They Live

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

by doener • 2 years ago

117 81 2 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

muppetman• 2 years ago

This movie really shook me when I watched it as a kid.

fifteen15062• 2 years ago

SPOILER

Ya, the hero died at the end. I kept expecting him to come back to the very end.

EDIT: edited due to downvotes. Come on!

ChrisMarshallNY3• 2 years ago

Roddy Piper has passed. Apparently, many professional wrestlers die early.

peteforde• 2 years ago

Unsubtle but ahead-of-its-time media analysis + most absurd fight scene ever. Worth a watch with a drink and some good friends.

panarky• 2 years ago

What's really absurd is how hard we fight to view the world only through our own ideologies.

cess114• 2 years ago

One of Carpenter's best, and one of the best 'capitalists dressed up as aliens'-movies.

fifteen15062• 2 years ago

Is that a real category?

cess114• 2 years ago

No, like every other category it's made up.

Another of my favourites in this category is Save the Green Planet!, though it's not as family friendly as Carpenter's take on it.

mentalgear• 2 years ago

Haha, it should be! If it is, "Landscape with Invisible Hand" is certainly one of the genre's best!

ChrisMarshallNY3• 2 years ago

The Arrival[0] (not Arrival) was like that.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115571/

Findeton2• 2 years ago

A capitalist success ($4m bugdet, $13.4m return).

cess114• 2 years ago

Not sure what you mean. Could you name the capitalists to whom that revenue was so important?

iammjm• 2 years ago

Great movie. Zizek's "A pervert's guide to ideology" got me hooked on it.

rogue7• 2 years ago

Same here. _I already am eating from the trash can all the time_

https://youtu.be/oBcFLmu_tlc

mjfl2• 2 years ago

Haven't seen the film. But the concept reminds me of the Israel Palestine situation in the US.

scandox• 2 years ago

In 2017, in response to neo-Nazi interpretations of the film's themes, Carpenter further clarified that the film "is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism" and "has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world".

mjfl2• 2 years ago

I said it reminds me personally.

eggy• 2 years ago

Yes, Carpenter made it to be about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism in 1988, however, art from the viewer's perspective 36 years later, can mean something different for that viewer or any other. Personally, I don't see the neo-Nazi and Jewish control of the world angle, but the way the media has sold the Palestine-Israel conflict, the passing of the redundant, free-speech-limiting, Antisemitism bill recently, and with thousands of Jews in the US and Israel protesting for a cease fire, and the thousands of police unleased on US college campus protestors, it can have a different interpretation. In 1985 Columbia students occupied the same hall for 3 weeks, and it led to Columbia's divestment from South Africa's apartheid regime, but most Americans under 35 or so, don't have historical depth. They sway in the wind of the media's hot air. For me, putting the glasses on or being red pilled, today makes the film applicable to a host of viewpoints, and not the cliche yuppy / capitalist trope even if that was sincerely John Carpenter's intention as an auteur. Sure, the acting is bad, and the late 80s coloring makes it seem a dinosaur to today's high-tech, SFX, CGI-addicted, chop-editing audience. I guess I am old. I love it. I also loved watching Wood Allen's 1973 film "Sleeper" for about the 7th time last month.

HumanProtractor• 2 years ago

To be fair, when asked he had to say that. Many people think it's obviously about Jews, seeing as how the 'aliens' are in control mainly of banks and the media.

Had he answered any other way, his career would have been over and he might have been killed.

mindcrime• 2 years ago

I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum. -- Nada

doener• 2 years ago

Fun fact: Roddy Piper's line was originally intended for a match against wrestling fighter Playboy Buddy Rose (1952-2009). (Source: "In Search of Darkness" documentary.)

xnx• 2 years ago

"put the glasses on" is a distant ancestor to "red pilled"

MrSkelter• 2 years ago

Not so distant. The films are only a decade apart and They Live was hugely influential.

permo-w2• 2 years ago

with arguably inverse political implications

penfolder4• 2 years ago

How would you argue they're inverse?

akira2501• 2 years ago

Which gave birth to Cripple Fight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Fight

newzisforsukas• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jxm6JQDN98

effingwewt2• 2 years ago

Wow I had no idea! Too good, time to rewatch both!

joeatwork• 2 years ago

This movie is a lot of fun, and a great window into its moment.

palad1n• 2 years ago

Is this of special significance today?

arduanika• 2 years ago

Unclear. Maybe there's a bubble gum shortage.

arnaudsm2• 2 years ago

The best way to farm karma on HN is to post a random Wikipedia article every day

matthewsinclair• 2 years ago

Y’know, I see these random Wikipedia articles come up every day or so on the front page and wonder what is going on.

I thought they were organic at first but then I got skeptical and wondered if it was some vestige of the early days of HN where it was automatically injecting a random article to bolster content.

The other thing I thought could be happening was that there is an article on the front page in a particular topic, someone reads it finds a novel topic and then thinks to themself: “I know! I can post a Wikipedia article on that topic and farm some karma”.

Who knows.

CPLX• 2 years ago

I mean assuming the articles are well chosen that seems like a public service

dvh• 2 years ago

I've posted this and nothing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40106956

penfolder4• 2 years ago

Dumb question. What advantage is there to having hn karma?

surprisetalk• 2 years ago

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Anything that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic on HN :)

Wikipedia happens to be a great neutral resource to share curious media/phenomena that others might not know about.

Hizonner• 2 years ago

I saw that movie when it came out, and it did not gratify my intellectual curiosity.

derstander• 2 years ago

Anything that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic on HN :)

Yeah — sure. But I’m with the parent comment to which you replied. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m just coming across one of todays “lucky 10,000” [0] or if there’s another reason why something old has resurfaced and, if it’s the latter, it’d be nice to know the context.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1053/

LightBug1• 2 years ago

Finally ... a use case for current state of the art AR ...

1) Tag boss and other questionable associates through They Live filter.

2) Put glasses on.

3) Chew Gum

4) End Gum

5) Run Kick Ass automation.

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

John Carpenter made some good movies some great movies, some truly shit movies, and one of the greatest movies ever - one of my top 3 favorite movies of all time (The Thing).

Story and script seem to be the defining factor in making a great movie.

riffraff• 2 years ago

That is a very, very good way of stating way of stating a fact that I 100% agree with.

Although my favorite would probably be In The Mouth of Madness, because I saw that at a better point in my life.

Jgrubb• 2 years ago

What are his shit movies?, I’m not aware of any but need to check them out.

rado• 2 years ago

Me too. The worst I’ve seen from him is average/meh, never shit. I liked the much maligned “Ghosts of Mars”, a kick ass action movie with a twist on his usual anti-conformist work; now a couple of polar opposite archetypes must act together.

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

I hated ghost of mars and prince of darkness.

penfolder4• 2 years ago

Same here, The Thing is an absolute masterpiece. What are the rest of your 3?

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

Alien and Star Wars of course.

owlstuffing2• 2 years ago

They do indeed.

Anon4Now• 2 years ago

Redditor /u/SanderSo47 posts a weekly analysis called "Directors at the Box Office". Last week they covered John Carpenter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/1cepji9/director...

I was surprised to find out that most of his movies were box office failures. Didn't matter to me, though. They weren't critically acclaimed, but they were a lot of fun.

mingus88• 2 years ago

Yeah he is a legend in the horror and sci-fi genres but neither of which are too lucrative

We get what we deserve. Nowadays if your movie is not PG-13, a franchise, or both it’s tough to get financing so these original and unique works have pretty much died out

owlstuffing2• 2 years ago

Obey Consume Go to sleep Conform

kls0e• 2 years ago

Roddy Piper has the best Jeans.

beagle3• 2 years ago

The short story it is based on can be found here:

https://pvto.weebly.com/uploads/9/1/5/0/91508780/eight_o’clo...

euroderf• 2 years ago

When I think about how well terraforming is proceeding, I think of this film. Our planet is just another input.

ElCapitanMarkla• 2 years ago

Best fight scene ever

mcculley• 2 years ago

This movie is great overall, in my opinion, but I always chuckle when I think about it because I had no idea about Roddy Piper’s wrestling fame and there is a scene where he fights Keith David that is just silly and I had no idea why it was in there until later.

zagrebian• 2 years ago

Watched it last year. The premise is great, but I thought that the acting was very poor.

Sincere6066• 2 years ago

What about it?

didgetmaster2• 2 years ago

Saw the move years ago. The acting was not great, but the very end was hard to swallow.

The 'hero' gets to the roof where he has a clear shot to destroy the transmitter (apparently sophisticated aliens with teleporting technology can't be bothered with simple redundancy so they have a single point of failure), but stops to ask his girlfriend if she is 'clear' even though she is standing way behind him. This gives her a chance to shoot him and almost stops him from destroying it before he dies.

Anyone watching has to roll their eyes at whoever wrote that scene.

efitz2• 2 years ago

I have to roll my eyes at anyone who not only spoils the movie’s climax but gives the blow by blow in detail.

didgetmaster2• 2 years ago

I have to roll my eyes at someone who thinks critieking a 30 year old movie is somehow 'spoiling' it.

spacemadness• 2 years ago

Why are so many posts being upvoted that are nothing but links to Wikipedia articles?

They Live

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