I just finished reading what is supposed to be an early version of the script: "An original screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof". I must say it is pretty terrible. The general sweep of events is there. There are a lot of little items in it that were kept in the final version of the movie (like the alien structure is explicitly patterned after Giger's designs for structures for the un-made Dune movie), but it is much more of a mess than I would ever have thought would have convinced anyone to make it into a movie. It is interesting how much was improved, but also how much wasn't. All the silly stuff from the final movie is here: Taking off their helmets immediately, though in the script it is Shaw expressing "faith" that she can take her helmet off safely. The elite scientists are described as such, for example, Drs. Milburn and Fitfield are described as "the best of Astrology and science" (Fitfield must have gotten a PhD in "science"?), but do nothing scientific in the whole script. No one in general acts smart or realistically in the whole thing. The ship knows where to go on the planet initially because a previous extra-solar probe took pictures of Nazca-like lines on the planet's surface which kicked off the mission (so the story isn't driven by either Shaw's ideas or Weyland's), but the pilot only manages not to smash the ship into several mountains only by shear luck. Shaw is a devout Catholic who gets raped by Holloway (maybe they changed this because Noomi Rapace had previously played Lisbeth Salander?), never mentions it or seems to even remember it after the scene , which is maybe why she doesn't have a scene in the finished movie about the c-section. And in the end she likes the baby alien that she was infected/implanted with. David, sadly, doesn't have any of the interesting introduction, none of the nuance of character or artistry of scenes. He doesn't even act like a robot/android - it kinda reminds me of Spock in "The Cage", he's Spock, but he yells and has emotions - he just isn't robotic except that the script says he is. Basically no one has any real motivations - not the scientists, the ship's crew, Vickers, David, the Engineers, no one - it is very hollow. Either later rewrites or Ridley's influence punched up the intentions of the movie and made it more than the mess of purposeless Alien-like action that this script is.
Huh? I thought the purpose of the mission was to find the Engineers in order to find a way to prolong Weyland's life. Weyland didn't know LV-223 was a bioweapons facility any more than the rest of the Prometheus's crew did.
I'm not talking about beforehand, but just after they found all the canisters on the ship. It appeared at that point that all the Engineers were dead, so all that was left was to start experimenting and seeing what the black goo could do.
The fix was in as soon as the media started crowing about how movies were still a "great value" for the entertainment dollar. As soon as you hear that sort of talk about anything, including specific restaurants, it ain't gonna be a great value for long.
But that had nothing to do with the canisters being bioweapons. And nobody even thought they were bioweapons until the ship's captain proposed that idea near the end of the movie. Whether David infected Holloway on Weyland's orders, or he just did it himself because he's a bastard, he didn't do it because he thought it was a weapon. Right up until the Engineer killed him, Weyland only wanted to know how he could use whatever was in that facility to keep himself alive. That seemed to be the only motivation Weyland ever had, IMHO.
Again, that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Even if you're Weyland and you're a complete sociopath, you don't experiment under such extremely uncontrolled circumstances. Doing so represents a danger to you -- if these are all bioweapons, how exactly is your sad ass going to survive? These bioweapons, as it turned out, yielded creatures that could easily have destroyed the only crewmember not susceptible to biological infection (David), and could have easily found and killed Weyland in his cro-sleep. Nothing of Weyland's or David's behavior in this film makes sense, even from a completely amoral and sociopathic perspective.
I'd argue that's an average so it's going to include matine prices, senior prices, and dollar shows all of which are very different these days.
I've only regretted paying money for one movie, and that would be One For the Money starring Katherine Heigl.
The GF and I just got back from seeing it and I have to say, it was complete and utter garbage and it wasn't at all like I expected.
Regarding "missing scenes." Unfortunately (in some respects) film-making and the market has changed. I found the film easy enough to follow, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been better. Ridley Scott himself says he is a business man as well as a film-maker and he has to balance between the two. He wants to tell a complete story yet he also has to put asses in theatre seats and tell the story within an approximate time. From what I've read there are indeed 20-30 minutes of unused footage that will be available on DVD and BluRay as either an extended cut of the film and/or as deleted scenes in extra features. He said he might also off an option for you to choose to see a deleted scene when it's prompted onscreen. This is the reality of film-making today, and as has been mentioned it can be seen as both a blessing as well as a curse. To my recollection Fritz Lang's Metropolis is one of the very few old films where lost footage has been put back into the film in newer versions in the hopes of recreating (as much as possible) the originally released cut of the film. But as for the rest what we see is all we'll ever have. I'm sure there are miles of deleted footage cut over the years that some people would have really appreciated seeing because they feel a favoured film would have benefited from it. More recently Daredevil was a film that benefitted greatly from deleted scenes restored for a Director's Cut. I liked some of the extra scenes in the extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong although in that case I had no real problems with the theatrical release. The ST-TMP DE is another case of some restored footage and re-editing benefitting a film (although not for everyone). In an ideal world we'd always get the best full cut of a film upon release in the theatre. But we don't live in an ideal world and so what we now have is the best compromise available to us.
The more I think about this movie, the less I liked it. I gave it a B+ last week becasue I really wanted to like it. But this movie was really dumb, and just wrecked a lot of the mystery in Alien. The cliche origin of man story was just stupid. And really, where did the first facehugger come from? They found some black ooze in a jar, decided to spike some vodka with it, the guy then started to disintegrate, but only after he sexed up his lady friend, who then gives birth to a giant facehugger? What a garbage plot. An decent Alien prequel's plot wouldn't have been that hard to come up with.
Personally I love the flick. There was a few issues in characterization, and it didn't answer every question. But that to me was the biggest advantage to the film - it created a new arc of films that can be set in the Alien universe that are completely separate from the previous work done. David is a fantastic character. I think its clear he's working on his own initiative on several different occassions in the film. The fact that the revived Engineer appears peaceful until David says something to him -and we never find out what he said - is an awesome construct. All sorts of potential there for future plot devices. Indeed, most of the 'revelations' we have are given to us by David. He may have been lying about any number of things - including the fact that Earth was the target of the Engineer ship. Having the main character and David leaving together at the end to solve the riddle of the Engineers is a great start to a new franchise. I have to say there are several things that I'm still unsure of - the example of the Engineer who dissolved himself to start life on the opening planet, the nature of the black ooze (though it could simply be a genetic material easily enough), the reason that the invitation from the Engineers led to a place where they were making bioweapons, the reason such bioweapons appear to be intended for Earth... This is the beginning of a franchise with great potential. If the answers to the questions suck, I'll obviously change my mind about the franchise. But right now I see a TON of possibility here, David is as intriguing a character as I've ever seen in scifi, and I'm happy with the tie in to the Alien Quadrilogy. If, like in the Matrix, the sequels are far less intelligent than the opening act, then I'll no doubt revise my opinion.
It's hard to imagine any Prometheus sequels being LESS intelligent. Much as I enjoyed it, it was dumb as a rock...
I'm sorry if this is bad form, but I'm going to repost something I said in a different forum: I almost think that the above views show the real success of the film. This movie has people talking. One of my friends agrees with Sci, but instead of just forgetting about it, she keeps reading reviews and discussions and sending me links. What is better: make a movie that the masses like/love, then forget about; or make a divisive movie that stays in the public conscious because people need to discuss its merits vs. its shortcomings? I think Ridley Scott may be grinning like the Cheshire Cat right now...