Prometheus

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Praeothmin
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Praeothmin »

Jim wrote:
Mikey wrote:
Praeothmin wrote:Charlize Theron?
I think she counts as part of the "visually stunning" part.
Over-rated.
Wow, if you feel Charlize Theron's beauty is over-rated, I certainly dont want to see who you think is better looking...

She pretty much is a classical beauty, that woman is... :Drool2:
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Re: Prometheus

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Praeothmin wrote:Wow, if you feel Charlize Theron's beauty is over-rated, I certainly dont want to see who you think is better looking...

She pretty much is a classical beauty, that woman is... :Drool2:
Don't get me wrong... I am not saying she is not attractive. Just not apex-predator level.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Mikey »

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think she's hotter than hell.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Okay, here are my thoughts on Prometheus, in detail. I'll spoilerise the spoilery section.

I've been trying to work through my feelings about this film since I saw it a couple of days ago.

Everything I saw and heard about this had me thinking that we might be in for something very special. Ridley Scott at his best is a genius, and I regard Alien as one of his best. When I heard that he was going to do a prequel to Alien, I was interested. When I heard that he was going to explore the background to the Space Jockey, I was sold. Count me in! When I heard that this was a "not quite a prequel" but it's own thing, I was only more intrigued - and the initial trailers had me gagging for it. I actually went into spoiler avoidance mode for the last few weeks, seeking to go into this as cold as I could.

I'm not quite sure what I expected... other than revelations. I expected to be surprised by the Space Jockeys. I expected that when we heard about them and their purposes, I would go "wow!"

I didn't go "wow". I didn't even go "huh?" I went "Um... really?"

Maybe I expected too much. I wasn't really thinking of this film as a monster/horror movie... I was thinking that in spirit it would be more "Close Encounters" with a Ridley twist than that. And the movie does dangle tantalising ideas along those lines - the idea that aliens have walked the Earth before, which appears in the trailers. The idea of mankind going to "meet god". The idea of finding out about the Jockeys and their purpose. These are all dangled... and then pretty much left to dangle. There's no follow through on any of it, no resolution. It's just kind of "hey, here's an idea. Make of it what you will, whilst I dangle another idea and then throw a monster at you."

Actually it's the same feeling I got from Lost, which I believe the Prometheus writer worked on. That they were dangling ideas and pretending like they had some grand concept in mind that they would slowly reveal... only it rapidly becomes clear that they are really just throwing stuff out there and thinking they'll come up with the best explanation they can later.

I'm not complaining that the movie doesn't explain every little thing. I'm fine with a little mystery, and a little "work it out for yourself". But there actually has to BE an answer there for you to work out. There really doesn't seem to be any answers available, in this movie.

No, this really isn't an "ideas" movie as such. It's a monster/horror movie. It's a movie about nasty beasts killing people. And unfortunately, that's about all it is. And even more unfortunately, it's not a very good one.

I'm going to get into spoiler territory now...
My first big disappointment in this film is the treatment of the Space Jockeys, aka the Engineers. Remember that gigantic creepy skeleton thing in the chair in Alien? Remember the weirdly shaped skull?

That's not a skull. That's a helmet. It lifts off, and underneath it... the Engineers look just like you and me. Only pale. Are you excited by that prospect? Does it intrigue you? It disappointed the hell out of me. As for their motivations, their story... Ridley has once or twice opined that the Alien eggs are basically biological weapons that the Engineers drop on their enemies. And that's what he goes with. And that is pretty much the entirety of what we learn about them in this movie. The use biological weapons to attack people, and they do it because... well, who knows? Apparently they are just bad people. Perhaps they are one of those "Warrior races" so beloved of science fiction, that go around attacking people for no reason. You know, like the Klingons in Star Trek.

If you were ever excited to ponder the possibilities that the Space Jockey offered... well, this is what is delivered up. And it's about all that is delivered up regarding them. It's so very ORDINARY, and if you go in expecting grand sweeping revelations, it's a big disappointment.

Still, I can't honestly feel too bad that Scott made a monster movie instead of the movie I wanted him to make. It's HIS movie after all, and we should judge it on its own terms. So how is it as a monster movie?

It's poor, frankly. Remember how the Alien in the first film worked? There was a remorseless, relentless logic to it. A logic that was there largely because the Xenomorph's life cycle was directly based in the actual biology of real creatures. It was horrific, because the logic of these creatures is that they HAVE to kill us. The Xenomorphs literally must kill us to reproduce, to continue the existence of their species.

In Prometheus, the monsters have no logic. They come from a black goo that the Engineers use as their bioweapon, but what the goo actually does is different in every case, and apparently completely random. In one case, it turns tiny worms into giant super-strong worms with acid for blood that can force their way down your throat. In another person, the same thing turns him into a sort of mutated zombie who rampages around killing everyone in sight whilst they shoot at him with guns and flamethrowers. One infected person has sex with a woman and infects her - and the result is that she becomes pregnant with a squid monster. But once she has that removed, she is apparently completely free of further infection and perfectly fine. But the squid monster can act as a face-hugger and infect somebody else, who then gives birth to a Xenomorph.

Just contemplate that last one. The greatest weakness of the Xenomorph, a weakness common to any parasite, is the limited supply of hosts. All those eggs the Nostromo crew found, and only one Xenomorph resulted because only one person got close enough. If the Xenomorphs reproduced more like birds or reptiles, Ripley would have faced a thousand of them.

Prometheus gives us a Xenomorph whose lifecycle is : Black goo infects man. Man has sex with and infects woman. Woman gives birth to squid monster. Squid monster sticks tube down somebody's throat. That guy grows a Xenomorph. Not one, not two, but THREE hosts are required. It's beyond ridiculous. There are no rules here, no logic, the monsters just do whatever Ridley thought would be cool and gross to the audience. And as a result they leave us unmoved and uninvolved.

All this really tries to be is a monster movie. It's a modest ambition, but even on that level a monster movie MUST have a really good, clear, threatening monster. Prometheus crowds the story with contradictory nonsensical monsters, and it's a flaw that it never recovers from.
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Re: Prometheus

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To be fair, the Space Jockeys were covered rather well, if lightly, in the novels. Their reasoning is their fear of any race developing to match them. What they do as a response is to plant trap worlds throughout space. However this back fires at some point and they are nearly killed off. In part due to their own creations, and in futher part because the Yutja (Predators) find out about them and their creations and think it would be a fun hunt.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Jim »

Sounds like a Nexflix options rather than spending the money to see it on the screen... i do nto care for the completely random nature that seems to be in the movie, nor the "Lost" story-style associations.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by colmquinn »

I just recently watched some old X - files (including the after show first movie ) which had the black fluid that could "infect" people and make then "hosts" for the aliens. All I could think of was where did I hear that before?..
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Re: Prometheus

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I watched it today instead of Battleship. It is ok. Nothing really special. Kinda figured the Engineer was going to do something nasty.

The first guy who was trying fucking pet a alien space work with a nasty looking head deserved to die. What a fucking moron.

So I figured that the black goo just randomly mutates whatever it comes into contact with. The Xeo we know is just result of a infected human male impregnanted a female human who births a giant squid in which impregnantes the Engineer which gives you the Xenomporph though more point looking than normal.

Nitpick here and a major one. That Space Jockey was found in his chair in Alien not lying dead in some human built transport.
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Re: Prometheus

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McAvoy wrote:
I watched it today instead of Battleship. It is ok. Nothing really special. Kinda figured the Engineer was going to do something nasty.

The first guy who was trying fucking pet a alien space work with a nasty looking head deserved to die. What a fucking moron.

So I figured that the black goo just randomly mutates whatever it comes into contact with. The Xeo we know is just result of a infected human male impregnanted a female human who births a giant squid in which impregnantes the Engineer which gives you the Xenomporph though more point looking than normal.

Nitpick here and a major one. That Space Jockey was found in his chair in Alien not lying dead in some human built transport.
This film is not set on the original planet (LV-426) but instead another one (LV-223). Only one of the many highly confusing things about this truly awful film.
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Re: Prometheus

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WTF?
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Re: Prometheus

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Yup, this is not the planet that Ripley et al visited. Confusing eh. :bangwall:
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Re: Prometheus

Post by McAvoy »

Maybe that should have been made clear especially in the end when the ship was lying down on the ground like the original.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Graham Kennedy »

When you first see the planet, the display shows that it is "LV-223". The one in Alien was LV-426.

If you remember, when this film was first being mooted a year or two back Ridley said it started off as a prequel to Alien but became "it's own thing" along the way. I strongly suspect that the original idea was for this to take place on the same planet, and the wrecked ship at the end to be the one the Nostromo finds. Part of the whole "making it it's own thing" was probably switching it to some other planet, for some reason.
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Re: Prometheus

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That is still stupid though. How many people are going to remember that difference? I just recently rewatched Alien and I didn't remember that.
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Re: Prometheus

Post by Jim »

Didn't they originally say that this movie was not meant to be an actual direct prequil or even directly connected to the "universe" of the original Alien film? I took this movie to be a non-reboot reboot.
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