Quote from: Mus on Mar 28, 2011, 05:43:09 PM
Quote from: Taraka on Mar 28, 2011, 05:18:11 PM
we saw the Alien too much and it didn't look natural in any way because of the CGI at the time.
It wasn't CGI. It was a puppet.
I'm referring to the full body shots, specifically toward the end when it was on the ceiling and chasing the prisoners in the hallways.
On to Predator 2...actually there isn't much to say. We see the Predator all the time, we're given a weak mystery to unravel. (Keyes.) But at least it was kinda important to the series to establish the clan system and add a little more mystery to the Predators. I'm guessing it was written under the assumption most of the viewers already saw Predator 1 and didn't bother to try the element of not showing the Predator until the end.
Alien Resurrection, I don't think it was seriously written to be scary. Though the Camera work helps with the action and probably could've been used for the element of horror. the only tention I can see through the movie, aside the boo scares is Ripley's uncertainty. Though personally I felt she acted more like a Terminator than an Alien. The disturbing imagery was through the Ripley clones, the unnatural distortion of human and alien features, but we see too much still, and sadly most of it doesnt look real. Only Clone #7 seemed disturbing. (More like disgusting, but still a little disturbing.) The Newborn at the end was a failure if it was an attempt at being scary. Part of what makes the Alien scary and disturbing is unless they're bearing their teeth, they appear faceless. Sadly thats part of why every Alien after the 2nd movie isn't as scary. Their mouths are much more evident, even with the lips sealed. Back to the Newborn though. (Which features no lips.) The body has no bio mechanical features and the color contrasts too much with the environment, so it has no way of camouflaging in the environment. It's death was an attempt at making you feel sorry for it as it died in a slow and agonizing way. It failed because it still appeared brutish and we had no reason to really care about it's well being.
Alien Vs Predator, the first time we see our friends together on the silver screen. In the interviews and behind the scenes featurettes Paul Anderson had every intention of the movie being seen as scary. He had some good ideas though. Antarctica is one of the most hostile places on the planet, and human contact is almost non existent. The Pyramid underground...kinda corny but further isolates the main characters. See the Problem is this, Starting with the Aliens, they're all reused from the Resurrection molds, and there's very little bio mechanical looks because of the human fleshy look from the Resurrection aliens. They attempt to use the overwhelming numbers factor from the 2nd Alien film, but they moved on the floor too much, and when they were on the walls they look more like a cgi cartoon. Also with the instant chest bursting, minus Scar, we have no anticipation of when a character is about to die. Now to the Predators. Their head shape is somewhat smaller, but their upper body is ridiculously huge. As they say in the ADI book they wanted the Predators to be more heroic looking, which was a huge mistake. Not just the hero look but they don't look natural either. And the big complaint from many, 2 predators die under the window of 5 minutes, and from one alien. So scar is easily expected to go down like a bitch. When he does start kicking ass you can't help but wonder, why couldn't the others do this? Mostly Celtic who kinda appeared stronger than Scar. And the Predators face was too human, which was a conscious decision of Paul Anderson, as stated in the ADI book. Thus he destroyed pretty much all of the factors that made the Predator, the Predator. The Pyramid interior was WAAAAAAAY too bright, and the high ceilings make the pyramid feel sparse. Only when pyramid changes does it work a little better. It's still too bright and a number of times the ceiling is still too high. The only time this really gets spooky is when Alex is on her own and it's completely dark, her compass is busted and her lights out of batteries (novelization.) thus giving the strong feeling of being lost and Alone. I'll admit this is also the only time Scar is intimidating when he's behind her, soundlessly and does the slow draw with his spear. After that though...
Aliens vs Predator Requiem...the WORST movie out of the whole series, mostly due to bad directing, casting, cinematography, and story. The only thing that keeps this from being an Uwe Boll movie is Uwe Boll himself, and unnecessary sex (which apparently they were highly considering.) The Aliens aren't scary because they reused the resurrection molds AGAIN, and the new head mold destroys most of the originals hint at a sexual organ, as well as they have no lips and look like a B Movie monster. The Predalien is no exception...I'm going to leave it at that before I rant about the Predalien. I will say Wolf was a somewhat decent, though I was half expecting it to go "Come with me if you want to live." Wolf was too overpowered, which did make him a bit intimidating, along with his body shape, though it appeared a little too feminine. His face was an improvement over Scar's, but failed because they used a little too much animatronics. Why they didn't just use contact lenses like all the previous movies I'm not sure, but it makes him look like a puppet at Disney. Sadly the environment wasn't scary in the slightest. Nothing Alien about it. even the hive in the hospital wasn't scary. We saw nothing in the walls to give any idea there may be an alien hiding. (It was attempted, but we couldn't see ANYTHING at all 80% of the time anyway because of the bad lighting.) And next is something most of the previous films in both series had. No ambiguity toward death. It was just high amounts of blood and gore in your nose and mouth.
Last but not least, is Predators. Again, not exactly scary, but had good tense moments and intense action. The Ere of Mystery in the first half of the movie was good, especially when revealing they're not on earth. The new creatures had a somewhat disturbing appearance The hounds being dog shaped, yet the bones over its body made it hard to relate to other creatures on earth. The Deep eye sockets were a nice touch. Stick-man being the original design for the Predator was a good idea too. The overall shape gave it a similar feminine feel of a Woman, and the rotten skin with the roaches has a good implementation of Death. As for the Predators, they did have an intimidating appearance, with the exception of classic. The mask idea wasn't as scary as flat out seeing the face or the faceless tribal mask, which the shape used in the film made it look a little silly in some angles. Also, it became a bit of a hero look, especially right before his fight with Berserker. We're not scared of someone that's fighting out enemy in most cases. (But the fight was still kinda good. Would've been better if Classic wasn't weakened from hanging on that poll for 2 weeks as shown in the comic prequels.) Now the Super Predators were intimidating, but not scary. The only one that looks a little bit scary is Berserker, the Puppet Jaw look the designer implemented makes his make look a little bit disturbing. They tried to build tension in a similar way Predator 1 worked, and they succeeded a number of times. (Chuchillo's death is a good example. Any Predator veterans or people who've seen similar tricks KNEW he was dead and a Predator was making the calls, but the tension built up nicely from the dialogue and the camera angles.) The only time the invisibility didn't work well is in the drill. When Tracker is highlighted by the flare we see too much details on him. (The music didn't help. I understand they wanted to keep the music similar to Predator 1, but it didn't make it as intimidating as it could have been.)
That about wraps it up, though I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something. I mostly was looking at stuff from the previous films I could use with the elements of psychological horror. I'll talk about what ideas to make my film scary using these elements in the fan fic section.
