How?? The Space Jockey sequence is almost a mini-adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. And Annihilation is about patterns of self destruction. The aliens are not important, they're metaphorical.

@storyrant ldk... They find an alien body. In a crushed ship on a planet. Could be similar to finding an alien body in antartica... But to call that an adaptation is a streach imo. As for anihilation... As l told you, l'm not a scholar, hence l tend to avoid going too deep in interpretation. It has other nuances, but to me it was colour out of space 2.0.

@@storyrantps: did you watch the endless and the void?

True, he did do this in Blade Runner...but the thing is that it fit thematically with that film. Alien's a totally different beast with its own vibe.

@@storyrant Quite so, I did not mean to indicate otherwise. The entire structure of the stories are different from the start.

Exactly.

I mean, it's in the word "Critique." You can say you enjoyed a film all you want, but how does someone providing critique and analysis hurt you or your enjoyment of a thing? The answer is simple. It doesn't.

I'm clearly making fun of the way they spell it.

@ Lol

I mean, I usually make videos as the passion for a subject strikes, but I do absolutely add things to my TBR and if a topic manifests out of that, I'll cover it. :) My general rule of thumb is it's gotta strike my interest. I did love Spectacular Spiderman and the first two seasons of Young Justice, but I haven't seen Gargoyls in yeeeears.

@ I’ve been a fan of Gargoyles my entire life since it premiered in the 90s as I was entering my teens. I would rediscover it every decade or so as it made its way to archive cable channels like Toon Disney or Disney XD, and learn a new facet of its narrative that appealed to my current level of maturity. At first, it was monsters that fight crime. Later it was character development and the desire for acceptance, and finally the deep lore that weaved many mythologies almost with flawless skill. The nice thing is that recently Gargoyles has gotten a canon revival in comic form with Dynamite Comics, written by Weisman, which has his signature narrative style of long story arcs with seemingly standalone threads having a butterfly effect on future events. Also, it was announced awhile ago that Gargoyles was being developed for a live action series on Disney+, though in what form is unclear. My concern is that it’ll be a simplified version that amounts to a modern Beauty and The Beast, which had actually been done decades ago with Ron Pearlman as the Beast. Outside of canon, one of the most comprehensive expansions of Gargoyles is the fanfic universe written by Christine Morgan in the early aughts, who went into very mature territory without compromising the themes of the source material. It’s worth a read, though I recommend searching for the official master list in a Wayback Machine search rather than the various fanfic repositories since they seems to list them out of order. I hope you enjoy.

@@esvegateban I just noticed that.

It's never looked like the Necronomicon to me until rewatching this video before release. Couldn't tell you why.

@@zogwort1522 What exactly is your point?

@@storyrant My point is that if you have more in common with Mary Whitehouse than you suspect, which makes you a poor fit to review this film. For example: The tree scene is a major highlight of Evil Dead 1 and it's one of the few reasons to watch it if you've already watched Evil Dead 2. It's a payoff in and of itself *because* it is immoral and should be appreciated as such. It's also plot-relevant because that's how the kandarian demons enter back into a human body. From the professor's wife, into the trees whose roots have fed on her, then into Sheryl. It makes sense, it's like in The Colour out of Space, if you're a Lovecraft fan you should celebrate that. If you're going to let morality impact your judgement, the last thing you should do is take potshots at your fellow moralists, because that sets standards you're gonna have to live up to. The standards of an edgy boy. The main point of mentioning the whole "video nasties" thing is to perpetuate Evil Dead's status in pop culture as a piece of transgressive art. The main point of deriding Mary Whitehouse as a hypocrite is to show that Evil Dead's transgressions are inconsequential. So if its transgressions are inconsequential, they aren't worth bringing up. Yet here we are. I dunno maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe it was for the reddit audience.

Wow, that was some bullshit you just made me read. There's a massive difference between the Satanic Panic-esque campaign waged by Whitehouse and wishing directors would take greater care with how they show or discuss sexual violence in storytelling. My wife has been sexually assaulted before, and gets particularly bothered when it's shown in media. She's told me, from her perspective, why it bothers her, why it makes her feel like she can't even watch a piece of media that uses r*pe in its story. To her, it doesn't matter why it's done, because so many of the people who create scenes like the tree r*pe scene in Evil Dead 1 are men. That scene isn't going to have the same effect on me as it will her, but I can certainly empathize with her why it would make her uncomfortable. When I say the scene was unnecessary, I mean it. Narratively, it serves zero purpose. Nowhere in the story did it say "demonic possession must be done through r*pe!" Wanna know why? Because otherwise every other character would have been... And that certainly would have changed how people reacted to the film if the Kandarian demon went and fucked Ash like that, now wouldn't it? And ask yourself. If you're okay seeing it happen to Shelly, but not Ash, is it really about it serving a purpose in the narrative? And frankly, no one is saying you shouldn't watch Evil Dead. My message is quite the opposite in fact. It's a great piece of art. I'm not trying to have this media removed. And guy, my not wanting to see sexual violence on screen really shouldn't be an issue. Says more about you than you can even imagine.

​@@storyrant The plot pakes it clear that demonic possession can occur through harmful physical contact, the tree scene is the first instance of that, and establishes beyond any doubt that the demons are a force of evil. So yes, regardless of the fact that this scene is fun, it does serve the narrative. But even if it didn't, Ash could have been a victim, and it would have worked very well with Bruce Campbell's acting style, as demonstrated by the sequel. But the trees don't quite do that to him in the sequel. Therefore we have to settle for the first film if we want that. I enjoy this type of scene, all that says about me is that I am edgy and maybe also sexist (since "evil" now has grandiose, romantic connotations you would deny me) but not that I am hypocritical. This makes me your moral equal, maybe even your superior, so don't try to finger-wag me. In the video, you didn't frame this as "I wish Sam Raimi didn't show things that upset my wife", you framed this as "Sam Raimi is a lesser man for writing that scene", which is false. Bringing up your wife's trauma doesn't justify your approach, it only confirms your bias. Directors and audiences are under no obligation to respect her, just like you are under no obligation to respect Mary Whitehouse and her peers. In fact I bet Mary Whitehouse was far more upset by it than your wife is, because your wife knows that watching it on tape isn't as bad as the real thing, whereas Mary was sheltered from any sort of offensive material. If I were to hazard a guess. So that's something you should consider, next time you review a film with this reputation.

@@storyrant The plot makes it clear that invasive physical contact is necessary for possession. The tree scene is the first instance of that. What makes you think that the tree scene wouldn't have been fun if Ash had been subjected to it, making goofy faces and screaming like a madman? And more importantly, what makes you think that anybody is under any obligation to respect your wife's sensibilities, especially when they get in the way of your reviews?

The effects are ON POINT in that film.

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I give Back to the Future a pass cause it's primarily a comedic adventure story, but a lot of stories don't really play with this in a way that makes sense and it's a shame. At least with Terminator, there is a drastic alteration, but there's still so much you could do with time travel (I think Accidental Time Machine does a bit of this if I'm not mistaken, but it's been a while since I read the book).

If you're able to remember what novel it was from, let me know and I'll add it to my TBR.

@@storyrant It is indeed *Dan Abnett's Xenos*, from the Eisenhorn series. Had to check which of the novels since it's a good series overall. Sci-Fi too, from Warhammer 40k.

I'll check it out, thanks for the rec!

I don't care how new something is, if it fails from a storytelling perspective I'm gonna bring it up. I also love how I said the movie was good, but there are still so many comments from people who are apparently not paying attention to a damn thing I said.

Is there a version for CoC 7th? I haven't run Call of Cthulhu in a while and it'd be nice to get back into it.

Why not both? It's truly strange that science fiction short story magazines like Clarkesworld and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction would probably not accept a story with the number of mistakes made in Prometheus and Covenant, READERS would not accept this, and yet there are people who will cover their ears and scream "it's just a movie." What you seem to be unable to understand is that good science makes science fiction BETTER. And the bad science in Prometheus and Covenant is so distracting that it compounds the issues with their pacing, dialogue, etc. A competent science fiction author would never make these mistakes. So why should we expect anything less from a form of entertainment that takes millions of dollars to produce?

@storyrant hmm imma be honest it is a fair point. When they did put in that kinda money it should have been closer to realism.

I rewatched In a Violent Nature with my wife and I totally got the film wrong. Don't go into it thinking it's a serious horror film, but a comedic satire on the genre. Might do another video on it at some point.