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

sorry s1ocki, i always like reading you except when you are trying to harsh my vibe

s1ocki keep in mind that it is very very difficult in 2014 for any media object to attain the sort of iconic status that major media projects in the mid-1980s did

what? are you saying people don't quote movies lines and song lyrics and stuff anymore? if anything we live in a much more meme-ified culture!

sorry s1ocki, i always like reading you except when you are trying to harsh my vibe

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 12, 2014 12:41 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i consider this playful volleying and i hope you feel the same!

With the performances of Aliens, I wonder how much of it was the life experiences if the filmmakers. Ridley Scott talked about the success and look of Star Wars allowing him to make a movie about "truckers in space," so now you have a sequel made by an actual ex-trucker

I have poorly formed idea that I don't know is even true or not but

maybe the loosey-gooseyness of the first movie and the fun that the actors had with the character is more of an indication that ridley was more open to them doing that, same way Lucas was, because it's early in their career and they haven't been ridden into town as heroes with parades in their name and they legit don't know if what they're doing is even going to work

whereas 30 year on and their names are carved into mount rushmore and what they want is treated as gospel and maybe not even really questioned and THAT's why there's a sort of, lifelessness because the actors are filling the requirements of what's on paper and no-one's really asking them to bring any humanity to anything because it's assumed that everything's there on paper

idk

I'm totally talking out of my ass

i mean you can keep twisting yourself in knots interpreting the movie as like... a wry commentary on the ineptness of cave surveyors or something but at that point its almost fanfic

i dunno, it's not really fanfic if what is objectively presented in the movie is scientists being idiots--it's only natural to sorta accept that these scientists are idiots (or more charitably, reckless and naive) as a basic framework for the movie. there's not a single human character with anything approaching wisdom, caution, or humility

and yeah vegemitegrrl otm.

No, no, there's something there. With Star Wars, you had a cast and production crew who had nooooo problem just ignoring Lucas' under-direction style(Harrison Ford especially, to the point of explicitly telling the more fresh-faced Hamill to do the same).

Empire had a stronger director, and Lucas on the other side of the planet making this movie with Spielberg.

By the time of Jedi, Lucas is in full control and on-set a lot, plus going thru a divorce with the one person in Hollywood who could tell him him "no." Previous important people like Gary Kurtz had just gotten upset and quit.

i actually thought about this movie recently because i came across a discussion of a bit in aeschylus's "prometheus bound" where apparently (i haven't read it) prometheus claims that, in addition to everything else, he gave mankind the "capacity for blind hope as a way of forestalling doom."

i think for your reading to make sense, the movie would have to be operating in the mode of satire (which it clearly is not), or i guess be some sort of cautionary "ship of fools" fable, which it also doesn't really seem to be. i think the movie honestly believes these are the smartest scientists around and yet makes them do dumb things to advance the plot.

dumb scientists could totally work, but you'd need a cost-cutting weyland at the helm instead of the guy who outfits his ship like a luxury yacht.

well i certainly do admit there's a weird tension (possibly incoherence) in the movie in which it doesn't seem to know what it's about at times.

well i certainly do admit there's a weird tension (possibly incoherence) in the movie in which it doesn't seem to know what it's about at times.
--ryan

:: strokes chin ::

LINDELOF!!!

could certainly have used, right after mapper dude says he's lost, yaphet kotto rolling his eyes

Interesting talk abt suspension of disbelief upthread.

There were times when I thought this film believed in itself too much, and other times when it didn't believe in itself enough. Whereas perhaps a good fantasy film should do the opposite, not be too leaden and serious about itself, but also really believe in itself at the crucial times.

One of the things that perhaps Scott should have just 'believed in' being the simple symbolic power of the mysterious image of the navigator found dead in the boneship in Alien - that one scene tells a huge story in a flash: here's this obviously huge and powerful being, that has fallen. Scene could just have been left there, if Scott had 'believed' in it, but unfortunately he 'believed' it was possible to make a good film out of explaining it. Etc.

Actually Prometheus is sort of 'Scooby Doo ghost is actually an irritable carney performer' moment writ large isn't it.

i thought wakened Powder dude was satisfyingly violent and inscrutable. as i said before, i tht the greatest moment in the movie was when old millionaire finally comes face to face with the creature he thinks can grant him eternal life or whatever and the alien just fucking houses him

What was the deal with the giant head sculpture in the biological containment room place? And the mural on the ceiling that was changing?

I have lots of questions about this movie.

the giant head sculpture was a giant head

the mural on the ceiling changed

~cool depth to the movie~

i thought wakened Powder dude was satisfyingly violent and inscrutable. as i said before, i tht the greatest moment in the movie was when old millionaire finally comes face to face with the creature he thinks can grant him eternal life or whatever and the alien just fucking houses him

The first sequence was great, everything inbetween was ridiculous. If only they would have kept to 'mostly wordless/semi-abstract/violent/inscrutable' it would have been a pretty winning movie. But really Lindelof's involvement doomed it no matter what.

Don't know if this is really the best thread for this but HR Giger has died, apparently from injuries sustained during a fall.

H.R. Giger ist tot
Mit seinen düsteren Skulpturen und Möbeln erlangte er Berühmtheit: Der Schweizer Künstler H.R. Giger ist gestorben.

RIP

:(

For some reason I was skimming through the thread and my favourite thing was this Super Furry Animals callout:

important questions to be answered in prometheus sequel

1) are there space jockey women

2) do they have hair

― the late great, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 02:54 (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jolly white giant as a giger/brothers quay stop-motion puppet instead of what we got was another missed opportunity.

http://www.cpnas.org/events/daser-051514.html

I still haven't seen the movie, and I can't vouch for the quality of the event either, but this is happening in DC on Thursday.

Prometheus woulda been a great movie if midway thru they had cut to The Last Starfighter

This makes me think there's potential in a Turkish Star Wars version of Prometheus

Why did David the android infect the dude scientist with the alien disease? Was that ever explained?

oh man if you missed that the the entire movie made no sense whatsoever!

wish it was like BATS and he got to proclaim, when asked why he would betray everybdoy and create these horrible monsters, ''I'm a robot. It's what we do.''

I saw that most recent Liam Neeson movie, the one on the plane, and after this long, convoluted, complicated, pretty much impossible bad guy scheme plays out, and the bad guy is revealed, the bad guy goes on a rant that ends with the actual words "And it was so easy!" And yet the bad guy never explains how the bad guy did any of the near-impossible things the bad guy did. More movies should be that wave-the-hand audacious. Maybe this one wanted to be. Because it's about the questions, maaaan, not the answers. It's about making you think.

Man, this movie must be one of the most impressively and confidently filmed pieces of shit ever. They should have let the CGI team have a crack at the script.

Otm

Great looking and sounding and reasonably well cast and performed, great setup and goodwill towards it, great trailer, stinking piece of crap throw shit at a wall story

Haha wow this movie really was insanely stupid

..ly awesome

I love how the magestic engineers just decide to whop ass when meeting the humans

sequel??

Yeah does look like it intended to set itself up for the further adventures of kickass female archaeologist and headless android in space looking to teach 'God' a lesson.

they could also do a further adventures of the lil first alien baby

God this movie makes me so angry every time I think about it. The thing in the top picture is not a big bald guy in a fucking spacesuit like in the bottom picture, fuck you Lindelof and Scott 4ever.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111208192152/avp/images/2/26/SpaceJockey.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UyheCMRhcxo/T9LAAvMAc4I/AAAAAAAAFxM/TGzY03M3iNY/s1600/Prometheus+alien+in+space+suit+helmet+88015_gal.png.jpg

Hey, elephant-head spacesuit fashions change, man.

yeah that part in Alien is really good and weird. mysterious. another mystery ruined by revelation

in the sequel, on the engineer home planet, they explain that humanity (you) are a tangent to their own ego (I)
(You) Tan (I)
yutani
Weiland-Yutani

Also, we('re) on an i(s)land... like metaphorically or something.

Medieval diving suit design:

http://i.imgur.com/1qWB8.jpg http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111208192152/avp/images/2/26/SpaceJockey.jpg

they could also do a further adventures of the lil first alien baby

― da croupier, Monday, July 21, 2014 12:56 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yes

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

http://i.imgur.com/OgD57dF.jpg

<3

that's better than the whole movie