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Forum namePass The Popcorn Archives
Topic subjectI take issue with what he says here.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=23&topic_id=106775&mesg_id=106943
106943, I take issue with what he says here.
Posted by Frank Longo, Sun Jun-10-12 09:10 AM

>Each Alien parasite affects its host differently. What was the
>idea behind that? Are the parasites altering DNA?
>
>I don't want to talk too specifically about what the black
>goop does. Obviously the characters in the movie are trying to
>theorize based on what is happening to them. "This thing is a
>weapon, it's really bad for us." When it interacts with living
>species, bad things result. So you see little worms and when
>the black goop gets on the little worms we see what happens to
>them. And when Fifield gets it all over his face mask, we see
>what happens to him. When Holloway just has a drop of it in a
>glass of champagne, we see what happens to him.
>
>We wanted to be purposefully vague, (but steer) the audience
>towards some conclusions as to what that stuff was supposed to
>do: Is it supposed to kill you? Is it supposed to transform
>you—which seems like the most obvious choice—and to what end?
>Like, why in God's name would the engineers want to create
>abominations out of mankind? Some of these questions we wanted
>to answer directly and some of these questions we didn't want
>to answer directly, which sets you up for a certain level of
>frustration and disappointment that I am well familiar with,
>but I'll take it any day of the week because I also feel like
>it forces you to fire your own imagination.
>
>We clearly have answers for those questions ourselves that we
>did not present in the movie purposefully, not just because
>we're saving them for potential sequels, but because the power
>of the original Alien—or even Blade Runner—is that to a
>certain degree, we're giving you all the numbers in the
>equation but we're not adding them up for you. And that's
>intentional.

Alien and Blade Runner do that, yes, but they also don't have a seemingly random set of rules (or no rules) to abide by. They at their core have very basic and easy-to-understand rules. If you're dealing with primordial goop with different effects on everything and everyone which has been developed for no clear reason and is being stored for no clear reason and is being taken to Earth for no clear reason and all we have are unreliable resources hypothesizing why they're doing these things, you need to provide SOMETHING for us to grasp onto, Damon! I mean, fuck.

I'm so torn on this movie, because it's insanely gorgeous and the super ambitious stuff that does work works so incredibly well. But Jesus Christ, the character motivations are either severely lacking or change from scene to scene based on plot convenience.