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

https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiSUOoBwYg4CeIZobXOLyOhQQ0RuTmqNlpfFG7lU3s_b3jp_br

microsoft introduces its new virtual concierge for windows 8, squishy the spermicle

http://i42.servimg.com/u/f42/16/22/94/10/p19210.jpg

that alien is dumber than that dumbest thing

To be fair, if you just looked at the art book pictures without understanding the French text you could probably put together a pretty terrific narrative that's far better than the movie.

xxxposts jon I can confirm Charles Band is still very much alive - he runs a little studio called Full Moon Pictures and is currently in production on Zombies Vs Strippers :D

has anyone seen his rubber suit monster movies? are those any fun?

More book tidbits/photos/background stories:

http://io9.com/5917639/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-design-of-prometheus

This review piles it on, but this part nails my dislike...

As in any Ridley Scott attempt to grapple with “big themes,” the ideas in Prometheus get handled with utter heavy-handedness in those few moments where they aren’t being ignored entirely in favor of empty bombast. Take the “questions of faith” Scott boldly explores here. Elizabeth, shown to be religious from childhood in a dreamscape flashback, and Charlie, who bears a cross tattoo on his arm, are the film’s standard-bearers for belief; they’re convinced their quest will lead to final answers. On the opposite side are the ship’s pragmatic, universe-weary captain Janek (Idris Elba), stern Weiland representative Meredith (Charlize Theron), and geologist Fifield (Sean Harris), all of whom seem far less concerned with the identity of their creator than making money and continuing to live. Somewhere in the middle is the ship’s android steward David (Michael Fassbender, providing the film’s only true signs of life); his motives in relation to the overall mission are opaque, but he does take any chance he can to remind the humans of his own created-ness at the hands of man. This confluence of characters should be the basis for some meaty narrative conflict, but you won’t learn much more about Sir Ridley’s thoughts on these weighty matters beyond the brief description I’ve just provided. Why explore the elements of your films, when it’s just so easy to merely introduce lots of stuff and hope that audiences will do the work for you?

Though science fiction often seems uniquely positioned to ponder the most massive of ontological questions, one can forgive when well-crafted futuristic fictions skimp on the thematic heft; Alien is remarkable for just how little it seemed to care about anything beyond great scares and thrills. It didn’t try to be 2001, unlike its new prequel. However, the real problem with Prometheus isn’t that its pretension can’t masks its ultimate empty-headedness; it’s that on a very basic level the movie just doesn’t really make any sense. (Not to mention that its creation myth completely contradicts everything we learned about our prehistory from Alien vs. Predator!) Plot threads begin, but are never resolved. Others happen in inexplicable vacuums: Elizabeth, accidentally impregnated with alien DNA, aborts the deadly fetus with the help of some kind of surgery machine pod, yet somehow no one else on the ship seems to know or hear anything about it. Major events are completely unlinked from consequence or are raised and resolved with impressive velocity: when Charlie, infected by the same DNA, is torched to death a few scenes later by a flamethrower wielding Meredith, the rest of the team reacts with little more than a “whatevs.” Others simply baffle: when the remaining members of the group find Powder’s similarly albino cousin and wake him from his eons-long slumber, what does the creature do but immediately recommence the mission to destroy all life on Earth that was begun thousands of years prior? Couldn’t this highly advanced race of beings just have sent another ship and killed off the human race at any time? Why wait until a bunch of knuckle-dragging cave dwellers learned the art of interstellar travel and came to find their “engineers” (the film’s ridiculous parlance, not mine)? This list could easily extend. It’s fine for movies to be simple of mind, but it’s unacceptable for them to treat their audiences as if they are as well.

Roger Ebert argued in his wildly positive review of Prometheus that it is “all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn’t have the answers.” This is a quite stupid thing to say in relation to a film like Prometheus for any number of reasons, not least of which is that it is clearly a film so utterly underconceived that it couldn’t even be said to be actively withholding the answers it obnoxiously never provides. It’s a lovely thing to look at—a feast of silvery grays and murky browns—but Scott’s been the master of lushly brainless imagery since at least as far back as 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Why do we exist? Prometheus will never tell—it’s not even curious enough to guess.

tbh would totally watch a series of webisodes featuring widdlest xenomorph just checkin things out

(xpost)

people on facebook/twitter/here keep posting about people complaining about this movie while not seeing "good movies"/artsy independent films - if you can recommend any good smaller/obscure movies that are out right now, please feel free to do so, because all the ones i read about sound shitty

like i guess i should have spent my $11 on quirky indie romcom lola versus? or quirky indie rom com safety not guaranteed?

stern Weiland representative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzVgIop0f0Y

like i guess i should have spent my $11 on quirky indie romcom lola versus? or quirky indie rom com safety not guaranteed?

Bernie was funny

I bet the new Cronenberg is worth seeing

is that the weekend at bernie's prequel

yes, it answers (and raises) a lot of fascinating questions only hinted at in the original film

like, who was that one guy at the party? and was he related to Jesus?

eh i guess the problem is getting motivated to see any of those movies in the theater vs. at home - like what is "bernie" going to gain from being seen on the big screen? question for another thread i guess.

every kind of movie is better in a theater

well yeah Bernie is not in 3D Imax and doesn't FLY AT U FACE, on the other hand you might relish spending an enjoyable evening in the company of gay couples and old people, if my experience is any indicator lol

lol

Couldn’t this highly advanced race of beings just have sent another ship and killed off the human race at any time?

This is kind of recurring - why couldn't "the company" just fly a spaceship to the original planet and pick up a nice big box of the eggs, instead of continually sending random punters off to be eaten.

huh?

Well, the idea in "Aliens" was basically that the colonists were sent there specifically to be eaten and hatch aliens, right?

not really?

The idea was that Paul Reiser needed to be eaten.

if only

you know what would have been better, is if Paul Reiser's character had been played by Helen Hunt

you know what would have been better, is if Paul Reiser's character had been eaten by Helen Hunt

Yeah but they did it 57 years after the company's first attempt to get the eggs/aliens. Why the gap?

you what woudl have been best, is if paul reiser had really been eaten

along with Helen Hunt

"Aliens" : Some nice effects, but actually kind've a crap film.

(apparently I have "Mad About You" PTSD)

Yeah but they did it 57 years after the company's first attempt to get the eggs/aliens. Why the gap?

― Keith, Tuesday, June 12, 2012 5:22 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they're not there in the first movie in an "attempt to get the eggs/aliens," they run into them on their way to somewhere else. and the company only finds out about it once they find ripley.

In Aliens I think it's explicitly so that they get an alien inside someone through customs.

But doesn't the computer say that the main priority is to return the organism - crew expendible, with the robot in on the story?

you guys have terrible memories

but that was once Mother was told about the discovery - that wasn't their original mission iirc?

mission is to bring tiny underpants to space

I assumed this was all in classic 1970s government conspiracy-type stuff, where they were placed in a seemingly random situation, but that the government/company knew all about what they were doing.

like i guess i should have spent my $11 on quirky indie romcom lola versus? or quirky indie rom com safety not guaranteed?

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, June 12, 2012 1:38 PM (20 seconds ago)

i saw a good swiss/french documentary about a pair of seasonally itinerant shephards the other day: winter nomads

no no keith, the company has a directive that says if they run into alien stuff they are mandated to check it out. it's like a running policy. that's not what their job was.

First movie: get distress signal, computer wakes up for hypersleep, robot's mission is to get the alien, crew expendable.

Aliens: company knows what's happened to colonists (who either in the director's cut or the novelization or maybe both are sent to "investigate" the eggs, which it recognizes from Ripley's report), send Paul Reiser to bring back creature through customs for weaponizing.

Remember, in "Aliens" they don't have the colonists investigate until after Ripley gives her report. Then like the next day or so they wake her up and tell her they've lost contact with the colonists.

the last scene of prometheus really just plays like fan fiction, doesn't it? it doesn't really make any sense in the context of the movie beyond just saying SEE??

x-post

Well, I guess I never read it that way. The whole thing looks to me as though the company knew exactly what they were sending them to get and it wasn't a random incident. I could be wrong, but seeing Ash's defence of the thing every single step of the way, including letting it in and stopping Dr. Kananga from killing it, which is all odd if they're just following company policy to investigate an anomaly.

However, if this is the case, the company/computer quickly figure out that it is important they keep the alien (see what mother says), so important that killing the crew is less important. This being the case, it still seems weird that once everyone dies (to all intents and purposes) the company then loses interest until 57 years later when Ripley turns up.

how do we know they lost interest? how do we know they knew any of what had happened?

the movie makes it very clear that they were on another job, and that there is a sort of priority override (unknown to the human crew) that kicks in whenever one of the company's ships runs into signs of alien life.

But they didn't lose interest at all. They didn't find out about it until they found Ripley and heard her report, and once she told them, it was a matter of days before all hell had broken loose down on the planet.

Nostromo coming home>>distress signal/wake up>> crew member impregnated/alien hatches>> computer changes mission to bring back alien at all costs>>>everyone dies, Ripley blows up ship, floats off>>>>>

57 years pass

company finds Ripley, learn she found an alien on this planet, blew everything up>>company tells colonists on planet to investigate alleged alien/eggs, they all die/birth aliens>>>Ripley and marines go to planet to "rescue" colonists but really to get the company an alien.