PROMETHEUS - Grade and Discuss

[Locutus of Bored]

flcat wrote:

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Well, maybe it's not so far-fetched having such stupid people on the scientific team. The dude who tried to pet the alien-snake thing reminded me of touchie-feelie nature-lover types who think you can walk up to a bear and pet it and then end up being featured in a volume of Faces of Death.

I don't know anyone who says "We're about to embark on the most important, revolutionary, expensive, time consuming, and dangerous mission in the history of humankind... so let's hire Grizzly Man for one of the key scientific positions."

[Danny99]

Let me preface this by saying I did not read all 55 pages of posts. I don't think this movie deserves the credit.

First off, did we really need to have the incredibly graphic scene of Shaw climbing into the pod and been sliced open and pry out what my girlfriend called "Her baby octopus." It was totally a gross scene for the sake of being gross.

Corporate mission or not, these people take absolutely no precautions during this mission. "Oh, the air is breathable here? And we're on an alien planet that no one has ever set foot on? Let's take our helmets off!" or "Oh look, this alien got his head cut off by a door, let's take it with us on board our ship when we have no idea what could happen!"

As for Janek's booty call, it was a poorly written scene. Vickers treats the entire crew like shit from the first minute she wakes up and suddenly she's sleeping with the Captain. If you need him off the bridge for ten seconds for the other two nitwits to get pulverized, there has to be at least a thousand different waits to get him off the bridge.

Weyland's whole theory is just stupid. If a scientist comes to you and says we may have found our Creator on a planet millions of miles away, I don't care how sick I am or how little time I have left, I am not going.

There is just too many things wrong with this movie. It is just too stupid. If this is what Sci Fi is becoming, I'm afraid.

[Yminale]

Danny99 wrote:

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There is just too many things wrong with this movie. It is just too stupid. If this is what Sci Fi is becoming, I'm afraid.

Well get use to it. Sci-Fi is getting dumber not because of Americans. Studies have shown that current Americans are as ignorant of science as previous generations. The problem is most movies need to play well with foreign audiences so good by complex narratives and interesting dialogue (won't translate well) and hello special effects.

That being said, it's obvious that Prometheus was badly edited to fit a two hour time slot. I'm going to wait for the definitive director's cut before I judge the movie.

As for the crew, I have my own theory. I don't think they were really "scientists", I think they were mercenaries or corporate security whose job was to deal with our Creators if they got hostile. I also think they at least Weyland and David knew more than they let on. Someone like Weyland could pay to observe the planet from a distance and then sent remote probes. Finally the connection between the Engineers and Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, I think was suppose to be more explicit. In the epic, Gilgamesh searches for the key of to immortal life from the gods.

[MacLeod]

I don't think translation issues are that big of an issue.

Lets take a look at Prometheus. Current Worldwide takings are at US$263m

Of which ~US$110 is from the N. American Box Office
The rest being from the rest of the world, of which ~US$45 is from English Language speaking countries.

So ~US$155 or 60% from English language countries.

Avengers Assemble is about 52% takings from English speaking countries. So it would appear that the largest percentage of takings come from English speaking countries.

The Dark Knight is about 65% from English language countries.

Obviously the N. American box office accounts for most of the takins, but countries like the UK, Australlia generally do healthy takings given their relative size to the US.

In the UK Prometheus has taken around US$30m, if you factor into population size difference that would equate to around US$130-140m. So thus far it has done better in the UK relative to population size than it has in the US.

[Trekker4747]

Danny99 wrote:

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First off, did we really need to have the incredibly graphic scene of Shaw climbing into the pod and been sliced open and pry out what my girlfriend called "Her baby octopus." It was totally a gross scene for the sake of being gross.

Then it did exactly what it was intended to do.

[Misfit Toy]

Locutus of Bored wrote:

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I don't know anyone who says "We're about to embark on the most important, revolutionary, expensive, time consuming, and dangerous mission in the history of humankind... so let's hire Grizzly Man for one of the key scientific positions."

Earth's scientific community hasn't been represented too well in any of the Alien pictures. Perhaps it is intentional - to imply scientific laziness as a result of corporate greed.

[roliver]

Yminale wrote:

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I don't think they were really "scientists", I think they were mercenaries or corporate security whose job was to deal with our Creators if they got hostile.

Seriously? Did the crew of Prometheus show any ability to "deal with" a hostile alien race posessing technology far beyond anything we could dream of?

Let's not forget Shaw's mind-numbingly stupid "no weapons" line as they geared up for there forst foray into the temple.

The crew was incompetent in both security and science aspects.

[Warped9]

A week or so ago I received a copy of Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual. It's a bit quaint by today's standards, but it has a lot of interesting tech information in it about the various pieces of hardware and ships we saw in Alien and Aliens as well as some stuff we didn't see.

But there are two elements of this book that really make it interesting. The first are fictional excerpts of marines recounting their experiences when using some of the hardware described. It's all made up, but it's interesting to read. And often they talk very much like the marines in Aliens expressed themselves.

The second thing thats interesting are the excepts of scientists analyzing the reports and data they got from Ripley, Bishop and the Sulaco logs. It paints an fascinating and also chilling picture of a corporate minded society were even the scientists are somewhat corrupted by it. They speak of Burke and his cold-blooded intent to get Ripley and Newt impregnated by face-huggers, and they don't sound all that bothered by the idea!

The other thing that jumps out is how Ash and Burke were both in on some sort of information about the xenomorphs and highly interested in getting hold of a live specimen and hopefully an impregnated host as well. The Nostromo wasn't just responding to a distress beacon, but its computers were on the watch for any kind of signal that could lead to the xenomorphs. It suggests Burke also had a hand in setting up the colony on LV426 and making certain the marine force sent there later (with Ripley) was of nominal size---a reasonable show of force but not as large as perhaps it should have been. And a point was made to put an inexperienced officer in command. WTF!!!

There is also a lot of excerpts of scientists conjecturing on the nature of the xenomorphs and trying to understand them and how they exist.

Now I have no idea how any of this could tie-in to Prometheus or if Ridley Scott was even privy to anything in this publication, but a lot of it does seem consistent with what we saw in the first two Alien films. If one accepted the nuggets in this book at face value then it means the events in Prometheus become known back on Earth and/or Shaw eventually finds something that gets some folks back home really interested in finding out more about these xenomorphs.

[Disruptor]

EU stuff. As flushable as Star Wars EU when new official material comes along.

I remember Dark Horse's ALIENS comics...their "space jockeys", their post ALIENS story (before ALIEN 3 was released) with Ripley, Hicks and Newt.

[Nightowl1701]

I do like how, at the end of that book, the Company figures out the derelict would have been sufficiently out of range of the colony's explosion (behind a ridge) to survive the blast - and they immediately order an expedition sent out there. Which is apparently exactly where next year's video game Aliens: Colonial Marines picks up, with a stop at the abandoned Sulaco on the way...

[MacLeod]

The long awaited game, it's been what 6 years since it was first announced?

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ What game?

[MacLeod]

Aliens: Colonial Marines.

[137th Gebirg]

Ah! Oops - missed that in the prior post.

[inflatabledalek]

Apologies for not having had chance to read the whole thread but my first reaction thoughts:



Ahhhh. Prometheus, I'd read the reviews. I knew that as a Scott film it would almost certainly be very pretty but as shallow as a puddle (the original Alien is ironically one of the few exceptions, probably because the script was mostly worked out before his involvement) but it still wound up a disappointment.



So the big message of the film is: "God" is probably a dick. Yeah, anyone who's noticed any of human history will likely have worked that out. Hell, anyone who's seen Star Trek V will know that.

But OK, despite the pretentions the film had no real depth to it. But I was expecting that. And it was pretty (even if the new monsters were generally a bit dull). And I liked the twist that the Space Jockey had been wearing a space suit all along. Though as giant blue men they seemed to be the guys from Avatar if they became really pissed off skin heads.

Where it fell down, and fell down badly was the characters. Every, single one of them was a complete moron. The first thing we see in the film is skinhead Na'Vi comiting suicide because he can't think of another way to mix up his species DNA with weird ¤¤¤¤ and put it in the water. And he winds up being one of the smarter characters. In the rest of the film we get:

"Hey, I'm taking my helmet off!"

"Whoops, we've gotten lost despite have mapped the place and no one has noticed we're didn't make it back until the people who set out after us made it back to the ship!"

"I'M GOING BACK FOR THE HEAD!!!"

"I'll just put this weird ¤¤¤¤ in your drink and then leave you too it. Even though I've already worked out these are WMD's and it could turn you into something that's a threat to me as much as anyone else".

"Hey, we know something killed all these big strong scary blue men but we'll act like Nedry in Jurassic Park when we see something that the directer clearly told us is supposed to be amazing and cute looking but the effects company made look like an evil penis".

"I'll abandon my watch to go shag Charlize Theron so no one will know those two idiots are in trouble till it's too late" [I'm tempted to let Elba off for this though].

"Even though I want your EVIL MUTANT BABY for my own EVIL ends I'll tell you the news in such a way as to scare the living crap out of you just for ¤¤¤¤s and giggles. And once you've cut it out of yourself no one will bother to go check on it". [And was the Scottish doctor in on it?]

"Well, I've just woken up after 2000 years and am surrounded by my creations, who could be in unknown numbers with unknown weapons. So rather than trying to lull them into a false sense of security and finding out the exact situation before making my move I'll kill kill those here and just hope I don't turn out to be out classed before carrying on my mission rather than maybe going home and checking in first even though it's been 2000 years"

And that's just some of them.


What was the point of Theron's character? Her getting off the ship made it look as if there was going to be a final cat fight- which might at least have been fun- but she's instantly crushed to death and basically winds up contributing nothing (there's some vague hints of a "real child" Vs "Built child" thing but it's basically restricted to two short scenes). After all, Elba could have just ejected the life pod thing for Shaw. And why cast Guy Pierce as an old man with a bad make up job rather than just casting an old man?

After the hour mark it got to the point where the only thing I was left looking forward too was how it was all going to end with everything set up for the first one. OK, where are the eggs going to come from, how is the Space Jockey going to get back to his ship and in the chair, what's the origin of the signal... And I didn't even get that much. The ending wound up leaving me really confused until a friend explained to me it's not the same planet as in the first one. I didn't actually believe him at first. Do those ships just crash a lot then? What the hell was the point of doing it as an Alien prequel at all if it doesn't even have that much going for it? I'd have been fine with a completely standalone film with no real links beyond a vague shared Universe but including stuff that seemed to be leading to the first one felt self defeating and confusing on that score.

And it was mildly annoying the very well thought out Alien life cycle (OK, ripped straight from nature but still more thought through than most space monsters get) was thrown out here for something sillier. "It's magic goo that will do any old ¤¤¤¤ as long as people are stupid enough to finger it". The final shot actually felt like something Fox insisted on because they thought you couldn't do an Alien film without an Alien in it.

Frankly, Alien Vs. Predator was better than this, at least it was silly fun. Hell, I've not seen Requiem yet but considering it's presumably shorter and has Michelle off 24 in it it's likely to annoy me a lot less.

"Doctor Elisabeth Shaw" would probably have seemed a nice (presumably intentional but who knows?) Doctor Who homage if I hadn't seen this the same week Caroline John died making it feel like two hours of pissing on her grave.

Despite the mixed reaction and my own disappointment I can see this doing a Blade Runner though and going on to be seen as a classic down the line. Mainly because those of us who didn't like it are going to forget it very quickly but those who loved it will be championing it hard for years to come.