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

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

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.

sometimes scenery really does do 90% of the work though. the icy mountainscapes in game of thrones are absolutely gorgeous, jaw-dropping, some of the most beautiful imagery i've ever seen in a television drama. but the rest of the show is quite pedestrian, visually speaking. now it may be that the DP for the iceland-shot stuff is just way better than anybody else holding a camera for GoT, but i suspect the location itself has a lot to do with it.

In that Lindelof interview linked upthread (maybe?) he seems to be subtly distancing himself from some of the more batshit elements, basically saying he came in at the last minute to put a polish on a mostly complete script/idea. Maybe so. Or maybe that is just bad false modesty, since he has a history of doofustry.

but there are other moments in the film besides the opening that get "big nature" right - like the dust storm on LV-223, which as far as I know had no second unit DP shooting footage

xp

Saw a review somewhere that compared this, unfavorably, to DePalma's "Mission to Mars," which iirc had a giant sentient sandstorm in it.

Ok it was shot well, I'll give it that. Xp.

(waves hand royally)

Saw a review somewhere that compared this, unfavorably, to DePalma's "Mission to Mars," which iirc had a giant sentient sandstorm in it.

:O

That is one of the worst movies I've ever sat through. Fucking Jerry O'Connell.

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

There are sone bones of a good movie here, but to work it would need to have been lower budget (I kept thinking that Duncan Jones would have been a far better director). Prometheus is so wrapped up in in trying to fill every frame with spectacle that you never really get involved and by extension, it seems that no one: actor, director, or crew was really involved with the movie either. Actually, that's not true... Damon Lindelof is definitely engaged here and that's to the detriment of everyone. There's always been an implied cynicism that sci-fi fans will go see any sci-fi movie regardless of quality and that's exactly what you get here, but the execution is so WTF that the closest movie I could think of was Mission To Mars (even down to the once good director)

x-post

To put it another way, Battlestar Galactica remake's final episode was far more engaging.

Gawkerville has two pieces up:

http://io9.com/5916778/the-best-part-of-prometheus-isnt-the-aliens

http://deadspin.com/5915878/it-feels-like-the-first-timealmost-prometheus-reviewed

Would've been better if it was just David pottering around the space ship for two hours.

Like "Silent Running" with aliens.

BTW, isn't the black oil substance in this lifted directly from The X-Files?

haha yeah point 10 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/08/prometheus-ten-key-questions

pretty much everyone over there hates it too

A few of those misgivings are valid, a few are nitpicky.

I actually liked this, though it would have been vastly superior as a standalone, no-franchise-ambitions, no-Alien-connection flick.

And yeah basically everything shitty about it can be traced back to Lindelof.

re those Guardian points

1. yes
2. clearly been visiting, and at some point changed their mind - whatever happened in the cave/pyramid thing was about 2,000 years ago
3. money
4. this is fair - and muddled, though in regards to Holloway vs. the guy that went nutso...Holloway had a single drop infecting his system, the other guy planted face down in a flowing stream of the good
5. I assumed for sequel purposes, because otherwise, yes, it makes no sense
6. Presumably Weyland doesn't want anyone know his motives and the fact that he's probably got David running around using the people as guinea pigs to see what effects if any there are to whatever they find
7. see #6
8. because the plot needed her to
9. that's the question they explicitly ask in the movie and explicitly state they are going to fly off into the sequel to try to find out so why that's a question her i have no idea
10. yeah, it is a bit.

good=goo*

Meanwhile, v. good Rich Juzwiak take (unsurprisingly).

http://gawker.com/5916932/what-is-the-meaning-of-life-and-other-questions-prometheus-fails-to-answer

thought this was overall good, but a lot has to do with expectations and what to expect from a Ridley Scott film since 1982 (i.e. not much). can understand derision but i think that misses out on some good stuff. Not sure why Ebert and Glenn Kenny thought it was super mega awesome, other than it has a decent stab at "old school sci-fi" for a little while

i think the "dude who told them where to go was a rogue" theory is pretty good since it's called prometheus and all that

So I was vaguely curious who was playing all the engineers -- turns out it wasn't just one person:

Daniel James = 'Sacrifice Engineer'

John Lebar = 'Ghost Engineer'

Ian Whyte = 'Last Engineer'

thought this was overall good, but a lot has to do with expectations and what to expect from a Ridley Scott film since 1982 (i.e. not much). can understand derision but i think that misses out on some good stuff

I'm OK with movies trying to reach out a bit and failing. For example, I thought that Contact was ridiculous, clumsy, and hokey in how it handled its subject, but completely entertaining as a movie. By the end of Prometheus, I was ready for the Engineers to full-tilt gnostic and destroy all life on earth for evolving the ship's crew.

oh my fucking word the flutes

Oh Aqualung

The Hound!

http://www.fluterock.com/

best review title?

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/failien-prometheus/Content?oid=2236713

btw in that still twinky Fassbender looks like Herbie the Elf.

He's going for O'Toole in Lawrence

All right. Strapped into my IMAX seat awaiting takeoff. I inoculated myself against disappointment by watching COWBOYS VS ALIENS. After that anything should seem awesome.

Remember when rumors were that this was going to be about the Space Jockeys making humans farm aliens and have gay sex with each other?

"This is not an Alien prequel but here is an Alien from the film "Alien" which this film is certainly not a prequel to."

Update: I quite enjoyed the parts that weren't bollocks. See it in IMAX.

Remember when rumors were that this was going to be about the Space Jockeys making humans farm aliens and have gay sex with each other?

is that not what COWBOYS VS ALIENS was about?

Lindelof has a writing credit on CvA too.

This movie sure got dumber as it went on, didn't it?

^That was my feeling. I quite enjoyed the first two thirds - thought the sense of arriving at a new planet, uncertain, but with a sense of pioneering adventure, was quite well done. Liked all the tech and the dust storm. But my estimation of how much I'd enjoyed and how much I'd enjoyed it went down as the film went on. By the end, instead of a prequel, it felt like they'd just made a film out of prolonging the beginning of Alien, massively truncating the climax, so it wasn't at all climactic, and leaving out everything in the middle. Difficult to locate exactly the bit where I realised it was shit - I think when the Simon Whitlock/Fifield character comes back to life so they can have an entirely pointless firefight scene. Although at the time it wasn't until the 'sometimes a king must die etc' bollocks that I realised that this was a film with no idea what it was about.

The end was somehow both cursory and laborious, and entirely laughable, although the appearance of the Alien at the end was the only bit that provoked open and contemptuous mirth. It's a PREQUEL you see. Also that alien looked quite d'aw - just a little poiple alien, lookin round, thinking baout things, sup cinema dudes, etc.

Entire sections of the flick felt like somebody had just copy-pasted earlier drafts of the scripts into the final revision. "but I can't have children!" WHAT where the fuck that come from and why do you just drop it

also, REALLY? we REALLY need to see him washing the dude's feet?! Some of the Christian imagery and refs were as shoehorned into this as badly as the Prequels dumped in refs to the original trilogy.

Film's worth seeing, at least. Stays in my head, only if to rant about it. SO MUCH STUPID happens.

also Charlize Theron's look is straight out of Mass Effect.

Anybody else note that Noomi never says "abortion" to the auto-doc? or the fact that a fully functioning auto-doc apparently will happily cut into you without massive amounts of painkillers

The phrase "space morphine" applies here.

In fairness, given that the alien is practically trying to get out of her by the time she reaches the auto-doc, saying "caesarian" probably makes more sense. There did seem to be a delicate pause before David says that he can't perform "the procedure", though.

https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTX3QNUQhV7704wsC2E98lbPITe_J8tLiP28-3dcxkEgHJ9wGt4

"Horror movie dumb" is a great way to describe how the characters act.

And yeah, Vickers' death is stupid and wasted.

Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, and The Raid have filled me with do much cinema-going satisfaction this year that any disappointment from this flick doesn't really sting, I've noticed.

And like much of us, I obsess over my pop culture consumption.

OK, just saw it. 80% of this is nowhere near as bad as you made it out to be. That other 20%, though - phew. At least they spread it judiciously throughout. The incredible stupidity of the crew is the toughest to stomach, my least fave exchange being:

Captain Stringer Bell: "The whole thing is a giant WMD plant! It's going to kill everything!"
Religious zealot scientist: "But don't you want to go back?"

I laughed.

But you know, you folks making fun of the genetic component ... that subject was raised and explored in both Alien 3 and Alien 4, so no surprise they should try to tie it in again. I also think some of this film's WTF-ness (which I mostly followed) could have been explained with a bit more prologue of dottering David, perhaps exploring his motives a little bit, though clearly there was some barely explored battle for "daddy's" affections going on.

Only thing I'm at a total loss to is the being at the beginning, was he dropped off by that ship? Was he supposed to chug the goo? Was that a mistake? What was he up to?

(Film's answer: we will never know!)

A mystery at the beginning? Does this movie leave open the possibility of a sequel AND a prequel?

Honestly, I can't see why not. There's a lot of years that pass in the first few minutes.

That said, I hope the sequel is all "The Adventures of Dr. Noomi and Fassbender's Head."