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

Yeah, I didn't mean to say it's not a mess of movie even if it has some cool themes, just that emphasizing some of those themes and leaving out others altogether might've made it less of a mess.

And, of course, not having the characters act so irrationally... Though I, like many others apparently, got the feeling that at least some of the odd behaviour was because explanatory scenes were cut; it literally felt like there where chunks of film missing where a normal movie would've had them. Like a scene of the biologist guy smoking the geologist's weed (thus explaining his behaviour towards the snake thingy), some scenes that would explain why the captain wasn't paying attention to what was happening on his ship, a scene where the medics go after Shaw and find the octopus, who eats them (explaining both their disappearance and weird growth in size of the octopus), any scenes that would actually show someone being surprised to find out their supposedly dead funder was alive and on the ship, and so on... So this is one of those rare cases where I feel an extended director's cut might actually improve the movie. (Though of course some of the silliness in the movie can never be explained by any director's cut, like the totally carefree way the members of a scientific expedition react to a completely alien environment: not doing any reconaissance of the planet before entering the cave, immediately taking their helmets of when they hear you can breathe the air, joyfully touching everything they see, not having any weapons with them, etc.)

i think vickers died to draw a contrast with noomi, maybe vickers died a strict rationalist whereas noomi lived because of deus ex machina

Maybe, but this is just the religious crap that needed to be cut from the movie... I'm not familiar with the screenwriter (never watched Lost), but based on what people are saying in this thread, seems that he's a Christian and likes to add Christian themes to his scripts? I don't think people like that should write sci-fi... Or I guess they can write Matrix style messianic-fantasy-dressed-as-sci-fi, but not something that tries, at least nominally, base it's fiction on science.

yeah i agree people like Philip Dick or R.A. Lafferty shdn't write SF

Actually, I'd like to retract what I said above... I guess an extended cut could explain all the irrational behaviour by having the opening scenes on Earth, where we learn that no respectable scientist would take a 5 year trip to a planet they know nothing about, for a reason that can't be disclosed to them, so Weyland has no other alternative but to hire wackos and stoners desperate for money. But I suspect such a scene was never scripted or filmed.

yeah i agree people like Philip Dick or R.A. Lafferty shdn't write SF

Dick's writing clearly falls to the Matrix side of things, I doubt he cared that much about the actual science in his books.

could've been a better movie had scrapped all the stupid Christian references and emphasized this parental theme more. For example, they could've illuminating the Engineers' motivations at least a bit

The Engineers intended to undertake their mission to end humanity 2000 years ago.

So aside from the other Christian claptrap, the implication is that Jesus was an Engineer.

i missed half of this, must've been cringing or shouting at the screen.

just wanted to be clear that you don't think anybody who uses religious themes shd be classified as an SF writer Tuomas. fair enough.

For all its flaws and failure to understand stuff like genetics, Prometheus still mostly deals with hard sci-fi themes, not with inner space trips or messianic uprisings, so a religious approach to the subject matter was ill-advised, IMO.

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It dealt mostly with hard sci-fi imagery - spaceships and aliens. Themes are a different matter and often down to the viewer to interpret as they see fit, but this was obviously heavily infused with religious bullshit from the very beginning.

isaac asimov (not a writer i'm keen on) once said he'd once read an interview w/ phillip jose farmer where farmer talked about keeping up to date with all the latest scientific journals. now farmer was not known for being a 'hard' sf writer - more of a mad pulp fantasist - whereas asimov was thought to be very much on the pure science side of the equation, yet farmer's claim guilted asimov into resuming his reading round the subject. my point is, i don't think you have any idea how much or how little dick or lafferty cared about the science in their writing, how it fed into their work, and that tidy assumptions about such things can often be wide of the mark.

Okay, maybe that was badly worded, what I meant was that Dick's sci-fi had less to do with speculating on actual scientific questions, more to do with using sci-fi as a setting for metaphorical adventures. Since that side of sci-fi automatically has a larger fantasy element to it than hard sci-fi, I don't think mixing religion to it is always bad. But it is bad in hard sci-fi, or can you name a lot of examples where it would work?

i don't know if the "hard" label ever meant a lot and i certainly don't think it means anything now. and really Prometheus has got very little to do with actual science compared to the debt it owes to Giger's artwork. but this is nitpickery approaching craziness imo.

I mean, it's telling that Dick's last published novel isn't sci-fi at all, and yet its themes are unmistakably similar to his earlier books.

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there is a ton of hard (and yeah, you could argue about what this means all day) sci-fi with religious themes

Childhood's End to name one pretty famous example

spaceships doesn't equal science, using DNA as a macguffin doesn't equal science, aliens doesn't equal science, i'm not sure what theoretical framework is being violated anyway

if you want to take that tack then lindelof-style-insert-messiah-reference != religion

is he actually christian btw? i thought this was just a thing he did because Symbolic Relevance Is Clever

he's Jewish

{dramatic sting}

i wd take that tack tbh thomp, using imagery or setting to tell a story isn't really being "about" something, as isn't Symbolism when it becomes a game of reference for the hell of it

stand by my original impression that this is mostly "about" linear movements and helmet placement

i dunno, i'm pretty formalist about stuff, the themes are probly there but i don't buy into that subject/expression dualism that wants to explain what some stupid badly-written daydream is "about"

he's Jewish

Oh. I assumed he's Christian, since someone upthread mentioned he's writing a series about the Rapture. Still, doesn't change the fact that he put pointless Christian symbolism to his script for Prometheus.

it's only pointless if there's a point. if there's no point then none of what happens is pointless as such.

or put it another way, if the point is "cool-looking shit happens" then everything that feeds that is valid

But my point was that there is some interesting non-religious themes in the movie (which I tried to outline in the big post above) which are needlessly distracted by the religious stuff. (The Engineers were planning to destroy humanity because we killed Jesus? Why do they care about him? The main scientist couple treats the aliens as if they are gods? Why? The mural in the cave has a picture of an xenomorph in a crucifix pose, why? Etc.)

maybe the non-religious themes are distracting from the religious ones

maybe they turn a corner on the engineer planet and see the statue of liberty

this still isn't out, huh. i've had so many opinions about this movie i keep forgetting i haven't seen it yet

wait, so this thread is some kind of mass hallucination?

maybe the non-religious themes are distracting from the religious ones

Maybe, but the parent-child theme at least made a lot of sense to me (as I tried to explain upthread), whereas the religious stuff is just puzzling. Like, if crucifying Jesus is the reason the Engineers want to destroy humanity, why do they care about one religious leader? Or is the implication that Jesus really was the son of a god, and the Engineers worship this same god?

i don't go to cinemas. the sordid mass of humanity revolts and repulses. xp!

tuomas maybe the religious theme is the parent child theme

as christ was the son of god, damon lindelof is the son of man

yeah, or the religious theme of the father and the son is just an iteration of the parent-child archetype. hey, maybe themes can't be nailed in place.

Or is the implication that Jesus really was the son of a god

so weary of talking about this worthless piece o crap. but the implication is that jesus was an engineer, no?

Eh? There's absolutely no clues towards that conclusion in the movie itself, it's just something Scott said in an interview.

he was a carpenter iirc

carpenter is like a primitive version of an engineer

before the carpenters came the origamists

Lao-Tzu was the chief origamist, he came to earth earlier

When I watched the movie I hadn't read that interview, so the idea of Jesus being an Engineer never even crossed my mind, I don't think there's any hints to that direction in the text itself. Also, that idea just raises more questions... Why did an Engineer pose as a religious leader? How come none of the historical documents on Jesus mention that he was a hairless eight-foot albino? Why did him getting killed make the Engineers think the whole human race should be exterminated?

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tuomas i think it is possible you're not taking this seriously enough

so sorry i yet again fell into the trap of trying to make sense of of the deranged ramblings of an idiot.

fwiw all the parent/child stuff in yr original post that makes so much sense to you is only your own kind of wild speculation.

I don't think it's just wild speculation, I'm pretty sure the "every child wants to kill his parents" and the "a king has his reign, then he dies" lines weren't in the movie for no good reason at all. The latter one was even used in the trailer, IIRC.

ok i retract the 'wild'.