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

as this particular conception of the dead-god-in-a-ship imagery I would say that no, there is no one else that would have done it the way Kirby did, dude was unique and one-of-a-kind.

I'd second that. Love Kirby. Not knowing much about him at this level, I'd also hazard a guess that he was the kind of old-school illustrator who really did that stuff how-to-draw books tell you to do - collecting National Geographic and museum catalogs and shit for reference imagery. If it has a Von Daniken quality, it's probably because Kirby spent some time studying and sketching Egyptian and Mesoamerican art - but again, just speculating.

speculations probably correct afaik. I do recall reading he kept stacks of stuff like Popular Mechanics and Nat'l Geo by his drawing board, and he pretty obviously used stuff like that for his collage work.

important find imo!

his reference material/collage work is a know thing, he was just less-known for collage than Steranko, etc due to his depth of work

I think Kirby was an army map maker during WWII. Always felt that informed him and the crazy-geometricness somehow. I love Kirby conspiracy theories about space gnosis/cosmic ascension. My fave is his adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey - the monthly series version is completely bonkers.

Kirby was a visionary, no doubt. Especially evident when he was left to writing and drawing (and editing!) his own work. I wouldn't be surprised if his space jockey idea was - erm - jacked by H'Wood. O'Bannon, Scott, et al were big comics fans.

From the Grantland interview with the dudes who did "The Guest:"

Speaking of underappreciated: Adam, you have to make your case for Prometheus, a movie that most people hate, but a small minority really enjoy. Why does it do it for you?

Wingard: Because it’s a massive, epic kind of disaster of a movie. It doesn’t make any sense really, it’s all over the place, but there’s a genuine stylization to the film that I’ve never seen before. It’s one of the best-looking movies that’s come out in the last 30 years. The cinematography’s incredible, the sets are incredible. I’m a sucker for sci-fi films, but on top of that I absolutely just love Michael Fassbender’s character in it. If he wasn’t in that film, the movie would be kind of a disaster because those other characters don’t really hold up, you know? But he’s an iconic character. I love so-called movies that are bad movies, but Prometheus is one of those movies that people are gonna come back around on in 20 years. There’s gonna be midnight screenings of that thing. People were too hard on it because they wanted Alien and it’s not Alien. I was disappointed when I first saw it, but then when I realized that after the screening we had a two-hour discussion of the film, just trying to figure out how the creatures in that film work. Like the liquid goes into your glass and then you have sex with somebody, and then they have an alien and you melt and turn into a zombie person. We were just trying to figure out what is going on in this movie. I kept watching it in the theater — I ended up watching it like three times — and each time I went with a different group of people, and each time it resulted in another two-hour conversation. I was like, “This never happens,” and that’s why I think this movie’s brilliant. It really is on its own level.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/the-guest-adam-wingard-simon-barrett-dan-stevens-halloween-the-terminator-1980s-movies/

Idk if incoherency is a virtue in and of itself

Incoherence even

So this guy's standards for greatness is whether people can argue for hours about something that made no sense and had no thought put into it? And he's not on ILX?

Somebody dispense an invitation on a vellum scroll to him at once!

Not knowing much about him at this level, I'd also hazard a guess that he was the kind of old-school illustrator who really did that stuff how-to-draw books tell you to do - collecting National Geographic and museum catalogs and shit for reference imagery.

Most newspaper strip and comic book artists would accumulate what they commonly called a 'Swipe File' - ie visual reference for all kinds of objects, places, costumes etc. Wally Wood was meant to have a particularly impressive Swipe File. And Kirby was known to take his collages from science mags and the like. He was also very definitely a commercial artist, and his work often riffed on popular trends (ie Planet of the Apes in Kamandi, James Bond movies in Nick Fury) - so yeah, the Eternals was definitely Kirby's response to Chariot of the Gods, filtered through his own cosmic imagination.

By the time of the Eternals, Kirby had also been exposed to the work of the French comics artist Phillipe Druillet, who Dan O'Bannon would've known from working on Jodorowsky's Dune. So I think Kirby was also responding to that Metal Hurlant-style of cosmic excess, and that possibly accounts for some of the Alien-vibe that that Eternals spread gives off (although equally, I'm sure someone like Moebius was familiar with Kirby's work by the time he came to work on Alien). Separating all this out is interesting, but difficult.

his reference material/collage work is a know thing, he was just less-known for collage than Steranko, etc due to his depth of work

Well Steranko's early style is basically Kirby + Pop Art. Kirby laid out all of Steranko's early Marvel work, and by the time they worked together on Nick Fury, Kirby had already been using collaged material extensively in the pages of Fantastic Four. So I think Steranko's use of collage was almost certainly directed by Kirby's prior example. Kirby of course based the character of Mister Miracle partly on Steranko, so I don't think there was any hostility on Jack's part towards Steranko running with/expanding on his bag of tricks.

It's been years since I've read von Däniken, but IIRC one of his books has a piece of South American indigenous art where a god is sitting inside a chariot (which Däniken of course interprets as an alien astronaut inside a spaceship), and the composition of the pic is similar to Giger's Space Jockey and the Kirby panel above. So maybe both Kirby and Giger were simply inspired by that instead of Giger copying Kirby?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N-Tpad1T3hw/UwFWWBNN70I/AAAAAAAAKbk/EcKP3xqIJWk/s1600/Pacal.jpg

I love so-called movies that are bad

That guy is how you say an idiot

No alien/xenomorph in P2, says Ridders:

"The beast is done. Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It's very hard to repeat that. I just happen to be the one who forced it through because they said it's obscene. They didn't want to do it, and I said I want to do it, it's fantastic".
"After four, I think it wears out a little bit. There's only so much snarling you can do. I think you've got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we've found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start".

Great post, Ward Fowler, thanks.

Not surprised that a director fond of unpredictable, ambiguous tones would love movies that show massive ambition and complete incompetence at the same time

Yeah, arguing about a movie that makes no sense for two hours is a low bar for its merit. I'd like to think most of this thread is so-called schadenfreude.

someone said "hey Adam talk about why you like Prometheus" and he did, its not like he wrote an article headlined Why Everything You Thought About Prometheus Is Wrong

is it not possible to imagine someone enjoying the style and ambience of a movie that does not make sense?

every generation gets the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY it deserves

is it not possible to imagine someone enjoying the style and ambience of a movie that does not make sense?

a question for the Tarkovsky fans

Or fans of a lot of art, literature, movies and music of the past hundred years plus.

Thing is the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs didn't have chariots

OR DID THEY

They didn't, but their gods did. Little known fact.

I thought it was frequently a beautiful-looking movie, but I still didn't like it

I think the thing with this movie is that there are moments where there is a better film waiting to chestburst out of it (sorry) but it never really happens so there's a frustration/fascination level with it.

Alex Jones weighing in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njHc5nnPZYE

My earlier post got eaten but yeah, Chariots of the Gods was all over the 70s, wasn't it? To the point of Glen Larson reffing it in the original BSG

I still think the line "Damn it, just give me a space abortion!" should have been in the film

"I'm sorry, you have to wait 72 space hours and get a space sonogram."

;_;

A. J. is the worst but I have to say, an issue of LIFE from the '60s is a pretty dope prop

how excited are the prometheus lovers on this thread for this?? http://thedissolve.com/news/3822-ridley-scott-to-executive-produce-a-2001-a-space-o/

Ridley Scott to nod in the general direction of Syfy mini-series

Scott's also an EP on a miniseries based on a Bill O'Reilly book that starts next week

do people usually get excited about someone executive producing something? especially someone who has executive produced like 10 things a year for the last 10 years?

-a lover of promethus

Those later Clarke books aren't exactly great.

Ridley Scott on Prometheus 2:

“it’s fresh” and “getting away from gods and dragons and shit. If I see one more dragon I’m going to shoot myself. Stop the dragons.” Rather than a dragon, Scott describes his original Alien as “the definitive dragon and he’s a motherf . . ker. The alien’s real which is why it’s probably one of the scariest monsters in film history,” Scott says. “So with Prometheus 2 what I’m trying to do is reintroduce a fresher form of alien in the third act.” The Prometheus “baby” alien was, he concedes, “awfully close to the alien” that tormented Sigourney Weaver. His next one promises to be very different.

http://www.scified.com/site/prometheusmovies/ridley-scott-says-prometheus-2-gets-away-from-gods-and-dragons

...dragons?

I thought Ridley Scott was just having a senior moment until I looked at the top grossing films of the year:

1. Transformers: Age of Dragons
2. Draconians of the Galaxy
3. Maleficent the Dragon
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past (and Dragons)
5. Captain Dragon: The Winter Dragon
6. The Amazing Spider-Dragon 2
7. Dawn of the Dragon of the Dragons
8. How to Train Your Dragon 2
9. Godzilla (A Dragon)
10. Rio 2: DRAGONS

well, it's true that promethus did drag on

of the films he's directed in recent years, The Counselor was mostly dragons

Man, Ridley-speak is hard to parse sometimes

I reckon he means generic movie beasts. Maybe the next alien is fluffy.

Is he telling us the OST will be by Imagine Dragons?

"will noomi ridley of this somnolent Scott" was p fuckin ace imo

Someone should remake "Prometheus."