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

looks like the aliens came from humans infected with a virus, which is an interesting wrinkle if that's where they went with it.

unfortunately it seems like the grubby "used future" set design got lost somewhere, this looks like it takes place 3000 years *after* the first alien.

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:56 PM (2 months ago)

hey I called this one! kinda sorta. and the fancy spaceship was understandable considering how many top weyland brass were on it.

While I don't doubt there will be lots of retconned silliness in this flick, I'm pretty sure that the "aliens came from humans infected with a virus" scenario won't be part of that. For starters, this mural http://i.imgur.com/UL3mC.jpg seen at 1:37 in the trailer, pretty much makes it clear that the aliens have been around for a while before the events of the movie.

My guess is that the "space jockeys" are a race of bioengineers of some sort and the aliens are one of many bioweapons or creations of theirs (those little worm things in the trailer are probably another).

― Conmetheus (latebloomer), Sunday, March 18, 2012 7:50 PM (2 hours ago)

maybe that mural was a failed experiment and it took the ruthless spirit of humans for the space jockey bioengineers to finally perfect their killing machine!

― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:02 PM (2 months ago)

lol this turned out to be true

latebloomer sounds like we had the exact same reaction.

i know!

There is definitely one of the same species seen for about a minute towards the end.

definitely not, unless the dog alien from 3 and the turd alien from 4 are also the same 'species'. but idk how you would classify a creature who changes with every host.

Not impressed - http://sickmouthy.com/2012/06/08/prometheus/

In ancient times...
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people... the space jockeys

No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains

trying to remember, not having watched Alien through for a while, but the creature that bursts rather phallically out of John Hurt does so in its own time doesn't it? It hasn't had something inducing it to emerge, beyond plot.
It then turns to the camera grins and disappears into the ship to grow to full size, which takes some time.
From the time passing in Prometheus it looks like the fully grown form emerges in next to no time from the admittedly larger body it's been born through. Can't really remember the sequence and why I'm thinking it seems like very little time has passed, but it does seem like it's happened faster.

Is it to be read or over-read that the alien needs a larger space to grow in plus more to feed on. If the DNA is the same between space jockey and human then the only other factor is that there's more supply and that the space jockey isn't moving around.

Also what possesses Fifield? If that is supposed to be the alien or whatever why would the same thing allow a host/feeding supply like John Hurt to become mobile again? I mean come come, one must expect logic to prevail and the classic version of the story to be retrofit to fit all action sequences from this thing mustn't one?

also is the other phallic worm thing that is in the temple related to the most well known alien species or a prototype of it or something?

So much is unexplained. It's like the inverse of dramatic irony; neither characters nor audience, nor, seemingly, director, writer, or producer, seem to have a fucking clue why anything is happening. It all just happens because "it'd be cool to have this happen!" No internal logic.

“Let’s have a giant worm force itself down someone’s throat again and again!”
“Let’s have a giant starfish monster with a vagina-like maw...
“Let’s have an entire planet be a bio-chemical warfare laboratory breeding some nasty bio-weapon which may or may not turn out to be the Giger-alien!”

these are perfectly serviceable ideas imo, the bio-weapon thing was a decent direction to jump off from the first film, and giant vagina starfish monsters, yeah why not. it's the giant godlike aliens and exploring our own bullshit origins that really doomed this.

Any idea or couple of ideas on their own would be fine, is my point - but Scott let Lindeloff jam ALL of them in.

With the DNA, although they are using the term 'exact match', I think they mean a very close match to suggest a common ancestor, right? Aren't humans and dogs about 85% shared DNA, or 99.9% with chimps for example.

It's pretty unbelievable to me that a scientist would leave any room for ambiguity in a statement like that.

what is dna match between different breeds of dog?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_dogbreeds.html

It's complex, but it's not 100% that's for sure; we can analyse to this level now, in another seventy years...? I've worked with scientists and it's a point of pride to be precise. It's a very minor thing in the film, but it'd have been much better, and more dramatic, to have been all "they're DNA is amazingly close to ours; too close to be a coincidence" instead of "100% match whoop whoop facehugger!"

you haven't worked with these scientists

these sexy scientists.

With their sexy DNA and their sexy throat-invading worms.

Also what possesses Fifield?

seriously!

he gets attacked at the same time in the same place as the other dude. one of them gets the penis worm, the other goes mental and attacks everyone. WUT

the sexiness of the scientists is not a problem tbh and also if you found fifield and the penis worm dude sexy then that is your own issue

are there no actors in hollywood sufficiently old to play an old man

― ༼◍ྀ ౪ ◍ི ༽ (cozen),

Meryl Streep was booked...?

he looked like old man Biff in Back to the Future

Yes!

It's pretty unbelievable to me that a scientist would leave any room for ambiguity in a statement like that.

An 'exact match' if taken literally would only exist between clones and twins though? Or is my understanding of biology even worse than I think it is.

seriously you'd think a super advanced race of lumbering flautist dudes would manage to find a more expedient way to wipe out the human race, no wonder it was a balls up

he looked like old man Biff in Back to the Future

Someone shouted out "Mr. Burns!" at the screening I was at.

I thought he looked like Grandpa from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage//upl_images/dads-TCMGrandpa%281%29.jpg

You could handwave it as "This is an exact match with the bits of human DNA that we all have in common"

Also hey look, our ancestors weren't black after all, but whiter than white! Whooo!

this is starting to sound like an episode of dr who

I'm impressed by the consistency of the reviews, positive and negative alike: this is pretty, but pretty daft.

I saw this twice within 24 hours, and would see it again in a heartbeat. Love it. It's like Forbidden Planet mixed with Star Trek: the Motion Picture and a selection of front covers from 1970s SF novels. The plot doesn't make one lick of sense but it looks like what I always hope sci-fi movies would look, but never, ever actually do.

Basically this for me, combined with Edward III/latebloomer's thoughts, especially:

not scary at all, suspense almost non-existent. but it's a v weird movie, and quite beautiful in its rendering of natural phenomena - the opening pan over plains and waterfalls is breathtaking. I can't quite explain why I enjoyed it, but I was never bored.

If pretty prettiness is all you're after, just watch Koyanisqaatsi again. Or any Malick film.

it really doesn't look like 70s sci-fi novel front covers though. It does look nice, but it's way more boring than that

The waterfall was amazing but I put that down to the waterfall being amazing, rather than any skill of the film makers.

yeah iceland* is a real place guys

*nb not the supermarket, tho that is real too

Just watch Sigur Ros music videos.

I have been to Dettifoss and stood almost exactly where Potato Head stood when he drank whatever it was.

You then shivered into a million pieces and created life.

I try my best.

One thing I liked about that opening was that it wasn't clear whether it was a willing sacrifice or a punishment or something else going on. (Obviously SEEMS like a willing sacrifice but...is it? But again, doesn't need to be explained either way.)

Ugh. What a shit sandwich this was.

another odd thing: alien is such a patient, suspenseful movie but even scott's knowing nods to it here are all wrong. like the sequence of discovering and entering the engineer's base (I've had lunches at drive-thrus take longer) or noomi being attacked in the shuttle by the engineer (you're breaking in? I'll just dispatch you in seconds!).

At least we know the answer to the question "What if Schick Sunn Classic Pictures had a quarter-billion dollar budget?"

Ha, I was wondering what your reaction would be and figured it would go either way.

this was somehow better than i was expecting, yet exactly what i was expecting. it's a gorgeous movie, scott hasnt made a movie this good looking since the 80s. at times its a pretty good horror movie. but its terrible sci-fi. lindelof's insipid fingerprints are all over it, and he doesn't have a single idea rattling around in his skull. i didn't hate it though, it was tense and cool-looking. c-section scene and the build-up to it is seriously fantastic

Which is funny, because you can see so vividly where he was ADDED to it. It's got the most visible rewrite seams of anything maybe ever! All the daddy issues/cheeseball faith vs. science spirituality stuff (stop trying to push this theme in sci fi!!!!!!!)... etc. etc...

― Walter Galt, Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:29 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

otm

that awful scene with patrick wilson = first bad sign

the scene where tattooskull and glassesguy are first talking right out of cryosleep = the anti-Alien, which never needed dialogue like "i don't want to be your friend" to let you know everyone on the nostromo hated each other's guts

the pearce/theron reveal was classic lindelof, by which i mean a horrible horrible horrible scene

i got a lot of 2nd rate jurassic park vibes out of this, from the phony sense of wonder & themes of scientific meddling to the nedry scene where glassesbro is trying to entice a giant snake monster to sniff his hand for no discernable reason

meddling to the nedry scene

Well I have my place in the universe and all but...

The waterfall was amazing but I put that down to the waterfall being amazing, rather than any skill of the film makers.

― Jesu swept (ledge), Friday, June 8, 2012 11:50 AM (1 hour ago)

I dunno, that's kinda like saying the opening of the shining is impressive because the rockies are beautiful. this movie's indefensible on the whole but let's give credit where credit is due.

i got a lot of 2nd rate jurassic park vibes out of this, from the phony sense of wonder & themes of scientific meddling to the nedry scene where glassesbro is trying to entice a giant snake monster to sniff his hand for no discernable reason

I got some lolsome "ghost adventures" vibes from that scene where glasses guy and mohawk dude are wigging out in the cave

for a recently terrified biologist, he sure was eager to have his arm ripped open by a penile vagina fish

Maybe that's what he always wanted.

yeah whoever was doing the psych evaluations for prospective crew members must have had a cruel sense of humor