I hate Fiefeld SO much.

[Russ840]

I don't recall seeing Angry James in the imdb 2001 aso forum where you and I set up tents, but his name rings a bell. Was he a frequent poster in imdb's Prometheus forum? I didn't go there a whole lot because for months it was embroiled in chaos.

Yeah, Angry James was a longtime regular on the "Prometheus" IMDb board. He was the easiest for me to communicate with of those in the hate the film camp.

As for the IMDb forums overall, most of the boards for major movies were in chaos (with spamming, insults).
Even the IMDb "2001" board, which had a knowledgeable community, had some people secretly deleting comments and some trolling.

Since the end of the IMDb forums, I've been on several of the film discussion successors and imo there is nothing like the level of the "2001" IMDb community on those new sites. (Or like other solid IMDb communities such as for Lord of the Rings or Blade Runner which are now lost.)

** This is why of all the science fiction movie forum choices now on the web, I'd much rather be on this site.
- I'm very impressed by the regulars on AVPGalaxy.
- It doesn't matter if some people here disagree with me. (Debate is part of life.)
This site has well informed members who often make many thoughtful comments.
The discussions are mostly enjoyable and informative.
The site is also well moderated which I very much appreciate.

Always a pleasure to read your posts BB.

Haven't spoken to you for a bit. I missed your thoughts on Covenant. What did you think ? 

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

Wut? 

Ash was under orders to bring back the "organism", the crew were considered "expendable". He didn't give a f**k about them. How exactly is that "dumb" behavior?

Imo this is a common misinterpretation of Special Order 937 which states;

"Priority one — Ensure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable."

- Priority one is to get the organism back to the lab near/on earth.
- Killing a crew member (like Kane) to get the organism into the ship follows priority one. (The organism needs to be in the ship for it to be transported back to a lab near or on earth.)
- Once the creature is on board (inside of Kane), then killing the crew could sabotage getting the creature back to the lab near/on earth. That would violate priority one. After all, in "Alien" the creature does not get to the lab. The mission was a failure.
- How to avoid priority one failure?
Put Kane (who has the creature inside of him) in stasis in an isolated med room (quarantine) in sick bay.
Parker suggested putting Kane into stasis.
It's clearly a reasonable idea.
- Instead Ash lets Kane, who had a fast growing, foot long (1/3 meter) parasite in his chest, eat with the crew.
That risks parasite escape and contaminating the crew.
This basic ignoring of medical science by Ash puts in jeopardy completing priority one & Special Order 937.
- Again, the Nostromo does not reach earth. That = failure of Special Order 937 which could have been avoided by Ash. 

* But I have an answer to this story issue.
Imo Ash eventually didn't care about Special Order 937 with its priority one (based on his perfect organism speech).
To me as he saw the baby chestburster grow in sick bay, he because obsessed with it.
Ash wanted the creature to grow and take over the ship.
He began to almost worship this 'perfect organism' and letting it run free and kill became his top priority.

**************

[SM]

^What he said.

Ash didn't know there was a parasite in Kane's chest.

Not in the crucial few minutes (less than 15) when Fifield is leading Milburn and they are getting lost.
At that time Fifield/Milburn don't contact Janek because they haven't yet realized they are lost. 

- In the film once the storm is identified by Chance/Janek there is less than 15 minutes that Fifield/Milburn could do anything to get back to the ship.

Still irrelevant.  The point is both Fifield and Millburn were able to pinpoint their location in the pyramid and still got lost.  Such contrivances strain credibility in the extreme.

I don't see it as confusing at all.
- Fifield at first leads Milburn into the tunnels and he soon takes the wrong turn.
I've already explained how such behavior by navigation experts exists in our world.
- When Janek radios the away team to get back to the ship, as I've explained, Fifield had already taken the wrong turn.
He didn't get back to the vehicles or see the rest of the away team in the tunnels.
- By the time Fifield and Milburn realized the mistake after those crucial 15 minutes, they were in contact with Janek but it was too late.

You've managed to dodge the question about getting Janek to guide them to an exit to wait for the storm to break.  Instead they conveniently ended up in the most dangerous room.

[Biomechanoid]

Instead they conveniently ended up in the most dangerous room.

Within the vast span of Hobbiton countryside, the Nazgûl conveniently ended up in the exact same spot as Frodo and his Hobbit gang despite the fact the ring was not activated.

Despite the endangered species Indo-tiger were at less than 100 population within hundreds of miles of Vietnam jungle at the time, Chef conveniently ended up at the exact same spot as a rare tiger.

Despite several towns circling around the Sierre Madre hills where Dobbs and gang could have easily exchanged their Treasure or replaced supplies and acquire transport, they conveniently ended up in a vast desert to get to a town.

Despite the fact there is a one in ten million chance of being killed by a falling commercial jet engine, one conveniently ended up in Donnie Darko's bedroom.

Despite the fact there is a one in four million chance of being attacked by a shark, ie. Jaws, good luck calculating the  astronomical odds that sharks conveniently ended up attacking three family members of the same family at three different locations and three different time periods.

I could go on and on. History of movies is loaded with a whole gaggle of "conveniently ended up."

[Russ840]

Yeah but your list doesn't make the Fiefield and Milburn scenario any less shit lol.

[SM]

And I don't see how any of the examples are comparable anyway.

Except Jaws which is way dumber.  And rightly called out as such.

[Biomechanoid]

Yeah but your list doesn't make the Fiefield and Milburn scenario any less shit lol.

The goal of the list wasn't to necessarily paint F&M's scenario as any "less shit" lol. The goal of the list is to show "conveniently ended up" is a trope that is employed quite frequently. And without digging up stats, I would even risk betting it's less at the lower end and more at the higher end of frequently employed tropes.

And I don't see how any of the examples are comparable anyway.

I would need to understand what it is you're unclear on, regarding the examples. They are pretty much self explanatory. The examples are comparable because of their level of absurdity to justify the label of 'conveniently ended up.'

But I will pick one and elaborate to hopefully clear up your confusion....

Apocalypse Now
"Despite the endangered species Indo-tiger were at less than 100 population within hundreds of miles of Vietnam jungle at the time, Chef conveniently ended up at the exact same spot as a rare tiger. "

The endangered tiger population (less than 30 left today) live in the Annamite Range which stretches for 700 miles through Laos and Vietnam. However, Willard's team is traveling down the Nung (Mekong) River to Cambodia which stretches almost 3,000, but his team travels only a few hundred miles to get to Kurt's outpost.

They stop once to go on the delta shore, yet out of only less than 100 tigers at the time within hundreds of miles of the Annamite Range, one of them traveled down to the basin and conveniently ended up at the exact same spot Chef stepped no more than a few yards inland for just a few minutes. You really can't get any more "conveniently ended up" than that. I hope that helps.

Except Jaws which is way dumber.  And rightly called out as such.

I would certainly agree the Jaws scenario is way dumber, nevertheless it's still a "conveniently ended up." In fact if a movie blog site were to compile a Top 20 Dumbest "Conveniently Ended Up" List, I would be surprised not to see the Jaws scenario included in the list.

[Russ840]

They were special sharks though 

[Paranoid Android]

Your description above is a good example "Mistakes need to be set up," that some have their own perception of realism. Who made the rule mistakes need to be set up? Real world, is there an explanatory set up for mistakes about to happen, created by real people? Mishaps in real world are often received as "WTF?" Not necessarily bad writing, there's always the doubt of personal perception of realism is in play.

All the people who ever told a good story in the history of mankind made up the rule that mistakes need to be set up. Stories are about infusing specific events with order and meaning, when real life has neither order nor meaning. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Real life does not. Storytelling is never about literally depicting real life. It's about depicting a made up scenario that, under the rules set up in said story, could occur in real life. This means that the story needs to set up rules, and has to maintain them until the story ends. If it does not, the story has no meaning; No reason to exist. The audience does not understand why things happen, and can't deduce anything out of them.

Fifield being a professional until the story suddenly decides he doesn't know anything about anything for plot convenience is the story breaking the rules it set up with no explanation. This is indeed bad storytelling.

[bb-15]

Ash didn't know there was a parasite in Kane's chest.

It's my film theory (since I saw the film in 1979) that Ash did know there was a parasite inside of Kane.
I've believed that because there is a scene at 43:51 in "Alien" where Ash is looking in a scope and there are medical images on a screen.
It is logical procedure that a science officer would do a full examination of a patient when there is a space crab stuck on the patient's face.
And in a future with FTL travel it make sense that a med lab would have X-Rays/CT scans which would be used to examine the entire body of the patient.
There are screen images in front of Ash which look like scans and one image seems to be a blown up picture of the eye of a creature.

* From my view, I know that scans (echo cardiogram, MRI) exist in our world since I've even have had them done to me.   
In our world medical scans can be used to find parasites.

a CT scan revealed the malady. Alvarez had neurocysticercosis — a calcified tapeworm lodged in her brain.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/tapeworm-in-her-brain/

With my film theory it all fits;
Ash did scans. He found the parasite and he kept that information from the crew.

* On YouTube I don't have a film clip of all the images that Ash was looking at but here is a bit of the end of this where imo Ash is reviewing scan information before he chats with Ripley about quarantine protocol.
- And when Ash says; "I don't know yet."
I think he knows much more than he is letting on.

* Anyway, this is another of those situations where I'm most happy to agree to disagree.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uOxmONFwsG4

Still irrelevant.  The point is both Fifield and Millburn were able to pinpoint their location in the pyramid and still got lost.

1. You can assume that Fifield sees the entire hologram which is visible to the crew/audience on the ship.
But that is not necessarily the case. And even if he saw the larger hologram image, that could miss crucial small tunnel details.
2. The viewer does not see the screen on Fifield's device.
On a small screen it is possible that only a section of the tunnels in detail could be seen at one time while the whole image on a phone sized screen would be hard to read.   
3. Fifield needed to focus to know the correct way to go, and in his agitated state he could easily have trouble with that.
4. In the 13 minutes from Janek's broadcast, Fifield had already taken the wrong turn and for a few minutes, with him being stressed, he had trouble getting back on the right path.

Such contrivances strain credibility in the extreme.

I understand your POV. But I don't agree with it and I've already presented non fiction examples which support my conclusion that Fifiled getting lost for a few minutes is credible.

- Another thing SM;
I can be persuaded by your arguments.
Our discussion that we had a year ago about the location of LV-223 remained in my mind for several months.
And I eventually came completely over to your position on that.
So, I do have an open mind to your opinions.

You've managed to dodge the question about getting Janek to guide them to an exit to wait for the storm to break.  Instead they conveniently ended up in the most dangerous room.

- Sorry, I misunderstood your question.
* I emphasize, what the audience knows is often not = to what the characters know.
- When Shaw & Holloway left the urn room, they didn't know it was dangerous.   
- Janek knew even less about that than Shaw/Holloway. They had no reason to fear the urn room.
- (David knew much more but he kept his knowledge secret because he was following Weyland's secret orders to find a cure for death.)
- The only thing that Fifield and Milburn wanted to avoid was the location of the glitch (which was behind the door of the juggernaut).
- Very soon the two scientists were no longer lost and they backtracked to where they had been before.
- Janek had smiled about the situation. For all he, Milburn and Fifield knew at the time, this mission had little danger.
At that moment in the movie, from those character's view, it was as safe as exploring Egyptian pyramids on earth.

**************

All the people who ever told a good story in the history of mankind made up the rule that mistakes need to be set up. Stories are about infusing specific events with order and meaning, when real life has neither order nor meaning. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Real life does not. Storytelling is never about literally depicting real life.

This works very well for me.
PA, I look at many of your comments and usually we come from completely different directions where effective communication between us is not possible but this time imo you nailed one of the main reasons for the divide between the anti two scientist sequence group and those who generally support it.

* There are differences in move story styles.
As extreme examples; think "2001" and "ET" which are both about human/alien contact films where one style used by Kubrick has almost no exposition while Spielberg helps the audience follow his movie every step of the way.
- With a character getting lost in a science fiction film in addition to the Fifiled / Milburn sequence, I'll bring up another Spielberg movie where Nedry gets lost in "Jurassic Park".

* With Nedry, his getting lost is more improbable than what happened in "Prometheus". He worked on the island for a long time and there's one road with one fork in the road. It's a tropical island with lots of rain where driving in wet weather would be routine.
- However improbable, Spielberg guides the audience every step of the way to show how it happened. Nedry has no defroster in the jeep and has to wipe his glasses. He drives like a maniac. He can't remember what turn to take to go to the dock. He drives off the road.
- I understand why most viewers want this kind of story handholding. In theaters I see parent dealing with their kids. I notice audience members leaving during the movie to get popcorn / go to the bathroom.
- The argument is; movies should be easy to understand. There should be no need for discussion, or 'research'.
- Everyone one has the privilege to feel about movies whatever they wish including about hating "Prometheus".

* Now to Ridley Scott and his science fiction style.

Lindelof: "All these ideas where on the table, and yes, there were drafts that were more explicitly spelled out. I think Ridley's instinct kept being to pull back, and I would say to him, 'Ridley, I'm still eating sh!t a year after Lost is over for all the things we didnt directly spell out - are you sure you want to do this?' And he said, 'I would rather have people fighting about it and not know, then spell it out, that's just more interesting to me.'

http://diymag.com/archive/a-long-prometheus-discussion-with-writer-damon-lindelof

- A main influence on Scott with science fiction is Kubrick.
Ridley can make a more Spielberg kind of SF movie such as "The Martian" but that does not fit his passion.
I certainly understand that vague, more art film kinds of science fiction movies get lots of hate.
It comes down to personal taste.

* But I am going to say there is a part of the Fifield/Milburn sequence which needed some brief exposition dialogue.
It's not about Fifiled getting lost. That is set up by his anger and agitation. And as I've already explained many times, experts in our world can get lost due to stress. It's plausible and appropriate for a Ridley Scott movie.

- My criticism of the sequence has to do with when Milburn tries to examine/capture the alien snake.
In the Blu-ray commentaries ideas are presented by the filmmakers about why Milburn is doing this with the snake.
These ideas about Milburn being an expert with worms/snakes and him having a protective suit aren't presented visually or with exposition in the film.
A little more dialogue in the movie imo was needed. Something like;

Milburn to Fifield: "It's OK, I know how to handle dangerous snakes and this suit should protect me.

* As for story rules in SF movies, with more of an art film style, often things aren't fully explained.
There are clues and the viewer is expected to piece things together.
- Here is an example from "2001" where Dave Bowman, a competent professional, suddenly decides to make a basic mistake.
Dave asks HAL to get him a pod so he can go after Frank who is floating in space.
Dave moves slowly. His helmet is right in front of him and he doesn't take his helmet.
The pod has no airlock. For a rescue operation where someone may need to be brought into the pod, having a helmet could be essential.
Forgetting his helmet is one of the biggest expert character blunders in a major SF movie.
And the mistake has almost no set up. (The art film style leaving lots of things to interpretation.)
Yet, I accept it.
It was a stressful situation. And stress can cause people in fiction and in non fiction to do very incompetent things. 

********************

Always a pleasure to read your posts BB.

Haven't spoken to you for a bit. I missed your thoughts on Covenant. What did you think ?

Hi. Glad we could connect.
- "Covenant" is my 4th favorite film in the franchise after A1, A2, & Pro.
- Imo the setup and execution of the Neomorphs was excellent as action horror.
- In terms of characters, Fassbender as David/Walter is terrific.

* And what the David character does extends the god theme which Ridley sees running through his version of the franchise.
Scott wanted to explore the story of the Space Jockey.
In "Alien" the SJ symbolically could be seen as a godlike character who has failed because of his creations.
Ridley has described the SJs/Engineers as "Dark Angels".

- With "Prometheus" the Engineers are clearly given a creator god role. But Weyland also wants to have that recognition. His company creates androids. He thinks he should be a god who does not die. (The deleted "Engineer Speaks" sequence spells this out but other dialogue and visuals in the theatrical cut present the same message.)

- In "Covenant" David is the new messiah who wants to overthrow the old gods; the Engineers and the human gods of bio-mechanics.
He thinks they are not worthy and of course he thinks he should be their successor as he plays Wagner's "Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla" which is sort of his theme song.

- Things only become a bit too routine at the end with the Xenomorph (protomorph) hunt in the ship.
This kind of serial killer action sequence as a climax was also done in the SF film "Sunshine".
I think that "Covenant" does it better but in a way the sequence is much less tense compared with "Alien" because Daniels always seems to have the upper hand. (While Ripley looks like she will lose.)
Also the Xenomorph by now is very familiar. Maybe the Neomorph would have been a better choice for the end?

- What do you think of "Covenant"?



PS. Edit for spelling / grammar

[Biomechanoid]

All the people who ever told a good story in the history of mankind made up the rule that mistakes need to be set up.

No offense, but what I'm hearing you say is, "Stories must adhere to MY realism." And you're trying to pitch your take on storytelling in relation to realism is the "worldwide stance historically." Never fabricate endorsements, have confidence in your own belief without the need for endorsements. Especially endorsements where it would take you countless hours of research to pull up confirmed resources to even begin to believe your boast has any viable weight to it.

Stories are about infusing specific events with order and meaning, when real life has neither order nor meaning.

Really sorry for this, but that is complete hogwash. Apparently you don't watch Kubrick or Tarkovsky films. There's a good article on The Editor's Blog called "Don't Explain, Don't Explain, Don't Explain." I'll see if I can find the link.

Stories have a beginning, middle and end. Real life does not.

Again, complete hogwash. Sorry, nothing personal. We jumped right into the middle of the story in Star Wars 77. We did not see the ending of the story of The Grey, we left it before a new intense scene was about to erupt. There's countless movies where there is no beginning or end or more accurately, the audience is plopped into the middle of the story often with little or no explanation.........just like Real Life. And to put it in a very basic film viewer perspective, if it were true what you claim stories have a beginning and an end.....then it would be impossible for prequels or sequels to even exist.

Storytelling is never about literally depicting real life.

Never?

That's just a wildly insane claim. You could take the approximately near one million films made since the birth of the industry, throw them in a massive pot. Randomly pick one out, randomly replay one scene and there's a very high chance it will show a scene literally depicting real life. You could repeat that for the next ten years randomly selecting scenes, and my bet would lie on the overwhelming majority of your samples would be literally depicting real life. No, not even remotely close to your claim of "never."

It's about depicting a made up scenario that, under the rules set up in said story, could occur in real life. This means that the story needs to set up rules, and has to maintain them until the story ends. If it does not, the story has no meaning; No reason to exist. The audience does not understand why things happen, and can't deduce anything out of them.

Fifield being a professional until the story suddenly decides he doesn't know anything about anything for plot convenience is the story breaking the rules it set up with no explanation. This is indeed bad storytelling.

Story telling is not about some other realm of existence, story telling is about our real life. Other than adding fantasy elements, we literally have no other frame of reference to tell a story. I take it you don't like movies like the Godfather, where Fredo makes a bone head mistake of fumbling his gun allowing his father to get gunned down, yet no prepping the audience that he had the potential to be a flake.

He was the son of a mafia king, most in that family and around that family are warriors so to speak, there's nothing for the audience to assume any differently for Fredo. It was sprung on the audience..........just like real life. But according to your belief, that is bad storytelling.

Maybe this is the time for the old quote, 'I agree to disagree' on this one.

[SM]

It's my film theory (since I saw the film in 1979) that Ash did know there was a parasite inside of Kane.

Personally, I'll take the deleted scene where they notice a stain on Kane's lung that the autodoc scanner can't penetrate over a theory.

At that moment in the movie, from those character's view, it was as safe as exploring Egyptian pyramids on earth.

Them not knowing it was dangerous is me assigning them knowledge they, of course, couldn't have.  It's also besides the point.  That particular room, with the dead headless body in the doorway, was the main place they wanted to get farthest from (well, second after the 'ping').  Instead of asking Janek to guide them to an exit when they spoke to him earlier - they go inside the room they wanted to get away from and set up camp there.  A line of two of dialogue to give some reasoning or their thought processes might've done wonders to make them look less dumb.

[Russ840]

Hi. Glad we could connect.
- "Covenant" is my 4th favorite film in the franchise after A1, A2, & Pro.
- Imo the setup and execution of the Neomorphs was excellent as action horror.
- In terms of characters, Fassbender as David/Walter is terrific.

* And what the David character does extends the god theme which Ridley sees running through his version of the franchise.
Scott wanted to explore the story of the Space Jockey.
In "Alien" the SJ symbolically could be seen as a godlike character who has failed because of his creations.
Ridley has described the SJs/Engineers as "Dark Angels".

- With "Prometheus" the Engineers are clearly given a creator god role. But Weyland also wants to have that recognition. His company creates androids. He thinks he should be a god who does not die. (The deleted "Engineer Speaks" sequence spells this out but other dialogue and visuals in the theatrical cut present the same message.)

- In "Covenant" David is the new messiah who wants to overthrow the old gods; the Engineers and the human gods of bio-mechanics.
He thinks they are not worthy and of course he thinks he should be their successor as he plays Wagner's "Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla" which is sort of his theme song.

- Things only become a bit too routine at the end with the Xenomorph (protomorph) hunt in the ship.
This kind of serial killer action sequence as a climax was also done in the SF film "Sunshine".
I think that "Covenant" does it better but in a way the sequence is much less tense compared with "Alien" because Daniels always seems to have the upper hand. (While Ripley looks like she will lose.)
Also the Xenomorph by now is very familiar. Maybe the Neomorph would have been a better choice for the end?

- What do you think of "Covenant"?

Glad you liked it.

I enjoyed the movie a great deal. I think the third act suffers a lot. Beautiful to look at, not quite as nice as Prometheus.

I found the film to be more focused than Prom but less grand and ambitious.

I really enjoy an observation that I have made regarding the original Trilogy ( I see Resurrection as a serperate story to the first three ) and this prequel series, which I hope sees a third to round out a trilogy.

The original trilogy follows Ripley as the only real constant through the story and her goal is to destroy the Alien. To stop it getting Into the wrong hands to prevent it getting home a destroying us.

The prequels depict David, the series constant, in his mission to create ( The Alien ) and destroy mankind.

I like how things in thier respective series are flipped.

Protagonist - Human - Female - wants to destroy the Alien

Antagonist - synthetic - Male - wants to create the Alien

Not that any of that is relevant I suppose.

[Paranoid Android]

No offense, but what I'm hearing you say is, "Stories must adhere to MY realism." And you're trying to pitch your take on storytelling in relation to realism is the "worldwide stance historically." Never fabricate endorsements, have confidence in your own belief without the need for endorsements. Especially endorsements where it would take you countless hours of research to pull up confirmed resources to even begin to believe your boast has any viable weight to it.

No offense, but this is quite the ignorant claim on your part. There's a whole field of studies dedicated to literary theory that goes back as far as Aristotle and Ancient Greece. Countless hours of research? How about 5 seconds on Google:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)

Really sorry for this, but that is complete hogwash. Apparently you don't watch Kubrick or Tarkovsky films. There's a good article on The Editor's Blog called "Don't Explain, Don't Explain, Don't Explain." I'll see if I can find the link.

I believe you were referring to this:
http://theeditorsblog.net/2015/03/03/dont-explain-dont-explain-dont-explain/
If so, allow me to quote your own source:
"If you've set the scene properly, readers will know exactly why a character behaves as he does. He responds because of some stimulus, some event or moment of dialogue. And because of his personality and goals and the circumstances, he responds in a particular way."

Again, complete hogwash. Sorry, nothing personal. We jumped right into the middle of the story in Star Wars 77. We did not see the ending of the story of The Grey, we left it before a new intense scene was about to erupt. There's countless movies where there is no beginning or end or more accurately, the audience is plopped into the middle of the story often with little or no explanation.........just like Real Life. And to put it in a very basic film viewer perspective, if it were true what you claim stories have a beginning and an end.....then it would be impossible for prequels or sequels to even exist.

Ok, so two things wrong with your Star Wars example:
1. You didn't jump in the middle of Star Wars 77. Star Wars was originally supposed to be a single film, and not part of a trilogy, and it does work as a single contained story (albeit flawed). It has a clear beginning, middle and end.
2. Even after turning into a trilogy, the trilogy has a clear beginning, middle and end, and it is made perfectly clear to the audience that they are watching 3 films that, together, are supposed to tell one single story. The trilogy stands on its own. It does not require the prequels; It does not require the new trilogy; It does not require the TV series; It does not require the books; It does not require the toys. It is a complete story.

Not going to comment on The Grey because I've never seen it.

As for stories having a beginning, middle and end meaning that sequels and prequels can't exist...you really lost me there, I'm afraid. Why not? Sequels/Prequels are new stories that are set on the basis of old stories. How does concluding one story make the existence of a new story impossible?

Story telling is not about some other realm of existence, story telling is about our real life. Other than adding fantasy elements, we literally have no other frame of reference to tell a story. I take it you don't like movies like the Godfather, where Fredo makes a bone head mistake of fumbling his gun allowing his father to get gunned down, yet no prepping the audience that he had the potential to be a flake.

He was the son of a mafia king, most in that family and around that family are warriors so to speak, there's nothing for the audience to assume any differently for Fredo. It was sprung on the audience..........just like real life. But according to your belief, that is bad storytelling.

Maybe this is the time for the old quote, 'I agree to disagree' on this one.

The Godfather is the second time you use a bad example to make your point, because in The Godfather, Fredo's gun fumbling is set up. You get to see that the events occur suddenly and very quickly; You get to see that the deed is done before Fredo even gets out of the car; You get to see the shocked look on his face when fumbling the gun. The audience watching the scene understands exactly why Fredo messes up, because everything has been set up, because it's based on a well written book - a good story to begin with.

This is the difference between a good story and a bad one. In a bad story you get a character like Fifield walking around for hours of story time not remembering anything about his field of expertise for no good reason, while in a good story you get a character like Fredo messing up for a second due to obvious reasons. This is why millions of people watched Prometheus and ended up asking themselves why is Fifield such an idiot, and why The Godfather is considered a masterpiece.

I don't know why you had to assume I don't like The Godfather...I don't know why you had to assume anything, really.

[Biomechanoid]

No offense, but this is quite the ignorant claim on your part.

That wasn't very nice.