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

on the plus side, you don't have to care about anyone if caring isn't your thing. they are all stock horror movie characters with the exception of aryan robot boy.

Fassbender hams it up like a goddamn champion in this. He OWNS.

It's basically an evil episode of Star Trek or a wacky mad scientist flick stuffed inside a conventional alien movie. It moves way too fast but I liked it.

all the pretty planet and ship stuff really made me wish he could just make a 3 hour pretty planet and ship movie. that stuff was lovingly done and i wish i could have lingered with it longer. it was worth seeing just for that.

there is one part, the apex of the part where they're climbing the pretty planet (again trying not to spoil anything specific) that is gooorrrgeous and yeah it was like, if these images were married to a really great story and about half as many characters who actually were characters, there would be the potential there for a really spectacular latter-day sci-fi triumph from scott. in practice it's more like pandorumetheus but so it goes.

These characters would be colonists rather than scientists, right? So I'd expect a certain level of dumb.

Not this dumb. You land on a previously unknown planet with a rich ecosystem, take no biological or quarantine precautions, and aren't concerned when someone starts to look really sick really quickly? These are Golgofrinchans.

"guys they're only colonists, doesn't matter if we just choose the first couple of dozen idiots that apply"

This is the type of movie where an evil robot sings opera to himself in the mirror while cutting his hair.

It's not wrong to say that the characters frequently act like idiots in this but it feels kinda beside the point maybe?

Also like, have y'all been watching the news lately at all or

a coupla white robots sitting around playing the flute. is what they should have called it

waiting for podot *awaits erudite applause*

Is it possible... Weaver is the most interesting thing about the movies, the irreplaceable thing that holds them together - not Scott, Cameron, Fincher, or even the alien - and that's why the last two movies are so dire?

I guess that doesn't explain why 3&4 were bad - unless you say they're both deconstructions so we're not getting the "real" Ripley as the first two movies.

Haven't seen the new one. Sounds fucking idiotic, like Prometheus with added torture porn. Also, the first two are FUN!

I guess that doesn't explain why 3&4 were bad

Exactly. She's the best thing about them (well, Winona is good, iirc), but she can't save them. I think her character is great, but the irreplaceable thing about the first two, imo, is the ensemble. Every character is a real character. By three (despite some good characters, tbf) it's mostly fodder, and the ensemble camaraderie of 4 is forced and artificial.

i like the grumbly jobsworth britishness of 3 but mileage evidently varies: still wish vincent ward had directed it tho (his concept was that entire planet was built of wood, clearly >>>> than any ridley s idea for 30-odd years)

the soundtrack/score/clanking noises of 3 was my favorite thing about it. so much so that i saw it a second time at the movies and taped it with my tape recorder! but if that's your favorite part of an alien movie...

here's an interesting thing about Alien(s) i did not know

http://lwlies.com/articles/alien-gender-politics-ellen-ripley-joan-lambert/

JiC is right about ensemble. The casts have grown bigger and bigger and less and less real. Cameron thins his down quickly, Fincher just accepts having a bunch of lookalike background guys, Jeunet aims for a cartoonish vividness for each person (but ends up instead with the first issue of an Image Comics team book), and then Scott's new entries, like Anderson's AvP, become just huge groups of basically faceless young actors who die before you know their names, no matter how long they stick around. The deaths are therefore not very interesting or memorable. (We also learn at one point about some really horrifying atrocities that happened in the past, which if taken seriously kind of dwarf anything the Xenomorphs will accomplish in the other films, but the film doesn't really incorporate this knowledge or treat it with the gravity it deserves, imho.)

The dumbness matters imho - it's distracting when it's clearly just plot mechanics being squeezed through the character's mouths, but it just generally reflects a failure to write them as people who do things for reasons that come out of who they are, how they relate to each other, how they handle situations and conflict. Alien had that in spades - here, though, half the dialogue comes out as "ooh, this looks like a good spot to get separated!" or "listen pal, I am ORDERING you to lead me into that spooky old house!" How many script pages are wasted on people trying to see if they can get a transmission through? Zzzzzzzzz.

it felt quick though. so i didn't get bored. but yeah the amount of cliches...you couldn't count them all. "i have to go take a leak..." i mean that is right out of friday the 13th part 400.

still think it was worth it for stuff like the solar sail. which really did belong in a better and grander film.

Good point re: ensembles. Is it fair to say that none of the Alien movies since Alien3 are... better than Event Horizon? (Even that iirc had a distinct, if B-list, ensemble.)

i read an article that said that every alien movie has made less money than the one before it. there were like a bunch of guys my age at the movies last night and a smattering of comic book guys but about 3/4 empty basically.

Weaver was great, but the real difference is the screenplays. The first two were outstanding: quotable dialogue, well-drawn characters, narrative tension, meaningful plot twists, etc.

The new movies are on par visually, and they feature talented actors, but the scripts stink.

i can almost hear billy crudup saying "what if we made him a man of faith...?" and everyone else saying sure whatever dude. get into your spacesuit.

hahaha otm

his speeches were such wooden non sequiturs that i didn't really register his man-of-faith character trait until reading reviews afterwards. it doesn't inform the way he deals with people or the decisions he makes afaict. even when people are trying to get him to do things they don't appeal to scripture or anything. like he was just, the nominal leader who's in over his head? but trying his best? but people think he's an asshole? but only sometimes? and this is the second or third most clearly-drawn character in the movie!

Just seen this at the BFI IMAX. Agree with Skot and DC for the most part, but I'd set my expectations very low after Prometheus, and so they were comfortably exceeded. Impressive visually. Bit surprised by the abrupt way the writers decided to, erm, deal with the problem that this movie had been teed up to be set on the planet of the Engineers.

"blood and fassbender" otm

I've decided I'm going to see this- mostly because I haven't yet seen any Alien film in the theater, whether first run or revival- and I can't find out whether the various "prologues" they've released are a part of the film or whether they're like that ridiculous Guy Pearce TED Talk filmed for Prometheus. Can anyone confirm or deny?

The crew based prologue that came out isn't in the film I can confirm that, haven't seen any others.

None of the prologues are in the film, from what I can tell. I hadn't really paid them note before. One seems to indicate that an element in this film that feels like a stub was supposed to be more of a thing. Even though it probably would make the most sense as part of a much more coherent conclusion to Prometheus tbh, since it finishes off some things that characters in that film cared about, and about which nobody in this film has even heard of.

The released videos are pretty much blu-ray extras

If nothing else at least this had a lot of Jerry Goldsmith's original Alien theme in it.

I am way too deep on L&O because Katherine Waterston with short hair, from a few angles... I kept expecting her to say something about prosecutorial misconduct

Weaver was great, but the real difference is the screenplays. The first two were outstanding: quotable dialogue, well-drawn characters, narrative tension, meaningful plot twists

Exactly. In Alien, the crew goes into a hostile environment in full protective gear; there's a real battle of wills over breaking quarantine to let Kane back on the ship, and you only find out later why Ash was so keen to go against the rules when it first seemed like compassion--all well written and acted.

The chest-rupturing scene and the revelation that Ash is an android are two of the best plot twists in any movie, ever. But this level of narrative innovation is impossible to sustain through multiple sequels. The plot elements become predictable, and we get tired of seeing them rearranged.

It's the curse of the franchise. The Predator sequels suffer even worse in this regard.

Did Alien and Aliens just use up all the potential of this material? I can't readily envision what an equally creative follow-up to those two would look like. Aliens still had a lot to explore, since we didn't know much about the monsters yet. After that, though, what's left? You're stuck recycling the older ideas or muddling around in uninteresting aspects of the mythology like the origin of the creatures.

That's an anslysis that fits the prequels far more than the main series, I'd say.

(to it me, though it fits both)

It's somewhat astonishing they've never inflicted an Aliens on Earth movie on us (not counting the AvP duology of dreck)

Alien 4 sets this up, but I think by that point fatigue had set in.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" style plot, where some indistinguishable humanoids carry Alien DNA and others don't, could be watchable.

Prometheus had a good premise, too, I think, and its first half hour felt genuinely interesting and new. But the commercial requirement to tie it to the "Alien" franchise ends up sinking the movie. I'd watch a movie that was solely about the Engineers, and their mysterious desire to create and destroy life on various worlds.

the Engineers are dumb as hell tho

yeah i mean there's hypothetically an interesting sci-fi movie to be made about an alien race that goes around meddling in life, but no reason to extend credit for this hypothetical good movie to the actual bad movie that is Prometheus - there's very little there that i'd call a keeper.

i don't think the first two films by any means exhausted the kind of stories/themes/whatever you could explore through the basic concept of this evil life form that grows inside people. they just got worse as genre movies, where they just repeat the beats of the first two movies ad infinitum. alien3 and alien resurrection both have some okay ideas that are distinct from those in alien and aliens, by lingering on different sides of the "i've got one inside me" angle. in alien3 it's the horror and burden of slowly realizing that, in resurrection it's the strangeness of dealing with a character who is not entirely human and seems okay with that - closer to a cyborg story really - and picking up the whole 'mothering' aspect in parody, a series of sick and wrong parent-child relationships. neither really goes for the body snatchers/Thing approach of "is one of us a mole??" - which is right i think, since it's just not what the xenomorph concept does best.

mind you, neither one is particularly successful at exploring these - alien3 is its sharpest and most affecting when it's focused on ripley and the thing inside her (and the vulnerability of this 'mother' in this fucked up violent hypermasculine situation)... but clumsy-with-a-big-budget on the rest. resurrection is just kind of a lightweight action adventure comedy thing. there are some genuinely horrifying bits but it doesn't sink its teeth into your psyche. boy is it fun to look at though.

I rewatched it during the week, and what I remembered as one of the most egregious elements (Jesus was an engineer) is actually just obliquely hinted at, it must be some interview with Scott / Lindelhof which planted that spider's egg in my brain.

it was Ridley

"If you look at it as an 'our children are misbehaving down there' scenario, there are moments where it looks like we've gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, 'Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.' Guess what? They crucified him."

Sky blue water wet &c but man this film is a piece of shit. My friends apologised to me after

Scott otm tho about the gold shield thing being lovely, and I do appreciate fassbender fully embracing the ridiculous but this was such a chore - my friends said similar stuff to those itt re "at least it was short & quick" but I really felt the 2hrs quite painfully. The stupidity was killing me.

I did laugh at the aliens golluming about & kicking ppl but not much else

if the roman out-of-control problem was running around in skirts maybe the emissary stopping it shouldn't have worn a dress, just sayin

imho let the spoilers fly at this point. i'm never going to see this and y'all's commentary will be more entertaining

All this has made me really want to rewatch Prometheus, ugh

What is wrong w u

this was really fun!

basically though its an insane robot movie not an 'alien' movie.

fassbender gave great insane robot. he was so much fun.

the middle part is ridiculous, but its done with a good amount of conviction

the last third was a hommage to previous alien films, including crazy ash

the LOTR aspects of this were all pretty funny

the whole thing was the funniest alien film, tbh.

oooookay, Ridley

im not sure ridley would call his own film ridiculuous, but wv