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

see i dont think either movie is dumb at all but i do think people acting a bit irrationally (or maybe emotionally) is an intentional theme in both--it's the source of chaos or contamination, maybe.

the alien has acid for blood. if they kill it it'll eat through the hull. also ash wants it alive.

Maybe this has been mentioned upthread but is it consensus that Prometheus retcons the eggs in Alien to be the canisters? Giger always claimed they were biological weapons, but this makes Aliens and the later sequels (and the poster for alien, which features an egg that doesn't look like a canister at all) out of canon.

in alien, there are sensible barriers erected to prevent contamination (suit seals that aren't broken willy nilly, airlocks, decontamination procedures, quarantine periods, etc). when these barriers are circumvented, it's for entirely sensible and sympathetic reasons. the "irrationality" on display is rational in a sense, in that it's a reasonable-seeming product of the characters and their circumstances.

in prometheus, there are no apparent barriers. it's as though no one has ever so much as considered that contamination might even be possible. what's worse, people behave in an utterly nonsensical fashion. their behavior has relation to comprehensible human motives or emotions. it's an irrational sort of irrationality.

well the egg on the Alien poster doesn't look like anything like the eggs in the movie. It's an actual hen's egg.

fassbot is pretty good in this movie. there really wasn't any standout characters in the avengers, to compare a movie that was received better, where characters also act weirdly to service forward motion of plot.

is it consensus that Prometheus retcons the eggs in Alien to be the canisters? Giger always claimed they were biological weapons, but this makes Aliens and the later sequels (and the poster for alien, which features an egg that doesn't look like a canister at all) out of canon.

hard to say for sure. the thing is that geiger's alien was always said to be "biomechanical", and the cannisters might well be biological products of a sort. it seems reasonable to suppose that the xenomorph might be a device engineered to produce more weapons ("cannisters", bugs, acid, black goo, whatever).

in alien, there are sensible barriers erected to prevent contamination (suit seals that aren't broken willy nilly, airlocks, decontamination procedures, quarantine periods, etc). when these barriers are circumvented, it's for entirely sensible and sympathetic reasons. the "irrationality" on display is rational in a sense, in that it's a reasonable-seeming product of the characters and their circumstances.

yeah in fact breaking one of these barriers is a huge tense plot point! i really like that part. "wait a minute."

and the thing i like best about the sequel is how it spends all this time showing you the marines' Badass Military Hardware and setting them up in deliberate contrast to the basically unarmed and unprepared crew of the first movie, and then (in the unload-your-guns-you-might-shoot-the-reactor scene) thinks of a reasonable and non-stupid crack to put in their control, which like these things do spiders very very fast.

but i love movies in general where everything works all slickly until it breaks. the system's gonna be, um, compiling for twenty or thirty minutes, so, some of the minor systems, they might go on or off or whatever.

find nedry! check the vending machines!

another great thing about ash is when he lets contaminated john hurt in - which seems almost first like a compassionate human thing to do until u realize why

sorry but david was such a dumb character, as ok as fassbender played him

everyone has their own opinion but alien/aliens are IN NO WAY as dumb/contrived/c-grade as prometheus

"Alien" works better because, duh, they all learned the lessons illustrated in "Prometheus." Worry about contamination, when an alien lizard creature rears its head don't try to pet it, join your local outerspace worker's union to avoid Company exploitation, etc.

ha

there is no way prometheus is as dumb as alien or aliens, which are careful and nuanced studies of corporate culture under stress in the vein of robocop and terminator

...

say what now

i think that's a typo tbf

I sure hope so

Can we open the airlock just in case

depends on if tlg's coming in or leaving, i say be prepared in any case

"sorry but david was such a dumb character, as ok as fassbender played him"

bishop and ash are pretty dumb characters, too, but the actors really sold them in a compelling way. three out of four distinct compelling robot performances is a pretty good record.

harsh on charlize

ok here's my director's cut

remove all jesus shit and focus on prometheus myth. guy pearce appears often as young guy pearce in hologram. he is actually a skeletal monstrosity in a lifepod. he is yr basic dr morbius mad scientist with david as amoral altaira and charlize as macready and idris as pris (yr basic pleasure model). the alien thing is actually an STD propagated by engineers. all the caricature remaining ethnic / ignorant / superstitious / curious george red shirt and scientist dudes all die way earlier from more memorable ways including sensitive crying dude who never impregnates noomi. he should just crumble into dust already and seed the planet with doe-eyed rodents. the nanotech dna virus might fuck up the hull of the ship and kill more people with melting helmets and final destination part 4 / jaws 3d plausible natural disasters. this includes everyone who got killed by roundhouse punches from zombies. the engineer is actually totally reasonable and is actually deep down alot like a draag. but he turns out to be a replicant too and when he impregnates noomi the baby turns out to be a facehugger egg that bursts onto skeletal guy pearce and produces the alien which ultimately just gets let loose on the planet with an escaping engineer who goes to LV 426 BOOM DONE

the crew of the ship could be in a spinoff tv series and david and charlize could be a cartoon network show

i'm in

anyway i'm just kidding it would be better if the engineer characters were just completed unrelated to hr giger

*actually*

leave the engineers but just expunge any reference to facehuggers and chestbursters and never have them show up or wake up, i'm sure fassbender could handle the flute

first way i can think of improving this movie is that none of them wake up

just a bit of robofass pottering

ie performing some of the better-known routines from the ouevre of dennis potter

anyway an advanced alien culture with only one type of WMD is like an old dog with only one trick

just have it be something different and interesting

like this

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldjbxuZa6c1qf0aafo1_500.jpg

http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/624/files/2012/03/Escale-%C3%A0-Pharagonescia.jpg

SPLOZZ

castro assassination plan #253 imo

Maybe this has been mentioned upthread but is it consensus that Prometheus retcons the eggs in Alien to be the canisters?

i can't see why it would be. the eggs hatch facehuggers and the canisters leak black goo. also the eggs are eggs and the canisters are canisters. plus it's a pred ship.

Yeah, these dudes deal in bio weapons. Nothing saying they always have to be transporting the exact same bioweapon every time.

I just thought... if the engineers made us - WHO MADE THE ENGINEERS?

Oh crap, 5 seconds ago that was a shit gag in my mind, now I think it could be where lindelof actually wants to go with the sequel.

Imagineers

headband dude

YAPHET

KOTTO.

CALL HIM BY HIS NAME, HE'S AN AFRICAN PRINCE

otm

lol at "Imagineers"

Oh man think of how next level this would have been if it was Walt Disney secretly frozen on the ship instead of Weyland.

You know, what we're really missing these days is cool comic book adaptations of movies. Downloaded the original Alien one the other day, pretty cool.

http://images.wikia.com/marveldatabase/images/3/36/Marvel_Comics_Super_Special_Vol_1_17.jpg

I own this.

I was reading <A href="http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/15-027/Aliens-Omnibus-Volume-3";>a collection of stories in the Alien universe</a> last weekend, they're impressively bleak and down on plucky humans.

not the onion

http://badassdigest.com/2012/07/03/seattle-ticket-taker-spoils-prometheus-on-moral-grounds/

hehe wonder which red state's going to sponsor that bill

well we're just going to warning-sticker movies the same way we're warning-sticker-ing soda and cigarettes