Goodbye Alien prequel, hello Prometheus! Options

[Gir]

Holloway (cool name, forgettable character) was an example of the forgotten good nature in humans willing to sacrifice theirselves in order to preserve something greater than their own being. I shed a tear not for his loss, but for laughing at his emergence as Zombie Holloway.

About as usefully used for this guinea pig chopping board were the captain and his co-pilots, who were nowhere near enough the smack-talking, jerk-off, bomb-riding-cowboys we all instantly fall in love with to have invoked any thought of 'Fuck the human race, save your hilarious selves!' as they set course for their harikiri spaceship collision. Go ahead, I say, you left me indifferent.

Vickers’ inner bitter bitch culminated the inheritance of a lack of value in life as she suffered her father's obstinance in valuing artificiality and prolonged death more than his own life-born creation. However tight and when lacking in boob, a latex suit does not an interesting character make.

As this recurring problem was my biggest issue with Prometheus, I can wholeheartedly admit it is the reason I adore the Alien films; it is filled with well built characters crafted with humility.

Beyond some incredible imagery, Prometheus' most endearing moments (to me) were the quiet, sterile moments in the vessel itself, largely reminiscent of the Alien scenes. There was not enough development to make the people likeable to me, and yet oh so aptly, David might have been the closest to peaking my interest.

[tantryl]

<Gir>

Yah, that's pretty spot on for me.

Random thing I noticed that don't seem to be mentioned by most people:

They appear to have taken the pictogram matched to a star system thing from one of the first nutters to see grey aliens, Betty Hill (even believers think Betty is a nutter, and those that don't basically just haven't met her/seen her speak). Like Betty's, it's just silly as when you take imprecise 2D drawings you can match it up to a shitload of 3D arrangements of objects, especially if those objects are moving and you can place the "camera" wherever you like. Basically you could have done that with virtually any five planet system. They could have also matched it with thousands of star clusters. Or galaxies. Or frisbees. And so on. But anyway, yeah, probably taken from the idea of Betty Hill's star map.

Identifying positions in space is incredibly difficult without great detail. I hate to say it but Roland Emerich, terrible big budget film maker only topped in non-sensical movie science by Michael Bay, did it quite cleverly in the Stargate movie. It was too complex for them to carry over to the TV series so they just changed it to a phone number style system. But yeah. Ridley Scott did about the dumbest possible way to identify spacial coordinates, a way that simply would never work, and Roland Emerich was... and it pains me to say this... much, much smarter.

[mudg3]

For anyone thats seen the flim this is a good analysis my interpretation was a long this lines with the black liquid and some other scenes. Hence my high rating.

[Contains Spoilers DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED]
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/us...d_and_analysed/

[tantryl]

For anyone thats seen the flim this is a good analysis my interpretation was a long this lines with the black liquid and some other scenes. Hence my high rating.

[Contains Spoilers DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED]
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/us...d_and_analysed/

Yeah, those are the sophomoric philsophies of the Later-day Saints, Raelians and Scientologists I was on about.

[Director]

For anyone thats seen the flim this is a good analysis my interpretation was a long this lines with the black liquid and some other scenes. Hence my high rating.

[Contains Spoilers DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED]
http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/us...d_and_analysed/

Yeah, those are the sophomoric philsophies of the Later-day Saints, Raelians and Scientologists I was on about.

The reason the Engineers don't like us any more is that they made us a Space Jesus, and we broke him.

:)

[Antraman]

Saw it gold class, 3D last night. It was mostly a huge let down for me, though I went in with incredibly high expectations as I had bought into all the hype that led up to it. I *wanted* it to be great, but it was not. It alright, several things bugged me, like the scientists wanting to go investigate the dome as soon as they landed, and with 6hrs of sunlight left, and one of the final scenes where the captain is standing at the helm piloting the ship into the other one, and the shot just made him look like a black guy deejaying at a console...it looked so wrong.

Visually I thought the technology, the world, and the creatures were awesome, and the photography was great. Just there was no real character development, some of the characters weren't even introduced, like there was a couple of guys who seemed to appear on set out of nowhere and you think "who the fuck is this guy?' and then you don't see him for half the movie again.

Like others said, there seemed to be a lot that remained unexplained. Sure a lot of that could be rationalised away by a fan, but we shouldn't have to do that...there should be a logic and coherency and explanation for all events in a film. Most of the "plot holes" in that list linked above,as hector said can be explained away as gripes, and some of them as simply a misunderstanding by the viewer.

Most of my complaints are about how believable some of the choices of action made by various characters were...for example the captain being so blase about the 2 crew members left behind and not being concerned about their safety.

Lastly, I felt that there was stuff missing. Hopefully it has been edited down for cinematic release, and that there will be a directors cut that is longer and more complete, and hopefully will have more explanation as to whats going on.

[ArcaneMagik]

Listened to a rant mostly about how poorly written the scientists were, including a comment about Darwinism.

[King_Of_The_Moun...]

I enjoyed it adequately at the time of viewing, and by that I mean it was nicely made but everything else was crap. I had to restrain myself from yelling - LORE, YOU ARE MESSING WITH THE LORE YOU IDIOTS, NONE OF THIS PRETENTIOUS CRAP MAKES SENSE.

[gabber]

Saw it tonight in 3D. Since my daughter has been around (almost 3 now), I've seen a total of 3 movies at the cinema. All 3D and the effect was just 'meh' in all of them. It's cool and all but, just not as awesome as it should be.

Anyway, I liked the movie. It felt a bit underwhelming though. Kind of disappointing. I feel I'll like it the more times I see it which is good. And the link mudge posted seems to make things a bit clearer. So yeah, cool flick. I liked how the actress that played Shaw had that Weaver quality to her. Very cool.

This post has been edited by gabber: Jun 17 2012, 02:48 AM

[tantryl]

Saw it gold class, 3D last night. It was mostly a huge let down for me

Ah, that sucks man. Especially after paying the extra for GC3D.

Even though I think it isn't great and agree with everything you said about it (especially the part about no-one seeming to care about anyone else bar the Holloway-Shaw and maybe David-Weyland relationships), I still keep hoping people will come out of it saying it's great so when I get the BD (and let's face it, I will) it doesn't feel like a chore re-watching it.

Lastly, I felt that there was stuff missing. Hopefully it has been edited down for cinematic release, and that there will be a directors cut that is longer and more complete, and hopefully will have more explanation as to whats going on.

That actually does give me hope. It does feel like it was edited to gee up the pace. Although it's hard to edit out character motivation :|

[hectorbustnuts]

Couple of links worth checking:

http://collider.com/ridley-scott-prometheu...terview/172202/

http://collider.com/ridley-scott-prometheu...terview/170207/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/kermode (An episode or two, about midway through)

[tantryl]

He says 30 minutes of deleted scenes, but he also says the first cut was 127 minutes (the final is 124 minutes).

*EDIT* Mah brain has falled out. He says 147 minutes, not 127 minutes.

This post has been edited by tantryl: Jun 17 2012, 01:19 PM

[xnatex]

i loved it, the 3d looked awesome and the effects rocked, my mrs on the other hand thought it was 1 of the worst movies she had ever seen and we got into an arguement about how i get to pick which movies to watch hahha

[Antraman]

30mins of deleted scenes. That is a fair chunk of time, maybe it would be enough to turn it into a sensible movie.

One of the links from the previous page lead to a forum where someone pasted some comments by Ridly how there was this whole thing about depicting Jesus as one of the Engineers, going on to explain the virgin birth, crucifixion, etc...and then he decided to cut it. What? Ridley is talking about stuff to explain the movie that is not even appearing in the movie. That's crazy. Its almost like he has the real movie in his head, but he only decided to give us bits and pieces...

Anyway, I would watch it again...there were elements to the movie I did really like. If it came out in directors cut blu ray...

EDIT: Just remembering the theatrical release of The Abyss by James Cameron...there were quite a few bits cut out of that, whichh made the movie kinda weird, and there was even a part of a scene related to the removed scenes that remained included, and it was a real WTF? moment...but the directors cut had them included, and it made a hella lot more sense then...

This post has been edited by Antraman: Jun 17 2012, 10:20 PM