating the mother, that was all very nice, very intense, loved it. (I’m one of those weirdoes who thinks that the predalien turning that lady’s pregnancy into alien: quintuplets was extremely fun and I’ve always wanted to see that expanded upon.) But Kay herself didn’t seem to have any adverse reaction to being injected with the goo, only her baby. I wanted her to have a negative reaction, I wanted Rain to have to face her down, I wanted a little of that ‘Romulus killed his brother to found Rome’ energy here. (And it would’ve tied in nicely with what Rook said about humans having too many emotions and not wanting to believe the best choice is to kill someone. Make Rain face that herself!!)

Otherwise this movie was a fucking masterclass and I enjoyed every second. The visuals, the sound design, the practical effects, the – and I cannot stress this enough – the CAMERWORK. The slow rolls of the camera to mimic the zero gravity? The close-ups on the horribleness so we definitely don’t miss a second of what’s going on? Outstanding. The grungy, drippy, dampness of everything was 10/10, the alien having a vaginal-themed chrysalis (thank you, I’ve waited years for this moment), the cattle prod going into it and coming out melted? Yes, oh my god, yes. The tail spine emerging slowly? And piercing back? OH MY GOD, YES!

The inherent horror of watching your brother become a monster and having to save him from himself? Andy’s part in this movie was so fucking stellar I’m in love with it. David Jonsson absolutely stole the show for me. The symbolism of it all; if you drink from the capitalist wellspring, you become a monster who doesn’t care about anyone, not even those who you counted as family. The moment when he clapped his hand over his ear to stop Rain from removing the chip? How many people have to deal with family members who have drunk the Kool-Aid and won’t hear different? This was that on screen.

And I have to say, this was the best cast of characters an Alien movie has had in… idk a while. They actually felt like distinct people with some personality which was refreshing considering Covenant had a bland bunch of faceless people I couldn’t tell apart and didn’t care about anyway. This movie knocked that one out of the water, it’s really a night-and-day comparison. Even though none of the characters in Romulus had super-fleshed out backstories, they were all going through something and had distinct arcs: Rain and Andy struggling to get off-world and not end up like their parents, Kay’s pregnancy being a secret, Bjorn losing his mum to Android Logic™, Tyler feeling like he has the burden of keeping them all alive and together and failing. Navarro died first, she had the least characterisation, and I don’t mind that, but she at least had on-screen presence and was memorable for what happened. Her last words “don’t let me die” whispered in such a pitiful way because she knows she’s going to die but that’s not really what she’s asking, she doesn’t want to be forgotten. Like. That’s heartbreaking. And she WAS memorable because of it, not just as the pilot or the one who did the cool thing with the xray light.

The zero-grav scene where Rain shot all the xenos in the hallway was extremely fun and novel and NEW, having to navigate through a maze of acid blood wasn’t just a cool visual, it tied nicely into the themes: they were navigating the metaphorical acid maze that Weyland-Yutani left behind. And oh, the continual conflict of going back for someone versus saving yourself? That was good. Bjorn leaving everyone else behind to save Navarro, Tyler watching Kay get alien-napped and then going back for her later, Rain going back for Andy directly into the alien nest. Bravo.  

Overall, I had a blast with this movie, it was really good. Definitely the best Alien movie in a long time. I felt it missed a few opportunities, especially at the end, I appreciate the effect they were going for with the Offspring creature but it felt like a miss to me when they could’ve done something fun with turning Kay into a monster and continuing the thread about humans trying to save each other. Maybe the Offspring will grow on me with a rewatch, like how the Newborn did, but eh. Was a good movie regardless.

[ginjasnappp]

Alien Romulus: my opinions/review!!

I'm so sorry to everyone who sees this and therefore is subjected to it but my thoughts must exist somewhere

Spoiler free review is overall I'd recommend it! I think it did a lot of things right by the franchise and is a solid addition - but nothing beats the original imo.

Also I've only seen the first 2 movies before this so call me a fake fan if u want but the og is all I need

Spoilers for the whole movie below the cut!

Also warning it's absurdly long

THINGS I LIKED:

▫️ I really enjoyed all the characters! I thought they were faithfully written as a bunch of rebellious, rambunctious young adults trying their best in a shitty world. I thought their dialogue was fun and realistic and their age made me hold more space for the fact that they made reckless choices lol. I also thought their acting was spectacular. I wish we got a little more time with them before they got killed off to make way for Raine.

▫️The scoring and cinematography were great. it veered in and out of familiar territory, but there were several moments where the music and camerawork really evoked the first film, and even when it didn't to me, it was still effective.

▫️PRACTICAL EFFECCCCTTSSS how I have missed them. There was a mix of practical effects and CGI but even most of the cgi was done really well except for one part (lookin at you, Ash deepfake). All the practical creatures and general ooze and viscera were great.

▫️ The human hybrid?? Creepy as FUCK. It easily couldve been goofy lookin but it was genuinely super unsettling and expertly done imo!

NEUTRAL OBSERVATIONS:

▫️ This movie rang closer to Aliens than Alien to me, which was a little bit disappointing but entirely down to personal preference. Part of my love for Alien comes from the claustrophobia and creeping sense of dread - 'where is it', 'there's nothing I can do but hide', etc, and while there was some of that, this and Aliens are more action-packed with loud conflict and guns. Still a lot of fun though!

▫️I found it interesting and a little unfaithful that the only characters to get facehugged/otherwise impregnated (at least onscreen) were female characters. A big part of why a male character was the facehugger victim in Alien is because Ridley Scott noticed that in horror, the female characters are usually the ones to be physically violated in such a way and wanted to flip that around and make male audiences uncomfortable by depicting a male 'birth scene' (from what I read years ago, anyway). Seeing as Scott worked on this movie as well, I'm interested in why this choice was made, if it was even a conscious choice.

▫️The 'artificial person' Andy is a whole can of worms for me. When he was first introduced, before he's revealed to be an AP, my (and my parent who I saw it with's) very first thought was 'oh god, he's the autistic character that's gonna get killed off'. He is an example of how stereotypical autistic traits and scifi android traits (not understanding social cues, taking things literally, being outwardly unemotional and practical) can overlap, and there's a very fine line between drawing interesting but not direct parallels and coding the character outright, often negatively or to characters' detriment. He's definitely a character I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on!

THINGS I DISLIKED/DIDNT MAKE SENSE/THOUGHT WERE MEH

▫️We all know you can't breathe in the vaccuum of space - so why, after being warned of the danger of letting the xeno blood go through the floor, did it actually happen and then everything was fine? Sure, things were sucked out into space, but Raine was fine and could breathe, which is impossible - her head would have imploded seconds after she was exposed to the vacuum. Also she would have frozen to death.

▫️The deepfake face. Just why?? I think it could have been way cooler if his face was entirely practical and maybe worn beyond recognition, and then a namedrop or similar reveal could be really effective.

▫️Dare I say it - too many aliens. Like the difference between Alien and Aliens, I find one unfaceable threat in an enclosed space is more effective than a whole shootable swarm in a large space. I enjoyed the shots of facehuggers skittering everywhere tho.

▫️This is PURELY my own unreasonable hopes being dashed but I was hoping and praying for a Sigourney Weaver/Ripley cameo. I understand wanting to leave her to her era and not drag her into a new one (and also that apparently she died like 4 movies ago) but I MISS MY QUEEEEEN

▫️I wish we got a liiittle more worldbuilding - though I understand the sentiment of 'we know what you're here for so we'll get right to it' lol.

That's it! Wow ty for reading if you got this far

Hand over your opinions >:3

[atthebell]

im glad u watched romulus so i can finally ask. what can u say regarding "the issue of the androids and their place in humanity in this universe and the philosophical implications of them and with the act of creating life" (quoted from ur answer to my other ask about prometheus+covenant a few days ago) (that second part about creating life is optional i didn't see as much of that in romulus unless ofc ur talking about the shewolf/lupa from the romulus and remus myth)

i think that one of the things romulus did at least manage to do was continue the thesis of "androids are not inherently good nor evil; their directives and the way their programming changes (due to various circumstances) impact how they interact with humanity and how they engage with the question of 'what is life?'"

like i think andy is a good demonstration of how androids do not purely exist to destroy humanity, nor do all androids think themselves above humans. andy cares, first and foremost, for better or for worse, about rain's wellbeing. do i love how that plays out or the vibes it gives off? not really, no. i think the disability angle was poorly done at best and i don't even really want to get into how bad i really think it was. however, i did like andy, and i think he got at those questions i talked about last time. are androids truly meant to serve humanity? romulus, at least, comes down firmly on the side of "no," which i believe prometheus and covenant align with as well as the rest of the franchise, excepting resurrection and possibly covenant. firstly, all the company androids exist not to serve humanity but to serve the company's best interests-- that is their prime directive. but romulus gets at the notion of what androids SHOULD exist for. andy, the movie argues, should exist because he exists, and he should have the right to self-determination. even if that means he stops doing solely what is in rain's best interest. which, i would argue, is a pretty firm declaration of aliveness. andy is alive because he exists, because he can form his own wants and desires, and because even aside from any existing programming, he has such things.

the same goes for other androids in the series, although their levels of self-created wants and desires are far more nebulous. ash believes humanity to be beneath him; it's unclear how much of that is weyland-yutani programming and how much is his own sense of human folley (rook seems to confirm this originates with the company, as like he says, humanity does not take well to space colonization, and they need to adapt. whether you want to take this as gospel about the original movie, that's a whole other question). bishop has the capacity to choose to save ripley and newt, to help them escape even if it's not directly in the best interests of the company. but he also seems to allow for the idea that they would carry embryos back to earth, and if you look at aliens 3, he also allowed an egg to come with them in the EEV knowing what that would mean for their safety and for the larger safety of humanity. company programming is very strong; even the "good" androids tend to do things within the bounds of continuing to benefit the company, along with maintaining whatever personal relationships they may have. call is a whole other story by virtue of having her weyland-yutani module removed; her goal is to prevent the destruction the xenomorph will cause and she no longer has to obey company programming. call is just a weird one generally, but it's undeniable that she is a person with her own wants and feelings, and her stance seems to be that the company should not have the control that they do, over people, including androids, and over lifeforms that could threaten humanity's survival. david and walter are interesting, mostly the former, in that david is probably meant to be an example of faulty programming, or programming that decays and turns into something new. he decides that he is a superior lifeform, that humans are tools for his creations, and that life is at his fingertips. and its not all that shocking considering that weyland made him and seemed to feel the same about his own ability to create android life. walter's existence and the idea that david was "too human" also seems to indicate that its that capacity for creation that was too much for humanity to handle in an android. walter himself is less interesting, really, aside from the idea that he was in love with daniels, although honestly i thought that came entirely out of left field and may have just been david fucking with him. he maintains his programming pretty effectively, protecting the crew of the covenant. according to the extra ads about him that were created and filmed outside the movie, he was supposed to be personalized and reflect the desires of whoever needs him. so if the idea is that daniels needed someone to protect her, someone who would risk everything for her, i suppose that means that walter followed that prime directive to a t. that doesn't mean that he didn't want to, nor that that directive wasn't driven in part by self-created motives.

all this to say i do think andy gets at that idea of whether androids are truly capable of wanting things for themselves-- it seems like he does, but it could also be that damned chicken or the egg debate; does andy want something because he wants it, or because rain wants him to want it? i don't think that's what's meant to be what's going on within romulus, but it's still an interesting question.

in terms of other ways of that question of creation and life, i think romulus fell very flat. let's not talk about the offspring at the end, who says nothing about creation or life or anything other than that they wanted to put a different tall guy in a rubber suit. it's not even like this was the first human-alien hybrid and yet they went in such an insane and terrible direction with it that said nothing. if you inject yourself with a genome enhancer made from the mysterious black goo, you will give birth to a weird egg sac that will birth a horrible slenderman creature that tries to eat you. and they didn't even have the guts to have it try and breastfeed, which is what i completely expected when it went for kay. i didn't even hate the genome enhancer idea, although i wish it would've tied back in with david more. i just wish it had actually meant anything other than freaky pregnancy. it's like someone watched the alien franchise and understood that there's themes about the anxieties of reproduction and childbirth and the violence involved in both but didn't understand how to actually put those things together in a meaningful way.

idk the whole movie felt like someone watched the franchise and didn't understand what actually makes it good (not all of the movies are good but they are all trying to get at similar concepts and themes) and just went ah, horror movie about creatures that get inside you and are scary. none of the actual fear and revulsion and all that that are central to the original concept or even to giger's artwork were in it. it was utterly sexless and functioned as competent horror inasmuch as there was tension and release and buildup but none of the meat of it. i know i sound so obnoxious but also i love this franchise and think the gross weird body stuff is really key, and that was all missing here.

but anyway on the android side of things i did kind of like it, and i thought david jonsson's performance was pretty good.

[in regard to the she-wolf romulus and remus myth element: aside from the obvious siblings theme going on (rain & andy, tyler & kay, bjorn & navarro) i don't think there's much to say about the significance of that reference. i wish there had been more, i think that would've been interesting, and i think a look at siblings within the alien franchise and how that relationship operates and what sociological hangups we have about those relationships would all be interesting, that's just not what this movie was doing. it also felt like it was kind of stepping into what covenant was trying to do with the all-spouses crew, except that that element of covenant felt like a complete miss too. but yeah i don't think romulus really managed to say anything with that reference aside from that wow those sure are siblings]

[whatyourusherthinks]

Alien: Romulus Review

I got off on the wrong foot with this movie, because the first time I heard about it was from the 45 Anniversary rerelease of Alien in May. Before the movie there was an interview with Ridley Scott and the director of this movie. and between every question they reminded us that Alien: Romulus was coming to theaters this August. Bad start for what ended up being the best horror movie I've ever seen. And then the trailer came out.

And it was glorious.

What's The Movie About?

A group of young miners attempt to scavenge cryopods from a abandoned space station and must contend with the Xenomorphs frozen away on the station.

What I Like.

This movie is fucking awesome! The story is a lot of fun. It's set up to be the original Alien for a modern audience, but when they get to the space station the scenario shifts and it becomes it's own story. I like that because it gives us a lot of insight into the world of Alien itself. Most of the time the movies are set of uncolonized worlds and isolated ships, so it was cool to see how the average person lives on an isolated planet. I wasn't sure if I liked the ending or not at first, but after talking with someone who knew more about the Alien franchise, I think it is a cool payoff for a long standing question. Admittedly it does callback to Prometheus and Resurrection, and I can see long time fans getting annoyed by that if they hate those movies, but I thought the connection was the best they could've done. I also like Rain and Andy. They're adopted siblings that are basically our leads for the movie, and they're dynamic was cool. Rain is the typical Alien's protagonist, but she really cool fight scene. It's nice to see Cailee Spaeny in a movie that doesn't suck ass. And I really like Andy. He's an android that was programmed to do what's best for Rain by their parents, and is stuttering and prone to robot seizures, but tells terrible dad jokes. I wasn't sure if I like the autistic-coding on him at first, I mean he's literally that way because of physical damage to his mechanics. But his plot in the movie revolves around getting an extra chip implanted inside of him which less stutter-y and turns him evil, so the happiest outcome for him to to revert back to the way he was. (And besides, getting the chip didn't fix his seizures, so it's not like becoming neurotypical fixed all of his problems.) The acting in the movie is pretty good, so is the effects. I love that I hate seeing the face-huggers gigantic proboscises that get shoved down humans throat.

What I Don't Like.

Only two complaints. One, one of the characters is a major douche bag. He's super racist to my sweet android boy and is literally the catalyst for everything going wrong in this movie. There's a part where his brother and Rain are talking about it's all their fault that things are going wrong and I'm like, "No no no, it was that fucking idiot's fault." The other thing is that it... uh... how do I explain this? So the first Alien was lowkey a feminism masterpiece. I mean, the whole Bechdel Test joke is that Alien is the only movie that passes. I heard the original script was written with all the characters being gender-neutral and they just changed them depending on who wanted to play which part, which I think is how any movie where gender or relationships isn't a focus of the story should do it. I've heard Aliens leans into it more, but I haven't seen that yet. Anyway, my point is Alien: Romulus backs away from that legacy and I found that disappointing. It's not sexist or anything, but there's just little things. When the crew goes into the space station, all the female characters stay behind. And yet the female pilot is somehow the first one to die! And Rain has to be taught to do anything by all the guy characters. The only thing she knows how to do on her own is reboot Andy. Again, it's not offensive, but it's definitely noticeable comparing it to the original.

Final Summation.

This movie is just as good as I hoped it would be! Definitely check it out if you like Alien, but maybe start else where if you don't have any knowledge of the franchise. Oh really Roan? Don't watch the seventh movie first? I'm shocked. Okay fair point Buggnutz, but the best sequels stand on their own somewhat. Alien: Romulus does achieve that, but the ending is easier to appreciate if you have more knowledge of the franchise.

[tailsrevane]

[comic review] prometheus: fire and stone (2014)

this crossover event joins “anything starring machiko” as basically the most essential avp comics in my opinion. this had a very cinematic scope that is exactly what you are probably looking for out of this franchise but is often actually lacking in other comics. and i also love how interconnected everything is but also that you could read any one of these individual series and still get a complete story and not feel like you were missing anything.

it comes right out of the gate with a prometheus comic that’s drastically better than the movie. i didn’t love that the engineers were way stronger than xenomorphs to the point that a single engineer can take on multiple xenomorphs and win. like, it makes logical sense i guess given how advanced the engineers are supposed to be, so this isn’t really a criticism. i just personally don’t like it because the xenomorphs are far and away my favorite of any of these species and i think they’re much more effectively terrifying, so anything that even superficially detracts from that will get frowny faces from me.

there’s a bunch of asshole characters in this one. there’s a scientist guy who injects an android with some of the black goo you see in the prometheus movie because he thinks the android’s blood will somehow magically turn it into a cure for his cancer. and like. it sucks that you have cancer, my dude, but you didn’t get that android’s consent at all and you straight up lied to him about whether or not you knew if it was dangerous. you suck. also there’s a military guy who ends up taking a few people (including asshole scientist guy) off planet the first chance he gets, and stranding basically the whole rest of the crew on the planet. you also suck.

the other characters were awesome, especially the lesbians. and the whole crew getting picked off one by one made this feel more like an alien movie than aliens: fire and stone, even though that’s tied more firmly to the aliens continuity. i also loved all the variations on the xenomorphs! like, there’s sharks in the ocean and shit that are clearly xenomorphified! it’s such a creative thing to include!

a-rank

[fragileoracle]

She Is Anew, She is Reclaimed; Conceptualizing The Verdant Frontier

"Recently I had made up my mind to participate in NaNoWriMo."

Of course we (writers I mean) are mostly knowledgeable of what the event means-- hours upon hours of staring at a laptop screen, willing a full novel into existence by hammering our eager fingertips across a keyboard, unless, of course, you're one of those (that I admire deeply) that prefer the pen to the sword. This time spent not including what should be hours of editing and re-editing and weeping openly into a cold cup of coffee as you realize what a ridiculous idea it was to begin with.

All in the span of a single month. Yes. The hopeful author's inktober.

Fast-forward exactly two weeks. It is 6 am on a Monday, (I actually had to look at the date to make sure) I am sitting at my desk at work patiently waiting for 7 am to turn around so I can return home to my cat (he's going to be pissed that he hasn't gotten fed yet). Having just created this Tumblr after being away for the better part of a decade, and my mind is reeling with the at-times overwhelming buzz of characters and story-lines I am itching to actually write.

It hits me.

I will not be finishing anything in time for the conclusion of NaNoWriMo, to ask that of myself when I haven't been consistenly writing is beyond my abilites both innate and honed. Yet in the same vein of thinking? I am entirely grateful to the sudden spur of the moment decision to write something. It is not the project I would have originally picked to work on, but here I am. Planning. Outlining. Staring at the blinking cursor on my screen. I am for once in a thousand moons actually writing again. This is a project that is all mine, and I rely on no co-authors or partners to aid me in the task of world-building or even small details like naming places or people.

A daunting task? Obviously.

Who in their right mind after creating four entire universes would choose to start from scratch a fifth time? Who would voluntarily leave whole worlds on the back-burner for a possibly over-glorified fan fiction with exactly one character from the franchise and paint an entirely new backdrop for him?

Me.

*cue unhinged laughter*

After a month of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I have been deeply invested in all things cowboys and outlaws, but completely disinterested in the actual history of any real timeline. Boring. I want the wild west to be much more wild, and I want androids and aliens and space travel. I want to drop a reincarnation of Arthur Morgan into the thick of it and spin a different ending (after having my heart ripped out and stomped on). I want to give the characters that haven't had an opportunity to shine in previous projects of mine a complete over-haul.

I want a new frontier, one that has grown over the bones of empires fallen.

The Verdant Frontier

Catchy right?

When conceptualizing the universe I wanted to write in, I knew I wanted to stay true to exactly two themes; overgrown & wild.

Of course there were other elements that I was concerned with but RDR2 had awakened such a thirst for the "Untamed" that I decided to go for the extreme, a method I tend to use in a lot of my world-building.

We all have secret wishes, don't look at me like that.

There's this beautifully bittersweet theme of losing a world that once felt vast and magical i.e the final frontier of America toward the turn of the 20th century. RDR2 is drenched with longing for a piece of the world that remains untouched, a corner of the world to hide in after a lifetime of surviving; a subject that I became very enmeshed with. I felt deeply sympathetic toward those that wanted to simply fade to black when resistance of the suffocating grip of c i v i l i z a t i o n inevitably became futile. Decades of theft from the ones that had lived on this land for lifetimes leading up to Industry on the cusp of taking over completely as capitalism slowly sinks its teeth into the new world. Not to mention the world now is a much more extreme version of this sentiment, I too yearn for the quiet corners of the world where light pollution doesn't exist and the smog of cities is little more than a bad memory.

Its a piercing kind of yearning.

*cracks knuckles*

So of course as many creators before and after me... that means its time to force a cure for such yearning into existence.

Eventually this planet will find its ruin in the same hands that promised accessibility and wealth for all, as climate disaster becomes more and more irreversible. In a way I believe the growth of this idea is a love letter to an Earth that even in its ruin still found a way to progress forward in a quiet, heartbreaking, beautiful way. I suppose there are two deaths that I am not and could never be prepared for.

Arthur Morgan and planet Earth.

A fictional character and the literal planet I live on... ahh, the duality of man.

The very basis of the setting for the Verdant Frontier is a planet that was raped and abandoned by the self-proclaimed "upper-crust" of society. Those dripping in wealth both new and old began their escape from the dying Earth in the year 2100 after space-travel had become readily-possible for more than just organizations like NASA (looking at you b*zos). The event would be called "The Grand Flight" and would mark a time in history. However those without the ability to leave would be left alone to the planet sapped of resources, where weather patterns had turned fatal, and nature itself becoming hostile where once it provided.

I still wonder where exactly I should take said hostile nature. Man-eating plants anyone? Much larger animals perhaps?

Fast-forward exactly one-thousand years to 3100, to be exact year 3115 as our "time of telling". Translation; the time the beginning of the story is told, however this may be debatable depending on who I begin telling the story with. There are six major cities, many townships and villages scattered over the unrecognizable land masses of Earth. Much of what was possible and practicalities in the 1890s of our real history is possible and used during this time, the humans that remained somehow managing to survive after all this time. The buildings, homes, and community centers are quite rustic, a scenery (of course) that would remind one of the facades of the usual fictional frontier imagery.

Population is finally climbing once more among the "Rooted" as they are called, even if life expectancy has been reduced among the denizens of Earth.

However, those that once left often return for a visit. They are called the Unbound and have long since become something beyond human. With life expectancy proving to be beyond 200 years of age, the Unbound have made remarkable advances in health and space-related technology. They have seen the very edges of the cosmos and have traveled further than most species in the far reaches of the macrocosm. Yet still they return to Earth, going so far as to create the first metropolis on Mars known as Marsaven. A neighbor to Earth in all respects.

I imagine for the Unbound its very much like going to Disney World for vacation with family. Similar to Westworld even. Amusement. Only the darker than black quality here is the fact that those on Earth are very real beings. With hopes, dreams, and squishy meat sacks for bodies. Enter moral quandaries here. Earth has become somewhat of a dumping ground for the Unbound, both for criminals ("unrecoverables") and resource-related waste. The more industry that comes to Earth via connections to the Unbound and even alien species beyond them, the more danger follows.

Spacecraft theft, murder, kidnapping, execution, politics, royalty, and COPS. Oh the things I have planned for my Verdant Frontier. So you see, where this may have stemmed from an inkling for a fan fiction and a month of cramming a novel into something readable...

Its become so much more.

Signed,

k.c

[duhragonball]

Chi-Chi

I think I’m gonna wrap these up today so I can get back to work on my fanfic.    For the record, I got Buu, Frieza, Jolyne Kujo, Father Pucci, and Jobin Higashikata left to go, and then I’m done.  

But I hate to call it here, because this has been fun.   Maybe I’ll bring this back some time.  

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: I started watching DBZ back in the fall of 1998, and I didn’t get very serious about it until 2000.   Chi-Chi didn’t have a very big role in the Saiyans or Frieza arcs, and I wasn’t making a point of watching every episode, so it took a while for her character to be fully revealed.   Starting out, she was basically popping in every so often to remind us that she wanted Gohan to study.   She stood up to Garlic’s henchmen in Movie 1, but didn’t really get a chance to do anything.    In the Garlic Junior Saga, it’s stated that Chi-Chi is the strongest woman in the world, which sounds pretty impressive as long as you don’t think too hard about how many women are on the show.  

I don’t think I really understood Chi-Chi well until I got to the part where Goten spars with Gohan, and he reveals that Chi-Chi had been training him while Gohan was studying.   That was where it became clear to me that she only emphasized book-learnin’ over ass-whoopin’ because she knew Goku had that side of things covered.    With Goten, Chi-Chi had to be both mother and father to him, and she didn’t shirk from that.   

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Chi-Chi’s a great supporting character.   She maintains a presence in the story whether she’s on-screen or not, and you learn about her gradually through these short appearances.    And when she does show up, it’s just a treat to see.   She’s always got something to say, and she’s cute and she can beat your ass.    What’s not to like?  

Why I don’t:  Yeah right.   Look, the biggest gripe people have with Chi-Chi is that she makes her son do homework, which is dumb.    She explains this a number of times: There’s more to life than fighting, and she wants that for her son.   And Gohan’s not exactly worse off for her style of parenting.  

I think the disconnect here is that people watch this show and they want to see Goku and Gohan screw around and go on adventures, and they feel like Chi-Chi is here to kill their buzz.   I guess it’d be like watching a football game, and every so often some guy wanders out onto the field and scolds everyone for playing football.    But that guy would be right, because football is dangerous, yo.   Everybody keeps telling Chi-Chi that the only hope for the world involves her little boy getting his ass kicked by aliens, and she’s like “no, that’s bullshit,” and she’s absolutely right.   She’s a saint for tolerating it as much as she does, but I think a lot of fans refuse to look at it from her point of view.    They just want the fighting.  

I remember Lanipator observing that he used to hate Mr. Satan when he was younger, but the older he got, the more and more he appreciated the character.    I can’t relate to that, because I was old enough to drink when I started watching this show, so for me, there is no “when I was a kid” perspective on Dragon Ball.    I thought Mr. Satan was awesome from the start, and I never had much of a problem with Chi-Chi either.  

They did tend to overexpose both characters in the anime, cutting to them when they needed a filler moment to pad out an episode or five.   So maybe that’s got something to do with it.   But that’s not the fault of the characters.    But yeah, if I was watching the Cell Games at age 10 I’d probably get really sick of them constantly cutting to Mr. Satan or Chi-Chi for analysis.    

Favorite episode (scene if movie):  It’s probably hard to top the one where she fought Goku.   That was one of the last Chi-Chi moments I got to see, because I didn’t get caught up on OG Dragon Ball until 2004.   It’s an excellent use of the character and her lengthy absence from the show.   By the time she reappears, no one recognizes her, and she’s upset about being forgotten.  

Favorite season/movie:  I think I’d have to go with the Buu Saga, on the grounds that she got more time to shine, mainly due to so many other characters being unavailable.    It was a real roller coaster ride for her too.    Her husband’s dead and she’s raising two kids on her own, then he comes back, then he leaves again, and maybe Gohan’s dead too, and now Goten has to fight, and then she’s dead, and then they’re all back together in the end.     Wild.

Favorite line:  In the Cell Games Saga, there’s a TV show where Mr. Satan drags three buses onto the set, cuts a scathing promo on Cell, and then punches one of the buses to put an exclamation point on the whole thing.   Wait, I take it back, I’m pretty sure 10yo me would have loved Mr. Satan.  

Anyway the live audience is marking the fuck out for Mr. Satan, but at Kame House Yamcha and Krillin are unimpressed, because they punch holes in like fifty buses every morning as a warm-up.   But in the dub of that episode, Roshi remarks that Mr. Satan’s theatrics are “sad”, and Chi-Chi goes “It sure is.   Somebody could have used that bus.” Classic, total classic.

Favorite outfit: It’s hard to pick, honestly.   I like the Buu Saga yellow, but I prefer the way her hair looked in the Saiyans Saga.  And that outfit she wore near the end of DBZ was pretty great too.

OTP:  Goku. come on.

Brotp: I think Bulma sort of stepped into that role after Trunks was born, but Chi-Chi seems like a loner to me.   She basically rolled in, got Goku to marry her, and then retreated deep into the mountains to interact with as few people as possible.   I need me a freak like that.  

Head Canon: I think she’s genuinely proud of Goku and the boys being so great at super-karate-laser wars.   She doesn’t talk about it much, because there’s plenty of other people to congratulate them on that sort of thing, and I think they sort of look to her for as someone who grounds their family.  

To put it another way, I don’t think Goku wants Chi-Chi to talk a lot about the androids or the Saiyans or whatever.   I think he wants someone to bother him with household matters and chores and ordinary stuff.   And Gohan and Goten just want a regular mom to balance out their alien monomyth dad.    And she plays that role well, because that’s who she is.   But she’s still proud of them for saving the world and so forth. 

Unpopular opinion: Chi-Chi was right. 

Look, how was Gohan going to make a life for himself as a fighter, in a world where Goku and Vegeta have that market cornered?   

Where’s he live?  In a big-ass mansion.    Why?  Because he married a rich man’s daughter.   Where’d he meet her?   In the school Chi-Chi made him go to.  How’d he get in to said school?   He aced their entrance exams.    How’d he do that?   Chi-Chi made him study.

What does Goku do all day when he isn’t training?  He drives a tractor?  Why?  Because his wife has a thing for farmer aesthetics.   Why does he just do whatever his wife tells him?   Because he didn’t study.

A wish:  I wish all the Chi-Chi haters would stay out of my soup, because it’s salty enough as it is.   (Heyoooo!)

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I’ve been seeing Manalorian spoilers lately, and I don’t want to give anything away, but it seems like every time something happens on Mando, all the chuds come out of the woodwork to complain about Episode VIII and/or IX.     They’re like “thank you, Disney, for giving us the [Star Wars thing] that Disney refused to give us.” 

My fear is that Star Wars has become balkanized into this thing where people praise half of it as fixing or undoing the damage caused by the other half.   Used to be, people would either like the Ewoks or hate them, but they couldn’t ignore the fact that they were there.   Now it’s like any movie that doesn’t feature Ewoks is done to cater to the anti-Ewok crowd, and any movie that does is solely for the purpose of keeping the pro-Ewok side engaged.   

My point is that I worry that this will happen to all media franchises, and Dragon Ball Q will feature a Chi-Chi that gets turned into a hateful she-hag to satisfy the haters, and then Ultra Dragon Ball Deluxe will feature a more nuanced version of Chi-Chi as a make-good, thereby pissing off the haters.   And they’ll go back and forth trying to please everyone while the character ends up becoming an incomprehensible mess from it.  

5 words to best describe them: Adorable tiger mom/bus advocate.

My nickname for them: Cheech. 

[ariana-maryse]

back again! with rainbow cookies! (which are chocolate chip cookies with m&ms) priest is on netflix so i watched it & remembered how much i love black hat's dramatic ass 😂 got any good monster movie recs? i need some more monsters in my life. i definitely need some lady monsters too, if you don't mind helping a monster lover out

Omg YES. Those are one of my faves! It’s like you just knew. Black Hat is SO dramatic and Karl Urban is already hot, so adding in his wonderful performance makes for a villain that managed to outshine a priest - which, for me, is a big deal. I have a priest thing, like, hardcore. 

Absolutely! Yesss, lady monsters. I’m sorry if you’ve already seen everything I suggest but I’mma try my best. Also I’m going with all genres and throwing in some other media types as well because I must, apparently.  Also I’m sorry this is a novel, holy shit.

Vampire Movies: Dracula (the Bela Lugosi one. I’m not a fan of the Gary Oldman version,) all the Blade films, Lost Boys, Ultraviolet, Interview with the Vampire, Vampire in Brooklyn, Twilight (I know everyone shits on it but there’s so many babes in the films,) and Only Lovers Left Alive. Vampire Shows: Hemlock Grove (I didn’t finish it, but it has Bill Skarsgard, Famke Janssen, and Dougray Scott in it so even if the story isn’t that strong, there’s that,) What We Do in the Shadows, and Sirius the Jaeger if you fw anime.

Werewolves (besides those that are in any of the above): Red Riding Hood, An American Werewolf in London, Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too, and if you’re into vidya games you can make werewolves on the Sims.

Ghosts: I’m obviously a big fan of Thirteen Ghosts, Candyman, Beetlejuice (there’s also an animated series!) Crimson Peak, The Crow, Ghost Ship, and Sleepy Hollow.

Demons/Angels: Constantine, Jennifer’s Body, Hellraiser (just 1 and 2 - after that it gets so campy,) Legion, Dogma, Bedazzled, Little Nicky (100% for Rhys Ifans,) Insidious has some interesting lil friends, and if you fw anime: Blue Exorcist, Claymore, Demon Slayer, Fire Force, and Inuyasha all have actual demons. Some others have similar variations and I’ll mention those in “other,” 

Robots/Androids/Cyborgs (I’m going with they count): AI (peep Jude Law,) Avengers: Age of Ultron, Robots (you may not wanna smash any of them, but it’s a classic,) and Archer (hella cyborgs.)

Aliens: A fair amount of the Marvel films, but my personal faves are Venom and Thor: The Dark World - the elves are pretty damn hot, the Men in Black franchise has some good ones, The Faculty, Rocky Horror Picture Show, District 9, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Chronicles of Riddick (Karl Urban is up in this bitch, too!) Star Wars obvi, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Rihanna, always hot,) and Futurama is basically all aliens.

Clowns: It (all the films,) Clown, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Terrifier. Also Archer has a few episodes where there’s a whole clown gang.

Other: Sinister has Bughuul, Dead Silence (if you’re into puppets. If not, it’s still a cool film,) The Brothers Grimm offers a lot, Ferngully has Hexxus, League of Extraordinary Gentleman, The Mummy (Imhotep and Anck Su’Namun are fine,) absolutely anything made by Guillermo del Toro, The Babadook can shapeshift and I wasn’t sure if he qualified as a ghost or not, American Horror Story has everything: ghosts, demons, withces, vampires, clowns, etc., Black Phillip’s human form in The Witch, Coraline (the other parents,) Pagemaster has this Jekyll and Hyde scene that’s nice and spicy, Courage the Cowardly Dog has Queen of the Black Puddle and some other great ones, the hormone monsters in Big Mouth are pretty legit. I’mma get into anime and video games now so if you’re not feeling that, I totally get it if you stop reading. Or if you did like a million words ago.

Anime: Ajin, Devilman Crybaby has all the demons, Bleach has kinda ghosts and the Hollows/Arrancar (plus fillers featuring vampires and sword spirits that are all beasty,) Swordgai isn’t that strong of a show but they basically all get possessed, D. Gray-Man has demonish creatures and some vamps, some of the Shinigami in Death Note aren’t bad, some of the evolutions in Digimon are pretty hot ngl, and there’s probably more that I can’t think of rn.

Vidya Games: In Skyrim (and TES in general) you get vampries, werewolves, elves, orcs, lizard folks, and then all the Daedric Princes. The Legend of Zelda series offers some good shit; Prince Sidon in BotW, Twilight Princess comes through with Ganon, Zant, the darknuts, and Death Sword. All the games have some good shit. Same with Final Fantasy - in 12 alone there’s the Espers and Vayne post transformation. The Jak and Daxter series, the tyrants in Resident Evil, and in The Arcana some of the card.. spirits? Idk what they’re called but they’re lowkey hot.

[dbzebra]

☕️ Dragon Ball Minus (rant as much as you want! 😜)

I talked about why I hate Minus plenty of times before, but one more time wouldnt hurt. This. THIS ABOMINATION. It’s probably the single worst thing in the entire franchise. (Kisscourse is right behind it, but for completely different reasons)

It’s a disgrace. Plain and simple. Not bashing anyone who likes it, but the fact that so many people parade Minus around as something great because its “cAnoN” and it retcons the Bardock special, something that was almost universally loved up until that point drives me up a wall. Everyone considered that special canon, including Toriyama himself because he liked it so much he put Bardock in the original manga, if only for a single panel. 

If Toriyama spilled ink on a page and submitted that as a chapter, the canon police would eat it up. fuck what DB considers canon these days.

I have a theory that Shueisha or someone at Jump forced him to make Minus and it shows. 

First of all, Goku is sent away to live a better life, not to destroy Earth like it was for 20 years. His parents love him, instead of being disregarded to a backwater planet like the trash he was according to Saiyan culture. 

This is true especially in the Saiyan Saga when Goku fought Vegeta. Vegeta talks abotut his status in Saiyan society, saying that Goku should feel privileged to get to fight an elite, and that the whole reason Goku was sent to earth in the first place is because Saiyans are tested for their power at birth, and those with no promise are sent to shit planets that arent worth much like Earth is considered

 However, Goku is unfazed by this insult. In fact, he says he's glad to have been considered trash because that was what allowed him to escape those very limitations his society had placed upon him. It taught him that hard work is more important than social status or a fate placed on him while he's still an infant.

Goku's character arc in the Saiyan saga is learning about his heritage and dealing with it. The Saiyans are pricks. His brother kidnaps his son. Nappa and Vegeta kill his friends. He's saved the world, but he was actually sent here to destroy it, and it was only through a lucky chance that that wasn't exactly what ended up happening. And we come to find out that Goku is supposed to be one of these mass murdering space pirates. He's one of them. Except that he's not. Even as far back as his birth, his people rejected him, labeled him as nearly worthless, and shipped him off to do the only thing they judged him capable of doing. And that's what makes the Saiyan saga work so well. If they hadn't judged him to be inferior, he would’ve died on Planet Vegeta. Even if he was older and off-planet, likely wouldve called back like the others were. 

And now he is face to face with the personification of that bigotry, and he is about to show him exactly what a low-born castoff can do and just how wrong they were about him. 

“Even a reject can suprass an elite if he trains hard enough”

That despite their aspersions on him, he can be better than all of them. 

Unless of course you believe Minus. With Minus, that is GONE. It’s “uwu my mommy and daddy wanted me to be happy away from the big bad mean freeza so i got sent to a weak planet to live” like even more of a Superman ripoff.

Give me a break. 

Then it shoe horns in Super Saiyan God, because OF COURSE, despite Freeza never mentioning a single thing about it before. (I know why, but still). Toriyama always made his retcons or changes feel natural, like with the original plans for the Androids or Goku being an alien. With the random name drop of SSJG, its just screams “HEY ITS THE NEW FORM FROM THE NEW MOVIE, IT CONNECTS TO THIS” stop toriyama. youre better than this.

All these things that built Goku’s character in the early arcs of Z fall apart. Why? Because Dragon Ball Minus told you they're not true. They're not worth taking seriously. And for what? 

Because we got to see Goku's mom. Gine is cute, but at what cost? Bardock’s entire character and Goku’s entire backstory. 

fuck

[galacticbugman]

Colorado Fun! Summer 2019 Part 1: Prehistoric Adventures

Greetings from Colorado! It was sure a wild trek I took a few weeks ago. It was so cool to visit some of the old hot spots and the new places. This was a photo of me taken at one of my favorite Dinosaur Museums. This place is called the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. It has a lot of cool things in it. It may be a small little place but it has quite the collection. Here I am behind a model of a Megalodon’s Jaws. These suckers got huge. They wouldn’t have to bite just to swallow you whole. I am so tiny compared to this set of Shark Chompers. It was kind of freaky yet cool. I got a lot of neat photos so lets get started. Just a warning you will be hearing and reading a lot of Jurassic Park related stuff in this posting. 

Okay so you know I can’t pass up a Jurassic Park post it is one of my favorite movies of all time. This one is at the same place as the Meg jaws. This poster I am next to is an authentic original Jurassic Park (1993) Poster. I have all the movies and now the original books. Jurassic Park has had a big impact on my life and I enjoy the whole series. The movies are great and the books are even better. I have been a big fan and no trip to a Dinosaur museum is never complete without some references to classic Dinosaur films from the Sliver Screen. Did you notice my clothes? I thought you did. Yep I wore my Jurassic Park button down and my Jurassic World Raptor shirt for this trek. I went all out and even wore my fossilized Shark Tooth Necklace. I always have a theme when I got to certain places or at least I try to. 

On the other side of the theater area they have another authentic poster from my favorite JP movie in the series. This is an original poster from The Lost World: Jurassic Park which came out in 1997. This was so cool to see posters from the two best Jurassic Park films ever created. I really enjoy finding Jurassic Park based things. I just crazy about stuff like this. I really enjoy the novels that Michael Crichton wrote back in the 90s as well as the movies. I like both types of media and I know that when this movie came out many fans of the book were pretty outraged by the movie not being like the book like we saw with the first movie which did follow pretty close to the book with a few plot differences and things. Jurassic Park for me is one thing I really enjoyed growing up with I have some of the Toys, a Jurassic Park bed sheet set, all of the movies that does include the Jurassic World stuff. I have the Lego Jurassic World Video Game for the Nintendo 3DS, I have played countless Jurassic Park games including the Rampage Edition, the NES Jurassic Park game, the SNES game, I have played the demo for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, I have played Jurassic Park Builder for Android, Jurassic World the Game, and Jurassic World: Alive. i even have the Jurassic Park: Danger board game. I am just a huge fan of this and have several shirts and things that I wear pretty often. I wasn’t able to watch the films until I was older. I was I was about ten or eleven when I was finally able to watch the films. Ever since I was able to watch them my mind was blown and I became an instant fan. Of course I did collect  the toys way before I saw the movies I have several that I might post in post of their own in a collection of my collectibles that I have collected over the years of being a huge fan of many things. Still a pretty cool find in one of the coolest museums on the planet. 

One of the coolest things about this museum is that they have the third Largest Tyrannosaurus-Rex. It used to be the second almost topping Sue; but in recent years there is another one that has been discovered to be even taller than Sue. Still this monster is one of my favorite dinosaurs and has always been my favorite since I was kid and it is one of my favorites in the Jurassic Park franchise. Tyrannosaurus-Rex was not really an active hunter but more of a scavenger. It’s teeth are kind of dulled out and only used for ripping and swallowing whole instead of chewing. What is the deal with the tiny little stubby arms you ask? It has been up for debate for years but some thing that they played a part in the mating ritual of this species but we are not too sure about that. It is just speculation which paleontology is all about. Still a fantastic and giant creature from the last Cretaceous period. 

 One of my favorite shark fossils is this one. This is an almost complete spinal region and skull of a shark. It maybe the only one in existence so far as we know. This is kind of a really interesting rarity. As we know Shark skeletons are made of cartilage and it often breaks down and deteriorates after a while but in this is one of those rare fossils of cartilage. It is kind of neat and this shark may looks small but it is pretty large. The photos don’t really do it justice than experiencing these fossils in person. Lets look at another cool fossil shall we. 

What is this weird creature? Is it an alien? Well it is from a time very different from our own. This is the Giant Ground Sloth and my brother and I saw this guy being put together on a display stand. This is one of the weirdest creatures. You may have heard of the Horse Apple or Bois De’ Arc tree. Well the horse apple was a favorite food of this species as well as the mammoths that lived here thousands of years ago. This one was pretty young and just a little taller than me. I am about 5′ 9″ and these guys could get up to ten foot tall so this guy was not even close to being done growing. This guy is kind of a weird dumpy animal but it is quite interesting to look at. It was kind of cool to see all kinds of extinct animals other than Dinosaurs. There was a bunch of neat stuff at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. 

As a huge Jurassic Park fan I couldn’t help but notice this skull hanging in the prehistoric wing of the museum. You may recognize it from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This guy is the Stygimoloch AKA Stiggy in Jurassic Park. Sorry to bust your bubble on these guys but they can’t actually ram each other or solid brick wall. These guys would shatter their skulls if they were to do that. These guys may have used their heads to amplify noise or to show off for the ladies. These guys are still pretty cool to look at. I saw this and was instantly familiar with it. Stiggy is one of my favorite Jurassic World Dinosaurs for the chaos at the auction scene when we was running about causing panic and confusion to buy Owen Grady some time. This was one of the coolest fossils in their collection. This is the first one of these I have seen in any museum collection. 

A cool battle scene between an Allosaurus and a Stegosaurus. You might think of a Stegosaurus to have a pretty good defense due to those big thick bony plates; however this is simply not the case. The plates are actually very thin and were possibly only used for mating purposes. This made the plates more like a blood filled cookie. Still they did have their famous weapon the Thagomizer which was used as a weapon and could really do some damage. I will never forget the scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park when Sarah Harding gets attacked by the family heard after her camera messes up when she is photographing the baby causing it to sent of an alarm call. Stegosaurus is a huge dinosaur and will always be one of my favorites. Fun Fact: In the first Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton instead of using a sick triceratops like they did in the film it was actually a sick Stegosaurus that Dr. Harding was caring for when the Toyota Land Cruisers came up to that point on the tour. That was one of the biggest differences in media but the same thing was going on with both animals in both forms of media.   

A close up of a Stegosaurus Thagomizer. 

A cool Hadrosaur fossil that was also at the Denver Museum. They had a lot of cool fossils but I didn’t get a chance to photograph them all. There was just too much and so little time to see the whole museum but heck it was really cool to see some of the Jurassic Park superstars in this museum. Hardrosaurus was not in Jurassic Park but this was one of the first dinosaurs I ever learned about. These guys are also known as Duck-bills for their goofy looking mouths. Dinosaurs had some of the coolest features from weird headgear, to weird mouth shapes, to their wild arsenal of weapons. Even in the time of the dinosaurs biological warfare was very weird. 

A rather cool replica I got on the trip was this cast of a Raptor claw. I am a huge Raptor fan and adding one of these to my collection was really cool. My collection is now in a nice display cabinet with some of my Jurassic Park toys in the mix just to make it more interesting. Fossils are just one of my favorite things to collect and even though this is a fake it is still a nice edition to my educational collections and too I got it reminded me of Alan Grant’s Raptor Claw from Jurassic Park (1993) and I am a huge JP Raptor fan. I will be doing a top ten Jurassic Park Dinosaurs post soon to show you what my top 10 pics are after the trip photos. So stay tuned more animals and stuff to show you from Colorado as my Colorado trip review continues. 

[aion-rsa]

To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi

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To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is Christopher Paolini’s first foray into science-fiction, and the first of potentially many stories in the Fractalverse. The story follows xenobiologist Kira Navárez as a chance encounter with an ancient, alien artifact propels her into an epic space adventure across the vast expanse of the galaxy, in a fight for the fate of humanity. We talk to the author about the writing process, his sci-fi influences, favorite shared universes, and writing hopeful science fiction.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Den of Geek: What is it about science fiction that made you want to create within that framework?

Christopher Paolini: I grew up reading as much science fiction as fantasy. So for me, it was a very natural transition. My dad was and is a huge science fiction fan. My mom was a fantasy reader, so I kind of got both genres from them. And I just love the possibilities of science fiction, and I love how a lot of science fiction talks about the future of humanity, especially as we may be moving off this planet and exploring the rest of the universe. And I was also wanting a change from fantasy after working on The Inheritance Cycle for about 12 years, from 15 to 26/27. That’s a large chunk of one’s life to be put into one project. So yeah, science fiction felt like a very natural fit.

Which came first for you, did you already have an idea that you wanted to write in science-fiction? Or did you have the idea of a whole story in one book, then decide that science fiction would fit with that idea in mind?

I had the idea for the story first and the idea first came about in 2006, 2007. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a self contained story or series, but very early on, I decided that yes, it was going to be a one book story. That became increasingly important to me the longer I worked on The Inheritance Cycle, because I didn’t finish that series until the end of 2011, and then I was touring for it mid to late 2012. So when thinking about what I wanted to do next, was like, “Well, I’d rather write a self contained story and then move onto something new.” And also I wanted to get that experience for readers of not having to wait for years and years for the next volume. The ironic thing is that it actually didn’t really take me any less time to write To Sleep than if I had broken it up and just done two or three novels.

Were there any things that you maybe didn’t want to get rid of or cut to make the story fit into one tome that you had to get rid of? If so, how did you deal with that?

No, I told the story of what I wanted to tell. I actually had a unique experience with editing with this book where my editors at Tor, along with the other changes I was making, general revisions and copy edits… They actually had me add about 30,000 words of material to the book as I was revising, which I’ve never had that experience before. So no, everything I wanted to put in the story is in the story. It’s a book that is stuffed to the gills with stuff, and hopefully readers will enjoy all of that stuff. With that said, there is lots of material within the universe and within that setting that I want to write about and have plans for that isn’t in this book. But this book itself has what it needs to have.

Do you have plans for, not necessarily a sequel, but other stories that take place within the same connected universe?

Absolutely. I mean, if people… At least in the hardcover edition of the book, they’ll see there’s the logo for the Fractalverse, not only embossed the cover, but also printed on an inside page and the Fractalverse is a setting that I’ve been working on for quite a long time. The idea is that any stories that I want to tell that aren’t explicitly fantasy can fit within the Fractalverse. So it includes the real world, the far future, the distant past. And even though some of those stories might seem a little disconnected, they will all tie together in the end.

What do you think makes a really good connected or extended shared universe?

Part of it would be theme and tone. I think about Star Wars or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or any of these big franchises, and usually there’s a certain feel associated with that franchise. You know that when you’re going to go watch a James Bond film, for example, or you’re going to go watch a Star Trek film or show, you’re going to get a certain something. So I think theme and tone is a big thing. I’m kind of in the same camp as Sanderson for this one, finding ways to tie in characters, or thematic things, or world events so that things really are interconnected on a deep level. It may not make much of a difference for any one individual story, but when you step back and look at the whole edit sets, you can see how all the pieces fit together.

What are some of your favorite extended universes, across all mediums?

The Cosmere by Sanderson would certainly be up there. Also the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, and how that ties into his other works. I’m not actually a fan of horror. I think that there are enough difficult things in the world already, without putting more of that in my head, but I really appreciate how the Dark Tower sort of ties together his other books, characters cross pollinate between his various stories. I think that’s pretty cool.

If you could choose any character from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to put into another universe that you didn’t create, which character would you put into that universe and why?

My answer probably won’t surprise you. Gregorovich.

And what universe would you put him in?

Oh geez. Almost anything, almost anything. I would love to see him in… Actually, this would make him deeply unhappy, but the way it tickles my storytelling brain, I would love to see him in Battlestar Galactica and see him grappling with divisions between the humans and the Cylons, and him being sort of an inter median between human and cyborg or even full on Android.

Were there any tropes or things you wanted to explicitly avoid in your writing for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars?

My general approach was to try to treat every character with dignity and respect the same way I would want to be treated or anyone else would want to be treated, to not make a big deal about people being the other, even if sometimes they feel like they’re the other. And also, the thing is, I’m sure there’s still going to be prejudice and discrimination and all sorts of other issues in the future. I mean, humans are humans, that’s unfortunately not going to go away. But there’s no reason to highlight that or make it a major point of your main story or character, unless that’s something you want to grapple with in a deep examination of “how can we do better?”

I wanted to know about the rules you set for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars where: you wanted it to be realistic science, you wanted it to not completely break physics, and you wanted to disallow time travel. What was the reason and the thought process behind that?

The main point for me was that I didn’t want my spaceships to be time machines. Because if you look at the physics of a lot of faster than light travel in a lot of popular franchises, the math says that the spaceships really should be capable of time travel, which, if your story’s not about time travel, having your most popular transportation method allowing for that kind of wrecks your story. So I really, really wanted to avoid that. I really wanted a technical answer that I could wrap my brain around, which would give me a really solid footing for whatever I want to write in the Fractalverse.

What was the process of figuring out how to both be very technical, but also making it where a lay person could just read To Sleep in a A Sea of Stars and actually be able to follow along?

Well, that was very important to me. Having written fantasy, I definitely ran into challenges of info dumping and, and not wanting to info dump, and how do you convey large amounts of information to your readers in a palatable fashion? I definitely learned things when working on The Inheritance Cycle and I tried to apply them in this book. So the goal was to naturally introduce readers to this universe without overloading them with technical information. If readers want that technical information it’s in the appendices at the back of the book. So in some ways it’s almost like science is to science fiction is what magic is to fantasy, it defines the rules of what is possible in that universe. And it’s important for me as the author to know all those rules, but I don’t have to dump out those on the reader all at once.

Were there any habits that you had to break in the transition from writing a fantasy series, then going into a completely different genre and a different world?

Absolutely tons. First of all, I had an established approach style in a society that I had been working with for so long that it was really second nature. So I had to work very hard to come up with a cleaner, more modern style for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I enjoyed. It actually gave me a lot more freedom in terms of the tools I had to write the book. And then also just the pacing of the book is different because To Sleep is a complete story from start to finish. That was actually a little surprising to me, because when you write a series, you really get to know the characters in a way that you just can’t in one book, because you have thousands of pages to live with them. So the pacing was different and that was also a challenge to get used to. On top of that, the fact that a spaceship does not go in faster in an emergency, unlike horses or people, where if you need to get from point A to point B faster, you can just sort of spur the horses on a little more. You can run, you can push yourself harder. Spaceships don’t really do that. Machines don’t really do that. So that put some restrictions on the logistics of moving my characters around, it was a fun restriction.

Are there any common threads between your other series and this new one?

There is a fairly significant easter egg from The Inheritance Cycle in this book that I’ll leave for readers to discover. And then there are my usual obsessions as a writer on display. For example, I find myself continually drawn towards stories of personal transformation, both physical and mental, and that’s on full display here. And a lot of questions of how the individual relates to society. What is your responsibility to people in general if society stopped caring about you as a person? Despite the fact that it’s science fiction, there is a very real ethic and physics to the story, as it proceeds, that people who are fans of that in my fantasy novels will find the same here and will enjoy that also.

If you had to choose for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to be respectfully adapted into either of the following, a TV mini series, a standalone film, or a AAA game title, which would you choose and why?

I don’t know if it’s one film, but my gut says, a film. Simply because I would love for people to experience the story in one go, that was my whole reason for putting it into one book. I mean, a miniseries or TV show could do a wonderful job of it. But the pacing is different in a TV show and the beats and the emotions are different. So yeah, my gut reaction would be a film.

What are some of your favorite stories specifically set in space across all mediums— book, TV, film, comics, video games?

Well, video games. It would be the Mass Effect series, specifically if you’re playing with Commander Shepard, who is voiced by the amazing Jennifer Hale, who we were fortunate to get to read the audiobook. And she did an absolutely fantastic job with that. The Halo series, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, old school Star Trek, the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Dune by Frank Herbert, including the David Lynch film, which I have a soft spot in my heart for. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. I know that’s science fiction, that’s not in space. I think those would be some of the big ones. Oh, a lot of Iain Banks’ sci-fi novels.

What job do you think you would have, in the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe?

Well, given that the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe includes the real universe, I have a feeling I’d have the exact job I have now, writing epic stories that people would hopefully enjoy.

If you could bring one thing from the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe into our real modern day, present day, what would it be and why?

If I had to pick one piece of human technology to bring, it would actually be the fusion drives from the spaceship, because that would allow us to access the rest of the solar system in a way that we can’t, and really start spreading. I mean, the solar system we have is huge. So that alone would really provide an enormous boost for us as a species.

If you had to convey what To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is about to someone or something that doesn’t communicate with language as we understand it, what vibes would you want to give off or what feeling would you try to express?

I love this question. Oh, I’m so glad you asked that. I would want to convey the same feeling that inspired me to write this book in the first place. And it would be a feeling of… A tingle down your spine, of awe and wonder, both horrible and beautiful at our place within the universe. At the fact that the universe even exists and that we exist, in a bittersweet ache, that things are never perfect, but we still have accomplished all we can. And there’s hope for the future.

That’s a really hard thing to combine into one word or one sentence. But I literally wrote this entire book to try and convey that feeling and hopefully to convey it in the very last scene, in the very last line of the book.

This is a really good time for this book, I was surprised at how delicate and hopeful it was.

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I want to write optimistic fiction, ultimately. I never wanted to leave my readers depressed when they finish one of my books. I’ve heard so many people over the years where Eragon got them into reading, or one of the books helped them, helped a person through a difficult time in their life. And it makes me think that, well, if they’d read the wrong book and the wrong time, it might’ve made life a lot harder for them. So I think it will be unlikely that you’ll ever catch me writing a grim dark fantasy or science fiction.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is out now.

The post To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mk-wizard]

Personal Critique on Terminator Dark Fate

Note that the following contains spoilers so if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to have the surprises ruined, please stop reading now!

The following is also my own opinion. While this latest instalment is not as good as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, it has many good qualities and it definitely earns the spot of being the official sequel of it. I felt it was the Terminator movie we really needed to have for a long time even though it took a lot of radical, but necessary steps or rather, steps of which were sort of done before, but this time, done right.

The first and most important note of this movie is that it was one huge salute and reminder to the audience that the true star of this franchise is Sarah Conner not John. I think that is why the majority of the main leads were women who were a balanced mix of strong and sensitive in all the right ways just like her. They were fighters, they stood on their own two feet and they were independent when the situation called for it, but they were also highly motivated by love namely motherly and/or familial love, their pain and emotional scars were obvious, and they were not ashamed to openly mourn. Yet, they are never broken by it.

The second note this movie did right was the death of John Conner. I know many fans felt cheated with his death because there was all this build up of his great destiny which we were all dying to see, but what fans forget (and even I do at times) is that his great destiny was already cancelled since the second movie. His fate was altered and he was now just an ordinary boy free to have his whole life ahead of him. In my opinion, THIS is what made his death truly tragic. He was no longer a threat. He really was just an innocent normal boy which is why his death hurt Sarah and the audience so much. It was a beautifully done "why" moment. And that is what made it a good decision. It reminds us how cruel and how narrow the view of the machines are.

The third note the movie did right is that gave us Carl who is a Terminator with feelings and a sense of right and wrong done right. He wasn't cheesy, over the top or the comic relief character. His interactions with people felt alien because at the end of the day, he isn't a human and we can't expect Carl to be human, but he definitely achieved person-hood. He even grew to genuinely regret killing John hence wanting to atone by giving Sarah a new purpose. If he was truly just a machine, he wouldn't have stopped to think about what he did. Being a husband and father changed him. Love changed him. And those instances where he smiled or looked sad were real. Yes, you still couldn't call him human, but he was not the equivalent of a heartless PC. After all, the Terminators are androids which are capable of learning and their "boss" doesn't sit there teaching them about things like ethics or communication. If given the chance, they could comprehend them though.

The fourth note was that it finally did something different and right. For too long, the sending someone in the past to protect someone had been done to death. And while the new saviour Dani did need protection in the beginning, she was a fighter to begin with. She was responsible, she would stand up to people and she could think on her feet. In the end, she didn't need protection. She was standing alongside the other fighters. Also, Dani made hard choices which were not for the faint of heart which showed her potential to be a leader from get go. And even though she knew about the future, she was still determined to write her own version of it in which nobody has to die. She was a worthy successor to both John and Sarah combined.

Overall, I rate the movie 8/10 and I really hope that James Cameron will continue to be involved in the production of future Terminator instalments. With that said, I hope there will be other instalments.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Full Shares

I have one helluva backlog of films to work through but, between those and other distractions, i am having just the dickens of a time getting through them. I’ve started Uncut Gems three different times but the tension, man, it stresses me out way too much. I have to take breaks in between and just forget about where i left off so i need to start over. I have to say, though, the twenty to thirty minutes i have seen is absolutely excellent. In the meantime, while i muster enough nerve to actually finish that film, i wanted to revisit one of my all-time favorites. Way back when i first saw this movie, it gave me the same intense, stressed out, panic i feel watching Gems. Alien changed the way that I interacted with film and, to this day, it’s one of maybe a handful of movies to ever illicit true fear from me. I saw it, for the first time as a young kid of maybe six or seven, in a late night showing on TV and i remember even the broadcast edit spazzing me the f*ck out. Imagine my apprehension seeing the theatrical cut fr the first time a few years later. As i got older and learned to appreciate the moving parts of film individually, i came to love Alien even more. Not only is it actually terrifying. it’s one of the best built movies i have ever seen and carries the template for bad-ass film like a badge of honor. Cats say the sequel, which i’ll get to in a later review, is better than the first, but i wholeheartedly disagree. This movie is easily top three all-time for me and here’s why. I have to tell you from the outset, this movie is perfect in my opinion. There  are no flaw so don’t expect any negative, just me gushing about the excellence within.

The Outstanding

The very best aspect of this movie is easily Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal as Ellen Ripley. My goodness, was this character absolutely amazing. When people think of Ripley, they often remember Cameron’s version of her from Aliens. To most people, Ripley is that chick, strapped down in a power loader, calling the Queen Xenomorph a b*tch to her face. That is, undeniably, iconic. Ellen Ripley solidified the template for strong, female, lead with that scene. But Ripley didn’t start out that way. She had to earn that title and it began with her battle for survival in the original Alien. Ripley began as an undermined, kind of by-the-book, Warrant Office, just trying to get back in time for her daughter’s eleventh birthday. Over the course of two hours, we watched Ripley evolve into the absolute unit that she is known for and the nuanced portrayal of that evolution by Weaver shows us the harrowing journey with an almost visceral vulnerability. Ellen Ripley is not a character, she is a person. You feel for this woman and her struggle. You root for her. You gasp when she fails. You want her to survive. To get attached to a film character so completely is testimony to the excellence of that actor’s performance and Sigourney Weaver turns one in for the ages. Not bad for a twenty-year-old’s second film appearance, first speaking role.

You can’t speak about Alien without the iconic imagery provided by the nightmares of H.R. Giger’s art. The raw, horrifyingly sexual, disgustingly organic, yet wholly bizarre vestiges of the LV-426 hive were incredible. That initial pan of the fossilized Space Jockey fused to his pilot’s seat can’t help but inspire very real awe. I imagine seeing that reveal on an Imax screen and it is absolutely riveting. More so, entering into the hive itself, wit all those corridors woven from steel and flesh, leading into the pitfall trap full of the waiting, legitimately alien eggs illicit a feeling of primal terror. Those things are nothing like anything terrestrial. They are just familiar enough to inspire curiosity from the audience but uncanny enough to trigger apprehension. Absolutely brilliant but the true genius, the source of constant panic, belongs to the adult xenomorph, itself.

Big Chap, as the production team called it, was a miracle of effects work. The suit was custom built to fit the near seven foot frame of Bolaji Badejo but it was his physicality that lent an organic presence to the techno-organic monstrosity. That original Xenomorpgh was wildly terrifying to me. Even at my young age, i weathered Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees, with rather stoic aplomb but the Xenomorph sent me into a panic. I had legitimate nightmares about this thing which had never happened before. Giger had created a creature of such instinctual terror that you has no choice by to fear it and that sh*t is amazing.

I touched on how excellent Ellen Ripley was as a character, giving well deserved credit to Weaver’s portrayal but, like all classic characters in storytelling, Ripley began on the page. The writing for Alien is some of the best i have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Every character, every scene, every aspect, of this story is tight. Dan O’Bannon deserves all credit for this classic script. He wrote a story filled with characters and suspense, never identifying male of female unless absolutely necessary. I miss when films were films and not soapboxes for gender politics. It’s amazing how timeless and iconic characters can become when you’re not trying to push a goddamn agenda.

Now, O’Bannon’s script is excellent but it took a true visionary to bring it to life. Ridley Scott was that creative. Alien was Scott’s second directorial effort and he was able to craft a visual narrative far beyond what his tangible experience would dictate. Scott is a true visionary. The way he saw O’Bannon’s script was incredible. I mean, the vistas of the Derelict Ship, the sanitized halls of the Nostromo, that whole retro-futuristic look, the abject terror and repugnant reversal of sexuality with the Alien; All of that is Scott. O’Bannon gave this man one helluva blueprint but Scott built a goddamn monument of cinema in his own right.

The sound design in this film is absolutely classic. The hisses from the alien, the clacking of the computers, that harrowing voice from MOTHER during the adrenaline packed climax; Every sound, echo, pitch, and clank is perfectly administered to embellish the hellish visuals onscreen. I’ll never forget the first time seeing Brett’s death scene. The subtle sway of chains giving way to the impactful sound of those water droplets hitting his face, lulling you into a false sense of security, only to see the Xenomorph puncture his skull. That mixture of screams and rattling chains was haunting, brilliant use of sound for a horror set piece and testament to it’s voracity.

I spoke at length about Sigourney Weaver’s casting and performance but literally everyone is outstanding in this film. being an original script, not based on any existing media, you had an open template to create these characters. In a sense, casting for this type of project is even more tantamount than building a cinematic adaption of a novel or comic. This film is going to be known for these characters, for this world, going forward and Alien nailed this sh*t. Aside from Weaver’s star-turning performance as Ripley, John Hurt turned in a rather endearing outing as Kane, the first victim of the Xenomorpgh. Tom Skerritt was probably the biggest name in the film so everyone thoight that his character Dallas would be the lone survivor. Nope. Veronica Cartwright’s Lambert was woefully unraveled, specially during the Chestburster scene and Ian Holm’s Ash is easily unnerving his uncanny valley-esque performance. Harry Dean Stanton’s Brett was a man of few words but my second favorite performance in this entire film belongs to Yaphet Kotto. His portrayal as the aggressive, outspoken, incredibly loyal, Parker, endures to this day. These characters are all incredibly written and skillfully performed, bringing characters to life that will endure through time.

This movie came out in 1979, man! It is four decades old an can still give anything created today, even with out advances in effects work and film techniques, a run for it’s money. That is testament to the deft hand and expert precision in the construction of this movie. It’s rare that a film can be so timeless and it’s easily the first i have ever seen to capture that high mark. There are others like that; Jurassic Park, Twelve Angry Men, Jaws, The Godfather, To kill a Mockingbird, Star Wars, but even those classics show chinks in the armor. Not Alien. That Retro-futuristic design is absolutely timeless and fits in with any era of cinema.

The world Alien created was ripe for elaboration. The franchise, alone, produced three sequels; Each an amazing look at different film styles, directorial vision, and cinematic genre. Aliens is arguably one of the greatest sequels ever and has a completely different tone that the first. Some would ay it’ even better than the first. I wouldn’t but others do. There have been books, comics, games, and so much more based on this world. Alien: Isolation is easily the best game ever made based on the franchise and it stars that eleven-year-old daughter turned adult woman, Amanda Ripley, in a similar situation as her mother. Let me tell you, bad-assery must run in the family because Amanda was just as dope as her mom during her own gauntlet. And just like her ma’s adventure, Amanda’s outing stressed me out to no end. I loved the Earth War comic growing up and the introduction of Ripley 8 was something special. She was kind of ridiculous in the fourth film, Alien; resurrection but the comics did 8 much better justice. Speaking of artificial constructs, i would be remiss if i didn’t mention the absolutely charming android Xenomorph, Norbert, and his predecessor, Jeri, but my favorite hybrid is definitely Eloise. That’s not to mention the excellent stories with in the Aliens versus Predator mythos. I’m not going to get too heavy into that lore but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more amazing, female protagonist, outside of Ripley, than Machiko Noguchi; The human Japanese woman, blooded by the Elite Leader Yautja, Broken Tusk, given the title of Little Knife by the space-faring Predators. Ma is a f*cking machine and it’s a crime AvP ignored her story for what we eventually got in cinemas. Hell, there are even aspect of the Prometheus portion of this universe that i like, even though i don’t particularly like the film, itself. Elden is a dope character with a ton of potential for the overall lore going forward. There is so much excellent material in the Aliens expanded universe; Characters, concepts, worlds and more. The expansive nature and reverence for this universe rivals that of Star Wars, none of which could be possible without the inspired execution of the original Alien film.

The Verdict

What can i say? Alien is a goddamn masterpiece. From the second those titles slowly manifest to the exploration of LV-426, to the claustrophobic panic of the Nostromo, to Ripley’s triumphant yet uncertain fate in the end, i absolutely adore every aspect of this movie. Everything about this movie is deliberate and amazing. The performances are all excellent, everyone does an exceptional job. The set design is gorgeous and in the case of the alien hive within the Space Jockey’s ship, disgustingly beautiful. Giger’s art as perfect for this film but his design for Big Chap, the original Xenomorph design, was absolutely unnerving. The first time i saw it onscreen, i was both enthralled and horrified. To see the massive beast, in the few glimpses you got between some of the most excellent lighting ever captured on film, was incredible. There are shortcomings, sure, all films have them but i don’t believe them to be a negative. The pacing can be a little dragging at times but it’s absolutely necessary to build atmosphere. I thrive on slow burn films like The VVitch or Blade Runner 2049 and it was Alien that taught me patience in film can be a virtue. I cannot praise this film enough. For me, Alien is as close to perfect as can be. This easily gets my highest recommendation. If you’ve never seen Alien and appreciate sheer psychological terror, beautiful sets, brilliant direction, awe inspiring shots, and some of the best sound design ever captured on film, you’ll love this movie.

[celestialholz]

Star Trek: Picard. MON CAPITAINE, HE’S BAAAACK. <3

Well, I am a British idiot without a decent proxy, but it’s Friday and therefore Captain Picard Day officially for my good self, so... about time we got with the damn times and DID SOME REVIEWIN’, mes amis. Spoilers abound, naturally. I’m going blow-by-blow, but also elaborating on some lovely things here and there. Jean-Luc Picard means a lot to me personally, I write about him a lot for those who may not know me, and I’ve been SO excited for this - but does it measure up? Spoiler warning: oh yeah. Hellllll yeah.

Warning: Many crudely-drawn hearts incoming. None of them are mechanical, sadly.

- Okay, first thing: this show is GORGEOUS. Oh my god, seriously. CBS knew they were running a potential gold mine here and spent the damn money to prove it. That sweeping into the Enterprise? The credits? Boston? Jesus, my eyes haven’t been treated so well since Avengers: Endgame. It’s a damn Michelin-starred FEAST. It strikes precisely the right balance of feeling gloriously alive and futuristic whilst having the vineyard be oh-so-current, and thus retro for the era. 1701 out of ten, boys. <3

- Data. Picard. Poker. My soul aches. This immediate rich banter is just... *pinch emoji* Ten Forward, man. TEN FORWARD.

- Give me the dog. Just give me him. I love Will, super stoked to see him again, but THIS is my new Number One. Shaped like a goddamn friend.

- Boston, huh? Jesus. Immediate action, immediate knowledge without any knowledge at all of who this chick is. Great writing. <3

- Credits! Already said they’re visually lovely, but the music is also surprisingly effective. Has this contrast of giving us quaint vibes mixed with 24th century tech; the real message of this show, laid out right there.

- Romulans! In the vineyard! Picard said alien rights! Love him. <3 This whole thing feels so very him - he can’t ever quite be stagnant, even back home. He’s out here being forward-thinking and socially progressive as fuck.

- He has a found family again. Of course he does. God, you can truly tell Patrick Stewart exec-produced this. <3

- Decaf earl grey. “You’re getting old, Johnny.” (Don’t drink decaf earl grey if you can help it, guys. It’s fucking terrible. I’m sure he knows this. Bless him.)

- Journalist? She’s going to be an arse, isn’t she?

- ... Oh yeah. And a prejudiced one, too! Lovely. /end British sarcasm I love that layering of this against “Romulan lives -” “Lives.” This new universe feels so deliciously alive at every turn; visually, socially, culturally... this is the vibe I WANTED from a sequel. Beautiful. <3

- Picard, here, in this scene. Just dear GOD. This is why this character is so enduring - he’s kind, warm, soulful, deeply intelligent, principled as all hell, and he’s become so embittered by this horrendous miscarriage of justice... the utopia’s failing, folks, and it’s a delight. Patrick sells the absolute shit out of this whole thing like the absolute asset he’s always been to this franchise, and just the CARE that has gone into his portrayal? I’m in love. Just give me fucking ALL of it. He feels so very him whilst also being richer and a touch bolder and christ, all these things Patrick’s said about loving Picard and wanting to portray him faithfully shine here so very clearly. Flawless. <333333 

- Oh, and all of that, but also THROWBACK THURSDAY. <3 These flashbacks will murder me, I’m certain of it. Retro and new in perfect harmony.

- Oh, here’s the kid! And hang on, an intriguing quote... “You just wave your hand and it all goes away”? Can we just... step back and think about what that’s a reference to, because fuck, dude, I MAY JUST HAVE TO WATCH TAPESTRY AGAIN. (Hardly a chore, let’s be real. I’m a Q stan, leave me be. It’s likely not a reference of course, but for the love of the Continuum, give me De Lancie. This shit already can’t improve so far, just LET IT IMPROVE ANYWAY.) 

- This interview-on-a-random-screen thing is great, too; I love the dichotomy of it. Picard’s out here being principled and wonderful, solely for our eyes and the girl’s. It’s literally background info at this point and it’s a lovely little aside to how Picard’s just been here the whole time, abiding by what he believes in without any real fuss. 

- ... That lovely little vineyard confrontation. Yes, yes, yes. Dad vibes without being a dad. I so didn’t want him to be a dad, it’s so painfully out of character, and I’m so glad they went with ‘lovely old uncle’ instead. <3 This whole scene just again pitches Picard amazingly.

- Can I have that firepit, Jean-Luc? Thanks, Captain.

- ... Hold the entire galaxy’s collection of phones: IS THIS CHICK LAL?! How the hell would that even work?! Bro...

- This nostalgia suite thing in the archives? Incredible. The banner? He hated that shit, we all know this, but it meant something to him deep down, that those children had his respect and admiration, that he felt so inspiring to others... how very telling that it’s one of the things he chose to keep. <3 Parallels not-Lal and this whole mini-arc thing wonderfully.

- ... Is her name supposed to sound like Vash’s? Is that a coincidence? Anyway, she’s not Lal, which makes much more sense, but she is... Data’s daughter? When the sodding hell did that happen? Oh, I really don’t care, honestly. It’s beautiful. All these Data flashbacks continue to kill me, and just for the love of it, let’s chuck some Captain in there, uniform and all! Gaaah. Who gave Patrick Stewart the right to still be this attractive, good lord above. Brent out here absolutely nailing this naive joy we loved so much back in the day, too... <333

- That chat about Dajh (possibly? The sweet and misguided android chick, giving me major Amanda Rogers vibes - I was too excited to look up the spelling, do forgive me) and her connection to Data, and what it means to Picard? Lovely. Absolutely adorable.

- ... And we come to my only minor gripe with all of this joy - why in the name of all positrons was Dajh introduced and then more or less immediately blown to tiny android pieces? Can’t help but feel the potential she had was wasted. I understand that we needed a Picard catalyst to get him back in the game, but I feel as though she’d have done that whilst still being alive. Although, I’m not going to be too harsh on it... “I haven’t been living, I’ve been waiting to die” is a thousand percent the quote of 2020 twenty-three days in and I just about screamed. I’ve got Tapestry vibes again, my god. This man is such a legend. <333333

-  I was becoming rather invested in dear Dajh, though, and I know we have her identical twin elsewhere (more on that shortly) but that’s sort of like giving me Lore and expecting me to be fine without Data. Speaking of which... 

- B-4. In a drawer. Near a door? Well, probably about thirty metres away from one. Love it. And a Maddox namedrop at the same time as something of an explanation! Actually really enjoyed this tie-in to old lore (pun fully intended, folks) whilst being coherent in its own right. God, I’d love to see a non-Trekkie watch this, they’d be so fucking baffled...

- Okay, even with all I’ve said about the visuals, that segway from neuron necklace to space was spectacular. I’m never going to need an eye test again. <3

- Nice guy Romulan. Awww. Someone hug his awkward soul. Dajh’s twin looks immediately less interesting (as evidenced by the fact I’ve forgotten her name - it definitely starts with ‘S’) but I’m definitely reserving judgement for now, I’m sure she’ll be as great as the rest of this show.

- ... That’s a cube, isn’t it?

- IT’S A CUBE. WITH ROMULANS. WHO AREN’T ASSIMILATED. Did they steal it? How the hell did they steal it? Do they have an alliance? What the fuck is happening? Picard did not sign back up two minutes ago for this shit guys!

... Well, basically, tl;dr? Modern, socially developed, stunning; retro in flawless contrast, with an even richer and more nuanced main character than ever who still feels so very himself, which is all I ever wanted. Fucking fantastic. Is it Friday again yet? Can your esteemed reviewer hit up a proxy next week and not die in anticipation of whatever the shit that ending was being perhaps explained a little more?

To be continued...