NOT PYNCHON: the estimable Michael Wood on COVENANT

[jesse gooch]

I’d like to check out that Gibson script, seems like it wold’ve been a neat addition, even if it was totally bonkers. Would’ve been hard to be worse than the Fincher attempt at Alien 3, even though I like a few things about that movie, partly the fact that it helped bring us Finchers later works.
I feel like horror and theology should be given a lot of license to make absolutely no rational sense as long as it is fun and creative, especially, as John Pointed out, Cosmic Horror. It’s not like we say Lovecraft was trash because of the fantastical content that makes so little sense. So Prometheus was enjoyable for me. Regardless of the huge, gaping (absolutely cavernous) gaps in logic and reason, I found a lot to enjoy. If that kind of thing turns you off, you’ll have a hard time not picking apart most horror, and IMHO, certainly all theology will be a wash if you are trying to have it make actual sense.
The first few times I saw prometheus it was edited for TV and I thought that maybe some of the irrational leaps in logic “this is a chemical weapons factory” and “same-day abdomen surgery flowed by a 10k across alien terrain and physical battle” were due to the fact that I was missing things that had been edited for content. But nope, that’s just the way it is. Still really enjoyed it though. When we go with a decades old franchise, I feel like comparing newer incarnations to the original work makes about as much sense as saying “it’s not as good as the book.” I try and just let it stand alone from what came before and try and enjoy it separately. Blade Runner will likely spark a lot of the same debates.
I still really do like reading the long lists of things that made absolutely no sense about Prometheus. I think cinema sins did one. Funny and accurate, but they don’t detract from the movie for me.

> On Jun 15, 2017, at 6:34 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170615/1c4d96cc/attachment.html>