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

don't hate, appreciate

there's room for love for both of those films, kids

or to not love either of them!

Tracer watches movies the way I do, sit back and enjoy!

it was a nice touch when the medipod wouldn't perform an operation on a woman, it musta been designed by congress

― space dokken (Edward III), Friday, October 12, 2012 12:05 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wish they had actually made a point with that, could have been pretty dark satire, as such it was just another dumb thing that happened

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Friday, October 12, 2012 12:24 PM (24 minutes ago)

I dunno, I didn't really need it spelled out, alien is a femme-centric series that gets mileage out of the trauma of motherhood and birth so the wry critique seems built in.

tho I agree cabin in the woods was quite the achievement, making 90s style meta horror as boring as it was in the 90s is not easy

smoking weed in the middle of an alien hazmat dumping ground is a really bad idea

you deal with being in an alien hazmat dumping ground your way, I'll deal with it in mine

sorry but I just saw that classic of modern horror a couple weeks ago and I want my dollar back

when i was watching the movie i assumed he told everybody in the room something like "there's a crazy injured woman running around, don't worry about her, she's not dangerous, i'll handle her. just ignore her. everything is going to be fine."

To which any right thinking persons response would be "jesus h christ what the fuck are you for real what the hell is going on holy shit"

it was a nice touch when the medipod wouldn't perform an operation on a woman, it musta been designed by congress

― space dokken (Edward III), Friday, October 12, 2012 12:05 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wish they had actually made a point with that, could have been pretty dark satire, as such it was just another dumb thing that happened

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Friday, October 12, 2012 12:24 PM (24 minutes ago)

specifically because they made such a big deal about it being Charlize's personal property--why would she have a medipod that she couldn't use?

because it was for the old dude duh

Haha, that was like THE CLEAREST THING IN THE MOVIE (ooooh, mystery, why is the woman's medipod set to BOYZ ONLY) and Scott apparently shit the bed with it.

tho I agree cabin in the woods was quite the achievement, making 90s style meta horror as boring as it was in the 90s is not easy

― space dokken (Edward III), Friday, October 12, 2012 2:09 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nice try, prometheus still sucks and now you are WRONG TWICE

i kinda love this thread for how far apart the pro and con contingents are.

conmetheus

prometheus is tearing this board apart

If I could press a button to make Prometheus completely cease to exist...

i am looking forward to the blu-ray because while i loved it in the theater lord knows i am not the best at following plots--maybe i'll actually notice the problems others see.

i dunno dude it's not like we're talking about subtle incongruencies here

lol

I bought the ultra-special-version on disc earlier this week (haven't opened yet) and the cashier asked, "I don't even know what this one is about, what is it?"

"Well, have you seen Alien? It's kind of in that line, but I'd really recommend seeing that. I really think part of this movie was bad and I am kind of a glutton for punishment so I'm going to probably sit through all of this"

specifically because they made such a big deal about it being Charlize's personal property--why would she have a medipod that she couldn't use?

― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Friday, October 12, 2012 11:26 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because it was for the old dude duh

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, October 12, 2012 11:28 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha, that was like THE CLEAREST THING IN THE MOVIE (ooooh, mystery, why is the woman's medipod set to BOYZ ONLY) and Scott apparently shit the bed with it.

OK I feel pretty dumb. Mission accomplished, Prometheus!

"there's a crazy injured woman running around, don't worry about her, she's not dangerous, i'll handle her. just ignore her. everything is going to be fine."

To which any right thinking persons response would be "jesus h christ what the fuck are you for real what the hell is going on holy shit"

well on a NORMAL mission sure but this is hot on the heels of a decapitated alien face coming back to life and then exploding, among other things; bloody bandage girl is kind of small potatoes in a world where your crewmates' faces have melted off and become impervious to bullets

i mean seriously i did not question that scene at all! i know that i get swept along by movies more than most, though. for instance i NEVER guess twists, even the most obvious ones

still not real clear on the black goo though. is it a bioweapon? or is it some kind of life-genesis creation juice? i guess both? it started as the latter, maybe, then they realised it couldn't be controlled, would always hyper-evolve into something pitiless and supreme, which is why they stored it in the equivalent of a bunker for radioactive waste. and i guess the "invitation" was from the days when they still thought it was good? i like the idea that the "invitation" was just totally misconstrued, it was actually a warning, like they're pointing at this one particular star system and saying "NEVER go here, NEVER" and the prehistoric scribes are nodding and writing down "ALWAYS go here, ALWAYS"

so why does the re-woken engineer wake up and want to kill them

nothing in this movie makes sense unless you make up fanfic explanations for like 70% of the shit that happens

did you guys watch that x-files movie fight the future? that had some black goo stuff as well, and also indeterminately motived aliens.

have you ever woken me up from a nap? I kill people, too

yeah totally, i don't understand this desire for rigorous logic all the time, especially when applied to an ALIEN SPECIES?? why can't the engineer just be PISSED OFF at the fact ALL HIS FRIENDS ARE DEAD and these puny humans are begging for impossible shit and getting in his way? or whatever the engineer version of "pissed off" is, some german-style portmanteau that encapsulates a feeling we don't even have a phrase for

like, that's not making shit up to explain things, that's just the surface-level reading of that scene, and like, that's totally enough? ANGRY ALIEN is ANGRY

your explanation for all this stuff seems to just recount what literally happened in each scene in all caps

to be fair, that is what the script was

ENGINEER WAKES UP AND IS _PISSED_

xxpost because the whole movie encourages you to ask questions about these engineers, who they are, what makes them tick, and then they're just stupid lumbering grunting guys....i appreciate that they deny clean answers but it's just dopey to go "we're asking deep serious questions" "oh all the enormous plot holes are because it's a cheesy horror movie and that's what the stupid not-deep, not-serious characters in cheesy horror movies do"....this didn't offend me mind you, it was just dumb

if this was just a balls to the wall action movie with some unexplained stuff i'd let most of it go but its called PROMETHEUS and very pompously claims to be ABOUT STUFF and it has characters making big stupid lost-like pronouncements about FAITH so give me a break. also it has a scientist who finds the most incredible find in human history and then goes off and sulks because there wasnt a maitre d' to greet him in the first building he went into

Is Meredith Vickers human? Is she a cyborg like David? Is she really Weyland's daughter?

wtf were you watching? she's obv weyland's daughter and obv hates david because weyland loves him more. she's only robotic insofar as she's emulating the object of her dad's affection

the movie stands up well to multiple viewings and I got more out of it each time, one example being vickers becoming a more sympathetic character. she's the most like ripley - her brittle, officious manner a byproduct of operating in male-dominated fields, with the extra whammy of her boss and family structure reinforcing her second class status. her dalliance w/ janek was humanizing, echoing ripley's relationship w/ newt. vickers' two-dimensional aloof authority is made complicated by her sexual agency, whereas ripley reconciles motherly instincts with her badass toughness.

Why do they have Vickers go through the trouble of escaping the ship at the end just to have her die two minutes later?

OUR TAKE: So they could have two extra minutes of Charlize in the film

MY TAKE: i dunno, why go through the trouble of clambering up a ravine after a car accident only to be run over by a truck? cause life fuckin sucks sometimes, especially when you're an unsympathetic corporate harpie in a sci-fi movie

I was less bothered by the rationale here than the fact that she gets squished at all. I would've preferred an ending where vickers + shaw blast off together like thelma + louise in a flying ford thunderbird w/ brad pitt's head in a bag.

Why does the Engineer want to kill the humans?

OUR TAKE: That's the question the whole film hinges on, isn't it? The film goes out of its way to never give the Engineers any articulated motives, so all we can do is watch what they do and listen to the few clues that are dropped in the film's dialogue, all of which is still just speculation.

...

The last exchange between Weyland and David as they both lay broken on the floor of the chamber sounds significant in the film...

Weyland: There's… nothing.

David: I know. Have a good journey, Mr. Weyland.

… but the entire film is full of these cryptic pseudo-heavy exchanges that sounds good without actually saying anything.

MY TAKE: this is cryptic?? weyland like the other humans is terrified of what happens after death, wants there to be a meaning to it all, and david is just smugly above all that shit, cause he's a psycho robot. as far as why engineers want to kill the humans well.. that's right, we are never told explicitly. oh fucking noes!?!!

I liked the no afterlife 4 u zinger, there's nothing heavy about it, just reinforces the folly-of-man theme this movie jams on (it reminded me of gielgud's death scene in caligula, and the end of martyrs).

something I picked up on 2nd viewing is the engineer at the end is mutated, he's got the black rippling on his neck when compared with the engineer shown in the beginning, so that explains his aggressiveness, and also why he goes after shaw. not to get all extra-textual perception but one of the deleted scenes has an extended exchange between the engineer/david/weyland.

There appears to be a minimum of three ships on the planet in the first longshot we see. One is destroyed and crashes. That's the ship (we think) that's explored in "Alien." The second takes Shaw and David off the planet. Why wouldn't the terraformers discover the third ship in "Aliens" let alone "Alien"?

i swear to god you need so much help

we're getting deep into the dork forest here but the planet in alien/aliens is LV-426, this one is LV-223

Why do Weyland, Vickers and their staff not react at all to a bloody Shaw coming into their quarters?

OUR TAKE: This is the beginning of a whole stretch of film where no one behaves the way we'd expect people to behave faced with these circumstances. Yes, it's a big deal that they're waking up Weyland, but when a half-nude woman covered in blood with a fresh surgical incision comes stumbling into a room, you would expect people to react. Nothing. Not even the slightest hint that this might be out of the ordinary.

see I dug the surreal tone of this scene, david the christ washing his father's feet while the bloody swaddled shaw ranted at them. I dunno maybe you need catholic school upbringing to fully appreciate it.

Are Fifield and Milburn the stupidest scientists ever? Why would they go back to the one room that an alien was killed in?

this was the most baffling and ridiculous character motivation in the entire film, how a guy goes from scared shitless to sticking his meathook in an alien vagina-viper's face. I like the fifield got him high theory, and supposedly there's a deleted scene that transitions this better.

I guess forks was right

i kinda liked the engineer just killing people, and to me it dovetailed well with the faith stuff, this idea that maybe well come across the super intelligence that created us and actually it wont be benevolent and fatherly or motherly, itll be incomprehensible and violent

just dumb enough, imo

it was totally a balls-to-the-wall action movie, what the hell?? of course the humans posed some dopey questions, wouldn't you on a mission like that? and in the end the only question that needs answering, as in all the other alien movies, is how the fuck are we going to get out of here

so why does the re-woken engineer wake up and want to kill them

nothing in this movie makes sense unless you make up fanfic explanations for like 70% of the shit that happens

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Friday, October 12, 2012 3:33 PM (18 minutes ago)

repeating myself here but that engineer was visibly mutated - something I didn't catch the first time I saw it. there's a lot going on in prometheus and a second viewing helps. I agree there's some stupid shit scott should've fixed, especially when he's asking the audience to connect the dots in several instances, but I'm willing to look past the imperfections cause I enjoyed its daffy bigness.

i kinda liked the engineer just killing people, and to me it dovetailed well with the faith stuff, this idea that maybe well come across the super intelligence that created us and actually it wont be benevolent and fatherly or motherly, itll be incomprehensible and violent

exactly, and this is precisely what i got such a kick out of. on the "fanfic" angle i also agree there's a LOT (too much) unexplained but i dunno im comfortable with that. and not sure what Scott's pretentions about "big questions" has to do with the actual enjoyment provided by watching the movie.

I mean it was so laughable I was laughing when I first saw it but I was never bored, and I prefer wacky sci-fi where the joints don't align over a finely tuned narrative machine like avatar where all my questions are answered and yawn

plus there are things in prometheus I enjoy mulling over - like how david, the robot w/ no emotion shows more wonder at what he's discovering than all the humans combined, especially when compared with the petulant holloway - again, something that didn't occur to me on first viewing

xp

incomprehensible and violent? truly they are the gods of our fathers

did you guys ever see Pandorum, is this better or worse?

frankly, the notion that humans are accidental by-product of a bio-weapon created by a super-intelligent race that looks on us as something to be exterminated (ie, like Aliens) strikes me as kind of a unique answer to "big questions."

it occurs to me that prometheus is the first real sci-fi movie in the alien series

What, because having space bases and killer aliens on them isn't science fiction?

Ripped from today's headlines.

didn't AVP answer the question that we and aliens both were created by predators for hunting?

lol you guys are tying yourselves in knots

AVP >>>>>>>> prometheus