Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Alien: Covenant – Contemporary Horror of AI (2020)

38 points by measurablefunc 4 hours ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20251012183954/https://www.ejump...

TIL: Ridley (one of the main alien villains, and sometimes a final boss) from the Nintendo video game franchise, Metroid (that originated in 1986), was named after Ridley Scott.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_(Metroid)

pols45 - 2 hours ago

Private Hudson arc is the main show -

"I'm ready, man. Check it out. I am the ultimate badass. State of the badass art. You do not want to fuck with me"

"Well, that's great. That's just fuckin' great, man! Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now, man!"

"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over!"

"What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals man!"

"They're coming outta the walls! They're coming outta the goddamn walls! Let's book!"

- an hour ago

[deleted]

veganerfotze - 31 minutes ago

Two (one bad, the follow up crap) forgettable movies.

FrustratedMonky - 3 minutes ago

So much wasted potential. I'll take any article or theory to retcon the movies into something that makes sense.
measurablefunc - 18 minutes ago

How is that relevant?

burnt-resistor - 23 minutes ago

Sci-fi is a manifestation of society's diffuse subconscious in mostly semi-lucid nightmares.

andy99 - 2 hours ago

It’s down for me right now. See https://web.archive.org/web/20251012183954/https://www.ejump...

dang - an hour ago

Thanks! we'll add that link to the toptext as well

jmclnx - 2 hours ago

> Ripley defeat the alien queen

What is it with "queens" in SF ? Off to a rant :)

IMO, adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg. I was really intrigued by the Borg as presented in their first appearance. If you remember, they had a nursery with Baby Borg and a collective conscience, no individuality. Then came the queen, the ruler of all with some people having a "higher rank". Totally made the Borg irrelevant to me.

There was a TV show about an invasion of Earth, it went along fine until the last season, a queen was added, I could tell it was rushed and doing that changed its direction.

Same can be said about Independence Day, even though I did not like the queen addition, it did not take away from the whole movie and in a way a "queen" in that context made a bit of sense. The only thing is, if the Queen was killed, wouldn't that end these Aliens ? To me, a queen should not leave the home planet.

Alien movies were too much for me, things popping out of someone's belly would be a "close my eyes" type scene. But I really liked Promentheus. I did not realize until much later that was a prequel to Alien :) And I still think it is a good movie.

pixl97 - an hour ago

>What is it with "queens" in SF
Insects. Queen bees, queen ants, queen termites. Feels nice an icky to humans.
Now, SF mostly gets this wrong as isn't that much of a leader, more of a 'starter' and many species have multiple queens and when one gets killed another is promoted from larva. This and the vast majority of behaviors are self organizing, and not ones from a leadership position.
righthand - 2 hours ago

Well in the case of the first Alien movie, the whole thing is a left-then-right metaphor about conception, birth, motherhood, and gender roles in biology. If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film (a now commonly known fact about the franchise). This idea plays off of scifi with male leads. The film then does A LOT to foreshadow Ripley as the lead and mother figure. So in the case of Alien it was a statement on traditional science fiction films. The Queen was added later in the sequels on an evolution of the birth theme.
A queen in Alien universe doesn’t operate like ants do. She is just the largest most vicious female amongst the brood.
- hnspammers - 2 hours ago
  
  > If you were alive when it originally came out you wouldn’t know that Ripley is the true lead of the film
  ?
  - throwawayk7h - 2 hours ago
    
    I think they meant "wouldn't have known." The ensemble cast didn't really give contemporary viewers purchase on who would ultimately be the one to survive by the end of the film. Nowadays, many viewers go into the movie already knowing that Ripley will be the one to make it through, which makes it easy to see her as "the main character."
  - jjmarr - 2 hours ago
    
    In the marketing materials, Tom Skerritt got top billing as Dallas. He's also the captain of the ship.
  - Baeocystin - 2 hours ago
    
    Ripley being the survivor was a rug pull on the audience's expectations. Tom Skerritt (Dallas) was a well-known actor at the time, and would have been assumed to have been the default lead.
- mikkupikku - an hour ago
  
  [dead]
TOGoS - 44 minutes ago

> adding a queen to the Borg destroyed the Borg
Agreed. The Borg used to be scary because they seemed unbeatable. They were like grey goo that could adapt to whatever you threw at them.[1]
Having a queen gives them a single point of failure. Suddenly they are a lot less scary.
[1] I kind of felt the same way about the Boogieman from Ghost Busters when I was a kid. Teleports between closets and the regular ghost trap doodad doesn't work on him! Shit!
speedbird - 2 hours ago

Gotta have a boss fight at the end

reactordev - 34 minutes ago

Alien: Earth was the dumbest addition to the franchise. Hybrid synths that can “talk” to the aliens… pffft. Off the rails.

The last few films were of similar ilk. Prometheus started it with their David narrative. Just terrible writing.

burnt-resistor - 16 minutes ago

Being a good fiction consumer requires offering the benefit of the doubt up to a reasonable/personal limit of suspension of disbelief. The missing piece with that show is inconsistent and shallow character development. Lost (prior to the later season/s) is probably one of the better examples. It's still watchable but it could be better. Maybe they'll sort it out.
- grues-dinner - 7 minutes ago
  
  That's the thing, though. Gigantic spaceships, alien panspermia, stasis pods, androids, underground alien bases, convenient maps in caves. All that disbelief can be suspended.
  A handpicked team of professional astronauts on an interstellar mission being a bunch of complete incompetents over and over again for plot convenience is the real headscratcher that makes it feel like the plot is an afterthought.