NOT PYNCHON: the estimable Michael Wood on COVENANT

[John Bailey]

Also was it here that someone linked to a long article on William
Gibson's script for Alien 3? It sounded abso-frackin-lutely insane.

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 8:32 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a crazy booster for Prometheus, which a lot of critics are now
> coming back around to appreciating. I think Scott has made major
> concessions with Covenant after the critical drubbing Prometheus
> originally suffered, and amped up the action while making the
> theological and philosophical stuff really, really obvious rather than
> letting it simmer. Covenant is less of a work in my opinion, but I'll
> probably come around to liking it more.
> Both are SHIIIIIT movies if you read them through the lens of science
> fiction, which has to conform to certain kinds of logic and narrative
> realism. I think it's better to read them through as horror
> (specifically cosmic horror) which operates under a totally different
> set of conventions. The original Alien managed to strike the perfect
> balance between horror and SF but Scott's ambitions with the new ones
> are more existential.
>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 6:23 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If there's bad science there's bad choices--all this exposition and
>> background on the Giger's creation/creature just drains all the mystery so
>> well used in the first movie (I'm probably one of the few who wasnt a big
>> fan of Aliens)
>>
>> Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The
>> perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its
>> hostility.Lambert: You admire it.Ash: I admire its purity. A
>> survivor...unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
>>
>> they should've left it that.
>>
>> rich
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 3:40 PM, jesse gooch <jlguuch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> HaHaHa!
>>> Yeah, hard to get around the silly science, but I don’t really go see
>>> science fiction movies expecting them to adhere to logic. Also, since Alien
>>> has always been a bit of a “slasher in space” thing, you’re always going to
>>> get the people making really idiotic decisions that no rational person would
>>> make.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 15, 2017, at 1:31 PM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> This is about that really stupid film that R. Scott foisted upon us
>>> recently? It was that or the Mummy last night, and I suspect I made the
>>> poorer choice. I can’t imagine being desperate enough to actually see the
>>> Mummy, so I can only speculate about the choice. After watching the numerous
>>> stupidities of the humans on board, I came to the conclusion that the group
>>> being sent to colonize some far off planet must have been selected in some
>>> future eugenics project to raise the level of intelligence of the species
>>> left behind.
>>>
>>> Interstellar densities are around 10^6 molecules per cm^3. Try figuring
>>> out the pressure per square cm on that huge sail deployed at the speed the
>>> ship was going. Talk about drag!
>>>
>>> <sigh>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 15, 2017, at 3:30 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> https://twitter.com/LRB/status/875295382401691649
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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