SF films that make you go 'Umm...what?' by chrisisall

OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES

SF films that make you go 'Umm...what?'

POSTED BY: CHRISISALL
UPDATED: Monday, March 23, 2009 06:54
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VIEWED: 5944
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Sunday, March 22, 2009 11:01 PM

Quote:
Dreamtrove:
That's what makes killing Newt in Alien3 the dumbest move by another director who is not as clever as he thinks he is, in spite of one clever success, and 7, or was it 5, which is probably the most predictable piece of torture porn I've seen...

A few things to think about.

1. David Fincher did not write Alien 3. To my knowledge, he hasn't written any of his own films, and therefore it is rarely a director's fault if something like that happens, not to mention this was Fincher's first film, and so he would've had very little to no creative control.

2. David Fincher agrees with you. He has stated on many occasions that he hates Alien3, doesn't like to watch it, and doesn't like to talk about it, because it was such a horrible experience for him. He disowned the film, and actually walked out on it before editing even began. He also had nothing to do with the Director's Cut, as he thought the film was unsalvageable.

3. Alien3 was such a horrible experience because of studio interference. Guess who the studio was.

4. You may not have liked Seven, but a lot of people did. And it wasn't torture porn. Hostel is torture porn. Seven was just a dark, gritty and violent thriller.

And here, some more Trivia from IMDB's Aliens3 page:

-On the set at Pinewood Studios, a giant lead foundry took 12 weeks to construct and put the production way behind. Even with 6 day weeks and 14 hour days, the crew were unable to keep up with the schedule.

-The production effectively shut down for three months while the script was undergoing rewrites.

-The film spent over a year in editing.

-When the powers-that-be decided on a new ending to be shot, Elliot Goldenthal had one night to come up with a new score.

-$7 million had been spent on sets that were never used thanks to the ever-changing script before filming had even started.

-At one point, David Fincher was denied permission by the film's producers to shoot a crucial scene in the prison understructure between Ripley and the alien. Against orders, Fincher grabbed Sigourney Weaver, a camera and shot the scene anyway. This scene appears in the final cut.

I know I went on a bit, but I've enjoyed all of the Fincher films I've seen thus far (I haven't seen Alien 3 and don't plan to.) and I just wanted to make a point.

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Sunday, March 22, 2009 11:08 PM

PEACEKEEPER

Keeping order in every verse

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:
Originally posted by 22Claws:
I just finished Sunshine. It was pretty wacky. Also, I'll say Event Horizen and The Black Hole
Three DEFINITELY weird-ass ones.

The laughing Chrisisall

Now thata a cool movie. Danny Boyle can do no wrong in my eyes

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Monday, March 23, 2009 4:24 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Event Horizon was one I desperately wanted to like, but in the end: FAIL!

I feel the same. But I will say this, and I thought it was cool:

4 years after seeing that movie, I discovered that the writer of the film was a Warhammer 40K player. He had the idea for the Event Horizon script after a 40k game when he asked himself: "Humanity uses the Warp to travel from star system to star system in the 40k universe. But what happened thousands of years prior to 40k when humanity 1st discovered the warp?" Warp travel in 40k results when ships punch a hole from reality to Chaos Warp and use shield tech to protect ships from Chaos Hellspace when travel occurs. Humans discovering the warp on Old Terra would not have known that shields would have been needed and would have tried to travel without them. The result is that the experimental run from Neptune to Proxima Centuri was instead a trip from Neptune to Chaos Hellspace. Opps.

You'd need to be a tabletop gamer to even know what I'm talking about, and few on this site are going to be. But if you ever played 40k and know about Chaos and the Warp, you'll understand.

Learning that put a whole new lens on Event Horizon. I raised my grade of it from a C to a B-. I always like seeing 2 seperate mythos' come together like that. Like when I was a kid and we all got excited in Predator 2 when the Alien skull was on a wall in the ship. "You mean that the Alien mythos and the Predator mythos are the SAME?" In 1990 it was a shocker. Now Alien vs. Predator stuff abounds.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 4:38 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:

That movie where juliet lewis sings naked, 1999?

Strange Days?

Kind of an odd sci-fi...

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Monday, March 23, 2009 4:52 AM

BLUESUNCOMPANYMAN

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Urotsukidôjii - the legend of the overfiend

Holy cow. I can't believe someone on here even knows about that one. I recall that it sat on a video store shelf for years in my hometown with a "Must be 17 to rent" sticker on it. It had it's own corner of a forgotten shelf in a rarely walked section of the store. Years of sunrises had shed light on the box, fading the color and aging the cardboard. "What could this be?" I'd wonder to myself. What is this forbidden animated film that sits forgotten in a corner? How can an animated film be forbidden? Of course those were the days when I hadn't seen any anime past playing Phanstasy Star II on Sega and had never even heard the word Hentai.

I turned 17 and rented it.

OK well.....To describe the experience I'd harken to the south Park episode when the kids are playing Lord of the Rings and have the 18+ video (Saurons Ring proxy) and Token volunteers to watch it. He goes inside...insert 1 minute pause...comes out and says "I'm not Playing anymore"

Yes indeed. That was my exact experience with Urotsukidojii. Innocence stripped away in 2 hours 20 minutes.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 5:24 AM

THESOMNAMBULIST

Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Urotsukidôjii - the legend of the overfiend

Holy cow. I can't believe someone on here even knows about that one. I recall that it sat on a video store shelf for years in my hometown with a "Must be 17 to rent" sticker on it. It had it's own corner of a forgotten shelf in a rarely walked section of the store. Years of sunrises had shed light on the box, fading the color and aging the cardboard. "What could this be?" I'd wonder to myself. What is this forbidden animated film that sits forgotten in a corner? How can an animated film be forbidden? Of course those were the days when I hadn't seen any anime past playing Phanstasy Star II on Sega and had never even heard the word Hentai.

I turned 17 and rented it.

OK well.....To describe the experience I'd harken to the south Park episode when the kids are playing Lord of the Rings and have the 18+ video (Sarons Ring proxy) and Token volunteers to watch it. He goes inside...insert 1 minute pause...comes out and says "I'm not Playing anymore"

Yes indeed. That was my exact experience with Urotsukidojii. Innocence stripped away in 2 hours 20 minutes.

Jeez you lasted the full 2hrs 20! I gave up after just about 30mins. Dreadful thing was I bought it for my sister in law as she said she liked Japanese animation. We all sat there, my brother included, and... well we were aghast at what was presented before us. It's not really a film - it's more like a series of lovingly animated perversions. Quite who loves to animate such things is anyones guess. I just felt so bad because I bought it as a gift. I've been redeeming myself ever since by overloading on Gibli studio animation instead! She's fond of that style of Japanese animation.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 5:35 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
list of movies that just wander off into space.

Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun, as close as Gerry & Sylvia Anderson ever got to 2001-style greatness in the WTF category.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 23, 2009 5:37 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:

Jeez you lasted the full 2hrs 20! I gave up after just about 30mins.

Me too. Animated sex I can deal with, but THAT was torture porn IMO.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 23, 2009 5:38 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I didn't see AVP because everyone said it sucked.

AVP: Requiem was pretty good, though. At least I thought it was. It was no "Aliens," but worth a rental.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 23, 2009 6:17 AM

THESOMNAMBULIST

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I didn't see AVP because everyone said it sucked.
AVP: Requiem was pretty good, though. At least I thought it was. It was no "Aliens," but worth a rental.

The laughing Chrisisall

I was so saddend by AVP that I'm staying well clear of anything claiming to be it's sequel.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 6:21 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:

I was so saddend by AVP that I'm staying well clear of anything claiming to be it's sequel.

Requiem's not a sequel, it has NOTHING to do with the first horrible one. And it's bloody.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 23, 2009 6:54 AM

DREAMTROVE

Big Richard

Thanks for the overreaction. Of course, my motto is, if I comment on something at all, it's a compliment. I kind of like Fincher. I hated 7 because talk about FAIL, if you figure out everything that is going to happen in a mystery about 15 minutes in, it's just painful to watch. It's made more painful as torture porn. Sorry. One of the people I was watching it with says, no, you gotta hang on to the twist at the end, you'll never guess who's driving up there. I said "Kevin Spacey with Brad Pitt's head in a box?" and he said "Oh, you've seen it?" And I said "No, this is just he most predictable film I've ever seen." It was really painful to watch abysmally stupid heroes fail to solve an obvious mystery.

I liked Fight Club. That's the only reason I cut Fincher any slack. Alien3 was terrible, but nowhere near as bad as Se7en.

BSCM,

Okay, I'll admit that's cool. If more of that has come through in the film, it would have worked for me. Yeah, I'm a geek and I know exactly what you're talking about. I think that the problem was probably that the studio had no interest in 40k, and twisted it to make it more like another knife in the wormhole story.

Mike,

Strange Days? that was it. The question isn't are you paranoid, but are you paranoid *enough*. :)

Quote:
Urotsukidôjii

I skipped mentioning this because I thought it didn't count. I guess I'm not sure on the parameters. Ultimately, doesn't all decent anime make you say Huh? even without tentacle sex?

I mean Hentai is a lot of huh, but even the rest of anime. I did mention something. But I think there's an element of Hayao Miyazaki no longer being outside the box, but there's a lot of disturbed confusion there. For that matter, Fantasia is sort of Umm What?

Frem recommended Elvenlied earlier, I have to second that.

Somewhere between waterworld and nymphoid barbarian from dinosaur hell there are some movies actually worth watching.

No one has yet mentioned Peter Jackson, like Dead Alive/Braindead. I thought we were going for a sort of wrong turn into nowhere land

Speaking of which, for anyone who wants to see a bad b-movie that is very disturbed and feels that they aren't getting enough Eliza Dushku, there's "Wrong Turn."

Some movies just leave me saying "Why?" Silent Hill for example. it's almost clever. I feel that a story editor is needed to make this not suck. I surprised by how many of these things are in my head.

Like a lot of people would put the Game on this list, I just find it too mundane. I'll grant Existenz, but I think that would be my limit.

Dreamscape is another 80s film in need of an editor.

Here's one I really liked, while not totally in the huh category, a decently executed film: Lost Souls with Winona Ryder. Oh, and another satanic film about a book dealer, someone help me out here.

To get horror to be interesting I think that abandoning christianity which is getting kind of boring in favor of classical pagan deities in something more than just random satanism and better more seriously done than Xena, though it can keep all the girl on girl...

Oh, there's another one Warlock, a bunch of stuff like that. Here's a huh with sean connery iirc Outland.

That one where i think it's vin diesel, and claudia black gets cut in half.

Of course, a lot of these aren't nearly as Huh? as random Farscape or Lexx.

Still looking for challengers to Cherry 2000.

On the Alien list, Cameron is best, but Joss-Jeunet's Resurrection was a decent huh. There were some truly disturbed moments in it. The underwater scene was nice but weak, in that it had that element of deep blue sea. Monster of the week "Let's see how many characters we can sacrifice for no apparent reason" which as a theme got the ultimate send up from Shaun of the Dead. Yes, we actually are morons, that's why we keep dying.

I really want to see "Aliens take Manhattan" It's been a long time coming. Here's hoping that summer's 4 week absence from T:SCC was because they're putting her in the new movie, btw.

The more we talk about this, the more I think the radical wrong turn hasn't been done enough. I mean, Alien Resurrection was good, a blast, and big baby was a wrong turn of absurd proportions, but the whole scene with winona in the drink was better. I assume I'm in a Joss room, everyone's seen the movie. I can't tell if it's Joss or Jeunet that is making this movie work.

Speaking of which, Maybe brother Jed is the thing infecting the Dollhouse. I've promised not to knock DH anymore, but I'm still gnawing on this one. I don't know why someone posted that the BSG thread was a finale hate fest, I thought we all pretty much enjoyed it, nitpicking comes naturally.

Okay, back to work now.

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