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

Yeah, I mentioned above that that in many ways is the biggest red flag that tons of stuff was cut.

A 2 hour sci-fi epic ... how quaint.

xp - I'm guessing the lack of billion-dollar grosses in his resume?

Billion dollar grosses are a totally contemporary thing. I bet 90% of Scott's films were hits.

the secret is that Ridley's 3 hour versions aren't any better, they just flesh out some unnecessary plot threads or show back story for boring characters

Only "Kingdom of Heaven" has gotten the superzize treatment, no? "Blade Runner" and "Legend" both gets director cuts, "Alien" and "Gladiator" reluctant director cuts.

Robin Hood had an extended cut, too

lotta people must have watched that

lol

Eh, it's like 15 minutes more or something.

That movie made money. Cost $150, made $350? Something like that?

let me check

Tickets for 21+ 10:15 PM show 2nite. Looking forward to (watching jbr) decipher this in a drunken haze whilst I cross-reference it with two weeks' worth of spoilers!

There are certainly annoying mistakes in the movie -- characters whose personalities flip on a dime, characters who figure out that the aliens created us based on who-knows-what, "DNA match". But there were a lot of things people consider errors that I thought added to the movie. The first scene, David's motivations, not knowing what the aliens' plans were -- these were all fine by me. I did not need the blanks filled in.

They should make a movie that's just all blanks. It would look like this:

I JUST SAW ALL OF ALIEN FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS MORNING

HOLY SHIT

Okay hold on

Let me just back up here

...first...time...ever?

HOLY SHIT

this seems consistent with first time ever. also OTM.

Yeah yeah I know

Fucking great movie, dunno why I waited so long to see all of it, in order (I'd seen most/all of the famous scenes)

I re-watched Alien on the weekend. The shot of Jonesy when the Alien gets Harry Dean Stanton is the greatest piece of animal acting ever

watched it not so long ago, noticed an audacious shot just before it gets harry dean stanton - might be director's cut only idk - where you see a kind of top-down almost full shot of it hanging there among the ducts, looking like part of the ship itself. if you know what you're seeing it's like a massive reveal but if not you probably don't even realise.

I JUST SAW ALL OF ALIEN FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS MORNING

HOLY SHIT

― Victory Chainsaw! (DJP), Sunday, June 17, 2012 3:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES

I only saw it for the first time recently too, and yes I was suitably impressed. Just finished watching Aliens tonight and it's much better than I remember from when I saw it 15 years ago. Why do I vaguely remember seeing the Queen Alien hanging off the back of the ship at the end whereas this one I saw had no such scene...??

aliens is kind've amazing

i just watched the first 30 minutes of it last night after i got home from the bar... i love the space scenes at the beginning so much... the music cue when you see ripley's ship hanging underneath the salvage vessel (which you never actually see in its entirety... so great)

I love how everytime the crew sits down together there's always those cross-conversations, it just feels so natural like you can almost right away tell who likes who, who's in charge...like natural lunch-room politics.

and I love the way he uses the classic horror camera tricks, but uses your knowledge of them AS a trick: in the scene where they're looking for the facehugger in the lab, you aren't sure if the camera being down so low is the facehugger POV and then when Skerrit knocks over the shelf you're like AGH OH FUCK wait no that's not it...

it's just such a brilliantly constructed movie

noticed an audacious shot just before it gets harry dean stanton - might be director's cut only idk - where you see a kind of top-down almost full shot of it hanging there among the ducts, looking like part of the ship itself. if you know what you're seeing it's like a massive reveal but if not you probably don't even realise.

lol this is the scene i had to stop watching at the other night! and i've been thinking about it for days! so i'm going to finish watching now. maybe...

aliens is bollocks fuiud

I love how everytime the crew sits down together there's always those cross-conversations, it just feels so natural like you can almost right away tell who likes who, who's in charge...like natural lunch-room politics.

YES. They seem like real people doing boring blue collar space jobs! Also, fucking amazing cast. Harry Dean Stanton for life.

Been waiting for this: Film Crit Hulk posted a thing about te problems of Lindelof and theme:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-the-damon-lindleof-intervention/

He's pretty astute for the most part but I wish Film Crit Hulk would just drop the schtick.

c+p into text editor, change to lower case. instant readability!

also replacing 'hulk' with 'i' turns him into gollum. 'i hates writing columns like this'!

yeah you can just drop it in this too

http://www.convertcase.net/

I re-watched Alien on the weekend. The shot of Jonesy when the Alien gets Harry Dean Stanton is the greatest piece of animal acting ever

― Number None, Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i haven't seen alien in full yet but i've seen this scene and YESSS

HOW HAVE ALL THESE PEOPLE NOT SEEN ALIEN IN FULL?!

prequel put them off

b/c i don't know how to work the dvd player

just to be clear, as Alien is important to me and to the world, I have seen it several times and am just rewatching in two parts this time. I don't know how people haven't seen Alien but I do know that a lot of people don't like horror movies and some people don't like 'old' movies and that some people are just wrong.

b/c i don't know how to work the dvd player

― star-spangled david banner (lex pretend), Monday, June 18, 2012 7:46 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Move it out of the kitchen.

hulk otm on undue extrapolation

for a 'hulk' he's pretty tentative about possibly hurting damon lindelof's feelings

lindelof seems like he'd bruise easily

OG "Alien" xenomorph test footage: http://io9.com/5919117/test-footage-from-alien-was-way-creepy-even-with-the-xenomorph-out-of-costume

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpKi41a1rJI

finally saw it. consensus otm. A mess. looks amazing, actors mostly do good work with a screamingly bad script.

Hated the clumsy character drawing - post-cryo meal in particular is an insult to the parallel scene in Alien.

Takes some of SFs loveliest topoi - aliens made mankind, exploring a tomb-planet, sad robots - and screws up each of them, through mis-pacing, confusions in place of ambiguity/mystery, shitty dialogue and shoddy symbol games. (seems to think bible reference = automatic profundity power-up.)

I do keep thinking about it, but those thoughts are mostly 'why wasn't it better?'. I am all for meeting-the-demiurge SF but this goes wrong. idk, sequel might be better, get into full-on batshit gnostic liberation war with jesus space jockeys lead by head of david as t e lawrence vs satan space jockeys.

But I wasn't bored. I might even watch it again.

Funny how that smart Hulk piece illustrates the problem with extrapolation, and then the comments kick off with a lengthy extrapolation. "See, it's just like Mary Shelly's 'Frankenstein ...'"

Sigh. Comments.

i rewatched alien the other night too. that scene where ash tries to kill ripley by stuffing a fastidiously rolled porno mag down her throat. also "don't worry, parker, yeah. you'll get whatever's coming to you." best slasher movie.

I read on Wikipedia that Ridley Scott originally wanted to end the movie with the Alien biting of Ripley's head and then speaking with her voice, so my guess is that whatever is making "Prometheus" unwieldy and nonsensical is a direct result of the producers involved having the clout/chutzpah to tell Scott no

ash tries to kill ripley by stuffing a fastidiously rolled porno mag down her throat

yeah, there are some unsettling images around power and gender that just sort of freelance around the place without ever really being determined or explained or fit into the jigsaw, which gives them more power ultimately. the computer being "mother", who witholds secrets and betrays the crew; the homicidal alien herself actually being a mother; anyone who is impregnated being a mother, but against their will..