Prometheus trailer

Would you have invested?

1. Known director.
2. Working in same genre where he already had a hit.
3. Has a built in audience for his work.
 
Saw it today, and thought it was fantastic. I don't think the story's muddled, I think it just takes focus and attention -- you have to keep up, because there's a lot to keep up with. It's not really an Alien movie (in that it's stylistically very different -- massive wide shots, most of the film takes place during the day, and most of it is exterior, with more focus on the mystery than the terror), though I think I'd say it's an homage to Alien that works very well both as such and as a film on its own.

Also, while I'm still a fan of film (Super 16mm, 35mm, IMAX, you name it), this certainly eases my distaste for films shot on Red. Of course, Wolski knows how to handle that camera better than anyone I've ever seen -- those landscape shots were f--king amazing. Glad to see Wolski teaming up with Scott again for McCarthy's The Counselor.

-JMT
 
I also saw it today and absolutely loved it. Prometheus is visually breathtaking in IMAX 3D. ( will definitely see it again in the next couple of weeks )

...I had no problems with the story, acting, or direction, though there are lots of places where you have to fill in the blanks for yourself, which I don't mind. It would be a 3+ hour long movie if Ridley was expected to spell everything out.

I saw James Cameron being interviewed on the street in the past month, where he said that he would be very interested in directing the sequel to Prometheus.

One last note...

A "genius" Dad decided to take his 10 year-old son to see Prometheus ( the kid sat beside me ), and as soon as the film got to the nasty alien temple scene the kid freaked and begged his Dad to leave, and thankfully the Dad listened and they left the theatre together.
 
(spoilers below)



Some quick nitpicks:
- The character of Theron is pointless. I don't mind watching her walking around. But I'd rather have a character that has something to do with the narrative.
- Yoga space zombie. Because every movie is better with zombies... Not.
- Out-of-place cheerful "lets-kamikaze-this" attitude in the end.
- The captain figuring out the purpose of the whole Engineers tech (bio weapons, won't let this go to earth, etc) from a quick visit to fetch the bodies and a glance at a hologram.
- The geologist and the biologist getting lost. After the geologist mapped the cave with his own drones. They didn't ask for help on the radio. Noone looked for them until some time passed. "Oh, btw, where are X and Y?" On a freaking unexplored alien planet. That's where. Yeah. Right. But hey, work force is cheap and expendable.
- The moment below the falling ship actually made the audience laugh hysterically and/or shouting advice while Vickers and Shaw kept running forward, instead of stepping to the side.
- Too many holograms and shiny stuff. Alien tech looks like ancient history compared to this. And this is a prequel. Erm, continuity?
- The whole xenomorph birth chain is ridiculous. And Ridley didn't like the facehugger and thought that it was cheesy... Because, you see, a black-alien-goo-sexually-transfered-turned-to-prematurely-aborted-mini-octopus-turned-giant-octopus-infesting-a-superman-through-his-mouth is totally not cheesy.

And there is more where this comes from. :)
 
I'm with cpc, on those points and more. There was little effort to build the characters into the roles required of them when it came time to move a story point. The captain stood out for me in this regard, but the same is true for most of them.
 
Agree with cpc too:
thought the xenomorph birth chain was really badly executed,
too many characters, not enough screentime or empathy for any of them, some were pointless.
didn't think there were any blanks to fill in myself, found the plot/story to be pretty obviously signposted (bar the Engineer's actions in the intro that took a while to figure out)
the film's score was overblown too - used as an early warning indicator that "something bad is about to happen"
ending was rubbish! like a horror B-movie with added potential sequel cheesiness.

Saw it in 3D at IMAX - it did look as good as expected, just letdown by the script,
I've read a ton of reviews and 90% seem unfavourably good
 
i found the answer to all my questions about Prometheus.

Damon Lindelof. that explains everything.
 
cpc said:
(spoilers below)
Click to expand...

- The character of Theron is pointless.

Yes, she was under used. Being "Daddy's" girl, she was the one who actually called the shots, but her motivations for being there aren't very clear.

- Yoga space zombie.

I didn't mind this. He's morphed into something that isn't human any more, and you have to illustrate this visually.

- Out-of-place cheerful "lets-kamikaze-this" attitude in the end.

The captain's motivation was unclear, though I assume that anyone who signs on for these type of missions is not a "normal" person. ( interstellar space flight is still a new thing, and extremely dangerous )

- The captain figuring out the purpose of the whole Engineers tech (bio weapons, won't let this go to earth, etc)

He wasn't an idiot, and knew everything that everyone else knew. The bio weapons scenario was a good fit. Otherwise why the heck did the "gods of the human race" build this installation?

- The geologist and the biologist getting lost.

If you are familiar with extreme anxiety and panic attacks, people experiencing these conditions don't function very well, especially if "emotional-flooding" kicks in and cognitive-processing starts to shut down.

Emotional Flooding

- The moment below the falling ship actually made the audience laugh hysterically and/or shouting advice while Vickers and Shaw kept running forward, instead of stepping to the side.

Again, in moment of absolute primal terror the brain does not function normally. ( nobody laughed at my screening, though I was a bit pissed that Vickers was gone, I really wanted to see what her character would do when pushed to the extreme )

- Too many holograms and shiny stuff. Alien tech looks like ancient history compared to this.

The Prometheus was built by one of the richest corporations on Earth, probably the first experimental ship of it's kind, and with a sea of money to build it, no expense was spared. The Nostromo was a planetary industrial mining ship, where it was likely built by the lowest-bidder. Nobody gave a crap about what the Nostromo looked like, it just had to function.

- The whole xenomorph birth chain is ridiculous.

H.R. Giger, the original artist who created the Alien and all of it's derivatives, was brought on board to design the Prometheus Alien life cycle, and he was the one who decided what they should look like and how they should function.
 
MPB said:
i found the answer to all my questions about Prometheus.

Damon Lindelof. that explains everything.
Click to expand...
I want to so easily place blame on Lindelof, but given Scott's producing credit, and overall "force" behind this film, I'd have to say that it's preposterous that he wasn't significantly involved in the story. I wrote a bit on the film earlier today, so out of laziness, I'll just link it:
http://www.douglasguerra.com/?p=538
 
I enjoyed the film very much. My only gripes were the space jockey not remaining in pilots seat and just generally not expanding on the alien mythos.

The Theron character represented the cold, unfeeling nature of "the corporation" that exists in the Alien films. The company was solely interested in the alien and everything else was expendable. Vickers was only interested in expanding her power and how this mission would benefit the company and nothing more.

Fassbender and Naomi R did an amazing job.
 
Saw it opening night. Enjoyed it as a visual spectacle (and Fassbender's performance was fantastic), but overall it was disappointing. It wanted so desperately to be important, but failed. Too many holes, poor character development (I didn't care about a single one of them), and in the end the story was really not as interesting as the characters kept telling us it was.
 
jkc123 said:
My only gripes were the space jockey not remaining in pilots seat and just generally not expanding on the alien mythos.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that the Prometheus "Space Jockey" ( "Engineer" ) is NOT the same SJ from "Alien", and that the whole film takes place on a different planet. ( LV-223 versus LV-426 )

Also, one of the unique features of the Alien bio-weapon is that it can combine with any other DNA based organism to create a new organism that did not exist before. So you would expect extreme mutations every time the organism combines with a new "host" creature. ( H.R. Giger, the creator of the original Alien design was brought in to design the new Prometheus Alien life-cycle )
 
RX782 said:
I want to so easily place blame on Lindelof, but given Scott's producing credit, and overall "force" behind this film, I'd have to say that it's preposterous that he wasn't significantly involved in the story. I wrote a bit on the film earlier today, so out of laziness, I'll just link it:
http://www.douglasguerra.com/?p=538
Click to expand...

i was being glib, of course. Lindelof was not the only participant, but his influence looks apparent to me. saying that, i should mention that Lost never failed to piss me off as the Triumph of the Red Herring. regarding Prometheus, the only excuse i can find for the sloppy story (and i think i'm being generous) is if the story was written in the manner of serial or episodic television. granted, this is not entirely unprecedented in the age of Hollywood, franchise filmmaking. but my impression (admittedly, not as an aficionado) of the, uh... method, is clusters of unjustified, unresolved plot lines and story points, like spagetti against the wall. we may find them properly integrated... or not. who can say? to the devotee, this apparently makes it interesting or exciting. or even, complex. in the context of Lost, even the red herring implies a method, plan or narrative strategy which must eventually be justified. and i can't say that i found that to be the case. it appeared to me to be mis-direction for its own sake.

i'm not a fan of postmodernism.
 
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MPB said:
i should mention that Lost never failed to piss me off as the Triumph of the Red Herring.
Click to expand...

...I watched the entire LOST series, expecting that everything would be revealed in the end, just as had been promised by J.J. Abrams and crew in interviews when the show first started. I remember being told that the entire plot of LOST had been worked out up to 5 years in advance of shooting. Needless to say I was severely pissed by the final episode. Had I owned any of the LOST seasons, I probably would have had my own LOST DVD barbecue that night. ( not a fan of J.J. Abrams TV work, with the exception of Fringe )
 
Did anyone see the trailers or viral videos for this? I don't think they could have been any more clear that this wasn't going to be Alien 4, or 0.5.

-JMT
 
Michael Traven said:
Did anyone see the trailers or viral videos for this? I don't think they could have been any more clear that this wasn't going to be Alien 4, or 0.5.

-JMT
Click to expand...

I saw just about every trailer they released, I think. I knew it wasn't going to be another Alien film, and I didn't want it to be. I wanted a science-fiction film with fully-drawn characters. I felt like I got the first thirty minutes of that, and then it just didn't know what it wanted to be.

So I was entertained (somewhat), but not overly engaged on an emotional level.
 
Actually, I think the life cycle was quite brilliant the more I thought about it. First, it was unstable. In a sense, I think the beginning was saying that something like that virus was ingested by the engineers and that created us. Now they had a new virus they were about to send to earth.

However, this is why I think it was brilliant:

1) There were worms in the ground in the structure. I am assuming this is something that was living in the conditions that were being maintained. When the door was opened and oxygen and moisture came in, it triggered maybe an expansion in the vessels causing the virus to leak out. That material infected the worms, which they created the new creature that the biologist thought was not dangerous. That then infected the geologist. Since he didn't get implanted by something other than the virus, his reaction was different, and unpredictable. Maybe the engineers were experimenting on worms.

2) When the male scientist gets infected, it's through the virus ingested. He is on the path of the geologist. However, his sperm must be also infected. Given he has sex with the female scientist, and she is unable to get pregnant, the virus must be mutating in the sperm, which is inside her, which is why it ends up being almost like a sperm with 4 tails. (Of course, makes you wonder why there weren't multiple mutated sperm, but maybe there is some gestation defense mechanism. Again, there seems to be a rapid growth cycle here. Then, when it attacks the engineer, if you noticed, there were parts of an exoskeleton built into his body, not just external armor. Because the large squid sperm uses him for a host, his DNA and armor ability get mapped into the creatures, which then generates the first xenomorph.

Of course, that's just how I fill in the blanks :)
 
TheDingo said:
I also saw it today and absolutely loved it.
...I had no problems with the story, acting, or direction, though there are lots of places where you have to fill in the blanks for yourself, which I don't mind.
Click to expand...

+1, I'm with you man. I will see it again, next time in 3D.

TheDingo said:
A "genius" Dad decided to take his 10 year-old son to see Prometheus
Click to expand...
Idiot


- The moment below the falling ship actually made the audience laugh hysterically and/or shouting advice while Vickers and Shaw kept running forward, instead of stepping to the side.
Click to expand...
Running to what side? Did you not see how f-ing huge that ship was? There was like no way to avoid being crushed by it. And on that note, Theron's death scene was pitch-perfect.
 
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