Prometheus *SPOILERS FROM POST 1538*

BlitzKrieg

CiscoStudent wrote: »

They were novels. I think they were adaptions of the comics but much more detailed. There were quit a few by various authors. Steve Perry wrote a number of them based on Mark Verheiden's graphic novels and I enjoyed them thoroughly when I was a young teenager. As far as I know they are non-canon, but as there are so many diversions from canon in the Aliens and Predator franchise its hard to tell what is canon and is not.

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Yes they are adaptations of the dark horse comic series that started up just after aliens was released.

They are the official comic book series but are blatantly non canon. there was one runnin series which was the initial 3 storylines (book 1-3 now known as outbreak, nightmare asylum, female war)

Originally they followed hicks and Newt after returning to earth (Ripley had disapeared) but after alien 3 completely f*cked the series over by killing them all off they changed their names to Billy and Wilks instead and just had it that it all occured on another colony.

The books differ with female war because the comic came out just before alien 3 and just had ripley return, but the novel came later and they redid the story to have it that ripley was actually a synth like bishop.

The upcoming colonial marines game actually uses a very similar premise to female war actually the first part of the book is pretty much the same setting (boarding the sulaco with a new marine team just after aliens and then going to the planet)

After that they series opted to do stand alone stories instead and there are some strong stories in the franchise (Aliens Rogue, Aliens Genocide and Aliens Labyrinth are particularily good). They did do another long running story with aliens colonial marines and they tied up the initial aliens vs predator story into a trilogy with aliens bersker and aliens vs predator: War.


But for the space jokeys they only show up in two stories. Aliens outbreak where I dont think it's as you say, I dont think they wipe out everything from system to system out of hate, I think it's actually a form of terraforming, I know the comic ends with them trying to turn earth's atmosphere to suit them and wait for the aliens and humans to all die out.

The only other story they show up is Aliens: Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels which is actually quite similar to prometheus with the religious overtones of gods and origins and the revelation is that their society was wiped out by the aliens which are this natural extinction system that wipes out any species that achieves space travel (think the reapers of mass effect) and that only one remained alive trying to outlast the aliens but fails in the end.

Kind of funny thinking about it because prometheus is sort of the reverse of the above

the alien is the creation/extinction system (ooze) becoming polluted by man interferring and creating a new life born out of a weapon of mass destruction.

The comics do seriously vary in quality but there are some quality writing and ideas of how the universe/species worked in them. And you got to respect any series that has earth being overrun by the end of the first book.

Mance Rayder

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Yes they are adaptations of the dark horse comic series that started up just after aliens was released.

They are the official comic book series but are blatantly non canon. there was one runnin series which was the initial 3 storylines (book 1-3 now known as outbreak, nightmare asylum, female war)

Originally they followed hicks and Newt after returning to earth (Ripley had disapeared) but after alien 3 completely f*cked the series over by killing them all off they changed their names to Billy and Wilks instead and just had it that it all occured on another colony.

The books differ with female war because the comic came out just before alien 3 and just had ripley return, but the novel came later and they redid the story to have it that ripley was actually a synth like bishop.

The upcoming colonial marines game actually uses a very similar premise to female war actually the first part of the book is pretty much the same setting (boarding the sulaco with a new marine team just after aliens and then going to the planet)

After that they series opted to do stand alone stories instead and there are some strong stories in the franchise (Aliens Rogue, Aliens Genocide and Aliens Labyrinth are particularily good). They did do another long running story with aliens colonial marines and they tied up the initial aliens vs predator story into a trilogy with aliens bersker and aliens vs predator: War.


But for the space jokeys they only show up in two stories. Aliens outbreak where I dont think it's as you say, I dont think they wipe out everything from system to system out of hate, I think it's actually a form of terraforming, I know the comic ends with them trying to turn earth's atmosphere to suit them and wait for the aliens and humans to all die out.

The only other story they show up is Aliens: Apocalypse: The Destroying Angels which is actually quite similar to prometheus with the religious overtones of gods and origins and the revelation is that their society was wiped out by the aliens which are this natural extinction system that wipes out any species that achieves space travel (think the reapers of mass effect) and that only one remained alive trying to outlast the aliens but fails in the end.

Kind of funny thinking about it because prometheus is sort of the reverse of the above

the alien is the creation/extinction system (ooze) becoming polluted by man interferring and creating a new life born out of a weapon of mass destruction.

The comics do seriously vary in quality but there are some quality writing and ideas of how the universe/species worked in them. And you got to respect any series that has earth being overrun by the end of the first book.

Hi yeah I remember Labarynth it was excellent sci fi horror reading.

I admit I may not be 100% accurate in my retelling of the space jockeys, as it was a long long time ago when I read the books. I seem to recall something about Billy making it back to a ship just as thousands of Xenos are about to over run it, a space jockey shows up and starts wiping them out with some sort of Gatling gun type weapon. There was a telepathic conversation, and If I recall correctly Billy was overwhelmed by the creatures hatred for humans, but this didn't compare to its hatred for xenos. Billy knew that after this race had finished dealing with the xenos it would turn its attention to humans. Your right about the Terra-forming, I forgot to mention that. Either way the space jockeys fascinated me in that they were a seemingly all powerful race that were both central to the story and yet completely peripheral to the events of that unfolded, rarely making an appearance.

Nice to see someone else on here who took an interest in the books. Your right that the quality varied greatly , but the best of the books were excellent sci fi reading.;)

Fysh

Just back from seeing it at a Digital IMAX.

The visuals were nice (the 3D actually felt used in a worthwhile fashion, which was nice) and I liked the score quite a lot (even though it was OTT at times), but the script and dialogue ranged from bad to atrocious and for the most part it felt like nobody involved really knew what the underlying theme of the film was or how to express it with any kind of subtlety.

Also, I would quite like it if someone would either take the Idiot Ball away from Hollywood scriptwriters or kick the bastards in the balls every time they use it. I am tired as hell of seeing films in which

alleged scientists doing retarded things like taking their helmet off after 10 seconds of atmospheric observation, or treating extraplanetary fauna as being inherently friendly and non-aggressive, or performing a variety of examinations on deceased remains of a species shown to be genetically identical to humans without taking any kind of precautions against potential infection, and then being surprised by their consequences. Not as tired as I am of seeing female characters being given "depth" by revealing that they *sob* can't have children *gasp* in a ham-fisted conversation written by an tin-eared idiot.

If you can put up with the level of stupid typically present in large-budget Hollywood science-fiction films, there's plenty to enjoy in Prometheus on an audiovisual level. As a story it's a load of arse.

BlitzKrieg

Hah!

only took a few minutes of searching but I got Outbreak, labyrinth and Hive here (plus my signed copy of action philosophers #2 which has a great story on Ayn Rand's hypocracy)

Yeah the jockey comes to the alien homeworld for revenge against the alien, it's mind is full of hatred but not at the humans, but when they return to earth, the military have set in motion a plan to nuke the whole planet to wipe it clean and then terraform it again and the jockey learning of this plan takes the planet for itself instead and in female war it's terraforming the planet for it's own needs.

nyarlothothep

Just saw it at the cinema. I thought it was a fine film, not an all-time great but a much worthier addition to the series than Alien 3 or 4. I was completely unenthused about the premise but Scott, who seems to be something of a genius managed to make the most of it and ended up with a film which presents a number of interesting questions/possibilities for a sequel. And unusually for a film of this nature, I'm actually interested in what happens next. The characterisation is ok, Theron is the typical annoying corporate exec, Rapace's character, Shaw, was a good protagonist. Some Irish Times reviewer complained about the lack of exploration into how her faith interacts with her scientific rationality. Well for me the fact that they didn't delve into it much is a relief. Why? Because I remember the X-Files and the ho hum po faced holier than thou explorations of Scully's faith versus her scientific training and I always found it annoying and boring. In fact Shaw is a representative for all the people who happen to be religious but not in an in your face I believe and must dispute science at every turn kind of way, such people do exist, hell, such scientists like this exist, I have met them and they're cool. Our characterisations of theism vs atheism needn't fall into fundamentalist categories the bible bashers vs Richard Dawkins. So I'm glad that didn't take over the film.

Also I'm glad the alien didn't feature much. To me the concept is exhausted. Instead I found their creators much more interesting. Particularly the reaction of the one in suspended animation who upon awakening proceeds to kill everyone around him. This to me plays into the whole alien psychology argument, that aliens have no need to be friendly or share any kind of human emotions or sense of ethics

. This is again why I'm very curious if there will be a sequel. Of course Scott or someone of his calibre will have to direct it. This film in the hands of any lesser director would have been a disaster. Also I've read that some people are complaining about the music? Why??? I liked the 1979 alien theme returning for this film, and the rest of it didn't offend me. The 1979 theme, is a great piece of music, it's actually striking rather than conventional, and conventional for me equates to boring. Soundtracks which suit the film but sound like any other soundtrack are dull, I prefer the composer to write something original, not everything has to gel, sometimes contrast works, and it did in the 1979 original for me anyway. If you want an example of a bad/redundant score in a modern film look no further than Star Trek (2009) which boasts a score consisting of what seems like 4 bars of music repeated over and over again except louder. So yeah I was expecting sh1t based on my own perception of the premise and that wildly innacurate Irish Times review which of course had to sing praises of the 1979 original in true elitist fashion, but to me this film surpassed my expectations with a good cast, some interesting characters, a number of intriguing story leads, visual flair and good pace/composition. I don't care about the legacy of the first two film, yeah they're great, no nothing in the franchise is going to come close because generally such levels of awesomeness are really really hard to pass out, but it's a good film in its own right, a great what if? exploration film, so a solid 7/10 for me.

opinion guy

a5y wrote: »

Neither did I.
But a but of googling says that there is a

teaser for something coming on 10/11/12. Not an actual scene, just a still with that date on it from what I gather.

.

Yeah thats right - there's also a 'copyrighy Weyland industries' notice. I couldn't figure out what it was about tbh.

Great review a5y
let me add another point
9.

Having an alien feotus removed from your abdomen - as in having all the layers of muscle in your abdomen cut right through - you know the ones that help you stand up and walk and **** - having them cut, and then stapled back together (a present day tech by the way), leaves you quite able to walk, run, jump, put on a spacesuit, abseil, fight aliens. With only the occasional dart of pain causing you to moan and clutch your tummy. Yeah that's what recovery from major surgery is like :rolleyes:

Mance Rayder

opinion guy wrote: »

Yeah thats right - there's also a 'copyrighy Weyland industries' notice. I couldn't figure out what it was about tbh.

Great review a5y
let me add another point
9.

Having an alien feotus removed from your abdomen - as in having all the layers of muscle in your abdomen cut right through - you know the ones that help you stand up and walk and **** - having them cut, and then stapled back together (a present day tech by the way), leaves you quite able to walk, run, jump, put on a spacesuit, abseil, fight aliens. With only the occasional dart of pain causing you to moan and clutch your tummy. Yeah that's what recovery from major surgery is like :rolleyes:

Maybe in the future they have REALLY good pain killers. Adrenalins pretty awesome too.

senor incognito

If you are a hardcore Alien fan you may spend months of your life coming up with speculations and excuses:"It created wonder"..."It excites thought and debate"..."visually arresting"e.t.c. before you finally admit; actually it's flat, worthless and stoopid, but like many the diehard star-wars fan before you: if you have any true respect for the original, then you will sooner-or-later disown it for the poor, poor cousin it is.

Otherwise, you'll just know it's crap nonsense straight off.

opinion guy

CiscoStudent wrote: »

Maybe in the future they have REALLY good pain killers. Adrenalins pretty awesome too.

Does't matter

You go running and abseiling that soon after an op with only staples holding your gut closed and you'll burst open like an alien is trying to escape.

Mance Rayder

opinion guy wrote: »

Does't matter

You go running and abseiling that soon after an op with only staples holding your gut closed and you'll burst open like an alien is trying to escape.

Yeah it was pretty ridiculous, Me and the missus were rolling our eyes at that part

Taco Corp

I don't understand why they didn't get an old guy to play Weyland. The makeup on Pearce was terrible

a5y

opinion guy wrote: »

Yeah thats right - there's also a 'copyrighy Weyland industries' notice. I couldn't figure out what it was about tbh.

Great review a5y
let me add another point
9.

Having an alien feotus removed from your abdomen - as in having all the layers of muscle in your abdomen cut right through - you know the ones that help you stand up and walk and **** - having them cut, and then stapled back together (a present day tech by the way), leaves you quite able to walk, run, jump, put on a spacesuit, abseil, fight aliens. With only the occasional dart of pain causing you to moan and clutch your tummy. Yeah that's what recovery from major surgery is like :rolleyes:

I think I'll throw in another too.
10

Scenes that were included but did nothing but make things more confusing

Engineer/Space Jockey watching departing space ship (of a different design to the one seen later in the film, for its shadow is jam doughnut shaped, not ring doughnut shaped) ritually opens up and chugs a Primordial Soup flavoured Space Pot Noodle of Suicide by Disintegration on top of the waterfall of unspecified location on unidentified planet at non-specific time for reasons that he/she/it may or may not have been fully aware of, and the result of which may or may not be significant to the plot of the film. It doesn't come up later, and nor does any explanation of the jockey's motivation.

Any scenes involving dates and planet names. There is nowhere near enough information displayed to create anything approaching a meaningful understand of when and where things are happening. Some things look plain off the shelf from today, others look more advanced than anything that appeared in later Alien films.

Shaw's dreams in stasis. Nothing I learn here isn't overly cryptic and its all drilled into my head clumsily later via the kinda of awkward dialogue that'd be rewritten before being approved in even a Steven Segal film.

"I'm putting up a Christmas tree. Because for some reason we're going to be mixing a baby Jesus's miraculous birth as a metaphor into this mess too. Because only by bridging the ancient beliefs of ancient civilisations where we found those star drawings and a religion originating yet another different region will... err... umm.... "

"To the crew I personally hired, its nice to see you again. *big smile* To the rest of you, I'm your boss and will needlessly be a cold-hearted bitch for some reason. Why? I don't know and this will never be explained. For some reason the script just needs to have a fractured crew who don't look out for each other as far as morale goes. By the end of this speech I hope you all realise no one should have any idea who is ultimately meant to be in charge of making decisions on the ship, and neither should I, so no one will know who is supposes to discipline anyone if whoever acts irresponsibly, which is by now inevitable."

The scene where Old Dead* Holographic Man in Heavy Make Up recounts the tale of the titan Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Its incomplete, inaccurate, and a tale from an ancient Greece, a civilisation that has actually nothing to do with the ancient civilisations that are actually connected to the reason for the ships journey. Sure, lets throw that on top of the metaphor shopping basket too, in case the Christmas bit gets lonely.

Dave McJerkdroid presses the holographic recording buttons on his merry way through the ship's structure, without informing the rest of the team what he is doing. And no one asks. Sure that may be just bad manners or a reflection of earlier androids having very bad social skills. But there is no serious complaint and then he opens the Door of +2 Decapitation without warning again. Even though he's being unpredictable and this door came down hard and fast enough to earn its ridiculous nickname they're not bothered by his behaviour.

"I like rocks. You don't need me here to look at rocks." (or something similar, its not all that memorable dialogue) Well, shouldn't that confirm "this *IS* an artificial structure" with appropriate levels of wonder and alarm - like say concerning security measures or traps? Actually they should have stopped being so feckless a long time ago, but this still deserves to be singled out.

The particulars of what's happening to who in the storm scene, starting with "why aren't you keeping a tighter grip of the bag containing the incredibly valuable scientific discovery?" through all the indistinguishable space suits, and the role of a winch on a vehicle that isn't obviously either inside or outside of the loading bay. Who's incompetent and showing bad judge? Who's heroic? Is anything important happening to characterisation in this scene? No idea. Maybe when they have a massive argument once inside it'll all be clear who did what and believes in... oh wait, bicker a little but no one is thrown in the brig or anything. "Endanger the mission" is said, but frankly they've all taken their helmets off like idiots which could have been enough to kill 'em all. Its the pot calling the kettle derp frankly.

*Bonus, after claiming the man is dead, the man isn't dead. Considering it was assumed he was on earth (2 years travel time away) or wherever he normally lives and runs the corporation, why the needless deception?

I could go on, but you get the idea :rolleyes: ...

opinion guy

a5y wrote: »

I think I'll throw in another too.
10

Any scenes involving dates and planet names. There is nowhere near enough information displayed to create anything approaching a meaningful understand of when and where things are happening. Some things look plain off the shelf from today, others look more advanced than anything that appeared in later Alien films.

I could go on, but you get the idea :rolleyes: ...

To be fair - this is one thing I'll give the a pass on. Mainly because I was watching Alien last night and the computer tech was ridiculous - even for 1980's predictions. What the entire ship is run by Spectrum ZX10's ???!? And for some reason its called Mother and to talk to it you have to go into a special bubble room for no apparent reason !?!?!

Anyhow I understand that when Alien was made they didn't have the special effects tech to show anything more advanced than that. Now they do. And in fact now if they made a movie with effects like that we'd all laugh hysterically at it and not take it seriously - like a prolonged episode of Red Dwarf.

So I think the fact that the tech in the movie is way more advanced than the later ships by cannon is fair enough really - its more in keeping with how tech has progressed in the real world which is inescapable. If they had computers with pages of text whizzing by with clickity-clack noises going and C64 chunky keyboards we simply wouldn't accept that

Mance Rayder

opinion guy wrote: »

To be fair - this is one thing I'll give the a pass on. Mainly because I was watching Alien last night and the computer tech was ridiculous - even for 1980's predictions. What the entire ship is run by Spectrum ZX10's ???!? And for some reason its called Mother and to talk to it you have to go into a special bubble room for no apparent reason !?!?!

Anyhow I understand that when Alien was made they didn't have the special effects tech to show anything more advanced than that. Now they do. And in fact now if they made a movie with effects like that we'd all laugh hysterically at it and not take it seriously - like a prolonged episode of Red Dwarf.

So I think the fact that the tech in the movie is way more advanced than the later ships by cannon is fair enough really - its more in keeping with how tech has progressed in the real world which is inescapable. If they had computers with pages of text whizzing by with clickity-clack noises going and C64 chunky keyboards we simply wouldn't accept that

The clickity clack computer room was one of the best things about Alien 1! Its not start trek and is not trying to be scientifically accurate, Its Science Fiction. The sounds and visuals add to the overall feel and atmosphere.

Don't diss the clickety-clack computer!;)

Also the effects in Alien 1 were mind-blowing and I think Prometheus is the first alien move since aliens to come close to the same quality and given that the first two movies are decades old, that is a testament to the special effects of the day.

It took 33 years for CGI to catch up to the visual quality of animatronics and fiberglass props. In some scenes of the first 2 Alien movies the effects still look better than modern CGI animation.

Andrew76

Saw the film in 3D yesterday afternoon, Screen 1 in the Odeon. I thought the film itself wasn't bad at all, what irritated me most wasn't what I was watching but where I was watching it. Big ass screen going from floor to roof but the height difference between each row was tiny so the first metre or two of screen is blocked by the head in the row infront. Absolute joke and baffling how the clowns who designed the place could make such a vacuous building and then fcuk up the most important part of it - the viewing experience. Luckily the rims of my 3D glasses blocked out the annoying extra bright Exit signs to your left, but the screen was so big the rims also blocked some of the picture too. :rolleyes:

No way was it worth the extra fiver over a Cineworld ticket.

@a5y and the first part of your point 10:

I presumed that first scene with the Engineer killing himself and showing his DNA washing away was meant to signify him seeding a planet with what would turn out to be human life? I didn't think much in relation to the difference in ship design, I presume that scene was dated hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the past (had to be at least greater than the 35,000 years ago when humans were drawing cave paintings of them) - maybe their tech evolved or maybe they have more than one ship type. That's just my interpretation of it anyway.

I think it was BlitzKreig that mentioned this previously, it definitely felt like a good chunk of the film was cut out, maybe to cut the time down or to hold back for the inevitable director's cut. Maybe it will end up like Aliens, the director's cut version is the only one worth watching as it fills in a lot of blanks.

Kinski

Saw this last night - a mixed bag, but I enjoyed it overall. Very different to Alien though, which was disappointing.

Confirmed me in my belief that all films from now on should star Michael Fassbender - he's just brilliant.

Tusky

Fysh wrote: »

Also, I would quite like it if someone would either take the Idiot Ball away from Hollywood scriptwriters or kick the bastards in the balls every time they use it. I am tired as hell of seeing films in which

alleged scientists doing retarded things like taking their helmet off after 10 seconds of atmospheric observation, or treating extraplanetary fauna as being inherently friendly and non-aggressive, or performing a variety of examinations on deceased remains of a species shown to be genetically identical to humans without taking any kind of precautions against potential infection, and then being surprised by their consequences. Not as tired as I am of seeing female characters being given "depth" by revealing that they *sob* can't have children *gasp* in a ham-fisted conversation written by an tin-eared idiot.

This REALLY bothered me.

This is a crew on an extremely important mission, sent 500 billion millions miles across the galaxy at great expense, yet they are a bunch of morons. They poke everything in sight, they push buttons and flick switches to see what happens, they take their helmets off... because they can? Your man trying to cosy up to the alien creature, which was clearly acting aggressively, took the biscuit though.

Would they not have been warned to keep away from alien life because it might be dangerous? Would you even NEED to be warned? I mean, if I saw a snake on EARTH acting aggressively I would be backing away at double speed, as would any right minded person.

Also, why did the crew seemingly have absolutely no concern for one another? I know that they are basically mercenaries and are there the money - but the lack of any sort of professionalism or leadership was crazy. For example, when the two guys are left in the Temple for the night, the captain basically says: "There appears to be aliens moving around in there. Have fun, LOL" before fecking off. And then what did the two guys do - sit tight and wait until morning? Nah, they went back into the big scary room and started poking around.

The fact that the dude in charge of mapping immediately got lost in the Temple also seemed rather ironic. And when they returned to the ship with the alien head - why was their first instinct to try to immediately reanimate it with electricity? Surely they would want to take samples/run other tests/take photographs? Just seemed a ridiculous approach. Come half way across the galaxy and then blow up your only specimen immediately.

Nevermind the crew being poorly developed characters - it was a real problem for me that they were idiots. I'm not someone that would normally pick these kind of holes in a film - but it really bothered me with Prometheus.

/rant

Mance Rayder

The worst thing about this movie for me personally was

Logan Marshall-Green's awful character and acting.

opinion guy

Tusky wrote: »

This REALLY bothered me.

This is a crew on an extremely important mission, sent 500 billion millions miles across the galaxy at great expense, yet they are a bunch of morons. They poke everything in sight, they push buttons and flick switches to see what happens, they take their helmets off... because they can? Your man trying to cosy up to the alien creature, which was clearly acting aggressively, took the biscuit though.

Would they not have been warned to keep away from alien life because it might be dangerous? Would you even NEED to be warned? I mean, if I saw a snake on EARTH acting aggressively I would be backing away at double speed, as would any right minded person.

Also, why did the crew seemingly have absolutely no concern for one another? I know that they are basically mercenaries and are there the money - but the lack of any sort of leadership or togetherness was crazy. For example, when the two guys are left in the Temple for the night, the captain basically says: "There appears to be aliens moving around in there. Have fun, LOL" before fecking off. And then what did the two guys do - sit tight and wait until morning? Nah, they went back into the big scary room and started poking around. Nevermind the crew being poorly developed characters - it was a real problem for me that they were idiots. I'm not someone that would normally pick these kind of holes in a film - but it really bothered me with Prometheus.

/rant

Agreed. In truth this is my only real gripe with it. The rest of the stuff I can forgive but this bugged me. Alot of stuff people are asking questions about is stuff I think the film makers chose not to tell us and rightly so because it isn't required for consistency, the science mistakes I can forgive in also, but what you just said is stuff that damages the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the movie.

Mance Rayder

The Geologist looked like the type that could barely make it through primary school let alone get a degree in Geology.

don ramo

saw it last night, i thought it was a good show and a nice set-up for what could be a very interesting sequel,

i loved all the cast and theron must have been some bitch to be around while filming this and snow white:D, david was brilliant, just doing **** that he wanted to, i know he was under orders for some of it but he was just activating everything he could get his hands on, and when he was alone at the start it was funny how he was passing the time, Raplace i was impressed with, she really helped move the show forward and was the voice of common sense throughout the whole film, that scene when she was

trying to get the alien out

was intense, i was nearly standing on my seat squirming around the place, very well done scene,

all in all it wasnt and hugely epic film (more adventurous than all out action) but i will definitely be re-watching it when its on DVD

one thing i do wonder and i dunno if anyone knows, at the start

(im assuming it was earth) the fella that fell down the waterfall would that stuff he drank have caused some kind of reaction in the water that when he disintegrated that helped create us, starting a kind of genesis on earth,

Kinski

CiscoStudent wrote: »

The Geologist looked like the type that could barely make it through primary school let alone get a degree in Geology.

Between that guy and Randy from South Park, geologists should be complaining about how they're represented on screen.

Tusky

opinion guy wrote: »

Agreed. In truth this is my only real gripe with it. The rest of the stuff I can forgive but this bugged me. Alot of stuff people are asking questions about is stuff I think the film makers chose not to tell us and rightly so because it isn't required for consistency, the science mistakes I can forgive in also, but what you just said is stuff that damages the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the movie.

Exactly. Normally people who endlessly pick holes in films - especially science fiction - really annoy me. I couldn't care less if it's not scientifically accurate and there's always going to be plot-holes in Sci-Fi with big ideas. That's fine - but as you said, in this case, the problems with the crew damaged the sense of realism, and in turn, the suspense and tension. I was actively sitting there thinking about how stupid they were, rather than focusing on the film and being engrossed. I still really enjoyed the film but with a few small tweaks it could have been much improved. I'm amazed these issues weren't raised during script-rewrites.

johnny_ultimate

a5y wrote: »

I think I'll throw in another too.
10

Scenes that were included but did nothing but make things more confusing

Engineer/Space Jockey watching departing space ship (of a different design to the one seen later in the film, for its shadow is jam doughnut shaped, not ring doughnut shaped) ritually opens up and chugs a Primordial Soup flavoured Space Pot Noodle of Suicide by Disintegration on top of the waterfall of unspecified location on unidentified planet at non-specific time for reasons that he/she/it may or may not have been fully aware of, and the result of which may or may not be significant to the plot of the film. It doesn't come up later, and nor does any explanation of the jockey's motivation.

Didn't think that was confusing at all, truth be told.

Was very clearly meant to be pre-pre-historic Earth, and him drinking the soup so to speak was the process necessary to kick start the evolutionary process. We don't in anyway need to know the reasoning behind the 'process', so to speak. Again, you can never ignore the fact that the filmmaker may have chosen this particular 'disintegrating jockey' routine because it looks good (and you can't deny that's a damn fine looking waterfall). To me the reasoning behind the execution is less interesting than the motivations of the film itself.

I think it's great the film didn't delve into the motivations behind the space jockeys / Engineers. Firstly, how were they ever going to explain that in a non-clunky manner? David would have been the only character capable of interpreting any of the sort, and the film to its credit didn't solely make him a tool of lazy exposition (notable because this is a film chock full of unbeliveably clunky exposition). However, to me the key for that particular narrative ambiguity is hidden within the overall intentions of the narrative itself. It's simply another representation of how creatures search for meaning and discovery through scientific or natural creation. Just like Weyland created David, the Engineers creating life on Earth is an extension of an intelligent being's constant quest for the meaning of the universe: a quest, one could argue, that will only ever raise more questions. And, again, the scenes before the epilogue illustrate the film-makers making a fairly definitive stance on this, as Shaw embarks on her journey into the infinite.

Now I'm not denying that the film has some significant gaps in logic, but to me the prologue was actually one of the more sequences that perfectly emphasised and shaped the film's loftier goals. Again, if anything I'd suggest it was too obvious IMO.

As for the helmets?

One could easily argue that it is again an extension of character's either putting their fates in the hands of faith or science. Holloway taking off his helmet due to a scientific readout is a fairly conclusive and understandable example of his scientific zealotry and unshakeable belief in the Engineers.

The rest of the motley crew? Well they were just ****ing idiots :P

(apologies if I'm coming across as a straight up defender of this film. It frustrated me as much as it provoked, and I just can't understand some of the film's failings at fundamental technical and creative levels. But I also feel it was interesting enough to be worth defending in a few crucial regards, and for once Hollywood has made a film that is actually worthy of debate and divisive opinions)

Chris_Heilong

alright film but by no means a classic, many characters had no motivaton for their actions and the whole thing felt 2 dimensional but then again I did see it in 2D. A good Sci-Fi film but not something worth returning to, if it had of been a half hour longer and it was a bit smarter with story it would have been a real winner.

The guy at the start created Humanity, in the same way the god Prometheus created humans, he went against the other gods(or engineers in this film), So the other gods want to erase what they see as a mistake, something a bit stupid is the star maps in the cave pointing to where the Aliens make their weapons and how the captain came up with the theory to explain to the audience that it is a bio weapon facility, and the crappy hero attitude of the lets kill ourselves together, and..I could go on and on

also

David is programmed "to do things his human counterparts would feel unethical" which is from the promo 'Happy birthday David' so yes he can cause harm if it is ordered of him much like the Ash android and less like the Bishop one. Before he infects the doctor he asks him how far would you be willing to go for your answers, when he gets his answer this confirms to him he is doing the right thing and so he infects the guy to get his answers, what does the goo do to humans.

I liked the film, didnt like the last scene, felt the alien design was poor and so computer generated looking, wish the Space Jockey got up, struggled back to his now crashed ship, fell into his pilot seat and presses a button on his seat that causes everything on the planet to be sterilised ,just as his chest begins to burst, screen goes black and you here a familiar chestburster scream. This would have led smoothly into alien and would explain why they found things the way they did. But then it could be a different planet as in the film it has a different name

stealinhorses

Went to see it yesterday and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. The movie had the potential to be epic beyond belief, but ended up having a pretty solid first half and a ridiculous last act that would have made the creators of Transformers proud.

Now, I'm not big on the Alien franchise, or Predator for that matter, but I enjoy a well thought-out, methodical and dramatic sci-fi flick: look no further than Sunshine or Moon. This one, however, felt more like they were trying to make Avatar but ran out of ideas half way through the movie and started throwing in the stupidest things that completely ruined the atmosphere created in the first hour of the film.

Things that I thought were unnecessarily stupid for a Ridley Scott film (this is the guy who brought us gems like American Gangster and Gladiator):

*Charlize Theron's character had as much use in the film as...well, nothing. Apart from not letting Holloway back on the ship when he was dying already, she didn't contribute anything to the storyline and had no presence of "Cold-hearted Company Bitch Character" that she was surely supposed to be. Her death was not worthy of any character, no matter how terrible, it was one of the most frustrating scenes I've seen in a movie in a long long time. It felt to me like eternity when the doughnut ship was rolling along the ground and the two of them chose to run exactly ahead of its path rather than to the side, seeing how the ship had enough momentum to keep rolling straight ahead. When Shaw jumped one metre to the side in the end to escape death I felt really angry and wondered why Theron's character couldn't have met her demise at the hands of an awakened Engineer. If she had been the cold-blooded bitch throughout the film and the audience was brought to the point of hating her character, that death would have been met with applause and not been meaningless as it was in reality.
* The whole back story to Rapace's character felt under-developed and unnecessary, considering how the big thing to do with her was her religious belief and somehow her scientific curiosity was leading her closer and closer to discovering God, no matter how many planets she had to visit to trace back the origins of the human species. In her mind, does that mean God pays special attention only to the inhabitants of Earth, or are the Engineers also going to church and have their own version of Jesus and all the planets in the universe worship the one deity that created life somewhere, and then those creations continued to create life on their own...? :rolleyes:.
Shaw also barely featured in the first half of the movie and so I didn't quite feel the connection with her as the lead character. Only after the awesome med-pod scene, did I start rooting for her.
* This idea I've already touched upon, that some scenes seemed to have been thrown in on the spot to fill up some time. Namely, the return of that guy who was supposed to have been killed by the water-snake-acid-blooded creature in the cave, but somehow turned into a spider-monster and made his way to the ship to supposedly kill everyone....ugh, why bother.
Another stupid thing was the very scientific method driven analysis of the cut-off head with the use of 30A of electric current to "trick the brain into thinking it's alive" just as you can do with human beings, seeing as we have identical DNA...
I'm not even mentioning taking off the helmets because the air on this foreign planet is so fresh and pure that we should drop all safety concerns, including the possible presence of gases undetectable by the equipment that we have, and enjoy a little stroll around a cave oozing "organic" black goo without concern for our vision/respiratory system, etc. This includes the scene where they find the dead bodies of the two scientists, seeing that their helmets have been breached, and they still don't protect themselves...sooooo annoying.
The guy trying to make friends with the water-snake creature... I couldn't even watch that, why wouldn't you just leave it alone and run away?
* The make up on Guy Pearce - why not just have an old guy play that character :rolleyes:? Then you could have had Pearce playing Holloway, which would have worked much better, as I thought Holloway was the worst character in the whole film and I was happy when he died so quickly.
* The rush in the third act. The worst scene of the whole film for me, was when David contacted Shaw near the end when she just got the ax and said "he's coming for you" and the Engineer appeared out of nowhere, sticking his arm in the door. It felt to me like a Friday the 13th moment and it was cringeworthy. I would have much preferred some elements of actual horror, suspense, Shaw sitting quietly in the pod, clutching the ax in her hands and awaiting the arrival of the alien while breathing heavily...something along those lines, c'mon Ridley.
* Why did the Engineer become so angry when he woke up? Killed everyone, even though they made the human race. I know that's the point of the film and that's what Shaw wanted to find out, but it just didn't make sense to me why the ship was heading for Earth to destroy the humans, just an unexplained force of evil governed over our creators to fit in with the need to crash Prometheus and have that stupid scene with the rolling doughnut that looked so bad-ass in the trailer.

On the other hand, there were some positives that outweighed the negatives and made this a good movie rather than a bad one:

* The performances from Rapace (especially in the second half of the film), Fassbender (trolling everyone as much as he could :P) and Elba (just a cool guy).
* The visuals were stunning. Probably the best implementation of 3D I've seen and it surprisingly worked well even in dark scenery. I didn't care much for the soundtrack, I don't know why people are complaining about it, it was nothing noteworthy but it didn't spoil anything. The sound seemed extremely loud in the cinema I saw it in, which added to the experience.
* The surgery scene. This is the type of intense cinema that was missing from big productions over the last few years. If the film had been kept in that sort of aura for its whole duration, it would have been a beauty, but probably would have lost some money on at least a 16 rating.
* The general feel of a space adventure movie is what brought me to the cinema in the first place and it did have that Avatar feel to it, and for all of Avatar's obvious flaws, Cameron managed to stick to his central idea throughout the whole film. In Prometheus, the concepts of adventure, horror, action and drama and being interwoven in 30-minute intervals which makes it seem like you're watching two different movies. If Scott had been a bit more consistent and stuck to maybe making it into a nail-biter or a full on adventure film even with a 12 rating, then I feel Prometheus could have benefited.

So as much as I have complaints (a lot :P) about the direction in which the film went in the second half, I enjoyed myself to the point where I think the movie is good. I found myself rolling my eyes and looking at my girlfriend with that "are you ****ing kidding me?" look way too many times to call this a great film, but it's a nice 7/10 summer flick.

P.S. Sorry for the length, I don't really have anything to do and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the film :P.

P.S.2 Did anyone have to sit through that really awkward and long "trailer" for Spider-Man or whatever it was supposed to be? It seemed like they put together a few full scenes from the film and added another trailer at the end without actually distinguishing between all of them, it took like 10 minutes to get through it and no other trailers were shown. I'll still go and see it but literally the whole film was shown before Prometheus yesterday, such bad marketing :rolleyes:

Augmerson

If Weyland could create David, if his company could build a spaceship and all the other amazing scientific and technical equipment, why couldn't they build him a new body? Transfer his conscious or at least his brain into a David-type machine? I just felt that was a bit hokey. I mean they could do all sorts of things like see your dreams, have a computer-operated surgical table etc

BlitzKrieg

Augmerson wrote: »

If Weyland could create David, if his company could build a spaceship and all the other amazing scientific and technical equipment, why couldn't they build him a new body? Transfer his conscious or at least his brain into a David-type machine? I just felt that was a bit hokey. I mean they could do all sorts of things like see your dreams, have a computer-operated surgical table etc

They used that premise in the last avp game.

nyarlothothep

Tusky wrote: »

This REALLY bothered me.

This is a crew on an extremely important mission, sent 500 billion millions miles across the galaxy at great expense, yet they are a bunch of morons. They poke everything in sight, they push buttons and flick switches to see what happens, they take their helmets off... because they can? Your man trying to cosy up to the alien creature, which was clearly acting aggressively, took the biscuit though.

Would they not have been warned to keep away from alien life because it might be dangerous? Would you even NEED to be warned? I mean, if I saw a snake on EARTH acting aggressively I would be backing away at double speed, as would any right minded person.

Also, why did the crew seemingly have absolutely no concern for one another? I know that they are basically mercenaries and are there the money - but the lack of any sort of professionalism or leadership was crazy. For example, when the two guys are left in the Temple for the night, the captain basically says: "There appears to be aliens moving around in there. Have fun, LOL" before fecking off. And then what did the two guys do - sit tight and wait until morning? Nah, they went back into the big scary room and started poking around.

The fact that the dude in charge of mapping immediately got lost in the Temple also seemed rather ironic. And when they returned to the ship with the alien head - why was their first instinct to try to immediately reanimate it with electricity? Surely they would want to take samples/run other tests/take photographs? Just seemed a ridiculous approach. Come half way across the galaxy and then blow up your only specimen immediately.

Nevermind the crew being poorly developed characters - it was a real problem for me that they were idiots. I'm not someone that would normally pick these kind of holes in a film - but it really bothered me with Prometheus.

/rant

Spoilers
Yeah but in Aliens the crew were total idiots aswell, in fact they were the exemplars of true stupidity, most of their dialogue was designed around making them sound and appear like the dumb marines that they were, and in Alien 3 the prisoners were dumbasses, can't remember Alien 4 as I've blocked it out of my mind. Even in Alien the crew made ridiculous decisions like letting the guy with the facehugger have dinner with them, without you know, even putting him in quarantine for a while, or just even letting him on board the ship in the first place. Prometheus is carrying on that tradition of dumbass crews, actually some of the bad decisions were kinda funny, like the biologist dude suddenly forgetting that he's a coward and then idiotically getting up close to the carniverous dodgy looking alien lifeform from Enemy Mine. I wasn't too surprised or let down by such displays of irrationality, it is just a film and many of the scenes which didn't make sense were visually entertaining like the exploding head, those scenes were simply excuses to put in some cool effects and gross out moments, like when the two guys get killed by the alien lifeform, but I didn't really care that they were nonsensical as they served their purpose. I think logic is overrated.

Bullseye1

People are complaining about the dialogue in this movie. How do they rate the dialogue in Aliens?

I agree that the Geologist and Biologist did not show much intelligence. And Shaws partner acted strangely once he got to their destination.

rednik

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Spoilers
Yeah but in Aliens the crew were total idiots aswell, in fact they were the exemplars of true stupidity, most of their dialogue was designed around making them sound and appear like the dumb marines that they were, and in Alien 3 the prisoners were dumbasses, can't remember Alien 4 as I've blocked it out of my mind. Even in Alien the crew made ridiculous decisions like letting the guy with the facehugger have dinner with them, without you know, even putting him in quarantine for a while, or just even letting him on board the ship in the first place. Prometheus is carrying on that tradition of dumbass crews, actually some of the bad decisions were kinda funny, like the biologist dude suddenly forgetting that he's a coward and then idiotically getting up close to the carniverous dodgy looking alien lifeform from Enemy Mine. I wasn't too surprised or let down by such displays of irrationality, it is just a film and many of the scenes which didn't make sense were visually entertaining like the exploding head, those scenes were simply excuses to put in some cool effects and gross out moments, like when the two guys get killed by the alien lifeform, but I didn't really care that they were nonsensical as they served their purpose. I think logic is overrated.

Don't forget in Alien, Ripley did not want to let them back onto the ship even at Dallas's insistance, in the end Ash let them on board. Other crew members wanted to freeze Kane. The Nostromo crew were not that dumb.

Bullseye1

They were no rocket scientists either.

rednik

They were the crew of a freight ship.

K.Flyer

Note to Mods...
Would it not be easier to stick a Spoiler Alert on the thread instead of blanking out so much of the commentary.
For those who dont want to know yet, they dont have to read it, for the rest of us I feel you are spoiling the discussion, opinion and debate of the movie and ruining the thread.

Fysh

Bullseye1 wrote: »

They were no rocket scientists either.

No, but they were competent and knew about how to evaluate the risks of a given decision. More importantly, it was clear that they understood that their circumstances meant they all had to depend on one another to some extent.

Whereas in Prometheus:

• in the interests of "tension", we get a character who is clearly angry (for no reason we're ever told), who's allegedly an expert in his fields of "rocks" and "mapping facilities", who demonstrates no interest in either examining the rocks on site and who manages to get himself lost despite having a network-based realtime-tracking map & navigation system!
• similarly, to justify a "tense" sequence we get an alleged scientist who, at the very end of the return trip to the ship ahead of the storm, somehow manages to drop the holdall (and that's another FFS moment, a feckin' holdall!? So much for sterile sample collection :rolleyes:) containing the one sample she's collected and who then dives back out into the storm she's just been told will kill her in minutes, so that someone else can do the same and end up depending on an improbable winch and an android to save them.
• in the interests of plot progression, we get a retarded scientist who, upon arriving at a NEW planet that's NEVER BEEN EXPLOREd but appears to be broadly earthlike, insists on going STRAIGHT INTO the facility they identify. No site survey, no weather/atmosphere/location monitoring, none of those things *actual* scientists would do to ensure they don't render their work invalid. Nope, just in we go and sure feck the consequences.
• As for the alleged biologist who can't identify basic aggressive behaviour in a reptilian species, he deserved an even nastier death than he got, the incompetent bellend.
• Also, if you've just retrieved the surprisingly well-preserved head of an alien that you claim has the EXACT SAME DNA as a human, the first thing you'd do when examining it would be to put it into a sterile environment - as much to protect yourself from the disgusting bacteria that it might be carrying as to protect it from the dozens of disgusting bacteria that humans from earth will carry. Except that in Prometheus what you do is what tens of amps of electricity through the head, magically reanimating it instead of just causing it to combust. :rolleyes:
• Also, the systems engineer who designed the Prometheus communications & logging system deserves a wallop to the nutsack with a lumphammer. So you've got two guys stuck down on a site that you've barely explored, on a planet whose surface you've been on for less than 24 hours, and your captain's decided to go off and leave the comms system unmonitored. In that time, your two stranded dudes call back with important information, including a recording of their own grisly demise. According to Prometheus, there's no reason to record said calls or even to note their existence. (This wound me up in particular because it was a wasted opportunity to further hint at David's agenda - a 2-second shot showing him tinkering with the comms system would be enough to explain why there's no record of said contact).

And those are just examples off the top of my head, that don't relate to specific interstellar travel but just standard protocol when it comes to the sorts of situations they'd deal with on a daily basis. The crew in Alien & Aliens weren't that stupid (ok, maybe some of the Marines in Aliens were a bit meatheaded but they were still largely competent marines). It's a bad sign for a story when you need to have your characters behave in an unexplained, uncharacteristically stupid way in order to progress the plot.

Raekwon

Saw it yesterday and was very disappointed and totally underwhelmed with what I saw.

It was obviously massively over hyped and I totally bought into that hype but essentially I felt that it buckled under its own huge expectations plus the dozen or so trailers & TV spots totally ruined the overall experience for me, but that was partially my own fault. It's absolutely beautifully shot picture and it felt quite epic right from the start but its totally let down by a clunky script and some of the dumbest characters ever committed to celluloid.

In that regard it was actually embarrassing in some places.

I mean two of the crew get left overnight in an alien tomb with a ping of life showing up on the map yet nobody seems to care. Captain Janek seems more interested in getting into Meredith Vickers' knickers then the fate of his stranded crew members and even tells them not to bugger each other while he's off getting his leg-over. It was totally ridiculous! Plus when the snake like alien does appear in the tomb Millburn treat's it like a cute little puppy dog and was practically kissing it instead of being alert to the danger and backing away to safety.

Overall I was very disappointed with it, IMO it's only saving grace was it's stunning visuals & the always brilliant Michael Fassbender. I'd will be interested to see if a Directors Cut could maybe flesh it out alittle bit more but I wouldn't be holding my breath.

PerrinV2

I think ppl are getting a little too hung up on the crew not taking the proper precautions are not being prepared or whatever
What I mean is if for everything they did if right was right they'd have to do a load of tests and then we'd have ppl back here complaining "god that was so boring all they did was tests and watched each other on camera"

Tusky

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Spoilers
Yeah but in Aliens the crew were total idiots aswell, in fact they were the exemplars of true stupidity, most of their dialogue was designed around making them sound and appear like the dumb marines that they were, and in Alien 3 the prisoners were dumbasses, can't remember Alien 4 as I've blocked it out of my mind. Even in Alien the crew made ridiculous decisions like letting the guy with the facehugger have dinner with them, without you know, even putting him in quarantine for a while, or just even letting him on board the ship in the first place. Prometheus is carrying on that tradition of dumbass crews, actually some of the bad decisions were kinda funny, like the biologist dude suddenly forgetting that he's a coward and then idiotically getting up close to the carniverous dodgy looking alien lifeform from Enemy Mine. I wasn't too surprised or let down by such displays of irrationality, it is just a film and many of the scenes which didn't make sense were visually entertaining like the exploding head, those scenes were simply excuses to put in some cool effects and gross out moments, like when the two guys get killed by the alien lifeform, but I didn't really care that they were nonsensical as they served their purpose. I think logic is overrated.

There is an obvious key difference that you are overlooking.

The crew in Alien were the space equivalent of truckers. The crew of Prometheus are supposed to be hand-picked experts in their field on a very important mission - yet none of them display any professionalism or ability.

Fysh

PerrinV2 wrote: »

I think ppl are getting a little too hung up on the crew not taking the proper precautions are not being prepared or whatever
What I mean is if for everything they did if right was right they'd have to do a load of tests and then we'd have ppl back here complaining "god that was so boring all they did was tests and watched each other on camera"

No, big hairy nutsacks to that. Scott & co decided to stake out science-fiction as the territory for the film. Clearly science-fiction depends hugely on made-up stuff for its story, but the suspension of disbelief required for that to work can be cleverly reinforced if the filmmakers establish that the approach taken is consistent with real-world science.

Take a film like Moon, or Sunshine. The behaviour of the characters involved there, and the general processes they follow when things are operating normally, both help to underscore the fact that they are working in dangerous environments where attentiveness and diligence are important. Moon works particularly well in this example, because the biggest thing that goes against said diligence and attentiveness is deliberate and addressed in the film's narrative.

Scott wanted to have this thing at least partially grounded in science. The fact that he chose crap science advisors (or good ones whose advice he ignored) and opted to use the Idiot Ball as an excuse to set up various plot developments is a fault of the film.

johnny_ultimate

Bullseye1 wrote: »

People are complaining about the dialogue in this movie. How do they rate the dialogue in Aliens?

I agree that the Geologist and Biologist did not show much intelligence. And Shaws partner acted strangely once he got to their destination.

It's an appallingly written film. The characters stop at length to tell the audience about their motivations and observations in a way that is completely clunky and unnatural.

Of call the complaints, the script's dialogue deficiency is easily the singlemost flaw that bothered me most.

K.Flyer wrote: »

Note to Mods...
Would it not be easier to stick a Spoiler Alert on the thread instead of blanking out so much of the commentary.
For those who dont want to know yet, they dont have to read it, for the rest of us I feel you are spoiling the discussion, opinion and debate of the movie and ruining the thread.

There'll be a spoiler warning going up tomorrow. Just fair to give a weekend's breathing space for curious onlookers.

Tusky

PerrinV2 wrote: »

I think ppl are getting a little too hung up on the crew not taking the proper precautions are not being prepared or whatever
What I mean is if for everything they did if right was right they'd have to do a load of tests and then we'd have ppl back here complaining "god that was so boring all they did was tests and watched each other on camera"

I don't buy that at all. Just to give you a few quick examples.

Would have been easy to have the biologist show some concern at the aggressive behavior of the alien creature.

Similarly, would have been very simple to show the captain showing a little bit of concern and professionalism when two of his crew get lost in the scary alien temple.

I could go on. I think peoples complaints are totally justified. The film doesn't need to be totally scientifically accurate, but it ruins the suspension of disbelief if the so called experts act like teenagers in a low budget slasher movie.

Giruilla

Wow I'm still in shock at how f'ing terrible that was.. How could they mess an alien prequel so bad? Oh I know..get a writer from lost to write one of the worst scripts and story conceivable, fill it with pseudo philosophical bollix, have zero atmosphere or tension throughout the whole film and then over hype it to the max!

Absolutely woeful... what a disappointment!!

Handsome Bob

I think if Fox had actually played it cool in their marketing, I would have enjoyed the film a whole lot more. It's actually shocking the amount of key scenes they gave away between tv spots and trailers, and it took away from the overall effect of the final product.

nyarlothothep

Tusky wrote: »

There is an obvious key difference that you are overlooking.

The crew in Alien were the space equivalent of truckers. The crew of Prometheus are supposed to be hand-picked experts in their field on a very important mission - yet none of them display any professionalism or ability.

True, I left the film thinking that for a professional crew they really made a disaster of the mission and I was surprised that the mohawk dude was meant to be a geologist. But their stupidity led to some entertaining scenes. Also scientists can act really stupid too, there was an Apollo mission where one of the rock guys was repeatedly told to get back into the craft as he was going "ooh but can I just look at one more moon rock." This happened in real life. So imagine if you put a bunch of scientists on an alien world, discovering the remnants of an advanced civilisation for the first time, professonialism be damned, of course they would get hyperactive and inject strange chemicals into an aliens head in order to reanimate it. Also the David Blaine scientist guy who takes off his helmet at the start, not entirely unconceivable, he is the over confident, mystic believer uber talented scientist archetype living off his own hubris. But yeah, of course they're all valid points, but for me anyway, the overall effect of the film was positive, I'm not interested in the logic for character motivation/plot. What does concern me is that the overall purpose of the film was successfully realised and that was to open up a new chapter in the alien universe, to get away from the monster angle which has been overplayed and to put forth some big questions and fascinating avenues for exploring them. It felt like an authentic science fiction film because of this as opposed to the usual run of the mill stuff you get where it feels more like an action film masquerading as sci fi. And placed in the context of recent alien efforts, eg Alien 4, Alien vs Predator, etc it's a really good addition to the series. And comparing it to Alien and Aliens is fruitless, it's a different type of film, it's not even really about the alien thankfully. In addition Alien and Aliens aren't without their goofy flaws, nostalgia has a huge role to play in the way they're being put up on pedestals. This film was going to be lambasted from the very beginning because it wouldn't measure up to people's rose tinted vision of the first two films. And I'm glad it didn't even try to, because the first two films, while excellent, have been done, no point repeating the past.

a5y

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Spoilers
Yeah but in Aliens the crew were total idiots aswell, in fact they were the exemplars of true stupidity, most of their dialogue was designed around making them sound and appear like the dumb marines that they were, and in Alien 3 the prisoners were dumbasses, can't remember Alien 4 as I've blocked it out of my mind. Even in Alien the crew made ridiculous decisions like letting the guy with the facehugger have dinner with them, without you know, even putting him in quarantine for a while, or just even letting him on board the ship in the first place.

That's a fair point, but there's just one problem: while everyone seems to think its reasonable to demand a higher standard of special effects after all these years in comparison to Aliens, why should we settle for the same standard of inexplicably stupid crew in a comparable horror film? Shouldn't lessons be learned by now?

I know sci fi is demanding in impressive sets and special effects more so than many other genres, but its still storytelling, and using characters written to be mindless idiots for the meatgrinder as the best and brightest of scientists - in a film discussing The Big Questions is not really defensible.

Prometheus is carrying on that tradition of dumbass crews, actually some of the bad decisions were kinda funny, like the biologist dude suddenly forgetting that he's a coward and then idiotically getting up close to the carniverous dodgy looking alien lifeform from Enemy Mine. I wasn't too surprised or let down by such displays of irrationality, it is just a film and many of the scenes which didn't make sense were visually entertaining like the exploding head, those scenes were simply excuses to put in some cool effects and gross out moments, like when the two guys get killed by the alien lifeform, but I didn't really care that they were nonsensical as they served their purpose. I think logic is overrated.

Respectfully I disagree.
This just reduces the characters to Final Destination standard of fodder for the meatgrinder. Except FD had the good manners and sincerity to represent itself as exactly as it was - no attempt at depth or philosophy. A herp-a-derp-tastic slasher fic. If you want to see a slasher fic, go see it, its fantastic in its mindlessness.

Prometheus had the theme of exploring humanities beginning in the trailer. So I expected a reasonable stab at it delivering that, and if it didn't I think its reasonable to be disappointed that it didn't deliver on something a lot of money went into building up hype about.
What the trailer didn't suggest was the scientists and crew selected to perform this noble endeavour

were a better fit for a science fiction parody flick called Lemmingminded Redshirt Bloodbath in Outer Spaaaaace.

I want my science fiction with actual science

(ie, if it has identical DNA to a human, it _is_ a human. This is so dumbed down I'm surprised they dared use DNA frankly)

and storytelling that justifies the fictional world as more than a non interactive sandbox for a big special effects budget of set pieces to stare at (an example:

did they make enormous Engineer Space Jockey ship round in shape solely so they could use that utterly stupid run from the wheel of death scene? I'd like to think the design decisions in spaceships were based on less stupid reasons than that, but the rest of the film has me doubting.

shootermacg

I enjoyed it, but I think I'll enjoy the director's cut even more. Definitely the best aliens film since aliens.

Raekwon

Handsome Bob wrote: »

I think if Fox had actually played it cool in their marketing, I would have enjoyed the film a whole lot more. It's actually shocking the amount of key scenes they gave away between tv spots and trailers, and it took away from the overall effect of the final product.

+1

I would have preferred if Fox stuck with the original teaser trailer released back in December then maybe released an edited version of the extended trailer that was released on the 17th of March.

The viral campaign was slightly over the top but none of those trailers gave away any of the plot and were usually quite fun to watch (Peter Weyland's TED speech being the highlight).

The last few TV spots were full of spoilers and I still can't believe that they showed a glimpse of

Shaw's offspring with it's tentacles wrapped around the last Engineer

on E4 a few weeks ago. What a ridiculous plot detail to put in a TV spot.

Kirby2k07

im so underwhelmed, i just wish the movie was as good as
this.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HHcHYisZFLU#!

Handsome Bob

As far as I know, this was the director's cut. In fact, Scott aired his grievances at the rating this cut received but maintained that he wouldn't compromised his vision to get a lower rating.

nyarlothothep

a5y wrote: »

That's a fair point, but there's just one problem: while everyone seems to think its reasonable to demand a higher standard of special effects after all these years in comparison to Aliens, why should we settle for the same standard of inexplicably stupid crew in a comparable horror film? Shouldn't lessons be learned by now?

I know sci fi is demanding in impressive sets and special effects more so than many other genres, but its still storytelling, and using characters written to be mindless idiots for the meatgrinder as the best and brightest of scientists - in a film discussing The Big Questions is not really defensible.

Respectfully I disagree.
This just reduces the characters to Final Destination standard of fodder for the meatgrinder. Except FD had the good manners and sincerity to represent itself as exactly as it was - no attempt at depth or philosophy. A herp-a-derp-tastic slasher fic. If you want to see a slasher fic, go see it, its fantastic in its mindlessness.

Prometheus had the theme of exploring humanities beginning in the trailer. So I expected a reasonable stab at it delivering that, and if it didn't I think its reasonable to be disappointed that it didn't deliver on something a lot of money went into building up hype about.
What the trailer didn't suggest was the scientists and crew selected to perform this noble endeavour

were a better fit for a science fiction parody flick called Lemmingminded Redshirt Bloodbath in Outer Spaaaaace.

I want my science fiction with actual science

(ie, if it has identical DNA to a human, it _is_ a human. This is so dumbed down I'm surprised they dared use DNA frankly)

and storytelling that justifies the fictional world as more than a non interactive sandbox for a big special effects budget of set pieces to stare at (an example:

did they make enormous Engineer Space Jockey ship round in shape solely so they could use that utterly stupid run from the wheel of death scene? I'd like to think the design decisions in spaceships were based on less stupid reasons than that, but the rest of the film has me doubting.

Well for a start that's part of the fun and secondly I don't see why a serious sci fi film can't have gore/dumb characters to the slaughter elements, I don't care for monotonal film making in the respect that a serious film has to be serious or display high mindedness all the way through, for the purposes of maintaining absolute stylistic consistency, otherwise you end up with a Christopher Nolan film. Also it's not really a horror film, it has horror elements but it's really a different kind of animal compared to Alien.

Secondly 99% of science fiction is ridiculous, if you want scientific accuracy watch a documentary. Science Fiction for me, isn't about being faithful to science, it's about using science, even if it's in a non scientific way, to explore philosophical/scientific questions at the limits of human understanding. Star Trek for example makes no sense scientifically but achieves this aim. Well TNG and TOS anyway. And I felt that Prometheus also delivered on this aswell, although the sequel will have a lot of difficult questions to answer, so it will be an even more precarious film to make compared to Prometheus.