So I have now seen Episode 7 and what a huge mess this is. The show started off as a mess, became more of a mess and now is so much of a mess that no feat of writing could make this fully coherent at this point. Noah Hawley is, in the simplest terms, the wrong guy to write this show. I don't know what he's the right person for - some people seemed to like Fargo. But he's the wrong writer for this.
How many things are just wrong? There are things that are wrong just in the details. For example, Slightly needing Smee's help to move the unconscious scientist. We see Wendy jump off a 50m cliff without harm and hand four or five children from her arms straight out. And there has been nothing to indicate that the others aren't equally capable. And Nibs' fight with the soldiers suggests they are. So what I'm asking here is why Slightly didn't just hoist the unconcious dude over his shoulder like the mere 65kg he probably is and sprint for the beach? There are things that are wrong because they only work because of plot. Like Kirsch's plan appears to have been to lure in Morrow and the Yutani forces and that's why he let this get as far as it did before acting. But this Just As Planned trope has so many things that could and would have gone wrong without the contrivance of plot. Kirsch actually
helps them escape with an impregnated man and a chestburster gets lose on the island. This is a large island with rugged terrain and dense foliage. It's almost the worst place to lose and have to recapture one of these creatures. And yet this is not merely done but done with such confidence and ease that he was willing to risk one of the most dangerous organisms on Earth running around loose for a while. How did they find it? We'll never know. And why does he even need this plan anyway? He's got all the communications, all the plans. He knows where the Yutani forces are surfacing and we see that Prodigy forces out number them many times over as well as presumably have the home turf advantage. Just have Slightly continue to inform them things are fine and collect them when they arrive. What? You're telling me you're screwed if you can't get them to put their heads out of the water? You could possibly work it if Slightly didn't know where to meet Morrow and was getting live updates where to go but even there you could just have Slightly play along and in any case, we see that they're not in communication while Morrow is underwater and on his way anyway. The "clever plan" also resulted in a dead senior scientist (who you did not know was going to be leaving the company when you set this in motion) and the loss of a six million (or was it billion, I can't remember) hybrid prototype. And there are things that are wrong because they're just written by someone who has no real grasp of science. Like the eye-thing reading 3.14 on Kavalier's palm and (a) being able to read Western Earth numbers, (b) have a similar mathematical basis in its own world. Frankly, both base 12 and base 16 number systems make more sense than base 10 which we only use because we have ten digits. As in finger and thumb digits. (c) Have this be a reasonable assessment of intelligence. There are lots of intelligent people who cannot tell me the fourth and fifth digits. Can everyone reading this do so and if not, do you still consider yourself capable of higher reasoning? Apparently Boy Kavalier does not. He also pretty much states that the eye must be from an advanced civilisation. If they abducted this thing from an actual technological civilisation then the show presumably would have told us this - it's a pretty staggering omission if not. And yet per Boy Kavalier's dialogue it's now implied there is an advanced civilisation of these eye things out there in Space somewhere. Now there's a lore drop for the setting!
Oh, and Wendy is a psychopath. She kills eight or nine scientists that we can count. None of whom were threatening her and some of them good chance she knew. And has also potentially put the entire population of Earth at risk. And don't tell me she couldn't think of such things because what we've seen of her so far tells me she can. Her level of maturity seems to vary as needed in this show.
I think I'd have to do a rewatch to list all the things wrong with this episode. So I'll leave it there for now. But it's bad.
WEBP is web picture
WEBM is web video. I hate this one because I constantly want it to be WEBV for video.
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Most people find this amusing because of Putin's smile. But I find Angela Merkel's terror equally entertaining.
God damn, the editing was bad this week. I had to watch the scene of the W-Y commandos coming out of the water like a dozen times before it clicked that these were two separate teams.
Wait, is that what happens? I thought the same as you with the difference that I never worked out that I was wrong. They're not all one group? That is bad editing.
I guess the justification is that since she's not something that can be used as a host, not threatening it, and can communicate with it, it doesn't evaluate her as prey or a threat.
I don't fully understand that though, the queen in Aliens was fully willing to shred bishop, and I just don't get why those two things can be possible at the same time. I suppose you could argue for some kind of imprinting, as Wendy interacted with this xeno while it was still a chestburster, but that still feels odd.
I always assumed the queen was smarter/more human-like in terms of emotion or motivation than the regular "drone" aliens, and did it because she was pissed. Like she wasn't going after Newt to try to implant her, she wanted revenge for Ripley torching a bunch of eggs right in front of her, and would have just killed Newt if she'd been able to get her.
And I think the way they interact with synths/androids/etc. is sort of like in Star Trek, where the Borg will leave a boarding party alone if they're just wandering around a Borg cube without their phasers drawn, but once they start messing with the ship's systems or shooting stuff, the Borg are going to start trying to assimilate the non-Borg.
My view is similar. I think they see the synthetics as part of the environment. An automatic door opens when I approach but I don't think of it as alive. All sorts of automated systems operate in a modern building but again they're just part of the infrastructure. I think the aliens just don't interfere with them because they're not a threat and they're doing useful things - they keep the ship flying, the reactor from melting down, etc. I'm not saying the xenomorphs understand the fine detail of their actions but they see it as just machinery that functions as part of the environment. You wouldn't go out of your way to step on bees pollinating, either. But that doesn't mean if one gets in their way or acts against one, they wont deal with it. The queen could probably detect that Bishop was different in nature to Ripley and Newt but understood that it would interfere. I honestly think that contrary to this show, in some environment where somehow people weren't reacting negatively to the xenomorph, say some cult that worshipped them, it would just walk amongst them the same way we walk amongst cows or sheep - selecting as it wished in order to breed. But that's headcannon. They're smart though. They cut the lights.
But none of that is to say that Noah Hawley gets this or this is how it is in Alien: Earth. As
@Anti Snigger 's comment above, something feels off here. And it's interacting with Wendy as an entity it recognises as sentient. The xenomorph's structural integrity is supposed to be matched only by its hostility. The more you give it human behaviours and human thoughts, the less alien it becomes.
I think Isolation or Dark Descent, I forgot which, adds to that Xenomorph/Android thing. Androids who are not a threat do not get attacked, which is the rundown. Then you get Dark Descent adding Androids who willingly put chest bursters in them because of cult programming.
It's Dark Descent. And I don't think they're androids that have the xenomorphs in their chests. There are androids in the plot but I believe what you're talking about are human cult members with the bubble containment cell in their chest. I could be wrong but I remember them as humans.
This is a plot in some versions of Alien 3. The Alien has a psychic link with the prisoner Golic. It uses him to subdue other prisoners and spares him instead of killing him. In the end when Bishop Weyland shows up to take the creature it causes Golic to finally snap. And he takes Bishop's head off with a axe killing him. In another version of the script Golic is used by the Alien but in the end it still captures and cocoons him.
In the Assembly Cut he frees the Alien from the storehouse and it immediately kills him. In the theatrical cut they removed most of his scenes including the his death. His psychic link with the creature was never explained but it clearly was communicating with him in some scripts. Until the storyline was just abandoned to make the more traditional slasher style film that Alien 3 became.
Nobody should be watching the theatrical cut of Alien 3. It's a very different movie and frankly, bad. I like the hints of some kind of psychic link in the franchise. Admittedly it's a little of its time as back in the Sixties and Seventies and even early Eighties, psychic powers and telepathy were very much in. But it's still something that fits with the Unknown feel of the alien. I'm a little disappointed to learn that it's just high pitched cicada noises.
The alien looks terrible. How can they be more man in a suit, than a movie from 40 years ago?
There were deleted scenes from Alien that looked bad - like an absolutely ridiculous moment where Ridley Scott wanted the actor to walk forward on his feet and hands (hips upwards) as he advanced on his victims. But they had the sense to make them exactly that - deleted scenes.
I think they doomed themselves from outset on this - the suit is actually very detailed, lovingly painted - particular the second xenomorph with the green tint to its carapace and the guy moving around in side it is not doing anything wrong. But there are all these scenes shot in broad daylight, lingering on it as it moves and crawls... And as others point out the dryness of it. They lost before they began.
It's baffling the fact this show's only really good actors are 2 very similar looking black guys.
I don't rate Morrow as highly as some here seem to do. He simply has a better role than most of the others. Speaking from experience the difference the role and the directing makes can exceed the actor's individual talents in outcome. For example, there's the old cliché that "comedy is hard" and indeed in many ways it is more difficult than looking angry. I would say the actors who have most impressed me in this show (and I'm afraid it is a low bar) are Kirsch and Smee. Kirsh is the more interesting role but Timothy Olyphant also elevates it with his performance. Smee is a lousy role to land as an actor but his actor (apparently one Jonathon Ajayi) also manages to bring a bit more to the role. Most of the others, well they could be good actors or bad but there's so little opportunity to actually do anything with the role. Lily Newmark as Nibs might be fine - there are moments, but all she gets are odd moments to actually be a character here and there. I suspect the scientist husband... Arthur? is a good actor as when he gets the focus on him he comes across well. I liked how he handled the kids when he tried to get them to return with him. But there are just too few moments in this show for anybody to really shine with such a large. Oddly enough for all that the character is annoying and badly written, even the guy playing Boy Kavalier showed moments of interesting performance in the meeting scene with Yutani. But really, what can you do with a character that is written so absurdly stupid in action yet we're told over and over he's a genius? You're screwed.
The one amusing aside in all this is Ade Edmondson as Kavalier's human assistant. For anyone of a certain generation in Bongland they know him as the guy from Bottom and The Young Ones - crass and crude comedy. So strange that he's decided to go into serious acting but my respect to him for doing so.
Not since Covenant has there been such a long succession of inept people dealing with exceedingly dangerous organisms.
At the negotiation table between Yutani and Peter Pan, it struck me as odd that they were haggling over 20 or 50 billion, unless there's a new future currency. That seems like peanuts, considering these are planet-governing corporations.
This is set in 2120, I'd say at current rates of inflation traced backwards to today, US$50bn would be around $5bn. Of course there's lots of assumptions in that such as there being no re-basing of the currencies in that time (something I think will happen). Or even that they're talking in US$ as in the absurdity of this setting with five corporations owning the Earth, something different would almost certainly have to be arrived at. But for the sake of argument, I'd say it's enough to get the CEOs out of bed for. What I find most absurd is the whole negotiation being two of them and a single arbitrator who has seemingly got authority over them. Neither the level of detail is accurate nor is this how legal business is done between really big players. These corps are akin to super-nation blocks like the EU or the USA and more. At that point, they keep the appearance of law for the sake of other nations but are willing to discard it. France has seized the assets of Russia - a country they are not at war with - in defiance of all international law and is certainly spending the interest on it and if you believe rumours, has dipped into the funds themselves. There's no court that can enforce the law between entities of this size, at best you get horse trading and a game of who blinks first before military conflict.
EDIT: I appear to have accidentally included a quote and response from another thread about naked women charging at Vladimir Putin. But I stand by my comment.
