Prometheus SPOILERS FROM POST 1538

don ramo · 03-06-2012 11:43AM

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 · 03-06-2012 11:54AM

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 · 03-06-2012 11:55AM

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 · 03-06-2012 12:07PM

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 · 03-06-2012 12:17PM

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 · 03-06-2012 12:38PM

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 · 03-06-2012 12:53PM

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 · 03-06-2012 01:09PM

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 · 03-06-2012 01:11PM

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 · 03-06-2012 01:53PM

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 · 03-06-2012 01:58PM

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 · 03-06-2012 01:59PM

They were no rocket scientists either.

rednik · 03-06-2012 02:03PM

They were the crew of a freight ship.

K.Flyer · 03-06-2012 02:06PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:19PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:22PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:28PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:32PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:36PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:40PM

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 · 03-06-2012 02:59PM

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 · 03-06-2012 03:43PM

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 · 03-06-2012 03:54PM

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 · 03-06-2012 04:05PM

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 · 03-06-2012 04:14PM

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 · 03-06-2012 04:24PM

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

Raekwon · 03-06-2012 04:30PM

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 · 03-06-2012 04:49PM

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 · 03-06-2012 04:51PM

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 · 03-06-2012 05:03PM

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.

Prometheus *SPOILERS FROM POST 1538*

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Prometheus SPOILERS FROM POST 1538