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

thought this was overall good, but a lot has to do with expectations and what to expect from a Ridley Scott film since 1982 (i.e. not much). can understand derision but i think that misses out on some good stuff

I'm OK with movies trying to reach out a bit and failing. For example, I thought that Contact was ridiculous, clumsy, and hokey in how it handled its subject, but completely entertaining as a movie. By the end of Prometheus, I was ready for the Engineers to full-tilt gnostic and destroy all life on earth for evolving the ship's crew.

oh my fucking word the flutes

Oh Aqualung

The Hound!

http://www.fluterock.com/

best review title?

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/failien-prometheus/Content?oid=2236713

btw in that still twinky Fassbender looks like Herbie the Elf.

He's going for O'Toole in Lawrence

All right. Strapped into my IMAX seat awaiting takeoff. I inoculated myself against disappointment by watching COWBOYS VS ALIENS. After that anything should seem awesome.

Remember when rumors were that this was going to be about the Space Jockeys making humans farm aliens and have gay sex with each other?

"This is not an Alien prequel but here is an Alien from the film "Alien" which this film is certainly not a prequel to."

Update: I quite enjoyed the parts that weren't bollocks. See it in IMAX.

Remember when rumors were that this was going to be about the Space Jockeys making humans farm aliens and have gay sex with each other?

is that not what COWBOYS VS ALIENS was about?

Lindelof has a writing credit on CvA too.

This movie sure got dumber as it went on, didn't it?

^That was my feeling. I quite enjoyed the first two thirds - thought the sense of arriving at a new planet, uncertain, but with a sense of pioneering adventure, was quite well done. Liked all the tech and the dust storm. But my estimation of how much I'd enjoyed and how much I'd enjoyed it went down as the film went on. By the end, instead of a prequel, it felt like they'd just made a film out of prolonging the beginning of Alien, massively truncating the climax, so it wasn't at all climactic, and leaving out everything in the middle. Difficult to locate exactly the bit where I realised it was shit - I think when the Simon Whitlock/Fifield character comes back to life so they can have an entirely pointless firefight scene. Although at the time it wasn't until the 'sometimes a king must die etc' bollocks that I realised that this was a film with no idea what it was about.

The end was somehow both cursory and laborious, and entirely laughable, although the appearance of the Alien at the end was the only bit that provoked open and contemptuous mirth. It's a PREQUEL you see. Also that alien looked quite d'aw - just a little poiple alien, lookin round, thinking baout things, sup cinema dudes, etc.

Entire sections of the flick felt like somebody had just copy-pasted earlier drafts of the scripts into the final revision. "but I can't have children!" WHAT where the fuck that come from and why do you just drop it

also, REALLY? we REALLY need to see him washing the dude's feet?! Some of the Christian imagery and refs were as shoehorned into this as badly as the Prequels dumped in refs to the original trilogy.

Film's worth seeing, at least. Stays in my head, only if to rant about it. SO MUCH STUPID happens.

also Charlize Theron's look is straight out of Mass Effect.

Anybody else note that Noomi never says "abortion" to the auto-doc? or the fact that a fully functioning auto-doc apparently will happily cut into you without massive amounts of painkillers

The phrase "space morphine" applies here.

In fairness, given that the alien is practically trying to get out of her by the time she reaches the auto-doc, saying "caesarian" probably makes more sense. There did seem to be a delicate pause before David says that he can't perform "the procedure", though.

https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTX3QNUQhV7704wsC2E98lbPITe_J8tLiP28-3dcxkEgHJ9wGt4

"Horror movie dumb" is a great way to describe how the characters act.

And yeah, Vickers' death is stupid and wasted.

Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, and The Raid have filled me with do much cinema-going satisfaction this year that any disappointment from this flick doesn't really sting, I've noticed.

And like much of us, I obsess over my pop culture consumption.

OK, just saw it. 80% of this is nowhere near as bad as you made it out to be. That other 20%, though - phew. At least they spread it judiciously throughout. The incredible stupidity of the crew is the toughest to stomach, my least fave exchange being:

Captain Stringer Bell: "The whole thing is a giant WMD plant! It's going to kill everything!"
Religious zealot scientist: "But don't you want to go back?"

I laughed.

But you know, you folks making fun of the genetic component ... that subject was raised and explored in both Alien 3 and Alien 4, so no surprise they should try to tie it in again. I also think some of this film's WTF-ness (which I mostly followed) could have been explained with a bit more prologue of dottering David, perhaps exploring his motives a little bit, though clearly there was some barely explored battle for "daddy's" affections going on.

Only thing I'm at a total loss to is the being at the beginning, was he dropped off by that ship? Was he supposed to chug the goo? Was that a mistake? What was he up to?

(Film's answer: we will never know!)

A mystery at the beginning? Does this movie leave open the possibility of a sequel AND a prequel?

Honestly, I can't see why not. There's a lot of years that pass in the first few minutes.

That said, I hope the sequel is all "The Adventures of Dr. Noomi and Fassbender's Head."

Too much left for a sequel really. They should have answered a bit more. Assuming that opening dude was a Prometheus figure though.

There is absolutely no way to even guess what the being at the beginning was up to. Did he eat the goo on purpose? Was there a miscommunication? Was he dropped off or was that ship there to pick him up? We also have no idea if that is pre-humanity or not. Does it ever say when that early stuff is taking place? There is also a subtle hint later, from David, that the Christian doctor's dad didn't die of ebola but "ebola," ie some other virus that may or may not have been created by the being at the beginning,

But unanswered questions are neither here nor there, I say. I mean, we don't even know if Charlize is an android or not (maybe she herself doesn't know, a la Blade Runner!). The only problems I had with this movie were practical, that is, the utter stupidity of the people, the religious component, the fact that the Tom Hardy guy is such an asshole bro from minute one. That sort of stuff.

Vital interview:

http://www.movies.com/movie-news/ridley-scott-prometheus-interview/8232?wssac=164&wssaffid=news

RS: ... you have a sequence at the beginning of the film that is fundamentally creation. It’s a donation, in the sense that the weight and the construction of the DNA of those aliens is way beyond what we can possibly imagine …

Movies.com: That is our planet, right?

RS: No, it doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself.

If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.

I always think about how often we attribute what has happened to either our invention or memory. A lot of ideas evolve from past histories, but when you look so far back, you wonder, Really? Is there really a connection there?”

Then when I jump back, and you put yourself in a situation of a cave painting, you see that someone 32,000 years ago is showing me a little man sitting in the darkness, using a candle light that is fat from a creature he killed and ate. And in the darkness are two or three other family members whose body heat is warming the cave. But he has discovered that from a piece of this black, burnt stick, he has discovered that he can draw pictures on the wall.

In essence, you have the first level of emotion and a demonstration of entertainment, right? Because he’s drawing brilliantly on the God damn wall. Now, you put yourself into that context, it’s 100-times bigger than Edison. And people don’t go back to the basics and ask, “Holy shit, what gave him that knowledge, that jolt to not scribble on the wall but draw on it brilliantly?”

If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is Quest for Fire. That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic. And that got me sitting back on my ass thinking, “Damn! What a fundamentally massive idea.”

(Hmm, maybe that was linked upthread? Regardless ...)

Pretty sure that waterfall was the beautiful Gullfoss

http://venefica84.deviantart.com/art/Gullfoss-Iceland-270361485

I thought this movie was not much better or worse than an Avatar or a Gladiator or an Inception.

Yeah have been thinking of quality comparisons with Avatar. It's another film with pseudo profundity at its heart innit?
Also looks pretty good in 3d.

Prometheus is way better than Avatar imo. It looks a lot better, has some genuinely great moments, etc.

Yeah, this is better than "Avatar." "Avatar" left no questions that needed to be answered, and answered lots of questions no one asked. It was pretty self-contained and a little too tidy. "Prometheus" is an intriguing mess, which is far more entertaining to me.

"Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About"

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1

^^ otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJSayPfRmFc

The day of this strange birth just happens to be Christmas Day.

Yeah, this was pretty subtle in the film, what with all the talk of Christmas.

Why did the engineers wait thousands of years to destroy humanity? Why did it take visiting humans to wake them from their hypersleep to start up the death ships? Why did those holograph videos show them running scared and getting their heads chopped off by closing doors? What were they running from? Why was there an alien (as we know it) embedded in the wall? Where did those worms come from?

It's cool that the guy wrote a long post hammered all these square pegs into round holes, but he's basically as lost as any of us are. Personally, I'd like to think of the Engineers - where did the scientist even get the idea that they made us, anyway? - as victims of hubris, like they found this planet as a base station but didn't realize it was already overrun with cooties that cottoned to their black goo.

I think it'd be pretty ironic if this movie is sort of a mess not because of the religious stuff stuck in but because there was a bunch of religious stuff taken out. Seems like Ridley had been watching a lot of "Tree of Life" and "Cave of Forgotten Dreams."

I'd blame Lindelof for that, not Scott.

Entire scenes seemed pasted in from previous script drafts. Like the oh I can't get pregnant bit, or the old guy reveals at the end, which seemed to be payoffs of stuff that was to be already set-up.

Got way more outta this than Avatar, I will say.

Whoa at the parallel to the Annunciation

But the pregnant bit seemed to play a role, telegraphed though it may have been. The old guy reveal ... I have no idea what purpose that served. Again, wish there was an extra 20 or 30 minutes at the start, exploring the development of David, the nature of his programming, his relationship to Charlize (who is essentially his sister, whether she is a robot or not). It would have been more "2001"-like, a placid, odd, sterile start to something that gets grim and gooey.

director's cut

eek I am about to see this right now in ultra avx 3d!
Then I will read thread

here's a super-big shot of the ceiling mural that I couldn't see clearly in the theater

Trying to figure that one out...someone observing the opening of an egg/pod?

Anyway the viral nonsense continues:

http://www.projectprometheus.com/genesis/

http://www.whatis101112.com/

Latter one doubtless refers to Blu-Ray/DVD release.

so it turns out the space jockey is just a humanoid who happens to wear a helmet that makes him look like an elephant? Fuck this shit.

can't believe a bullshit cash-in of empty cash turned out to be bullshit

Hahaa
Well, at least it looked super cool...

It's too bad that hollywood hates writers so much