'Falling Skies' on TNT HD - Page 50

An interview with Remi Aubuchon is available on EW.com, discussing the season finale, including some background information not explicitly mentioned in the show. See http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/08/19/falling-skies-season-2-finale-burning-questions/

Easily explaned by the fact that the new aliens are hostile (and meaner) then the current aliens. They CLEARLY said the weapon was not for US, right when they asked why it was pointed to the sky. Not sure there is much debate on what it was for. They made a point of saying it was not for us.

I could swear there was a line of dialog about it destroying the eastern seaboard or some such .. oh well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong .. old age does that sometimes ..

You are correct. I heard the same comment about the Eastern Seaboard. Maybe I am having a "senior moment" also.

There's also the red herring theory... that the "new" aliens will turn out to actually be the ones in charge... you know, the ones responsible for the original mass-planet assault... then they left the Overlords and Skitters to maintain things while they went off conquering elsewhere... and then the humans put up more of a fight, so the big bosses had to come back in force.

My recollection is that the Eastern Seaboard comment was a description of the military district run by the Overlord who they were hoping to eliminate.

Also, my impression was that the "space gun" looked a lot like the structure that was being built in Boston in the 1st season, the one that Tom did such a good job of damaging in that season's final episode. Or is that just my form of "senior moment"?

Very possible. Why, tho the skyward weapon? I remember the eastern seaboard comment, too. I know we'll have to wait for S3 but it's fun to speculate.

The Eastern seaboard comment was pertain to the Overlord who controlled that section, if he would have been dealt with while in the 2nd mass had it as it's prisoner they could have thrown a mighty blow to the occupying aliens, and save precious lives, etc... That's what I got from that conversation mentioning the Eastern Sea Boarder.

DJoel

You beat me to it, but that's what I got from the comment when Ben was translating the info to his father and the rest of numb nutz

Djoel

No, what I thought I heard dealt with the sky cannon ..I did not delete the show yet, so I may scan it tonight if I have the time ..

Thanks!!! That was interesting.

I liked the finale. I agree that the giant sky gun was intended for the 'new' aliens. He had kind eyes, so they want us to like them or think they're our allies. But I'm guessing if that's true, it won't be for long.

They're aliens. What they look like to us is unlikely to have any bearing on their actual attitudes, if they're even understandable. I also assumed the one landing closest to Tom was just a random invading trooper, not necessarily someone who intended to contact him. Of course, what the writers intend might be something else.

Well....you could be right but here's my case for why they could be friendly:

If I remember correctly, the alien we saw appeared to be an actor in makeup and his (or her - which would be a bit of a twist) actual eyes were seen. That's something we haven't seen so far.

Eyes are very important for conencting with a character, which is why Westmore always tried to use the actor's eyes in the makeup whenever possible. While that doesn't necessarily indicate this alien species will be friendly, it means that (if I'm not mistaken about what I saw) that a) they have an actor playing the role, which means there probably will be some one on one interaction and b) you can make the character more sympathetic by showing those eyes.

You thought that was a real person, I was thinking it looked more CGI than anything else... But I'll watch it again to se what's the deal..

Djoel

An actor in a "rubber suit" is a lot cheaper than CGI or puppets with multiple puppeteers, so we certainly could expect to see them more frequently than skitters, interacting more often with the 2nd Mass. I expect that their initial contacts would be friendly to the natives (2nd Mass, etc) but that they will have their own agenda. For example, it could be that the Earth is just one more battlefield in a long, ongoing conflict between two interstellar civilizations.

Or they both want our resources.

The eastern seaboard was talking about the overlord's control and if he was killed the entire eastern part of the US would be thrown into total chaos.

The skyward weapon is to attack the aliens that landed, Tom's son stated the weapon was not for us.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'm guessing that the last aliens are the good guys and are at war with the fish heads.

There's one way to find out . One of the 2nd Mass should go up and extend their hand as a good will gesture.

If he pulls back a stub that's bad news.

I've seen an alien with eyes like this before. Babyon 5 I think.
Edited by SuicideJockey - 8/22/12 at 12:07pm

The wider shot may have been CGI, but the closeup appeared to be makeup. It's the same thing they did when the people were standing in front of the skitters to protect them. From a cost perspective, if your character is going to be a biped, it cheaper to use a person in a suit. That's why so many aliens in SciFi shows are humanoids. You only need a facial/head appliance and hand coverings to sell the effect. The costume does the rest.

If the wider shot was also a person, it looked very female-like, which is why I said "him or her" in my other post. I wouldn't be surprised if the wider shots were CGI since there weren't any people in them. In that case, it would have been just as easy to create the alien along with the rest of the digital scene.

Would have like a two hour epi, as everthing seem so packed into this one.
Looks like I'll be rewatching this episode for a thrird time too. Thanks the heavens for dvrs...

DJoel

Honestly, I'd rather it seem rushed with an hour than have them try to fill two with fluff. While they likely could have used more than the hour to let things breathe a bit, there's no way they needed two full hours to tell that story.

Yeah, because the VFX facility just hits the 'create alien' button in Nuke, and boom, there it is. It's not like there are any artist man hours involved in designing, modeling, texturing, lighting, and compositing aliens. It's all automatic now.

Wow! Has such advanced technology eliminated jobs or just shifted them to other creative positions.

Exactly, you can do all that with the "Alien Skin" plug-ins for Photoshop.

LOL!

It would be nice if the 2nd Mass spends the off-season making anti-Mech bullets and mounting a gun for them on their Humvee. Not sure why that ammo dropped out of the storyline.

Djoel

You know darned well what I meant. Don't be so touchy. I wasn't implying your job overall was easy.

It's just that certain things don't add a huge workload to do while you're already doing so much work on related processes. In other words, when it's a wash, just let one crew work on it. You're 90% there, the extra 10% is not a huge deal in comparison to the rest you already did.

They likely had to create the entire rest of the scene digitally for the wide shot so it wouldn't be a huge step further to create the alien along with all the rest of it. Otherwise, they'd have to model an entire scene, shoot a plate with the actor in costume, them composite it all together to blend the actor into a scene they probably had to model from scratch already. At that point, the wide distant shot of the alien becomes less work to pull off digitally than bringing a crew and an actor to shoot it.

On the other hand, for the closeup, using makeup on a guy in front of a green screen would be easier. A couple hours of makeup and a minimal B-unit crew in the corner of a soundstage and you're done before lunch.

You do what makes your job as least troublesome as possible.
Edited by NetworkTV - 8/22/12 at 9:30pm

Actually, the Chinese are doing it now at $10 bucks a pop ..