The trailer is all fucked up but from what I COULD SEE it looks dope. Also like how they did the title with the very first Alien.
http://youtu.be/3idSf4q2fVI

Article and pics:
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/11/23/prometheus-ridley-scott-first-look/

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=22024

Since 1976

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width_scaled/hash/e6/c7/e6c7ca608ccfe3b0915675500232d783.jpg

I didn't have a problem with the unanswered questions.

The coyness about whether or not its Alien related needs to go, that trailer looked like Alien 0 to me (this is great imo)

Two of my favorite movies of all time are Alien and Blade Runner, I don't see how this film could disappoint

>Two of my favorite movies of all time are Alien and Blade
>Runner, I don't see how this film could disappoint

Have you seen any Ridley Scott movies in the last ten years?

>>Two of my favorite movies of all time are Alien and Blade
>>Runner, I don't see how this film could disappoint
>
>Have you seen any Ridley Scott movies in the last ten years?

Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut), American Gangster and Body of Lies are all winners to me

Well, then you'll probably dig Prometheus.

I think 2000s Ridley doesn't come close to 70s/80s Ridley. American Gangster is a solid film, but his bigger gambles (Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven) are silly.

>I think 2000s Ridley doesn't come close to 70s/80s Ridley.

This is undeniably true


>American Gangster is a solid film, but his bigger gambles
>(Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven) are silly.
I didn't hate Robin Hood, but it is very forgettable. I also enjoyed Kingdom of Heaven, but I've only ever seen the Director's Cut and i've heard the difference btwn that version and the theatrical one was night and day. I'm not sure which version you've seen, but if you haven't seen the DC, maybe that might help your perception of the film.

I'm excited for this movie because Blade Runner and Alien are two of my favorite movies of all time and I'm excited for a new sci-fi movie that has that dark, haunting, semi-dystopian feel. I also hope that this might be a chance for Ridley Scott to return to that 70s/80s form.

that kinda annoys me lol.
_____________________
@etfp

i was never big on the ending, but it's a very enjoyable movie... i don't know about much more though. i always wondered if that was sort of a "well, i expect his movies to suck now, but this one doesn't!" sort of thing. haven't seen it in years though.

also, nicolas cage was really great in matchstick men.

themacguffinmen.com

>
>also, nicolas cage was really great in matchstick men.
>
>themacguffinmen.com


_____________________
@etfp

His over-the-top schtick worked perfectly for the role. Not sure how much of that acting though...other than trading alcohol for harder stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEXMtcLqfMw

I guess I always considered it a Nick Cage movie and not a Ridley Scott movie. The latter I avoid on principle whereas the opposite is true for the latter

>The latter I avoid on principle whereas
>the opposite is true for the latter

I tend to avoid Nic Cage movies on principle, but the opposite is true for Ridley Scott

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52100

aintitcool is fake.

_____________________
@etfp

Someone bootleg that bitch, upload it, and inbox me please.

http://www.slashfilm.com/prometheus-trailer/

Damn.

With this, TDKR and The Hobbit, this is icing on the cake. He's pretty much back to form. Can't wait.

Can't wait. 2012 is going to be so amped.

They got the Space Jockey in the fucking trailer and they did the title just like the OG Alien. C'mon

1) It ties into Aliens somehow, but just in a small, incidental way.

2) It was SUPPOSED to tie into Alien, at first, but it didn't 'work' so they changed stuff at the 11th hour and then claimed that it was never supposed to be an Alien prequel (SEE Super 8).

3) The twist is that it leads up to the beginning of Alien, and they don't want to give it away.

http://youtu.be/HHcHYisZFLU

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=88133

both bonkers

Both of em have me in day one...I need a cigarette, lol

SO GOOD.

>SO GOOD.

I am all the way in.

im innnnn

but scaaaarred


wait! i see lips tom hardy??

WHO is logan marshal-green?!
oh wait thats the dude in dark blue
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

if anything, Green is a tom hardy lips clone (and a low budget one at that since he's so bland on screen...but shout out to Green, since I know he was dating Marissa Tomei at one point...*HOLLA* :))

________________________________________________________________________
Baby, I'm your carpenter, please let me lay your tile

that's it, no more trailers or swipes or interviews for me. June 8.

So I'm now on board with you. Nothing else at all. It was literally one of the first sentences of the first article I read. So fucking pissed.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=88155

i also still think it looks like it could be a halo or mass effect movie.

is Prometheous a character in the movie (Fassbender)? tied to the Greek legend? what time period is this taking place in? is Noomi Rapace suppose to be young Weaver from what i've heard here and there? is Idris gunna get to smash Theron on screen?

>is Prometheous a character in the movie (Fassbender)? tied to
>the Greek legend?

I'm assuming Prometheus is the name of the mission and/or ship. So, when the characters are trying to contact Prometheus, it's basically the equivalent of "Headquarters, can you read me?"

>what time period is this taking place in? is
>Noomi Rapace suppose to be young Weaver from what i've heard
>here and there?

Considering how hesitant they've been to concretely describe this as a prequel to the Alien films, I doubt Noomi is supposed to be a young Weaver.

>is Idris gunna get to smash Theron on screen?

He might literally smash her, with a rock or other blunt object. Because you know someone's gonna "go wogue and lose contwol."

and lol @ "literally smash her"

Charlize did in fact get literally smashed, by a space ship no less, as a direct result of Idris' actions.

Talk about prescience.

.

http://youtu.be/DOOJl5lWNfM

I'm getting more and more pumped for this movie!

haha. Can't wait for this movie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1byZkbNB3Jw

I am more excited about this movie than any other one coming out this summer.

Looks awesome.

Alien Director's Cut was just on last night too

that looks fucking spectacular.

I was SUPER excited before this, i'm still incredibly gassed, like leave my lady at home gassed on Friday night type shit, but I want them to stop showing me shit.

I want to be surprised!

>I was SUPER excited before this, i'm still incredibly gassed,
>like leave my lady at home gassed on Friday night type shit,
>but I want them to stop showing me shit.
>
>I want to be surprised!


Same here..now I know a lot of whats going on and it's taken away a lot of the mystique that the other trailers created.

What we talked about on our podcast couple of weeks ago. I didn't want to know that we were wrong until i went into the theater.

I mean at this point it looks more like an Alien remake than a pre-quel

And to be honest, there may still be something there...

what did you think was gonna happen man?

one more month for a movie i've been waiting at least 10 years to see..

I'll wait..

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1byZkbNB3Jw

^^^^^^I kinda want to yell at the guy who posted that comment.

_________________________________________________________________________
© 1 ScreenName Only, Inc. All Rights Reserved

On the dock of that bay serving a life sentence,even if I’m going to hell I’m gonna make an entrance

I'M SO FUCKING HYPED RIGHT NOW NIGGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MIGHT HAVE A Q&A WITH RIDLEY SCOTT!!!!!!!

Unfortunately it's in 3D...

!!!

Time to lower those box office predictions.

http://collider.com/prometheus-rating-rated-r/164532/

Tom Rothman didn't fuck with it!!!!!!

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=89939

So excited right fucking now...

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=90032

http://youtu.be/bEVY_lonKf4

49 seconds in

So yeah, in case there was any doubt that this was connected to Alien in some way, that was a big clue

Along with the quick shots in the trailers and commercials of the space jockey in action

Alien has been on Cinemax for the past couple of days; tune in and see the dead space jockey and wonder how we'll get to that point via this movie

Ridley has said that the last 12 minutes will make Alien fans pretty happy, or something to that effect

_________________________________________________________________________
© 1 ScreenName Only, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Im thinking we're going to start hearing screening reactions via twitter and blogs by the end of the week.

First day.

was the 3D added on in post? or was this shot with the intent to include 3D.

>was the 3D added on in post? or was this shot with the
>intent to include 3D.
>
>

Which makes me more likely to see it in 3D. I also think that this could be one of the cooler films to see in 3D because there will be some crazy architecture and interesting lighting so that the depth is more impressive.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

She's so hot

http://youtu.be/zwEtldZQNew

_________________________________________________________________________
© 1 ScreenName Only, Inc. All Rights Reserved

>She's so hot
>
>http://youtu.be/zwEtldZQNew

& that voice is soooo fuckin sexy

Noomi is the best part of that whole shit though, she controls the screen whenever she's on it.

I was really hoping my press screening would be on the 8 story IMAX. At least Fassbinder is showing up. Mad excited!!!

Fuckers only gave me stock. I GUESS ill deal.

http://collider.com/django-unchained-trailer-prometheus/168914/

http://io9.com/5914281/is-prometheus-actually-any-good-early-reviews-are-in

From Meh to Good.

I'm still going.

It's good, actually it was very good.
Visually stunning, should win awards for cinematography.
the link with 'Alien' is there,
but it's not really a prequel.
One of the problems mentioned in early reviews
is that there is not enough character development,
this is not the case, plus, outside Ripley & arguably the android, the first Alien wasn't exactly an example of character development.


Fassbinder, Rapace & Theron (in that order) give the best performances.


I was left with enough questions afterwards.

As the poster above said the visuals were incredible. It's just sweeping the whole way through.

I thought the performances were great, the story lovingly creepy.

Fassbender(sure I spelt that wrong) is awesome in this.

I'll probably see it again.

So excited right now.

Recommend me some questions to ask Fassbender.

one of the last dudes on Earth I want to see talking about Prometheus.

nm

... You can quibble with aspects of the plot and some of the meandering philosophical themes that never really lead anywhere, but on a visual level, the film is stunningly immersive, which heightens the creeping sense of dread. Fassbender is tremendous, and Rapace fills in ably as the Ripley stand-in.

It's all about the Space Jockey baby (or as they're called in this film Engineers)

The film does falter in the last act, but if your a fan of the original Alien like me, you're gonna eat this shit up from beginning to end. This is just awesome and yes ALL MAJOR PLAYERS KILL IT!!!

I love how my nigga Idris Elba ends up being the hero and save the day with his crew. And he lays the pipe down Theron.

What I like is that Ridley took the Space Jockey and opened up a universe of questions that'll hopefully be answered in the sequel. This was really philosophical.

And while I felt this was a PG-13 cause Ridley was holding back it seems, It gets awesomely gnarly at points that had my boys and I cheering.

Can't wait to fully take this in again on the 8 story IMAX Saturday night. There's a lot I'm still processing.

you agree with me that the engineer in the beginning was on earth
and spread his dna that would eventually lead to humans
as an experiment but then the rest realized it was a failure
and thus they created the ship with the yet to evolve AlIENS
to destroy "us".

and why did they call off the attack on earth? the last engineer awoke and was heading to earth. why?

running from -something-, there were a bunch of bodies.
might be one or some of the aliens they were running from, killed by their own weapon....
one survived (there weren't more 'sleeping' right?),
I'll have to see it again though to catch more details.

the Shaw "abortion" scene was badass.

that's what the pile of bodies was about. what were they running from?

that's a great way to look at it. makes other themes connect even better

I heard the asian dude was the hero...*BUT* if Idris survives, then shit, HOLLAH!

cause you KNOW negroes be the first to go or close to it in sci-fi/horror movies...

im going to see this over the weekend I can't wait.

my nigga Idris lay it down on Charlize

...I don't think White America is ready to see the real Shame with Elba and Theron. Hence why it was not shown.

nm

and those who love are gonna love for the exact reasons that those who hate are gonna hate.

anyone going in expecting some huge action or horror movie is gonna be disappointed in a way. it's much more of a cerebral thinkpiece than i thought it was gonna be. and that's kinda why i love it.

i can't stop thinking about what i just saw. all of it. just the ideas of it all. the very religious overtones. especially all the conversations between the two leads about religion vs. evolution. what happens if we finally find what made us only to find that we now have to ask what made THEM?

i'm rambling. i can't wait to watch it again. i feel like the second time is gonna rule so hard.

but yeah i can already see the stupid "that shit sucked" comments from casual viewers. and these future comments i'm gonna have to see are already making me angry. lol.

oh and fassbender can officially do no wrong. he was great as expected. even though i couldn't help but think of him as a grown up version of haley joel osment from artificial intelligence just cos he was named david. whole cast was great really. can't really think of any weak links.


http://theyesyesyalls.com
http://facebook.com/theyesyesyalls
http://reverbnation.com/theyesyesyalls
http://shamelessplug.bandcamp.com
http://twitter.com/shamelessplug

i can't see it until next week, so i'm just curious how charlize looks in what looks to be, from the trailers, some skin tight outfits?

she has no body at all. none.

now noomi...

not much T&A but her body was so fit. she looked great.

she looked bout it bout it...noomi too

__________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

is a strange strange man IMO

Best. Abortion. Ever.

http://theyesyesyalls.com
http://facebook.com/theyesyesyalls
http://reverbnation.com/theyesyesyalls
http://shamelessplug.bandcamp.com
http://twitter.com/shamelessplug

>
muhahaha

..solid syfy

great sweeping visuals through the film

decent job of answering a few questions from the original franchise while still leavin' plenty to be discovered.

the cast was aiight, but i was disappointed with charlize theron.

i'm torn between givin' it a B-/C+


..and miles to go before i sleep...

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

White people: LEMME TOUCH THESE STRANGE ALIEN LIFEFORMS

This felt like the first piece of a prequel pie, and as such I thought it was fine. Not perfect. Not great. Not awesome. But good.

I also thought that of the 4 leads, Noomi and Fassbender were quite good. Charlize was cool but there was nothing to her character except cold, and the hints as to whether or not she was an android like David were scarce. I just had a hard time locking into her character, because all she was playing was a cold beyotch.

Also, Idris was okay, but again, wasn't given much to do except play the captain as a kinda-sorta horndog manly man. And sorry, black women, but I wanted to see him tap Charlize's ass. Yep, I did.

I was going to complain that I couldn't make an emotional connection to any of the characters in the movie. I mean, it's supposed to be a big deal when Charlie bites it, but I didn't really care that much. And I didn't care about Noomi until she had to do the operation on herself. And I didn't care when Idris drove the Prometheus into the big alien horseshoe. Again, it was tough for me to get behind anyone save Noomi after her wide-awake not-abortion of the alien baby.

But then I remembered that the original Alien didn't have a lot in the way of soul, either. That didn't come until Aliens, and that was mainly because Sigourney was looking after a little girl.

It sounds like I didn't dig it, but I did, mainly because of the effects and the performances of Noomi and Fassbender. Noomi kicked more ass here than in those shitty Swedish Millenium movies combined.

I know that some will say that the movie just sucks, citing the new PTP Law which says that any movie over 1:40 sucks (this ran 2:04), and claiming that the first 30 minutes could have easily been cut out. But I'd argue that you kinda-sorta need the setup of who everyone is, and what's going on, in order to proceed. I'd only agree in the fact that there was a LOT of essential but tedious backstory that had to be covered in that first half hour. But you certainly can't stop once the action gets rolling to explain why Shaw is the way she is.

Again, not the greatest film evar, but not terrible and certainly worth a look-see...

___________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

I liked the "slow" stuff way more than any of the action here, really. Running from a storm and running from a falling ship, while they looked awesome, were nothing new. The best section of the film was before the "static storm" started arriving (a pretty blah cliche of convenience in films like this, really), when we were just discovering the characters and discovering the world. It's when we started trying to solve why this world and these characters were like this that the film becomes less awesome. (I'm sure there's a Lost joke to be made here.)

I think Alien's characters had more soul than this, btw... maybe because there were way fewer of them and we got to know them even longer before the action started taking place. Alien's also way easier to follow, since it tells a very simple story in an epic background, whereas this movie is attempting to tell the epic story, so the audience isn't overwhelmed and can focus on getting to know the characters more easily.

A lil unsatisfying.



Shoulda got Joss on it.


83% for the visuals alone theaux.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

the art design and effects are a triumph for shooting digital (truly a movie that needs to be seen in a high-end theater to appreciate). this would be a striking experience even without a line of dialogue.

it just misses being a masterpiece, however. there's an amalgamation of Blade Runner and Alien here, but the existentialism and horror thrills are not as strong as either predecessor. perhaps that's an unfair comparison (as they are arguably the best movies ever made in their sub-genre) -- yet it's hard to avoid when Prometheus culls so liberally from both.

I did appreciate the attempt at reconciling the emotions of religion and unproven aspects of science. both rely so much on faith, they are more similar than unlike. I also dug the power of creation, from the engineers "mistakes" to human-made droids and the thread of ownership/parenthood.

again though, they teased those aspects more than explored them (leaving an ending that suffers from sequel syndrome). a very, very good movie that was nearly great.

There were definite and absolute moments of horror that weren't nearly as well done as the earlier movies you mentioned, but I also think some of the scares were toned down because you knew EXACTLY how shit was about to play out, not like oh this might happen, you knew EXACTLY how the face hugger's uncle was going to get to where it got, or how certain characters would die.

I liked it alot, but there are some very real falling shorts here.

i'd like to see it again though.

there are so many plot holes in this movie i don't know where to begin. you could literally play drinking games to the plot holes.

great visuals though, specifically the opening sequence and the last 15 minutes or so.

but agreed.

It's nowhere near as tight a movie as Alien but it's Scott's best film-making in God knows how long. The storytelling becomes a bit jumbled at the end but the visuals and across the board strong performances more than made it worth my time. I don't quite get comparing it to Avengers. This is a fairly hard sci-fi-horror flick.

Also, see this in 3D at all costs.

...

FIRST: my suggestion: DEFINITELY see it in 3D (3D Imax if Possible)....

visually speaking....I was 100% sold in the first opening scene when the... ))SPOILER STUFF COMING>>

...Engineer is on Earth creating us by sacrificing himself <thats my interpretation of that scene at least. Could be literally interpreted or could be religiously metaphorically interpreted too, ie:

'Engineer' sacrifices himself to create new species-humans = 'Son of God' sacrificing himself that we (humans) may live.

Again, those are the 'two' ('same' in a way) takeaways that i got from that initial opening breathtaking scene....

....and damn what a scene it was!

i mean, for ME it was jaw dropping. FULL of visual depth, wonder, beauty, creepy and coolness. multi-textured & visceral...that scene kicked ass in my opinion. took my breath away...and like i said, it alone was worth every penny I paid to see in Imax 3D. I told my wife on the way home that it would be great to be able to project that scene full size on our wall at home and replay it over anytime i felt like i needed some movie magic awesomeness....

on the way home we talked and we both LOVED the film and will definitely be going back to see it again. But then again, we are acknowledged 46 year old movie junkies...sci-fi, comic, fantasy thriller fans especially. Ridley's 'Alien' was of course one of my all time game changer favorites, as well as Blade Runner which was another different kind of gem as well...so, yeah, WE absolutely LOVED 'Prometheus'. Thought it was visually breathtaking throughout, and should win awards for all of that art direction alone. And story-wise it had a full mix of things i like....some mystery, questions & wonder...gives ya some answers but not all...lays some things on the table for you but also leaves some things open to different possibilities...i loved it.

In my opinion it is NOT a 'mass-appeal'/'general public' movie though, and i don't think it was made with that goal in mind. ( of course i'm sure the studio WANTS it to have as much mass appeal as it can though and wants it make a gazzilion dollars, but unfortunately i have a feeling that the NON-movie fanatic wont be geeking out QUITE like we were and wanting to immediately see it again! i HOPE they do, but i'm not sure they will. And i dont think those who prefer more 'in your face instant gratifaction action' type of movies are going to appreciate some of the 'slow burn' steady build-up elements as much as folks like me who really dig the subtle set-up approach. (Dont get it twisted though, there are indeed some fantastic thrilling moments in this flick without a doubt!) Like i said, perhaps the NON-movie fanatic wont be geeking out QUITE like we were and wanting to immediately see it again...i HOPE they do though.

just like i HOPE that younger folks, (who have grown up IN the digital special effects age with CG-good and bad-all around them scince birth, and who are IMO somewhat jaded in some ways by that fact)...i HOPE that younger viewers can appreciate this movie for its absolutely stunning but subtlely awesome visuals....i do HOPE they will appreciate and enjoy it as much as i did, but do i have my doubts.

I am SO glad that i intentionally & successfully prevented myself from seeing any trailers for this before going to see the movie. It is a technique i use whenever i know something is coming out that i will absolutely see no matter what....if i KNOW i'm gonna see a movie, i avoid watching ANY trailers or reading ANY specific info on it prior to going to the movie.For me, it makes for a much more exciting movie experience and allows me to actually be surprised and to discover stuff and have the story unfold for me IN the moment.

i wont get into the story and theories now (cuz i need to get my ass to SLEEP) but i'll try to come back in the thread later to see what folks are saying about that and throw my 2 cents in too.

to quickly summarize though, for me this was another Ridley Scott classic....if i have to give it a comparison, 'Prometheus' is almost literally the 'baby' of "Alien' & 'Bladerunner' if those two movies did it and could have a child. For me, that is a GOOD thang :)

I WILL be seeing it AGAIN in 3D (which is surprising to me because i am NOT typically a fan of the 3D thing. THIS movie though makes that 3D experience VERY satisfying i must say.....

...and damn i cant WAIT for the BluRay of this one...methinks there's an R rated Directors cut just waiting for me to happily give my hard earned money for :)

SPOILER:





Isn't the space jockey who died at the end and obviously gave spawn to the queen, supposed to have made it to the seat of his arced ship and had the alien explode out of him there? Isn't the crashed arc ship the one they find in Alien?

>
>SPOILER:
>
>
>
>
>
>Isn't the space jockey who died at the end and obviously gave
>spawn to the queen, supposed to have made it to the seat of
>his arced ship and had the alien explode out of him there?
>Isn't the crashed arc ship the one they find in Alien?



just one of the many plot holes, dawg. here's how I took it...

the proto-alien love child of the octopus shark and buff powder hightailed it to the crashed arc ship and then sorta camped out there making alien eggs for a few hundred years until the scientist crew from Alien showed up. Now, how he/she got the blue/green laser to protect the eggs (shown in the first Alien) is beyond me. Also, how her eggs were fertilized is beyond me as well. Maybe that alien was a male and a female alien was chilling in one of the other ships that was apparently lying around the planet.

But for the most part, I think your interpretation is pretty much accurate.
of course this isn't explained in the film so it's really left up to the viewer.

>>
>>SPOILER:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Isn't the space jockey who died at the end and obviously
>gave
>>spawn to the queen, supposed to have made it to the seat of
>>his arced ship and had the alien explode out of him there?
>>Isn't the crashed arc ship the one they find in Alien?
>
>
>
>just one of the many plot holes, dawg. here's how I took
>it...
>
>the proto-alien love child of the octopus shark and buff
>powder hightailed it to the crashed arc ship and then sorta
>camped out there making alien eggs for a few hundred years
>until the scientist crew from Alien showed up. Now, how he/she
>got the blue/green laser to protect the eggs (shown in the
>first Alien) is beyond me. Also, how her eggs were fertilized
>is beyond me as well. Maybe that alien was a male and a female
>alien was chilling in one of the other ships that was
>apparently lying around the planet.
>
>But for the most part, I think your interpretation is pretty
>much accurate.
>of course this isn't explained in the film so it's really left
>up to the viewer.

I thought the ending was the BIRTH of the queen. That this is the origin of the Alien species ( I mean the icon Alien, not all those face huggers etc which are from those tar soup snakes)...

And thats what I was expecting to happen..him to have octopus shark attack him..shove the egg down his throat with him on smei coma..then he awakens and walks to the crashed ship or at least another..get in the seat..and then splat..the queen is birthed from his chest..then thats what Ripley and Why Dont You Freeze Him find in the 1979 flick.

>I thought the ending was the BIRTH of the queen. That this is
>the origin of the Alien species ( I mean the icon Alien, not
>all those face huggers etc which are from those tar soup
>snakes)...
>
>And thats what I was expecting to happen..him to have octopus
>shark attack him..shove the egg down his throat with him on
>smei coma..then he awakens and walks to the crashed ship or at
>least another..get in the seat..and then splat..the queen is
>birthed from his chest..then thats what Ripley and Why Dont
>You Freeze Him find in the 1979 flick.

Well see, that would have made too much sense.

So basically, the only explanation is that the ship in the first Alien was a completely DIFFERENT ship altogether. So I'm guessing the tar snakes must have infected some other humanoids on a different part of the planet, thus resulting in ANOTHER cephalopod shark which then face planted ANOTHER buff powder somewhere else.

So the chain of events seems to go something like this:


tar snake + humanoid = octo-shark
octo-shark + swoll powder = proto queen alien

edit:

oh fuck, man the tar snakes actually didn't do shit, at least that we know of. they just hopped in dudes mouth and made his chest cavity their new home.

the octo-shark came from Logan Marshall's character being infected by the soil juice from that relic. so before he became a space zombie, he fucked Rapace's character and then THAT is where the octo-squid came from.

So here we go...

space zombie + humanoid (intercourse) = octo-shark
octo-shark + swoll powder = proto queen alien

>>I thought the ending was the BIRTH of the queen. That this
>is
>>the origin of the Alien species ( I mean the icon Alien, not
>>all those face huggers etc which are from those tar soup
>>snakes)...
>>
>>And thats what I was expecting to happen..him to have
>octopus
>>shark attack him..shove the egg down his throat with him on
>>smei coma..then he awakens and walks to the crashed ship or
>at
>>least another..get in the seat..and then splat..the queen is
>>birthed from his chest..then thats what Ripley and Why Dont
>>You Freeze Him find in the 1979 flick.
>
>Well see, that would have made too much sense.
>
>So basically, the only explanation is that the ship in the
>first Alien was a completely DIFFERENT ship altogether. So I'm
>guessing the tar snakes must have infected some other
>humanoids on a different part of the planet, thus resulting in
>ANOTHER cephalopod shark which then face planted ANOTHER buff
>powder somewhere else.
>
>So the chain of events seems to go something like this:
>
>
>tar snake + humanoid = octo-shark
>octo-shark + swoll powder = proto queen alien
>
>edit:
>
>oh fuck, man the tar snakes actually didn't do shit, at least
>that we know of. they just hopped in dudes mouth and made his
>chest cavity their new home.
>
>the octo-shark came from Logan Marshall's character being
>infected by the soil juice from that relic. so before he
>became a space zombie, he fucked Rapace's character and then
>THAT is where the octo-squid came from.
>
>So here we go...
>
>space zombie + humanoid (intercourse) = octo-shark
>octo-shark + swoll powder = proto queen alien


Correct (which I think is proposterous...ol' Alien came from us as a hybrid lol) but still doest explain why another buff Powder would be infected with an egg on a DIFFERENT planet. Im crying bullshit on that scenario of thats what Ridley Scott is trying to say.

>Correct (which I think is proposterous...ol' Alien came from
>us as a hybrid lol) but still doest explain why another buff
>Powder would be infected with an egg on a DIFFERENT planet. Im
>crying bullshit on that scenario of thats what Ridley Scott is
>trying to say.


no dawg, there are other ships on the SAME planet.

>
>>Correct (which I think is proposterous...ol' Alien came from
>>us as a hybrid lol) but still doest explain why another buff
>>Powder would be infected with an egg on a DIFFERENT planet.
>Im
>>crying bullshit on that scenario of thats what Ridley Scott
>is
>>trying to say.
>
>
>no dawg, there are other ships on the SAME planet.


But nobody is in them..the buff Powder guy who got got was the last one there..alive.....remember?

the beacon Noomi left was the one the 1979 Alien crew picked up and got woke up for

true. it's basically a huge plot hole.

we don't really know that though, David could have been lying or simply NOT detected the other living Engineers....remember, he had to find that underground cockpit chamber, see the log of what happened, and THEN put his ear up to that stasis pod to really know for sure someone was still alive in there...he SAID dude was the last, but if there are all hese other ships, how does he "know" they're not still alive....IMHO i think David was really trying to further the Engineers agenda, and it didn't work like he thought....other than his seeming affection for the doc, he seemed to detest the other humans on the ship.....

>But nobody is in them..the buff Powder guy who got got was the
>last one there..alive.....remember?

Dude said there were other ships.... there just as easily could have been more creators sleeping in hyperbaric chambers.

The bigger question to me is why did they go to sleep in the first place. Why not just take off... which is exactly what he tried to do as soon as he woke up.

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each of the jars was some sort of bio-weapon. They weren't all the same. I don't think its a str8 line from this film to Ripley and them. I think it shows how the SPECIES of aliens comes about, but not necessarily the EXACT critter from alien comes about

.

I didn't think it was the same ship/planet as in the first Alien. I figured the Engineers had bases all over.

So they wouldn't have to explain the continuation with Alien.

all of the plot holes so they changed it to being "related"...

Prometheus takes place on LV-223 while Alien takes place on LV-426.

>Prometheus takes place on LV-223 while Alien takes place on
>LV-426.


If so...then howd the LV-426 enginner get infected when the origin of the species was created on LV-223 by Noomi given birth to the soul children, I mean face hugger, that infected the engineer THERE(who had been there for eons). None of the other engineers would seemed to have ever went back as it was abandoned.

I would love to know how too. I assumed they got this figured for the sequels. This is more evidence how the script wasn't logical.

That opening scene really set the tone well. Just an uncomfortable vibe throughout the whole flick but still a lot of fun to sit thru. I thought all the performances were spot on including Theron. Fairfield was probably might favorite secondary character. I could've done w/o the Guy Pearce bit but that's a minor gripe. I've got it tied with The Grey right now for best movie of the year so far.

instead of caking a bunch of obvious make-up on Pearce. for a movie with so many seamless, realistic effects, his whole presence was incongruous.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/prometheus-unbound-write-damon-lindelof-on-the-non-prequel-alien-prequel-9514210


>Prometheus Unbound: Writer Damon Lindelof on the Non-Prequel Alien Prequel

Damon Lindelof was driving when he got the call—Ridley Scott wanted to talk to him about a script. That script turned out to be the prequel to Scott's much beloved sci-fi flick Alien, written by John Spates (sic). Lindelof read the script, sent an email to Scott with some ideas for changes, and snagged a co-writing credit on Prometheus, out June 8, which has morphed into a sort-of-but-not-really prequel. Popular Mechanics spoke to Lindelof about working in the Alien universe, and why it's important to have scientific advisors. (Spoilers below, so see Prometheus before you read this interview!)

BY ERIN MCCARTHY

How did you get involved in Prometheus?

It was about two years ago. I'd been back (from my break after we finished writing Lost) for just a couple days and my phone rang and my agent said, "Ridley Scott is calling you in five minutes." I slammed on the brakes... and pulled over (to take the call). I stammered my way through that conversation—I was convinced that (Scott) thought I was someone that he already knew, because I have been worshipping the ground that he walked on for as long as I can remember, and (I was) secretly hoping that whatever he was sending me was the Alien prequel I'd been reading about. A couple hours later, a guy showed up at my house, handed me a script and said, "Enjoy. I'll be waiting in my car. When you're done, you can give this back to me."

I read the script—it was written by John Spates (sic)—and I thought it was great, but it was definitely a dyed-in-the-wool Alien prequel in the sense that there was a direct and clear connectivity between the movies. It relied pretty heavily on the face hugging and chest bursting and acid-for-blood xenomorphs that we'd seen in the other movies. All that was wrapped around this incredibly original and cool sci-fi idea about scientists thinking that they had a bead on what mankind's origins on the planet might be.

So I wrote an email that night saying, "I think that that idea is strong enough to carry the movie. We can get to some of that Alien stuff that the audience is definitely going to want to see, but you did that 30 years ago and it's been done many times since. And it would be great to not rely upon it so heavily and here's how you might do that..." And for some crazy reason they hired me, and that was the next year of my life.


Prometheus has creatures that are new, but also familiar. Did you have any say in how those things should act or what they might do?

On the day that I started, Ridley brought me into a secret room at RSA where he had a design team working. Every single wall was covered in conceptual art, from the design of the ships to what the engineers were going to look like. (Ed. note: The engineers are what the scientists call the beings who they believe created humans.) The idea for the engineers was very present in John's script before I even came in—(there was) the idea that what we identified as the space jockey from the first movie in the derelict ship was going to be human. And there were all these photos of Michelangelo's David and ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, and Ridley was like, "That's what color their skin is gonna be. They're gonna look in many ways like animated statues but I don't want to do it with CG, I want them to feel as real and as human and as grounded as possible."

So he was thinking about that stuff many, many months before he even began photography. And the way that he wanted to play the hits in terms of xenomorphs and face huggers, he wanted to make sure that they looked different than they had in previous movies because of some of the things that we were trying to say in this movie... I've always looked at Prometheus as this huge orgy between three generations of creation. So you have our creators, the engineers; us; and then our creation, the synthetic beings, the androids. And so basically everybody is kind of screwing each other. They all have a role in the end result of this movie. None of it would have happened had David not taken that little drop of goo that was generated from the engineers and spiked Holloway's drink with it and then Holloway has sex with Shaw and then their baby essentially ends up infecting the person who started it all, the engineers. So it goes full circle.


Each Alien parasite affects its host differently. What was the idea behind that? Are the parasites altering DNA?

I don't want to talk too specifically about what the black goop does. Obviously the characters in the movie are trying to theorize based on what is happening to them. "This thing is a weapon, it's really bad for us." When it interacts with living species, bad things result. So you see little worms and when the black goop gets on the little worms we see what happens to them. And when Fifield gets it all over his face mask, we see what happens to him. When Holloway just has a drop of it in a glass of champagne, we see what happens to him.

We wanted to be purposefully vague, (but steer) the audience towards some conclusions as to what that stuff was supposed to do: Is it supposed to kill you? Is it supposed to transform you—which seems like the most obvious choice—and to what end? Like, why in God's name would the engineers want to create abominations out of mankind? Some of these questions we wanted to answer directly and some of these questions we didn't want to answer directly, which sets you up for a certain level of frustration and disappointment that I am well familiar with, but I'll take it any day of the week because I also feel like it forces you to fire your own imagination.

We clearly have answers for those questions ourselves that we did not present in the movie purposefully, not just because we're saving them for potential sequels, but because the power of the original Alien—or even Blade Runner—is that to a certain degree, we're giving you all the numbers in the equation but we're not adding them up for you. And that's intentional.


In Prometheus, there's an Alien evolution of sorts, but how it works isn't explained in the movie. Was there an internal logic to how it worked?

It's not arbitrary. (But) the movie has to speak for itself. I will say that the theory that is formed by Shaw by the end of the movie—that the black goo is some sort of weapon and it is headed towards earth and if it gets there the result is going to be terrible—(is) based on the information that she has in the movie, but that's not necessarily the correct deduction for her to make. The audience is privy to pieces of the story that Shaw is not. I hope that the movie is one of those films that (is rewarding on) subsequent viewings as opposed to more confusing and more frustrating.


Did you do any research, beyond rewatching the movies after your first draft was written? Did you consult any science advisors?

John Spates (sic) did a tremendous amount of research in terms of interspace travel, cryonics, artificial intelligence. You're also married to the original Alien in a lot of ways—this is 30 years before that, so can we present our gadgetry so that it doesn't look like it's backwards, considering that movie was made 30 years ago? The Nostromo was a mining ship. It's going to be completely and totally dressed down. The computers are going to do the bare minimum of computing because its only job is to get from A to B and then mine, whereas the Prometheus is designed as a science vessel to basically answer the meaning of life. So that's the way you get around that issue. And Arthur Max, who was the production designer, designed all the ships and the Alien landscapes, and he had a whole slew of advisors that he (checked with).

There was a NASA guy that came in a couple of times and spoke to Ridley and us about the theoretical realities of extraterrestrial life. If you're trying for it to feel real and there's any degree of veracity, it's absolutely critical to have that stuff. But as a storyteller you kind of have to say: It's really good to know it, but we are writing a movie.

___________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

>Each Alien parasite affects its host differently. What was the
>idea behind that? Are the parasites altering DNA?
>
>I don't want to talk too specifically about what the black
>goop does. Obviously the characters in the movie are trying to
>theorize based on what is happening to them. "This thing is a
>weapon, it's really bad for us." When it interacts with living
>species, bad things result. So you see little worms and when
>the black goop gets on the little worms we see what happens to
>them. And when Fifield gets it all over his face mask, we see
>what happens to him. When Holloway just has a drop of it in a
>glass of champagne, we see what happens to him.
>
>We wanted to be purposefully vague, (but steer) the audience
>towards some conclusions as to what that stuff was supposed to
>do: Is it supposed to kill you? Is it supposed to transform
>you—which seems like the most obvious choice—and to what end?
>Like, why in God's name would the engineers want to create
>abominations out of mankind? Some of these questions we wanted
>to answer directly and some of these questions we didn't want
>to answer directly, which sets you up for a certain level of
>frustration and disappointment that I am well familiar with,
>but I'll take it any day of the week because I also feel like
>it forces you to fire your own imagination.
>
>We clearly have answers for those questions ourselves that we
>did not present in the movie purposefully, not just because
>we're saving them for potential sequels, but because the power
>of the original Alien—or even Blade Runner—is that to a
>certain degree, we're giving you all the numbers in the
>equation but we're not adding them up for you. And that's
>intentional.

Alien and Blade Runner do that, yes, but they also don't have a seemingly random set of rules (or no rules) to abide by. They at their core have very basic and easy-to-understand rules. If you're dealing with primordial goop with different effects on everything and everyone which has been developed for no clear reason and is being stored for no clear reason and is being taken to Earth for no clear reason and all we have are unreliable resources hypothesizing why they're doing these things, you need to provide SOMETHING for us to grasp onto, Damon! I mean, fuck.

I'm so torn on this movie, because it's insanely gorgeous and the super ambitious stuff that does work works so incredibly well. But Jesus Christ, the character motivations are either severely lacking or change from scene to scene based on plot convenience.

that's ur beef. the questions surrounding the primordial goop and what it does or doesn't do are holes i'm perfectly fine filling in myself. also not one character's motivation seemed to waver too greatly in the whole film. what are you talking about

Blade Runner

If it's true & he (Ridley) can pull it off then I'm really intrigued.
I just don't know if I'd rather see the replicant/android gap bridged or a better understanding of the space jockey/alien relationship


>We wanted to be purposefully vague, (but steer) the audience
>towards some conclusions as to what that stuff was supposed to
>do: Is it supposed to kill you? Is it supposed to transform
>you—which seems like the most obvious choice—and to what end?
>Like, why in God's name would the engineers want to create
>abominations out of mankind? Some of these questions we wanted
>to answer directly and some of these questions we didn't want
>to answer directly, which sets you up for a certain level of
>frustration and disappointment that I am well familiar with,
>but I'll take it any day of the week because I also feel like
>it forces you to fire your own imagination.
>
>We clearly have answers for those questions ourselves that we
>did not present in the movie purposefully, not just because
>we're saving them for potential sequels, but because the power
>of the original Alien—or even Blade Runner—is that to a
>certain degree, we're giving you all the numbers in the
>equation but we're not adding them up for you. And that's
>intentional.
>

>In Prometheus, there's an Alien evolution of sorts, but how it
>works isn't explained in the movie. Was there an internal
>logic to how it worked?
>
>It's not arbitrary. (But) the movie has to speak for itself. I
>will say that the theory that is formed by Shaw by the end of
>the movie—that the black goo is some sort of weapon and it is
>headed towards earth and if it gets there the result is going
>to be terrible—(is) based on the information that she has in
>the movie, but that's not necessarily the correct deduction
>for her to make. The audience is privy to pieces of the story
>that Shaw is not. I hope that the movie is one of those films
>that (is rewarding on) subsequent viewings as opposed to more
>confusing and more frustrating.

sOmEone's gonna be mad about this as it sounds like he's Following the Nolan blueprint here

SPOILER




"we... ARE...LEAVING!" spoken in the same manner, tone, and worry that was in Aliens?

not as great as it thinks it is, but still there's a lot to like. Maybe my fave studio movie so far this year, it manages to ask some questions that usually belong in Malick movies, without the pedantry (I love Malick but Tree Of Life was a little over-the-top in that aspect). Speaking of which those opening shots in Iceland were spectacular.
Definitely some loose ends in the plot, but I was so taken by the flick that i missed if any of them were glaring. Fassbender and Rapace were fantastic, but really all the actors were good (special shout-out to Ryan Atwood's big bro. I have no idea how he finagled that part but he nailed it).
I gotta say i'm very happy with my decision to stay away from all the videos and spoilerific info that have been showing up on movie blogs these part months. I kinda hate how much Hollywood tries to oversell flicks these days, but I guess I must be in the minority.

Lindlelof had a hand in writing the script so no surprise...lol
__________________________________________________________
http://agoonieneversaysdie.wordpress.com <--(film)
http://moonlightronin.wordpress.com <--(writing)

Visuals did their job
Great cast they also did their job
Not sure what t was plot?
Wasn't expecting much plot anyway

Not sure but it was just aiight
Not great
But not bad


Oh saw it in 3D
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

It suffers in Act 3 from what all prequels suffer from, the need to get cutesy and show the audience, "Look! It's that thing!" The final 15 minutes are supposed to make me geek out... but whoever really wanted to see a movie explaining in great detail what the Space Jockey was? When we should be seeing some sort of character resolution, we're going out of our way to show the genesis of the alien-- without the burden of being a prequel, I wonder if the film could have ended in a more satisfying way, allowing the film to stand alone.

The visuals are extraordinary. Simply incredible. Cinematog and Effects Oscar noms and maybe wins. Fassbender was fantastic, as was Rapace-- the rest are fine but don't have too much to do. Guy Pearce was a distraction.

For a movie with such smarts when it came to philosophy and technology, certain things seemed pretty arbitrary and confusing-- why did dude come back to the ship as an angry extra-strong guy? Why, when LMG ingested a drop of it, did he have an alien in his eye, an awesome image that doesn't seem to make much sense? Why does the infection cause sperm to turn to fast-growing aliens? Logic seemed to take backseat to creepiness and visual splendor, which in a regular blockbuster I have zero problem with but in something with so much to offer I get bothered by.

Parts of it left me breathless. Other parts left me frustrated.

http://t.co/5BcXsKFW

LMAO!!!!!!!!!

it is going to SUCK to be LMG from here on out because that's all he's getting is that he's a low budget Tom Hardy clone with half the talent! LOL!

This review was hilarious

then i was like wait that's not tom hardy.

lol @ this review tho. even though i enjoyed the movie and will stick up for it, this shit is hilarious.


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cause it wasn't.

is watching the some of the same people who insist lost haters are a. wrong, b. wrong because they wanted answers (which was never true), c. wrong for wanting answers

suddenly obsessed with not getting answers, reasons and connection

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

With Lost, there were compelling characters with interesting backstories. Even when shit didn't make any sense (i.e. many times, including the entire final season), you could still be invested in the characters. Here, things don't make sense and you don't get to know the characters over several seasons.

For the record, I enjoyed Lost until the final season which was terrible, but I fully acknowledge how full of shit the writers who claim there was a plan are. There was obviously no plan.

>With Lost, there were compelling characters with interesting
>backstories. Even when shit didn't make any sense (i.e. many
>times, including the entire final season), you could still be
>invested in the characters. Here, things don't make sense and
>you don't get to know the characters over several seasons.

Exactly...


>For the record, I enjoyed Lost until the final season which
>was terrible, but I fully acknowledge how full of shit the
>writers who claim there was a plan are. There was obviously no
>plan.

*spit take*

Oh, WORD?

And for anyone else reading this, I ain't gonna take part in any back-and-forths. My stance on Lost is well-known and hasn't changed, despite the criticism and trolling and "evidence" that everybody else believes is proof that they were "right."

Death to Cysing.

___________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

... to be fair, I don't recall what exactly Lindelof and Cuse said back in the day that had me heated, but I believe it was something along the lines of that they knew from episode 1 how the series would end and how everything fell into place.

They obviously had a plan in the sense of how TV writers plan a season and set themselves up with something to do the next season, etc. But I seem to recall them saying they were planned ahead from the jump. And there's just no way. I don't feel like going back and looking for the interview that made me mad at the time... but yeah.

I agree that back and forth about LOST, especially with a certain poster already in this thread, is a pointless endeavor, lol.

what was the procedure she selected to get the alien out of her? cuz i thought the AI for the chamber said it was set for males only

...y'all REALLY think the Engineers were making those prototypes to kill humans? cause that one Engineer seemed to take eveyone in that room out (cept the good doctor who took, the fuck, OFF) with no trouble...seems to me they wouldn't need the prototypes to kill humans, but would rather leave the issue of having those unstable creatures around an "Earth" problem rather than their own...

...why did David set ole boy up as the guinea pig again? ...on first watch, i figured he KNEW dude would impregnate the doctor and wanted to see what would happen, but as the movie went on i wasn't sure if David hated humanity itself, or just most if not all of the humans on that ship.....i still say he manipulates events that lead to what happens in Alien....his reactions to all the humans was GREAT, and i loved his line about destroying something in order to rebuild something else

well david ideas..

A. He was following orders... he was clearly asked to basically find someway to Extend old dudes life so he would do anything to do that.

B. They shit on him so much as being a "robot" I think he was quietly trying to "create" something of his own.

Bingo, you it hit on the head...

He was just creating on his own. He was just engineering out of curiosity on what he found. There was no point to it. He was just experimenting, and I believe he intentional picked out Noomi's love interest to prove a point about creation and destruction, because Noomi firmly believed in god and spirituality. David firmly believed that creation is just creation, and everything evolves for the simple purpose of evolving and being experimental. ..DAvid didn't go around infecting everybody. he intentional selected one person.

( It's like scientists creating in the lab for the significance of generating something different, or to create something that has never been created before....but then destroying that creation because it has served its purpose, or because the concept or idea is an old model....THE ENGINEERS were no different, and I'm pretty sure they evolved from something, just like we evolved from primates, and computers and robots are evolving from us...David was trying to prove that to Noomi)

Also, one thing I want to point out which is incredible, remember when david was in the bio-engineering chamber, and he took samples of the black milky substance from the containers? There were no organisms inside the containers, but over time the substance morphed into something...It's like the weapon was some type of biological morphing substance that converted into an organism based on the DNA of the opposite subject, or the person it comes into contact with......Also, the small worms on the ground were the ones that changed into paranormal pythons within minutes of the scientist being in the room.

shit is wild.

My mind is all fucked up in a good way off of this movie..Thank you Ridley!!!!

Also,Also, remember Noomi's love interest transmogrified into some type of superhuman monster after being infected, and the organism that was inside of noomi morphed into an octopus version of the paranormal pythons that were in the chamber.....

battlefield earth was an analogy for white supremacy and sociopolitical oppression. that don't make it good nigga!

They obviously put thought into the themes. It's the execution that struggles.

>what was the procedure she selected to get the alien out of
>her? cuz i thought the AI for the chamber said it was set for
>males only

Remove foreign body in the lower abdomen. Kinda weird that technology has advanced so far that it can achieve perfect laser surgery but they can't make a machine that handles both genders.

>...y'all REALLY think the Engineers were making those
>prototypes to kill humans? cause that one Engineer seemed to
>take eveyone in that room out (cept the good doctor who took,
>the fuck, OFF) with no trouble...seems to me they wouldn't
>need the prototypes to kill humans, but would rather leave the
>issue of having those unstable creatures around an "Earth"
>problem rather than their own...

Seeing as how there's no motivation on screen for the Engineers to kill us, much less establish an entire arsenal of crazy alien-based weaponry to destroy us, I suppose we have to trust what the outsiders hypothesize.

>...why did David set ole boy up as the guinea pig again? ...on
>first watch, i figured he KNEW dude would impregnate the
>doctor and wanted to see what would happen, but as the movie
>went on i wasn't sure if David hated humanity itself, or just
>most if not all of the humans on that ship.....i still say he
>manipulates events that lead to what happens in Alien....his
>reactions to all the humans was GREAT, and i loved his line
>about destroying something in order to rebuild something else

I'm not convinced dude was following orders from Weyland here. He clearly has beef with Weyland and seems to know full-on that Weyland will be killed when they meet the Engineer. Also, the only person at the end who seems to know why LMG was killed is David himself. So I'd be inclined to believe he has developed an anti-humanity agenda. Except it goes against the beginning, where he clearly wants to be human. And except it goes against the end, where he clearly wants to help the human.

So folks who thought the movie made sense could call him "mischievous" or perhaps "curious" while folks who acknowledge the movie doesn't really make sense could call him "haphazardly written while ingeniously acted."

>I'm not convinced dude was following orders from Weyland here.
>He clearly has beef with Weyland and seems to know full-on
>that Weyland will be killed when they meet the Engineer. Also,
>the only person at the end who seems to know why LMG was
>killed is David himself. So I'd be inclined to believe he has
>developed an anti-humanity agenda. Except it goes against the
>beginning, where he clearly wants to be human. And except it
>goes against the end, where he clearly wants to help the
>human.
>
>So folks who thought the movie made sense could call him
>"mischievous" or perhaps "curious" while folks who acknowledge
>the movie doesn't really make sense could call him
>"haphazardly written while ingeniously acted."

i honestly thought he was just a little conflicted on the human hate issue...i think he hated all humans EXCEPT the doctor, and i think the only things he liked about humanity were her and that movie...i in the beginning, he clearly enjoyed having the ship to himself and seemed to want to want to be like the humans in that movie, but then the real humans show up and he realizes that for the most part the real humans can be idiotic assholes, and easily grows to resent them....presented with an place were he can get rid of all, if not most of them, he goes for it....

sidenote: the more i think think about it, the more idiotic and insane Weyland's plan is....why would the Engineer save HIM?? he was gonna threaten him, try to muscle it out of him?? did he hope that he'd just go up and ask and the Engineer would just do it? his whole plan was crazy....

>>...why did David set ole boy up as the guinea pig again?
>...on
>>first watch, i figured he KNEW dude would impregnate the
>>doctor and wanted to see what would happen, but as the movie
>>went on i wasn't sure if David hated humanity itself, or
>just
>>most if not all of the humans on that ship.....i still say
>he
>>manipulates events that lead to what happens in Alien....his
>>reactions to all the humans was GREAT, and i loved his line
>>about destroying something in order to rebuild something
>else
>
>I'm not convinced dude was following orders from Weyland here.
>He clearly has beef with Weyland and seems to know full-on
>that Weyland will be killed when they meet the Engineer. Also,
>the only person at the end who seems to know why LMG was
>killed is David himself. So I'd be inclined to believe he has
>developed an anti-humanity agenda. Except it goes against the
>beginning, where he clearly wants to be human. And except it
>goes against the end, where he clearly wants to help the
>human.
>
>So folks who thought the movie made sense could call him
>"mischievous" or perhaps "curious" while folks who acknowledge
>the movie doesn't really make sense could call him
>"haphazardly written while ingeniously acted."

I'm a little confused by you and a few other people talking about what David "wants" and what his motivations may be. Why do you guys think he can like, dislike, envy, resent, or feel any way about humans at all, one way the other? He *seems* like he has those feelings, but I think those are just projections - I don't think he feels one way or the other about them. I don't think he *feels* anything.

I think he's programmed to develop as much of an understanding about the alien/engineer species as possible, regardless any possible human casualties. (Kind of like in Alien when Ripley saw that the android's mission was specifically to bring back the alien and that the crew was expendable.) I don't think he was pro- or anti-human; I think if keeping humans alive would help him learn about aliens, he would try to keep them alive, but when killing them was necessary to gather data, so be it.

He poisoned Holloway to learn about aliens; he tried to have Shaw birth an alien to learn about aliens; he went looking in the cave to learn about aliens; he tried to save Shaw at the end because...it would presumably lead him to more information about aliens.

I think it might be a mistake to read into his character that he's making any subjective value judgements about any characters in particular or the human race in general. All of his actions seem to be driven by a desire to obtain information about this alien species. Sometimes that means helping people, sometimes it means hurting them, and sometimes it means doing both to the same person.

Then again, that's just kind of loose theory. I honestly didn't spend tons of time fleshing this out in my mind, but it sort of makes sense to me. I rarely see movies in theaters twice, but I might have to with this one.

Is that there's a huge difference between the Alien of the first movie and the alien of the sequels.

The alien from the first movie was a perfect killing machine that learned/matured fast and could adapt.

In the sequels it was mostly strength in numbers.

If we're talking about the alien from the first movie, shoot. A ship with that kind of cargo would have been more than enough to wipe out the planet. The Space Jockey dudes wouldn't need to fight anybody.

But yeah, the aliens as portrayed in the other movies, not so much. It's much more apparent that an army with a smart leader would stand a chance.

apart from the hilarious review Frank Longo posted above

"Prometheus Unbound: What The Movie Was Actually About"

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1

Very observant and well put. Increased my appreciation twofold and eased my frustrations re: questions, questions, and no answers.

All that stuff about Jesus and the Engineers' backstory and everything else? Not on screen.

In fact, the only time it becomes clear what the Engineers' plan is is when Idris Elba runs on screen and clunkily announces it.

The article also doesn't explain why the enemy's powers have zero rules. Sometimes they're snake aliens. Other times they make people fall apart. Other times they make people super-strong alien zombie guys. Other times they create aliens inside barren wombs. Other times they make little alien worms appear in people's eyeballs.

The article also doesn't explain why characters suddenly change their minds. Best example I can think of: the dude in glasses who wants NOTHING to do with aliens, so much that he leaves the crew to wander in a cave by himself without the map, but when they see an alien mere hours later, he's joking around and trying to touch it. Zero sense.

Unfortunately this is one of those movies where the dumb senseless stuff sinks the smarter ideas the film possesses. It's either the smartest dumb film I've seen or the dumbest smart film I've seen. It's like you can feel a dumb writer trying to inject things that make no sense into a smart script.

Haha I totally agree with you. I thought it was a fun ride, but a total mess (terrible dialogue, inexplicable human behaviour/motivations, total lack of cohesion, elementary questions disguised as deep philosophy). Just thought it was a great read, made the whole experience more worthwhile/fulfilling.

and Lindelof is one of the biggest hacks out there, no doubt.

>The article also doesn't explain why the enemy's powers have
>zero rules. Sometimes they're snake aliens. Other times they
>make people fall apart. Other times they make people
>super-strong alien zombie guys. Other times they create aliens
>inside barren wombs. Other times they make little alien worms
>appear in people's eyeballs.

why would a human expedition suddenly understand the rules to an alien species? in real life, it's extremely probable that a "first contact" with aliens would be completely unintelligible to us. how an Xbox 360 works would make as much sense to George Washington.

"Dr. Shaw, we analyzed the black goo and discovered it's a changing mutagen, one of hundreds of different bio-weapon species with different effects based on user." that's exposition for exposition's sake. and kind of dumber than just accepting we can't understand it.

HOWEVER.

I do agree about lack of character motivations. them being scientists on such a specific mission ruins the absurdity of many dumb actions. now, I don't mind playing to thrills (in Alien, every time Dallas or Ripley insist they stick together, the crew promptly splinters in the next scene), but it wasn't well done here. so with that in mind, I do think the morphing alien attacks were a writing free pass.

the stuff is there, it's there symbolically, which this reviewer does a great job out outlining. but it seems you want shit spelled out for you. whatever.

second its the red haired tattoo-ed guy that wants nothing to do with the goo chamber, its the other scientist who wanted to be his friend, that got scared so ran with him (and somehow they got lost. that part really didn't make sense) that found interest in the worm-snake thing

lastly, the reviewer actually did explain that elements of why the goo makes different things; he explains it as the consciousness of the species it comes in contact with affects its formation. i.e. sacrificial engineer makes life, human's funded by billionaire wanting eternal life brings destruction. i.e. the "we're changing the atmosphere" line

again this movies was great. yall can cry about the supposed plot holes all you want.

i'm just mad my nigga Idris didn't get to smash Charlize on screen to the delight of "post-racial" america

I would, however, like them to be consistent.

The characters were barely there and nobody had an arc, the plot was filled with holes, the action scenes were standard or silly, the central question was answered to the audience in the first scene.

>Unfortunately this is one of those movies where the dumb
>senseless stuff sinks the smarter ideas the film possesses.
>It's either the smartest dumb film I've seen or the dumbest
>smart film I've seen. It's like you can feel a dumb writer
>trying to inject things that make no sense into a smart
>script.
>
>

another thing that bugged me was how charlize mentioned in the beginning they spent a trillion dollars to get to that planet, and i'm thinking for a trillion dollars this is the best team you could put together?? really?? these unprofessional rag tag flunkies??

you know, how in the hell did that geologist guy get lost when it was his devices that mapped that shit out AND at one point when asked which way to go he looks down at his monitor and said "my pups are telling me its this way?" wtf?

shit did not make sense.

it doesn't show up in the movie. if i need to read something this long to appreciate it, it hasn't worked as cinema.

... I do want to see it again. It's likely to frustrate me again, but the imagery is too extraordinary to dismiss the film as a whole.

I forget who tweeted it's the worst movie that they can't wait to see again. I understand that sentiment 100%.

I am going to see it again in Imax because this was by far the best 3d i have seen.

A trillion dollars buys you a pretty shitty crew.

"Father!" might have been the most pointless revelation I've ever seen.

During tense scenes, the score sounded like one of John Williams's more upbeat cues.

In the future, I guess they decided programming curiosity was a bad idea and didn't do it with the droid in Alien.

Idris Elba's character said it best when he said, "I don't care." I just wanted the movie to end; I didn't care about any questions or answers. The end devolved into bad horror with Noomi surviving unbelievably when the falling ship slams into a rock, doesn't break, and just gets held up. Then the big dude comes for her.

Visually it looked amazing but it was basically a stupid horror movie that floated out big minded ideas to explain why everyone ended up in harm's way.

>During tense scenes, the score sounded like one of John
>Williams's more upbeat cues.

it had this out of place, Star Trek vibe...Idris and Noomi's heart to heart about saving Earth being the worst example

Charlize was dumb and kept running in a straight line, smh. Shorty shoulda rolled 12 inches to the left like Noomi.

>A trillion dollars buys you a pretty shitty crew.
>
>"Father!" might have been the most pointless revelation I've
>ever seen.
>
>During tense scenes, the score sounded like one of John
>Williams's more upbeat cues.
>
>In the future, I guess they decided programming curiosity was
>a bad idea and didn't do it with the droid in Alien.
>

After 2000 years in a space pod the highly advanced albino goon takes a nice stretch and proceeds to decapitate the robot who just set him free and back slap an elderly gentleman in the face

http://enchantedmitten.blogspot.com/2003/12/reading-previous-entries-in-this-series.html

go watch Avengers

compared it to Danny Boyle's Sunshine when walking out the theater. That's the long lasting impressions it had on me. How both films have the heart and soul of a great sci-fi but ultimately have a messy third act. Watched it last night and still thinking about how Ridley Scott dropped the ball.

& I still don't mind the 3rd acts of either one

that becomes canonical movie in the future

i've never seen sunshine

.

Ridley was on point.*
The actors were on point (and actually fleshed some characterization out of the shreds they were given).

But outside of the basic plot, everything was a fail as a script. People have pointed out a few of the flaws above so no need to go over it again....it was just frustrating watching characters move around strictly because the writers thought of 'great' set pieces or scenes but couldn't figure out a way to work them in logically, lol.

The secret is only a very small amount of Sci-Fi movies pass the test under the magnifying glass...if you look too closely it's not hard to make the logic fall apart(which is why that fake SMS critique of the movie is unfair). However with all the things that make a good movie(plot, characters), throw in some special effects along with some solid future leaning philosophical ideas and you get classic sci-fi. And that's what us nerds really ask for; a good movie, lol.

As much flack as people gave Inception after the fact, it was a MUCH tighter film even with wider plot holes and not as strong set-pieces and performances. It's because the characters behaved the way you expected them to...which is why they could sell preposterious bullshit like 'dreams within a dreams withing a dream, while dreaming another dream'.

Fucking Prometheus has so many great ideas I REALLY REALLY want to believe, and those fucking hack writers robbed me of being able to suspend my belief by how dumb they think we are.






*The old man seemed like a dude in really bad makeup though...I don't get that choice as opposed to getting a seasoned elderly actor

Why didn't the Engineer just go to another ship when Prometheus crashed into his ship? We know there were other mounds, and I think one of the characters confirmed that there were other ships in those mounds, likely carrying a bunch of of evil goo stuff. Why wouldn't he just go into them and head out? Why chase the last remaining human and risk, however slightly, that the humans could take you out?

To form the alien from Alien.

That's literally the only reason.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

perhaps he thought she would alert Earth to his mission.

http://io9.com/5917448/all-of-your-lingering-prometheus-questions-answered?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow


All of Your Lingering Prometheus Questions, Answered!
Still full of questions after seeing Ridley Scott's Prometheus? So were we — so we asked everyone we could get a hold of, from the actor who played scientist Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) to screenwriter Damon Lindelof. And anything we couldn't ask somebody, we found out online. It's the ultimate answer guide to all your pressing Prometheus questions.
Why is Holloway such a jerk to David?

Logan Marshall-Green: It's something that I wanted to implement and I really, really liked it. Michael and I had a blast with it. It's something I haven't seen in science fiction, which is a sense of racism or bigotry towards androids and synthetic life. I think synthetic life is inevitable, and along that line bigotry and racism (if you will) will be inevitable as well. Although I can't approach a role thinking of as a racist or a bigot. Certainly now I can look back and explain his disdain for Michael in that way. I kind of loved it, just because I haven't seen that approach, that social reflection on a future being, a synthetic android.


What was David's motivation for "infecting" Holloway with black goop?

Damon Lindelof: I say that the short answer is: That's his programming. In the scene preceding him doing that, he is talking to Weyland (although we don't know it at the time) and he's telling Weyland that this is a bust. That they haven't found anything on this mission other than the stuff in the vials. And Weyland presumably says to him, "Well, what's in the vials?" And David would say, "I'm not entirely sure, we'll have to run some experiments." And Weyland would say, "What would happen if you put it in inside a person?" And David would say, "I don't know, I'll go find out." He doesn't know that he's poisoning Holloway, he asks Holloway, "What would you be willing to do to get the answers to your questions?" Holloway says, "Anything and everything." And that basically overrides whatever ethical programming David is mandated by, to spike his drink.

Logan Marshall-Green:My definition of a robot, or at least a self-sustained robot, is to put together information. As much information as possible and data. To build on data. The only way they're going to grow is to build on data. You meet David collecting data instantly. I think he probably hit a wall (so to speak) with this mission. They all hit a wall, at first, with this mission. And going back to his father, Weyland, and he's told to "try harder." I think he understands that he will have to sacrifice a human life in order to achieve that collection of data.

David has been watching Lawrence of Arabia while the crew of Prometheus was in stasis for two years, why that movie?

Lindelof: Ridley and I started talking about Lawrence of Arabia, for some reason, very early on in our process. I'm a huge David Lean fan — we were talking about The Bridge on the River Kwai and then Peter O'Toole etc. etc. we just started saying oh what if David was just obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia? Why would he be obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia, and i think the short answer was: Lawrence is a stranger in a strange land. A white man who is entirely different, ultimately becomes the most pivotal figure in that movie, independent of his differences. That felt slightly analogical to what we wanted to do with David.



What is Lindelof's obsession with rich old men who ruin their kids lives?

Lindelof: Well, I will say that I haven't had any experience with rich old men who have ruined my life. Some less rich old men who have been wonderful role models. But I think that the Keynesian "rich old man with nefarious intent" is a classic character in both regular fiction and both straight up genre. And just too delicious to resist.

On that same note, we've seen Lindelof tackle childbirth before specifically women losing the ability to have children or having it bastardized in some way in Lost. Why was it important to weave human pregnancy into Prometheus?

Lindelof: I think hardwired into the original Alien is this idea of fertility. This idea of, for lack of a better way of looking at it, the sperm and the egg need each other to in order to form a new life. And in this gestational construct, the human being is the egg and the sperm is represented (in the original Alien) by a face hugger. And in Prometheus it's represented in a different way. I just feel like the idea of taking these three generations of creators (so the Engineers who created us, then us, and our creation synthetic human beings the robot David). We're going to take those three generations, we're gonna lock them in a room together, we're gonna watch them have sex with each other. And then we're going to see what comes out. That was the experiment that Prometheus was running. And whether it was successful or whether it was a failure, it sure was fun to write.

Have they actually mapped out a motivation for the Engineers, is it supposed to remain ambiguous? Will they be mysterious forever, or can we figure them out if we pay enough attention? Was it deliberate or if they felt like they offered enough hints to the dedicated viewer, where we never really know what the advanced aliens wanted?

Lindelof: Ridley definitely had very specific answers to those questions and we talked a lot about how we wanted to put those answers into Prometheus. And whether or not we wanted to hold any of them back. It's a little bit obnoxious to say, "well if you like this movie, we'll give that stuff to you in the sequel." So you have to have a fair shot at being able to extrapolate based on the information in this movie. But I do feel like, embedded in this movie are the fundamental ideas behind why it is the Engineers would want to wipe us out. If that's the question that you're asking. The movie asks the question, were we created by these beings? And it answers that question very definitively. But in the wake of that answer there's a new question, which is, they created us but now they want to destroy us, why did they change their minds? That's the question that Shaw is asking at the end of this movie, the one that she wants answered. I do think that there are a lot of hints in this movie that we give you quite and educated guess as to why. But obviously not to the detriment of what Shaw might find when she goes to talk to these things herself.

Is Prometheus anti-science?

Lindelof: It's definitely not anti-science. In fact, if anything I think it's pro-science because it advances the idea that part of our own programming as human beings, we're many ways just as governed by our programming as David is. We have to seek out the answers to these questions, even though we know we'll never get satisfying answers. We're curious about what happens as we die. We need to know where we come from. What the meaning of life is. What kind of life we're supposed to lead. These are all sort of nonscientific, philosophical, religious, and spiritual questions. But the idea that we can find some comfort in science, that science can sort of give us a path to follow in understanding our roots. I think we're better off from understanding that we're descended from apes than we are looking at some book that was written 2000 years ago that gives us an explanation for our own roots.

I'm most definitively pro-science, but I think that the movie advances the idea that, can the two live along side each other? Is it possible to be a scientist and maintain some fungible faith in the unknown? And are you rewarded for having blind faith? I do think that the movie is making the meta-commentary in saying well Shaw is the true believer on board, and she's the one who survives. So what are we trying to say by telling that story?

Do the aliens want us to visit them?

In an interview with IGN, this question is addressed — but Lindelof only answers with more questions.

Lindelof: That's an excellent question and one that I'm not going to answer. But I will say that there's something fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an invitation. You look at a cave wall, there's somebody pointing at some distant planets, and one interpretation is "This is where we come from" another is "We want you to come here." Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that's interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon the land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the right place? And how close are they to the place that these aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just extrapolating "This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life." So there's a lot of guesswork. There's a small line in the movie where David and Holloway are talking about David's deconstruction of the language based on Holloway's thesis, and he says "If your thesis is correct" and Holloway says "If it's correct?" and David says "That's why they call it a thesis Doctor." And the reason we threw that in there is that we're dealing with a highly hypothetical area in terms of who these beings are, what, if any invitation they issued, and who is responsible for making those cave paintings. And did something happen in between when those cave paintings were made — tens of thousands of years ago — and our arrival now, in 2093, 2,000 years after these things have perished. Did something happen in the intermediate period that we should be thinking about?

What is David saying to the engineers?

MTV News got this answer as part of a lengthy email exchange with Lindeloff, which also reveals whether Vickers is a robot or not.

When David communicates with one of the Engineers late in the film, what the hell does he say to get them so angry? Did you actually script what that dialogue would have been in our language?

Yes. David's dialogue with the Engineer has an English translation, but Ridley felt very strongly about not subtitling it. I spoke at length about this on my DVD commentary

Was David's basketball toss a nod to Alien Resurrection?

Crave Online has the answer:

Lindelof: I do think that there are a lot of tips of the cap in Prometheus to all of those movies and I think it's so easy to sit back and rag on mistakes made or wrong paths turned down. But at the end of the day, every single one of those movies I feel had good things in them and an articulation of fondness. All I'll say in response to your question is, nothing is an accident in Prometheus. Every single decision that is made by Ridley Scott is made for a very specific reason and purpose.

What did we miss? What other questions do you have? Fill the comments and we'll try and tackle them.
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

in addition to this mamajahambo up above

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1687022/prometheus-secrets-damon-lindelof.jhtml


*or at least take a lengthy break from it and get some fresh air

__________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

and analysis pages, etc. people have been putting up of this movie.

Granted, it wasn't a great movie, but the kind of curiousity folk are expressing at finding the answers to the questions this movie raises has been cool and it's been fun reading people's interpretations of this movie.

And, I'm going to watch it again this weekend on IMAX.

___________________________________________________________________________
Skrillex.

in the film, because too many folks have the same concerns/questions.

None of those explanations are evident in the work. That's a problem

>*or at least take a lengthy break from it and get some fresh
>air


not mad
but just in case i suppressed it
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

Aight, I'ma go ahead out of the kindness of my heart and translate all this shit for ya'll.

>Why is Holloway such a jerk to David?
>
>Logan Marshall-Green: It's something that I wanted to
>implement and I really, really liked it. Michael and I had a
>blast with it. It's something I haven't seen in science
>fiction, which is a sense of racism or bigotry towards
>androids and synthetic life.

wtf? how about in the second movie of the series, ALIENS. Ripley is repulsed by Bishop after finding out he's an android. How about iRobot, Terminator, Blade Runner (WHAT THE ENTIRE MOVIE WAS BASED ON), Star Wars "We don't serve their kind here" ... etc, etc. This is literally one of the dumbest statements ever made.


>What was David's motivation for "infecting" Holloway with
>black goop?
>
>Damon Lindelof: I say that the short answer is: That's his
>programming. In the scene preceding him doing that, he is
>talking to Weyland (although we don't know it at the time) and
>he's telling Weyland that this is a bust. That they haven't
>found anything on this mission other than the stuff in the
>vials. And Weyland presumably says to him, "Well, what's in
>the vials?" And David would say, "I'm not entirely sure, we'll
>have to run some experiments." And Weyland would say, "What
>would happen if you put it in inside a person?" And David
>would say, "I don't know, I'll go find out." He doesn't know
>that he's poisoning Holloway, he asks Holloway, "What would
>you be willing to do to get the answers to your questions?"
>Holloway says, "Anything and everything." And that basically
>overrides whatever ethical programming David is mandated by,
> to spike his drink.

^^^Translation: "blah blah blah... cuz he was programmed to!" great, thanks for that revealing bit of info. So basically the robot coerced the human against his will by tricking him. what a TERRIBLE explanation.



>What is Lindelof's obsession with rich old men who ruin their
>kids lives?
>
>Lindelof: Well, I will say that I haven't had any experience
>with rich old men who have ruined my life. Some less rich old
>men who have been wonderful role models. But I think that the
>Keynesian "rich old man with nefarious intent" is a classic
>character in both regular fiction and both straight up genre.
>And just too delicious to resist.

^^^ Translation: "I don't know but thought it would be cool to put it in the script."

>On that same note, we've seen Lindelof tackle childbirth
>before specifically women losing the ability to have children
>or having it bastardized in some way in Lost. Why was it
>important to weave human pregnancy into Prometheus?
>
>Lindelof: I think hardwired into the original Alien is this
>idea of fertility. This idea of, for lack of a better way of
>looking at it, the sperm and the egg need each other to in
>order to form a new life. And in this gestational construct,
>the human being is the egg and the sperm is represented (in
>the original Alien) by a face hugger. And in Prometheus it's
>represented in a different way. I just feel like the idea of
>taking these three generations of creators (so the Engineers
>who created us, then us, and our creation synthetic human
>beings the robot David). We're going to take those three
>generations, we're gonna lock them in a room together, we're
>gonna watch them have sex with each other. And then we're
>going to see what comes out. That was the experiment that
>Prometheus was running. And whether it was successful or
>whether it was a failure, it sure was fun to write.

^^^ last sentence says it all... "WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS SUCCESSFUL, I WAS GONNA WRITE THE SHIT ANYWAY." So basically he's saying I don't give a fuck if this works or not, I just felt like throwing it in there so i did.

>Have they actually mapped out a motivation for the Engineers,
>is it supposed to remain ambiguous? Will they be mysterious
>forever, or can we figure them out if we pay enough attention?
>Was it deliberate or if they felt like they offered enough
>hints to the dedicated viewer, where we never really know what
>the advanced aliens wanted?
>
>Lindelof: Ridley definitely had very specific answers to those
>questions and we talked a lot about how we wanted to put those
>answers into Prometheus. And whether or not we wanted to hold
>any of them back. It's a little bit obnoxious to say, "well if
>you like this movie, we'll give that stuff to you in the
>sequel." So you have to have a fair shot at being able to
>extrapolate based on the information in this movie. But I do
>feel like, embedded in this movie are the fundamental ideas
>behind why it is the Engineers would want to wipe us out. If
>that's the question that you're asking. The movie asks the
>question, were we created by these beings? And it answers that
>question very definitively. But in the wake of that answer
>there's a new question, which is, they created us but now they
>want to destroy us, why did they change their minds? That's
>the question that Shaw is asking at the end of this movie, the
>one that she wants answered. I do think that there are a lot
>of hints in this movie that we give you quite and educated
>guess as to why. But obviously not to the detriment of what
>Shaw might find when she goes to talk to these things
>herself.

^^^ Translation "Blah blah blah... I'm gonna answer your question by rewording it and asking you the same thing only use 30 sentences to do so. I'm an awesome guy!"

>Is Prometheus anti-science? >earlier in our spoiler free interview with Lindelof, but here
>is his spoiler filled response.]

>Do the aliens want us to visit them?
>
>In an interview with IGN, this question is addressed — but
>Lindelof only answers with more questions.
>
>Lindelof: That's an excellent question and one that I'm not
>going to answer. But I will say that there's something
>fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an
>invitation. You look at a cave wall, there's somebody pointing
>at some distant planets, and one interpretation is "This is
>where we come from" another is "We want you to come here."
>Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that's
>interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon
>the land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is
>where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the
>right place? And how close are they to the place that these
>aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just
>extrapolating "This is the system that has the sun with the
>sustainable life." So there's a lot of guesswork. There's a
>small line in the movie where David and Holloway are talking
>about David's deconstruction of the language based on
>Holloway's thesis, and he says "If your thesis is correct" and
>Holloway says "If it's correct?" and David says "That's why
>they call it a thesis Doctor." And the reason we threw that in
>there is that we're dealing with a highly hypothetical area in
>terms of who these beings are, what, if any invitation they
>issued, and who is responsible for making those cave
>paintings. And did something happen in between when those cave
>paintings were made — tens of thousands of years ago — and our
>arrival now, in 2093, 2,000 years after these things have
>perished. Did something happen in the intermediate period that
>we should be thinking about?

^^^Translation: "Blah blah blah... i'm gonna reword your question AGAIN and then come up with 10 irrelevant questions of my own, all while not answering the initial question whatsoever. I'm a cool dude!

>What is David saying to the engineers?
>
>MTV News got this answer as part of a lengthy email exchange
>with Lindeloff, which also reveals whether Vickers is a robot
>or not.
>
>When David communicates with one of the Engineers late in the
>film, what the hell does he say to get them so angry? Did you
>actually script what that dialogue would have been in our
>language?
>
>Yes. David's dialogue with the Engineer has an English
>translation, but Ridley felt very strongly about not
>subtitling it. I spoke at length about this on my DVD
>commentary

^^^Translation: "We don't know wtf that nigga said, we just wanted him to say something before goon albino decapitated him."


And there you have it... Lingering questions answered!

>>Logan Marshall-Green: It's something that I wanted to
>>implement and I really, really liked it. Michael and I had a
>>blast with it. It's something I haven't seen in science
>>fiction, which is a sense of racism or bigotry towards
>>androids and synthetic life.
>
>wtf? how about in the second movie of the series, ALIENS.
>Ripley is repulsed by Bishop after finding out he's an
>android. How about iRobot, Terminator, Blade Runner (WHAT THE
>ENTIRE MOVIE WAS BASED ON), Star Wars "We don't serve their
>kind here" ... etc, etc. This is literally one of the dumbest
>statements ever made.

wasn't sure if it was the script or his acting. after that statement, I'm leaning towards the latter.

let it go homie, all the answers and non answers make sense, esp the first one, cause it was HIS recollection of SciFi movies which may be pretty limited.....

>let it go homie, all the answers and non answers make sense,
>esp the first one, cause it was HIS recollection of SciFi
>movies which may be pretty limited.....

I can understand having questions, being baffled, or even totally dismissing the movie, but that level of anger towards a movie is insane.

Lindelof: "The movie asks the question, were we created by these beings? And it answers that question very definitively. But in the wake of that answer there's a new question, which is, they created us but now they want to destroy us, why did they change their minds? That's the question that Shaw is asking at the end of this movie, the one that she wants answered."

My problem with this thinking is that they pretty much answered that question with the very first scene. Then the next two hours were watching a group of 17 (4 of whom were actually invested at all with this question) trying to catch up with us so they could ask a new question.

Also, the matter of fertility that he mentions earlier in the interview was almost completely random in this one. The entire "I can't have a baby" moment was unnecessary. Ripley lost a child and it gave her extra motivation to look after Newt. Shaw couldn't have a baby and when she found out she was pregnant... she immediately wanted it out of her anyway.

And that's the problem here, almost nothing matters. There are countless scenes, like the fertility moment, that could be lost without changing anything.
On top of that, nobody has any sort of arc. Charlize's character should have been the one to survive; gone from not believing to wanting to finish the job. And flamethrowing that dude could have been played as her doing the right thing even if people didn't think it was humane. Although how, after they'd already seen an infected Engineer head explode, anyone thought letting dude on board was a good idea was beyond me. I mean, the lack of protocol on that ship was astonishing.
(Meanwhile, Shaw actually does a kind of 360 - wanting to go, wanting to leave, to wanting to go to the next planet.)
Half of the stuff we learn about people doesn't matter, like when the guy who doesn't want friends stays by the cowardly biologist who inexplicably plays with an alien snake (mind you, moments after seeing the hologram of beings three times his size running in fear and then found piled up dead. It doesn't take a scientist to know that the one remaining living being might not be friendly.)

Again, it was like Lindelof worked off of an outline and had to stick to that outline regardless of how little sense things made and then ended up with this mess of a script. Asking big questions is fine but when, in doing so, you create a ton of little questions for which you have no explanation, you've done it wrong.

<rimshot>
hah! nicely done!

the first engineer on earth who sacrificed himself drank the same black goo that was on the alien planet in the containers. him drinking that goo directly dissolved him down to his dna, his dna then merged with whatever other host were near him in that water.
the goo is the substance that makes whatever it merges with into another lifeform. it transformed the worms in the cave into face sucking super leeches. it transformed oldboy and girls love child into a super octopus monster. that's what it does.

Loose DNA just doesn't merge with stuff. And that also means that the Engineers didn't invent life on Earth or anywhere because for your transformation idea to happen requires the existence of another life form to get leached onto by the alien DNA. And how we came about on Earth doesn't really make sense because when the goo was introduced between two humans, what was born wasn't a superhuman but a COMPLETELY different species - a facesucking octopus.

So if you're theory is right, I guess we were evolved from octupii and the answer of "Where did life come from?" isn't really answered because there was life on the planet before we were mutated into being by the goo.

Nevermind that Scott and Lindleoff have said that that planet might not have even been Earth.

>Loose DNA just doesn't merge with stuff. And that also means
>that the Engineers didn't invent life on Earth or anywhere
>because for your transformation idea to happen requires the
>existence of another life form to get leached onto by the
>alien DNA. And how we came about on Earth doesn't really make
>sense because when the goo was introduced between two humans,
>what was born wasn't a superhuman but a COMPLETELY different
>species - a facesucking octopus.
>

using an earthly mind it doesn't. nor is there anything known as super glue or super humanoids from billion mile away galaxies that we know of. good scifi requires a certain suspension of beliefs.


>So if you're theory is right, I guess we were evolved from
>octupii and the answer of "Where did life come from?" isn't
>really answered because there was life on the planet before we
>were mutated into being by the goo.

"in order to build you must first destroy". they never said earth didn't have any life. just lacked intelligent life. life lacked sentience.


>
>Nevermind that Scott and Lindleoff have said that that planet
>might not have even been Earth.

they will play and toy with this due to marketing. you make more money doling out medicine than you do by making a cure.

"good scifi requires a certain suspension of beliefs."

I couldn't disagree more about a statement than this. If it requires a suspension of beliefs than it is not SCIENCE-Fiction. If you look at it based on science and then say, "No, you can't look at it that way." then it's not science-fiction, it's fantasy and all you have to say is "Well, that goo is magic!"

You can't open a film with DNA exploding and then say, "Uh, no, you have to ignore how DNA actually works..."

just depends on which one you want to put more emphasis in. do we really need to go there though? as it stands now, the only fact we have is that we (humans) are the super powered aliens of the known galaxy. we are the advanced creatures. we have the power to create and destroy life on a universal scale. etc. etc. etc. i choose not to get caught up in semantic debates though. we can agree to disagree my friend.

And then when the flaws were shown in your point, you said, "Oh well, you just have to ignore those things." which was exactly Frank's initial point - there are a lot of holes that need to be overlooked.

Your post wasn't an answer, it was just another example of something people are just supposed to roll with and overlook so that they can eventually get to the end and ask "Why the guys who have never really been explained all that well doing this thing that hasn't really made much sense?"

And the reason is because we killed Jesus Christ, who, it turns out, was one of the aliens.

I think the point of the opening scene is clear, but all we see it do is turn things into super strong deformed prior versions of themselves. Is a human a super strong and deformed version of a paramecium or whatever?

There just seemed to be no distinct identifiable manner in which the goo evolved things. Or the alien DNA in the water. Or whatever. It seems a little too convenient to merely say "well it's alien DNA, it can do whatever it wants." Like, doesn't alien DNA have rules too? lol

I'm all for movies that allow for thought and filling in gaps... there's just soooo many gaps to fill here.

Either the 'goo' used on earth had since been modified and spun out of control (which lead to the collapse of the engineers base) or it takes different form based on the energy that surrounds it (giving the line about the Prometheus crew changing the environment more meaning)

"I'm all for movies that allow for thought and filling in gaps... there's just soooo many gaps to fill here"

I think a lot of what you're calling gaps are pieces of a puzzle that were left out intentionally... for me it's added to the movie not detracted from it. I would have had a bigger problem with a movie about the origins and meaning of life wrapping up neatly inside two hours.
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>Either the 'goo' used on earth had since been modified and
>spun out of control (which lead to the collapse of the
>engineers base) or it takes different form based on the energy
>that surrounds it (giving the line about the Prometheus crew
>changing the environment more meaning)
>
>"I'm all for movies that allow for thought and filling in
>gaps... there's just soooo many gaps to fill here"
>
>I think a lot of what you're calling gaps are pieces of a
>puzzle that were left out intentionally... for me it's added
>to the movie not detracted from it. I would have had a bigger
>problem with a movie about the origins and meaning of life
>wrapping up neatly inside two hours.


there would be no debate if all questions were answered, if all things were explained in 2 hours. there'd be no need for a part 2. ridley scott is the master of directors cuts. this was intentionally left void to make more money in my opinion.

you guys are debating the overarching existential elements of the film but independent of the whole "where did we come from?" question, the film is littered with smaller logical flaws. I think that's what most people take issue with.

2001 pretty much left us with our thumb up our ass but the details were meticulously fleshed out.

>2001 pretty much left us with our thumb up our ass but the
>details were meticulously fleshed out.

I know it's loved by many and that's fine... it just never really struck a cord with me *shrugs*

And I agree there are more than a few flaws with Prometheus but the big picture things were left out for a reason... I just don't agree with those that think they just weren't well thought out in advance.
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>pieces of a
>puzzle that were left out intentionally

a movie about the origins and meaning of life
>wrapping up neatly inside two hours.

Because a few of those puzzle pieces felt like pieces to a puzzle that wouldn't ever click together.

>Because a few of those puzzle pieces felt like pieces to a
>puzzle that wouldn't ever click together.

But it really depends on where they go from here
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And that the Engineers wanted to destroy Earth because they were mad we crucified Jesus!

http://www.movies.com/movie-news/ridley-scott-prometheus-interview/8232

He even says that was in the script at one point but they took it out because it was too on-the-nose.

He's trying to get that L. Ron money.

We often crucify what we don't understand.

I think the problem is people can accept logic flaws in a comic book movie, but not in a Ridley-helmed sci-fi flick.

and a horribly contrived plot. how many times did the damn Avengers take a break to fight each other?

anyway.

Promtheus raised the philosophical stakes only to sike us out and fall back on thriller cliches in the final act. I understand the frustration, but let us not throw the chestburster out with the bathwater.

And I feel somewhat the same about Avengers as I do Prometheus: story-wise it was weak but people were so invested in the icons that they enjoyed the film.

The key difference for me, however, was that Avengers was entertaining because it was stupid fun whereas Prometheus was a chore to get through because it was stupid high-minded philosophy. If I'm going to sit back and turn off my brain, I want explosions and fights, not people wondering about the meaning of life.

it had fun moments, but the fun of Avengers could be edited down to a Youtube compilation. that shit dragged like a motherfucker.

say what you will about the pretensions of Prometheus, but it had more merit in the visuals alone than Avengers had in its entirety.

I can kinda get behind that. the first half of that movie was so. damn. slow. and with tons of illogical or lazy storytelling.

I liked The Avengers, but it's largely avoided the critical dissection of Prometheus and The Dark Knight.

Prometheus literally ends with a question that is supposed to make you think (but the more you think about the movie, the more it falls apart.)

The Dark Knight also seemed to be trying to make bigger statements. (And I also think it went from a GREAT movie to a frustrating one since they tossed in what should have been a Two Face movie into the last act of the flick. Avengers was always just good.)

Avengers is stupid. It's flawed. But it's fun. And that's all it was really trying to be. Not much to dissect.

somebody could have just as much "fun" watching Prometheus as a visual spectacle (which it is, more so than The Avengers) while disregarding any thematic issues.

Backlash requires people to defend the movie.

If you say Avengers has a lot of stupid shit in it, I don't think most people will argue that. They'll say, "Yeah, but it's just a big fun comic book movie."

If you say Prometheus has a lot of stupid shit in it, everyone is trying to explain why the shit wasn't stupid or spin some fan fiction yarn that might help it make sense.

If Ike is saying he liked Prometheus better because he likes visuals over silly fun moments, fine. That makes sense. But when people are trying to act like the holes aren't really that important and unanswered questions don't matter even though the entire film was an unanswered question, then I think the backlash is deserved and going to be more involved.

The Avengers won't have a backlash; it'll just be forgotten.

it was not that fun of a movie. silly fun? John Carter. silly fun? Cabin in the Woods. briefly clever? Avengers.

you're right about it being soon forgotten, though.

Addressing the lack of a critical backlash/breakdown of Avengers:

Avengers is a dumb action movie. If you didn't like it and I don't think anybody is going to argue that there was something more that you missed and that you didn't get it. There's nothing to talk about. I think it was dumb fun, you thought it was just dumb, end of conversation.

Prometheus is a dumb action movie. If you don't like it, people (not necessarily you) argue that there was so much more to it and you didn't get it, and you need to believe in certain elements and overlook certain facts and it's your fault for focusing on the wrong things.

Therefore, discussion about Avengers end pretty quickly. Prometheus discussions go on longer.
---

Prometheus has the added saving grace for some people of it looking amazing but for me, I am not blown away by that and if the best thing you can say about a movie is that it looks amazing, I'd skip it like I wish I had skipped Prometheus.

I had fun in Avengers. I can understand why people didn't, it did drag but I didn't think Prometheus ever stopped dragging. In fact, I thought the first act was the best part; the action stuff was just uninteresting save for the ceasarian.

I just don't get the appeal of Prometheus, besides the visuals.

the falling in love with the first act and exposition of prometheus is beyond bizarre to me.

the execution of telling everyone what the trip is for i just weird -- really no one knew what they signed up for and most hadn't met prior to waking up? that's kinda never addressed. that people think the weird part is they didn't know weyland was on board skips over that whole secrecy element.

the only part of the third act that I didn't like was elizabeth's begging for answers from the alien guy. pretty much every time she went all breakdown woman was like....eh



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I think I was at least invested with the first part because there was a bit of tension between Vickers and Shaw and we were meeting the characters and I was paying attention, hoping for what would come next.

By the end, I realized that pretty much nothing I'd been watching mattered. I could give two shits about any of the characters. The lead was "heroic" because she was the least of a jackass out of everyone, the actions scenes were comical, and the movie ended with a big question that I couldn't care less about.

there's no big question at the end of the movie.

which is where you go back and try and rework how everything else sucks from

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And even if it doesn't end with a question, everything I wrote about it still sucks. Not ending with a question doesn't make the characters strong, the ending not cliched, etc.

CLICHED !!!

NO CHARACTERS!!!!

you said the third act was bad and the action was..something, I don't remember what you said.

but you were wrong about it

character wise, the characters were infinitely more developed than anything in alien. whether or not you want to get a drink with them is one thing.

I found the characters incredibly compelling.

david is much more nuanced than most are giving him credit for, weyland and his quest to live forever is actually the driving force behind the entire movie. the interaction/ odd family dynamic btw the trio of weyland/vickers/david has a lot of subtle details that I think have been missed in lieu of OH SHIT IS VICKERS AN ANDROID





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You're wrong about the ending of the film and you admit that you don't even remember what I said so you go back to the tired bullshit of "You must have missed the details." Spare me.
---

"Prometheus" had some nice touches but none of it came together as a film as a whole. People are lauding it for big questions and small touches and ignore the fact that the other 90%: the characters, their actions, their decisions, (I'd say their arcs but nobody in the film has one) are all nonsense.

What was compelling about Shaw's character? She's the hero of the film and we have a couple of factoids about her father and then we learn she can't have kids? Fascinating.

Why was she even there? Because she was a "true believer"? What a great reason to invite someone you're going to have to lie to about your motive for making the trip. David knew more than her. Was there even one point in the entire trip where her expertise came into play? (Charlie was useful once, with the "God doesn't build in straight lines".)

And while the sibling rivalry is an awesome idea, it was ultimately pointless because Vickers was a useless character, who was just their to burn up Charlie and have the hatch deployed so it would be out there for the final fight with Shaw and the Alien and the Engineer.

Put together the Vickers and Shaw characters and you have something and you can make the sibling rivalry actually matter rather than just something people say, "Oooh, but did you notice that moment?! AWESOME!"

Weyland trying to cure himself was the driving force. And it was a secret that was so huge that when Shaw realizes it (after almost being killed as a human guinea pig)... she doesn't do much of anything. She begs for him to leave, saying "We must go now!" and then we he refuses, she says, "Fine, I'm going with you." AND THEY TAKE HER! The girl who they just tried to experiment on and who ran away from them (and who they didn't try very hard to catch despite the fact that she had AN ALIEN IN HER FUCKING STOMACH), they just let her come with and then seem really surprised when she gets all uppity. Oh, and they never go, "Hey, what happened with that alien that was in your body? Should we send someone to check on it? No? OK."

The movie was one ridiculous moment after another with a few cool tidbits and subtleties mixed in. And, I'm sorry, but if you're going to laud the subtleties and make a big deal about grander questions, your film has to make sense on the basic story/character level, which this one didn't at all.

things to be wrong about.

I don't actually want to shoot down two hundred different elements you're wrong about. I don't have that kind of time.

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like the writer and director say it ended but you claim it didn't. That was the crux of your first argument and, well, you're dead wrong.

Or please argue against the fact that, besides David, all of the characters make one ridiculous decision after another?

If that's too hard, I'd like to hear an explanation how Shaw was a compelling character?

>like the writer and director say it ended but you claim it
>didn't. That was the crux of your first argument and, well,
>you're dead wrong.

you say i'm wrong, you keep not mentioning what this question is. I didn't leave the theater with any big question about the ending.

>
>Or please argue against the fact that, besides David, all of
>the characters make one ridiculous decision after another?

again, a hundred things, need you to pick one.

>
>If that's too hard, I'd like to hear an explanation how Shaw
>was a compelling character?

"compelling" - has a couple of meanings, not sure sure which one you're going for but imo, you're just using it to say you don't like her. I'll play along the sake of talking.

Evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way.
Not able to be refuted; inspiring conviction.

I assume its the first?

I find her worthy of interest, she's intelligent and able to not only decipher some cave scribblings and figure out what they mean, but obtain support for a trip across the universe to follow them. this is a rare set of skills.

she does not have a heroes journey, because she doesn't willingly sacrifice anything in the interest of someone else (the argument could be made that sending prometheus to take out the alien ship with no other way off that rock qualifies, but since she's not one of the three people actually putting their life on the line to do it, I don't think so) which imo is the main drawback of her character.

everything is either taken from her by someone else, or done to her without her say in the matter, until the final act when she escapes alien bro and smacks the button, feeding him to the most dangerous vagina in the universe. admiring her because she's able to pull off a self abortion of an alien squid baby is just a bit too easy for me to find appealing.


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>you say i'm wrong, you keep not mentioning what this question
>is. I didn't leave the theater with any big question about the
>ending.

They wanted you asking "Why did the Engineers create us and why do they now want to kill us?" You know, the question that Shaw is basically going to find out when she shoots off with David on the spaceship. It's the question that's supposed to get you to go to the next movie.


>"compelling" - has a couple of meanings, not sure sure which
>one you're going for but imo, you're just using it to say you
>don't like her. I'll play along the sake of talking.

Oh thanks. You're so kind. Seriously, get over yourself. YOU mentioned that you found the characters compelling. I found them to be run of the mill, sub-archetypal characters because none of them had an arc, let alone a journey. So I asked you to explain why they were compelling.


>Evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully
>irresistible way.
>Not able to be refuted; inspiring conviction.
>
>I assume its the first?
>
>I find her worthy of interest, she's intelligent and able to
>not only decipher some cave scribblings and figure out what
>they mean, but obtain support for a trip across the universe
>to follow them. this is a rare set of skills.

LOL. So she's compelling because she could gain funds OFF SCREEN to fund a trip... even though the reason for that trip has nothing to do with what she wants and, if anything, she's been duped into going there as a guinea pig?

If that's compelling to you, I hope that you never hate on a character ever again but that argument is beyond ridiculous. You can't be serious about that.

>everything is either taken from her by someone else, or done
>to her without her say in the matter, until the final act when
>she escapes alien bro and smacks the button, feeding him to
>the most dangerous vagina in the universe. admiring her
>because she's able to pull off a self abortion of an alien
>squid baby is just a bit too easy for me to find appealing.

So basically, you admire her, not really for anything she achieved during the movie, but because she pulled off something most horror film heroines can pull off. And basically what was her only hope because dude tackled her into the room (not like she lured him there ala Ripley in Alien) and she escaped only because she inexplicably broke free of the grip of the alien that took down the much stronger Engineer.

I mean, seriously, I hope you never argue that a character isn't compelling ever again in your life because this rationale is basically opening the door for most any person to be seen as compelling.

>>you say i'm wrong, you keep not mentioning what this
>question
>>is. I didn't leave the theater with any big question about
>the
>>ending.
>
>They wanted you asking "Why did the Engineers create us and
>why do they now want to kill us?" You know, the question that
>Shaw is basically going to find out when she shoots off with
>David on the spaceship. It's the question that's supposed to
>get you to go to the next movie.

I'm not asking that at all

>
>
>>"compelling" - has a couple of meanings, not sure sure which
>>one you're going for but imo, you're just using it to say
>you
>>don't like her. I'll play along the sake of talking.
>
>Oh thanks. You're so kind. Seriously, get over yourself. YOU
>mentioned that you found the characters compelling. I found
>them to be run of the mill, sub-archetypal characters because
>none of them had an arc, let alone a journey. So I asked you
>to explain why they were compelling.

the problem is the things you're saying aren't true. worse, they are true, about a movie called alien. one of the greatest movies of all time. which just shows why your statement that this is somehow a reason to hate the movie doesn't make sense.

her character has a definite arc that goes from hopeful dreamer to pissed off protector of earth to fuck it I'm taking my beef to their doorstep.

as far as archetypes, again, not true. all of the characters are more complex than any simple description as their situations and reactions to them show throughout the flick. you've decided you don't like them. cool.

>
>
>>Evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully
>>irresistible way.
>>Not able to be refuted; inspiring conviction.
>>
>>I assume its the first?
>>
>>I find her worthy of interest, she's intelligent and able to
>>not only decipher some cave scribblings and figure out what
>>they mean, but obtain support for a trip across the universe
>>to follow them. this is a rare set of skills.
>
>LOL. So she's compelling because she could gain funds OFF
>SCREEN to fund a trip... even though the reason for that trip
>has nothing to do with what she wants and, if anything, she's
>been duped into going there as a guinea pig?
>
>If that's compelling to you, I hope that you never hate on a
>character ever again but that argument is beyond ridiculous.
>You can't be serious about that

>
>>everything is either taken from her by someone else, or done
>>to her without her say in the matter, until the final act
>when
>>she escapes alien bro and smacks the button, feeding him to
>>the most dangerous vagina in the universe. admiring her
>>because she's able to pull off a self abortion of an alien
>>squid baby is just a bit too easy for me to find appealing.
>
>So basically, you admire her, not really for anything she
>achieved during the movie, but because she pulled off
>something most horror film heroines can pull off. And
>basically what was her only hope because dude tackled her into
>the room (not like she lured him there ala Ripley in Alien)
>and she escaped only because she inexplicably broke free of
>the grip of the alien that took down the much stronger
>Engineer.

so to recap - you don't like her. gotcha.

>
>I mean, seriously, I hope you never argue that a character
>isn't compelling ever again in your life because this
>rationale is basically opening the door for most any person to
>be seen as compelling.


you're the one fighting over it. j

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Alien is a horror movie. You can get away with thinner characters when most of the film is people running away from an alien. That wasn't Prometheus. I'm not even sure what Prometheus was because it wasn't good at being any genre.


>her character has a definite arc that goes from hopeful
>dreamer to pissed off protector of earth to fuck it I'm taking
>my beef to their doorstep.

The movie starts and she thinks the aliens want her to come and she wants them to answer the question of where we came from. The movie ends and she knows they don't want her to come but she wants them to answer where we came from and why they want to kill us now.

That's not an arc. She just said fuck it for a different reason. An arc would be if Vickers was the hero, didn't believe in what was happening, and then not only realized the Engineers existed but took on the role as protector of the Earth.


>as far as archetypes, again, not true. all of the characters
>are more complex than any simple description as their
>situations and reactions to them show throughout the flick.
>you've decided you don't like them. cool.

Explain how any of the characters, besides David, are complex.

Do you really think two facts about her dad and not being able to have kids makes Shaw complex?

How is Charlie complex?

What exactly complex about Vickers? She has what would seem to be a complex situation with her family but she pretty much doesn't like them and wants them to die and then she pretty much doesn't like them and wants them to die, and ends with not really liking them and wanting to leave them to die.

Actually nevermind because I know you're answer. It'll be....

>so to recap - you don't like her. gotcha.

I'm giving legit explanations and you can't come up with anything besides "You're wrong" or "You don't like them." Awesome.

Enjoy being compelled by offscreen fundraising scenes and arcs that end with the person feeling the same but having a different mood.

>Alien is a horror movie. You can get away with thinner
>characters when most of the film is people running away from
>an alien. That wasn't Prometheus. I'm not even sure what
>Prometheus was because it wasn't good at being any genre.
>
>
>>her character has a definite arc that goes from hopeful
>>dreamer to pissed off protector of earth to fuck it I'm
>taking
>>my beef to their doorstep.
>
>The movie starts and she thinks the aliens want her to come
>and she wants them to answer the question of where we came
>from. The movie ends and she knows they don't want her to come
>but she wants them to answer where we came from and why they
>want to kill us now.
>
>That's not an arc. She just said fuck it for a different
>reason. An arc would be if Vickers was the hero, didn't
>believe in what was happening, and then not only realized the
>Engineers existed but took on the role as protector of the
>Earth.

so if she doesn't change her outlook on life significantly, there's no arc? she is a scientist. focused on discovery. from beginning to the end of the movie. she's still curious, even after everything that's happened. I dig it.

>
>
>>as far as archetypes, again, not true. all of the characters
>>are more complex than any simple description as their
>>situations and reactions to them show throughout the flick.
>>you've decided you don't like them. cool.
>
>Explain how any of the characters, besides David, are complex.
>
cutting down the numbers

>
>Do you really think two facts about her dad and not being able
>to have kids makes Shaw complex?

what's the exact number of facts necessary to have a complex character? I think the elements that make up her character beyond just being a somewhat naive dreamer / scientist -- being tough, a leader, intelligent enough to fight her way out of being put in stasis -- make her complex.

works for me.

>
>How is Charlie complex?
easy, look at how he's able to emotionally connect with elizabeth, is even humble/personable making his presentation, and yet is entirely disconnected with david, much more than anyone else in the movie.

>
>What exactly complex about Vickers? She has what would seem to
>be a complex situation with her family but she pretty much
>doesn't like them and wants them to die and then she pretty
>much doesn't like them and wants them to die, and ends with
>not really liking them and wanting to leave them to die.

does she want them to die? I think there's a lot more to it than that. I think she either wants to be the hero for her father or see him die so she can replace him. but it's not nearly so straight a line. David calls her mom and her father is entirely repulsed by her. that dynamic is interesting as hell to me.

>
>Actually nevermind because I know you're answer. It'll be....
>
>>so to recap - you don't like her. gotcha.
>
>I'm giving legit explanations and you can't come up with
>anything besides "You're wrong" or "You don't like them."
>Awesome.
>
>Enjoy being compelled by offscreen fundraising scenes and arcs
>that end with the person feeling the same but having a
>different mood.

o...k..?

>


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>so if she doesn't change her outlook on life significantly,
>there's no arc? she is a scientist. focused on discovery. from
>beginning to the end of the movie. she's still curious, even
>after everything that's happened. I dig it.

She's got the same focus/curiosity at the end as in the beginning. Obviously it's not an arc.


>what's the exact number of facts necessary to have a complex
>character? I think the elements that make up her character
>beyond just being a somewhat naive dreamer / scientist --
>being tough, a leader, intelligent enough to fight her way out
>of being put in stasis -- make her complex.

It's not about facts. It's about internal struggle, some conflict. The only thing you listed that does make her remotely complex is the naive dreamer/scientist thing. I have no idea how her being tough makes her complex.

>easy, look at how he's able to emotionally connect with
>elizabeth, is even humble/personable making his presentation,
>and yet is entirely disconnected with david, much more than
>anyone else in the movie.

How the hell is that complex?

For someone who hates on movies so much, your definitions of complex and compelling are beyond simple so I'm astounded that you don't give more films leeway.

>>so if she doesn't change her outlook on life significantly,
>>there's no arc? she is a scientist. focused on discovery.
>from
>>beginning to the end of the movie. she's still curious, even
>>after everything that's happened. I dig it.
>
>She's got the same focus/curiosity at the end as in the
>beginning. Obviously it's not an arc.

you haven't proven why she needs to change as a person. she's not a heroin addict, she's a scientist. and even if she were, and she were still hooked on smack at the end of the movie -- that doesn't take away from what happened.

>
>
>>what's the exact number of facts necessary to have a complex
>>character? I think the elements that make up her character
>>beyond just being a somewhat naive dreamer / scientist --
>>being tough, a leader, intelligent enough to fight her way
>out
>>of being put in stasis -- make her complex.
>
>It's not about facts. It's about internal struggle, some
>conflict. The only thing you listed that does make her
>remotely complex is the naive dreamer/scientist thing. I have
>no idea how her being tough makes her complex.

what? internal struggle? she has a fucking squid baby struggling around internally.

she does struggle, learning that her engineers aren't at all who she thought she would find and coming to grips with that while doing what is required to save earth. kind of a big deal. I have no idea how her resilience doesn't add to her complexity.

>
>>easy, look at how he's able to emotionally connect with
>>elizabeth, is even humble/personable making his
>presentation,
>>and yet is entirely disconnected with david, much more than
>>anyone else in the movie.
>
>How the hell is that complex?
>
>For someone who hates on movies so much, your definitions of
>complex and compelling are beyond simple so I'm astounded that
>you don't give more films leeway.


I think whether or not something works is a very simple question.

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>you haven't proven why she needs to change as a person. she's
>not a heroin addict, she's a scientist. and even if she were,
>and she were still hooked on smack at the end of the movie --
>that doesn't take away from what happened.

I don't know what else I can say besides it's basic storytelling. You either have a person who changes the the world or is changed by the world and Shaw is basically neither. The only change is the question she's asking in the end. She's still the same person with pretty much the same goal (finding out who created us and why) and the same gumption to go after what she wants. She's a passive hero; everything happens to her. Everything she does is a reaction. The one time she acts out is when she yells her questions to the Engineer and that basically goes nowhere.

If you don't think people need arcs or journeys or to be active in their stories, fine. You just have a completely different view of storytelling.


>she does struggle, learning that her engineers aren't at all
>who she thought she would find and coming to grips with that
>while doing what is required to save earth. kind of a big
>deal. I have no idea how her resilience doesn't add to her
>complexity.

If that's her internal struggle, then it means her entire internal struggle takes place in the third act. Again, that's lousy storytelling. If you think the hero can just lag about for 2/3's of the movie, cool.

Resilience is a basic character trait. If someone described a person as complex, you'd think, "Oh, they're resilient?" No. Complexity means there's some sort of dichotomy. Something you wouldn't expect. The resilience would add to her complexity if there was something opposing it within her but there isn't.
You could say she's a smart, resilient woman and that pretty much covers her entire character. That's not too complex.


>I think whether or not something works is a very simple
>question.

Whether it "works" is a subjective question. I'm not arguing that the movie shouldn't have worked for you or for anyone. I'm stating that the film has flaws. Obvious flaws. Unmistakable flaws. Things that when you look at them objectively don't really make much sense.

That doesn't mean the film can't work for you. It doesn't mean that you can't like the characters.

I said the beginning of the film worked for me. You pointed out the flaws and said I was wrong. To me, this is ridiculous. Yes, there were flaws in the beginning, it still worked for me. What "worked" is subjective and I'm not about to start arguing that all of the flaws weren't really flaws just because I thought the beginning was OK.

But, at this point, it seems like your belief in pretty much everything from what is subjective vs. objective to what is basic storytelling is different from mine so there's really no need to continue.

"I'm going to make shit up" right at the beginning

OMG THE STRUGGLE TAKES PLACE ENTIRELY IN THE THIRD ACT

ok. so we're ignoring the conflict in the first act when she finds out that her mission is not the mission.

pretty sure her lover getting infected, attempting to save him and then watching as he gets flamethrower'd up is a conflict in the middle of the movie.

shit like that.

I shouldn't have to point this out.

it's right there.

one second you're all "the hero lags around for 2/3 of the movie" (which, if true, which it isn't, still doesn't matter, you can tell a story in any damn order you want) then later, it's "I thought the beginning of the movie was ok". how could it possible have been ok when there was no complexity to the characters being introduced, no struggle, and the hero was lagging around? a: because you're applying the "rules" as you want to. you refuse to acknowledge this.

if you want to ignore stuff that's in the movie to highlight your narrative of how bad it is go right ahead, but it's simply not an interesting angle.

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Since you don't get anything I've said and don't seem interested in trying to.

>ok. so we're ignoring the conflict in the first act when she
>finds out that her mission is not the mission.

When in the first act does Shaw learn that?

I didn't think she really learned that until she got poisoned and learned that Weyland was alive. Moments earlier, she learned that she was wrong about the invitation but that's not an internal struggle nor is there any conflict - she goes from thinking she's right to thinking she's right about something else. There's literally no questioning from her. "Oh shit, we shouldn't have come here" isn't a struggle.
And if you think that that moment of change is the first act, then that film is 70% first act, which is bad storytelling.


>pretty sure her lover getting infected, attempting to save him
>and then watching as he gets flamethrower'd up is a conflict
>in the middle of the movie.

Please name the internal conflict in that scene? Does she ever think, you know I probably shouldn't bring my contaminated boyfriend onto the ship and risk everyone's life? She never questions anything.

In a good story, Shaw would have had to weigh the mission vs. the man? Vickers came closest to having a struggle - winning over the crew or sticking to protocol - but it didn't really happen.

The only conflict is between Vickers and Shaw and that is an entirely pointless conflict throughout the movie that goes nowhere.


>if you want to ignore stuff that's in the movie to highlight
>your narrative of how bad it is go right ahead, but it's
>simply not an interesting angle.

Even Ike, I think it was, admitted that Shaw was a passive hero. If you can't bring yourself to admit these problems, fine, but please stop trying to disparage me and act like what I'm saying has no merit.
If you can overlook those problems, fine but don't act like they don't exist.

since we're going to get hyperbolic and reductive. Frank Longo's Loki ragdoll avatar is my favorite version of the Avengers. maybe Prometheus was nothing more than eye candy, but at least it was eye candy.

>since we're going to get hyperbolic and reductive. Frank
>Longo's Loki ragdoll avatar is my favorite version of the
>Avengers. maybe Prometheus was nothing more than eye candy,
>but at least it was eye candy.

If you're saying, it's nothing more than eye candy. Fine. As Will noted, that's subjective. Just as long as you're admitting the film is nothing but eye candy, I agree.

that's genuine.

>If you're saying, it's nothing more than eye candy. Fine. As
>Will noted, that's subjective. Just as long as you're
>admitting the film is nothing but eye candy, I agree.

i'm not saying Prometheus is nothing but eye candy, but we should all agree that the visual design deserves celebration.

i will say Prometheus is a shallow movie that asks big questions. i don't see that as a flaw, though. dumb niggas asking questions is okay. dumb niggas giving dumb answers is folly.

my main beef with Prometheus are the plot cliches that cheapen the last act and the largely expendable cast. largely. David was a compelling agent of chaos and one of my favorite characters in film this year.

That's where we disagree. Visuals are nice and all but if a movie's story sucks and the characters are barely there, then I have zero interest in it.

Dumb people can ask big question but when they do dumb shit and get everyone killed, I'm not sure why I should be excited about them ending the movie with another big question and heading off to a place filled with the beings that basically woke up and immediately tried to kill them all.
Prometheus 2 should last like ten minutes. Shaw lands, Engineers kill her and then remember they haven't heard from that weapons depot that was supposed to wipe out Earth, send someone to finish the job.

If a movie tonally feels more lighthearted and does less philosophizing, logic gaps feel less intrusive.

there's nothing in avengers i'd want to see twice that i couldn't catch on a quick youtube clip.

My brothers and I all went back to the crib and made a day of watching Alien, Aliens, and Blade Runner to sort of fill in gaps/connect the dots. That to me is the sign of a good film. People are so damn lazy. They want everything served up on a platter. I kinda enjoyed going back through source material and doing my own independent research. Watching 30 year old movies and stringing together my own theories/explanations.

not necessarily to fill in gaps or connect dots, but just to see how the movies compare to each other.

So far:
1. Alien
2. Prometheus
3. Aliens

I doubt A3 or Resurrection are going to shake things up, but they're next.

is how it makes Aliens largely pointless.

Alien is the most focused film of the series by far. Aliens tried to one up Alien by literally adding more aliens and more explosions and more soldiers. Not even Truffaut could convince me Aliens is better than Prometheus.

Ripley, who apparently had little to no combat training, exterminates a xenomorph hive with a flame thrower taped to a grenade launcher at the end of Aliens, but Prometheus is dumb because a biologist gets a little too Steve Irwin with the first alien lifeform he's ever seen and Vickers forgets to run laterally before being crushed by a giant falling spaceship?

I just scoffed up some blood, yo.

he's perfected the simplistic relationship that audiences cling on to. Newt is the surrogate daughter for Ripley (who lost her own during hyper sleep). Hicks is the love interest. Vasquez and Gorman share tension and redemption. it's all good stuff, but I don't think the characters are really much deeper than the cast in Alien -- who were defined well, albeit more subtly.

and you're right about Aliens more or less trying to coke up the predecessor's great moments. Paul Reiser is fantastic as the dirty company man; Ian Holm is better as the betraying android. the ending is largely the same. and there was a similar cocoon scene cut from the original Alien.

every time I watch Alien it's been harder and harder to rewatch the sequel. even the special effects are better in the first one! I can't dismiss Aliens though, because it *is* a great blockbuster and there's so much in there that is part of the canon now (the Queen, the Marines, etc.).

Was I disappointed? Yeah, somewhat, no doubt, because I felt like those first 45 minutes built it up to be a deeper, more intelligent classic, but then it reverted to cliches and silliness. But I still enjoyed the visual aspects a great deal, and I'm still compelled to see it again (seeing the 3D tomorrow afternoon, actually).

Aliens is cliches and silliness pretty much from jump street. But it never builds me up to expect anything different. Instead, it says from jump street, "I'm gonna give you a bunch of dumb jarheads, some good explosions and burning of shit, and some tight alien action non-stop for 90 minutes at the end." Neither Alien nor Aliens attempts anything as outwardly philosophically ambitious as even just the pre-title sequence in Prometheus-- they're pretty straight-forward genre exercises of "something creepy in the bushes BOO oh shit I'm fucked," one more horror, the other more action. They both have dumb white people and cliches, I don't deny it. They just bother me less in the other two due to my perception of ambition of scope. I'd say Prometheus is more ambitious than Alien or Aliens by a mile.

Really, it's just fun to talk about the dumb shit in the movie though, on some basic horror movie shit. "Don't touch that, dumbass!" "Run to the side, dumbass!" "Ask for help getting back somewhere between leaving and 5 hours later when everyone's long since gone, dumbass!" Shit like that. I may enjoy the film more upon second viewing since I'll expect less (sounds like a backhanded compliment, but sometimes high expectations, especially ones established at a film's beginning, can really interfere with one's enjoyment).

but Aliens succeeded at dumbing down the Alien series.

i'm not going to congratulate Aliens for being less ambitious especially when the movie was truly less enjoyable than Prometheus.

>but Aliens succeeded at dumbing down the Alien series.
>
>i'm not going to congratulate Aliens for being less ambitious
>especially when the movie was truly less enjoyable than
>Prometheus.

I love the action of Aliens. Also gorgeously filmed, immaculately paced. Silly at times, cliched characters in others, but it gives me everything it sets me up for.

When I first saw Aliens, I left jazzed. When I first saw Prometheus, I left disappointed that the third act didn't live up to the first two. Just difference of opinion.

I'm glad it's a film you're passionate about though... I've wanted more of you in PTP, since you have smarter things to say than most folks.

as everybody else. i groaned in the third act too.

it just didn't ruin the flick for me.

and i don't hate Aliens. Cameron did dumb it up, but Cameron does dumb well.

>as everybody else. i groaned in the third act too.
>
>it just didn't ruin the flick for me.
>
>and i don't hate Aliens. Cameron did dumb it up, but Cameron
>does dumb well.

I'm looking forward to seeing it in 3D today.

And yeah, I didn't think you were hating on Aliens. Pretty hard to fully hate on it. Big mindless awesomeness with one of the best heroes ever and one of the best one-liners in film history (two of them, if you count "game over man!").

>>as everybody else. i groaned in the third act too.
>>
>>it just didn't ruin the flick for me.
>>
>>and i don't hate Aliens. Cameron did dumb it up, but Cameron
>>does dumb well.
>
>I'm looking forward to seeing it in 3D today.
>
>And yeah, I didn't think you were hating on Aliens. Pretty
>hard to fully hate on it. Big mindless awesomeness with one of
>the best heroes ever and one of the best one-liners in film
>history (two of them, if you count "game over man!").

You consider 'game over man' worthy? Cornbread is the second best as Im assuming you mean the top is Get away form her..."

I believe Alien I was drugs and Alien II was vietnam.

not as deep as prometheus, but neither were the expendables

Questioning where we came from ain't deep at all. In fact, it's a very basic question that's practically hard wired into us.

Upon discovering we were simply made by a race of giant, black eyed albino Chippendales, it's really not all that deep to wonder "why" now that we know "who"; it's a very simple question that's just natural and logical to ask.

Wondering *where* THEY came from? Par for the course.

The whole subplot of the implied hidden agenda from the company (I forget the name of the old man) was a massive failure, complete with a comically bad "reveal" we all figured out quite awhile beforehand. The whole "OMG the old man is there!!" moment was zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz status.Oh, they did this so he could live forever!?!? wow! whoa! MEH.

David was dope, and he offered the SOLE questing of true profundity when he asked Charlie how he would feel if his creator said the same to him after another "your just a robot" comment (I honestly forget exactly what he said to David) which was especially effective in light of the fact that David is/was a VASTLY intellectual superior.

After that? LOL. Come on. There was absolutely nothing deep or high minded or philosophically challenging about this movie, and it's insulting that this description is being given about it.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was visually stunning (the Prometheus itself wasstunning) and mostly well paced. David and the Space Jockeys were easily the stars of the show and Theron was great at being a bloodless cunt toward everything. Rapace had some great moments, especially from the abortion scene onward.

I can't say the dialogue was especially well written (Save for David) and the redhead Pikey and the Darwinian nerd were fucking useless.

Again though.... I enjoyed the movie as a whole and the thin nature of the plot didn't really bother me too much. I know others were especially bothered by these weaknesses due to the supposedly "high minded" nature of the ideas involved, but since I realize that these were just basic questions every last one of us ponders at some point, seeing them asked in a movie doesn't make them all that deep to me.

My greatest dissapointment about it is watching everyone talking about how deep the concepts supposedly are, because that tells me people have to be pretty damn shallow and simple when these ideas are looked upon as "high minded" or deep.

>My greatest dissapointment about it is watching everyone
>talking about how deep the concepts supposedly are, because
>that tells me people have to be pretty damn shallow and simple
>when these ideas are looked upon as "high minded" or deep.

I agree with you about the movie itself, but with respect to this piece, I think people are talking about it being "high minded" mainly in the context of typical summer blockbusters (or just big-budget mainstream films in general).

Obviously the existential questions here are ones that people have been pondering for thousands of years, but it's still not exactly common to see $150M movies playing in multiplexes and IMAX 3D theaters to dedicate large chunks of screen time to exploring these questions, even in a superficial way.

When the movie ended, I was wondering what all the hype about the big questions talk was about but then I thought about Snow White and the Huntsman and Avengers and realized that pretty much any philosophical question is "big" in terms of summer movies.

Beyond that, I thought his post was great. Mentioning what he liked, admitting the flaws, not trying to make this film bigger than what it was. I couldn't disagree more with his response to the film but agree almost completely with his take on the film.

>I thought about Snow
>White and the Huntsman and Avengers and realized that pretty
>much any philosophical question is "big" in terms of summer
>movies.

I think I'm in the minority of people who went into the movie with expectations that were similar to what I had with The Avengers and Snow White. I expected the typical summer blockbuster elements on all fronts, up to and including a certain level of intellectual vapidity.

I went in expecting superb visuals, Fassbender to make me thoroghly engaged with his character from start to finish, and a plot with about an inch of actual depth.

The best thing I can compare it to was Hangover 2. I went in expecting them to recreate The Hangover step by step, and I wasn't shocked when that's what I got. I think those expectations going in went a long way toward being able to enjoy it far more than most people who wanted/expected something different. So with this one, I got what I expected pretty much to the hilt. Having read all the pre-release buzz on the grandiose themes, I pretty much concluded that it wasn't REALLY gonna take it there all the way, because movies like this almost never deliver. They get the rough concepts in place and don't really dig deep into them.

So for me, those tempered expectations going in+Fassbender+solid performances by Rapace, Theron and an enjoyable Idris+the Engineers and truly breathtaking visuals overall=an enjoyable night at the movies.

As an aside, Snow White should have been released in December. wouldn't have changed the movie at all but the overall effect just feels more like a holiday movie, and in that context I would have probably enjoyed it more. Stewart looks like the kinda chick that isn't a bad catch if you're Gilbert Grape, but she's by NO MEANS anything fucking close to the end-all beauty one would expect for the character, especially considering Theron played the queen, who actually presents the sort of ceonceptual beauty most of us associate with a role like that.

The bad reviews actually lowered my expectations but not nearly enough.

> I went in expecting superb visuals, Fassbender to make me
>thoroghly engaged with his character from start to finish, and
>a plot with about an inch of actual depth.

If I had heard this before seeing it, I wouldn't have bothered going because I'd have known that it wasn't for me.
I, probably foolishly, hoped that even if the story wasn't strong (as I knew going in), there'd be more characters or action or thrills that could have held me over but the story/character actions were just so dumb that nothing but David and the surgery scene (more for its visuals than actual tension) was interesting.

It's really just a matter of what people look for in a movie and what they can forgive. Prometheus was just chock full of annoyances for me and didn't have nearly enough of what I look for to make up for that.

Actually, just mainstream movies in general. Serialized T.V shows like Oz , Sopranos, Lost, etc have the vast majority of mainstream movies by the balls in terms of layered characters with interesting stories and I've been spoiled by those. In the cases of Oz/Lost, major flaws to the stories and settings themselves were covered by exceptional characters. These summer blockbusters, however, tend to cover those flaws with quality action and visuals. Me personally, I love to watch great action sequences and ambitious visuals as well as great character development. I suppose I don't always need a movie to nail it on all fronts to enjoy the movie. More to the point, I can still appreciate a deeply flawed movie by appreciating it for what it is in terms of what it does well. Though, that approach doesn't work for everyone, obviously. I doubt I would like much of anything if I couldn't form that separation with most things, because I'm a nitpicky son of a bitch.

I realized years ago that there will always be a significant tradeoff of sorts with most blockbuster-type movies. For me it's not an either-or proposition, because I can stilll enjoy a movie based on the things it does well, and just say "ah well, it is what it is" at the things that don't deliver. Of course, there's a limit to shit I can overlook. Prometheus to me is a visually beautiful surface-level popcorn flick that really only fails because it presented itself as something greater while not really putting forth the effort to get there. Had they upped the action ante or something, like you said, it would have been a better film.

I still go see a lot of these blockbusters (not all of them, but most) with low expectations on the sophistication front, and count on foreign or indie fare to pick up the slack. Also I've stopped seeking out trailers and reading any reviews before seeing a flick, that way I've got a general sense of what the movie's about, but am short on the details. Had no idea that Fassbender was gonna be an android or anything like that for example.

If every summer movie was as simple as The Raid: Redemption, I could live with it. I was actually surprised that film had any story at all.

The problem is when the stories/characters are incompetently told like Prometheus, Snow White, and Avengers. Sometimes I can look past it (like I did with Avengers) but more often than not, I feel like the poor storytelling is too much to overlook. I'm holding out that someone will start getting it right but it's looking like I should start taking your approach.

wtf were you digging in about before?

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The film ended with a question. It's not a high-minded, deeply philosophical question that early reviews were making it seem to be but it was a question. There are clues to the answer to that question within the movie (I think Scott explained the answer in his interview but others like Ike disagree) but there's little doubt that the film ends with Shaw thinking, "I want to know why the aliens are trying to kill us and I'm going to find out why." And the audience is supposed to want to see the answer she gets.

You took a stance that fans of the film, people who didn't like the film, the writer, and the director all disagree with yet somehow still think you're right.

when she asks that question 20 minutes before the end of the movie.

everything I saw fed into my acceptance that the people she wants to ask -- don't care.

enough of an answer for me.

if they make prometheus 2 and its six hours of conversations with buff powders maybe I'll reconsider, but I'm good.

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After I saw Inception, I was very much of the same mind as you after seeing Prometheus: 'What was everyone talking about? That wasn't deep!'

But *FOR A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE*, Prometheus was kind of deep.

Implying that the human race came from aliens, and that these aliens invented the 'perfect killing machine' to later wipe out the human race, but then either chose not to or were stopped. Moreover, it claimed that the alien race was smart enough to know how to effect it's own chemical makeup to die and then become one with the environment to in turn create specific new lifeforms...

Okay yeah that's not worthy of Kant, but I mean, it's a little deeper than Spiderman 3.

If you go to it expecting it to live up to Tarkovsky movies, yeah you'll be disappointed. But if you just go in like, I'm gonna see a big sci-fi movie, you might be surprised that it actually tries to say stuff. I thought, at least.

http://thecuriousbrain.com/?p=31897

They should have passed it out after the credits rolled.

you'll recall -- the spaceship STILL fell on elizabeth.

it's hard to see from the perspective, but I think there's a reasonable amount of latitude to see why running straight away from the spaceship instead of curving and hoping you made it past the width/height of the ship before it caught up to you was appealing.

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and pull it out when people start celebrating Prometheus all late like they did Blade Runner.

i want to be a petty 50 year old.

Also, the visuals, while great, are based on an older film and not as cutting edge and original as Blade Runner's were. Not seeing this film have NEARLY the impact.

nor did i say it was as cutting edge.

Gotcha

would share only one thing in common: being celebrated late.

smug it up though, smart guy.

Not sure why this is so hard to follow.

The Director's Cut improved the storytelling and people recognized the impact and how it was cutting edge.

If Prometheus isn't helped by some miraculous Director's cut, and it doesn't have the impact or cutting edge aspect...

critical reception to Prometheus will improve over time.

especially when compared to other mainstream sci-fi flicks of the time, as film historians are wont to do.

>Not sure why this is so hard to follow.

It isn't, but you're following something he isn't.

>The Director's Cut improved the storytelling and people
>recognized the impact and how it was cutting edge.
>If Prometheus isn't helped by some miraculous Director's cut,
>and it doesn't have the impact or cutting edge aspect...

It doesn't need to do the exact same things the exact same way to getthe 20 year (or whatever) celebration. You're implying that if it doesn't offer the same thing BR did, then it won't get a johnny come lately welcome, but that's flawed logic. They do not need to do the same thing or impact the same way to both be celebrated. I don't see why you're taking the path of the over-insistent dickhead to make such an invalid point because you're clearly a smart guy.

Who knows, it could inspire some people to go out and do other shit, and if 15 years from now someone drops a dope ass sci fi flick that digs deep into some shit, and in an interview cites Prometheus as the the reason he decided to do said piece, what will you say then?

Sure, we're conjecturing how this will be received 20 years from now, and that's fine. But this insistence you have that since it's not the same thing BR was, that it won't/can't reach a point of retroactive praise is absurd.

ESPECIALLY, if people are conceding that it's not cutting edge and won't have much impact.

What about this film do you expect to blossom over the years? Why will people rethink their stance?

I'm an insistent dickhead in this case because, to say this film will be loved in 20 years is to say that people who don't like it have invalid criticisms that won't stand the test of time. Or that we're focusing on the wrong things.

Blade Runner's praise changed because the film literally changed. Fight Club changed because the thinking became more mainstream and people got past the ending that ticked them off and focused on the meat of the film. Dazed and Confused changed because more people finally saw the movie.

I admittedly took the wrong approach on this one with the Blade Runner angle but the question remains, Why will this film gain appreciation in the future? Right now, the answer seems to be, "Because that happens with sci-fi films sometimes" which, to me, isn't an answer.

To me, in 20 years, the visuals won't be as interesting and all that will remain are the slight, inconsistent characters and the weak storytelling.

I think the bad will outweight the good overall in the long run but I've been surprised at the lukewarm reception to David.

People say they don't understand him. David Edelstein at Vulture (who wrote an overall horrible review that I think everyone here would take issue with) called him hokey. I thought he was one of the better characters I've seen this year. I could see people making an argument that he's the best.

It'll be in contention for all technical awards, and folks think Fassbender was robbed last year. Could happen, especially if this thing keeps making money this weekend.

>It'll be in contention for all technical awards, and folks
>think Fassbender was robbed last year. Could happen,
>especially if this thing keeps making money this weekend.


unless the field is REAL WEAK this year for the oscar race, I just don't see how that push would work since Fassy is clearly lead opposite Rapace and putting him in supporting would make no sense considering he's pretty much in the movie was much as she was, i.e. lead.

And, his role was great, but oscar worthy? once again, it's going to depend on who else is potentially in the running for spots this year and i'm just not sure the general oscar voting public will even realize or even catch just how brilliant he was in the movie.

i think people will remember him and his role in the movie, but something tells me he may potentially not get a slot here.

i'm expecting him to get a slot for TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE (Best Supporting) though and THE COUNSELOR (Best Actor)....because I keep hearing *both* movies may be done in time for qualifying runs in December 2012/January 2013...or that's the plan...

then again, anything can happen...I mean, Open Road is intending to put THE GREY back out in theatres this fall to try and get Liam Neeson a Best Actor nom...

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

The ship getting held up and not breaking thus sparing Elizabeth was the groanworthy part for me.

that the ship didn't crush her, but i don't begrudge the story some deus ex machina on that one


http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

the dumb decisions that 'scientists' kept on making, that's the part that bothered me about the whole movie.

one
k. orr

damn this movie was pissing me off. i wrote this above in a post, but i was just pissed off at the fact that they mention right in the beginning that they spent a trillion dollars to get to that planet and for that money that was the best team they could put together? are you serious? these "professionals" and "scientists" were making some of the most boneheaded decisions ever.

>the dumb decisions that 'scientists' kept on making, that's
>the part that bothered me about the whole movie.
>
>one
>k. orr

.... i think it's true that the crew made many bad descisions, but it sounded like Weyland spent more money on gettin there with people who could find what he secretly wanted rather than really tryin to pick a crew to do what they're supposedly there to do.....but all of this is unchartered territory, so i understood every bad decision, and that's kind of another point that was going on throughout the movie "smart people do dumb shit/make mistakes too"...creating all those experiments was a mistake, creating humans may have been a mistake to the engineers, the crew makes many mistakes during the whole movie, the engineer pilot made a big mistake underestimating the humans (which goes back to why they probably wanted humans dead)...without people making bad decisions/making mistakes, these kinds of movies (i'm talking about the whole franchise and beyond) don't work

...but i get how that can piss someone else off, but in the heat of the moment, shit can happen...

Looks absolutely beautiful. And the BEST thing about the movie is the small details in designing the future technology/society. I was more interested in the futuristic pool game than I was the script. The little details were great. How the doors opened....the costumes....the tools they used in exploring....etc.

But yah...the plot was convoluted. There WERE some interesting lines here and there in the dialogue but I failed to connect them to any cohesive theme or narrative. Another random problem that bugged me was the non-chalance of the characters in the face of their mission. Most apparent with the captain....Oh, we're discovering a new lifeform that might explain the genealogy of humanity? I just wanna get laid. Didn't make much sense that only two characters had a sense of 'awe' or excitement about what they'd find. Most of the characters had a 'been there done that' attitude when it seems like they should've been alot more interested in what was happening.

most of the characters didn't think they were gonna find anything important, and when they DID, felt like they might be poking a hornets nest, which they WERE....the captain wanted to get laid cause he was tryin to bang CT, since he wasn't really gonna leave the ship and it's fuckin CT!! fuck all the bs, if YOU'VE been on a ship for years in stasis and wanna get some and Theron is around and willing, you gonna say NO??

There was a general blase attitude amongst the characters that just doesn't add up to me. Sure, the initial cynicism makes sense but after they started seeing the footage and seeing strange images...you'd think they'd take it more seriously.

Gotta remember...in the Prometheus/Aliens 'world'....there was no intelligent lifeform other than humans. The obvious exception in Alien 1, 2, 3 would be the alien itself. But I can't think of any allusion to any living thing that was close to humanity in terms of technology, civilization, etc. They should have been in awe.

Agreed that it wouldnt stop someone from wanting to get laid. But there were images of new intelligent lifeforms, new technologies. You'd think they'd be glued to the screens....if out of fear or a sense of awe and most realistically both.

i get why they acted why they did, but you're not feeling that reason...cool

There would be some "blue collar" types on a mission like that, responsible for running the ship and maintenance. The Captain played out well for me, since mapping to a current reference like a ship captain would likely suggest the type of character that wouldn't be all that interested in the large-view science going on around him.

For the rest, it would probably take awhile for the magnitude of the situation to sink in. Remember that we, as the audience are getting the complete narrative while the characters are seeing their individual POVs.

YOU ARE THE NIGGA OF THE YEAR FOR GETTING ALL THEM BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKERS ON STAGE!!!-Supablak regarding 2uestlove Bonnarro D setup

YOU ARE THE NIGGA OF THE YEAR FOR GETTING ALL THEM BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKERS ON STAGE!!!-Supablak regarding 2uestlove Bonnarro D setup

I was a tad confused why David poisoned him but it makes sense now.

I really really liked this movie though. It's mysterious and not everything is answered but we will probably know soon enough with some sequels.

And CHARLIZE CAN STILL GET IT. Whew. I'd lick that ass after she crushed a grande combo at Taco Bell I GIVETH NOTAFUCK.

..with Prometheus (i.e., lackluster script, thin plot, unsatisfying ending, etc.), I have some questions..

Why did they cast Guy Pearce as old dude? Why not just cast some oldish actor? He was barely recognizable, didn't have a lot of lines, and never underwent any kind of physical transformation throughout the movie. Were they just trying to get another "name" on the cast? Trying to flex their visual effects and makeup skills more than was necessary?

The only reason I thought he was in there as old man was because they would either show him as a younger man or because he would undergo a physical transformation/renewal; however, that didn't happen.

and it was going to be the younger Weyland in that scene.

Also, so they could do stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8

I think the bigger issue was just how bad the makeup was. It was like Biff in Back to the Future 2 bad.

>and it was going to be the younger Weyland in that scene.
>
>Also, so they could do stuff like this:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8
>
>I think the bigger issue was just how bad the makeup was. It
>was like Biff in Back to the Future 2 bad.

Word. I figured they would put shit like that in the movie.

Yeah.. it looked awful. I kept remembering Dan Akroyd's makeup from "Nothing But Trouble".

http://cdn.videogum.com/files/2010/10/DVD-PlayerScreenSnapz012.jpg


Disclaimer: If they actually did show footage of a young Weyland in Prometheus, it may have been during one of the 2 brief moments I passed out. Faded 3D viewing with an non engaging plot does that to me.

>Yeah.. it looked awful. I kept remembering Dan Akroyd's
>makeup from "Nothing But Trouble".
>

THAT'S who I was subliminally reminded of too lol. I knew I recognized that same age-makeup.

all around the world, same song

>and it was going to be the younger Weyland in that scene.
>
>Also, so they could do stuff like this:
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8
>
>I think the bigger issue was just how bad the makeup was. It
>was like Biff in Back to the Future 2 bad.

they made him look like 135 year-old but his movements and speech were that of a 40-50 year old. he did a terrible job at selling the age.

there was no reason they couldn't have just gotten two actors to play the different ages

http://movieline.com/2012/06/20/prometheus-secrets-revealed-what-did-david-say-to-the-engineer/

Over at The Bioscopist blog, Stu Holmes was wondering the same question when he managed to track down the real-life linguistics expert who served as consultant on the film, Dr. Anil Biltoo of London's SOAS Language Centre. Biltoo not only taught Fassbender how to speak in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language as the android David — seen studying ancient communication as the crew sleeps in the film's opening measures — he also appeared onscreen as the holographic linguistics teacher David learns from as he recites the real-life text Schleicher's Fable, a story created in 1868 in the reconstructed PIE language.

While Scott, Damon Lindelof, and Co. remain mum about Prometheus's many open-ended provocations, Biltoo revealed what it is that David whispers to the Engineer at the end of the film, setting off the being's violent rampage:

The line that David speaks to the Engineer (which is from a longer sequence that didn’t make the final edit) is as follows:

/ida hmanəm aɪ kja namṛtuh zdɛ:taha/…/ghʷɪvah-pjorn-ɪttham sas da:tṛ kredah/

A serviceable translation into English is:

‘This man is here because he does not want to die. He believes you can give him more life’.

Absolutely stunning in terms of visuals and cinematography...excellent score as well. Just viscerally incredible. In terms of performances, Fassbender and Rapaci were powerhouses, and the rest weren't given much to do but did well with it. My only acting issue was with Logan Marshal-Green...his performance was just uneven and fell flat in his scenes with Rapaci. Just something off when he had to be more nuanced.

My only other issue was with some of the one-liner dialogue...not really necessary, felt out of place.

The self-abortion scene was so good.

Plot-wise....I have my own initial thoughts and def synthesized a lot of the ones in here but I have to watch it again to really allow myself to process and wrap my head around it without all the other distractions that come with a first viewing.

...visually it was instantly and completely satisfying to me, and stunning/breathtaking in spots... that alone made it absolutely worth the price of seeing on the big screen (and in 3d if possible) in my opinion....

acting and characters were nicely done in spots, not fleshed out enough in others, and 'just ok' and/or perplexing in spots...

story and plot was...well...hard to describe really... intriguing in many ways, curious in ways, unpredictable in some ways, predictable & questionable in others....ultimately, i felt it was indeed good enough to make me want to see it again...

Loved it

honestly was kinda bored the first time around.
but viewings #2 and #3?
yalp.
gets better each time.
defn lookn forward to the sequel.

V.

has problems
but so what

Whenever I see a film I love, I usually associate it with whatever is at its core. I felt this whole film was about how scary biology is (i know sounds corny). It just made me think how much we don't know about possibilities. Cloning, etc. Not that this is facts, it juts opens up these thoughts. Very brutal yet beautiful.

I actually watched it twice and was just as bored the second time around.