Prometheus trailer

I enjoyed it; but I wanted it to tie in with Alien more directly than it did.

As far as characters doing stupid things....how in the world can the doc decide to go to the Alien planet inhabited by the engineers who tried to kill her? Doesn't make sense to me. Any thoughts? Help me out with this one.
 
jkc123 said:
I enjoyed it; but I wanted it to tie in with Alien more directly than it did.

As far as characters doing stupid things....how in the world can the doc decide to go to the Alien planet inhabited by the engineers who tried to kill her? Doesn't make sense to me. Any thoughts? Help me out with this one.
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Other than an obvious tie in for a sequel... I saw it as a certain sort of vengeance... maybe she will try to destroy the alien culture, since obviously the genetically created death dealers kill the Engineers as well as they kill humans...
 
Saw this tonite, and enjoyed it greatly. That said, the geologist/biologist thing is annoying. How much knowledge the characters have of the cool holomap back on the ship is totally inconsistent--at one point, even the guys who are lost seem to have some sort of grid reference or something as to where they are. Plus, who drove the "truck" back to the ship? When Shaw, David, and the other two come out of the maze, the truck is gone, and they have to double up on the ATV's to get back. But then the "truck" is seen just ahead of them as they're racing back.

There's a lot of talk about the Engineers "changing their mind" about humanity, but original script intent aside, my personal theory is that they didn't change their mind at all. Earth, along with any other planet they've "seeded," is just another place to breed their weapons...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Other than an obvious tie in for a sequel... I saw it as a certain sort of vengeance... maybe she will try to destroy the alien culture, since obviously the genetically created death dealers kill the Engineers as well as they kill humans...
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Right; but she would be hopelessly outnumbered by (according to David) a "superior species". Perhaps in Camerons sequel she'll change her mind, head back to earth and alert the Marines.
 
I enjoyed it. There were a lot of 'cool' elements but nothing was original or groundbreaking in it. I am curious to know more about the Engineers and would watch a sequel but am just as happy to leave it there. I would have preferred it with little to no reference to the original alien to be honest. I think the story was hamstrung by the connection. The worst part of the movie was the constant setup/subversion of expectations referencing the original. As cheap as the walking backwards into your buddy and almost shooting him in fright cliche. Once was cute. Twice okay. By the third one I was over it. I agree the script needed a lot of work but it was sufficient for a movie with nothing new to say. They worked from the draft it seemed. Performances were okay, execution okay but there were a lot of holes once you finished your popcorn. Hopefully the extended bluray will demonstrate that the film was destroyed in the edit but I doubt it. Nothing to stop a good sequel coming from it if the script is good. I liked David's skewed morals. He struck a nice middle path between the usual android dichotomy. He had his own motivations, limited and alien but consistent.
 
Egg Born Son said:
I would have preferred it with little to no reference to the original alien to be honest. I think the story was hamstrung by the connection. The worst part of the movie was the constant setup/subversion of expectations referencing the original.
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I agree that the 'prequel but not really' approach didn't help the film. Either make it a prequel w/a direct tie in or make it a completely separate beast but don't do a little of each.
 
I might have been more critical but every time I started thinking 'this is a bit underdone' Charlize Theron would appear and the blood would drain from my brain. ;P But not even that could mask the 'meh' when they walked into the head room with the vessels laid out like the egg rooms of the past (future?). Having had time to think about it the other thing missing was the effort put into each and every character, only half were sympathetic and less than that memorable. And the rate of attrition too bunched up at the end. I did like the David character though, he has stuck with me. Fassbender is a little hit and miss for me but he always hangs it out there and when he hits, he hits.
 
I read through this article someone linked of inconsistencies and agree with most but for a decent number of them I think the author was clutching at straws.

I did enjoy the movie but thought some things were a bit silly and the more I think about it, I realize it does have a lot of holes. Then again though, I didn't get that the Engineer in the opening scene was populating our planet, most that time I was thinking surely there's a less painful way to do that.

Thought it was odd that Dave immediately unlocked the first door, I saw it as more of a secret code than a 'press this to open', I suppose. Also he turned rather quickly with not a lot pushing and made weird decisions straight up.

On the upside the 3D looked beautiful, as did the Engineer designs and our casts spacesuits.

Why the hell get a young actor in MAJOR CRAPPY age make-up to play the old guy?

Even with all these holes I'm giving it 3/5.
 
tmnt said:
Why the hell get a young actor in MAJOR CRAPPY age make-up to play the old guy?

Even with all these holes I'm giving it 3/5.
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From IMDB:
"Ridley Scott' initially wanted 'Max Von Sydow' for the role of Peter Weyland. However, Scott and Damon Lindelof conceived of a scene in which David the android (Michael Fassbender) would interface with Weyland while in hypersleep, and that Weyland's dream would reflect his looks as a younger man since he is obsessed with immortality. Though the scene was cut from the script and never filmed, Guy Pearce had already been cast in the role and thus underwent extensive make-up to appear elderly."
 
Saw it a week or so ago. Over all I liked it and some of the direct tie in to the original was good but it was a bit of a reach at times.

One question that I would like to have answered is how that very first seen of the "engineer" drinking that stuff, falling into the water and watching his dna fall apart tie in to the rest of the movie? Was he testing "the weapon" or seeding the water for future use?

Jeff
 
AevnsGrandpa said:
how that very first seen of the "engineer" drinking that stuff, falling into the water and watching his dna fall apart tie in to the rest of the movie? Was he testing "the weapon" or seeding the water for future use?
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I interpreted this as "seeding" human life on the planet. In the book Prometheus: The Art of the Film there are a bunch of illustrations where a very old "overlord" class of human-like creature is "programming" the "engineer" before the self-sacrifice takes place. ( it appears that the "overlords" are the ones who built and pilot the UFOs, that we see hovering above the waterfall )
 
I liked a lot of what Prometheus had to offer, but I think what bothered me the most is that it took away some of the hard science fiction feel from the Alien films with all the religious space god/ancient astronaut themes. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection did this as well, as those Alien films are filled with religious and spiritual motifs. Alien and Aliens, with their space truckers, pioneering terraforming colonists, and hard ass marines now feel almost out of place thematically with the rest of the Alien films in a lot of ways. I wish that Prometheus had treated its premise more like the original Alien did.

Also, Ridley Scott has said in interviews that the biomechanoid style Giger Alien (aka: xenomorph) is basically done. He thinks that it isn't scary or interesting anymore. I disagree. Sure if you show it in full light and treat it like dark comedy like they did with Alien Resurrection, then yes, it comes off as kinda silly. If you treat the creature as a character that poses danger to the humans in these films (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3), then it can still be a fearsome creature. Even the great sequel, Aliens, never was able to be as frightening as the original. That doesn't mean it is not good nor that it isn't still a frightening and intense sci-fi horror film. None of the creatures in Prometheus, except maybe that alien cobra snake thing that got in the guy's spacesuit were really even remotely close to being as terrifying, unique, or as conceptually interesting as the original Giger biomechanoid alien. I mean, crab-walking space zombie dude, black goo, and a giant squid-octopus? That is the stuff that is supposed to be the new scary Alienverse monster(s) that will replace the "perfect organism" we saw in the original film, and expanded upon in Aliens and Alien 3?

On a positive note, the space jockeys/engineers were pretty cool. I would have loved to have seen the last engineer suited up in his elephantine space suit/bone armor when he went after Noomi Rapace at the end. Seems like it would have added more menace and been a more memorable scene that way. It would have added a nicer contrast to the engineers, who at the beginning of the film were seeding life and appeared in human form in more normal attire. The switch to them being antagonistic, would have been more powerful to see a small human like Noomi face off against a big biomechanoid armored space god wearing a scary suit and mask. We've waited all these years to see the space jockeys and then we only get a few glimpses of them in their iconic elephantine armor (the hologram scene, the dead fossilized ones in the temple, and the blink and you'll miss it navigation chair sequence near the end).

Best things about the film were the alien planet scenery, design of the Prometheus (now that's a great spaceship design), seeing some of the classic Giger stuff like the Dune pyramid and space jockey stuff done up in state of the art IMAX 3D, Charlize Theron in retro skin-tight space suit (in this film she reminded me of Samus Aran of Metroid), and Michael Fassbender's android David.

I hated the alien that came out of the engineer at the end. It didn't look right, not biomechanical enough like Giger's aesthetic. Also, how did it grow so big while still incubating inside the engineer? In all the Alien movies the creatures emerge from their hosts as smaller forms then grow into the big bad aliens later on. Even Rapace's octo-squid baby followed this method of alien biological development.

Ranking the Alien films:

Alien & Aliens are equal to me. Both get a 10 out of 10. Classics of science fiction. I can still watch these two to this day and they just never get old. Alien does the horror, sense of dread style better, but Aliens is intense and more compelling from a character development sense. The two films together form a nice two-part story arc for Ripley. I find her character arc ending with Aliens, headed back to Earth with Newt, more satisfying than the dark hole of despair she gets dropped into in Alien 3.

Alien 3 = Prometheus. Both films are interesting, ambitious, but ultimately stumble. I'd say they get about a 6.5 out of 10. Still though, there are lots of cool and great moments and some good Alien saga story developments in these two. Prometheus is more fun than the depressingly bleak Alien 3, but Alien 3 has a better character arc and a more purposeful ending. Prometheus starts out on a better note, but loses a lot of its mojo in the final act.

Alien Resurrection had a nice premise, but once the bushy eyebrowed military commander gets his head bitten by an alien, then grabs a piece of his brain and looks at it, the film just never recovers. A 4 out of 10, only because Sigourney Weaver gives it her best shot, and Ron Perlman plays a fun but crude character in this film. Ron Perlman usually always brings something good to any film he appears in though. In the end though, Alien Resurrection, like Prometheus, feels like it was setting up another film, but so far it looks as if neither will get a sequel. Resurrection set up the great premise of Earth being a ruined world, which could have been a great post apocalyptic setting for an Alien film. An Alien 5 should have been the Mad Max or Hardware of the Alien saga. Ripley stranded on a toxic Earth, surrounded by a cast of rugged survivor-types banding together to survive the alien menace.
 
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Nektonic said:
Also, Ridley Scott has said in interviews that the biomechanoid style Giger Alien (aka: xenomorph) is basically done. He thinks that it isn't scary or interesting anymore.
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Here's a scary monster, and so I think FF Coppola should be recalled from FX retirement...

battlebeyondsun2_60.jpg


As a note, apparently the genitalia of the "Alien: Resurrection"(1997) was digitally removed because The Studio thought it too explicit... apparently they thought that was too scary for the general public...

I think I agree. Pictures with genitalia in full display do seem to send people running around in a frenzy.
 
I wasn't able to see the movie, but, here's a spoiler link to some of the CGI interests from CGI Society if it interests you as it did me.
 
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Scott F said:
Yay, Nektonic finally chimed in.

So what took you so long?
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Well, I wanted to see the film a second time before I had a mini-tizzy over it.

Also, I watched Alien Resurrection again, and it wasn't as horrible as I remembered from the previous viewing. My concerns over it still remain. Why did Jean Pierre Jeunet make it so silly? It actually had a nice visual style to it reminiscent of the original Alien's sets and atmosphere. At least beyond the newborn alien at the end and some dodgy CGI work (or at least dated CGI by today's standards). Why? It could have been so much better.

Anyways, Prometheus is a film I am dying to see a director's cut or extended cut of. I hope Ridley Scott gives us the option of both an extended and theatrical cut on the DVD/Blu-ray, and not merely the theatrical cut plus some random deleted scenes as a special feature.
 
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