Now that was one hell of an enjoyable read. Your alternative-universe version of the film is simultaneously scientifically, thematically, and dramatically tighter than what we got. (I think quite a few of us writing comments here — I include myself in that number — need to get off our asses and start producing, for…

Well, you've been "involved" enough to engage in this debate for quite a few posts now yourself. I'd say you're trying too hard to love this film and make excuses for its inexcusably sloppy structure.

Well! Aren't you the model of politeness.

Absolutely agree. And what makes everyone's unresponsiveness to everyone else doubly strange is that it was so visible. The Captain and the bridge crew basically sit on their hands on the bridge until occasionally called on to emerge and take action, but have no arc, no game plan of their own (until at the end,…

Great article. Basically it's a post-apocalyptic scenario — how the structures left over from the wreckage of the collapse of the Empire were repurposed and occupied by those who came after.

If we take the above scenario seriously, that's actually easy to answer: in all instances, the Xenomorphs we've seen have been "feral", born outside the context of their home civilization. The same is true of the offspring we see here. Newborn human babies behave pretty much the same way when they emerge from the…

Protocol, exactly. Much better term.

Your point about the expedition behaving in an incomprehensibly disorganized manner is crucial, and it bugged me more and more as the film went on. There's no rhyme or reason, no *procedure* to the way the crew does anything. No one is behaving like a credible scientist or officer or anything.

Totally agree; very well said.

Visually, you cannot beat the first 30 minutes of this film. And Michael Fassbender — as always — is very, very good.

Also reminiscent of the Atreides uniforms from Lynch's "Dune." Disastrous as that movie was, I thought it was astute to make uniform design convey the authoritarianism of the ruling families. We're supposed to root for the Atreides b/c they're the "good guys," i.e. not as bad as the Harkonnens — but they sure ain't…

It definitely was meant to be a pulp matinee movie for everyone, but there was plenty in it that was experimental, and intentionally so. The way that the movie "switches genres" with every scene (now it's Flask Gordon! Now it's Lawrence of Arabia! Now it's Shane! Now it's a prison break film! [etc.]) and makes all…

This opening would *not* have helped. It's all stiff exposition and there's no reason to care. Much, much better to do what the film actually ended up doing: slowly reveal the situation of Barsoom to the audience as Carter discovers it.

What a wonderful description! Thank you! As a current resident of Buffalo, I'm sorry to learn this ride was eventually moved out of the city (though I'm glad to learn of the origins of the name Luna Park, which I've certainly come across before). Time to build a reconstruction here...

Unfortunately, name-calling or not, this post is wholly irrelevant to the article at hand, which is about *outlawing the reporting* of certain kinds of empirical data.

Making the new Who focus on the relation of the Doctor to his companions was clearly a very conscious decision on Davies' part, and it does give the new Who more thematic coherence — it's now definitively "about" what it means for an ordinary person to be whisked away by the Doctor, in a way that old series wasn't. …

You mean that you, contrariwise, think that crumple zones should not be regulated?

"...the big 3 used government to destroy Tucker Auto which was trying to make cars safer by making their cars with safety features."

On the other hand, when last I checked asbestos caused cancer.

I'm loving how verbose the comment thread is for this article. Meanwhile, here's an amusing rant from someone on the receiving end of Answer Syndrome, or at least something closely related to it.