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

HEY ROGER MEXICO STOP READING THIS THREAD NOW, MAYBE GO WALK IN THE PARK OR SOMETHING.

But yeah to go back to my first sentence, I did really enjoy watching it while I was watching it, it was very creepy in its own way (like all of the Alien films have been) - the revived head, the eye worms, the rippling fluids, the snake, the emergency operation - I might say it was very Cronenberg if I had, er, watched more Cronenberg.

It was really well *made* in general, and then there'll be something like a zombie for no reason.

Space Jockey - Hello, Noomi.

Noomi - Who are you?

Space Jockey - I am the Space Jockey. I created the matrix. I've been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.

it's odd how Ridley's career seems to reflect Lucas's - early groundbreaking success, followed by string of utter shit, eventual acceptance of franchise legacy, churns out successful yet shitty "prequels" in the interest of resolving "unanswered questions" from originals, legacy secured.

i remain stoked for the silliness

Ah no, I'd have said that Lucas is more early success - franchise me up! - string of shit prequels. His legacy would have stood up a lot better if he'd stopped 20 years ago - whereas even now, Ridley Scott's still the guy who made Alien and Blade Runner. No-one's wondering "what if he made more films", because he's made more films already.

nah Lucas was really bitter about being saddled with the legacy of Star Wars for much of the 80s/90s and he produced/wrote plenty of stuff post-Jedi it's just that all of it was fucking terrible. It wasn't until the mid-90s when he was finally like "fine, I guess this is what I was put on this earth to do, make Star Wars movies!"

Whaa? His movie writing credentials* from 84-98 are the middle two Indy movies, Willow and Radioland Murders. That's not really either overpacked or shameful (NB I have never seen Radioland Murders. Or Willow). He's executive producer on a bunch of stuff, but I'm not sure how much credit I'd give him for, say, Powasqqatsi.

* okay, from Wikipedia

Willow is great

The Dualists!

Actually, were it not for Thelma and Louise and gladiator, I bet the lustre would have long faded.

Willow and Last Crusade are fucking horrible

and one of the reasons Lucas didn't make more stuff in that period (aside from being a talentless hack) was that he was paralyzed with fear about not being able to function as a filmmaker outside of the Star Wars universe. he definitely resented the shadow it cast over his career. success can be limiting.

I haven't seen Willow since i was kid. Last Crusade is perfectly enjoyable though

Nah, Shakey's right, Last Crusade is dull at best.

Oh lord no, Last Crusade is the second-best of them.

xp - but he'd already been setting up the universe and the franchise - he also wrote two Ewok movies for TV in the mid 80s, he didn't seem to be exactly conflicted about what it is he's known for.

i'm sure the Ewok movies are long overdue for re-evaluation

Guh, going to just start a poll on this to end the discussion once and for all.

look I'm just going by a) Lucas' actual track record, b) things Lucas has said publically and c) things people who work with Lucas have told me

Willow is great

d) things Lucas says to me in the mirror

jesus christ publically? what's wrong with me

Which of the Indiana Jones sequels is the best?

Admire Shakey's restraint in not blaming Spielberg for anything wrong "Last Crusade."

lol there's plenty of blame to go around!

Came to this as a fan of Alien, a massive fan of Aliens and with some love for both the others. I enjoyed it pretty much all the way through (7ish of 10 I guess), and if nothing else the immaculate fx, interiors and <cough> mise en scène lifted it above standard fayre. Wld agree with the sketchy characterisation and script being a let down, although Rapace and (esp) Fassbender gave it their all; the early stuff with Fassbender just padding about and bleaching his hair etc was terrific. It also felt nice to see an actual sci-fi film rendered with flair as opposed to horror/thriller/other masquerading as sci-fi - made me think that if any of the Iain M Banks' Culture (or related) books ever make it to the screen they could do much worse than give Ridley a shot, the look of this and esp. Chris Foss style vistas and ships would be a great fit for The Culture.

i have spent most of the last 24 hours talking about this movie and how dreadful it was- in a way that makes it better value than a movie i saw, liked and forgot.

― pet tommy & the barkhaters (darraghmac), Saturday, June 2, 2012 7:47 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this and lex's summary otm.

after a decent first 30 minutes it stumbles into cheap cider levels of incoherence. until by the end the script is laughable. favourite lol was the conjunction of noomi, the holdall and fassbender.

plot stuff happening for no discernible reason and having no relevance to subsequent events.

theron's character could be edited out and the film would make no less sense.

seeing this in 1.5 hrs, am nervous

it's okay man, just remind yourself aliens aren't real

but they are, they're US. woo mind blown

it's a very enjoyable film

it's pish.

there's a line in the trailer with one of the characters that is going to die at some point actually asking vickers "is there some kind of agenda you're not telling us about"

the question i keep asking myself about this is, how dumb would it actually have to be for me to not enjoy it

i mean, i don't really expect insight from big dumb object stories. i don't know that i necessarily need this to be any cleverer than 'cube', even.

"like a ride" actually sounds kind of hopeful

it's spectacularly dumb.

SPOILERY questions...

why would you *not* want to take guns into a completely unknown alien environment?

why were they so keen to breathe the possibly microbe or virus infested air?

why was the one guy in charge of mapping the one guy who got lost?

why was the biologist so keen to shake hands with an alien organism which he had no idea how hostile or dangerous it might be?

why didn't the ship have a self-contained quarantible med bay?

why would you make a state of the art med pod just for men?

why would you fit one into a part of the ship occupied by a woman?

basically why was almost everyone in this film inconceivably stupid, reckless, and foolhardy? i lost count at the number of times i rmde at someone's elementary idiocy.

what were we even supposed to think about the charlize and guy pearce big reveal-o towards the end anyway, like it was semi-obvious, had no bearing on the story really (perhaps the shallowest general analogy about man and his "creation" idk?) and in any case the characters were both so two-dimensional no one cared anyway

LINDELOF THIS IS ALL YOUR DIRTY MARK I WILL KILL U SOMEDAY 4REALS

otm, i was all "eh? is that a big reveal? are we meant to care?"

also did elba & theron get it on, or what?

also also why did fassbender do (the bad thing), or are we meant to wait for the sequel to find out?

elba as well, what exactly was his motivation for his (and his crew's) ultimate sacrifice beyond i am a cool black guy who listens to music

he barely even engages with rapace (and indeed the entire expedition) throughout the film and then suddenly gets noble heroic on her briefest say-so

i think what i'm most pissed off about though, and yeah this is a big SPOILER for anyone who still cares, is that they made the space jockey into a goddamned scooby doo villain. it's just a guy in a mask!

SPOILER

Did I miss a second engineer waking up, or did I just not care by that point to try and make any sense out of this mess? How come there was one in the escape module, and then presumably another one sitting in the space jockey chair?

They really are rubbish scientists, on the other hand one of the things that tickled me about it is that unlike the previous films where the company is evil because it's an amoral moneymaking machine, here it's just foolish because it's the toy of one old scared man. So it makes sense that he would pick people who didn't really know what they were doing because he likes their gumption.

Motivation for ultimate sacrifice = there is a ton of bioweapons heading for Earth? Where he keeps his other accordions.

Elba does have the scene earlier where he rants about how we absolutely must not let any of these aliens back anywhere near earth, though he is in fairness talking to Rapace who is visibly thinking "I understand that you are very agitated about this, but I have just had to invent something I like to call 'Super-abortion with extra helpings of shite' so it may be safe to assume that I am down with this".

Haha "Yeah, we were really surprised that we got the commission to go to the stars on a whim, but after he watched us fuck he was totally fine with it"

OK, to answer my own question, I've looked it up and this is on a different planet from the other films.

that's for fuckin sure

i can't wait for this thread's spoiler status to be confirmed, there is so much stupid shit in this movie posing as profound shit that it feels like my brain needs lancing of it, it must be mocked and ridiculed until i find peace

<i>that's for fuckin sure</i>

haha, very good.

Thinking about it again, I'm even more pissed off with the broader problem that the scooby doo space jockey is just a symptom of - it's all about us. The best SF imo is about the other, about the mysteries of the all mysterious universe. Things don't revolve around us and if we ever discover anything else out there it's not gonna be some giant surrogate lookalike dadgod - we already have a perfectly serviceable theory of evolution thx - and nor would i want it to be. Ok I wouldn't exactly want to stumble across an original giger alien either, but it's a perfect example of the idea that what we might find out there is not going to be familiar, and is certainly not going to have any shared history.

Seriously, we should should be allowed let loose with the SPOILERS at this point

Another question, why the hell would you not tell members of the team for a mission that cost 1 TRILLION DOLLARS where they were going and what their mission was? Surely you would want them to be briefed to the fullest possible extent, rather than having a geologist who acts like a complete psycho, a biologist who treats an obviously dangerous alien lifeform like a playful kitten etc.

I am considering everything after my missive to Roger to be spoiler town.

Scott said, "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way... That’s what we’re looking at [in the film], at some of Erich von Däniken’s ideas of how did we humans come about."[78]

why haven't i seen this quote before? ok because i was avoiding reading anything about the film. but wtffffff? nasa dispute evolution? really? and who gives a shit what the vatican think? FUCK YOU RIDLEY SCOTT EVEN MORE THAN LINDELOF

NASA, for funding purposes, agree that...

i can't wait for this thread's spoiler status to be confirmed, there is so much stupid shit in this movie posing as profound shit that it feels like my brain needs lancing of it, it must be mocked and ridiculed until i find peace

― irrational angst that makes me innocuously thingy (darraghmac), Wednesday, 6 June 2012 11:12 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

i have to go back to my original point that i feel nowhere near as scandalised by this film than some of the other trash that ilx/general public has seemingly humoured. let's have mission impossible 4 or thor for starters

fuck i mean if you think even nolan's batmen are that much better than this you're on some delusory notions imo