This is going in c/electoralism

    • Des [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      serious 1st alien is basically working class sci-fi. characters act as professionally as possible facing cosmic horrors. also love that kind of Apollopunk look of realistic space tech

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Alien was pretty revolutionary in how it presented astronauts because up until that time they were either fresh cut military nasa types or epic heroes from some space drama. In alien they're just truckers doing what they can to get by, working class stiffs.

        • Des [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          really made you feel for them too. no obvious horror personality archetypes, instead each death hurt me inside it was like watching regular people get fucked by something beyond their understanding. excluding the corporate android fuck that guy

        • Des [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          hate that megacorp but almost bought a W-Y trucker hat just because i liked the logo.

      • Yeat [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        what do you mean by apollopunk? i googled it thinking i was gonna find cool shit and got nothing

        • Des [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          oh damn apparently it's an aesthetic i must have invented in my head lol. i've heard of "nasa-punk" but that's just relating to the game starfield. but in my mind it's basically kit bashing apollo-era asethetics and design and extrapolating how that same design philosophy could apply to the future. so basically durable, simple transitor computers, big bell rocket engines, lots of gray, tons of early digital switches, buttons, and CRT screens and exposed or easily exposed hardware for maintenance.
          supposedly the Nostromo was inspired by a WW2 submarine but with the moon landings fresh in everyone's heads there was a definite eye for 70s realism and the design reflected that a bit.

          also it's technical stats state that it was originally an exploration vessel using a more advanced version of the Saturn-5s cryogenic engines until upgraded with either fission or fusion thermal engines with H2O for propellant.

          neat technical trivia is that in the Aliens universe the ships use FTL drive that uses a (currently unknown to physics) field to change the entire vessel's mass into virtual tachyons, which force it to travel faster then light. going FTL causes reverse time dilation for the crew, making everything on the ship experience extremely long local time compared to Earth or orbital habitats. so hibernation is used to suspend the crew so they don't age rapidly. the rest of the ship is designed to be robust and using simple, time tested technologies so the reverse time dilation doesn't cause major failures.

        • AtomPunk [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I’m thinking it’s a typo of atompunk but the tech design is too utilitarian to be that

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        That's one thing I really love about Alien. No one at any point does dumb horror movie shit. They all behave in reasonable, believable ways for competent people from a working class background. They don't get killed because they'd dumb, or because of bad writing, but rather because they're truly being hunted by something far beyond their capacity to deal with. I like Aliens for the same reason - All the things that go wrong are believable given what we know about the characters.

        • Des [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          (sorry late reply but i just rewatched alien 1). i forgot they had a small arsenal of firearms, one of which was a directed energy weapon (according to an entry in the script), but they leave them on the mess table.

          its a great "show don't tell" that they know they can't risk either putting a hole in their hull or cracking the xenomorh's skin.