Hurin

Well to be fair to us this is an "anime or science fiction" section of a science fiction fan site.

And it does have "alien skulls" in it. Maybe we just want to see the quality of the alien skull and comment on it? I just thought it was a bit unfair to dismiss the movie just because of an alien looking skull. What if it's just the skull of a ancient religious leader who had a deformed head and was super intelligent? (like exedor from macross?) So many possibilities. And even if it was aliens, it still fits into that supernatural/mysterious theme to some people. It doesn't mean indiana jones is necessarily going all science fiction on us if that is what people are scared of. (no guarantee it won't, but I'm just saying..) There may be other crystal skulls that are human-looking and you only saw a small portion of the whole thing. So it might be better to withhold judgment until you know more, that's all.

That's it. I officially give up. It's like you comment on what you wish people were saying instead of what they actually are saying.

A movie is just that, a movie. Enjoy and don't overthink it.

I hope someone often drops by conversations you're having about things that matter to you only to say: "it's just an x."

For the life of me, I don't understand why people bother to drop by conversations that obviously matter to some merely to assert that it shouldn't matter to them. I don't know if it's about people wanting to feel "cool" or "above it all". . . but it sure is one of those quintessential internet behaviors: When you don't have anything to say, but you want to say something. . . just drop by a topic that doesn't interest you only to announce that it doesn't interest you. . . and then (either directly or indirectly) demean those to whom the topic matters.

For the record, this is where I got started with Low-Viz too.

Hurin = me. Except with moderating power and a greater predilection to bite your face off.

Those two are not related, however. I've been known to bite faces off before I was ever an admin/moderator. Though I do not think that I do so unless it is warranted.

For the record, as I think I've demonstrated in the past, I'm happy to have a conversation, a disagreement, or even a spirited argument. . . as long as both sides are doing their best to understand the other instead of (intetionally?) obfuscating, setting up straw men, and ignoring inconvenient points and questions.

No, you're not meant to think that this would actually be a fitting sequal to the Rings Trilogy. If anyone thinks so, then we don't have much more to discuss. =P

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel too. I'm not sure if he's honestly doesn't get the distinction, or he actually thinks that there would be nothing "wrong" with it. Either way, I'm not sure I'm up to continuing the conversation. Thus far, it's been both exhausting and unnerving.

PT rise of the empire/fall of jedi

OT fall of the empire/a new hope

Both when seen together have a new meaning when compared to only seeing one and that one by itself having its own meaning.

But how can you be so sure that Lucas didn't have all the ideas for all the new stuff we see him adding later floating in his head before he made the OT (but just couldn't include at the time because of budget/time limits?) Are you a mind reader? Maybe he just forgot the stuff he meant to add and is just adding it now? Sorta like what happened to Gollum in the second LOTR movie where they changed his appearance once the newer and better things came along to better match what they really intended? R2D2 still looks the same to me in starwars. C3p0 hasn't changed much. Wookies got a bit of an upgrade in muscle. Yoda isn't glued to the ground. Whatever little changes there are just seem like upgrades. Although I admit I like the old "solo shoots first" version of OT than the new one.

Still don't see what is so bad about aliens in an adventure movie. If he does re-edit all the old movies I'm not saying I'll like them better though. Just that it can still be possible to have a good adventure movie with aliens in it.

Honestly, at this point, I can't tell if you're being willfully obtuse, intellectually dishonest, or if you're just confused. We're talking about whether Lucas/Spielberg intended the Ark to be an alien device. . . and you suddenly start talking about Star-Wars and Gollum. Meanwhile, probably intentionally, you continue to ignore basic and and pointed questions while going off on more bizarre, irrelevant tangents.

Then, you say yet again:

Still don't see what is so bad about aliens in an adventure movie

. . . as though anyone else has said there is anything wrong with "aliens in an adventure movie." Seriously man, what's up? Nobody thinks aliens can't be in an adventure movie. At this point, all I can assume is that you're setting up straw men because you don't want to actually address what others are actually saying.

But, for the record, you don't need to be a "mind reader" to see the modern influences on the PT vs the OT as well as the inconsistencies between them. Though, since that's largely irrelevant to both this discussion and this thread, and has been discussed to death in other threads on these very forums, I suggest we leave that alone.

Yeah but sometimes adding stuff can enhance it. Like when a sequel comes out "aliens" for example, you might want to make it more scary or convincing by changing the genre a bit to mix it up. So instead of horror you now have a war movie.

Dude, try to join us in the conversation we're actually having rather than the one you seem to be having with yourself in your head. There is a world of difference between adding a "war movie" element to a sequel. . . and fundamentally changing the nature of things retroactively. You don't seem to be able to follow these analogies very well. . . but I'm going to try again: In the case of Alien, the analogy would be Ridley Scott coming back to make Alien XII and making it in such a way that we find out that the "Aliens" are actually devils sent by Satan. . . or robots. . .

That doesn't mean it's suddenly destroyed the very thing that makes macross, macross. Just adding something to the universe. Just as the existence of egg-laying queens in aliens adds something that wasn't there in the original alien movie.

Dude. . . dude. . . wtf? It's like you have no sense of degree or nuance at all. Equating the adding of some details regarding how the established aliens reproduce in a sci-fi movie series entitled Aliens to the introduction of extraterrestrials into the Indy films (and possibly even retroactively to even prior ones) is like comparing an apple to a freakin' aircraft carrier.

Anyways, I'm still just waiting for a basic answer to the following basic question. The rest has just been random nonsense and avoidance of it:

H

One thing I've learnt is that you can never be happy trying to convert people to like the things you like,

One thing I've learned is that it takes a certain type of person to drop into threads merely to tell people that they shouldn't care about something. Usually the motivation is to come off as easy-going or "above it all."

lol basara already did that in macross7. God would have no purpose since Basara already singlehandedly saved the galaxy from protodemons. Sorta like asking the flash to save the world when superman has already finished doing it. Macross 7 was popular in japan too. While macross plus is shat upon as a POS just because its a side story and has annoying fighter jocks who act like apefaces. (even though these apefaces were designed that way to show that they are the only ones willing to fly dangerous untested planes that careful people would never want to touch, so are needed despite their reckless attitude)

Totally missing the point. Or intentionally avoiding it. Why the heck would you totally ignore a question and then jump ahead to discuss Macross 7? The point is that Lucas may be retroactively going back and extracting all the religion and mysticism out of the earlier Indy films and injecting sci-fi/aliens. . . decades after the movies were completed. As I pointed out when you merely asserted that nobody should care because it's "fiction". . . this would be analogous to going back and retroactively replacing the Zentraedi with demons and Dolza with the devil. Yet for some reason you think: "Basara already saved the universe in 7" somehow obviates your need to answer the question: Would you not think such a retroactive change was lame? And, by extension: How would you feel if Kawamori did indeed make this retoractive change and --while you were discussing it-- various folks dropped in from time to time only to say: "Calm down. It's just fiction."

Stargate, and Fifth Element weren't too bad. Is there a rule saying you can't mix a bit of sci-fi with a bit of adventure/mystery?

You're (still) missing the point. The Fifth Element and Stargate opened with those premises. That's far different than introducing something twenty years later and retroactively changing an existing film in a fundamental way. If Lucas pulls what some of us anticipate, we'll be watching Raiders twenty years later thinking about how it's all a sham because Lucas now says so. That's lame.

Just like in outlaw star or Vampire Hunter D? Where a bit of occult magic/mysterious ritual/religion is put beside technology/science? If there was an adventure like pirates of the carribean and it was set in space, and involved alien religious artifacts and space pirates all over the galaxy wanted this valuable treasure and bounty hunters all over the galaxy were sent to get it, as well as secret societies and other groups who had plans to gather up all the religious magic items together, I don't think it would automatically suck just because aliens were in it.

Again, missing the point. See above.

In fact I kinda liked the idea in the Doom games of mixing dungeouns with secrets hidden inside walls and devious traps that are set in the floors to kill wanderers, combined with "cyberdemons" and space marines. The demons in that are pretty menacing and scary. And I was ok with the idea in Halo that aliens themselves could be religious and misinterpret their own prophecy and almost kill themselves. But despite those being in a different genre, the adventure themes and mystery is still in there. And the involvement with aliens didn't bother me the slightest. It's actually because of star wars and "the force" (which is a religion itself - vader is seen as an old man clinging to ancient superstitions by the others in the empire) that I can accept a bit of religion mixed with aliens and be ok with it. Others, (like the people who didn't like macross zero due to the mysterious ending and lack of explanation for everything) may find it lame, but I could swallow it since the original series already hinted that aliens and us were similar so maybe the thing that created us and them was a more intelligent race.

Uh. . . okay.

But on the other hand, when the new bond movie came out where they changed bond into a blond guy, that pissed me off a lot, despite being a small change and the movie being good.

So, general ramblings aside. . . your (irrelevant) point is that other movies have mixed genres and introduced sci-fi concepts with religion. Good. But those movies did so from their inception. The point is that Raiders of the Lost Ark did not have these elements in any way shape or form. Nor did the other two. And decades later, Lucas is once again possibly going to f' with things and retroactively make his movies mean something that they never ever meant until the moment (years after completing them) that he shat out some new, craptacular idea.

Your response was essentially: "Who cares? It's just fiction." When I presented you with an analogous change that could be perpetrated on Macross, and asked if you would feel the same way even though Macross is also "just fiction". . . your response was to totally avoid the question. . . and then ramble on with irrelevancies for a few paragraphs.

H

It's movies guys. Fictional movies. Tomb Raider had the illuminati, so why can't Indy have some aliens?

Okay. . . it's just movies. So if Kawamori suddenly decided that Dolza was Lucifer and the Zentraedi were demons. . . and then had God himself come down and directly work with the UN Spacy and help them in their war against evil. . . you wouldn't have a problem with that? Cuz it's all just fiction?

I wouldn't have a problem with it on a religious level. . . but it sure would be lame. Most of us are just girding ourselves for whatever retroactive assishness Lucas has in store. If the Ark is revealed to be of alien origin. . . thereby actively f'ing with an already great movie and fundamentally altering it, sorry. . . but that's lame. Of course, this could all be jumping at shadows. But it just seems so much like the kind of crap Lucas likes to pull.

Okay, I still cannot access the mainsite or the forums via my router/cable connection. I can get on fine using dial-up or a proxy. I talking to the cable company, they said it's probably a router issue. I talked to Linksys and they said I need to find out Macross World's port number to use with port triggering.

Would it be possible to get MW's port number?

It's a website. It uses port 80. Like every other website. Port forwarding is not going to help.

Can you (briefly) connect your (fully patched) computer directly to the cable modem and see if the problem persists?

Keep in mind that your cable modem may not talk to your computer unless you first unplug the cable modem from power for a few minutes. Cable modems often remember the "MAC address" (not to be confused with Macintosh) of whatever device it has been connected to and will not accept another device until it is power-cycled (with a rest before you power it back up while connected directly to your computer).

H

I wasn't aware I was supposed to be pissed off at ET. I just knew I was supposed to find him/it adorable, when in fact I found him horrifying. And I don't think Spielberg is that anxious to piss off Jewish folks, seeing as he's one. After all he did make Schindler's list.

Yeah, I don't recall E.T. making me think about Jesus or God. . . or religion at all.

Having said that, Sundown. . . you can be jewish and yet also an atheist. As I'm sure you're aware, it's both an ethnicity and a religion. So, I really don't see Spielberg being jewish as any type of bar against him making some sort of anti-religious statement in a movie.

Where did this whole "aliens in Indy" angle come from?

Ask George.

Really, cause you know that would piss off every Christian and Jewish fan of the series... I don't see him doing it, even if he wants aliens in this one it's totally uncalled for.

You say that as though it would be something Lucas/Spielberg would want to avoid.

it works well for scifi shows like Stargate, but shouldn't be dumped into Indiana Jones... which foccused on Hitler's obsession with supernatural artifacts

And Star Wars was about a Galactic Civil War and the coming of age of the Last Jedi. . . until Lucas a decade or two later decided to just assert that it was always about Anakin/Vader and the Force is easily explained by microbes in the blood.

He gets off on "twisting" things and retroactively altering the meaning of what's been in the can for decades. I think he confuses doing so with real creativity.

I actually enjoy this kind of debate and think it's an important discussion.

It's not an important discussion to have here.

I'm with Sundown on this. When you see the hero of a film being accosted by American soldiers immediately after the American flag is bombastically splayed across the screen, it's a pretty safe bet that this will be more classic Hollywood "Good Americans dislike/mistrust/doubt America" stuff that makes those who subscribe to it feel oh-so-enlightened. Based on recent Lucas political undertones, I think it's likely. It's sorta amazing that, ham-fisted as his political "undertones" tend to be, they still go over the heads of some and instead we get "Gah! Showing your flag is bad!" even as the filmmaker (probably) is making the same point.

But, yeah, we should probably start steering away from the political angle. I will say this. . . if it turns out that Lucas has attributed all the supernatural events in the prior films to alien technology. . . wow. . .

I wouldn't put it past him. He went out of his way to retroactively take all the mysticism out of the Force in Star Wars via the prequels. Perhaps because of a new anti-religious leaning that he's developed later in life? Spielberg removed the guns from E.T. . . perhaps because of a new anti-gun political leaning he developed later in life? So, I really wouldn't put it past them to retroactively remove religion from their prior movies and turn Raiders retroactively into Raiders of the Lost Alien Face Melting Device. Seriously, I can see it happening. . . it's the sort of thing that Lucas would consider "clever" and a mind-f*cking plot twist even though Star Trek did it via "Who Mourns For Adonis" in the 60s.

yes.. i watched the trailer off the movies own website, and as i'm in the UK... i saw a big US flag...

sorry guys, i have to say i cringed...

Why cringe? It seems to me that the "enemy" in this movie will be some rogue hyper-patriotic right-wing nutjobs who have taken over part of the U.S. Army and/or government. It would fit in with recent Lucas "subtle political messages .'

HD trailer is out.

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/indianajon...3g1GC6bw55fVXcA

There's links to the original trailers for Raiders there too. Pretty cool. Strangely, I don't see any slapstick or attempts at humor. Odd. It's almost as if the filmmakers had a different sensibility and traget audience back then.

Edit: Wow. . . compare the trailer for Raiders with the trailer for Last Crusade. Now, actually, I don't think the trailer for Raiders makes it look particularly good and its style is dated. But note that it's not trying to be funny in any way but is instead chracterized as a gritty adventure. Not so for the Crusade trailer which pretty quickly develops a campy "family fun" tone.

Edit 2: If I seem to be a bit pointed here, it's because that nearly every time Lucas comes up, a certain type of fan always appears that considers any criticizm to be the whinings of hyper-critical fanboys and some even go so far as to bizarrely assert that there is no real difference in tone or cinematic sensibility between early Star Wars/Indy films, and the latter ones. . . and that any perceived differences are the effect of nostalgia. I've got no problem with anyone's personal tastes in movies. But if someone's so very undiscerning that they actually believe that there's just no appreciable difference (it's been said in other threads). . . well. . . I can't really respect their taste in film. . . just as they tend to dismiss mine as the rantings of an angry fanboy who is "dead inside." Forgive me if I have a problem seeing people swallow crap and singing its praises merely because it arrived in the same packaging as the ambrosia to which they originally became accustomed.

Having said all that, I have no real hope that this movie won't be horribly undermined by inept attempts at humor and "comic relief" in the Lucas style. Though, in this case, where I of course went out and saw all the SW prequels, I'll have to wait for Netflix to see if I'll be pleasantly surprised here.

H

For what it's worth, I didn't think the "I thought it was closer" gag that horrible or juvenile. Maybe not as understated and wryly executed as I would have liked, but it didn't make me totally grimace.

On second viewing (cuz I may have been hasty), it's not as egregious as it could be. But, it still represents a pretty good example of the type of ass-hatery that (to my mind) ruined the latter two Indy films and every Lucas endeavor since Empire.

Since they seem so proud of this "funny" moment that they chose to showcase it in the trailer, I'm willing to bet that there will be tons more moments like this throughout the movie. . . just as there were throughout Last Crusade and every other Lucas vehicle in recent (and not-so-recent) memory.

It's only a trailer guys. It doesn't tell ANYTHING.

I wonder why they made it then.

I've got nothing to say other than to point out that the trailer (which is supposed to represent the best a movie has to offer) goes out of its way to be funny above all else. . . and fails. . . and thus, for me, any residual hope that this movie could buck the Lucas trend is lost.

Lucas. . . cannot. . . make. . . a. . . decent. . . movie.

My favorite part was the erroneous blaming of others.

If you have an account over at Macross Nexus and want to download copies of any PMs, or threads, better do it before February 8, 2008. Macross Nexus is disappearing into the ether on or about that date.

Best,

H

Nevermind. Old news.

Let's wrap this up. The appropriate sentiments have been expressed. Thread locking is imminent (as is customary with current events threads).

Subtitle change from "found killed" (which implies foul play) to "found dead" (which does not).

No.

Any purist who has a problem with the re-envisioning displayed above is in dire need of a swift kick in the nuts!

Beautiful!

I was a huge (but closeted - I had a rep to protect! ) TOS fan back in my junior high and high school years. I got over it as all the "new blood" came on board with TNG. I guess I just got tired of every problem being solved with techno-babble from the writers ("reverse the tachyon pulse through the deflector array!" "Of course!") rather than ingenuity that the fans could actually understand or anticipate.

So, it's nice to be a fan of the original series without being prone to being extremely butt-hurt over the tiny contradictions of "canon" that so infuriate folks like the guy commenting at the link Azrael provides above.

Oh, one other reason I gave up on Star Trek: All the TNG fans are Communists.