1.) People need an aliens they can relate to and which can express feeling. People use their eyes and mouths for this. If you take away an actor’s expressive eyes, you’ve hindered him or her. So for relatable aliens we put weird appurtenances around the periphery and leave the emotive parts free.
2.) CGI is expensive and time-consuming and wasn’t good until recently. And it was terrible at conveying emotion.
3.) Puppets don’t look real and have trouble conveying emotion and feeling. Not all puppeteers are Frank Oz. You can get away with comic characters (ALF) as puppets, but don’t try it with a major character. IIRC, babylon 5 had a Praying Mantis-like alien puppet. Looked convincing, but it didn’t last. My theory is that people couldn’t relate to it.
In my opinion, people just react better to people-actors with mostly unobstructed face parts as aliens than they do to non-human ones (all those barely-noticed cues – independent eye motion, moving eyes, expanding pupils, moving lips, little head movements can be duplicated with puppets, but require commitment and money, and excellent performing skills), and it’s cheaper besides, so that’s what we get.
Delivering a head-butt to the bridge of your opponent’s nose or to his eye socket will often end the fight - you’ll barely feel the impact, but the guy getting hit will be in an amazing amount of pain and often blinded by his own (involuntary) tears. You need to strike using the top of your forhead near the hairline where your skull is thick and tough.
OK, I guess I can see the practical reasons behind it (no Planet of the Apes - style rubber faces), but it still pulls me out of the moment. I end up going, “Ah, the miracle of parallel evolution: these aliens from across the galaxy evolved to look exactly like humans except for a weird ridge between the eyes!”
Yeah. I’m hoping that now that CGI is becoming common and cheaper (and much more convincing than DS9 CGI) that we’ll finally see sympathetic nonhuman aliens, as in Hal Clement’s works. Or even Jack chalker’s.
There was a STTNG episode where they tried to explain the ubiquity of the humanoid form as being the end result of a deliberate act of panspermia, instigated by a dying race of (humanoid) aliens.
Yes, although as I remember that they were just lonely, not dying. They evolved billions of years ago, and were the only intelligence around. They created and left behind a genetic program on a multitude of worlds that would subtlely shape life on those worlds towards intelligence, and the humanoid form.
Nowadays, in a lot of bars, there are several different classes of beer. The bartender would want you to commit to the $2.50 draft (like a PBR), or the $3 (say Molson), or the $3.50 (Sierra Nevada, what I get if I ask for a beer in one place), or the $4 (Sam Adams, frex.). Of course, if you’re a regular, the bartender will know what you drink.
Actually, does anyone say “domestic draft” in the real world? Wouldn’t he be more likely to say, “Gimme a Bud”?
And a friend of mine interpreted Total Recall the same way that Fiver suggested; that the entire second half of the film was Quaid’s dream. It was a surprise to me, but it makes sense that way.
They were clearly going for ambiguity throughout that movie, trying to let it be either way. But it sems way too pat that his Martian Adventure just happened to match up so closely with the pre-approved details of his bought and paid for dream.
The one detail that strongly implies it was a dream probably wasn’t intentional. I missed it, but a friend pointed it out – when Michael Ironside’s character is communicating via phone in the car with his boss on Mars, there isn’t a several second delay, as there ought to be (radio signals aren’t instantaneous, and Mars, even at its closest, is far enough away to make a noticeable difference). I think the filmmmakers didn’t know and/or didn’t care.
By the way, the premise of the original short story (and as told by the guy in the movie at Rekall) is not that he DREAMS something, but that he just REMEMBERS a fake past. I think that’d make for a dull film, though. I wouldn’t want to sit in a seat and watch Schwartzeneggar remember things for two hours.
I’d imagine no. If nothing else, Bud/Coors light in bottles would be the “basic” order, probably 50/50. But, at least around here, there’s just too much beer available for the bartender to just take a guess. Anchor & Sierra are damn near as ubiquitous as Budweiser, and then there’s Stella… Well, I’m hijacking, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone order “a beer” and I can’t imagine any bartender knowing what that meant, unless the bar was having a “Free Blue Moon Night” promotion or something.
There was also a scene that implied it was all real and happening … when the fat guy came into the room (accompanied by Arnold’s wife, I think) to tell Arnold that he needed to stop “remembering”, or whatever he actually said. The fat guy was a supposed to be a projection into the program. They were trying to get Arnold to surrender himself. Arnold was about to buy the story, when he saw a bead of sweat trickling down the fat guy’s face. Realizing a projection into his subconscious wouldn’t be nervous and sweaty, Arnold shoots everybody.
I mean, basic physics dictates that the decelerating force would be applied to the girl’s body, but that her clothes would continue falling to the ground. Let’s have a little realism on this point, Hollywood…
I guess I don’t mind the ‘I’ll have a beer’ thing; since obvious and gratuitous product placement bothers me even more than suspensions of disbelieve that minor, I’m OK with erring on the side of genericness.