Bartimaeus

In Everything Everywhere All at Once's case, the justification is really twofold: I will forgive a lot of ridiculous silliness that might really bother me elsewhere if I love the character stuff...in fact, there's even a chance that my tastes might literally change as I watch it so that I am more accepting of whatever precise type of silliness it's engaging with. Characters trump everything else - they are the foundational backbone of almost all types of fiction/entertainment for me. I will also forgive what should be unforgivable if the film manages to resonate with me on a personal level, and Everything Everywhere All at Once very strongly resonated with me on a personal level from multiple angles, which is very rare indeed. I've always said that I don't really care for themes and other kinds of big ideas in entertainment, but that's because they generally stand extremely little chance of affecting me on a personal level: without characters that I like, it's virtually impossible for me to pay enough attention to even fully understand the plot of something, and never mind looking deeper for the themes. So when you have characters that I like while being able to interweave ideas and themes that I like, you've really got potential for something special. And then I watch Aliens where the characters are completely one-note meme-worthy non-characters that can't even deliver their lines properly, and people wonder why I'm not impressed with it. I'd like to turn to my friend George Lucas here... ...who, although he would completely and utterly forget what he said fifteen years or so later while making the prequel trilogy, pretty much hits a home run on my feelings here with regards to not spending your time on the proper elements. Haven't seen Event Horizon, but obviously I love Satoshi Kon's Magnetic Rose as previously discussed. Slow, personal, atmospheric horror that builds itself through what our characters are experiencing...what they see, or what they don't see, their personal weaknesses and fears, and the terror they experience. At the most base level, I want to feel something for my characters as a result of what they're going through, and you have to make it personal to them to accomplish that. I want to become afraid and get hurt just as they do.

Getting the first seven levels of a fighter-type class (or even a thief) and then dual-classing to either a mage or cleric so that you can get the single-class XP progression of the spellcasting class (as opposed to the much slower multi-class XP progression) while retaining the HP, THAC0, APR, proficiency, and item usabilities of the fighter-type class kind of beats everything else, IMO. Of course, it can be kind of painful for BG1 because you're starting to take on actually hard stuff right as you get to level 7...

I said everything, not everybody. I am anti-nationalist, generally accepting of ideas and identities wherein they do not infringe upon others (wherever their basis may lie, whether it's ethnic, religion, personal, ideological...), and am only just somewhat misanthropic, so I certainly don't qualify for that, . My intolerance for certain types of people is, I believe, much more reasoned and limited than my intolerance for most other things. I don't have a good enough memory of Prometheus to talk about its plot, especially given that I obviously lacked the context of the rest of the Alien films when I saw it. Perhaps that's a reason to re-visit it after all...

"Christianity didn't become a world religion because of the quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence." What a gorgeous line - mind you, it's applicable to other religions besides just Christianity, but it's especially relevant today given today's ever-growing Christofascist movement.

In all fairness, I am probably the biggest hater of...everything, out of everybody here on the Obsidian forum? Like, I play maybe two to three new (usually short/indie) video games a year, I dislike or at least don't care for the vast majority of movies and shows that I try, most music induces strong misophonic reactions from me, I'm very selective about what I'm willing to put in the effort to read... I mean hell, I almost definitely even have the largest ignore list on here! Intolerance and indifference is pretty much what everyone should expect from me as a default at this point, . In spite of that, I'm still somehow able to find stuff that I enjoy (and because of my dislike for everything, I also have a tendency to keep what I do like extremely close to heart for a very long time)...but in the context of specifically Alien, I have a pretty noted extreme aversion to pointless action and corny acting/dialogue, so really, the only surprise here is that I enjoyed Alien 3. Now, as for everybody else being "haters"...they can make up their own explanations for themselves.

Prometheus is the first Alien film that I ever saw. My main impression of it (now, ~10 years after having seen it) was that Noomi Rapace was good in the starring role. There were, I understand, just a couple of writing and creative decisions that people took issue to, . No chance on Alien vs. Predator, I'm afraid: it's so far outside my wheelhouse that it would serve no purpose for anyone.

Yes, the worst movie ever made (that I have watched, particularly that I have ever watched the entirety of) is still Star Wars: The Holiday Special. I think I'd put it right around on Aliens' level (i.e. significantly below Alien 3, unfathomably below Alien), but how it got there is different. Where Aliens is just generally bad and dumb throughout the entire thing pretty consistently due to deliberately stupid writing and direction courtesy of one Mr. James Cameron, there were some moments and ideas in Resurrection that I thought were pretty decent...but it was pretty much always quickly followed up with stuff even worse than what I saw in Aliens. A steady flat-line (Aliens) vs. peaks and valleys (Resurrection), I guess. Well, I'm officially done with the Alien property. Yeah, I'll get right on that, Fox.

Alien: Resurrection (1997). Well, this is going to suck. Seems like I always hate his characters and dialogue style...that combined with the fact that, as @Amentep so helpfully informed me, Ron Perlman is also in this movie, means I'm a hundred percent going to absolutely loathe at least one terrible actor and associated character in this film. Soon to find out if it's more than that... Well, what can one say about Alien: Resurrection? It was about the time we had the Catwoman basketball scene (but sans all the embarrassing quick cuts and nauseating zoom-ins, so I guess not quite as bad) between Sigourney Weaver and Ron Perlman that I knew this movie had gone past the point of no return, and that was only like maybe 25 minutes in. Brad Dourif was awesome, as always, so at least there was that...but on the other hand, there wasn't nearly enough of him. Ron Perlman was awful, as always, and there was naturally way too much of him (although I would say anything more than exactly 0 milliseconds is probably too much Ron Perlman, so you know...with the exception of when he's just voice-acting, I suppose). Um, wow, well, this was not a good movie for reasons beyond Ron Perlman, so I don't even know why I'm talking about him. Let's not make any more Alien movies, mmkay?

Sorry, I didn't hear what you said, I had to go clean up my dog's turds using my Princess Mononoke™ Giant Wolf Pooper Scooper, now what was it that we were talking about again?

...I'm definitely not thinking of Princess Mononoke and the intro sequence where Ashitaka sacrifices* himself in order to save his little sister before leaving his village being the best part of the film and it all going downhill from there on. Nope, not at all, .

By the way, you really ought to have to me complete a fifteen second investigation as to whether a show is going to be...well, that, before you start it. I mean honestly, a few seconds of looking at user screenshots and it's pretty obvious what kind of content it will have, . @kirottu recommended Angel's Egg and I liked that, I can only assume that his not-exactly-a-recommendation of Made in Abyss has to be okay. Someone besides only @majestic has to be capable of recommending things I like, right? I still remember that one part where the one girl brutally and bloodily bashes a locker room of girls' brains in. No, I don't think I'll watch that.

I haven't even seen what ol' crap-for-brains has said, but I try not to ever read the dystopic farce that is the Ukraine thread, and I certainly don't unblock the people I have on my ignore list on the rare occasion I do... O.K., I'm now back from taking a quick look at the Ukraine thread where I see you posted the same message that you just posted here, so I guess that must've been it - what you said now makes a lot more sense with that context, . Thanks, let me know how it goes - the original TV show is only 13 episodes long, but there's a bit of stuff after that that I figured would discourage you from trying it.

This is an improvement, since it got rid of the one where I confessed...er, jokingly mentioned ritually sacrificing my family to Satan.

Provided that it's grounded, for a reason (i.e. not simply for shock value, which is usually lame), and not just utter misery all the time, the torment of children is (or at least can be) great. ...I originally wrote that as just "child torture is great", but that didn't seem to capture my sentiment quite right and I would prefer to deny KP the opportunity to put another of my posts in his signature. But really, probably my third favorite live action film of all time is The Florida Project, and Grave of the Fireflies is pretty close to the top of my favorite Ghibli films...and I'm probably forgetting some other things, but yeah, not really usually an issue for me. Now whether or not I would like it due to vastly different reasons more related to it coming out in 2017 is an entirely different question...

Pretty much this exact thought occurred to me when I watched Alien 3: if I had actually enjoyed Aliens, I would've been greatly perturbed by them essentially invalidating the entire emotional core of the movie by killing off Newt within the first minute of Alien 3...but since Aliens was a big pile of garbage, I was more or less cheering for doing exactly that. Then the movie told me there weren't going to be any guns (which apparently was a Sigourney Weaver-mandated decision) and it felt as if they were deliberately crapping all over the legacy of Aliens - difficult not to be greatly pleased by that. But yeah, significantly worse than Alien and not at all like it's predecessor Aliens means that most everyone else will hate it. From what I recall reading, if the alien gestated from a dog (The Thing...), that's the theatrical version, while in the special/Assembly Cut, it instead gestates from an oxen.

One moment, let me do a Google image search...uh, what the hell am I looking at? Looks like a cross between the Rabbit of Caerbannog and Cthulhu. Yeah, I'm quite sure that I've enjoyed your descriptions of episodes many times more than I would've ever enjoyed the show itself, . I have to tell you though, Cobra just doesn't really seem like the "savant programmer" type to me...or really even an idiot programmer. Immersion ruined, . Although the sudden appearance of a certain mustached villain as the ultimate evil in the show, uh, probably would've done it as well, .

...I feel like whenever you say anything positive about something I'm skeptical of, I then go out and give what you say a chance and it's ten times worse than anything I could have ever reasonably expected. I don't even intend to be contrarian or reactive, it somehow just keeps working out that way. So now I'm expecting it to be the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life, and maybe, hopefully (if I actually bother to watch it), it will be at least a little better than that, .

Sigourney Weaver, Brad Dourif, and Winona Ryder all in the same movie and it sucks? How did they drop the ball so hard? Makes me all the more tempted to check out Resurrection and see what a train wreck it must be...and then I look at the screenshots and it looks about as dumb as everyone says it is.

My sister tried to get me to watch FMA when I was like eleven or twelve. I lasted a handful of minutes before I noped out, but even for ten year old me, that's a pretty predictable result with regards to shonen (as hard as it may be to believe for you fine people, I'm actually less opinionated and more accepting of most entertainment now than I was as a kid - there's a pretty decent gap of time from like when I was 10 to 17-ish where I followed and watched almost nothing because I didn't like anything...back then, I really only read books regularly!). I wonder how different my perception of anime would've been growing up if instead of being exposed to the worst and most popular shonen crap like Naruto, it had been something like Sailor Moon or company. Of course, due to being somewhat the wrong (i.e. too young) age, even if my reaction to such anime would've been less viscerally negative, I would've had no option but to suffer through mostly lousy English dubs and cheap/ugly digital animation, which would have been inhibiting indeed...

Alright, let's see what screenshots the fans have uploaded in order to sell the series to us. Ah, yes, exquisitely framed zoom-ins of our characters' crotches and butts while they're in their underwear/swimsuits, how delightful and totally unexpected. We also see a bathing scene where our characters are all nude and one of them looks to be sexually assaulted by the others as a result of some kind of humorous "misunderstanding", a truly classic sequence required for any and all anime of a principled nature. Glad to see said characters also look like they're somewhere between 13-16 years old. Generally speaking, I tend to believe the fans on what a show is about based on the screenshots they like to upload for the show in question, and boy, this one sure looks good, . Glad to hear the wedding stuff is finally over, hope you recover soon.

I've really never understood...I was going to say the third in particular, but really, the second and fourth as well. Looks like @majestic has a new show to watch, .

You may well be right re: Sigourney Weaver...but on the other hand, it's up to the director to direct scenes that work for their actors. Maybe both her and Linda Hamilton are plain old bad at crying, or maybe James Cameron didn't give them good direction - well, from how bad everyone else acted in Aliens (child actress and space marines), I know at least the latter is true, but the former might be as well, . From my point of view, the Jedi are evil there is no Aliens, . I actually didn't think the mother/daughter relationship was too badly written on its face...but wow, that poor kid could not act to save her life. The actress, Carrie Henn, went on to star in have a supporting role in appeared as a minor character in had a cameo in...uh, right.

Maybe it was just after seeing the joke that was Aliens that it felt like the characters got some development and knew how to actually deliver their lines on some other level than corny B movie. Jeeze louise was that bad in Aliens - how can you have such technical prowess and vision as a director and let it all go to waste because you can't figure out how to get freaking Sigourney Weaver to act? I don't know whether the theatrical cut or Assembly Cut is better - I read some comments that said the new cut is much better, while others say it ruins the flow of the film. If you already thought the theatrical version of 3 sucks, maybe it's worth a try, I don't know. Ms. Weaver isn't even in Alien vs. Predator, right? No chance of me watching it if not, she's too core to Alien. Yes, watching it directly after Aliens, with Alien instead being five years ago, probably makes quite the difference. I don't know, I just appreciate some attempt at slow atmospheric horror instead of whatever Aliens was supposed to be. In no universe could I ever sit through all of them (much less LotR) in one-go - would make them miserable just for that reason alone, regardless of the quality of the films watched.

1. Sound and visual design have been pretty nice, definitely agree there - particularly the overall sound experience has been excellent. 2. Haven't had any issues with the zurks yet, as in about an hour and a half of gameplay I've only had like two attach to me thus far and obviously haven't had any game overs...but I do make a habit of tactically waiting, drawing them out, running pretty parabolic-shaped movement routes, etc., where appropriate. 3. One thing I did like about the "cat things to do" was using windows shades as scratch pads in order to open up new routes through windows. They probably needed to figure out more purposes for cat things so it's not just totally pointless window dressing, so to speak. I played about half an hour early this morning and had a better time.

That...sounds less than ideal. Have you seen it, would you recommend it to me?