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But the majority are not average movies - they're below average. I Robot was average, AVP wasn't much more than a saturday afternoon creature feature with better effects.
What kind of message does that send Hollywood? It tells them that even if they do their best to make us happy, we'll dis their efforts and not spend any money (In my opinion there's something wrong if a movie like Chronicles of Riddick can't make any money). That in turn leads to what could potentially be extremely cool and original movies not being made, or made on the cheap, because the execs are afraid they'll get panned and we won't spend our money to see them. So what's their solution? Continue to make formulaic "safe" scifi movies that they believe will make money. And of course we're too smart for formulaic scripts to remain interesting, so science fiction in general starts making less money overall.
I don't think they're doing their best. If CoR is an example of their best the scifi movie biz is in sad shape already (IMO). AVP is Aliens and Predators in name only - its not cool or original. Its two monsters bashing each other for all of 10 minutes screen time - a souped up godzilla movie with smaller critters and less time spent kicking each other's asses.
Previously all the alien movies are far away from earth, in a future setting, with a people trapped in a bad situation, a corporation trying to keep the alien alive and bring it to earth, and
a set incubation period of longer than a half hour.
Previously all the predator movies are in areas of sweltering heat, one predator vs a small number of humans, and
the predators don't forget to bring their shoulder cannons.
This movie ignored all that and just used the costumes.
Hardcore Scifi Movies are a niche market - if they can't come up with a way to appeal to the masses they will never make money. As for extremely cool and original movies not being made - thats happening in all genres - its only a rare gem that gets out of the formulaic mold.
This movie was like watching someone else play AVP. Playing AVP is fun, watching someone else play it is boring. (And playing Alien tag against all your friends at a LAN party is lots of fun )
I do hold that if a movie isn't equal in caliber to the LOTR trilogy, then it might as well not be made at all. There is no excuse for crap filmmaking.
I find this interesting, as well. I really liked the LOTR trilogy. Granted I have a job and friends and was not terribly partial to the very dull books, but I really liked the trilogy. One thing I liked was the level of detail - how 'cinematic' the movies were. I got this grandiose sense that impacted me - I can't wait for the EE of the DVD to see how much neater it might be with more time. Having said that, I was quite dismayed at the horrendous treatment the movies got on this board. People were OUTRAGED that Tom Bombadil did not sing for hours - what was PJ thinking when he took the trilogy and made it less than 200 hours? he couldn't possibly have made it decent in just 12. And that was LOTR - one of the most influential items in our hobby's field. To hold everything to that standard is problematic.
People make these out to be life or death situations, and if it is not their vision of what the movie could have been, it fails utterly completely without mercy. If every situation is a life or death one, you will die alot of times. Same thing with movies - if they were all so cinematically LARGE, they would then all be the same and we would complain about that!
I enjoyed the flick, liked the back story, got a kick out of Lance Henrikson's involvement, and I will buy the DVD the day it comes out. Plus it was PG-13 for SLIME - it was actually rated for SLIME!!! What other movies can say that!
I got my entertainment, and I will enjoy it again. That's just my opinion. And opinions are like half-elf rangers - everyone has them!
We have lost Sci-fi, what we have entered is the world of pulp; it is a visual world of image and color of sound and fast action. It is not a world of facts or established dogma. Woe is me, woe is me.
We caused this, we really did. We went to movies for years, then they were know more as action-adventure flicks but we went and the success of those films have lead us down this road. We expect the same level but things have changed, we are older, our taste have changed and Hollywood has changed, the biggest money makers are movies that target the 13-17 year olds, then the 18-23, if you are older you MAY get 1 sci-fi, pulp, action-adventure, horror movie a year that you drool over.
I say this because I am an old fart (44), I have seen the change and every year I get older the less I like what I see on the big screen for fantasy and sci-fi. Good thing I like stupid comedies.
It holds up well enough as an action movie. It definitely isn't hard scifi, neither was Pitch Black, but its entertaining.
Previously all the alien movies are far away from earth, in a future setting, with a people trapped in a bad situation, a corporation trying to keep the alien alive and bring it to earth, and
a set incubation period of longer than a half hour.
Previously all the predator movies are in areas of sweltering heat, one predator vs a small number of humans, and
the predators don't forget to bring their shoulder cannons.
This movie ignored all that and just used the costumes.
There is absolutely nothing in any of the alien movies that says that the aliens couldn't have been brought to earth for a specific purpose during a previous time period and then frozen. What they did say was that aliens had never overrun the Earth. At any rate, since the aliens are destroyed at the end of this movie, this doesn't contradict the continuity as we know it. The corpses are buried under so much ice that its unlikely they would be found by Ripley's time anyway. There is no contradiction here.
There is nothing stating that predators only hunt in extreme heat. It may suggest that they prefer to hunt in warm areas, but nowhere is it defined that they can only hunt in such areas. In fact, it is made clear that in this movie, the temple serves as a right of passage for young predators. This is an especially brutal test that they must pass to be considered a fully matured predator. As such, it makes sense that they would be sent into an environment that they do not prefer without their primary weapons.
Hardcore Scifi Movies are a niche market - if they can't come up with a way to appeal to the masses they will never make money. As for extremely cool and original movies not being made - thats happening in all genres - its only a rare gem that gets out of the formulaic mold.
This isn't a hardcore scifi movie. Alien was a horror movie. Aliens was an action/horror movie. Predator was an action movie. The only thing that these have in common with hardcore science fiction is that they feature aliens, advanced technology, and spaceships. Hardcore science fiction works take technology and address the way that it affects society. These movies have never done that. I haven't seen hardcore science fiction on the big screen since the movie 2010.
I'm sorry, but if you expected this to be a perfect movie then you shouldn't be surprised that you went home disappointed.
Yeah, I kind of wondered about that too. I was equally concerned about how she was going to get back to the ship. It looked to me like she had a ways to go, and nothing to wear to protect her from the elements. Oh well, fodder for the inevitable sequel.
Yeah, I kind of wondered about that too. I was equally concerned about how she was going to get back to the ship. It looked to me like she had a ways to go, and nothing to wear to protect her from the elements. Oh well, fodder for the inevitable sequel.
Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator and even Predator 2 (which was pretty average) Actually I think AVP and CoR are below average for average action flicks - True Lies or Eraser. An average episode of Stargate SG-1 is better than AVP and CoR.
It holds up well enough as an action movie. It definitely isn't hard scifi, neither was Pitch Black, but its entertaining.
To-mae-to / To-mah-to. I don't agree. CoR wasn't a very good action flick (I liked Pitch Black much more than CoR). My own personal bias comes into play here. I can forgive a lot more in the average action flick, fantasy movie, horror shocker, high adventure story than I can in a scifi/anything movie. Once they use futuristic scifi type settings they automatically have a higher bar to jump. To many inconsistencies just jar me out of the experience. But thats just me.
None of which matters.
There is absolutely nothing in any of the alien movies that says that the aliens couldn't have been brought to earth for a specific purpose during a previous time period and then frozen. What they did say was that aliens had never overrun the Earth. At any rate, since the aliens are destroyed at the end of this movie, this doesn't contradict the continuity as we know it. The corpses are buried under so much ice that its unlikely they would be found by Ripley's time anyway. There is no contradiction here.
We have to accept that every alien born the first time the predators lost control (and the movie shows thousands of them) all stayed close enough to the central pyramid to be destroyed in the blast when the pred's blew themselves up. And then we have to accept that the predator's stopped returning to earth every hundred years to set up the ultimate hunt after the 2004 debacle (even though they showed something that looked much worse occuring thousands of years earlier). They didn't stop the first time they were overrun so why would they stop after the 2004 incident? If the alien hunt was such an important right of passage why didn't they just rebuild again and start over thousands of years ago? The predators controlled the planet - they could have kept control. Why didn't they?
Are these contradictions? No, but they make the premise seem pretty stupid.
There is nothing stating that predators only hunt in extreme heat. It may suggest that they prefer to hunt in warm areas, but nowhere is it defined that they can only hunt in such areas. In fact, it is made clear that in this movie, the temple serves as a right of passage for young predators. This is an especially brutal test that they must pass to be considered a fully matured predator. As such, it makes sense that they would be sent into an environment that they do not prefer without their primary weapons.
Actually, in the first movie there is something that suggests they only hunt in extreme heat - at least as far as humans know.
As for the especially brutal test. If the predators value the hunt so highly, why would they always remember their shoulder canons when hunting humans
- I'm sorry, when you're going gigging for frogs ya don't bring a shotgun .
This isn't a hardcore scifi movie. Alien was a horror movie. Aliens was an action/horror movie. Predator was an action movie. The only thing that these have in common with hardcore science fiction is that they feature aliens, advanced technology, and spaceships. Hardcore science fiction works take technology and address the way that it affects society. These movies have never done that. I haven't seen hardcore science fiction on the big screen since the movie 2010.
Correct - it wasn't hardcore scifi, but it wasn't a very good action flick either. There wasn't enough action. It also wasn't a thriller - nothing in it thrilled me. Alien was horror/scifi, Aliens Action/scifi, Predator Action/scifi (it certainly wasn't scary in any sense). Scifi doesn't have to just address the effects of tech on society (actually most of those type scifi movies bore me to tears)
I'm sorry, but if you expected this to be a perfect movie then you shouldn't be surprised that you went home disappointed.
I didn't expect a perfect movie - I never do. I avoid movie trailers like the plague so I don't have any expectations. They had two of my favorite scifi critters in the same movie. I really like the AVP games. It wasn't creepy like the alien movies can be or the AVP games are. The combat scenes weren't thrilling like the predator movies or aliens or alien 3. This movie just didn't produce. It was boring.
I think it was a mediocre/bad movie - and if this is the average that we should be shelling out bucks for then things are in a sorry state. I really don't see how paying for bad movies is going to make anyone produce better movies.
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