They're Remaking 'Alien' -- the 'Prometheus' thread

i think it's safe to assume lindelof knows nothing about anything except how to pitch shaggy dog stories to bewildered old network / studio execs

WTF, xenomorph does not need a human to gestate. Any port in a storm, etc. (see dog alien in Alien 3).

Exactly! Fucking idiot. THis is what I mean--people who don't GET the Alien films shouldn't be allowed to make them.

Fuck, why was I so enthusiastic? Of now 7 movies with Aliens in them, only 2 were genuinely great. I should have learned by now.

Also, really amazed at how much of the movie is in the trailer. I mean, almost the whole story is there.

Onion review is plenty negative for a B+. I guess the set design was enough to bump it up? But I mean:

The human element proves problematic, though, as the characters’ decisions are often foolish, even comically unbelievable. People in extreme situations often make poor choices, but Prometheus’ characters are routinely fundamentally incompetent in ways difficult to reconcile with their qualifications. Their disregard for common sense and their own safety tends to be distancing and frustrating, and lead to the feeling that they deserve what they get, much like the one-dimensional characters in slasher films who exist only to exhibit annoying behaviors, then get killed for viewers’ amusement.

Youch.

the review in this weeks stranger is surprisingly positive, taking the film's existential ponderings very seriously and attributing the few shortcomings it identifies to the studio rather than the director. i sometimes get the feeling that paul constant sees himself as an advocate for science-fiction in general though. he sometimes seems almost comically unwilling to find fault in anything associated with the genre.

eagerly awaiting Armond's review

slasher films + existential ponderings = prometheus

^ otm

why did the star map point to the WMD planet and not somewhere more useful?

ok so does this movie actually feature the alien from the movie alien, y/n

― thomp, Thursday, June 7, 2012 12:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The one that's born from an egg in that film through the hatching chamber of JOhn Hurt's body? Or the same species?
There is definitely one of the same species seen for about a minute towards the end. & hundreds more unhatched.

Oh yeah, just been reminded that somebody asked if there had been 2 space jockeys revived. I don't think the original Alien one had a time period specified and I'd assumed it might have dated back to their own time period. The Alien itself seems to be acknowledged as the ultimate weapon in this film so I'm assuming it was supposedly used more than once, especially considering the cargo unearthed in this one.
So, I'd think the body that the crew of the Nostromo found was entirely different to the one the crew of the Prometheus found.
Was thinking that it might not even be the same planet but then remembered that the crew in Prometheus found this planet by following a decribed grouping of planets. Thought somebody in this said that they were at a remote base because the engineers knew the danger of what they were handling. Still doesn't necessarily mean that the Nostromo was going to this planet. I thought the distress signal they followed had to be translated so wasn't necessarily the message from Shaw, thoug maybe what's being spoken on Earth changed over the course of time between Prometheus and that?

Also the very title Prometheus is one that would lead one to expect some level of profundity. Stealer of fire from heaven etc.

maybe the space jockeys had been using the WMDs against each other, one side using aliens and the other using penis worms

maybe humanity and the map were made by the bad flying saucer dudes who were on the run and wanted revenge on the bald dudes from lv 226

omg what if the aliens is us

just got out of a midnight IMAX screening. I enjoyed it, but mainly because going in I told myself a) this is not an alien film, and b) this will probably be about as good as inception.

it's an utterly uncharming film, the android is the most charismatic cast member. not scary at all, suspense almost non-existent. but it's a v weird movie, and quite beautiful in its rendering of natural phenomena - the opening pan over plains and waterfalls is breathtaking. I can't quite explain why I enjoyed it, but I was never bored.

Just got back from this.

What an odd, dopey movie. Supremely dunderheaded and tonally all over the place.

I didn't hate it, though. Maybe it's because my expectations were lowered enough, but I found it quite watchable. Easily the prettiest sci-fi movie I've seen in a long time.

looks like the aliens came from humans infected with a virus, which is an interesting wrinkle if that's where they went with it.

unfortunately it seems like the grubby "used future" set design got lost somewhere, this looks like it takes place 3000 years *after* the first alien.

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:56 PM (2 months ago)

hey I called this one! kinda sorta. and the fancy spaceship was understandable considering how many top weyland brass were on it.

While I don't doubt there will be lots of retconned silliness in this flick, I'm pretty sure that the "aliens came from humans infected with a virus" scenario won't be part of that. For starters, this mural http://i.imgur.com/UL3mC.jpg seen at 1:37 in the trailer, pretty much makes it clear that the aliens have been around for a while before the events of the movie.

My guess is that the "space jockeys" are a race of bioengineers of some sort and the aliens are one of many bioweapons or creations of theirs (those little worm things in the trailer are probably another).

― Conmetheus (latebloomer), Sunday, March 18, 2012 7:50 PM (2 hours ago)

maybe that mural was a failed experiment and it took the ruthless spirit of humans for the space jockey bioengineers to finally perfect their killing machine!

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:02 PM (2 months ago)

lol this turned out to be true

latebloomer sounds like we had the exact same reaction.

i know!

There is definitely one of the same species seen for about a minute towards the end.

definitely not, unless the dog alien from 3 and the turd alien from 4 are also the same 'species'. but idk how you would classify a creature who changes with every host.

Not impressed - http://sickmouthy.com/2012/06/08/prometheus/

In ancient times...
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people... the space jockeys

No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains

trying to remember, not having watched Alien through for a while, but the creature that bursts rather phallically out of John Hurt does so in its own time doesn't it? It hasn't had something inducing it to emerge, beyond plot.
It then turns to the camera grins and disappears into the ship to grow to full size, which takes some time.
From the time passing in Prometheus it looks like the fully grown form emerges in next to no time from the admittedly larger body it's been born through. Can't really remember the sequence and why I'm thinking it seems like very little time has passed, but it does seem like it's happened faster.

Is it to be read or over-read that the alien needs a larger space to grow in plus more to feed on. If the DNA is the same between space jockey and human then the only other factor is that there's more supply and that the space jockey isn't moving around.

Also what possesses Fifield? If that is supposed to be the alien or whatever why would the same thing allow a host/feeding supply like John Hurt to become mobile again? I mean come come, one must expect logic to prevail and the classic version of the story to be retrofit to fit all action sequences from this thing mustn't one?

also is the other phallic worm thing that is in the temple related to the most well known alien species or a prototype of it or something?

So much is unexplained. It's like the inverse of dramatic irony; neither characters nor audience, nor, seemingly, director, writer, or producer, seem to have a fucking clue why anything is happening. It all just happens because "it'd be cool to have this happen!" No internal logic.

“Let’s have a giant worm force itself down someone’s throat again and again!”
“Let’s have a giant starfish monster with a vagina-like maw...
“Let’s have an entire planet be a bio-chemical warfare laboratory breeding some nasty bio-weapon which may or may not turn out to be the Giger-alien!”

these are perfectly serviceable ideas imo, the bio-weapon thing was a decent direction to jump off from the first film, and giant vagina starfish monsters, yeah why not. it's the giant godlike aliens and exploring our own bullshit origins that really doomed this.

Any idea or couple of ideas on their own would be fine, is my point - but Scott let Lindeloff jam ALL of them in.

With the DNA, although they are using the term 'exact match', I think they mean a very close match to suggest a common ancestor, right? Aren't humans and dogs about 85% shared DNA, or 99.9% with chimps for example.

It's pretty unbelievable to me that a scientist would leave any room for ambiguity in a statement like that.

what is dna match between different breeds of dog?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_dogbreeds.html

It's complex, but it's not 100% that's for sure; we can analyse to this level now, in another seventy years...? I've worked with scientists and it's a point of pride to be precise. It's a very minor thing in the film, but it'd have been much better, and more dramatic, to have been all "they're DNA is amazingly close to ours; too close to be a coincidence" instead of "100% match whoop whoop facehugger!"

you haven't worked with these scientists

these sexy scientists.

With their sexy DNA and their sexy throat-invading worms.

Also what possesses Fifield?

seriously!

he gets attacked at the same time in the same place as the other dude. one of them gets the penis worm, the other goes mental and attacks everyone. WUT

the sexiness of the scientists is not a problem tbh and also if you found fifield and the penis worm dude sexy then that is your own issue

are there no actors in hollywood sufficiently old to play an old man

― ༼◍ྀ ౪ ◍ི ༽ (cozen),

Meryl Streep was booked...?

he looked like old man Biff in Back to the Future

Yes!

It's pretty unbelievable to me that a scientist would leave any room for ambiguity in a statement like that.

An 'exact match' if taken literally would only exist between clones and twins though? Or is my understanding of biology even worse than I think it is.

seriously you'd think a super advanced race of lumbering flautist dudes would manage to find a more expedient way to wipe out the human race, no wonder it was a balls up

he looked like old man Biff in Back to the Future

Someone shouted out "Mr. Burns!" at the screening I was at.

I thought he looked like Grandpa from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage//upl_images/dads-TCMGrandpa%281%29.jpg

You could handwave it as "This is an exact match with the bits of human DNA that we all have in common"

Also hey look, our ancestors weren't black after all, but whiter than white! Whooo!

this is starting to sound like an episode of dr who

I'm impressed by the consistency of the reviews, positive and negative alike: this is pretty, but pretty daft.

I saw this twice within 24 hours, and would see it again in a heartbeat. Love it. It's like Forbidden Planet mixed with Star Trek: the Motion Picture and a selection of front covers from 1970s SF novels. The plot doesn't make one lick of sense but it looks like what I always hope sci-fi movies would look, but never, ever actually do.

Basically this for me, combined with Edward III/latebloomer's thoughts, especially:

not scary at all, suspense almost non-existent. but it's a v weird movie, and quite beautiful in its rendering of natural phenomena - the opening pan over plains and waterfalls is breathtaking. I can't quite explain why I enjoyed it, but I was never bored.

If pretty prettiness is all you're after, just watch Koyanisqaatsi again. Or any Malick film.

it really doesn't look like 70s sci-fi novel front covers though. It does look nice, but it's way more boring than that

The waterfall was amazing but I put that down to the waterfall being amazing, rather than any skill of the film makers.

yeah iceland* is a real place guys

*nb not the supermarket, tho that is real too

Just watch Sigur Ros music videos.

I have been to Dettifoss and stood almost exactly where Potato Head stood when he drank whatever it was.

You then shivered into a million pieces and created life.