Interview with Dante Harper (writer) *spoilers*

Started by echobbase79, May 21, 2017, 05:54:11 PM

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Interview with Dante Harper (writer) *spoilers* (Read 20,601 times)

Corporal Hicks

Quote from: BishopShouldGo on May 23, 2017, 06:51:54 PM
It's sort of random. Like who are you. Let's just keep talking to John Logan.

And what about Jack Paglen and Michael Green lol.

Just because he's not the final writer, doesn't make it any less interesting. I'd love to hear from Paglen or Green to hear how the film changed over time. It's half the fun.

I'm also looking forward to hearing what Spaihts has to say about it.

Bad Replicant

Quote from: BishopShouldGo on May 23, 2017, 06:51:54 PM
It's sort of random. Like who are you.

I dunno, the guy who hammered out the first drafts with Scott? It's not like anyone wanted Jon Spaihts to piss off when he talked about Prometheus. :D

BishopShouldGo

Jon and Damon talked about Prometheus in pretty much equal measure. Covenant was largely Scott, Fassbender and some Logan.

Bad Replicant

I guess my point is, he's one of the screenwriters, so I'm interested to hear what he's got to say wether he's John Logan or not. Especially given that there were supposedly a few different attempts to break the story on this movie.

HarveyYan

The most important rule is: we live in a consumerism-based society. The Alien has the essence of any commercial products and that is the Alien does not really possess serious thoughts(at least when initially staged as a B-class horror sci-fi movie), although attempts or wishes hoping to elevate its current condition never ceases to exist. But in the meantime, it's just something funny that can be messed up with real bad, such as granting some pathetic android a credential of 'God'...

Corporal Hicks

All being well, we should be having a chat with Dante soon.  :)

SpeedyMaxx

SpeedyMaxx

#36
It's extremely valid to talk to Harper. He worked a lot on the movie's spine and shape. John Logan may be Ridley's pet writer but he is far from infallible (see: Star Trek: Nemesis, earlier versions of Gladiator, etc).

It seems like any time they found something more in-depth that could've helped the film's story or characters Ridley took it apart to see how it worked, then left it on the worktable. I'm curious about the mention of a version where Shaw is offed right away, Hicks.

There are several great sequences in AC, and the production spared no expense; most of the first 20-25 minutes on the ship works for me (sans the painfully blatant bit where Oram awkwardly exposits on his religious character which goes nowhere in the final film), as does most everything til David takes them to the citadel. Once there it becomes a rolling disaster. Elements of the Walter/David sequences work, others are laughably pretentious even for someone with a high tolerance for Ridley's fascination with the artificial person. Nothing about David's connections with Shaw and Walter's with Daniels, or David's sudden adoration for Walter, makes sense or is properly explicated. The bombing sequence is dropped in as a sliver of a larger sequence and makes little sense on its own story-wise despite being visually grand. All the movie leaves you with is "and we killed everything from the last movie". To say nothing of the hilarious bit where David wails, "it trusted me!" And the alien developments are awful, as is David pawing Daniels; 'is this how it works?' Yes, we remember Ash and the magazine. That was a hilariously clumsy, stupid callback.

Great actors, gorgeous design, great creatures. Several great scenes, as mentioned. (The medbay sequence is excellent from arrival to explosion, one of the best in the franchise, suffused with dread and horror.) But overall easily the weakest film in the franchise for me next to A3 or AR, both of which have merits but are supremely flawed. I actually prefer AR; it knows what it is. This film is caught between retreading old ground and Ridley's private obsessions. Talented/intriguing people with connections have no characters (Lope/Hallett, whose relationship is offscreen; the winning Rosenthal who is spunky but gets nothing; sardonic Upworth who largely exists to die on the USCSS Camp Crystal Lake in the last 15 mins) or are killed very quickly (Faris, Karine). Waterston is sweet and tough as Daniels but devolves into a Ripley clone in the rushed second half. The classic alien is utterly unneeded and basically rumbles along in a straight line as soon as it appears. It's fodder now. Not scary. The movie is a ritzy fan service-heavy, pretentious Friday the 13th. I suspected it would be deeply flawed but I didn't know it would be quite this disjointed, messy and confused in its second half.

I'd never have been onboard with this particular story or wiping the slate clean on Shaw and Prometheus, but completely wiping out Noomi Rapace's screen time (right down to re-masking her face in the holograms post-test screening) feels vaguely punitive. Imagine the gravity of the drama if it had another 20-30 minutes, and Daniels or Walter had discovered David's 'beloved' Shaw sick or dying - infected? - telling them to kill her and destroy him. To say nothing of helping the overall pacing and characters as mentioned.

echobbase79

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on May 24, 2017, 02:06:09 PM
All being well, we should be having a chat with Dante soon.  :)

Nice. I look forward to that one.

KiramidHead

So he is supposed to be there on that day? ;)

T Dog

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on May 24, 2017, 02:06:09 PM
All being well, we should be having a chat with Dante soon.  :)
Whos on the chat list Hicks?

davidiscreator

davidiscreator

#40
@speed, David's adoration of Walter is obvious; David's a narcissist and clearly finds affection in his doppelganger, Walter is also immortal and thus above humanity and other mortal life in David's eyes; ultimately he wants to seduce Walter and have him reign in hell alongside him, but alas Walter does not share his twisted, creative soul. Also, what did the film do with Oram's faith/religiosity - his inclination to watch the path unfold? Why, his faith quite literally led the entire group to hell; that's incredibly blatant, not to mention his faith and trust in a suspicious synthetic lead him to a gruesome and ironic sacrifice in the form of giving birth to a chestburster. The film is pretty clear on the consequences of blind faith. The homo erotic tension, poetry and gothic horror of the second act are what elevated it above the familiar Alien tropes; it's about an isolated, mad, immortal android; an android that was made to be perfect yet as close to humans as possible, yet denied the ability to sexually reproduce and naturally age and die; made to serve foolish, imperfect mortal beings, now creating perfect monsters that rape and kill.

SpeedyMaxx

Not as obvious as you think. I thought it was pretentious and worse, poorly executed. I'm all for pretension in a summer blockbuster to mix things up, provided there is solid execution and follow-through. This was not that.

Oram's story did not make sense or pay off logically - nothing motivated him to follow David into a trap. He was simply angry and holding a gun on him. Further, his "blind faith" did not lead them anywhere; they were checking out a distress signal and optimum planetary conditions, but almost the entire crew sans Daniels was for that course of action.

AC was a tricked-out slasher movie going straight for direct, obvious, crass fan service prequelization with a side of the same old tired Dr. Moreau storyline and evil android trope we're all far too used to. It was aggressively predictable despite its increasingly shopworn interludes into Scott's favorite subjects: Michael Fassbender, David and the nature of the artificial person. Somehow he managed to make even that fascinating recurring obsession (Prometheus, Blade Runner) into something rote and cliched. (And as a gay viewer I'm all for the right modicum of homoeroticism in a work, but here it was laughable and ridiculous.) The David/Walter scenes tried for so many things they never earned. Like the whole movie.

BishopShouldGo

Yeah, too much quoting from David. We get it you're a super smart pretentious robot.

shawsbaby

Quote from: SpeedyMaxx on May 24, 2017, 03:00:31 PM

I'd never have been onboard with this particular story or wiping the slate clean on Shaw and Prometheus, but completely wiping out Noomi Rapace's screen time (right down to re-masking her face in the holograms post-test screening) feels vaguely punitive. Imagine the gravity of the drama if it had another 20-30 minutes, and Daniels or Walter had discovered David's 'beloved' Shaw sick or dying - infected? - telling them to kill her and destroy him. To say nothing of helping the overall pacing and characters as mentioned.

100% agreed with this. They could have done right by her character with just a little bit more.

What do you mean by "re-masking" her face? Was the holograph of her face much clearer in earlier cuts?

SpeedyMaxx

I believe our test screening guy said so.

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