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RE: [Music Discovery] Childish Gambino - This Is America
Sometimes, well most times, I live under a rock re: tv and celebrities but recently for some reason I was contemplating the new Star Wars movie coming out - Solo. As my OCD tends to grip me I was fuming about the casting of Han Solo and just how terrible I think the choice was for the actor to play him. In seeking some solace I noticed the promo posters and saw Lando Calrissian and thought "wow, that guy really looks like how Lando would look..." and thus began my very first introduction (beyond news headlines) to finding out about Donald Glover. I really feel he is a saving grace to Solo and while I do hope the movie is better than I expect I just know I will at least be happy with him playing Lando. Now off to listen to his music...
I try to block out a lot of the celebrity stuff, but still some gets through to me. It's worth it when I find a gem like this song.
I've purposefully been ignoring the fact that that film is being made, but you're absolutely right, Donald Glover is the perfect fit for that role. I've seen a promo shot of him in the cockpit of the millenium falcon, and it just looks right.
My first introduction to him was in a show called Community, it's by Dan Harmon and is just amazing in my eyes, even the last season. His character of Troy is so good, but sadly he left the show around season 5. Strongly recommend you try it out.
You don't care for the Star Wars single movies? I really loved Rogue One but seriously I am fairly easy to please, the gratuitous use of the ATATs won that movie for me. Story? Pshh. hah
So about this video it's pretty disturbing. I appreciate it artistically but I was talking to a friend and they were like "so is that what a musician has to do these days to get popular is be extreme?" (also in context the pink guy music was mixed into the convo). What do you think? I'm not saying the song itself is gimmicky it's actually really good music but the visuals in music videos seem to just be getting very extreme. Just an opinion. :)
I haven't seen Rogue One yet, I threw a bit of a hissy fit at the time of it's announcement and swore off it. I grew up with Star Wars, and how the death star plans were obtained was covered on an old DOS game called Dark Forces, which was one of my favourites growing up. The retconing of that and removal of Kyle Katarn from the Star Wars universe.... nah. Overall I haven't been massively impressed with the direction Disney has taken Star Wars. There was a game being planned called 1313 which looked incredible, and they canned it. I just prey to the nerd gods that they don't mess with the Alien franchise... please....
Your comment made me think, a lot. I think the visuals in this video are supposed to be extreme. It feels like a comment on modern culture, maybe something about how we are becoming numb to the shocking atrocities happening in our countries. I read a VICE article about people turning the video into memes, or I guess how people shouldn't turn it into memes because that's the point of the song/video.
The way that people can turn things like school shootings into memes, or joke about gangland shootings as a part of life... it isn't right. Not that those individuals have necessarily done anything wrong, but it definitely makes a statement on the society we find ourselves in.
I don't feel like this song is about him getting popular through extreme visuals, personally. It's not dissimilar (in my mind at least) to the debate around my thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this tragedy-type statements. Sometimes I think maybe, with each subsequent generation, more and more people are starting to say enough is enough, things can't go on like this anymore.
I heard, somewhere, that they were going to reboot the Alien original movie arc starting over by ignoring #3 and onward (so, Newt does not die). I don't remember where I read or heard that but I hope it's true because I've tried so hard to appreciate the Prometheus and Covenant and the last one... oh it was so bad. So bad. I absolutely love the Alien chain, even the cheesy Predator x's and Covenant was just the worst.
I agree. I hurt so much for kids these days as in my time we did not have this sort of event as our reality. I do rem in high school occasionally there would be a bomb threat (in the 80s) but it was always a prank and people just assumed that. There is a post trauma the kids have now about the violence that is happening that they will carry with them. They have been forced to be war veterans by our own stupidity and oh I just can't find the right words but we have failed them. No one really knows what to do, either, to fix it (hence the cliches and empty comments) or rather no one can agree.
I've heard all kinds of rumours ever since Covenants release. It's hard to know what's going to happen, but I think the rumours about a retcon of Alien 3 are linked to the Neill Blomkamp scripts for an Alien 5 movie, possibly. Until something actually goes into production, all bets are off. I've also read that he has explicitly stated that his Alien film is dead and he's moved on, so I just have no idea.
I'm a massive Alien/Predator fan, and like you said, even the cheesier films were enjoyable. I loved Prometheus, the story of the Engineers and the mutagenic substance was exactly what I wanted and was expecting. Ever since I first saw the Space Jockey in Alien, I've just wanted to know more about it, what it was and what it was doing on LV-426. The fact that the movies never touched upon it again, other than a brief glimpse of the derelict at the beginning of Aliens, irritated me.
Prometheus wasn't a perfect film, but it's also nothing a better cut of the film wouldn't fix. That's seemed to work for most of the other Alien films in the franchise. Covenant... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by it, but I think for different reasons than most. I'd seen the promo images for the film which showed the engineer planet as David drops the urns over the populace, and in the actual film that was it for engineers really. It seems like after the intense criticism of Prometheus, Scott changed his direction massively which resulted in Covenant, a bit of a train wreck of a film. I've read the original spec script for what was at the time called Alien: Engineers and it is far, far superior to what we ended up getting. I still think Covenant is a perfectly good, almost stand alone film. Especially when compared to the likes of Alien 3 or Resurrection. The neomorphs were cool, I like the emphasis on AI as it's a potentially fascinating concept.
There was a special poster released as part of Alien Day I think, and it shows two skulls which are clearly not engineers, however one looks suspiciously like a space jockey. The other one, to me at least although I'm yet to see anyone else make the connection, looks like the skull of whatever was on the mural in the Head chamber in Prometheus, a kind of bird-headed creature.
Sorry, I went on far too long there about Alien! I could talk about that franchise all day.
I'm struggling to find the right words myself now, but I 100% agree with what you say there. It's such a deep-rooted problem with our society as a whole, I just don't know where you'd start to fix these problems.
Oh my goodness you should delete this comment and make a new post 😀. Really a lot of insight here. I am facinsted by the engineers as well and I think that's one of the many reasons covenant disappointed me... Because they at least seemed to be "killed off" which is a thread that doesn't work well with this franchise imo. I don't know why other movies and shows can get away with it, but aliens can't. It's like they don't let it run its course the kill it before it's time (it being the character or arc). I liked the Android AI part too I agree that was well done. What was awful was the numerous getting killed in the shower bath scenes and was it really necessary to spend 3 minutes of film on a floating head? I mean I get it. She was decapitated... Ok floating head, again. It must've been three times lol. Just really annoyed me.
I probably will do a post on this next week actually, I think I could probably write a thesis on the Alien universe at this point!
Yeah absolutely, and not only were the engineers killed off in it, they had seconds of screen time. Covenant didn't add anything to the mythos or story, I think Ridley Scott kinda choked on this one, letting the intense criticism from Prometheus affect his vision. I'd not really thought about the killing scenes, but you're right. They were just pandering I guess, trying to attract the box office audiences, but we were just left with an inferior film. In retrospect, I've been far too lenient with this one. Films like 3 and resurrection get somewhat of a pass for their cheeseyness because they weren't directed by Ridley Scott (or James Cameron). They were obvious cash grabs, crappy additions that the executives wanted. This was a Ridley Scott film, and in that respect the film completely failed.
"Apparently", the next film will be far more engineers-focused and less xenomorph. Hopefully Scott can redirect this franchise back to his original vision and join the prequels up with Alien in a satisfying way. Why is the Space Jockey so much bigger than the engineers we see? Why did it appear to be fossilised? How did the derelict get to LV-426? Why did it seemingly have a cargo of xeno-eggs? Is David the original creator of all xenomorphs, or just the neomorphs? If the engineers created us, who created the engineers? Sooooooo many questions still need answering.