Prometheus trailer

[David Jimerson]

I just watched it two weeks ago. Still holds up for me.
One thing, the pacing is very different. Nice slow burn. The other, I got to know the characters. Another reason, they actually SPOKE to one another, made decisions TOGETHER.

That's not the movie I saw. They never once made a decision together -- they just barked orders at each other, and argued about them -- nor did they stick with a decision once it was made, which was what pretty much always got them killed.

Not to mention sitting around leisurely on several occasions, navel-gazing, while the alien was freely roaming the ship, especially in the first few scenes following its birth.

Or the inexplicable things like a room with gallons of water falling from the ceiling, that a) is happening on a space ship, and b) no one seems terribly concerned about.

I'm really not trying to slag Alien here, just holding it to the same standard.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

That's not the movie I saw. They never once made a decision together -- they just barked orders at each other, and argued about them -- nor did they stick with a decision once it was made, which was what pretty much always got them killed.

Not to mention sitting around leisurely on several occasions, navel-gazing, while the alien was freely roaming the ship, especially in the first few scenes following its birth.

I think we saw two different movies.
In ALIEN, When the ALIEN first got out after killing Kane, they broke into search parties, stayed in groups, and sought it out, only to later learn it was now bigger than them.

In Prometheus, when they tried to put Shaw in stasis knowing she had an alien baby in her, she hit them, ran away, performed a c-section, and left the baby in the Lifeboat.
Nobody followed, nobody cared.

Oh well. Guess we disagree. No big deal.

 

[David Jimerson]

I think we saw two different movies.
In ALIEN, When the ALIEN first got out after killing Kane, they broke into search parties, stayed in groups, and sought it out, only to later learn it was now bigger than them.

No, they didn't. They held a rather relaxed funeral service for Kane. THEN they split up, supposedly to stay in groups, but what's the first thing that happened? Ripley sent Brett off by himself to find the cat. What happened to Brett immediately?

In Prometheus, when they tried to put Shaw in stasis knowing she had an alien baby in her, she hit them, ran away, performed a c-section, and left the baby in the Lifeboat.
Nobody followed, nobody cared.

OK, compare that to Kane having a huge alien on his face, then it just uppped and died for no apparent reason, but hey, he woke up, no further worries -- everything must be cool.

Shaw did, by the way, attempt to kill the alien in the chamber.

 

[Scott F]

oh, you two bozos who got lost, you're alien bait. Good luck while I get laid.

If that's not realistic scriptwriting, I don't know what is!

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

No, they didn't. They held a rather relaxed funeral service for Kane. THEN they split up, supposedly to stay in groups, but what's the first thing that happened? Ripley sent Brett off by himself to find the cat. What happened to Brett immediately?




OK, compare that to Kane having a huge alien on his face, then it just uppped and died for no apparent reason, but hey, he woke up, no further worries -- everything must be cool.

Shaw did, by the way, attempt to kill the alien in the chamber.

True. But I believe they acted accordingly MOST of the time.
About 90% of the choices they made in Prometheus just didn't add up for me. Especially since they sought this out. So most of the time, they were doing really moronic things.
Even supercharging the Engineer's head almost immediately was just plain dumb.

In ALIEN they were completely unprepared and still made smarter decisions, most of the time.

Every movie has its moments, but Prometheus just rubbed me the wrong way. It started with the Biologist and Geologist getting lost and just cascaded into a huge pile of nonsense after that.

ALIEN works for me and I've seen them both within the last couple of weeks. The comparison isn't even close in my eyes.
The only thing I like better in Prometheus is David. He was rock solid. Loved just about everything he did.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

If that's not realistic scriptwriting, I don't know what is!

LOL! True.

They also had a live feed of what their cameras recorded. As if they wouldn't have looked at that before heading back down to see what happened.
Cap'n should have had someone keep an eye on them, at the very least.

 

[Eric Boellner]

The exact same can be said of Alien.

Seriously, I watched it again last night for the first time in years, and it follows the same arc. Starts out slow and contemplative, building an atmosphere, and then turns into to people acting inconsistently, contradicting themselves, and doing stupid things which get them killed. And Ripley only survives in the shuttle because the alien, inexplicably, decides to take a nap.

If you watched Alien as a new film today, would you not come to all the same conclusions?

This.

I still love Alien -- I think it's levels above Prometheus in every way. But Scott got away with a lot of cliche horror twists and turns and bumps in the night that people aren't giving him the benefit of the doubt on with Prometheus. I agree that Shaw stating from the beginning the entire point of the film was a bit cheapening to the mystery of the rest of the film, and I don't get why Idris Elba's character randomly knew all that s--t about the alien creators making WMD's and whatnot. I even understand how people can be disappointed -- it's a movie about big ideas, and it doesn't really translate those well into a story. But the combination of the cinematic beauty, the two engaging characters (Shaw, and David), the ATMOM-inspired ideas about creation, and that damn alien abortion scene... it all made a pretty great moviegoing experience for me.

Also, that cat in Alien only existed to lure people into getting killed. Tell me that "Come back, Sparky!" isn't a major cliche in horror movies, leading to the deaths of the characters chasing after the pet.

-JMT

FWIW, I did kind of watch Alien as a "new film." Saw it for the first time, earlier this year (had seen Aliens already before, but wasn't as impressed). It's an absolutely amazing cinematic experience, regardless of its flaws, tropes, and cliches. The beauty of it, I think, is like MAH said: it's a slow burn, and we focus on the characters for way longer than we do in Prometheus.

EDIT: Apparently didn't see there was another page after the one I was reading...?

 

[TheDingo]

If that's not realistic scriptwriting, I don't know what is!

...Most of the crew of the Prometheus had never worked together before, and were essentially highly paid techies for hire, who didn't give a sh*t about anyone other than themselves. It appears that the geologist freaked out when things got too weird for him, and he quickly reached a point where he was no longer in a rational state of mind. Fear can have a very corrosive effect on a person's thought processes.

 

[David Jimerson]

Let's also not forget that the entire problem in Alien could have been avoided if Dallas had followed the law, his training, and every bit of common sense, and not brought the alien on board to begin with.

Ash let him in, but Ash was programmed to do that. Dallas wasn't.

 

[Eric Boellner]

In Prometheus, when they tried to put Shaw in stasis knowing she had an alien baby in her, she hit them, ran away, performed a c-section, and left the baby in the Lifeboat.
Nobody followed, nobody cared.

It was my understanding that David, alone, was aware of Shaw's "baby." After all, he, like Ash in Alien, was acting of an accord contrary to the basic survival instincts of the crew. It was weird that he let it go after she clearly had performed the surgery, but it also makes sense, because he was distracted/busy with Weyland waking up.

-JMT

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Let's also not forget that the entire problem in Alien could have been avoided if Dallas had followed the law, his training, and every bit of common sense, and not brought the alien on board to begin with.

Ash let him in, but Ash was programmed to do that. Dallas wasn't.

To me this is nitpicking a little. These guys weren't trained for this. They were on their way home. Mother woke them up to see if they could help someone that sent out a "distress" signal. When the **** hit the fan I could easily see some of them acting irrationally and I loved that Ripley wouldn't let them in and that Ash overruled her. That was great character development all around.

Unlike a BIOLOGIST that traveled 2.5 years to find a long dead "Engineer" and wants to immediately run home at the first sign of it. That, to me, is almost as funny as the Geologist getting lost. Forget that he had a direct link to the captain looking at their locations on a map.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

FWIW, I did kind of watch Alien as a "new film." Saw it for the first time, earlier this year (had seen Aliens already before, but wasn't as impressed). It's an absolutely amazing cinematic experience, regardless of its flaws, tropes, and cliches. The beauty of it, I think, is like MAH said: it's a slow burn, and we focus on the characters for way longer than we do in Prometheus.

My 19 year old nephew just watched ALIEN before we saw Prometheus, I made him. He was a first timer.
While he found some things in ALIEN a little hard to swallow, it was nothing compared to the rant I heard after we watched Prometheus. Not even close.

To each their own.

Again, I did like it enough to want to own it when it comes out. More for the spectacle of it all. It's a beautiful film and it does have its moments.
I enjoyed it more the second time around knowing what I was in for. For me, it didn't come close to ALIEN though. Not terrible, but not great. I consider ALIEN to be a great science fiction movie. Hell, the facehugger around Kane's face still looks more real than the "squid" I saw dangling over Shaw.

 

[TheDingo]

It was my understanding that David, alone, was aware of Shaw's "baby." After all, he, like Ash in Alien, was acting of an accord contrary to the basic survival instincts of the crew. It was weird that he let it go after she clearly had performed the surgery, but it also makes sense, because he was distracted/busy with Weyland waking up.

I think David's motivations were ambiguous at best. He had is own secret Weyland orders, but I get the impression that he may have formed ideas of his own while playing caretaker for 2 years while the crew was in stasis.

 

[David Jimerson]

To me this is nitpicking a little. These guys weren't trained for this. They were on their way home. Mother woke them up to see if they could help someone that sent out a "distress" signal. When the s*%t hit the fan I could easily see some of them acting irrationally and I loved that Ripley wouldn't let them in and that Ash overruled her. That was great character development all around.

Unlike a BIOLOGIST that traveled 2.5 years to find a long dead "Engineer" and wants to immediately run home at the first sign of it. That, to me, is almost as funny as the Geologist getting lost. Forget that he had a direct link to the captain looking at their locations on a map.

It was stated several times in dialogue that regulations and the law were clear -- you do not bring an organism on board the ship. You don't need to be biologist to understand that, and it absolutely would be part of the licensing of any vessel officer, and especially that of the captain.

I repeat, though, I'm not slagging Alien; I'm just applying the same level of skepticism.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

It was stated several times in dialogue that regulations and the law were clear -- you do not bring an organism on board the ship. You don't need to be biologist to understand that, and it absolutely would be part of the licensing of any vessel officer, and especially that of the captain.

I repeat, though, I'm not slagging Alien; I'm just applying the same level of skepticism.

I'm not saying he didn't understand it, just saying he was in over his head. They didn't sign up for this. I get why he freaked out. Ripley made the right call, Ash screwed them over.

Now, I didn't get why the biologist wasn't interested in a few thousand year old specimen from another world but went giddy over the very much alive hissing alien snake showing obvious signs of aggression. Call me biased. Huge difference in my book. I just can't buy into it.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

I repeat, though, I'm not slagging Alien; I'm just applying the same level of skepticism.

No problem at all.

 

[adkimery]

It was my understanding that David, alone, was aware of Shaw's "baby." After all, he, like Ash in Alien, was acting of an accord contrary to the basic survival instincts of the crew. It was weird that he let it go after she clearly had performed the surgery, but it also makes sense, because he was distracted/busy with Weyland waking up.

-JMT

They might not have known about the baby itself but they at least knew she was infected and potentially contagious which is why they showed up in Hazmat suits.


All movies will have logic flaws that are required to serve the plot or instances of artistic license but the key is in a well told movie those elements won't stick out like sore thumbs because they will have been folded into the story so seamlessly. It's like the difference between watching a good magic show vs a poor magic show. In either case it's slight of hand, or whatever, but the better magician well sell the illusion so well that you'll be like "Wow, that was really cool" as opposed to "I'm pretty sure I saw fishing line attached to those cards." My problem w/Prometheus isn't the ambition of the film it's the overly contrived, unmotivated characters that are little more than plot puppets.

So many of the contrived points are unnecessary too which makes it even more maddening. For example, here's another way the storm scene could have gone w/just a couple minor tweaks. The away team has found the dead alien and each team member does their thing. The captain then radios them that a storm is blowing in and they need to get back to the ship ASAP. The storm is disrupting communications which freaks out the Geologist and Biologist who are like "let's go, this stuff will still be here tomorrow." No one else seems ready to go so they take off by themselves and eventually get lost. Communication w/the ship is now almost totally gone so they can't radio for help. The rest of the team is now bolting out of the cave and in their hurry they don't notice that all of the vehicles are still parked out front (i.e. the Geo and Bio are still inside). The away team is now back on the ship, everyone realizes that Bio and Geo are missing but communications are totally down so all they can do is wait out the storm and hope that Bio and Geo will be okay.

The end result, plot wise, is exactly the same but story wise we get a much more believable (and thus compelling) scenario as to what went down.


-Andrew

 

[David Jimerson]

I think some of the issues with the film can be explained by MY major nit with it -- there was too much obvious sandbagging for a sequel. That's not something Ridley Scott has ever done too much of.

It appeared to me that quite a few things -- including David's underlying motivations -- were left purposely loose in order to feed the next movie. I never find that to be effective storytelling, and it's part of the reason I find it hard to get into much TV these days.

 

[Scott F]

It appears that the geologist freaked out when things got too weird for him, and he quickly reached a point where he was no longer in a rational state of mind. Fear can have a very corrosive effect on a person's thought processes.

We can pick this film apart eight ways from Sunday…I could give a crap. But I agree with what Dingo is saying: Read any "mishap" book on cave diving, spelunking, exploring shipwrecks...whatever…..panic always takes over rational thought in a dicey situation.

 

[Batutta]

That's not the movie I saw. They never once made a decision together -- they just barked orders at each other, and argued about them -- nor did they stick with a decision once it was made, which was what pretty much always got them killed.

Not to mention sitting around leisurely on several occasions, navel-gazing, while the alien was freely roaming the ship, especially in the first few scenes following its birth.

Or the inexplicable things like a room with gallons of water falling from the ceiling, that a) is happening on a space ship, and b) no one seems terribly concerned about.

I'm really not trying to slag Alien here, just holding it to the same standard.

There are several reasons their behavior works in Alien. They are a bunch of roughnecks towing a mining vessel. The last thing they were trained or prepared for was dealing with a hostile alien species. They are forced to go by the company pretty much against their will to investigate. And they are shown as being at odds with each other from the very beginning even about petty stuff. That they don't handle the situation that transpires well is totally understandable, and consistent with their characters. The crew of Prometheus are (presumably) very smart scientists chosen to specifically go and investigate and possibly encounter an alien species. They know what they might be getting into when they get to the planet, and as scientists, are expected to behave more professionally and carefully. Mostly they act like impulsive, incurious idiots running around like chickens with their heads cut off...As for the room with water falling from the ceiling in Alien, it is never explained, but is it important? It's not a plot point, just a curious design choice that doesn't impact the course of the story one bit. Prometheus has dozens of unexplained, nonsensical things that completely impact the story. One or two, I think people can let slide, but they pile up faster then the bodies do here.