Alien: Alone – Alien: 40th Anniversary Short Films

Started by Corporal Hicks, Apr 23, 2019, 07:06:12 PM

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Alien: Alone – Alien: 40th Anniversary Short Films (Read 33,874 times)

Still Collating...

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Apr 27, 2019, 03:41:22 AM
This would have made a lot more sense with a human character driven semi-insane by loneliness with some sort of protective equipment.

Neither Ash nor Bishop cared about longevity. Why would this synthetic? Especially as it/she could just need to plug herself into the ship's reactor for power, go temporarily dormant or simply copied/transmitted its memory and code, in order to effectively 'survive'.

Why did the character care about the facehugger? We're not given any reasons. The character's motivation (psychologically relating to something in a similar predicment) is something a human would do, not an AI, which wouldn't have any reason to care. But, sure, let's assume the opposite - so, the droid decides to do the one thing which would guarantee it dies? Why not just coerce it back into frozen stasis?

A human character could have gone down that path. They'd make up the typical David 8-like logic, where the adult Alien would be seen as a 'continuation'/reincarnation of the facehugger. They'd be fearful about self-preservation, but not about sacrificing someone else to that fate. Doing so could even have made a nice call-back to Golic. Or even have the story feature a Newt-alike, who the audience is initially led to believe is a similar distrusting survivor of a massacre, only to be revealed as convincing herself to sacrifice the newcomer for some allegorical 'greater good', before commandeering their ship and leaving the impregnated victim behind, like she's talked herself into believing was a bargain struck with the facehugger (like Golic similarly did).

Agree with this.

Rewatched this, just to make sure I know how I feel about it.
This one was weird. And least of all because of the friendly hugger. It was such a unique combination of the good and the bad. I liked the story idea, mostly. I like Xenomorphine's idea better. But the core concept is alright. Nothing revolutionary. But at least not so much by the book formula. But the execution was all over the place.

The bad:

Some of the editing and camera work. Playing an android that's an actual character and not just a bad guy plot device is very hard, I get that. Still, wasn't a fan of the acting... Not bad, it was okay, but not convincing to me. Didn't like her even close to as much as I liked all the other androids in the movies. I even liked the performance of the android in Ore better. Again, not bad, but it needed more work, more takes. The actress was trying to be more robotic than any other android in the series. This is after Ash, so she should've felt more human, but maybe kept the childlike aspect of Bishop.  And it did feel a bit cheap when they literally took and mashed up the Ash run and David's drawing habit into one droid.

The spacesuit looks meh. Looks like a cheap cosplay.

The facehugger. Even though I can get behind the idea, it was explained solidly enough, it still feels wrong. They didn't sell the idea hard enough, I had to be apologetic to give it a pass in my mind. They should've shown less of it, especially around the droid. It looks silly and certainly feels like the hugger was a pet. Not unforgivably bad, but the idea could've been executed better. My biggest problem was that the hugger looked bad. Very bad. Unconvincing. Thus, they shouldn't have shown it that much or in that light. Still not as bad as Harvest... I'm so grateful that Specimen used a CGI hugger, if something like this was the alternative. Looked very rubbery, like a toy. The hugger's look was my biggest problem.

The aesthetics here weren't the best and really made the whole thing look cheap in this short.

The good:

Again, the story idea gets points for being more original than some of the others were, the core isn't a bad premise at all. The space scenes. The music was just great! Nice one there. The atmosphere was enhanced by the music and somewhat countered the cheap feel of the spacesuit, hugger, acting... The final shots were very nice.


Overall, not bad. Nice core idea, great story potential, always appreciate the perspective of an android, but this needed more work. Too many things felt cheap IMO. Somewhere in the middle for me, not the best one at all, but by far not the worst one.
Originality for originality's sake means nothing if the execution is not up to par. So much potential there, but not quite fully realized, by a long shot.   

Vermillion

Quote from: Huggs on Apr 27, 2019, 04:48:25 AM
My final personal score

Harvest
Ore
Specimen
Containment
Alone
Night Shift

For such restrictive budgets, some of them did pretty good. Funny thing is, with the first letters of each short you can spell "NO CASH".  :laugh:
I liked Harvest the best too. 
Alone was a bit weird, but the companion was a welcome difference. 

And your ranking spells
HO SCAN. Lol

Xenomorphine

Quote from: The Old One on Apr 27, 2019, 03:46:54 AM
"I could be reworked, but I'll never be top of the line again, I'd rather be nothing."

Precisely. Bishop was a machine. Follows directives. Didn't go off on philosophical meanderings.

It's like the dialogue in 'Terminator 2', where John's confused about concepts like pain and how the Terminator would perceive its mission meeting victory or fail missions. The T-800 just emotionlessly says it would become obsolete. Isn't sad about it. Just pointing out a factual reality. That's how an AI does think. Have parameters been abided by? Have certain conditions been met? Their entire existence is one big flowchart.

If it's about to expire, an AI has no reason to feel resentful and growl about things not being fair. It's just there to fulfil whatever tasks it's been allocated. It might consider premature expiry as a lamentable waste of resources, when it could still be of use, but even that's sort of stretching it.

QuoteThe concept's good, anyway.
A.I rationalisation:
It doesn't die it changes form.

Well, it/she's literally been medically studying their anatomy. The character would know that's not the case. The creature's a delivery system and they'd know that. Once it's achieved its purpose, then it dies. This story has the AI relating to the facehugger, specifically stating they want it to survive and even having a method by which they can do this: Placing it back in stasis. They even state it's supposedly getting slower and weaker, which would make that easier.

Instead, they go about doing the one thing guaranteed to kill it.

While I'm not a fan of the emotional way David 8 has been written, at least that character doesn't try to hide they're fascinated by the process of evolution and see casualties along the way as acceptable collateral damage, to that end. David 8 acknowledges the spores are delivery vehicles and wants to shape the resulting evolution, regardless of the outcome.

This character isn't doing that. It/she specifically wants the facehugger organism, itself, to survive for survival's sake.

Huggs

Huggs

#93
Quote from: Vermillion on Apr 27, 2019, 06:05:30 PM
And your ranking spells
HO SCAN. Lol

Well of course.

Don't wanna catch nothin'.  :laugh:


Quote from: Local Trouble on Apr 27, 2019, 08:50:08 AM
This was really the one that made me want to see what happened next.
[/quote


Judging by the rest of it, they get married and have six kids.

Corporal Hicks


Still Collating...

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Apr 27, 2019, 06:24:17 PM
Quote from: The Old One on Apr 27, 2019, 03:46:54 AM
"I could be reworked, but I'll never be top of the line again, I'd rather be nothing."

Precisely. Bishop was a machine. Follows directives. Didn't go off on philosophical meanderings.

It's like the dialogue in 'Terminator 2', where John's confused about concepts like pain and how the Terminator would perceive its mission meeting victory or fail missions. The T-800 just emotionlessly says it would become obsolete. Isn't sad about it. Just pointing out a factual reality. That's how an AI does think. Have parameters been abided by? Have certain conditions been met? Their entire existence is one big flowchart.

If it's about to expire, an AI has no reason to feel resentful and growl about things not being fair. It's just there to fulfil whatever tasks it's been allocated. It might consider premature expiry as a lamentable waste of resources, when it could still be of use, but even that's sort of stretching it.

QuoteThe concept's good, anyway.
A.I rationalisation:
It doesn't die it changes form.

Well, it/she's literally been medically studying their anatomy. The character would know that's not the case. The creature's a delivery system and they'd know that. Once it's achieved its purpose, then it dies. This story has the AI relating to the facehugger, specifically stating they want it to survive and even having a method by which they can do this: Placing it back in stasis. They even state it's supposedly getting slower and weaker, which would make that easier.

Instead, they go about doing the one thing guaranteed to kill it.

While I'm not a fan of the emotional way David 8 has been written, at least that character doesn't try to hide they're fascinated by the process of evolution and see casualties along the way as acceptable collateral damage, to that end. David 8 acknowledges the spores are delivery vehicles and wants to shape the resulting evolution, regardless of the outcome.

This character isn't doing that. It/she specifically wants the facehugger organism, itself, to survive for survival's sake.

This.

It's not the same as David, and David 8, or his series was unique in how close he/they were to the emotional irrationality of humans. Davids actions have motivation behind them. Plus he's probably a unique Weyland model and has been going crazy for ten years. The other models, Walter, Ash, Bishop, were all more human like and felt more natural, yet were less and less emotional, a very logical AI. Kinda opposite to what we got here.

And I don't get to why people are comparing this so much to Covenant? It's maybe a less elegant take on the themes, but it's taken a step too far IMO. I really enjoy that movie and David especially, but this no where near as close. Whatever David does is unique to him and his situation, not all androids have to be a copy of him now. Those traits are gone now in the later series of AI, so this does feel jarring.

I appreciate the effort and all the other virtues in the short, but this is my least favorite android depiction to date. 

P-Rock

Y'all are forgetting Call, the most emotional and compassionate syntheti... Artifical person.

[cancerblack]

Quote from: Nrmiller on Apr 27, 2019, 07:04:07 AM

Personally I love the documentary Grizzly Man. A mind, even a synthetic one, can convince itself something is something it isn't.

Thanks for this answer. It's actually pretty definitive for seeming so vague on first blush.

SiL

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Apr 27, 2019, 06:24:17 PM
Quote from: The Old One on Apr 27, 2019, 03:46:54 AM
"I could be reworked, but I'll never be top of the line again, I'd rather be nothing."

Precisely. Bishop was a machine. Follows directives. Didn't go off on philosophical meanderings.
Stating he'd rather die than not be top of the line kind of is a philosophical meandering though. If he truly didn't care he'd have no preference between being patched or being let go.

And anyone who thinks Ash or Call weren't philosophical or idealistic weren't watching the films.

Androids with philosophical and ideological bents are a staple of the series, not the other way around.

The Old One

The Old One

#99
^

Roby

I like that it was a unique type of story. Good idea for a short.

The Old One

The Old One

#101
Perfect experimentation avenue.

Nrmiller

Honestly I'm happy there's a discussion to be had about this. To me it's 100x better than just "it was good" or "it was trash."

The Old One

The Old One

#103
Being interesting is an accomplishment
in of itself.

XenoHunter99

XenoHunter99

#104
I like the weirdness of this one. I like this one best of the lot because it's quirky and the actress did a good job with the material. But it's still the tale of another droid with serious mental issues. It adds to the enormous volume of subtext in the series that human-like AI has a lot of unsolved problems.

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