Shadow In the Cloud (2021)

[sirhenry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjLnk8YriCQ

A vehicle for Chloe Grace Moretz to address historic sexism; to an extent this is Alien in WW2, with her as Ripley and a gremlin as the alien and it's great fun. Written and directed by Roseanne Liang, it's not the most thought=provoking of films, but races along at a good pace once the action starts. The opening section where the crew all make sexist 'jokes' and don't believe a woman can understand/maintain/fly a plane does go on a bit too long, but after that it zips along merrily.

The whole film takes place in a claustrophobic freight plane flying from New Zealand to Samoa, bookended by short scenes on land. I'm not sure how good the action scenes were because I had real problems watching them - I have a real fear of heights and as falling out of an ever-increasingly punctured plane is the main threat throughout, there were scenes I just couldn't watch. I think this is the first time ever I've jumped through sections of a film to get to a point I could watch again. Which implies that they were effective.

A welcome distraction from the current boredom.

[BlodwynPig]

Getting panned in the comments - it did look a little hokey and those accents are atrocious - but looks fun!

[Gulftastic]

Big fan of Chloe, so I hope it's any good at all.

[sirhenry]

Getting panned in the comments - it did look a little hokey and those accents are atrocious - but looks fun!

That was the one bit I balked at - one of the crew notices her accent has dropped into American which then seems to trigger the drop. Her previous line may have been in American, but wasn't obvious (to me) at all.

I'd not seen her in anything before, so spent the whole film thinking she was Elle Fanning. Didn't make much difference.

[Blumf]

Nicking the 'B-17' segment from Heavy Metal (1981)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(film)#%22B-17%22

Still, looks like dumb fun, won't knock a film for that.

[thugler]

Genuinely think that looks like a hoot from the trailer. I'll watch that

[greenman]

Probably the last thing Max Landis will ever been involved in I guess/hope.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

to an extent this is Alien in WW2, with her as Ripley and a gremlin as the alien

I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that this was the original concept that eventually became Alien, only it was set aboard a bomber plane.

[greenman]

I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that this was the original concept that eventually became Alien, only it was set aboard a bomber plane.

Alien was always sci fi wasn't it? although I think the designs of the nostromo clearly have some WW2 bomber influence.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Alien was apparently an amalgamation of two scripts that Dan O'Bannon was working on:

The project, at this point titled Memory, would eventually form the first half of Alien: the crew of a spacecraft wake from stasis to find their journey home is not yet complete, and soon learn that they have been roused in response to a mysterious signal being received from an uninhabited planet. They set down to investigate and their ship malfunctions, stranding them there. However, O'Bannon did not yet have any ideas for the alien menace that would subsequently terrorize them.

Work on Memory stalled while O'Bannon accepted an offer to work on a film adaptation of Dune. While the project ultimately fell through, it introduced O'Bannon to several artists who would influence Alien, not least of all H. R. Giger. Inspired by Giger's disturbing yet beautiful artwork, O'Bannon resumed work on Memory. At Shusett's suggestion, he combined the script with another he had written about gremlins infiltrating a B-17 bomber over Tokyo during World War II titled They Bite; the location was simply switched to a spaceship, and O'Bannon had the second half of his story, now titled Star Beast.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Getting panned in the comments - it did look a little hokey and those accents are atrocious - but looks fun!

Not saying it looks great (although I'm a fan of Moretz) but any YouTube video featuring a strong female character, I tend to take the comments with a pinch of salt (even more than usual). Generally a lot of incel circle-jerking.

[Blumf]

I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that this was the original concept that eventually became Alien, only it was set aboard a bomber plane.

Yeah, the 'B-17' story in Heavy Metal was written by some of the same people who did Alien,

[Dex Sawash]

Looked as if it was made in 3 days for $3 million. 80% Moretz sitting in turret. Bonus point for not doing the 3rd act, strip down to your vest, tits out for the lads cliche. She did

Spoiler alert

rip one sleeve off her jumpsuit

[close]

though.

[Hand Solo]

I put this on the other week for my mate who's a WW2 buff and he was laughing his head off about how inaccurate everything was, it's laughable without any real historical knowledge though. I mean, when she first gets on the plane and the bant ladz start with being immediately aggressive, swearing and being lewd - nobody back in that era would react to a female stranger like that especially trained military personnel - it's completely ridiculous. Not to mention she later taps into the intercom and hears further lewd exclamations, wouldn't it have served the script to have made them be absolutely polite when she got on the plane THEN secretly hear they don't want her there and their real misognyist attitudes over their private communication? That's just plotting 101.

The other ridiculous stuff with hanging upside down off a wing with a broken finger swinging a baby basket around, and that Japanese fighter explosion scene are obviously pure bombast and so sort of can survive examination because ACTION FILM tho. When I first put it on I got `pure Spielberg homage' as it's basically that episode of Amazing Stories where the cartoonist gets caught in the sniper's turret mixed with the Lithgow version of Nightmare At 20,000 Feet from The Twilight Zone Movie with the gremlin on the wing. At least my mate had a good laugh over it, then he recommended me Overlord...