Which one? When I saw ads for the recent movie on the london tube in 2016 I thought they were old ads for the original movie.
I mean the original. I didn’t know there was a remake. I know there was a (bad) sequel back in the day, but just that.
Watched it thinking it was a pilot for a series, didn’t realise it was a standalone film. Considering the audience at the time was knackered after christmas and didn’t really read anything much into the film at all, it was quite enjoyable. I think that’s the trick here - don’t have any preconceptions or expectations, and it’s an alright film. I do agree with pretty much all the criticism thrown at it - the setting is a mess, the character development pretty much non-existant, it’s cultural and racial stereotyping and allegorical aspects are a massive dumpster fire and wholly unsavable… but from a purely superficial point of view (and let’s be honest, we all have days when we’re that tired or hanging out with friends of that intellectual calibre) it’s… alright. I’d say 3 stars and don’t try and watch it again. Ever.
1 Like
I’m on Team Grid View™ myself.
Neatly organized and ordered, easy to scan.
Currently I never go to the main page and seldom hit the bbs main page either, I click from grid view to the articles and click through from there to the comments. From there I check replies and messages. I just find that cleanest for me and how I like to browse my articles when I take a tea or coffee break. There are several sites I frequent this way, they are my digital magazines/newspapers.
Previously I’d mainly hit the BBS mainpage and click from there to BBS comment thread and click through from there to articles. I found that was preferable when I had more time and could also engage the purely social side with equal vigor.
At one point less recent I had a newsreader with RSS feeds and linked in from there.
Let’s not forget the ASCII View.
Just the other day @orenwolf informed me about a BB Facebook, Twitter, Instagram presence. I mainly use Facebook and Twitter for direct communication to people I know and can’t really stand either for content feeds, but I’m sure a lot of people who do enjoy those services find that approach easiest. I mainly use Instagram for art and creative feeds, so i’ll likely check out what BB is doing there.
I find this type of user interaction stuff very interesting.
So many different ways people approach and use things, many time in ways not expected or anticipated initially by the creators.
The other day I was going through a set of several thousand captured user interactions with a simple newsletter subscribe form in an app we developed. It was just an email field and submit button mind you, so you’d think what could go wrong…
There is a percentage of people who I’m not really sure how they manage to function in day to day life. 
3 Likes
The only way to view the main site if you ask me.
4 Likes
He shows up twice! He was easily the best detail in the entire film, because my brother and I cheered the second time.
I think it was fine not to go too much into the Dark Lord’s reign, as the idea is obviously that he’s so far in the past that he doesn’t matter except as as excuse people use for their own prejudices against orcs and not a reason for them, and oh god I just blundered another gaping contradiction in this movie’s supposed racial politics. Speaking of which, did you catch that nine races fought the orcs and the dark lord? Talk about lack of representation when you can only get to five if you count fairies and that dragon.
But that’s a double exception, at least for me. If there were a slogans “Orc lives matter!” the obvious parody would be “Fairy lives don’t matter”. The exception/negative lies in the “don’t”. Adding “today” doesn’t add anything. But of course, I’m not a native speaker nor do I live in the US, so my reception is quite possibly somewhat different from the baseline audience.
1 Like
I bought an British VHS cassette once, then managed to snatch in on Laserdisc, had it converted to digital, and recently bought it from US iTunes. I still can’t decide wether to watch the sequel or not.
Sorry, it will likely never go away. Written aliens have the huge benefit that you can write them in a way that readers can emphasize with them. Either by simply explaining their feelings or their moods. Or having super competent protagonists like Bren Cameron(*) who are so used to the aliens that they can convey their intentions, moods, reactions to the reader. The “mer tentacles rippled, indicating a level 1 amusement of the Chaplin-Xenohumor-scale.”
That’s not possible in acting, at least on a level for sustainable mainstream entertainment. Taking away voice, gestures, facial expressions – what does that leave the actors with? Background music, I guess.
You can do only so many Horta episodes.
And that introduces another problem: Size. There’s no reason why an alien species should be of comparable size. They could be 50 cm high, making having them both in scenes would become difficult. Or another example of the Perry Rhodan series: One major species, Haluts, are 3.5 m big. (11’ 5¾”). 2 metric tons, three eyes, 6 arms.)
People of that species are among the main casts for 2.700 issues and it works. In writing.
But look at this cover and tell me how that one would work on the TV screen. Apart from the in-universe fact that any fight between people employing unarmed combat or personal weapons is utterly dominated by them, making baseline humans as helpful as a rhesus monkey in Verdun.
(*) from the Atevi novels. Technically humanoid aliens, quite bigger than humans and wired emotionally different from humans. On a biological level, not the basically cultural differences between the main Star Trek races.
IMHO you can Jack Nicholson to that list. Perhaps he was different in the films he started with, but in all the stuff I’ve seen from the 80s one he basically played the same role.
2 Likes
Probably why I won’t bother watching Bright.
I was looking forward to it, thinking maybe finally, a Shadowrun movie, but also wary. (Fool me once The Matrix shame on you.) It started off with a bit of Shadowrun vibe, had the aesthetic well enough, and had Will Smith! I thought it’d be good. But then it just kinda never really went anywhere. There were so many possibilities, but instead, just another ‘people run around and shoot and get shot at, mostly for no real reason’ movie that we’ve all seen so many times.
There were shooty mooks and cardboard targets, but only one real character. I like Will Smith normally, but even he didn’t seem like much of a character, and wasn’t likeable. The one real character - the one person in the entire movie that actually had a motivation - was the gangster in the wheelchair who wanted more than anything to be healed. And he was just a bit part.
Could have been good. If there was plot. And/or character. But there wasn’t. A newbie GM could do better on that front (even if they fumbled on the technical stuff). Sure you had several groups hunting for the artifact, but aside from the gangster there was no apparent reason or repercussions.
That could have made for an interesting situation since she couldn’t handle it, and seemed to know that. But nah, would’ve involved character development and plot, which would’ve detracted from the shooting.
So it’s a Will Smith Shadowrun movie for people who don’t like Will Smith or Shadowrun. 
I get it, I too sometimes enjoy a weird or mindless movie. I think it’s catching flak because it had a clear target audience and aimed away from them.
A perfectly valid reason. Also, there is no requirement to watch Fantasy or Sci Fi with other sentient species. But ruling out humanoid ones will certainly severely limit the available movies.
Let’s see… I guess there’s “Arrival” and “The Blob”. Any more?
Arrival is worth 10 Brights 
I would include Interstellar, 2001 its part sequel Oblivion.
Did Interstellar even have aliens, much less aliens characters?
2001: Well, HAL was the only non-humanoid protagonist, but human-redrived in his manners and speech.
Oh, I have another one: Starship Troopers and Independence Day. Though the aliens had no character development at all.
I would argue that aliens who totally confound us, or are never seen are the most realistic.
Sure, but if you are looking for realism, perhaps fiction isn’t the place to go.
1 Like
But…he’s got a yuuuuge ego!
1 Like
Just adding to this topic.
-
I do love weird, non humanoid aliens. Early pulps and sci fi came up with some crazy shit. But at the same time, one then has to wonder if their anatomy would allow them move and do things. Like a giant octopus alien would just be a floppy blob on land, as there is not skeletal structure to keep it upright.
-
As per another thread for an invasion story idea, I too have been trying hard to figure out a non-earth like alien. I have made it bipedal, which if it is bipedal, it is going to be human-oid ish. I haven’t decided if it has extra limbs. I do want it to have more joints than what we are used to. The tubes for eating and breathing are different with redundant breathing holes (the fact you can choke to death is a horrible design feature in humans).
-
If you make something TOO alien and outlandish, like we said, it is too hard to make it real. CGI is still CGI. Puppets are still puppets. It isn’t enough to make it real to our brains. And if you have them as anything other than monsters, it is too strange for people to empathize or see them as real characters.
-
That all said, it got stupid the number aliens who look like humans but have a different series of bumps on their head in Star Trek.
I think thats why a show like Farscape worked compared to a movie. You had time to develop serious personality and character which allowed a connection with the audience to develop on a deeper level. Sure a lot of aliens on the show were people in makeup, but Rygel and Pilot were so well developed it was hard to not see them as anything but “people”.
3 Likes
