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

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

I don't think David is evil so much as "curious."

Tho I think it's funny that both our creations and our creators have contempt for us in the movie.

not to mention the film's creators

Ooooh snAP!

A friend on FB:

So the problem with Prometheus is that it was a decent film that could've been wonderful had it not fallen into science fiction traps like flat characters who only exist to service the plot and unscientific (yet plausible) premises that provide succor for creationists? I take it these people despise Butler's early Patternist novels as well?

...

Because I know you're always talking about those novels, s1ocki.

If you want to tell an interesting story about humans, engineers, xenomorphs and androids, you start with the parallels between the first two and the last two. humans and engineers are creators of terrible things. any other weapon created by either race pales in comparison to the potential of the xenomorph or the android.

You should, perhaps, actually compose a fucking story where an outbreak of the parasitic xenomorph species is pitted directly against the terrifying cleverness and fearlessness of a single android. that could be interesting above and beyond the cinematographical future-gothic playfair excess that has typified the Alien whatchamasaga to date.

You might, if you gave a shit, consider the possibility that humans resemble a god figure admired by a species that do not resemble humans - say if the engineers created humans in the image of "god" and as such we ourselves are simulacra, like our own androids. You might bother to explore this concept in a couple of dialogues such as those that take place in any given wachowskis movie (speed racer even has one. for fuck's sake!)

You could even use one of such dialogues to explore the need to create extraordinary, self-directing weapons - and you could let the audience revel in the irony of how "our" androids are not so different from the space jockeys' monster race. You could even spin a pretty healthy narrative about how a creator can lose control of their own creation - and throw a few loose ends out there with implications about who created who (back to the whole "god looks like us, god made space jockeys, space jockeys made us in the image of their god" thing).

Or you could make this film. Hey, we all gotta get paid and even the rich and established have deadlines. For my part, let me know when I can see it for free (legally).

btw I looked under the formatting help for how to mark up my post as "pompous" but there wasn't one so you will all just have to suck it.

summary, if I may:

the second most interesting contrast available in the alien mythos is between the space jockeys and weyland-yutani et al. only one of these allows for human interest storylines, so ok, we'll go with that.

the most interesting contrast is between the androids and the xenomorphs. this narrative doesn't really allow for humanity at all, except via the magic of bullshit, so ok, that can take the back burner.

to me, the absolutely most fascinating question available - and presented, in this film, but never explored - is who created who and for what purpose. I love the concept of intelligent design in science fiction. I think it's one of the reasons sci-fi succeeds, because it's not afraid to talk about who made Jehovah (ok, frankly, other types of genre lit probably aren't afraid either, they're just more concerned with shooting, stabbing and/or fucking, which is fine and perhaps healthier overall). If we think we were created by something else, why wouldn't that something else believe the same? Would they try to re-create their creator? Having tried and being disappointed, would they also feel the need to hit delete, many times, as hard as possible, cursing all the way?