PROMETHEUS - Grade and Discuss

[The Fatman]

I haven't been this torn about a movie in a very, very long time. Ultimately, I voted C-, and I will say I did not like the movie.

I do absolutely love the cinematography and set design. Honestly, this may be one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. The cast, particularly Fassbender and Theron, are treating this very seriously, and give amazing performances. This movie is also very clearly attaining to be an actual, honest-to-god film, a la "2001" (as opposed to striving to be a popcorn movie, like "The Avengers"), so it has to be reviewed and considered as such.

Unfotunately, the script is a muddled, incoherent mess. I will link to Drew McWeeny's spoiler filled re-review of the film on hitfix, which covers a LOT of my criticisms. Bottom line, jaw dropping visuals and good performances do not off set the stunningly bad writing and editing of the film for me.

http://www.hitfix.com/motion-capture...-and-questions

One thing I'm surprised no one else has pointed out... by the established timeline of the films, unless they are completely throwing out what has come before, "Alien" is set only 28 years after Prometheus. Prometheus ends on Jan 1, 2094; Alien starts on June 3, 2122. The Derelict was clearly on LV-426 for a hell of a lot longer than 28 years. That ship is already down on LV-426, and nothing we see in "Prometheus" is a direct precursor or proto-species to what is on the Derelict.

Long story short, whatever is happening or being created on LV-223, while it might be related to the Xenomorph, is a new variant/species all together.

[Warped9]

It's already been established that this probably isn't a direct prequel to alien. The connective tissue is tenuous. This is more another story in that universe that fleshes out more of where these things come from.

[Camren]

sidious618 wrote:

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Aliens was awful. It took all that was good about the original and made it look absurd instead of terrifying. The aliens died way too easily, the dialogue was often atrocious, and the ending with Ripley in the robot thingy was laughable. There was no sense of mystery as there was in Alien and, now, Prometheus.

Prometheus is an absurd movie, how can you compare it to the original Alien movie? And Aliens was miles better than this pile of tosh. The dialogue was fine and the aliens didn't die too easily. They weren't invincible in the first place (afraid of fire ffs!), had the crew of the Nostromo had a gun they would have taken the alien out pretty quickly. It was part of the beauty of that movie that the crew was unarmed and had to try to survive using their wits; repeating that (as they did in Alien 3) would have been a boring reprisal and Aliens was fantastic as an alternative action flick.

[Starkers]

T'Baio wrote:

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I don't know about that, but I know it was typical bullshit from male writers. Because man...now I know the next time I'm with a woman who is baring her soul and crying about being infertile, the way to make her feel better will be to start making out with her.

And of course, that's not to mention the fact of the lazy, terrible writing on display by having her infertility only brought up about 10 minutes before we need to know that to inform the next sequence.

Bob the Skutter wrote:

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Man, how clumsy was that scene? "Any idiot can make life." "I can't... I can't make life... boo hoo" "I didn't mean that, lets shag."

I agree wholeheartedly! And T'Baio, yeah it bugged me that this point is mentioned mere minutes before it becomes important. That's poor writing, it should have been telegraphed much earlier (but maybe not quite in the ham fisted way the medical pod was )

And Sci, didn't want to quote your long posting but yeah, agree with you too, although the missed the fact that they took their helmets off...remember kids, air can be breathable and still filled with noxious elements! sheesh!

Maybe if the film hadn't been hyped as much I'd be more forgiving, or maybe if there hadn't been so many such messy/stupid moments I wouldn't have minded, but as it is the further away from the film I get the more annoyed I get with it.

ah well, I might grow to like it on repeat viewings...

[ncc71877]

I liked the movie, it has it's problems, "I'm a geologist, I love rocks!" I went and saw it agian, thought it was better with a second veiwing.

My cousin however said this, "So an intrepid starship crew travel haflway across the galaxy looking for God and find a really angry guy. Have I seen that before?" Yes he brought out the Star Trek V gun on Prometheus. Although he did say he didn't "dislike the movie." FWIW

ncc71877

[Bob The Skutter]

Starkers wrote:

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I agree wholeheartedly! And T'Baio, yeah it bugged me that this point is mentioned mere minutes before it becomes important. That's poor writing, it should have been telegraphed much earlier (but maybe not quite in the ham fisted way the medical pod was )

And Sci, didn't want to quote your long posting but yeah, agree with you too, although the missed the fact that they took their helmets off...remember kids, air can be breathable and still filled with noxious elements! sheesh!

Maybe if the film hadn't been hyped as much I'd be more forgiving, or maybe if there hadn't been so many such messy/stupid moments I wouldn't have minded, but as it is the further away from the film I get the more annoyed I get with it.

ah well, I might grow to like it on repeat viewings...

The thing that was so annoying about that scene with the helmets was as soon as he takes his off she says "You're a crazy bastard you know that... (hang on, let me take my helmet off too and everyone else can follow suit, just to show you how crazy you are.)"
You acknowledge it's a stupid idea, and then do it anyway? WTF is wrong with these people? Did they misinterpret the saying "Feel the fear and do it anyway"?

[Warped9]

Whats apparent to me is that most of these scientists (if not all) were not the best and brightest. And it might well be that they were chosen for that very reason.

What we see of Weyland and Vickers is that they're genuine assholes with agendas that might not be bleeding obvious. Could be they didn't want the best and brightest that could put 2 + 2 together. If they become fodder then no problem.

[Sci]

Warped9 wrote:

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Whats apparent to me is that most of these scientists (if not all) were not the best and brightest. And it might well be that they were chosen for that very reason.

What we see of Weyland and Vickers is that they're genuine assholes with agendas that might not be bleeding obvious. Could be they didn't want the best and brightest that could put 2 + 2 together. If they become fodder then no problem.

Which again makes no sense. If you're Peter Weyland, and you bring along a crew full of people who are only barely competent at the job, you're endangering yourself. There comes with such a decision every possibility that they will be unable to make contact with the supposed alien progenitors, or that they will in some way anger the progenitors, or that they will in some other manner endanger the ship (and therefore yourself). If you're serious about wanting to make contact with these alien progenitors in order to try to save yourself from dying of old age, then you need the best and the brightest, the most rational people possible -- not a crew full of scientists who jump to irrational conclusions and behave irrationally while under stress.

[BillJ]

Sci wrote:

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Which again makes no sense. If you're Peter Weyland, and you bring along a crew full of people who are only barely competent at the job, you're endangering yourself. There comes with such a decision every possibility that they will be unable to make contact with the supposed alien progenitors, or that they will in some way anger the progenitors, or that they will in some other manner endanger the ship (and therefore yourself). If you're serious about wanting to make contact with these alien progenitors in order to try to save yourself from dying of old age, then you need the best and the brightest, the most rational people possible -- not a crew full of scientists who jump to irrational conclusions and behave irrationally while under stress.

Maybe being two hundred, his mental faculties aren't all there anymore?

He said he he had a matter of days in one scene. So if he was going to save himself he was going to need a group of people who would leap before they looked.

[Sci]

BillJ wrote:

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Maybe being two hundred, his mental faculties aren't all there anymore?

He said he he had a matter of days in one scene. So if he was going to save himself he was going to need a group of people who would leap before they looked.

He's cryogenically frozen. Time is only of the essence once he's unfrozen. As long as he's in freeze, he has all the time in the galaxy, and he should be employing people who will take the time necessary to do what's needed so that they can unfreeze him only once they know it's safe and that they've obtained Space Jockey agreement to help him.

[Relayer1]

Camren wrote:

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Prometheus is an absurd movie, how can you compare it to the original Alien movie? And Aliens was miles better than this pile of tosh. The dialogue was fine and the aliens didn't die too easily. They weren't invincible in the first place (afraid of fire ffs!), had the crew of the Nostromo had a gun they would have taken the alien out pretty quickly. It was part of the beauty of that movie that the crew was unarmed and had to try to survive using their wits; repeating that (as they did in Alien 3) would have been a boring reprisal and Aliens was fantastic as an alternative action flick.

Exactly. I'd add that although Alien was a very good monster movie, it wasn't a masterpiece of sci-fi.

I thought Aliens was a superior movie, and more influential !

[DarthTom]

Saw Prometheus over the weekend. I loved it. Part of the problem I think is people had such high expectations from Scott. The film was visually stunning and the dialogue and acting was acceptable - especially from more "B" level actors. The film was about 20 minutes too long IMO.

One nitpick. Why does science fiction always get the science of evolution and natural selection so terribly wrong? Depositing DNA into the sea codes would not lead to the creation of the human species - it's extremely unlikely. This film gets evolution and natural selection wrong and so did Trek in the episode The Chase.

[Starkers]

20 minutes too long? If anything I thought the film was 20 minutes too short.

[CaptJimboJones]

DarthTom wrote:

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Saw Prometheus over the weekend. I loved it.

Same here. Far from perfect, many flaws, I get it - but nonetheless I still enjoyed myself immensely.

[Pingfah]

Starkers wrote:

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20 minutes too long? If anything I thought the film was 20 minutes too short.

Definitely too short. Very rushed in the second half.

I have many problems with the film, but being bored wasn't one of them, so I could easily have stood another 30 minutes or so if it solved the pacing issues.