PROMETHEUS - Grade and Discuss

[Warped9]

YellowSubmarine wrote:

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It's exactly the feeling I got from the

first words with the space jockey. He was calm and ready to hear what the humans had to say, and Shaw's insistence on the first question was obviously a foreshadowing for the fact that the question is important. Then he went into a mad rage when we heard what selfish thing we had to ask. The rest seems to follow from there.

But I still think that the whole premise is a bit... over the top. I'd much if prefer a story depicting sentient beings to have them acting rationally and reasonably, which the whole premise implies they didn't. Instead there is a lot of symbolism that works pretty well, but doesn't feel to have a tangible reason for being there in the first place. For starters, the whole attitude of the Engineers appears to be pretty racist – meeting the Wayland moron or having your emissary killed by a few Roman morons doesn't translate to exterminating the entire race. Especially when you have obvious disagreement in front of you. And the surviving Engineer going after the one who disagreed? Way to go fella, that's totally unbecoming for a godlike creature.

The whole notion that a sentient alien jumps and starts killing en masse doesn't work well for me, no matter how much symbolism you put to tie it together. Unless there's a very good reason for it, but it has to be either depicted or hinted at. Otherwise it's just another version of “hey, aliens want to come and kill us all”. You didn't need to make them sentient to go there, the original killing machines did it well enough.

The endangering their installation part works, but going to Earth? You are afraid we might come again, pal? Why don't you just pull a self-destruct trick out of your hat if you're that much into self-sacrifice? Instead you waited for us to self-destruct you! All the humans that were crawling over your military base and had watched Star Trek knew better.

Gods always seem to have an awful lot of issues.

And I agree that it felt like there was an awful lot of cutting. Sometimes everything felt so rushed as if an hour had been cut in the middle. I think the Director's cut will definitely be better. Unfortunately, that won't be shown in cinemas, so I'd miss the spectacular visuals in the good version.

Well, if your TV is big enough...

[Admiral2]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Lol - did you SEE their decontamination procedure? Given the choice of roasting or having a time-limited visit on my first day, I think I'd keep my helmet on until after we'd tested our impetuous volunteer.

That was an emergency procedure brought on by the storm blowing half the dirt on the planet into the loading bay. The actual procedure was circumvented.

Plus later dialogue suggested that they didn't screen them after they came back. Rapace suggested they run bloodwork only after one of them started showing symptoms. It's a bit late to quarantine at that stage.

Again, the normal procedure was circumvented.

Given how inane some of the dialogue was, I think I'd have been more than happy to cut some of drivel out and add in a bit of common sense science.

I would add more footage with Charlize Theron in it. We all have our priorities.

[Tiberius]

I wasn't impressed.

So many of the characters serve no purpose except to die horribly.

And what was up with that stupidly convoluted plot to get her pregnant with the alien squid?

He gets some of the goo, then puts it into the guy's cup so he drinks it and gets infected, then he has to shag his girlfriend to get her infected so it can grow? I mean, bloody hell! That's hardly a reliable plan of action!

And as others have said, the fact that she can perform major surgery on herself and then go running around is completely unbelievable. Even if she was doped up on painkillers (in which case, why did she keep a clear head?) all that physical activity should have popped her wound open and spilled her guts out onto the deck.

And what was the point in Theron's character making it off the ship only to die under the collapsing SJ ship?

Also, the lack of subtlety regarding Chekhov's gun is appalling. The instant they said that Theron's quarters were a life pod, I knew that it would be used as such. Just make it a bloody shuttlecraft and it would work better. Show a bay full of the things, and then have one fall out of the ship as it takes off to crash into the SJ horseshoe.

And get rid of that bloody squid in her belly too. Just have the infant squid be the thing inside the canister, and then you can do away with the flawed chain of events that was in the movie.

A terrible disappointment.

[Admiral2]

SalvorHardin wrote:

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Armond's review

"Ridley Scott Hiccups Alien Fumes in Prometheus"

http://cityarts.info/2012/06/07/a-noxious-burp/

This idiot thinks Resurrection was a masterpiece.

His review means jack to me.

[SalvorHardin]

Admiral2 wrote:

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This idiot thinks Resurrection was a masterpiece.

His review means jack to me.

His reviews mean nothing to anyone.
They're to be read just for laughs at all the absurd things he says in a serious manner

Tiberius wrote:

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I wasn't impressed.

And what was up with that stupidly convoluted plot to get her pregnant with the alien squid?

He gets some of the goo, then puts it into the guy's cup so he drinks it and gets infected, then he has to shag his girlfriend to get her infected so it can grow? I mean, bloody hell! That's hardly a reliable plan of action!
.

The pregnancy was never David's plan, it was just something that happened. A "fortunate" coincidence for David.
His plan was to see what the goo would do to a human but then Charlie got himself roasted.

[Admiral2]

SalvorHardin wrote:

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His reviews mean nothing to anyone.
They're to be read just for laughs at all the absurd things he says in a serious manner

Gotcha!

[T'Baio]

That movie...sucked.

Wonderful visuals, some of the best 3D I've seen, a great performance by Michael Fassbender, of course.

But man...what a shitty script. Did anything anyone did make any sense?

"Aliens freak me out, man...I'm scared, let's run away!" One scene later. "Oh, look...a pretty alien snake. It's so cute, I want to touch it." I repeat...ONE SCENE LATER.

[Admiral2]

T'Baio wrote:

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That movie...sucked.

Wonderful visuals, some of the best 3D I've seen, a great performance by Michael Fassbender, of course.

But man...what a shitty script. Did anything anyone did make any sense?

"Aliens freak me out, man...I'm scared, let's run away!" One scene later. "Oh, look...a pretty alien snake. It's so cute, I want to touch it." I repeat...ONE SCENE LATER.

Ten foot humanoid aliens, scary. Snake-like alien...says a lot about the wise-ass in his praise of it.

[Horta Burger]

Tiberius wrote:

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I wasn't impressed.

So many of the characters serve no purpose except to die horribly.

And what was up with that stupidly convoluted plot to get her pregnant with the alien squid?

He gets some of the goo, then puts it into the guy's cup so he drinks it and gets infected, then he has to shag his girlfriend to get her infected so it can grow? I mean, bloody hell! That's hardly a reliable plan of action!

And as others have said, the fact that she can perform major surgery on herself and then go running around is completely unbelievable. Even if she was doped up on painkillers (in which case, why did she keep a clear head?) all that physical activity should have popped her wound open and spilled her guts out onto the deck.

And what was the point in Theron's character making it off the ship only to die under the collapsing SJ ship?

Also, the lack of subtlety regarding Chekhov's gun is appalling. The instant they said that Theron's quarters were a life pod, I knew that it would be used as such. Just make it a bloody shuttlecraft and it would work better. Show a bay full of the things, and then have one fall out of the ship as it takes off to crash into the SJ horseshoe.

And get rid of that bloody squid in her belly too. Just have the infant squid be the thing inside the canister, and then you can do away with the flawed chain of events that was in the movie.

A terrible disappointment.

I would agree with all of the above. The multiple agendas aren't juggled well, giving the whole thing a vague, convoluted feel. That's such a disappointment, because the hallmark of both Alien and Aliens is a relentless linearity that retains structural depth.

Overall, your specific complaints, though quite valid, are just symptoms of the main problem. The script simply hadn't been ironed out into a final coherent form. It felt like they started shooting with draft material.

Some lovely visuals, as always with Scott, but the whole is less than the parts.

[Gibraltar]

Pauln6 wrote:

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I enjoyed it but I think my expectations were too high so it only gets a C+.

On the plus side, Fassbender's David is fantastic and the movie's early scenes with him on the ship were nicely done. The sets and actors look great, and the concept is really cool.

However, I don't know if it's just that shoddy writing has become more acceptable in the last 25+ years or if I'm being hyper-critical but I was disappointed in the movie overall.

I watched Alien on TV the other night just to get myself in the mood and there really isn't much comparison in the quality of the storytelling (all Alien needs is a bit of CGI in the closing scene when the alien is blasted out the hatch and the movie would not date at all).

For me the story started to go downhill once the crew started to interact. They did a really poor job of establishing the characters early on, many of whom, for some inexplicable reason, had not even met before setting off...? Even at the end of the movie there were several characters running around who had done nothing more than deliver a few lines of dialogue. I genuinely believed that Charlie was Elizabeth's gay best friend rather than her lover until it became obvious, quite far into the movie, that this wasn't meant to be the case - there was very little chemistry there at all.

What jarred the most though was the lack of realism in the characters' behaviour. In Alien we were dealing with working class joe public; in Aliens we were dealing with boneheaded marines; in Alien 3 we were dealing with criminals but in this movie we were supposed to be dealing with scientists. Why then did they go charging in like idiots?

They didn't set up a lab on the planet to examine finds without risking contaminating the ship, they took helmets off without taking samples of the air for bacterial or viral analysis, we had a geologist who didn't even carry a samples case and a biologist who wasn't even carrying a basic testing kit. In one scene somebody asks why the water isn't frozen given the temperature - do they stop to take a sample to find out? No! Someone says, "Maybe it isn't water," and on they go, wading through this unknown substance without a care in the world.

They claim to have a quarantine procedure but given that their basic safety protocols are lacking, they would have had to quarantine the entire crew.

In short, their scientific method was shambolic and it really dragged me, almost weeping, out of what should have been a decent story.

The plot was a bit obvious compared to the first two Alien movies. I was mildly offended when one of the characters, despite having a serious injury, was performing physical, one might even say, acrobatic, activities with little more than the odd wince of pain. Given the larger cast, I would have much preferred it if they had taken a leaf out of Contagion's book to keep us on our toes with several leads, any of whom could die at any moment, sharing the burden of action hero among them.

Overall, I did enjoy it but it fell quite a way short of what I was hopng for. If Del Toro wants to make in the Mountains of Madness there is plenty of room left to do a better, more atmospheric job.

This sums up my feelings on the movie quite nicely.

[DarthPipes]

What was the movie David was watching in the beginning? I thought it was Bridge over the River Kwai.

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

It was Lawrence Of Arabia.

[Daneel]

That was an odd movie. Definitely not a wholly satisfying one. It was intriguing for the first hour or so -- it felt like it was leading up to something really grand, but in the end, the film just doesn't add up to very much. It went completely off the rails in the final act, despite some nifty visuals.

I think I found it more frustrating than anything else; I don't mind a bit of mystery or ambiguity in a movie, but with a near-total absence of answers or hints (other than "you might find out in the sequel"), it's a bit of a cheat.

The main things I was wondering about: just what is that black goo? Does it have a specific purpose/function? And what are the motivations of the Engineers (in particular, why is the one that's still alive such a violent, aggressive asshole)?

Characters were also a mixed bag. As has been mentioned, David was a stand-out, and I thought Janek was pretty cool too. Shaw was all right, although she's certainly no Ripley (yeah, it may be a bit unfair to start making comparisons to Alien, which is a completely different film, but it is kind of inevitable).

Vickers had her moments, but I think she needed a bit more fleshing out, particularly with regard to the family dynamic between her, Weyland, and David (which was hinted at, but not explored to its full potential, IMO). It feels like a lot of stuff was left on the cutting room floor, and that this is one of the numerous Ridley Scott films that improves with a director's cut. However, someone earlier in the thread said he's not going to do one; if that's true, it's a shame.

Despite all my issues with the film, I'm giving it a B- (which is, I'll admit, perhaps an act of generosity motivated somewhat by my admiration for Scott's previous works). For all the flaws with the script, the movie certainly looks great, has a solid first half, and features a few compelling performances. If there's a sequel, I just hope it can rectify some of the issues that are present in this picture.

[sidious618]

The more I think about this film, the more I like it. It's definitely odd and it doesn't follow the normal movie structure for a big sci-fi film. I look forward to picking this up on DVD and may even go back to see it in 3-D.

[DarKush]

As soon as the movie was over a guy behind me said, "It wasn't what I expected." I think that sums up my feelings quite a bit. Though I think the movie was a negative experience for him, for me I just don't think it lived up to the hype or my expectations. Though to be honest I'm not sure what I expected.

At least I had hoped that some of the questions about the space jockeys and the xenomorphs origins would be answered. And to some extent they were, but in a way that just raised more questions. It left Prometheus as part of a story, and not necessarily the other Alien(s) films. I mean, the questions aren't addressed in those films either, so there needs to be another film at least between Prometheus and Alien to answer those questions, if Ridley Scott, or the powers that be intend to answer them.

I did like that the film asked big questions, I liked that it aimed high, but I don't think it reached the heights it aspired to. It got muddled in the end and not answering the questions left me unsatisfied.

What I did like:
-The cast was pretty good. Noomi Rapace as Shaw made a worthy forerunner to Sigourney Weaver, almost a bit too worthy (will comment more on that later).
-Really liked Fassbender as David. He's really giving Bishop a run for his money.
-The look and feel was epic. The production design was very good, especially for the planet and the ship Prometheus.
-Asking big questions. It was a pleasure to see a big sci-fi movie, a likely blockbuster at that, asking those kind of questions.
-When the action kicked in it was well handled for the most part.

What (more) I didn't like:
-I thought the whole scene with Shaw using the computer to cut the alien out of her stomach was pushing the boundaries a bit too much. Especially after she hopped up and ran away. I know it could've been adrenaline, and also whatever she was shooting into her leg, but I thought that was a bit too unbelievable. Sure they showed her doubling over in pain a couple times after the operation but I thought she should've been in more pain from the start.
-Waste of Idris Elba. Plus I didn't like the "Southern American" (?) accent. I did like his bit with Charlize Theron though.
-A waste, somewhat, of Charlize Theron. I was expecting her role to be bigger, but she stayed on the ship for the most part. Her role was important I grant you, but I think more could've been done with her.
-New alien creatures, including the space jockeys. I was underwhelmed. Sure they looked nice, but they really didn't stand out for me.

Lingering questions:

-What was the point of the first scene? Was the alien killing himself as some form of sacrifice to appease the aliens in the flying saucer?
-David's infecting Holloway. I didn't get why he did that? Was it merely scientific curiosity? Or was another attempt to bring an alien back to Earth like we have seen in the other films? Or did he not just like the dude?
-Also, why would Vickers not want the Prometheus crew to make contact with the aliens after the corporation had spent all that money to get them there? Was it out of concern for her father? Or did she just want to deny him his life's dream for whatever reason?
-Why did Firfield attack the crew?
-Did the space jockeys really need all of those alien weapons to destroy Earth?
-Why was the space jockey in stasis all that time? And why hadn't whatever had killed the rest of the crew killed him?
-Why did that squid thing produce a xenomorph? We've never seen that before. It was almost like they realized they should throw a xenomorph in there and it just felt tacked on. Even though I had wanted to see a xenomorph, or more.

I think that Alien 3 tried to return to the tone of Alien, while Alien Resurrection emulated Aliens. With Prometheus I think it tried to mix both of the first two films together. And the results were mixed. I'm charitably giving it an A-.