PROMETHEUS - Grade and Discuss

[Shurik]

D (more like D-), only for the visuals.

Other than that, it fails completely and utterly on every other level. The story makes no sense and looks like a bad Alien fanfiction, it is not scary, not engaging, not entertaining - nothing. It looks like someone tried to do an Alien remake, tried to disguise it as a completely different movie, but failed.

It will make a great Rifftrax.

 

[Warped9]

The wide divergence in opinion of this film is almost mind-boggling. Even so it seems to be about two-thirds of opinion are in favour of it (in varying degree). That seems to hold no matter what opinion index or poll sampling I've seen.

 

[davejames]

Huh. Apparently there were originally two of them in the opening scene.

http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/06/14/prometheus-engineer-deleted-scene/

 

[davejames]

The wide divergence in opinion of this film is almost mind-boggling. Even so it seems to be about two-thirds of opinion are in favour of it (in varying degree). That seems to hold no matter what opinion index or poll sampling I've seen.

Well I think we ALL sort of recognize the same flaws in the movie, but some of us just have an easier time overlooking them than others.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Hmm, you sure? I am no plant biologist but a quick check in Wikipedia says:

"Most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the atmosphere. Through a process known as photosynthesis, most plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plus water, into simple sugars...Plants usually rely on soil primarily for support and water (in quantitative terms), but also obtain compounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other crucial elemental nutrients."

That seems to be saying that other than water, the majority of the final biomass comes from the atmosphere with specific needs from the soil.

You are right. Most of the mass of plants comes from CO2 and water from the atmosphere. I was wrong there.

However, all heavier elements, such as Nitrogen, Phosphorus, which a plant needs to grow come from the ground. Without these elements, a plant would die.

Either way, plants grow incredibly slowly and use branches and leaves to expand their surface area to absorb more. Nothing like an animal could get enough from the atmosphere to survive.

 

[Set Harth]

One interesting item I have read: someone pointed out on the web that the scene where Fitfield (the geologist) returns infected is out-of-sequence from where it goes according to the script. You can apparently tell from some of the trailer footage that it originally occurs as the away team with Weyland is about to head to the alien ship, and that Shaw is the one who drives the vehicle over the body. I would really like to see this scene where it originally stood, because as other than an action beat, it doesn't serve much of a purpose where it is now.

That reminds me of the scene in A Scanner Darkly which was moved to a point earlier in the film, thus causing part of a later scene to fail to make sense.

 

[Silent_Bob]

Finally got around to seeing it and left the cinema with two impressions:

1) When the frick did cinemas become so ridiculously expensive? For the price i paid for the ticket sod the 3D, Ridley Scott should be there to see me to my seat.

2)It was enjoyable enough, but not as good as it could have been.

For a film that was meant to deal with the Space Jockeys i expected them to play a bigger role. It seemed like most of the film was the Evil David Show with a snippet of Engineer at the end. And a few of the scenes just felt pointless.

Why have the Engineer head scene for example? Did we really need a whole sequence about a popping skull?

 

[MacLeod]

question: (sorry if this was brought up earlier)

WHY did the android deliberately infect Holloway and act so sanguine about the pregnancy?

Are we supposed to infer that by that point he hated the Human crew so much that he was justb treating them like guinea pigs to satisfy his curiosity? Or was that part of the old man's plan?

As for the movie, very meh.

Good music, it looked good, effects good, story very predictable and simple, and the lack of explanations regarding the "engineers" was frustrating.(saving that for a sequel perhaps?)

Well in the 'Alien' verse the synthetics at times have had ulterior motives i.e Ash in Alien. My guess is that David was programmed to see serve the best intrests of Mr. Weyland and other concerns were secondary.

 

[Starkers]

As a narrative thread it falls at the first hurdle because it seems to have been written backwards so it doesn't feel organic (pardon the pun) it just feels really contrived because we have no idea why David infected Hollaway in the first place, so what we're left with is the only reasonable conclusion: David infected Hollaway because how else would Shaw kill the engineer at the end.

While I agree the reappearance of the squid at the end was a bit silly and contrived (not helped by Shaw screaming "DIE!!" right beforehand), the rest of it I thought flowed in a pretty natural way.

David infected Hollaway because he was ordered to by Weyland, the virus was transmitted to Shaw through sex, and she then has the creature removed from her in a freaky operation.

It's no more ridulous than the sequence of events in the original movie (where a guy gets a creature stuck to his face, a second creature pops out of his stomach, and hours later it's suddenly 8 feet tall and killing the entire crew off).

And yeah, while it does seem odd that neither she nor Hollaway told anybody about their infections, that can just be chalked up to them not wanting to be locked away in quarantine for the rest of the trip (a trip they've been dreaming of their entire lives). And she had no reason to believe the squid would grow to the mammoth proportions that it did.

I think it is more ridiculous for various reasons. Firsly is the fact that the reasons for David infecting Hollaway make no sense. Why would Weyland ask him to do this? You're an old man, 35 light years from home on a potentially hostile planet, why start monkeying around with alien goop? What on the hopes it actually rejuvenates Hollaway in which case you can inject Weyland? That seems pretty thin given you might be releasing an infection that kills everyone (which is what nearly happens).

More importantly is just the damn pacing of the thing. The Kane/Chestburster bit in Alien works because there's build up to it. In Prometheus the entire lifecycle seems so ridiculously speeded up. David tells her she's pregnant, then dopes her, a moment later she wakes up being tended to by two of the other characters on board (did they have names? One was Scottish that's about all I know) who now appear to have become eeevvvviiiilll. Certainly talking to them never seems to be an option for Shaw, she has to beat them up instead. Then it's off to the (very handy) medical pod for a quick bit of DIY surgery (most ridiculous surgery since the end of Terminator Salvation). Basically she's pulled the squid out before I've really processed the fact she's 'pregnant', I haven't had time to become concerned for her so basically I don't care, so while I should be on the edge of my seat, instead all I'm doing is marvelling at how utterly stupid this scene is.

But this is a problem throughout the film, there's no time between set pieces to process what's going on. However fun the dip of a roller coaster is, what makes it is the anticipation as the car is slowly cranked up the hill. There's none of that in Prometheus, it's all downhill basically.

On an unrelated topic, I'm still increasingly perplexed as to why Scott even wanted to make this? It's clear he has far more interest in the Blade Runner universe, in fact Prometheus feels more like a film set in that universe. It's about artificial life and that life's intereaction with its creators. Whether it's David with humans or humans with engineers, and Weyland going to the engineer at the end is effectively Roy going to see Tyrel to ask for more life, only with a slightly flipped resolution this time. Be interesting to see what Scott can remotely add to Blade Runner 2 that won't feel like a call back to this film now.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

^He said to Mark Kermode that he always thought there was a story to be told about the Space Jockey and was surprised when none of the other films even attempted to do anything with it, so he went to Fox and suggested it.

 

[Starkers]

Well that's what he says

No I heard the same interview, it just feels like a lot of Blade Runner's themes are in Prometheus. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, I just think it's interesting given he's going to do Blade Runner 2 soon because it might appear he's going over old ground again so soon after addressing such issues here.

 

[Camren]

Wasn't Weyland in stasis when David infected whatshisname with the black goo? So how could he have ordered David to do anything? Can he communicate clear orders through his dreams?

 

[Starkers]

I think it's implied he could, certainly the way David was talking it appeared to be a two way conversation.

 

[Trekker4747]

Finally got around to seeing it and left the cinema with two impressions:

1) When the frick did cinemas become so ridiculously expensive? For the price i paid for the ticket sod the 3D, Ridley Scott should be there to see me to my seat.

In my experience the price for a regular movie ticket hasn't gone up in over a decade as it's still around $10. (Argument could be made it's cheaper since it hasn't tracked with inflation.)

3D movies usually cost a few dollars more simply because the 3D equipment and glasses are added cost burdens on the theater they have to recoup.

 

[Ometiklan]

Either way, plants grow incredibly slowly and use branches and leaves to expand their surface area to absorb more. Nothing like an animal could get enough from the atmosphere to survive.

I agree that in real life this would be the case. I am just hypothesizing a way for movie monsters to grow in size massively without apparent consumption of mass. The feasibility of it in terms of rates of respiration, etc. are less interesting because getting to that point one can always say "it's alien physiology, it's different" having established a not-unreasonable mechanism.

[Edit: One additional thought, plants don't have an active respiration system like animals do. Wouldn't a set of lungs or the equivalent pulling air through the alien carapace allow for greater collection of CO2/water? This still leaves us with the question of where aliens get their energy to be mobile/active predators. Maybe they do eat the occasional person for energy purposes? Or maybe they absorb ambient heat (kinda like reptiles, but way better) and have short active hunting periods?]

Reading more about proposed xenomorph biology, people have hypothesized that the mucus they secrete to cocoon people also serves to dissolve matter for ingestion (like flies). Maybe this is how the xenomorphs get their heavy metals?

More importantly is just the damn pacing of the thing...But this is a problem throughout the film, there's no time between set pieces to process what's going on. However fun the dip of a roller coaster is, what makes it is the anticipation as the car is slowly cranked up the hill. There's none of that in Prometheus, it's all downhill basically.

This is a very good point. Stated better than my own on the pacing issue. I think the most recent Star Trek (2009) had a similar issue. The character beats there were stronger than in Prometheus, but you still had very little time between action pieces. Spock removes himself from command due to his emotional trauma, talks to his dad in the transporter room, then is ready to go back on duty. Bang. No real to time build-up or assimilate the emotional impacts. I see a Lindeloff/Abrams thread here.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

In my experience the price for a regular movie ticket hasn't gone up in over a decade as it's still around $10. (Argument could be made it's cheaper since it hasn't tracked with inflation.)

Well, according to this, it has. It went from a $5.39 average in 2000 $7.89 in 2010. That's nearly a 50% increase!

I think there are many reasons for this, such as the massive budgets for the average action/adventure film. Just look at any list of movie budgets and it is obvious that costs have gotten out of control in Hollywood.

2000 Lord of the Rings trilogy - $100 M each
2012 The Hobbit - $270 M each

1983 Return of the Jedi - $32.5 M
1999 The Phantom Menace - $105 M

1982 Tron - $17 M
2010 Tron Legacy - $200 M

1993 Jurassic Park - $63 M
2001 Jurasic Park 3 - $93 M

1986 Aliens - $17 M
2004 Aliens vs Predator - $70 M

The only upside is, films make far far more at the box office now than ever. For example, Aliens made $85M in the U.S. box office. Avatar made $760 M.

 

[Tyberius]

Why have the Engineer head scene for example? Did we really need a whole sequence about a popping skull?

As I think more about it, that is a consistent portrayal of the Engineers. They believe in self-sacrifice and death to create life. It is the reason why the living Engineer is so pissed off at Weyland. For the Engineer's head to suddenly have life again after dieing would have been pure hell (and by the look on its face, it probably was). It just willed itself to death.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I agree that in real life this would be the case. I am just hypothesizing a way for movie monsters to grow in size massively without apparent consumption of mass. The feasibility of it in terms of rates of respiration, etc. are less interesting because getting to that point one can always say "it's alien physiology, it's different" having established a not-unreasonable mechanism.

Yeah. An alien would have to eat constantly in order to gain size the way we seen in this series.

However, this isn't beyond the realm of possibility. Assuming a sufficiently advanced species that can use material with near 100% efficiency, there is no reason why they couldn't grow extremely fast. Human growth is limited by how much of our energy is spent on simply staying alive (maintaining body temperature, ect) and when certain growth hormones are produced.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

One observation I'll make is that the film's score, by Marc Streitenfeld, is stunning. I purchased the soundtrack the other day, and it's just gorgeous.

 

[davejames]

I think it is more ridiculous for various reasons. Firsly is the fact that the reasons for David infecting Hollaway make no sense. Why would Weyland ask him to do this? You're an old man, 35 light years from home on a potentially hostile planet, why start monkeying around with alien goop? What on the hopes it actually rejuvenates Hollaway in which case you can inject Weyland? That seems pretty thin given you might be releasing an infection that kills everyone (which is what nearly happens).

Well Weyland probably knew that HE wasn't going to live much longer, so he didn't care what happened to the crew. David could conduct all his secret experiments on them, and then report back his findings to the Weyland Corporation.

The second the potential for a new bio-weapon was discovered, the crew probably became instantly disposable.