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

still amused by the thought of noomi rapace cobbling together an entire new body for david out of fuck knows what on an almost entirely empty engineer ship

"ozymandias is by byron you know, and it's good!"

http://cyberneticzoo.com/wp-content/uploads/k456-Nam-June-Paik-K456_p1-x640.jpg

‘let me unlock for you the secrets of effective fingering’

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/G3434R/artificial-intelligence-experimental-robot-search-future-G3434R.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYDW2A5-Cbw

I never quite figured out whether that planet was meant to be engineer homeworld, I suppose it was.

I thought the exposition - jumping to flashback to show David bionuking all those dudes - was a stupid decision that detracted from the tension. Better to have had him walking around the skeletons saying what he'd done or lying about it or whatever. Getting to see the engineer homeworld was always going to be anticlimactic. Oh, they look like humans and wear robes.

I thought the landscape was gorgeous and I really wish it could just have been a temperate planet but with xenomorph spores on it - looks nice, but actually a horrible place of death. Unusual to see xenomorphs in such a setting, don't think we've seen it before in the franchise? But no, must have a load of cosmic non plot.

Wasn't sure if he was supposed to have killed Noomi or what. Was that her body or a sculpture? He used her to make the alien out of?

Then at the end the pay off is just ... a regular seen it before soldier alien going round a spaceship killing people. And with none of the wtf claustrophobic atmosphere of Alien.

And the decision to go off course in the first place was unbelievably badly acted, like there was no feeling of resistance at all.

alien vs predator: requiem actually does begin in the forest outside gunnison, colorado, but it's mostly at night or in the sewers or indoors so it mostly doesn't look like forest

(the antarctic pyramid one i mentioned upthread is 1 not 2)

and that's why alien vs predator 1 is an awesome movie

finding that cardamon post really soothing and well-paced

I thought the exposition - jumping to flashback to show David bionuking all those dudes - was a stupid decision

idk i think this is like the best part of the movie

a movie i really like tbf

i just realized it was a stealth remake of The Black Hole. if only the ending were as good!

auspiciously named cat and kittens: ripley, bishop, hicks, newt, morse

A family of cats who were stuck inside intu Watford for days have been rescued. https://t.co/u4SxOglJ8e

— Watford Observer (@Observer_Owl) May 25, 2020

Man, Prometheus just makes me so angry(!) I can't believe I've seen it now like 3x.

Also, while searching this thread for my posts, I learned not only that there was a sequel to Prometheus (!) but that I actually saw it yet have zero recollection of it haha.

Would love to see a non-stealth remake of The Black Hole

Then again, the original is basically perfect

If I remember correctly, since I only saw it decades ago as a kid, but that ending is legitimately disturbing for a movie Walt Disney put out.

I’m referring to “The Black Hole.” I have no time for the Prometheus garbage.

It’s not just the ending that’s disturbing for Disney. They straight up have a satanic robot disembowel a guy after the heroes learn the horrible fate of the crew, which is also terrifying in itself!

the best things about The Black Hole are the score, th set design, the ship design, those gorgeous miniatures, the opening titles, and the hammy 70s theatrics from Schell and to a lesser extent Borgnine. can't imagine a remake improving on any of those in this day and age, and the story/characters aren't really much to work with.

IMO Best thing about the Black Hole is the matte paintings.

https://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-wonderful-world-of-disney-matte-art.html

great images at the bottom of this blogpost.

If I remember correctly, since I only saw it decades ago as a kid, but that ending is legitimately disturbing for a movie Walt Disney put out.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Wednesday, September 23, 2020 1:26 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That was just the early '80s Ron Miller era of Disney in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpf2IzmMVg

I still don't think there's been a good book or proper deep dive into what I keep calling the interregnum years, along the lines of DisneyWar, say. I would read that in a heartbeat.

interregnum years is a good way to put it. when i did the animated feature poll series i dubbed the 80s part of it the "gothic period," but that didn't deal with most of the post-Walt zone or live-action, and it's def the most fascinating and odd disney era for me.

and how did I forget to mention the matte paintings - yes, absolutely.

Boo- Watcher in the Woods is not on Disney+

i suggest Return From Witch Mountain, which is often dull but occasionally musters some creaky creepiness. the score is surprisingly good, too. but really Black Hole and Black Cauldron are the main D+ assets in this department.

Did someone say "Alien?" Did someone say "D+"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWPmXJ3Kwqw

Something Wicked This Way Comes also fits into the timeline/ethos. And straight up animated films of the era like The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound are often pretty grim! But then again you have Unidentified Flying Oddball, truly one of the worst things ever filmed.

(adds to D+ watchlist)

I loved Something Wicked when I was a kid, about the same time I saw The Creature Wasn't Nice, which at that time was the funniest movie I had ever seen.

You also have Never Cry Wolf from that era which is AFAIK the only straight-up Disney-branded film featuring a peen shot.

(Surprisingly not on D+.)

lol i just realized you all were calling Disney+ "D+". I just figured you were listing all the "D+" (as in grade) movies that Disney released. I thought, huh, some of these movies aren't any worse than C+, but different strokes ...

i like the idea that the "invitation" was just totally misconstrued, it was actually a warning, like they're pointing at this one particular star system and saying "NEVER go here, NEVER" and the prehistoric scribes are nodding and writing down "ALWAYS go here, ALWAYS"

anyway i just watched and loved this movie again and read (and loved) this ENTIRE thread again.

that's quite an achievement!

Thread good, movie terrible

been rewatching all the Alien movies after watching Covenant. it's been fun! could barely remember what happened in which ones.

we watched Alien on Halloween night & Aliens the day after

a fine, blessed run of movies

something about this time of year makes it just right.

though re Aliens: newt still drives me up the wall

i watched the first one again recently and had forgotten that Ripley calls Mother “you BITCH!!” - i had totally retconned that into the second movie, addressed to the queen. or maybe she says it there too?

she totally says it in aliens

i maintain that alien covenant is the best alien sequel since aliens

prometheus profoundly goofy yet with many effective scenes. though i’m overdue a revisit

yep aliens too. she says it in the powerloader scene

I had a friend in college with Hollywood ties. This is the barely internet era, so he would occasionally snag hard copies of scripts. One day he showed up with the "Alien: Resurrection" script and I thought, cool, I loved "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children," I can't wait to see what these dudes do with "Alien." Then I read it and thought, ugh, I don't really like this. Then I saw the movie, which was faithful to the script I read, and didn't like it either, but I think I only saw it that once.

(Fun aside: two other early scripts I remember getting from him were "A Life Less Ordinary" and "Pulp Fiction," both of course massively anticipated follow-ups to classics. I read the former and, once again, thought, oof, I don't like this thing, and the movie was indeed also faithful (and bad). But "Pulp Fiction," I had the sense to compromise and open it to just one page, where I saw the word "chainsaw" and knew better than to read any more.)

Back in the DVD era, the "Alien: Quadrilogy" boxed set was basically the best thing ever short of those massive Lord of the Rings sets.

(Another fun anecdote: that same friend once found a lost dog in his neighborhood, made some inquiries and found the owner, or at least their address. He rang the bell at the gate, was buzzed in, and it was Steven Segal.)

(Seagal)

i still have my Alien Quadrilogy dvd set
(me, an old)

used copies on amazon starting at $5.98, shit i might just pick it up

things that all good alien(s) movies have:

- female protagonist
- cryopods
- lack of consensus on quarantine best practice
- alien in tummy
- secret plan by the corporation to try to control the alien, leaving crew out to dry
- male robot with head torn from body but still talking
- strobe effects in finale
- flamethrowers
- an escape ship with the alien still on it
- a voice diary