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

Demanding quality from science fiction is bizarre. Real sci fi fans embrace the shitness

It's this attitude that's given us Joss Wheedon, Lindelof and co.

whoa there buster

So when does this movie open again?

the last 20 mins of this were some crazy unexpectedly batshit Cthulhoid Hollywood filmmaking.

Which is why Del Toro said Mountains of Madness had to be scrapped, b/c it has a lot of the same plot

Avatar is dreadful. Far worse than this.

I'M GLAD THAT's SETTLED

Which is why Del Toro said Mountains of Madness had to be scrapped, b/c it has a lot of the same plot

yeah, the similarities really are striking. engineers = elder things; black goo = shoggoths; curious explorers, ancient ruins and heiroglyphics, angry gods all present and accounted for.

I like this:

http://m.hitfix.com/motion-captured/prometheus-second-look-digging-deep-into-spoilers-and-questions

http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/08/sam-strange-remembers-prometheus/

Once upon a time, there was a show called Lost. The show was really popular because it allowed people to enjoy hokey sci-fi conventions without feeling like nerds. Everything supposedly serviced a very human story elevated high above geeky crap like that. It pulled this off simply by averring that it was pulling it off. It also kept things vague enough that people would invent the show's integrity all by themselves. By the time characters were time traveling and drinking magic water right and left without abandon, it was far too late for people to call bullshit and walk away. Brilliant.

So I hired that Lost guy to write Prometheus. I figured it would go the same way. We'd get people to buy tickets on false promises of thrilling intellectual storytelling and then kind of abandon all that halfway through. It's too much work to make a great movie. But a great trailer is child's play. The masterstroke was calling it an Alien prequel and letting that pedigree do all the work for us. Again, brilliant.

Prometheus is about a ship called "Prometheus" that goes looking for sort of a literal Prometheus. In a really cool looking prologue, we see a muscular Space Albino drink Space Acid so that he falls apart into Earth's water supply, therefore creating humans. But not Chimps...

Demanding quality from science fiction is bizarre. Real sci fi fans embrace the shitness

― badg, Wednesday, June 13, 2012 10:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is exactly backwards.

Although maybe not, if you're positing that "science fiction" and "sci-fi" are two different things.

distinction between scifi and sf can just diaf, afaiac

SCIENTIFICTION 4EVER

skiffy

sigh-fi

Guys it's SyFy.

phil d. otm

under the right circumstances, i like crappy crapmovies as much as anyone, but i've been a science fiction fan all my life, and i have yet to "embrace the shitness" as my default approach to the genre. because i'm a fan, i want better than that.

all fiction is science fiction

The more I think/read about it, the more I think it's some sort of achievement that a two hour movie could have so many plot holes, loose ends, unanswered questions, unexplained motives, and even a character who may or may not be a robot (but probably isn't, though I'd like to believe she is, given that she's basically written like a robot are there are several indications she could be a robot to the extent that one crew member even asks her flat out if she is a robot, a question she does not answer, so she probably should have been written as a robot all along) and still be a fundamentally solid film in terms of direction, effects, etc. It's really kind of amazing.

It's messy, like real life. Ergo, this film is the secret triumph of Dogme 95.

Most movies, even good ones, are full of plot holes, loose ends, unanswered questions, unexplained motives.

Yeah, but not this many, and not this huge! I mean, there are reviews that are literally just perplexed litanies, from that Red Letter Media review to the Hitflix thing just above. None call the movie incompetent, because it is not. And yet, it's a total mess.

Usually if the script is this terrible, the film follows.

The more I think/read about it, the more I think it's some sort of achievement that a two hour movie could have so many plot holes, loose ends, unanswered questions, unexplained motives, and even a character who may or may not be a robot (but probably isn't, though I'd like to believe she is, given that she's basically written like a robot are there are several indications she could be a robot to the extent that one crew member even asks her flat out if she is a robot, a question she does not answer, so she probably should have been written as a robot all along) and still be a fundamentally solid film in terms of direction, effects, etc. It's really kind of amazing.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, June 14, 2012 10:15 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what really drives me in crazy are the people tying themselves in knots trying to interpolate some sort of profound meaning/reason for all the holes

i guess that was being a fan of LOST in a nutshell though :/

xpost -- How dare you criticize the life's work of Coil and Michael Gira.

haha, s1ocki so sadly otm

After Alien: "Hey, what was that Space Jockey thing, kind of makes you think"

After LOST-style mystery: "Here is my ten point conjecture about the meaning of this throw-away line meant to invoke occult ideas"

prometheus: a masterpiece of postmodern magical realism

also scifi and science fiction both for nerds and fanboys

adults read "speculative fiction"

"Let's speculate on the dull angst of dull people here in 2012."

"You are the new John Cheever."

*death*

haha i had never really thought about what a meaningless phrase that is

what if everyone in the world went blind all at once?!?

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/you-are-the-only-human-being-left-on-earth-not-in-graduate-school-a-post-apocalyptic-nightmare

kept waiting for zatoichi to show up and put everyone out of their misery, sorry jose

Heh, from that other thing above:

In the same way David from A.I. was programmed to love without actually understanding it, David from Prometheus was designed to be a shithead without understanding exactly how being a shithead works.

I think his contempt for humans was completely his own

what really drives me in crazy are the people tying themselves in knots trying to interpolate some sort of profound meaning/reason for all the holes

Seriously. I think that widely circulated Livejournal post is the worst offender of this.

My thing is that the holes and mistakes and laziness are far more glaring because stuff like the characters are fucked in the head and do deliberately stupid things.

Also what annoys the fuck out of me: people who ascribe all the naysayers as just being disappointed that this wasn't a more thickheadedly obvious set-up for Alien, as if we'd excuse all the bollocks for a final scene where a derelict crashlands on LV426, a chestburster pops out of the space jockey pilot, winks at the camera, then performs "Hello My Baby!" with high kicks off stage left.

I'm kind of annoyed that they did as much connecting as they did

cute baby proto-alien at the end was kind of cool, wish we saw it running through fields of grain all happy

I actually like how they didn't have that be a post-credits bit.

My wife and I sat through all the credits hoping there might be something that made any of the preceding action make any sense whatsoever. Alas.

Guys, this movie basically ends with Lisbeth Salander and Magneto's talking head in a bag flying off for exciting adventures in space. How could this have happened?

this movie basically ends with Lisbeth Salander and Magneto's talking head in a bag flying off for exciting adventures in space

Would watch. Did watch!

haha that makes it sound so much better

I have to say, her apologizing for zipping him into the bag and Fassbender's delivery of the line telling her it's OK was one of my favorite moments

me too. maybe because it was one of the precious few moments of actual humanity in the film.

despite (or because) one of the lines being delivered by a potentially psychopathic android.

I liked that bit, it reminded me of going bowling.

kind of feel like the android got a bad rap, half of what he was doing seemed to be the beginnings of a personality and the other half was just doing whatever horrible shit Weyland told him to

Like there was more Blade Runner stuff in this than Alien.

Which is fine. After all, they had to find new planets for the off-world colonies. And apparently there's a Weyland-Yutani logo in the phone booth in BR.

Also, just found this EW promo shot, which makes everything better:

http://www.ineedmyfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Charlize-Theron-Michael-Fassbender-Noomi-Rapace.jpg