Honestly, I do wonder if this is a fight that breaks down on horror nerd/sci fi nerd/film dork lines. I'm actually mystified by the level of hate people have towards this movie, and a couple of you tend to have good taste, so I'm trying to work out why I think it's super solid and you all don't, which is why I'm guessing it has a lot to do with your approach etc
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, 12 May 2014 03:18 (ten years ago) link
It's probably similar to the way Star Wars fans hate the prequels
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 03:32 (ten years ago) link
can we settle this with a dance battle y/n
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 12 May 2014 03:32 (ten years ago) link
Well the answer to that is always yes duh
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, 12 May 2014 03:46 (ten years ago) link
XP alien fans (oh hi dere) would better serve their energy by hating the shitbag AVP movies though honestly.
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, 12 May 2014 03:48 (ten years ago) link
Yeah but everybody knew those were gonna be trash
We had a small hope that Ridley Scott would have done something worthy of the mythos
Like unfortunately every time you see the original Space Jockey in Alien you're just gonna think of Powder
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 03:50 (ten years ago) link
I've never seen Powder, so I just think "a big bald white guy"
― Slumdog Baseballionaire (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Monday, 12 May 2014 03:54 (ten years ago) link
Wait so are people sad because space jockey wasn't terrible cgi squid head?
I am so confused by this reaction across the board.
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, 12 May 2014 04:05 (ten years ago) link
The point is they should never haver revealed the Space Jockey at all and focused on something else for this pointless prequel
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 04:08 (ten years ago) link
creepy apple robot ads were great.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 12 May 2014 04:17 (ten years ago) link
I really liked Prometheus. I watched five times in the first month after I saw it. I would still sit down and watch it any time. I found out from some Cracked article that pedants hated it for pedantic reasons and so I am choosing not to read this thread.
― just like the one wing dove (Crabbits), Sunday, May 11, 2014 8:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
a lot of people love Battleship too
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 12 May 2014 04:34 (ten years ago) link
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, May 12, 2014 4:05 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
well not having a squid head is ridiculous retconning on its own (the helmet just happened to look like bones!), but having him turn out to just be a tall guy with a sick gym bod and pale skin is stupid. Having him drink something and turn into DNA is stupid. Having his DNA be "identical" to ours is stupid.
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 12 May 2014 04:39 (ten years ago) link
So
You accept a world where huge aliens exist, but only if their heads don't look like people. And this whole DNA thing is ridiculous, but blood made of acid is completely within the biological rules. Huh.
― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, 12 May 2014 05:21 (ten years ago) link
Acid blood is cool as shit, is the thing
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 05:26 (ten years ago) link
You can have any imagined present you like in yr SciFi movie.
Just dont explain it if yr explanation is going to annoy everyone.
The acid blood alien/dna powder gym buffs/future intergalactical travel etc etc arent the problem here ito what the audience will swallow while maintaining goodwill. It's the behaviour of the friggin humans (with whom we are meant to identify) that leaves me smh, wtmc & fmsats.
Kill lindelhof slowly over heat and euthanize Scott.
― james lipton and his francs (darraghmac), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:04 (ten years ago) link
^^^
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:14 (ten years ago) link
lol pointing out that this film and everything that happens in it is fucking idiotic is hardly "TEARS DONT LOOK LIKE THAT IN SPACE" pedantry
― wins, Monday, 12 May 2014 06:14 (ten years ago) link
I like the "you suspended disbelief once so nothing is ever dumb" reasoning too
― wins, Monday, 12 May 2014 06:16 (ten years ago) link
^^^^
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:16 (ten years ago) link
makes more sense to praise this in terms of (po-faced) surrealism than it does in terms of effective SF/Horror tropes
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:18 (ten years ago) link
unless you complete ignore moments like "lol i was hiding on my spaceship all along, also i hired idiots for the lulz"
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:19 (ten years ago) link
maybe it's like Star Wars and none of them are humans so are not obliged to behave in any way like humans
the harder i think about this it is kinda like some Ionesco thing with a bunch of random strangers all doing their own thing and not interacting on any level
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:21 (ten years ago) link
or the random improvisations of a couple of 4 year-olds playing space monsters and making it up as they go along
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:23 (ten years ago) link
having been given a shakey verbal account of the original Alien movie by a big brother who'd seen the trailer on Youtube
― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:24 (ten years ago) link
ya like... i can totally accept "the force" as a thing, but you try telling me the force exists because of high midichlorian counts in people's blood and i'm going to jump out the window
just because a story has fantastical elements doesnt mean that literally everything that happens in it is beyond criticism
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 06:37 (ten years ago) link
"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it's a complete mess"
― painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture (DavidM), Monday, 12 May 2014 08:30 (ten years ago) link
This movie is probably just unintentional nü-camp
(Having never ever read anything Kael ever wrote on camp or having even seen any movie commonly categorized as camp)
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 08:44 (ten years ago) link
And this whole DNA thing is ridiculous, but blood made of acid is completely within the biological rules. ― ohhhh lorde 2pac big please mansplain to this sucker (jjjusten), Monday, May 12, 2014 5:21 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the only wildly implausible thing in Alien was that it grew so fast (with seemingly no food). Prometheus has like 94 of these things.
Which would be more acceptable if it was campy fun, but instead it wants to be next 2001.
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 12 May 2014 08:49 (ten years ago) link
u mad doggie?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 09:23 (ten years ago) link
I watched it yesterday for the first time. Mostly it was just boring and incoherent. Bad script, moronic characters, awkward dialogue. "The kind of dumb that creeps up on you," totally. But as gore it was pretty good, especially on the classic Alien themes: horror of pregnancy, the alien as a parasitic parody of childbirth. The surgical tube scene with the self-administered C-section. That was great!
It's funny how this movie is so incredibly awkward and repressed when it tries to handle normal sex (Elba's "Are you a robot?"), but gleefully gruesome at horrific symbolizations of sex and reproduction.
― jmm, Monday, 12 May 2014 13:13 (ten years ago) link
this movie is so incredibly awkward and repressed when it tries to handle normal sex (Elba's "Are you a robot?"), but gleefully gruesome at horrific symbolizations of sex and reproduction
this is really true
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 13:53 (ten years ago) link
maybe it would help if we imagine everyone is a humanoid bee
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 12 May 2014 13:55 (ten years ago) link
tbf i don't think that's an accident
― Nhex, Monday, 12 May 2014 14:02 (ten years ago) link
that it would help if we imagine everyone is a humanoid bee?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 14:17 (ten years ago) link
Wait you're not a humanoid bee?
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 12 May 2014 14:42 (ten years ago) link
I believe he's an apian human iirc
― Diddley Hollyberry (Phil D.), Monday, 12 May 2014 14:58 (ten years ago) link
subtle but important distinction, only one of them has a fatal sting
i'm an undercover hymenopteran
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:02 (ten years ago) link
I don't see how anything in a sci-fi movie can be "too weird" when human men shoot DNA out of their, er, well, you know.
― StanM, Monday, 12 May 2014 15:23 (ten years ago) link
Their split dick slits?
― 龜, Monday, 12 May 2014 15:28 (ten years ago) link
I can find no fault with this movie because takes the francis crick panspermia thesis and then brilliantly makes it an accident!
― ryan, Monday, 12 May 2014 15:29 (ten years ago) link
i also don't see how anyone in a sci-fi movie can be "too stupid" when you look at what supposedly responsible people in the real world do on the reg
like, the mapping expert, he's got this incredible tech, this hover-sphere that explores every surface and beams its topology back to the ship - well OF COURSE he's the one who immediately gets lost
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 15:31 (ten years ago) link
I think the complaint is really about the characters not being very well-drawn. In alien, nancy cartwright's character literally blocks the path between the flamethrower and the alien, but everyone in that movie (even jonesy!) feels like a lived-in person, so you can buy whatever stupidity goes on, but in prometheus, the characters are conveniences to the plot, and you can see when they do invest some time, like in the robot, you can accept and even speculate about whatever weird or inexplicable things he does without immediately chalking it up to bad writing. So the real complaint is for a kind of insulting laziness to the enterprise, and it's easier to point out and pile on visible traces of that, like weyland's sloppy old age makeup rather than guy pierce not inhabiting the role, and not being given much of a role to inhabit.
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 12 May 2014 15:59 (ten years ago) link
i honestly dont think that if you dont get that these are really badly-written characters there's nothing i can say to convince you
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 16:05 (ten years ago) link
In alien, nancy cartwright's character literally blocks the path between the flamethrower and the alien
http://cdn.splitsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/etgohome1.jpg
― Diddley Hollyberry (Phil D.), Monday, 12 May 2014 16:06 (ten years ago) link
i mean you can keep twisting yourself in knots interpreting the movie as like... a wry commentary on the ineptness of cave surveyors or something but at that point its almost fanfic
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 16:06 (ten years ago) link
no, i literally thought it was hilarious that the dude got lost. that's not fanfic that was my gut reaction.
i believe you when you say the characters are badly written (i care a lot about acting but i'm not In The Biz and i don't really think in such technical terms about scripts). i just don't think i care that much, or even notice, when the movie is as ridiculously entertaining to me as this one is (cf. pacific rim, lots of others)
i mean, in aliens vasquez and gorman barely qualified as sketches of people; the gung-ho cigar chomping sergeant, i mean, was he "well written"? (i dunno, i'd say no.)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 May 2014 16:16 (ten years ago) link
i would say yes.
― socki (s1ocki), Monday, 12 May 2014 16:17 (ten years ago) link
im literally repeating lines those characters said all the time some 30 years after i first saw that movie.
in prometheus, the characters are conveniences to the plot
but the plot is great! "people do dumb shit, chaos ensues."
― ryan, Monday, 12 May 2014 16:18 (ten years ago) link