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

I'm also not that certain that the Harry Potter universe has strong views on the meaninglessness of Christmas!

All that matters is that it is there. It deflects the heretical magical elements by underscoring that, hey, Harry is Christian! (Not that that really worked, but still, maybe it worked for some)

I haven't seen this Alien movie yet, but like Harry Potter, I imagine as long as religion is in the mix somehow, it sates some of the faithful.

thank you all for saving me $10

Look, this film is flawed in many places, but it's great fun and great to look at and as long as you hang your anal coat up the door, there are japes to be had - okay?

My most grating problem was in the beginning scene where they find the cave paintings (on the Isle of Skye, lol), and the archaeologists are wearing clothes fresh for 2012 (Palestine scarves and that) even though it's supposed to be 2089.

Bad movies are their own animals. Often the films that actually bother me the most are the ones with potential that fall short for all sorts of reasons, and this sounds like one of them.

there has to be a German word that describes the creeping nightmare sensation one gets upon reading phrases like "hang your anal coat up at the door"

Metaphernenttäuschungsangst

you don't really have to be "anal" to be exasperated at the 2 hour stream of inept dumbfuck idiocy that flies at u face

i say this as a veteran of ilx

Palestine scarves are not exactly a new thing, mr latin.

i know, but the whole get up... it's like they went to Millets, and I understand they're tipping on the brink of administration these days...

I honestly noticed the same thing in that scene, palestine scarves and down jackets, was disappointed the filmmakers weren't aware of ultra thin down-free fabric tech already on the horizon. Much better than those anal coats too I hear.

at least we know in 2089 retro is still hip

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

"It's hard sci-fi"

http://io9.com/5916601/is-prometheus-anti+science-screenwriter-damon-lindelof-responds

I sort of always wondered, "Where did that thing come from? It's not really a practical organism if it needs a human to gestate. Was it invented by someone?"

damon lindelof bringing the hard science

i think the exact same cast should use the exact same sets and fx ppl and make a version of blindsight instead

"It's hard, sci-fi" / "It's hard-fi"

I sort of always wondered, "Where did that thing come from? It's not really a practical organism if it needs a human to gestate. Was it invented by someone?"

http://billtammeus.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834515f9b69e20115702b02bc970c-800wi

Ugh @ discussion about pink after that interview (xxxxpost)

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

I'm most definitively pro-science, but I think that the movie advances the idea that, "Can the two live along side each other?"

Intelligent design lol

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