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

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

and avp was, until then, the worst thing ot happen to the alien universe

actually, its arguable whether avp or alien ressurection's band of cheeky gauls was worse

i'll grant you lance henriksen was a superior weyland, and looked more convincing as a gaunt specter of death.

This is all going to end with s1ocki reenacting Dennis Hopper's breakdown in The Last Movie.

well there's sci-fi where the fi overshadows the sci, like star wars or other space operas, then there are things like star trek that are more about exploration, the future as a new reality to be understood, what new species tell us about humanity etc. alien is a haunted house movie where the house is a spaceship, aliens is a war movie where the battlefield is a planet, alien3 is a prison movie etc...

xps

I still don't know wtf alien resurrection is, if you figure it out please write

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."

Actually, this has been kicking around the alien abduction branch of UFO conspiracy theory for awhile. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

a french farce xp

la cage aux xenomorph

They open up the pod, Nathan Lane steps out...

"IT'S HUGE WHITE AND TERRIFYING, RUN."

I still don't know wtf alien resurrection is, if you figure it out please write

Alien Resurrection is an 8-page story from a 1979 issue of Heavy Metal magazine - only it hasn't been translated from the original French.

there ya go.

lance henriksen was in an Aliens movie!!! I wish he had been in more movies. I've only watched the first two Aliens and this one ,but reading this thread has made me want to see them all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zCbtPL_Kng
"weyland yutani... bought out by WAL-MART" kind of sums up alien resurrection

I see prometheus on the more speculative end of sci-fi which is the genre's sweet spot imo... and speculative works tend to be less concerned with rational character behavior and narrative consistency

yet this is somehow still otm:

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

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 12, 2012 3:54 PM (20 minutes ago)

re: lance henriksen -- he was in almost as many alien movies as sigourney weaver! RIP BISHOP

nothing to do w/ this movie (haven't seen) but, i'd love to see a movie about aliens that flips the usual comment on human militarism (do we try to talk to them or do we fight them) -- make the aliens factional in that way.

what

I guess I'll be watching all of them soon, haven't seen Aliens 2 since it came out, and only remember there being a little girl hiding, and military type men.

I feel like I should mention PREDATORS again so there it is

goole idgi can you unpack yr science faction scenario

plenty of alien movies are like this:

1. humans encounter aliens (accidentally, whatev)
2. mutual incomprehension = potential for violence
3. humans are divided on question: try to comprehend or opt for violence quickly

most alien movies solve this problem by making the aliens malevolent. i'm saying, add 4. the aliens are divided by that exact question themselves

aliens are ppl too

there was an alien comic where the android wasn't a humanoid but built in the shape of an alien so it could observe their behavior, but it was still basically the servant to the human scientists so they had scenes with this alienbot serving the science crew tea and wearing a baseball cap -- i think the alienbot got stockholm syndrome or something and started mauling the scientists. does that qualify?

it's p curious that in alien/monster stories it's generally only humans that have any politics

i guess the big trend of werewolf/vampire hidden society shit cuts against this

maybe this could be a sequel for "to serve man", detailing the burgeoning movement of vegetarian aliens, they listen to black metal, argue with the ones advocating for free range humans, etc

nothing to do w/ this movie (haven't seen) but, i'd love to see a movie about aliens that flips the usual comment on human militarism (do we try to talk to them or do we fight them) -- make the aliens factional in that way.

― there is no dana, only (goole), Friday, October 12, 2012 3:40 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not "aliens" per se but battlestar galactica had a ton of this

the newer one