Is Alien hard sci-fi?

>>80914889
>hard sci-fi?

>>80914889
No it was a pretty easy to understand.

>>80915255
>No it was a pretty easy to understand.
I think it doesn't mean what you think it means.

And maybe, at least it's more sci fi than let's say, star wars or startrek.

>>80914889
>creature grows 7 feet overnight, out of thin air
no

>>80914889
I don't know, bu the Alien certainly was hard in a couple of scenes

>>80914889
Nah, horror/sci-fi in that order.

If I owned a Blockbuster (remember when they were a thing?) I'd have it in the horror section.

'Hard' scifi is for autists. 'Hardness' doesn't make a movie better because it has nothing to do with filmmaking.

>>80915300
>more sci-fi than Star Trek
Um. No.

It's a horror film in a science fiction setting

>>80915621
I would rather watch a shittily-made movie with wonderful concepts than a perfectly-made movie about nothing.

>>80915300
star wars isn't sci fi.
how is Alien more sci fi than Star Trek when Alien is more about Horror than anything else?

>>80915646
>>80915590
100% this. Space is a setting, not a genre. Set it on an ocean freighter that comes across the eggs on a deserted island and you have literally the same movie.

>>80915699
What about the bonus situation?

>>80914889

I gave your mum some hard sci-fi last night

I can't decide which I like more between Alien and Aliens

>>80915857
Alien is a 9/10 and Aliens is an 8/10, for me.

>inb4 for you

>>80915897
for you

Whatever happened to blue-collar sci-fi and horror?

>>80915998
Hollywood nowadays is overproduced and out of ideas

>>80915857

Why can't you like them both equally but for different reasons?

>>80916073
>out of ideas

Hollywood is never out of ideas - it just chooses to not to use new ones.

Look at the Black List. Many of them are great, unique stories. Hollywood is an investment business at the end of the day so it naturally goes with what is proven and safe rather than take big risks.

Sometimes it does and it pays off, but sadly that is rare.

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Hard sci-fi is extremely uncommon, only examples I recall are Europa Report and Primer. I wouldn't count Alien as one.

>>80915650
>I would rather watch a poorly made movie than a well made movie
That's a strange opinion to have.

>>80916858
Any opinion is strange when you alter it and remove key words that previously laid therein.

>>80916926
The execution is what matters, because that's what a film is. Perhaps you should read scripts instead of watching movies, so you can properly appreciate concepts not tainted by the art of filmmaking.

>>80917011
I read scripts for a living. Trust me, they're shit just as often as films are - just in very different ways.

>>80917011
screenplays are about execution too. films aren't just about looking and sounding great. they need substance or they are empty.

>>80917043
>I read scripts for a living.
Are you being punished for something?

>>80915699
Evil corporation, androids, weaponizing life, those are all basic scifi concepts

>>80917133
Evil corporations and weaponising life are not at all unique to sci-fi. Not even a little bit.

Androids are, but Ash doesn't need to be an Android to make the story work - he's just a crew member with a secret, extra directive. Him being an Android isn't explored. We don't deal with the existential questions of whether he is alive or has a soul. He's a traitor because horror films often have a backstabber within the group. Him being an Android is just another sci-fi skin slapped onto a horror trope.

>>80917087
Substance in a film can only come from filmmaking. The script and the screenplay exist elsewhere, as stacks of paper or as text documents. I'm not saying they're irrelevant, but I am saying that the substance you perceive in a film is not the screenplay because films are not in a text format.

>>80916679
The Martian was hard scifi. The guy who wrote the book is an autistic software engineer. The only fake-out part was the storm at the beginning.

>>80917388
I'm the other anon, not the guy you're replying to now, but by substance I think he means (and I agree) the actual plot of the film, the questions it asks, the statements it makes. The meaning of the story, the subtext in the dialogue.
All of that is substance, and it all exists before a camera ever begins recording.

>>80917090
>Are you being punished for something?
I mean, in a way.
It's what most of us failed writers end up doing.
Those who can't sell screenplays end up working at production houses where we doctor the screenplays of those whose daddies worked in the industry.

>>80917556
The film is the medium through which the contents of the screenplay are conveyed. Unless you've already read the screenplay, you will only know what you derive from the film, and if the film is poorly made it will fail to convey those things. My argument for preferring (well made) completed films over screenplays is that when you read a screenplay, you visualise the concepts and ideas in your head. If you didn't the screenplay itself would be worthless as it's meant to guide a process of recorded visualisation. But is your imagination as refined and eloquent as a well made film? Most likely it isn't.

/tv/ of all boards shouldn't devalue filmmaking's importance for film.

>>80917896
>if the film is poorly made it will fail to convey those things
But this is where you're getting hung up over something that isn't necessarily true. A shockingly poorly-made film can still have excellent dialogue and excellent world-building - The Last Witch Hunter is a great example of the latter (honestly don't remember the dialogue but the world-building was top-notch).

I am not devaluing filmmaking, quite the opposite; I am stating that the screenplay is part of the filmmaking process, and thus extremely valuable.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but are you implying that one's imagination while reading, say, a novel, won't paint as clear a picture as a film? I don't think that's accurate at all. It all depends on the imagination of the individual, sure, but also very much on the abilities of the storyteller.

>>80914889
Yes

>>80917896
>>80918121
pls no intelligent discussion on /tv/

>>80918121
A novel isn't a screenplay, a novel is a finished work while a screenplay is just one stage of a film production and that means they are written and read differently. Yes, a screenplay is also part of filmmaking, but it doesn't dictate the film's final look. Translating a screenplay to film is an interpretative process, no film will ever present the screenplay 'as it is' and it shouldn't even be the goal. Your contradictory arguments are confusing. A shockingly poorly made movie that is also excellent? Can isolated elements like acting be considered good on their own if they exist solely for the sake of the whole? Films are a fusion rather than a collection of elements and should be approached accordingly.

What do you mean when you use the term worldbuilding? Films are stories, not encyclopedias. Details provide context for storytelling purposes, not being able to work them into one's reading of a film doesn't mean they're pure embellishment. They should still be approached from a storytelling point of view, not as 'fragments of a virtual universe'.

> OP asked a legitimate question
> no "what did they mean by this"
> no autistic contrarianism
> one "for you" reference
> Legitamate film/industry discussion

What board am I on? Why can't more threads be like this?

>>80919087
>Your contradictory arguments are confusing. A shockingly poorly made movie that is also excellent?
But I didn't say that. We're reaching the point now where you're deliberately misconstruing what I've said. I said that a poorly-made movie can have excellent dialogue. That's not a contradiction.

>Can isolated elements like acting be considered good on their own if they exist solely for the sake of the whole? Films are a fusion rather than a collection of elements and should be approached accordingly.
If that were true, film criticism would consist solely of "it was well-made" and "it wasn't well-made". It's an analysis of the elements-that-comprise which is informative of a film's strengths and weaknesses.
If a film has excellent dialogue, but uninspired cinematography, a poor score, abysmal acting and shitty editing, I think we can agree that it would be a poorly-made film - but that doesn't stop that excellent dialogue from being excellent, does it?

>Films are stories, not encyclopedias.
Well, yes. This was MY point. Films are stories - at least, they should be.
What I'm trying to get across is that it is very possible to have a visually stunning, technically proficient film that lacks any substance, and often this is the fault of the screenwriter supplying a hackneyed on uninspired script.
it's also very possible to go the other way and have a visually poor, technically lackluster film that retains some of the spirit held in the screenplay.

>>80919367
This comes back to the purpose of film. When inspected individually, the elements do not have a purpose because they lack the context of the rest of the elements that form the overall narrative. Is it possible for something such as dialogue to be excellent by itself, removed from the context that gives it its purpose, that dictates its form? In that state, wouldn't it be neither good nor bad? The dialogue itself is not the point after all, it doesn't exist for its own sake but, like the rest of the film, for the sake of expressing ídeas, messages and commentary concerning a particular subject or subjects. Attempting to determine those things simultaneously provides the reference for evaluating a film's quality as the subject and the aesthetic have a symbiotic relationship.

>a visually poor, technically lackluster film that retains some of the spirit held in the screenplay.
This is a paradoxical view as visuals are a method of communicating information. In a medium that tells stories visually, 'poor' should imply that the visuals are failing to convey the story, or 'spirit' as you chose to call it.

Going back to my initial comment, 'hardness' when brought up in a discussion about science fiction refers to accurate portrayal of real technology in order to develop a 'realistic' setting. I admit that I worded it in an unneccesarily harsh manner, and this was because I expected /tv/ to defend hardness as an inherently positive quality that somehow elevates the work. Hardness itself isn't interesting, since it doesn't prevent a film from ending up boring or incoherent.

>>80914889
hardly a sci-fi

>>80920501
>individually, the elements do not have a purpose
I think where we must agree to disagree is this point.

>Is it possible for something such as dialogue to be excellent by itself?
Of course it is. Think of any sort of opening narration over black. We have no context. We have no visuals. We have no history to inform the dialogue. All we have is the spoken word.
Now, you could argue that the performance of the actor or actress reading the dialogue is just as important as the dialogue itself, and I agree to a point, but we've still separated the dialogue from the "context", as you've called it.
You're taking this in a bizarre direction. In any given situation, or any given act performed by a character, that character has the opportunity to utter dialogue. That dialogue's quality is not determined by a cinematographer. It is entirely removed from that element of the film-making process. Many such elements can be just so separated in order to analyse it.

>This is a paradoxical view as visuals are a method of communicating information. In a medium that tells stories visually, 'poor' should imply that the visuals are failing to convey the story, or 'spirit' as you chose to call it.
It's only paradoxical if you're adding or removing information from what I've said, which you've done multiple times this thread. Visuals are a method, but they are not the only method. You're employing a logical fallacy by implying that because visuals can convey story, any weakness in the visuals results in a failure of the story.

>Going back to my initial comment
I actually began talking to you when you said >>80917388 . Note that the first thing I did was identify myself as a new anon entirely.
The issue I am taking with you is that you are saying that the screenplay exists elsewhere, outside of the filmmaking process, and specifically this line:
>the substance you perceive in a film is not the screenplay
I am simply saying that some of it is.

>>80914889
Yes, for the most-part, it does have a magic gravity generator though.

other than that, cryo instead of lightspeed, no ftl comms. But there wasn't really all that much "tech" in it.

>>80921015
Narration over black is followed by the rest of the film. Willfully ignoring that it is part of a sequence is dishonest. Also, visuals are the primary means of communication in film and waht distinguishes it from text based media. Do you view films as vessels for character performance or something?

>I am simply saying that some of it is.
You misunderstand. I mean that it's not the screenplay in the sense that the screenplay is text, while the film is an audiovisual interpretation of it. It's not the same thing, since every director will produce a different film based on the same screenplay. And don't get caught on plot, the same plot can have a different meaning, making it an entirely different story, depending on nuance.

>>80920849
Its about an alien on a spaceship in the future

>>80922460
Sci fi isnt about "tech". The fact it has functional, earth-ship like feel is what makes it what it is. It's a cargo ship that is in space, in its barest form, which is realistically how a corporate run space operation would likely be.

>>80916679

Would agree m8

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>>80914889
No, Alien is hard economics.
The struggle of the working class vs. corporate profitability, particularly in regards to the bonus situation.

No. Hard sci-fi explains scientific concepts and tries to be true to actual science where possible.
I love sci-fi films and books but I'm not into hard sci-fi. I'm not really interested in how the ship works and scientific theories and all that.
Sci-fi is fun and interesting to me, I don't mind when they get into biology a little bit on an alien but I'd rather they leave the bread crumbs and let me ponder on all the explanations.
I can be honest though, I'm not all that bright, a lot of hard sci-fi goes over my head. I'm. It bright but I've got a good imagination.

>>80924324
Evidence of me being a retard. Didn't proof read my post. Last sentence * I'm not bright but*