Hmm... Interesting.

I might have to at least half agree with you about Lindelof.

On one hand, there's:
LOST (incredible)
Star Trek (Awesome)
Star Trek: Into Darkness (Pretty goddamn good)

On the other, there's:
Cowboys vs. Aliens (Awful, moments of so-bad-it's-almost-good fun, but mostly awful)
World War Z (Only Brad Pitt movie — or zombie movie — I've ever walked out of)
Tomorrowland (Baaaaaa hahahahahaha!!!)

So maybe you're right and he's a problem. But I still loved Prometheus and thought it was by FAR the most interesting and best entry in the Alien franchise since Alien. Also, that fight scene at the end between big nasty pre-Alien thingy and big nasty pre-human thingy was... wow. Awesome.

Fair enough. I do know what you mean about prequels. In theory, they're supposed to help with "world-building," and mythologies, but they almost always end up undermining that very thing.

Look at fucking Star Wars. Man, talk about almost killing the most profitable franchise in history at the very moment when that franchise was trying to make a long-awaited return. Ick.

Or the Hobbit. Personally, I think Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were overrated. The first was the best and the rest were simply enjoyable. But wasting THREE MOVIES on the shortest and simplest Tolkien book just to expand on a brand that had already been critically and commercially massive ended up making the entire franchise feel gratuitous. Should have started with the Hobbit and just made a solid movie out of it, or left it alone, or at the absolute most made it a one film affair... little bonus for sad fanboys.

In fact it's hard to think of any prequels that have truly worked out or been legitimately successful.

But still.. I think Prometheus was great in part because it didn't rely too heavily on the familiar. Sure, that's what everyone wanted and expected... lots of alien shaped aliens. And that movie would have probably been really cool if Scott had decided to make it. But instead he made something with a different flavor. A more expansive and epic kind of movie that you don't need to be a fan of Alien to like. In fact, being an Alien fan might make it a good deal harder to like. But for me, it was cool as hell.

Maybe the next film will take us right up to the events preceding the original Alien. That's what's everybody wants, right? Obviously the vibe is going to be more "Alieny." More likely it will be a trilogy, and that won't happen until the third film. But either way... Ridley Scott + space opera + Aliens/aliens = good enough for me.

How's BOTNS coming?

coming well! got abut 100 pp to go. glad they are not making a shit movie out of it!

100 to go in the Citadel of the Autarch?

I don't think a movie would be possible. It keeps getting weirder until the coda book, and it starts out pretty goddamn weird. Plus there's ... eight more books that take place in the greater "universe," and all of them are pretty fucking out there. Hopefully nobody ever tries to undertake such a thing.

Nobody probably will. Despite being regarded as one of the best SF books of all time, I don't think it's particularly popular beyond SF cult circles. Fact I don't think Gene Wolfe has ever even had a bestseller.

Hahah!

Saw this last night. It was funny as hell.

Gene Wolf is too much of a wordsmith to have super mass appeal.

Yeah.

Though he has really moved away from the dense Dickensian prose over the years. Some of his books are surprisingly bland stylistically, while others are conceptually and emotionally complex, but still read pretty simply compared to his earliest works (specifically Home Fires; most people could read it in a day, but the greater theme is way more thought provoking than the actual prose).

I think he's done some definite genre experimentation. He did a Lovecrafty book (An Evil Guest), he did a "magical realm" book (The Sorcerer's House), an outright high fantasy epic (The Wizard Knight). and lately he's been on a '50s noir/Americana kind of kick where I admit he's kinda lost me.

I like Wolfe best when he was world building under the shroud of mystery. So.. Book of the New Sun (plus Urth of the New Sun), Book of the Long Sun, Book of the Short Sun, Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, and The Wizard Knight, much later. The rest of his stuff is good, often great, but sometimes, after reading so many bizarre behemoths from his early years, not really very satisfying.

Do you find this funny or...something else? Personally, I'm torn.

http://www.avclub.com/article/donald...ling-in-246655

Uhhh... yeah I see the conflict.

BUT...



This is objectively hilarious.

I couldn't agree more, at least in terms of the unnecessary bloating of The Hobbit. I enjoyed all three Rings films even if individually they were a little too long. The Hobbit, though, was one solid 2 hour film but Jackson killed it by stretching it beyond credibility.


Fair enough on liking it, and I agree that it probably works better as a stnd alone film (and but for the design of the alien ship and the very final scene it pretty much is). But even as a stand-alone I actually thought it had a similar problem to Hobbit: it was like a short story stretched until it broke. A huge amount of storyline padding. And for a film with such a limited, generally enclosed setting, and relatively small cast, it was still too jumbled. The idea behind Prometheus is complex on a philosophical level but Ridley's direction only makes it even more difficult to understand it. The fact I didn't like the actual idea behind it all is just my thing, others may like it for valid reasons. But beyond that I do just think the films simply a mess. A good idea (maybe), but very poorly told. Look at how those old (pre-reboot) Dr Who could tell a very sophisticated story in 90 minutes (3 episodes) which let you think about the idea without wasting energy trying to remember who's doing what, where and why. I honestly feel a lot of the more idea-centric sf movies being made at the moment could learn a lot from those older Dr Who stories.

there is nothing complex about the basis of Prometheus. same old shit ancient aliens BULLSHIT that lulls the ignorant and stupid into believing humans are pathetic fucks without help from "god." Fuck god fuck aliens.

ha ha ha ha

the idea that i've never seen shown in film is JEAN PAUL'S DREAM.

except maybe the closest being star trek's THE FINAL FRONTIER. which was brilliant in so many ways. well, at least 2 ways that i can actually think of.

Nietzsche said something along the line of he'd pulled his nets through the seas hoping to find fine fish, but only dragged up some old god's head.

ha ha yes

jean paul's dream for sure must have been an influence on nietzsche-- well, the german romantics really changed the world for everyone that came after (the early ones were the smart ones, the late romantics were all about irrationality and blood and fatherland... and we know where that went)

this sea thing reminds me of "all is lost" btw. which was great. but... best to have no spoilers

thanks for the JP dream, I thought of Sartre at first, but obviously not that. I ended up sending the last paragraph of it to a friend for a BIRTHDAY GREETING. Interesting to see what he will think o that!

oh ha ha ha

that thing shocked europe in its day

we're all orphans!

[quote=demonrail666]I couldn't agree more, at least in terms of the unnecessary bloating of The Hobbit. I enjoyed all three Rings films even if individually they were a little too long. The Hobbit, though, was one solid 2 hour film but Jackson killed it by stretching it beyond credibility.

Yeah. One move would have been just fine. Even as a prequel. Low expectations, use the building tension to make people want to watch Fellowship again right when it's done.. y'know?


I couldn't agree more about Doctor Who.
Honestly, I'd take Doctor Who over just about anything else in sci-fi, just about any day.

I read a neat article about Doctor Who and Star Trek (original series) and how the two shows, respectively, used their very different limitations to inspire creative and powerful storytelling.
Like, Star Trek started a couple years after Doctor Who, no doubt buoyed a bit by that show's success in the UK. And compared to DW it had a massive budget, but Roddenberry's eutopian, post-conflict vision presented some real problems in... y'know... creating conflict, which is obviously a necessary piece of any narrative. They came up with some interesting ways to present obstacles (mind control, more mind control, insanity, silliness), and eventually they sort of found their footing... usually by venturing outside Federation space where things weren't "post-conflict" anymore.

Doctor Who on the other hand, was overflowing with ideas, but they had fucking NO money, so they really had to work with what they had and present a philosophical fantasy space opera in a compelling way using, like, two interconnected sets and six people. Haaa!

The takeaway was that Doctor Who succeeded even more than Trek in expanding the framework of sci-fi and television despite having an aged, half-empty toolbox and being black and white. I agree. They used the limitations to their advantage. They thought outside the "box" (eh? Get it?) and turned those limitations into strengths by embracing them, making them iconic. Doctor Who has always been (and, I'd argue, still is) an extremely influential and wonderfully smart show, with a very rich universe surrounding it, and I would love to see more SF that could hold a candle to any era of Who.


I actually get a bit bitter about all the nonstop Star Wars hubbub, and intermittent Star Trek hubbub, because frankly I think Doctor Who puts both universes to shame in virtually every possible way. I would KILL for a feature length major motion picture of Doctor Who. Kill, I say. BUT Star Trek hasn't NOT been in the movie business for damn near 40 years, and even when there's not a Star Wars movie coming out every year for the forseeable future, as there is now, people never shut the fuck up about Boba Fett!!

A Doctor Who movie, in theatres, with a deserving writer and director, the right cast, and enough of a foundation in Who mythology and series nostalgia would probably give me a brain aneurysm. Of awesomeness.