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

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

They're not as pompous, though. Mission Impossible 4 is really clear about not being much more than 4 hi-tech capers in a row.

did Thor have a big following on here? It's certainly much more aware of its own ridiculousness than this ponderous mess. And MI:4 does exactly what you'd expect and does it quite well. Probably not a good idea to invoke Christopher Nolan's name though

i have raged against nolan's batmen (mans?) tbh, both hugely cool, hugely ambitious, hugely stupidly overplotted movies

But they were fun. This veered a lot further towards frustration at a wasted budget/opportunity

I wouldn't consider the Batmeng equal - I will still happily rewatch The Dark Knight for plotting + Joker, whereas Batman Begins is surely one of the most superfluous movies in history - if they wanted to recap it in TDK (and they didn't) they could have just stuck up a card saying "Bruce Wayne is Batman. You know, Batman".

But I imagine there is already a thread for this.

comparisons to thor or mi4 aren't fair- who takes that shit seriously? i'd argue that not even the makers of those movies would rep for them as big, serious, 'profound' epics that speak to us of our times like scott is claiming (and, tbh, the movie claims for itself at every turn) prometheus does, or nolan vies for with batmens.

Note- even ignoring the pseudoprofundity and pomposity- if prometheus were only aimed at popcorn lols forget it immediately thrills n shits it would still be a bad movie, it just mightn't irk so much- it's not as good as eg the mummy or w/e on this level

tbh it didn't help having the "omg they actually want to kill us all" twist explicitly revealed in the very first trailer. but even with that intact, yeah it was just too messy and vague.

It's kind of fascinating to me that none of these spoilers are making any sense to me, having kept myself more or less in the dark about the film's details. I'm impressed!

seeing it won't change that much

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

Real talk.

Nolan should have called the sequel "Batmen," and the one this summer "Batmen II."

"Batmen, Too!"

Tag: We are all Batmen.

https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRz7JKr_fw1C4LwjzXx7zZn9zs5IjCDVQallWMO5ooRAt7z3XO9yNk2Pke7

well if you believe some of the rumours, the new one could legitimately be called "Batmen"

Turns out Batmen are our Gods.

https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTis9Qr_RKyr28dsFS0iqOObKGioazhKde9mSOUSS8fu9maJoxdnQ

Caught a showing in Seoul this afternoon. There were a few bits that worked, either as scares or not-too-blatant exposition, but for the most part it was really airheaded. Also some very poor editing/handling of concurrent action in the middle third.

SPOILERS

why would you *not* want to take guns into a completely unknown alien environment?
You get the idea that this is the first-ever alien environment, and they're supposed to be hippy-dippy types off to meet their makers, no?

why were they so keen to breathe the possibly microbe or virus infested air?
See above. I mean, I handwaved this one away as "required for movie", but could probably stretch this out into "they think they're in heaven and are all excited about standing on the first life-supporting world not Earth"

why was the one guy in charge of mapping the one guy who got lost?
Because the mapping relied on the link to the ship, which was actually doing the mapping

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?
Yeah, I got nothing here.

why didn't the ship have a self-contained quarantible med bay?
It did, no? That's where they put the exploding head.

why would you make a state of the art med pod just for men?
It's built for Guy Pearce, basically.

why would you fit one into a part of the ship occupied by a woman?
Because that part of the ship is actually to be Guy Pearce's, once he wakes up.

it was a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR mission

they think they're in heaven

yeah i don't buy this, they may have been people of strong faith expecting to meet their makers but i would guess they were still pretty clear about this being an encounter on a real unknown alien world and not some airy fairy hippy dippy paradise.

It did, no? That's where they put the exploding head.

it didn't have its own airlock, hence the human torch act. not exactly self contained.

Because that part of the ship is actually to be Guy Pearce's, once he wakes up.

ok but then why not pack theron in with the rest of the crew? oh because they had to have some non-secret justification for having that module, grand piano et al. so needlessly complicated!

and you could say "people in movies they be stupid" but i'm sorry my anal standards of movie realism expect scientists on a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR mission to be slightly smarter than highschoolers on a weekend break.

Perhaps then you're seeing the wrong movies.

this clearly has pretensions to be "smart" sci-fi though

if they start making the right ones i will watch them.

I dunno, there appears to be a religious component to this, and there's a lot of money to be found there. If someone was trying to raise funds for a mission to heaven, they'd get a trillion dollars pretty quickly. That's why cults exists.

(Religious component being the sole spoiler here that really has me understanding why so many are calling bullshit on this movie.)

one trillion's not gonna be that much, by then. this is a shoestring operation by a crazy old guy. like how many mercenary geologists are there, anyway? I want to see that guy's papers.

was it ever explained why david infected the hot guy?

nope. i'm guessing that's one of the things they left open for the sequels i'm already hotly anticipating.

You get the idea that this is the first-ever alien environment, and they're supposed to be hippy-dippy types off to meet their makers, no?

this is a shoestring operation by a crazy old guy

Those ideas don't quite add up though. Weyland Corp already has its 'Building Better Worlds' tagline and some of the Prometheus crew reference terraforming, as if people have gone to alien worlds many times already (though admittedly the idea that we'd be doing that by 2093 is optimistic at best).

I don't think it was even left open for a sequel. I think they just came up with the idea for the surgery scene and had to shoehorn it in somehow

was it ever explained why david infected the hot guy?

So his hybrid would impregnate Lisbeth with the rapid-growth jellyfish.

yeah but why re: that as well then!

also after Shaw gave herself the C-section and stumbled around in her pants covered in blood and sweat why did no one think to, you know...ask her why? and did she just forget she left the alien thing hanging out on the surgery table?

Forget it lex, it's Prometheus

She thought she'd killed it in the disinfectant process.

David's agenda was to find the elixir of life for pearce, I think. So he was trying out the goo (at the time they thought this was the seed for human life, I think) to see what happened. And if he died, no problem, because he was a douche to him anyway.

i'm sorry my anal standards of movie realism expect scientists on a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR mission to be slightly smarter than highschoolers on a weekend break.

I suffered similarly.

xpost to Lex: Because Fassbender saw Peter O'Toole do it in Lawrence of Arabia.

Eh, all of the previous movies have "Let's interact with alien stuff" as a terrible idea followed by fules, I am not that bothered with this being the case here.

they do at least take guns with them in the first two (tho obv give them up in the second one which is pretty dumb)

It's 2093 or whatever, by then "ONE TRILLION DOLLARS" will be delivered in a Mr Evil voice and your little pinky extended.

Or even a Dr Evil voice.

but cmere

Lisbet kicked the shit out of two crew members before being chased into the med chamber and locking them out.

She then did that thing, taking about ten minutes.

Then she wanders out covered in blood.

Then she's all just chillin with pilot, nbd, several ppl have died in a mutant melee on the deck, nbd, any news with yourself? Naaaw, nbd

robofass contaminates sciencedude for lulz and cos he doesn't like him. robofass seems to be relatively certain that this is not likely to be a benign act of human superpower elixir donation, so the 'trying it out for papa pearce' doesn't rly wash.

it seems like something that could pretty easily backfire against the whole mission, not just the crew but his own chances for survival & return to earth. but maybe his cold robot brain really doesn't care about even that.

nah, doing it for the badness doesn't wash with getting him to say he'd do absolutely anything to find out the truth first