f13.net

Was originally intended as a prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, but Scott decided to turn it into an original film. Some time later however it was confirmed that while the movie will take place in the same universe as Alien, and greatly reference that movie, it will, for the bigger part, be an original movie and not a direct prequel.

First teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_luIM6xaIck&feature=player_embedded

There's a lot there that LOOKS like Alien.  This doesn't make me as pleased as you'd think.

Also, from here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/ it looks like is gonna be Noomi Rapace (Lizbeth Salander from the original Swedish versions), not Portman. Also looks like Charlize Theron in a secondary role, which is cool.

The majority of it looks like Alien. Especially when you watch the two trailers back to back. I don't know how this is anything but an Alien prequel, you even see the Space Jockey at the 0.38 mark.

Yeah, I don't know why they keep insisting it's an original and most definitely not an Alien prequel, like somehow it's a bad thing to make an Alien prequel. I guess the stink of two really shitty Aliens v. Predator movies really doesn't wash off in their minds.

The lead writer, Jon Spaihts, has a  :drill: script that you can read online called Shadow 19. It's about a Spaaaaace Marine who is sent on a one-man mission to figure out why a terraforming factory is malfunctioning on a distant planet.

I do not recall reading anything that has said it was not related to alien, in fact its been said a lot that the space jockey is central to it. That does not mean it has Xenomorphs in it however. AFAIK, The space jocky and Xenomorphs have nothing to do with each other, only that the jockey was also a victim.

Perhaps this movie sheds some light on all that.

I wouldn't mind seeing a sort of Dead Space spinoff as a movie.

Pass.

Isn't there a Dead Space animated movie?

It was terrible.

I haven't read anything official saying it's not an Alien prequel. I mean, the spacesuits are from Alien, the Space jockey ship is literally the same one from Alien, the Space Jockey and his chair/doohickey are literally the one from Alien, and the plot as I've read it is about the Space Jockey race creating lifeforms (including us) on planets and then for whatever reason engineering the Aliens to wipe them all out. That's why the "egg chamber" in this movie is mechanical with smooth, cylider "eggs". Aliens, Aliens, Aliens, Ridley Scott, Ridley Scott, facehugger, space jockey. It's a fucking Aliens prequel. The best thing they can do isn't to deny it's an Alien prequel, it's to point out that it's made by the guy who made the first Alien movie.

Alien was the first suspense horror movie I ever saw as a kid and it has stuck with me as a favorite of all time in my list. Therefore, I shall see this movie and marvel in it regardless of suckage. How else can you explain my watching of Alien 3 and Resurrection and not having an aneurism?

Well I dunno, but the Prometheus trailer text reveal looks like a huge reference to the original (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLamj-b0I8).

That's a good trailer.  I welcome Ridley Scott back to his universe.  Good looking art design and we get more info on the space jockey!
2012 will be a great year for movies.

Yeah it does. That trailer also reminded me: THAT FUCKING CAT

(http://itssolastcentury.co.uk/truck/sites/default/files/images/Alien jones the cat.gif)

My thing is that in the naming - why not call it Alien: Prometheus? Let the teeming masses out there who aren't insatiable sci-fi geeks but do remember the original movies fondly associate this movie with that one in their minds. Then also say "From the fucker that did the first Alien movie, you know the one that scared the shit out of you as a kid" in the trailer. Not linking it with the original just seems like wasted opportunity, even with as bad as the last 5 alien movies have been. You didn't see Robert Rodriguez cutting the Predators reboot off from the original series at all, despite the shitty shit shit shit that was AvP.

Because the public at large associate the name "alien(s)" with crappy B movie sci-fi now, not with the original.

a) The focus very well might not be on the Aliens.
b) The last good Alien movie came out 25 years ago.
c) How many successful prequel movies can you name?
d) Ridley Scott is no longer "the fucker the did the first Alien movie" or even "the guy that did Gladiator and Black Hawk Down".  He's currently "the guy that did that Robin Hood movie in 2010, and a number of other forgettable Russell Crowe movies".

A lot of the talk and buzz surrounding the movie is whether or not it's a prequel, how related it is to Alien(s), etc. If it was called Alien: Whatever that would be lost.

Also if the movie doesn't have a lot (or any) actual Aliens in it people would bitterly complain about Alien titling.

From what I've read (And I'm trying not to spoilerize myself too much) it sounds like a movie that's meant to stand on it's own, and also if you happen to be a fan of Alien, you could say it's a prequel and nothing will directly contradict that.

Which (IMO) sounds a lot more promising than shitting out an intentional Alien prequel.

I am sure most of you have seen the Superbowl trailer.... well, there's a new one without titles, with some extra footage... that has people nerding out over the content.

http://io9.com/5885921/ridley-scotts-latest-prometheus-trailer-cosmic-vistas-melting-faces-half+naked-freakouts

In short, I would say we have a much more direct prequel than we thought we might, while standing totally on it's own. The idea of how this could blow out the fiction of the universe is amazing. Now my most anticipated movie of the year.

Mind you, I'm a god damn huge Alien nerd.

Peter Weyland TED Talk 2023 (http://youtu.be/S7YK2uKxil8)

I've heard he only has a cameo in the movie which sucks because I could now watch a movie based purely around this character!

That was pretty damn cool.

Nice Pierce Brosnan impression.

Official Trailer released at Wondercon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HHcHYisZFLU)

So looking forward to this.

Please let this be good!

That trailer was just fucking ridiculously beyond anything else we call science fiction movies.

This movie's going to kill me isn't it?

Looks good.

I dunno, that trailer kind of disappointed me with how much it embraced the standard for this sort of storyline. Which means I'm still going to watch it, but I need to lay off paying attention to any of the other promotional material.

I think it gave away too much. Kinda wish I had not watched it. Lesson learned.

It did give away a lot, but nothing that a person wouldn't have figured out from the opening premise of the movie and the "evidence" found on LV426 in later movies. There are some inconsistencies that the trailer brings up, but they may be addressed in the movie.

How can you know?  :evil:

This does look good, although I feel the claim 'most anticipated movie of the year' is a tad bold when you have The Dark Knight Rises coming out in May.

I don't know...
I'm arranging a sitter for Prometheus, and the effects in it make me crave a release of a remastered, extended cut of Alien/Aliens with with the effects redone to match. Hell, the Laserdisc Box set I have with the extended cuts is the only reason I still have the Laserdisc player.

Dark Night Rises, eh. Another Batman movie, and it's a reset to boot.

I don't think it gave away much of anything.

There's heiroglyphs in space.
There are things with the heiroglyphs.
A space giant is in a chair.
The things with the heiroglyphs are...GOING TO EARTH (hweeee! hweeee! hweeee!!!!)

Note that I'm still excited for this movie, because I know it's tied to the Alien mythos, but I still don't even know if it's a prequel, sequel, or a parallel whatnot.

If you thought that trailer revealed too much, then definitely don't watch the International one....

Personally, I thought the trailer gave the entire game away.

Doesn't mean I'm not gonna go see it.

(though it's possibly because I'm international, looking at Taos post.

My gripe is that personally the greatest thing a movie can offer is an (how shall I word this...) unexpected ride. The Matrix and Inception were amazing not so much for being exceptional movies, both had their flaws, but for the chance to be Alice and jump down the rabbit hole. They allow me to enter their world and partake in a unique, engrossing adventure. Movies like Tropic Thunder or The Avengers are fun distractions to be sure. But a movie like Prometheus offers a chance to jump into an unknown world and go along for a ride.

I'm sure I will still be able to enjoy Prometheus, but I would rather not have had (grammar snake, help me!) the major plot points spelled out for me.

The problem is one of marketing. Inception's trailer spoiled nothing for me. I had no idea what the movie was about even after seeing the trailer. I went on word of mouth recommendation that the movie was awesome. Indeed the movie was an experience like few others, but I would never have seen the movie based on the trailer alone. TBH I was not really hyped about Prometheus. I saw the Aliens films a a kid and they were scary, but that's about all I remember. Sadly, I do remember Resurrection and Vs. spin offs. So while I am displeased that the trailer gave away the farm, it did succeed in pushing the movie onto my must see list as high concept sci-fi, rather than just a prequel to a scary movie I saw as a kid. So, catch-22 I guess?

I'm grateful to this thread. I haven't seen the trailers, and I'll be avoiding all the info about the film until I've seen it now.

So good.

I have a feeling the 'plot' of this movie is not really where the good will come from.  If it's in the vein of the original alien, the movie will be a lot more about the characters, suspense and horror than the actual setting or the why and how of what's going on.

I agree.  The second one knows this is a prequel, one is spoiled in some sense.  The movie has to work on other levels to grab people.

Weyland stock seems to be doing well.

https://www.weylandindustries.com/

David trailer is up  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DOOJl5lWNfM

Yup. I try not to get spoilerized, (I'm not clicking on any Cabin in the Woods threads until I see it.  :grin:) but in an age of the interwebz, and everyone knife fighting for the next 15 seconds of my attention, I can't see how they can not spoiler stuff.

"This video contains content from Comcast Entertainment Group, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.
Sorry about that."

Fucking Comcast. What the fuck do they even have to do with Prometheus?

but, it's a trailer for an upcoming movie right? wouldn't they want people to, you know, see it?

The might be looking to get the ad revenue from people seeing it on their own youtube channel. Also such a channel would have a list of trailers for their other great movies that they would want people to click on.

Comcast now owns NBC Universal, remember?

Great, comcast is trying to take on youtube the way google took on facebook, I'm sure it'll work out great for them too.  :why_so_serious:

Here's the David trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgJs7uluwlU

This may not be a popular view but if you make a video and put it on YouTube and someone rips a copy and uploads it to their own channel in an attempt to get hits, I think it's ok to ask YouTube to take it down, whether you're just doing it for fun or you're a megabucks corporation.

Anyway, I think the trailer and the marketing in general has been very entertaining so far.

Michael Fassbender is fantastic. And it's a great David Bowie impersonation too.  :grin:

I love the early 80's techno vibe to that ad, really great.

Unsub nailed it. He's totally rocking the Thin White Duke vibe.

New Prometheus trailer out

WARNING, it's very spoilery, wish I hadn't watched it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1byZkbNB3Jw

I noticed the Bowie connection straight away, but he's also channeling another David in his performance. There's a lot of the little boy who wanted to be real from AI in his mannerisms.
I'm certainly sure his name isn't a coincidence.

Huh? Inception had a plot?

I thought the trailer was great, and spoiled nothing of note to anyone who was already capable of doing connect the dots for 5 year olds.

Come on guys. Even though technically it's not an Alien prequel since they don't have the Aliens in it, it's the Alien prequel. We know the state of affairs on LV426 when the Nostromo goes there and there's not a lot of extra stuff happening on the planet to account for the crashed dong ship, chest-burst space jockey, etc. Even knowing the exact plot ahead of time I'll happily go see it to enjoy the visuals, story, and genre. And besides, how often do you go see a movie that you don't know what's going to happen? "Omg, The Avengers/Transformers/Whoever saved the earth! It's a twist!"

It would be with M Night Shlamamamadingdong.

Given the trailers, I'm going to take issue with the 'Doesn't have aliens in it.'.

 :why_so_serious:

Apparently, the way they say it's not a direct "Aliens" prequel is that the aliens we see in this one aren't the chest-bursty aliens - they are the superior aliens like the corpse you see in the throne on the egg ship the Nostromo found in the first movie. These are the guys that use the aliens to fuck shit up.

The "Space Jockey"

Though I'd love to know why the eggs look different than the traditional eggs.  Maybe we'll see why.

I think this is a reboot not a prequel.

Lab grown versus feral I would suspect. Evolution man... unless you are in Tenn.  :why_so_serious:

It has definitely not been produced that way.

I'm going to use the term "preboot" from now on.

I have a pair of loafers similar to the ones David is wearing, very comfy, too bad Simple went under. It seems everything in that trailer has been scrutinzed to an extreme, his clothing is fantastic, all sorts of possible references to ponder.  Love the clean and quiet sense of order with perhaps a slight whooshing or hum in the background, nod to Kubrick.

I'm going to try and avoid seeing that international trailer. I am wondering, after being aroused yet quite irritated by the spoilery and ADHD-ness of the earlier chop-cut trailers, if they couldn't have done all of the trailers in the superb "David style", I think that could have created a stir in itself for uniqueness.

Had a random thought that it would be neat if they could get Rooney Mara in for a Prometheus sequel, stage a fight with her and Noomi Rapace, and then zero-g makeup.  :awesome_for_real:

Saw this in London yesterday.

Mr Scott has done big budget swords'n'sandles, big budget medieval, big budget modern warfare and now big budget SciFi. How ironic then then that his return to the genre that he so masterfully worked in on Alien and Blade Runner should turn out to be his weakest work for some time.

I'll say nothing more specific as I guess most of you have not seen it due to the staggered global release. What I will say is that I am now far less enthusiastic about Scott's mooted Blade Runner return. Maybe I expected too much.

I've been wary of this film since he proclaimed it not to be an Alien prequel.

If you want a totally accurate review from an excellent critic, and you must see such before you see the film, here it is:

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/90469/prometheus.html

No real spoilers but a short, completely realistic review that gets straight to the core of the film and reflects exactly my feelings about Prometheus.

Ugh, I may wait for DVD after that review.

If you need a good night out at the cinema and want to see a film that looks fantastic (Scott is on top form with the visuals here) and is just disposable SciFi-by-the-numbers thrilling, by all means see it on the big screen - this film I think will lose much of its visual impact on the small screen.

But that's the problem - I was expecting a lot more from Ridley. I was underwhelmed - like I was by Kingdom of Heaven. However, "Kingdom" was a far superior film to Prometheus for me because I gave a crap about the supporting characters and if the lead character had been played by an actor with more gravitas than Orlando fucking Bloom and it had been released in the Director Cut version then I'd be comparing Prometheus to Robin Hood...  :ye_gods:

So, basically, a film that is going to be let down by the expectations that people placed on it. I doubt it was ever going to win in the first place.

I'm still intrigued by Del Toro's assertion that this film was the reason his planned "Mountains of Madness" adaptation was canned so will probably see it anyway - and Scott's visuals are nearly always worth seeing on the big screen.

Yeah, it sounds like everyone had this epic idea of what it would be built-up in their minds and instead it's merely a decent one.  The question, I suppose, is do you expect too much from Scott or is he not living-up to his potential here.

Either way I'll still watch it on my own sometime in the next few weeks. If anything because, as Draconian points out, the visuals will be wasted on a smaller screen.

Saw it last night at an imax. Visually incredible; this is sci-fi with scale, both in look and feel. Despite what everyone imagined or believed, Scott wasn't trying to deceive anyone when he talked about it being part of but separated from the Alien franchise. It shares a universe and several themes but is totally its own beast. It has elements of horror and brief bursts of action but it comes across as much harder sci-fi than either Alien or Aliens. Think more along the lines of 2001 or even Solaris; there are a lot of exquisitely serene, lonely moments throughout.

The film's secret weapon (that really isn't secret at all, considering) is Michael Fassbender's David. He is magnificent. Equal parts sinister, charming, childlike and with the exception of Noomi Rapace's Shaw, probably the most relatable crew member, which I'm sure is the point. The film's biggest flaw (and one that I hope might be eleiviated by a classic Scott after-the-fact extended cut) is that the rest of the crew are little more than window dressing. Some get moments to shine - Charlize Theron is a ball of barely repressed contempt and hatred; Idris Elba is stoic, contemplative and detached - but sadly few other of the 17 crew members get much time to show us who they are. We knew the crew of the Nostromo. We fell in love with the grunts of the Sulaco. It mattered more when they died. For the vast majority of the Prometheus crew, the theatrical cut sets them up as fodder.

It needs to be stated however that in terms of long range vision and imagination, Prometheus is incredibly strong. Scott is setting up something grand here, akin to Cameron's Avatar but in a universe we actually give a genuine shit about. There are moments in Prometheus that you know Scott must have been near squirming with glee about including that his younger, leaner self probably wouldn't have gotten away with. Science, Darwinism, Religion. It's all on the table. And more questions arise than answers are given.

Give this one time to sink in.

I expect a lot from Scott at his best - but in this case he can be forgiven since he was fighting a hopeless battle against a bloody terrible script. The movie is high concept, had the right director, seemingly unlimited financial resources - but the script is everything, and in this case I thought it a stinker.

Scott did his job as a visual auteur, but the characters sucked and there was very little suspense. His career annoys me - it's a diamond studded minefield.

 :thumbs_up:
Nice post.  I dare say you have some skills.  Write much?

As for that prior (negative) review, this is all I need to sell me on seeing it.

I mean really, it's hard sci-fi not space opera.  There IS a difference.  I think people who go into it expecting Star Wars meets Aliens will be dissapoint.  And tbh I prefer an 'Inception-like' sci-fantasy flick than otherwise. 

I liked Inception.

Yeah that line made me scratch my head as the parts of Inception I've seen I really dug.  I haven't seen it all, though, so I thought perhaps I was missing something that turned it in to a tatter of terribleness.

Don't you know? It's cool to bag on Inception.

I got that vibe from the trailers and it's a selling point for me as well.

Hype and anticipation go hand in hand with backlash and disappointment.

I really enjoyed Inception, but it was merely a beautifully crafted high concept heist/bond flick and not the second coming of cinema. It's not even Nolan's best movie (which remains, in my eyes, The Prestige) or second best. The thing is, much as I liked Inception, I've not really felt the need to see it again since I saw it in the cinema.

On the other hand, I want to see Prometheus again already. Not in an Avengers 'oh my fucking god that was so awesome let's go again' thrill ride way, more that I want to analyse and deconstruct it for my personal benefit, the same way I've done over the years with Scott's best work and Kubrick's also - and Prometheus really is Scott doing Kubrick as far as I'm concerned. I left the theatre feeling like I wasn't full up yet. Its not dissatisfaction - it's wanting more.

So are the horror elements jump scares and gooey monster stuff or anticipation/tension type stuff?

I think the Internet would have similar reactions to Blade Runner if it came out in modern times. HOW CAN WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

Oh wait, WB added on that stupid voice-over. WAIT. DOES PROMETHEUS HAVE A VOICE OVER AT THE END? IS RACHAEL A CARRIER OF THE ALIEN?

D:

Not having seen the movie there is a scene in the trailer where its heavily implied that she is infected with something inside of her.

The only thing Inception didn't do right was to fit neatly into an existing genre. Which probably pissed off some critics, but I loved it. Would watch again.

Sean Young is in Prometheus?

From the man who directed "Legend", "Someone To Watch Over Me", "GI Jane", "White Squall" and "A Good Year" comes a film about a woman and the android who loves her: "Prometheus"




Although, in in the interests of full disclosure, I quite liked Legend. Visually it was outstanding and Tim Curry's make-up was awesome. Also, Tangerine Dream!

Legend was a good, very underrated movie.

Man, when I was a kid, that was at the top of my list. Even with Tom Cruise in it, it is still one of my favorite movies from that era, along with Labyrinth.

Legend is amazing. I just wish they'd release the film with the Tangerine Dream soundtrack in the UK. It's one of the most glaring examples of the differences in regionalised features; the 2012 UK Bluray edition is a travesty.

Indeed, Legend is a stunnning take on the fairytale and pretty dark (demon kitchen axe-hacking, innocent fifteen year old princess seduced to her dark, lust-filled goth side - too bad the  studio wouldn't let Darkness fuck her as per the original script because that would have elevated Legend to the status of classic) and it is even better when viewed in the Director's Cut with the Goldsmith Sound Track as in the Ultimate Edition DVD version. I'd rank it as one Scott's best, along with Kingdom of Heaven (again, Director's Cut - fucking studio interference).

While he's raiding his back catalogue, I respectfully submit that Ridley should drop the Blade Runner sequel for now and do the far more important remake of  Legend following more closely Hjortsberg's original script.

I'd rather he didn't do a remake of Legend.  There's just no way it would be as good as the original, even without Tom Cruise, and sticking closer to the original script.  Hell, to be fair to Cruise, it's one of a small number of movies where he wasn't just playing Tom Cruise doing stuff surrounded by other people.

You should check out the tee at ShirtPunch today. http://www.shirtpunch.com/

No Tim curry, no legend.

I don't buy branded/printed tee's very often but that one? No brainer. Done deal.
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2twfiiO6G1qa9armo1_r2_500.jpg)

Hail, a_blatant_ripoff. That design was done much better on woot or teefury bout a month ago.

I don't think it's a ripoff; it's just been printed on black for the first time to be sold as a one day special by shirtpunch. You can buy it on other colours for a considerably higher price at other online stores now that offer has expired.

Just got back from a midnight show here, and my overall impression is a meh.  Characters made several puzzling or outright stupid decisions for no better reason than forwarding the plot.  Most of the characters were faceless and unimportant.  There was a lot of grossout footage, and very little actual thoughtful stuff.

I am really on the fence about whether this is worth seeing. I'm not at all liking Ridley Scott's pontificating about how "Chariots of the Gods" was probably right, there are Things Not Meant to Know and all that jazz, which rather typically for him he seems to be utterly serious about. When Scott decides he has a Message, his filmmaking typically suffers. A lot.

My decision was made not to see it when I found out David Lindelof was a co-writer of the screenplay. I'll never give that jackass any money ever again. He's an idiot.

Here's his quote about why he what he told Scott about the story:

Second reason I hate Lindelof: He thought the ending to the Sopranos was "empirically brilliant."

I want to shoot him in the face.

Stop sitting on the fence.

Of course its worth seeing.

Just saw it.  Still need to process some of it but it was decent, not great.  Good to see hard sci-fi on the screen.

Great sets, great visuals, great costumes and a nice mystery.  But the script was weak and I didn't much care for the actors.  I remember actually wondering who I was supposed to root for.  Also, why was Charlize Theron's character there?  Then I went to the can (thanks 30oz Cherry Slurpee) and considered just leaving. 

But I stuck it out and the movie picked up finally.  As someone said, it's Scott's version of 2001:  A Space Odyssey. 

Sadly, I think Scott's best days are behind him.  KoH, Robin Hood and now Promethus are well crafted, visually striking snore fests.  Or maybe he should 1.  Get better scripts and 2. Get leading actors who don't phone it in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Tweet:

https://twitter.com/#!/neiltyson (https://twitter.com/#!/neiltyson)

Saw it as soon as I got out of work, and was immensely underwhelmed.  Bad script, silly story, and uninteresting characters.

Scott delivered on the visuals and for the first few minutes I thought it was like he was channeling Terrence Mallick.  Then it just sailed along aimlessly and nothing really gripping ever happened.

Yeah, Charlize Theron's character was pointless...

Saw it. Visually fantastic. Actors are good, well-cast and able. Unfortunately, the script did no do any of them justice, and the whole story tottered around like a mish-mash of jenga pieces and gummi bears.

Why would you expect panicked characters to act like Spock?

Saw it in 3D last night. As others have said, the film itself is gorgeous. I thought the story was decent enough, if rather predictable, but I didn't go into the theater expecting anything amazing.

The 3D was passable; there weren't too many "things flying at your face moments" and the rest of it was done alright. We only saw it in 3D because we were half an hour late for the last non-3D version; I usually avoid 3D because wearing the glasses on top of my regular glasses is pretty uncomfortable.

Because its inconsistent and flippant. When a character is built up and played throughout the whole movie as a badass, having them suddenly start acting like a high-school cheerleader in a b-grade slasher flick is stupid.

I don't feel like Meredith Vickers is ever built up as a badass in the movie. A hardass, certainly - especially when it comes to situations that put her own personal safety on the line.

FIFY.

People do not make perfect decisions always, especially not quick snap decisions in life threatening situations.

I quite enjoyed it.  Maybe not the best film I've seen, but it was a good sci-fi flick and it felt 'familiar'.

Opinions itt. I'd argue with you on this, but I can't be arsed, movie is not worth it.

Just saw the movie and it wasn't bad. Felt like this thing needed a other 30min though, just wanted more out of it, especially the end.

This movie tried really hard to pretend it was smart. It wasn't. :(

Just saw it at my local CineTorrentPlexx. The best thing about is the David 'viral' trailer  :heartbreak: :heartbreak:

It's enjoyable as generic action-horror SF film. Don't watch if you expect somethnig in the style or quality of Alien 1.

Overall I am ok with it, good evening entertaiment (if you had a few beers beforehand).

Anyone who liked Blade Runner and wishes for a sequel should reconsider now.

Edit: The flm (especially at the end) makes attempts to be 'deep' and mysterious and fails.

I am pretty sure you can blame Lindelof for that. The main complaints after this weekend have centered on the script and the story.

It was just too...tame.  Some of the performances were downright excellent, the scenery and fx were great but the story told nothing other then omg aliens.

FYI, Madagascar 3 just beat this at the number 1 spot....just sayin'  :why_so_serious:

If you were a fan of World War Z and looking forward to seeing it on screen, then you'll love this.

http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/2012/06/10/19859476-wenn.html

A family movie will almost always beat an R-rated horror film. Particularly in the Summer.

Some internet dude breaks down all the symbolism for us.

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1

I was very interested in seeing this in the theater, but the reactions online, and the fact that Lindork wrote some of it, makes me want to wait for Blu-Ray, so I can watch it in the comfort of my underwear.

If you ever intend to see it I would do it in a theater.  The main redeeming quality of the film, which has been uniformly praised here, is the visual appeal and immense scale of the imagery.  I think that would be lost outside of a theater.

That studio deserves what it will get for believing that Lindelof will magically save a picture. It's even more ironic that they bring him to to solve a problem with the ending.

For a movie that wasn't very smartly portrayed for being 'hard' sci-fi, it has smart undertones if you dig.

I'm one of those picky motherfuckers who likes a decent story to go along with the great visuals as my motivation for getting out from under my rock and out to the theater.

Ghambit

Taking it further...

I was stretching since it has been well documented that Scott is pretty against religion.

Either way, life begets death.

A possible theory that I haven't seen mentioned:

I don't want to see this film anymore.

Btw.  If you can see this in a proper IMAX theatre (meaning a 5-story screen etc.), definitely do it.  Similar to Avatar, makes a huge difference... moreso even.
Also, spend some time on the Weyland website.


There's plenty of story in this movie, it's just painted in broad strokes designed to evoke thought rather than tell you what to think.  The analogies to Inception and 2001 are correct; not as good a movie as either obviously, but a nice jaunt into some fresh territory.





One flick where your spoiler-readin actually is a good thing and you don't want to see it.  pfft  That figures.

I don't take it as a sign that the engineers were anti-religion, as they kept arriving as religious figures to people.  It's only once their emissary wound up killed that they seemed to sour on the prospects of humanity.

There was a lot I liked about this movie but ultimately I left disappointed.  I think the difference between this and and something llike Inception is that for the most part Inception is a pretty well contained story that you can enjoy superficially, but gives you  something to ponder about later if you wish.  Prometheus doesn't feel complete, the whole movie posits a question that it willfully refuses to answer.  Most of the movie elements where quite well done as mentioned, the visuals and acting was fine and even the plot and pacing of the movie was pretty good, all let down at the end when even some hints of the answers you where hoping for don't come.

Exactly, almost all the elements of a great movie were there but they didn't tie it together. I blame the xenomorph myself because it felt like the movie built up to that being the big payoff when the rest of the movie had little to nothing to do with it specifically.

What? How many counts of DNA-Incest to make the thing. Start from 1.

Let me re-phrase.  While things led to the creation of the xenomorph, just hey it popping up and saying "hi im an alien!" -roll credits- is not an ending, there was no payoff there and we all knew it was coming.  Not to mention that the film never really explored more in depth the strong themes and symbolism it contained.  The was an epic ball-dropping if ever I've seen one, all the great elements were present except the script.

The more Inception fanboys rag on this the higher my expectations go.

Everything you just said is pretty much what happened in 2001 as well.  Didn't get fleshed out til 2010, and again later in 2061, etc.  Ended up just being a visual feast to provoke thought and that's really it.  Really fleshed-out stories tend to do the thinking for you.

I don't really want the story explained and all wrapped up but the movie needed some kind of closure to it.

Closure is for sequels... or however many it will spawn.

Not going to the theater happens to me a lot and I've come to the conclusion that it just a bad idea in general. You start elevating the movie you choose to go see on some kind of a pedestal, which is guaranteed to result in a disappointment. We should just get our asses off the computer chair more often. 

Pretty sure the xenomorph at the end was the queen seen in aliens...

A movie from the Lost writer poses some questions and has no answers for them?

Shocking.

Yeah that was pretty much my exact thought on the front end of all this. We went through the whole wankery on the interwebs the first time around, and when the curtain was finally pulled away, we still had nothing. Why people would bother doing it again is beyond me. Maybe because he's hiding behind Scott this time.

Or maybe, because we like aliens, got SOME answers, but also enjoy that with those answers came more questions.

I liked the picture and story this move painted, I liked the insights into things we never knew about the series, I like that there is more to tell.

Do you like the fact they may charge you $13 a pop for 3 movies when they could answer those questions in one pop?

I don't have a problem with it no. Why would I? I love the alien setting.

Unless they jump the shark.

Like :Resurrecton?  :why_so_serious:

I shall go see this...IMAX styles tomorrow afternoon. From what I gather here... it is probably the only way to watch this movie and enjoy the shit out of it (and not read the spoilers).

The problem is the way that they didn't answer the questions, not that they left some to explore.  They made a point of not giving you all the information that the characters in the movie had on hand. 

Look, I get that you don't want to answer every question, and that you want to leave some things mysterious.  However, this movie managed to give almost no concrete answers to anything.  Everything was, at best, implied, or suggested.

I don't disagree with that at all. The movie needed to answer more questions than it did, the ending just felt unsatisfactory and flat.  Would have worked for the pilot of a tv series but not a movie. I just mentioned the 2000 year thing because of what wasted said, the director is clearly stating that cause/effect from that was his intent.

"extended, mostly unsatisfying foray into deeper mythology with very little payoff."
"It all leads up to a conclusion so false and off-key that it is borderline astonishing."
"Real suspense comes from answers, not questions. Suspense comes not from wondering what's going on but from wondering what happens next."
"We don't just need answers, we need justifications."
"Meditations on the meaning of it all don’t amount to much."
"much of that speculation is trapped behind a series of unanswered questions that are more distracting than helpful."

Some of those quotes are from criticisms of the movie, and some of those are criticisms of LOST.

Because LOST was a Failure.

How so ?

Should have been green I guess.

I agree that Lost had many of the same problems.  Now, I also enjoyed both Lost and Prometheus quite a bit, flaws and all.

In fact, what I disliked the most about Prometheus wasn't the vagueness and lack of answers.  That was annoying at most, but not enough to trash the entire movie.  What pisses me off is the endless stream of colossally stupid behavior from pretty much every single character.  Every single death in this movie was the result of someone doing something completely ridiculous, that no sane, reasonably un-stupid person would ever attempt.  One or two moronic moments are unavoidable.  Sometimes someone needs to fuck something up in order to get the ball rolling.  Here, though, all the various dangers came almost entirely from people having  :uhrr: moments.

From pretty much the moment that anyone took their helmet off, I was  :facepalm:

Stupid moves is a staple of horror movies. Please see cabin in the woods.

Or the original Alien

Movie lacked an emotional connection that I got from Alien. Overall though, I enjoyed seeing it...especially in IMAX.

You were just worried about the cat.

I doubt you can recapture that lightning in a bottle, but the emotions played out on screen in Alien probably set the bar too high for any of the following iterations of it. This one just seemed to lack any connection to it as has been said in the thread. Guess scientists really are unfeeling assholes as opposed to blue collar workers.  :why_so_serious:

My point was that the problems of the show carried over into what could have been a promising movie premise. The man only knows how to write checks he can't possibly cash.

Lost wasn't a failure.  Just sayin'.

I don't think it was a "failure." I think the writer who did both lacks the ability to formulate a story without relying on the crutch of "tune in NEXT episode for the answers!"

I wasn't talking to you.

Lost wasn't a failure and I liked the ending. It wasn't perfect, but I thought it encapsulated the show fairly well, especially in comparison to the ending people expected. It obviously wasn't a financial failure, but I don't think it was a narrative one either. YMMV.

There's a ton of great artwork and a so forth that make the movie a worthy flick for any sci-fi fan, but this feels like a project with so many cooks in the kitchen they end up not being able to boil a simple egg, much less something with wildly ambitious philosophical goals.

Seriously ?

Is this more Green ?

Nah, Scottish jokes aside, it was entirely over the top, unexplained hostility, which ended up looking like poor acting, although it was just plain ole awkward script writing.

Yeah, a lot of character actions kind of made me go "what the fuck were you thinking" too.  

I mean, the way some of the characters act, I wouldnt be surprised to find out there is a hidden undeground lab out there with a bunch of office types in lab coats having it on with the Prometheus crew.  Control to Chem Department, did you finish treating their respirator tanks?

If you took a cheap, crappy, ultra-low budget 1950's SF movie and made it in the 21st century with 200 million dollars, you'd have Prometheus. It's like someone resurrected Ed Wood and told him to make a sequel to Alien.

Though come to think of it, I'm wrong. Ed Wood had a dream. Whoever made that piece of crap had a bad dream that was read by an Android without feelings, likeability, comprehension, musical ability (seriously, the music through the ENTIRE FILM was wrong), character motivation, plot making ability oe the knowledge of how to scare people, and then try and make a film about Aliens. Who are 100% human.

Or and somehow we need to get a Giant Squid that increased in size 1000 fold inside a medical bay made of plastic and end the movie in a nuclear explosion. And don't end the movie without ending the movie first. And also have a zombie. Because EVERY Ed Wood movie needs something that came back from the grave.

OMG. The Alien engineer's play was PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. It all makes sense now!


BUT WAIT THERE'S YET ANOTHER ENDING. After this next one.


When we can fly this ship at faster than light speed.




For the sequel.

The squid was what kinda crossed the line for me, even in the world of alien with its sketchy biology, the squid was a bit much.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Holloway

Yeah, I completely forgot about the mind boggling Biology traits anything remotely associated with the Xenomorphs have.  Nothing says realistic Biology like things derived directly from human DNA that have:
- Acidic blood hundreds of times stronger then anything remotely reasonable
- The ability to gestate from fetus to man sized or larger in a matter of hours
- The ability to increase in size and mass so extremely out of proportion to caloric intake that it practically defies the laws of Conservation of Energy

I mean,

A wizard did it...

Saw it this weekend.

It was an object lesson in poor research protocols, bad personnel selection and hilarious under-staffing.

Who needs a watch on an unknown creepy planet? Let's just all have sex instead!

I thought he was a mercenary at first.  A predecessor to the space marines from Aliens or something like that.

Just saw it this afternoon as my Dad's-day present and I was the same way.   

"Wtf.. why are you even doing that.  Nooooo, stupid!"

The movie straddles an odd line between hard science and fantasy science while also dipping toes in philosophy and horror.   It never quite gets them all right and I blame that on the script and the writer's inexperience.   (Or perhaps he just approaches everything this half-assed.)   

Not to mention so much of the movie was entirely pointless to the narrative.   
Ending thoughts:


See what happens when you put things in the hands of corporations!  :grin:

This was a different planet than LV-426 where the first two movies were based.

Oh shit, I missed that. Well now it makes even less sense to me.  :uhrr:

Yeah, a lot of people were confused like that. Speculation is it was supposed to be the same planet but got re-written late. The naming and the fact that it appears to be staged similarly on purpose is odd.

Apparently late in the game they did a script pass to make it less directly connected to Alien.

I don't think that's the case with Lindelof. I think his greatest strength as a writer is the ability to set a stage and give you a reason to give a shit about the coming material. If he was in charge of the first 1/4 of every story, and then forcibly removed from the project so that someone else actually moved his setpieces to a natural conclusion, the ending result would ultimately be better.

Meh.

Well at least it got me thinking on how this movie would line up with the originals.

I have come to a theory regarding the abject stupidity on display during the events of Prometheus. It's not much, but it makes some sense.

These people have been asleep for 2 years. They have been put into a sustained vegetative state, not much more than a coma, for a significant period of time. Now, I suspect that there's all sorts of hard sci-fi medical mumbo jumbo in their cryo-tubes that stops them all from actually becoming dribbling vegetables, but being forcibly woken up from a 2 year coma is still likely to leave a person with a fair degree of (possibly non-permanent) brain damage. Because while these people were hand-picked for their professional backgrounds, their actions imply some serious form of cognitive disability which I'm going to posit is simply because they all have the MOTHER of all jet-lag. "Eat space-pap to regain muscle mass! Drink sticky sweet space-pop to give you energy!" suggested the creepy automated Lunchlady voice. That it omits to tell them to take their space-Omega 3 supplements to stimulate brain activity was either an operational snafu or David Did It.

Maybe Senator Palpatine was using the Dark Side to cloud their minds.

Horror works with teens because they have notoriously bad decision making skills.  Hormones literally make them stupid.   It's almost passable with blue-collar 'real joes' because not all of them are street smart.  People at the pinnacle of their field breaking protocol because LOL ALIENS..   no.

This one also bugs me quite a bit.   You could write a fairly thick book based simply around attempting to figure out what the fuck David was doing / thinking throughout the entire movie.  Many of his actions are so downright bizzard you just have to wonder what was going through his head.

Would you write this book before or after you wrote one about the Lost numbers?

GOLD JERRY.

Also, bizzard.  Great new word.

I don't think they've ever been considered canon. Ill thought out fan-service, certainly.

Predator 2 had an alien skull included as a trophy, and I believe was always considered canon or permission was secured to do it from some rights holder....  it launched a gazillion other works with Alien/Predator crossovers.

The reality is that the Aliens folks never gave a shit about any kind of continuity anywhere at any time, which was why each movie did pretty much whatever it wanted. 

The problem with that thinking is that...


And a flute? Really, a fucking FLUTE!?

This video is full of spoilers, but I can't stop laughing at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0

Hence my final statement... I am rethinking things and hurting myself in the process.

Finally got around to seeing this. Liked it quite a bit. Alien and Aliens are still much better films, but from a rough read through this thread, not seeing the problems others saw. Well, other than the Geologist dude. That was just weird.

My position has softened on this movie. 


I'm not going to go see it again, but might buy the Director's Extended Cut OMGWTFBBQ editon for the extra footage, I'm always a sucker for that.

Andromeda strain

Benjamin Bratt was great in that.  :grin:

It's a crew going to an unknown solar system with two years in stasis.  The real top-notch people won't be swayed by money.  They needed either True Believers (the starry-eyed dimwits) or the A-Team (mercs and the personalities that come with).

Yes some really dumb shit happened, but it probably wasn't all that out of character given this was probably a first contact situation led by starry-eyed dimwits.

I saw it on Saturday and took some time to think about it. The more I think about it the more the movie falls apart and only adds to the "everything after Aliens was shit" history of this franchise. Between this and Robin Hood I'm thinking it's about time Ridley retires.

My problems with the movie:

Directive 4.  :why_so_serious:

David's story was the only one that really intrigued me.  I felt that a little more examination there and a little less "lol, biologist & geologist odd-couple!" would have helped a lot.

That is a pre post-production still. You can clearly see filming equipment in shot. Therefore you're comparing a relatively normal size human being portraying a giant alien before anyone's had the chance to digitally embiggen him as he appears in the movie.

True but my memory of the movie is that that is about the right size. I don't remember them being 2x the size of a human just large like say a basketball player compared to an average man.

Consider the size of the helmet/ head.  It was easily the size of the woman scientist's torso.

Hay guys!

They totally adjusted the size in the decades between movies, they also completely remodeled that room with cryobeds and chairs ( not in the first movie ).


Who gives a shit!

I'm unlurking for a bit here because this really confuses me. Are we supposed to watch and get all that out of it? Did they intentionally make it obscured to encourage every nerd on the internet to translate the movie for us? Am I just stupid for not catching any of it? I'm serious here, I feel dumb because I didn't notice any of that stuff. It's all very intriguing, but it would have been nice if the movie would have been just a tad bit more obvious about it.

Not only was it hidden from the audience, it seems to have been hidden from the characters. Including the things they themselves experienced in the previous scene

Maybe the film's supposed to be watched backwards.

Damon Lindorff is a pretentious moron. That's all you need to take away from the article.

It's not the same place!

(Which is a fault of the movie, let's get real - at some point in the script it clearly was the same place)

He was a geologist.  I assume he was into Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. :drill:

(Get it? :drill:)

Fixed.
And  :roll:

(http://www.tvequals.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/The-Borgias-Day-of-Ashes-Season-2-Episode-6-13.jpg)

His best role yet.

The aliens have a canon homeworld, A6 454. It was used in several of the old Dark Horse comics and the game AvP3. They're the dominant life form, but not the only one, and not the most dangerous one. They never go into much detail, but it's supposed to be some sort of fucked up deathworld where everything preys on everything else. Of course it's doubtful they've stuck to that, nor does it mean that the Engineers couldn't have taken some and fiddled with them.

So if the xenomorphs are weapons, who are the Engineers using them on? 

Us.  That was pretty much the entire plot of the movie.   :uhrr:

It's theorised that the Engineers are in the middle of a civil war. Any biological weapon that works on Humans should work on Engineers - we're the eugenic guinea pigs for one faction of Ubermenschen's mass extermination experiments.

If that's the case why did they want us to go to that planet.

The actual plot of the movie was

Yes, that was a thing, but... did you not watch the movie?   :headscratch:  There's not really anything ambiguous about it.  That's why they have to crash the thing into the other thing.

Again, it's not hard to infer that we were created in god's(engi's) image to be...something. Slaves, worshippers, evolved like them? Then something happened and the plan changed. Up until that point they were wanting us to go back to the cradle of life, when they changed their minds though, eden turned sour and they developed the means to destroy what they created.

Whether they invented the alien or not is up to speculation since it's on the mural on clearly existed in some form before the end of the movie.

We killed Jesus.

I'm fairly sure that wasn't me.

I suspect the chap in question was Jewish.

I saw this 2 weeks ago, but went to Ireland and forgot to comment.

Agree with general gist of what everybody is saying.  Movie is ok to meh'ish.  Has some plot holes, and the plot isn't much to begin with.  Visuals were great, but movie certainly could be better.  Still, was ok for a Sci-fi night out, and the sequel could be good.

Having said that, a few complaints about silliness in the movie:

Just watched it and got the feeling that more than half of the story died on the floor of the editing room. What a convoluted mess of a story.

I watched the deleted scenes, and I think they underestimated how explicit they should have been. This movie comes across as timid and afraid to tell it's story, and just wants to rely on everything being grand and mysterious.

I watched this last night and yeah, Del Toro was spot on - this isn't an Alien prequel, it's an adaptation of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" except, instead of a science expedition going to the Antarctic, they go to a planet where the first thing someone says is as close as dammit to "You can’t imagine anything like this. Highest peaks must go over thirty-five thousand feet. Everest out of the running." Then they find an abandoned alien structure.

The Engineers are Elder Things, the snake/octo-baby/alien thing are Shoggoths and the " freshly glistening and reflectively iridescent black slime" is glistening black slime. The scientists learn about the fate of the Elder things by murals/holograms and it seems that the Shoggoths turned on them. But they find a surviving Elder Thing which attacks the scientists and is then killed by a Shoggoth.

Simple really.  :awesome_for_real:

...I feel stupid now for not noticing that.

Christ, it's true. The only fundamental difference between the two is the lack of fucking man-sized penguins in Prometheus.  :awesome_for_real:

Well, there's a pseudo alien, a bunch of rapidly evolving worm things, and enough black oil to fill a lake. Given enough time I'm sure there will be man sized somethings there.

The more I watch this movie, the more pissed I am at it. A Del Torro MoM movie would have been a much better use of this plot. He's able to make stuff creepy and suspenseful without even trying. There's just so much crap Scott put in here that's stupid and demands you be stupid too. My latest bitch is that went whatsherfuck goes back to the alien ship that crashed to get David, she has to pass though that one big chamber that had thousands of those black oil canisters stacked neatly in it. Since just opening that one door made the canisters leak in that other room, guess what I bet will make them leak real good. Being in a spaceship that's just been rammed, crashed, rolled along the ground, and then fell the fuck over. But no, its apparently cool. And if they've got those cannisters stacked like chordwood in that room, what the fuck is the deal with the giant head room and the cannisters sitting up and neatly arranged. What's with that stupid green crystal in there. And if the Engineers were infected with the stuff, why were they all running to get into a room full of the stuff? Also, the CG scene of the geologist attacking the ship was a hundred times better than the shitty muppet makeup version they used. Shit, almost every scene has dozens of things wrong with it that make no sense.

David was good though. What a wasted opportunity on so many levels.

DVD/BLURAY PROMO AD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ynDGJS_FQ)

Questions... will... be answered?  

 :ye_gods:

THE. FUCK?!?

I actually yelled at the TV at a friend's watching football "What?" when seeing this ad.

Whole movie made me say WTF, and was a masturbatory Scott attempt to create additional sequels to an already overdone series.  

Yups. I think my favorite part of Prometheus was the viral trailers featuring David.

Yups again about the stupid shit. The film has so many unrealistic and contrived scenes and, even worse, characters that constantly act however the plot requires them too, rather than being sensible or at least relate-able. It's a long prepared-for science mission with an crack team of experts from every field, but their behavior is only consistent if you assume they are a bunch of 18 year olds from a generic teenage-slasher film.

Edit: And what was up with taking a 40 year old actor to play Weyland and dress him up like 95? I understand the use of CGI in something like Jurassic Park because, duh, but old people aren't extinct yet...

I can only suspect that Scott used a younger actor I case he ever want to revisit Weyland as a younger man.

IIRC, they had to do that because old Weyland wasn't originally in the movie, but after many changes to the script he was added.  Yes, the main point of the movie was added at the last minute.   :oh_i_see:

Also, don't try to figure out this movie.  It was a terrible script, terrible directing and terrible editing.  That's it.

I haven't seen the movie, but vaguely recall these short stories. So I went to the wiki for a refresher, and whoever edited that part of the page links ATMOM to Prometheus:
They cite this post by DelToro at DelToroFilms.com (http://www.deltorofilms.com/wp/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=454#p10252).

All of which actually makes me now want to see Prometheus. And reread ATMOM  :grin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avXZVgzLP68

They addressed this specifically in the three hour wankfest "making of" on bluray. It was because Scott wanted Weyland to have "youthful" eyes.

euhhhhhhgg

I would've preferred a 2hr movie of just Michael Fassbender as David alone on that ship doing neat, existential things than what I just saw.  Honestly.  I fear for any Blade Runner prequel. 

Lindlehof the obfuscator + Scott phoning in the direction is a terrible formula.  Disappointing.


But nice to see Sean Harris (Micheletto on Borgias) getting work.  Great stuff. 

Obviously you missed the alien at the end.

The world does not need another remake of Solaris.

I thought the movie was pretty good. The final line was lame, but otherwise I thought it was really enjoyable.

I think you're all being nitpicking nerds and alien fanboys.

I'd add the Welyand Ted speech to my list of favorite parts of Prometheus. If they'd had that version of Weyland in the movie and had a competent screenwriter rip the stupid out of the script it would have been a lot better. As it was it loses out only to Alien 3 as my least favorite Alien movie. Much like Alien 3 I simply pretend it never happened lest my enjoyment of the other movies is ruined.

I'm sure there will be a great directors recut in a few years. Actually I'm not sure you can fix some of the stupid/plot.

It's unfortunate.

Also worlds strongest stomach staples. And the black goo turns everyone into a homicidal maniac, but shaw just gets knocked up?

The goo only works on the Y chromosome.  That's why she had squid-sperm baby instead of being affected like the others.

Thought that was due to the sexy time with the infected worm-eye.

The black goo didn't turn anyone homicidal.  It made the idiot 'durr, let's take off our helmets!' boyfriend into a walking tumor who looked about to explode, and made him knock her up with the squid, but that's it.  The two even more idiotic scientists who got all homicidal weren't exposed to the goo, they got facehugged by the worm-snake-penis things that they shouldn't've been trying to poke but did anyways.

At least it was a legitimate squid.  :why_so_serious:

David's actions made so little sense as well. I'm sad this movie wasn't better than it was.

Me too.  :heartbreak: I am still really jonesing for a fairly hard sci-fi movie. 

I don't know how anyone expecting much after seeing that trailer...

Shut your mouth. The trailer was boss.

I don't know what you people were expecting. I thought the movie was very enjoyable. Most of the complaints seem to be nitpicking or "why isn't everything clear and explicit?!"

I liked all the "you're just a stupid robot" comments the characters made to David. (Oh no - alien life form is a little bit inscrutable! I call that good writing, not bad.) Edit: Let me clarify that all the other characterisation was pretty awful. Or maybe Fassbender is just good at being an andriod and Marshall-Green is fuckawful at being an insufferable idealist and just does 'goober' instead.

For those that were bitching about Lindelof earlier on in the thread, I leave you this.

http://io9.com/5960275/what-did-damon-lindelof-add-to-prometheus-the-biggest-differences-with-the-original-draft?tag=prometheus (http://io9.com/5960275/what-did-damon-lindelof-add-to-prometheus-the-biggest-differences-with-the-original-draft?tag=prometheus)

Just saw this. It was a mess.  I wanted everyone to die. Micheal Fassbender did well with the only mildly interesting or competent character. Charlize Theron was completely wasted which is crime by itself.  If I had payed more then $1.20, I'd be upset.

Interesting article. One thing I might have liked about the original script is that it explained why David was a psycho (to precis the article; while everyone else is in hypersleep on the way to the planet, he is busy decoding the alien language - and when he succeeds, it messes up his programming).

One of the problems I had with the movie as it stands is that it doesn't explain why David behaves the way he does. It's one thing to have some mystery in a film (like Alien not explaining what the visitor is or where it comes from - it's mysterious and inexplicable to us just like it is to the characters, which is cool because it helps us identify with them) but you have to understand the motivation of the main characters in a movie for it to work, it seems to me.

I was cool with the idea that David was just a little nuts and doing his own thing.  I've never bought into the idea of the Three Laws of Robotics as something that would be easy or failsafe.  Any human-level AI would necessarily be as complicated (and potentially unpredictable) as a human, and might not do the stuff you want.  Especially if it's a one-of-a-kind prototype or whatever.

That said, I like the idea of David being corrupted by alien thought patterns or whatever.  It's a cool touch.

Because in the same way that the alien organism in Prometheus hints at/harks back to what will/did happen in Alien, so David's instability foreshadows/recalls Ash's own human-esque failings and illogicalities.

EDIT: Christ I'm thick - only just picked up on Ash, Bishop, Call, David.  :uhrr:

Yeah but it only makes sense in movie chronology not lore chronology.

I don't get it.

A B C D

They're the androids from the Alien franchise.

:facepalm:

I much prefer the sense I got from the final movie than that early script.

But too old school SF slash fan fic for me on that one.

Finally watched this last night.

Holy shit, this movie was HORRIBLE. So pretty. SO GODDAMN BRAINLESS. I spent most of the night and the morning asking myself questions that contained the formula "But if X then WHY is Y?" Because there were so many stupid character decisions, inconsistencies and just outright bizarre senseless things that I kept trying to make sense of it all. The movie just made no sense. The characters made no sense. The aliens made no sense. It was the physical manifestation of the Chewbacca defense. Such a shame, because Fassbender did a fantastic job and Idris Elba was good with what little he was given. In all, I think you can chalk the whole mess up to a really really lazy screenplay that didn't bother to make even the slightest sense.

Uh, Bad decisions is a staple of this genre.

Don't you write books?

Bad decisions are fine as long as they make sense. In the original Alien, Dallas going into the vents was a bad idea, but he didn't know the xenomorph grew up so fast, so it made sense.

Wut.

Heh.

Hold on guys. I hear something. You guys stay where. I will be right back with help!

Are we talking about the making of the movie and not the story?  :headscratch:

Yep. Bad decisions is a staple of the genre. However, the decisions NEED TO HAVE A REASON. For teen slasher flicks, it's usually because teens are hormonal and stupid and thus prone to bad decisions. Or at the very least, the bad decisions need to be because of some character motivation we've been given.

Let's take Vickers, for instance. First off, her sleeping with the captain. Why? We didn't get to see her tits, so that's a reason shot down. If it was meant to get the captain off the bridge so he wouldn't see that Laurel and Scottish Hardy were getting facefucked by goo worms, that makes no sense because the minute he returns to the bridge or anyone looks at the monitoring equipment, they'll see that these dudes have NO FUCKING VITAL SIGNS, which would mean that when/if the crew did go back in the temple to find their bodies, they'd be prepared instead of being somehow surprised at these guy's deaths.

Also why did Vickers go on the ship WITH Weyland? The only fucking motivation we're given by the story is that she wants to succeed her father in running the company. Ok... well since her father is likely to die anyway on a 4-year space voyage AND she doesn't believe there's anything out there to be found, WHY WOULD SHE GO ON THE TRIP? Unless she's there to make sure her father dies (in which case, she'd have actually done something to kill him), I see no logical or illogical reason for her to go on the trip based solely on what little character motivation the script gave us. Just like there's no motivation for her to sleep with the captain unless there's more history there than the audience has been given. It's fine for there to be some past history but at least throw the audience a bone and give us a FUCKING HINT about it. Otherwise we're sitting there going "WHY WOULD YOU FUCKING DO THAT?!!!?!?!?!?!"

Bad decisions are fine, so long as the writer knows WHY those bad decisions are made and the audience is given at least some hint as to what would make the person make such a bad decision.

If it was just one bad decision, it would be fine, but it's a mountain of them that keep piling up for no reason other than the script said this had to happen.

Untrained civilians making bad decisions is ok.  'Expert' civilians making bad decisions is not.

9 pages of thread totally convincing me to buy this.  Multiple times.

That was the first time I laughed out loud at work today. Thanks... thought I would be able to get out of here without someone raising an eyebrow.

The Vickers and Captain scene is also a requirement. "Sexey" scenes followed by horrible things is a staple. Unless you are saying that a captain, and a high ranking corporate citizen are incapable of human error, but I don't think that's what you are upset about, Mr. Petraeus.

You clearly don't work in IT.

It's only a requirement if the scriptwriter you hired to unfuck your script is doing his rewrites according to "Lazy Ass Fucktard Screenwriting for Dummies by Clueless Fucktard." There's nothing that says you HAVE to do the expected things for genre entertainment. It just takes some goddamn thought. And there weren't even any "SEXEY" scenes. No tits displayed, hell the "seduction" had about as much passion as I show my vacuum cleaner. And it has mad suction.  :why_so_serious:

You're in the wrong thread.

They never gave vickers a reason to sleep with the captain other than "fuck it, why not?" which ironically happens in real life. I can't remember who said it but the quote is something like "unlike in real life, fiction has to make sense"  I don't regard that point in the movie as a bad decision or even close to one of its many faults, I think it stands out for most people though because since they did not explain it, it felt jarring to the audience.

Maybe the Ice Queen was horny?  It's been known to happen.

This is the thing though, in any story the characters generally have to behave in a way that makes some sort of sense. They don't have to behave rationally - if you establish that one of them is an idiot then they can behave like an idiot. You can have one of them be insane or just a nasty type of person or a nice person and that might be explanation enough for their actions. But there has to be some sort of logic behind their actions otherwise you don't have a narrative, you have a series of random events.

If a character is a trained astronaut or scientist but totally lacking in common sense ("I think I'll take my helmet off") then that's cool but the story has to acknowledge that, not just suddenly turn them into an idiot for 30 seconds when its convenient to the plot.

A story can leave mysteries unsolved or let the viewer come up with their own answers if it's exploring questions to do with life, the universe and everything, but if the behaviour of the characters is so inconsistent and apparently random that you're asking "why did they do that? And why did they do that?" every 5 minutes then it's just a badly written story.

Pics or it's never been known to happen.

I made Minvaren burn all pics involving the lamp.  Sorry.

What Palmer said. If you are going to have people acting like an idiot, don't establish the character as something entirely unidiotic like then out of nowhere make them act like an idiot. It was the jarring nature of most of the bad decisions that made them all so obvious. Biologist dude playing with snake thingie, geologist getting lost in a cave that HE HIMSELF IS MAPPING, Ice Queen sleeping with the captain JUST BECAUSE. Just because is a terrible excuse for anything in a narrative is 90% of the time going to cause the audience to ask "WHY?"

Once the audience starts asking why something has happened, you've fucking lost them.

Haemish is making sense to me.  I thought the implied love scene was strange because it served no purpose in a movie begging for more explanation.  We already knew Vickers was an ice queen.  It did not need to be reinforced.  The fact that the captain brought the subject up actually added to his character a bit, but it didn't require Vickers to agree to make that point. 

F13 Hates sexy time that has no reason!

When a 3 hour porn shoot has more plot structure for the sex that's about to happen, yes, it's a problem.  Particularly when you don't even get to see the goods.

It's not that I had no reason, it's that it felt out of place. Vickers being a frigid cow and/or being to stuck up to get consider fucking the chauffeur would make more sense.

I like how dedicated driven women in power are instantly frigid!

 :facepalm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8f9-Mf47L0&list=PLBF95254D29BEAE15&index=1&feature=plcp

I think I am in love.

She's going to bend them!!!!

They're just Image comics, not worth anything anyway.

I believe they are Liefeld comics? which makes it geeky and ironic.

Dear gods.  I just learned what I want for Christmas this year.

Santa is between a man and his fantasy woman.

I don't think any men will be involved.

Santa's sometimes called an elf, though.  And they're not manly.

Glad we share the same tastes.  :drill:

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbbktxXbI71r1fbqco1_1280.jpg)

How many colors of sports bras does she go through in one video?

If you run a Kickstarter, we'll all pitch in.

Enjoyed the video but found it kinda curious that her look didn't quite match the valley-girl diction. Not that I thought she was unpleasant to watch  :grin:

Looks like Promethus 2 is going forward with a new writer, Jack Paglen (Transcendence).

http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/news/669 (http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/news/669)

In the article, Lindelof explains why he isn't doing the next movie.  Here's a snip I found interesting.

"After the movie came out and discussions began about a possible sequel, I was already neck deep in writing and producing TOMORROWLAND with Brad Bird. I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking."

Apologies for the necro, but maybe there is hope for this franchise after all.

Isn't Prometheus 2 just Alien?

Only nowhere near as good.

There is quite a bit of time between Prometheus and Alien. Prometheus 2093 to Alien 2179.

So what was he writing at the same time he was writing Prometheus?

A deposit slip?

*snerk*

No, according to his own words, he spent a year solely re-writing the Promethus script.  He also said he told Ridley he  couldn't do Promethus 2 (Paradise) due to another project.  Ridley then said "I never asked you to."  :grin:

According to him.

I realize I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really don't like this guy. 

That's because he's a bad writer. A bad writer who, by some profound accident of moviemaking industry culture and heirarchy, writes the exact sort of bad movie script that moviemakers go with or get stuck with, as the product of some sort of inexplicable perverse incentive. He should be writing no movies. Zero movies. There is absolutely no shortage of writers who will happily write movies without Lindeloffian Plot Holes and just generally be more accountable to and better at their job. You lose nothing by not having writers like him, but he's affixed himself to the top of the heap and as such is empowered to poop on movies which should be good and could be good if he had not been allowed to grace it with his reverse midas touch. He's presently the film industry's Metzen.

He's not just easy to dislike because he has a flippant attitude perpetually orbiting his being a complete shit writer, he's easy to dislike because it becomes profoundly more and more obvious when his greasy fingerprints are all over a movie plot. If you have watched Prometheus and Into Darkness and in both movies been like "wait why the fuck.." then it has already happened. You have developed a Lindelof allergy. You already hate his writing. 

And you got tons of aspiring writers who, to quote one I listened to recently, are stomped in the face by this shit: "It's maddening because movies I've worked on for many months of my life get bulldozed by studio execs for plot holes significantly smaller than this, but writers at the level of Lindelof and K/O are never questioned. It's maddening when you are told you're shit at your job and then someone else is praised for being worse at it."

Literally because I discovered Lindelof was a writer for ST:ID, I made sure to slam down a bunch of alcohol before I watched it. I then termed it the movie's Lindelof Quotient. Defined as: how much alcohol you have to put down to be able to 'turn your brain off' and watch a movie without being taken out of it by niggling, stacking, persistent questions, really bad lines or awkward turns, unimaginitive plot holes, baldly exploitative scenes, and other things. Into Darkness was way up there for me, two long islands and add a vodka tonic if you follow trek lore. Prometheus was pounding down half a bottle of glenmorangie. Some record holders taking the heat off of lindy may include Transformers 2, which may hypothetically require a solid bottle of wood grain alcohol, followed by punching yourself in the eyes a hundred times just in case the alcohol poisoning hasn't blinded you fast enough.

yes i am mad. mad about lindelof. it is a pre-emptive madness, before he gets his grubby mitts on star wars and i go stark raving lunatic.

I eagerly anticipate the colossal butthurt when Lindeloff gets his mitts on Star Wars - or I would if I didn't know about the massive shit Lucas took all over the brand with the prequels.

Your spittle is showing. Hehe

FRAGH. SPLATGHFRN. ARGHTH. I AM SO MAD.

DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN REALIZE HOW LITTLE SENSE BATTLETECH WARFARE MAKES, I'LL KILL YOU

Like it goes from 99% to 100%?

Yeah, it's hard to get a proper nerdrage going when Lucas already took the franchise to shit town. Lindeloft will just keep the shit alive.  :awesome_for_real:

I think you're forgetting Lindelof would have the entire EU to play with.

So because of some mildly questionable parenting by his dad, he not only thinks it's valid to just throw up his hands and say "It's a big mystery!!!" -- it's his preferred ending!   :oh_i_see:

In summary, Prometheus 2 might be good, but Brad Bird's next movie will only be "meh."

That does seem to explain a lot.

I still think there's a good film in Prometheus. I'm expecting the traditional better-after-the-fact Director's Cut to show up within a year or so; there's plenty that editing can do to save some of the stupid, and I expect there's plenty of footage we haven't seen. Scott isn't exactly a parsimonious director.

That being said, Lindelof is becoming more and more of a problem. I'm deeply concerned that Brad Bird is working with him, now. Star Trek: Into Darkness was so abysmally fuck-stupid it made Prometheus seem like a breathtaking work of absolute genius in comparison. But that's possibly because of the competition Bob Orci represented to Lindelof in the 'Who Hates Science More?' writing stakes.

It sure as shit explains why every goddamn character on Lost had serious daddy issues.

In anticipation of the new Aliens - I've rewatched all of it, and I'm now on Prometheus.

This movie is far and away the best in the series. In fact, watching them in release order really shows how incredibly poorly the old movies aged. Aliens was way worse than I remember. Alien 3 and Resurrection were essentially garbage. Alien was the best of the original 4 and still... not very good. :|

I really liked Prometheus. But I like plodding thought movies.

So do I, but IMHO Prometheus doesn't fit that description.

I'd call it "People suffering from hypersleep induced brain damage stumbling through impressive vista movie"

I mean even the start is stupid: Seeding a planet by drinking a liquid that dissolves the user. Who does that?

Dramatic effect overruling a sensible story.

I thought was the only one who really liked this, plotholes and all.

I gave it a 2nd watch a couple of months ago and liked it a lot more than the first time I saw it. I'd had a bit of a read about what was supposed to be happening in it, so it made more sense. I don't think the movie does a great job of explaining itself.

This movie was terrible in every aspect other than visual.

Wait, is this some kind of subtle sarcasm I don't understand? I can't understand how anyone who appreciates things like good script writing, good editing and good directing can put Prometheus anywhere close to being in the same league as Alien and Aliens. Those movies are classics for a reason. Hell, I'd say that Alien 3 is a better movie than Prometheus and I hate the movie from the opening credits scene and it only gets worse from there. But at least it has a damn good director and some great cinematography. If nothing else, most of those prisoners are smarter than the "scientists" in Prometheus.

I'd re-watch Alien Resurrection before I re-watched Prometheus and Resurrection has that damn alien human baby thing Ripley has sex with.

Forget it, Jake. It's Schildtown.

See, that's what I thought going into it. Now I feel like Alien and Aliens don't deserve any of their classic designation. Ripley simply wasn't as believable as I remembered. And EVERYONE other than Ripley, up to like, Ron Perlman in Resurrection was a stone cold fucking idiot. That's really the only thing Prometheus shares with the originals - everyone is dumb as a stump. Alien 3 and Resurrection, where they moved off practical effects, were a disaster, start to finish. And the first two just didn't create NEARLY the tension I remember, nor were they effective as horror pieces.

Predator, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street (of all fucking things) have aged better than than the Alien series.

I actually had this discussion with a friend and the conclusion we came to was that Ridley Scott and Co misjudged what people liked about Alien during the first quadrilogy. They thought it was about Ripley, that's why she got shoehorned into all the movies. No, they were about the xenomorphs. And it wasn't until the long gap between resurrection and Prometheus that he realized it was never about Ripley. Which, if you take all the dialogue and all the actors out of Prometheus, still makes for a better back story than he could've conceived of in the 70s and 80s.

Also, CGI caught up with practical effects, which helped immensely.

In short, go back and watch the originals. Maybe they aged better for you. For me, they aged like garbage.

Edit: Mega-unpopular opinion, Alien vs Predator is better than all of these movies. Though I should probably watch AVP again since it's been a few weeks since I watched it. AVP:R however, is a corpse that didn't need to exist.

AVP was legit fun.

There - just a slight correction.

Both AVP movies were horribad, especially the second one. They were terrible as films, terrible as brand extensions and terrible as parts of a franchise/continuity. They weren't even fun as neither writer or director figured out what is interesting about the concept - Aliens fighting Predators. All the humans and their stupid stories got in the way.

And while I agree there is a certain aspect of "characters acting like stupid assholes for story purposes" in the first 2 Aliens, none of their actions eclipse "geologist who can't follow a fucking map" or "xenobiologist who takes his helmet off in front of unknown species" stupid.

1. Geologist followed the map fine, based on you know, how humans think.
2. Xenobiologist took his helmet off in Prometheus before he knew there were things living on the planet. The other ones all got punched/facehugged through.
3. AVP was not crap. You should really sit down and watch all Alien shit - all of it - again.

I've never been hugely invested in the Alien franchise. AvP and Prometheus are both terrible movies though. AvP is very much "from the guy who brought you most of the terrible Resident Evil movies". That final fight scene is embarrassingly bad. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it's always good to see Ewen Bremmer. Prometheus barely feels like a narrative as opposed to a collection of scenes and ideas that never come together to make any sort of cohesive whole. Of the handful of people in the movie who can actually act, Fassbender is the only one who gets an interesting role to play.

I won't defend Alien or Aliens at all. I rewatched both of them in the last year and like them well enough, but like I said it's not a series I hold particularly close.

See, here's the thing, I'm not attached to them at all, other than I think the xenomorphs are fantastically designed villains and maybe one of the best in sci-fi and yet they're just in garbage movies. My comments, other than the one I made about other movies that aged better, were specific to the alien franchise as they exist.

So no, I'm not attached to them either - but if I'm comparing them all against eachother, the older ones aged BADLY and as I've said, do not deserve their classic status.

I rewatched Alien & Aliens within the last 6 months. You're nuttier than a fruitcake, as usual.

Aliens does suffer from a bit of 80's action flick age and a few things that have become tropes since then, but it's still a solid film. Saying a film isn't a classic because others have imitated it in the 30 years since is a very you thing, though.

Eh? What imitated it? What are you even talking about? I'm saying Ridley Scott/Co never identified, until recently, what was so fucking rad about xenomorphs. Which, if Aliens: Resurrection didn't exist, would be a weaker argument.

I just looked it because I had no clue who wrote Resurrected.

And now it all makes sense.

Joss fucking Whedon.

But seriously, what are you talking about? If I wanted to make the argument that Aliens is weaker due to movies that came out later doing the same thing, I'd have pointed to Pitch Black and ended the argument, but that entire line of thinking is absurd. Aliens, as a series, is weak on its own merits.

Edit: Also, Aliens doesn't suffer because of 80s flick bullshit - otherwise Predator and a fuckload of other movies would suffer for the same reasons. Alas, they don't. Aliens suffers because it was not a good movie. And let's state a mega fucking unpopular opinion: Weaver is a shit lead in them.

Edit 2: And Aliens - which was all James Cameron, could've been up there with Terminator 1 or 2, but he was stuck with bad actors and a - at the time - a bad property that the studio clearly completely misunderstood.

At least for the first two movies, this is an unpopular opinion, because it's also not true. I can't imagine a single actress from the 70-80s who could have done the androgynous paranoid super bitch that Weaver pulled off. I thought it was beyond its years in terms of portraying an alpha female, who happened to also have maternal instincts.

My slight problem with this is:
1. Androgyny does not a alpha female make.
2. I recollected the same thing until I watched them again for the first time in probably 10-15 years.
3. Tilda Swinton she is not.
Edit 4. It's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

Now, there's a more interesting conversation to be had about what would the movie look like today. Well, I guess it's interesting. Probably not though, since it would look like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Anyway, I don't actually think she was a good casting call, but that's neither here nor there, I think the bigger mistake was keeping her around for 3 more movies which made the collection as much about Ripley as it did the xenomorphs.

Yeah, I get that you're just making a comparitive statement having just rewatched all the movies. It's not one that I agree with except for the conclusion of liking the Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street movies more (Friday the 13th has so many movies and huge dips in quality that it's hard to compare). I can't argue that your personal reaction to the movies is wrong though. I think Alien in particular is just so ingrained in pop culture that it can't be shocking or scary anymore on a gut level and without that all you can do is just kinda appreciate the craft of it.

I will always have Alien on my very short list of must watch movies. That was true suspense horror and projected atmosphere and dark fear with very little in terms of what is a CGI-fest by today's standards. It relied on the story and environment rather than flashy graphics and crazy visuals - chestburster not withstanding.

And yeah, it is dated and looking back on it, I have a huge nostalgic bias in favor of it. So I can understand people looking back on it more critically now. But for me, it's near the top of my list of great movies I have seen.

I think it should be watched, its absolutely landmark.

I just also think it aged horribly.

Its possible for it to be both. I was stoked going back into rewatching them and was surprised by what I experienced.

schild has seen the light! He won't be the last.

I didn't know "coming out of a nostalgia-fueled hardon for Alien" was a thing.

I own Alien and Aliens on Blu Ray and have popped them in from time to time.

For Alien, it is a haunted house movie on the surface. Beneath that it is about rape and sexual violence. I don't think that Ridley Scott was trying to make a point consciously but it's not accident that it is a man who gets "raped", impregnated and dies in the movie first.

Aliens is a straight up Vietnam flick that just happens to have acid blooded monsters in it. It's also a kick-ass action movie.

As for stupid decisions:

In the first movie they're basically a bunch of truck drivers who have no idea what they're dealing with or how to save themselves. Kane makes a fatal mistake that kicks it all off. But really, beyond that, I'm hard pressed to think of any major mistakes. Maybe Parker shouldn't have charged the alien to try to save Lambert but it really comes down to he just couldn't bring himself to leave her behind.

Aliens has a major stupid sequence when Gorman sends them in and tells them to disarm because of the reactor. But that was intentional in so many ways and it's no accident that most of the ones who survived were the ones who disobeyed in some fashion. (Vasquez secretly rearmed. Hicks pulled out a shotgun (not technically disobeying I suppose) and Hudson was just the guy who got really lucky.)

As for the rest of what you said. AVP is awful. Like...not redeeming in any fashion. Horrible writing. Horrible editing. Horrible directing. Prometheus at least had some talent behind it and serves more as a cautionary tale that, yes, even talented film makers can screw the pooch when they let Damon Lindledof write their script.

As for Resurrection and Whedon, he wrote it but the director changes a ton as did the studio.

No it doesn't, but I believe what made her the alpha was she pulled off both the strong feminine and the maternal in equal doses. Considering it was the 70s/80s Ripley was ground breaking, shame they parodied her into the ground in Alien 3 and Resurrection

Tilda is much to fey and other-worldly to pull this type of character off. Charlize Theron would be the closest thing I've seen to someone who has a mixture of all the right ingredients to carry this role.

I'll just throw it here. Small spoilers inside.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/alien-covenant-may-be-the-biggest-disappointment-of-th-1794898330

You ignore history and are comparing 31 and 38 year old movies to more modern films. That's bad form to start off with, but then to call a sci-fi film dated when doing it is just silly. ALL sci-fi movies age badly. Every single one. Matrix is only 18 years old and has aged horribly when rewatched with a modern lens. It doesn't "hold up" when compared to any other modern sci-fi "humans vs. AI" film either, including the awful Terminator sequels.  Fuck, T2 doesn't heven "hold up" by a lot of metrics because of all kinds of tropes and bad action decisions that wouldn't fly today.

As for "what tropes" Jesus, how about the Action Female for one? Joss Whedon has no career if Alien/ Aliens weren't successful. What were sci-fi female leads prior to 1979? Typically women were running around looking pretty being rescued and typically half-naked when doing so, or simply screaming rather than being useful. Leia was the exception in Star Wars and you can look at other movies from 1977 to 1979 to see that sort of strong female was not the standard.  Try doing anything like making the female lead as useless as in the Black Hole, Star Trek, or Mad Max today. Even Wilma Deering as originally shown was 90% useless and only started to change as the series progressed and Alien/ Empire started to show Sci-Fi women could be strong and competent and useful.

Then in 1986 and Aliens was the break-in of the Female Action Lead, though. Out of Sci-Fi and into the mainstream films. It was a BIG DEAL. It's a trope now that a woman can be a hero and a badass and still be female, but it wasn't possible before that. Fuck it was so new that they only did it with Ripley, Vasquez was still a butch quasi-lesbian because TWO strong females was over the top. (The female pilot was largely useless, died early, and non-combat)

The rest of the tropes? Here you go, a lot are firsts or near-firsts that have only become tropes in the past 30 years. Particularly with Aliens which came out at peak 80's.  I can't even fathom your "what imitated" it statement for Aliens. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/AlienS  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Alien

Predator also has aged as 'badly' as you critique Alien/S.  It's machismo and also peak 80's nonsense. Nothing in the movie makes any more modern sense than the Aliens films. Fuck, Predator 2 was bad when it came out and has aged worse than any of the other three films. It's just awful schlock and would be accused of being a checklist blockbuster if made today.


Also, Whedon wanted his name taken off of Resurrection. He hated the movie, like most sane people. However he had ZERO clout at the time and was told to fuck-off. One of his more famous quotes is: "There is always going to be a shitty Alien movie out there with my name on it." http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien/38965/alien-resurrection-joss-whedons-original-endings

My baseline comparisons are Terminator, Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th, and Predator.

I'll get into the rest of your post later.
Tilda was purely an androgyny response.

As to your first comment, I think that's what bothered me most watching all of them basically in succession. Had Weaver ONLY been in the first one, I think the series as a whole would have been raised in quality. Had they had four different female leads, the entire thing would've been even stronger than had it just been Weaver in the first (and men in the next three). The xenomorph world (though worlds weren't really a thing until like Predator 2 / Terminator 2 - for this particular genre), would've been better for it as well as the movies would've been about the aliens. Alas, we're stuck with four Ripley stories with each one stunningly worse than the one before.

This went to odd places.

I was going to respond to Merusk's post but I can't get past this.


Man, if only.

Just an aside to this - I recently rewatched 2010 because I had just finished reading the book and wanted to jibe my memories of the film with the book (because it was the late '80's since I watched the movie on VHS - I am old). Both 2001 and 2010 actually hold up surprisingly well both as depictions of outer space exploration (though clearly Clarke's timeline for certain technology is woefully accelerated). A lot of the US/Russia conflict in the story might be outdated (though we could be going back to that) but only because how was anyone to know like 2-3 years after the book/movie came out the goddamn Berlin Wall would fall?

As for Alien/Aliens being dated, meh. They are but not so bad as to make them lesser movies than the shitfest that was Prometheus.

Now Aliens 3 and 4? Jesus fuck, those movies were bad for a lot of reasons, and could have been good except for some INSANELY stupid studio decisions. The main decision that killed those movies was the necessity to make them about the Ripley character as opposed to the goddamn xenomorphs eating the fuck out of people. So, you know, the same mistakes they made on the AVP movies. Creature features should not be about the humans, who are all mostly redshirts and should be treated as such. They SHOULD be one-dimensional characters because it's not like we want to know our steak's name.

As much as I liked Weaver in the movies, I will concede that she was not really needed. Problem was they decided the xenomorph was probably not enough to carry through to the sequel and needed the tie in. They could have easily killed off Ripley in the escape pod and used her data records as well as the Nostromo's to figure out what was what. But they drew on the "she has knowledge of the xenomorph so she can be useful." I don't think it failed but it could have been different and still worked. Might not been as good as it would have been a straight up 80s Vietnam movie in space, but hindsight and all that. Weaver was stretched into the third on the prison planet and was not needed other than for the theme. At that point it wasn't even about her having anything more than "I know all about these things."

For me, Alien: Resurrection worked her more into a utility role. I liked the angle they took and the message about the horrors of cloning and what happens. But that movie was moving into strange days territory with Ripley having mixed DNA. Hints that THAT was the plan all along... a human hybrid and Ripley was the survivor winner of the Nostromo.

I dunno.. I still have an unbridled fondness of Alien as it was my first real adult movie I saw and hit home on a lot of things while I was growing up. But then, I still am fond of FFXI as it was my first MMO. YMMV i guess.

Then I guess my response should be that I find her not so much androgynous, but ethereal or strange looking.

As far as Weaver being omitted from Aliens, I had no problems with her in that movie, she plays the role perfectly. If you consider the era and the female leads available, nobody could have done a better job in my humble opinion. After that, sure, but the follow ups were so weak generally I find it hard to make Ripley/Weaver fully accountable.

I don't make Weaver accountable for ANY of this. I make the studios accountable for not recognizing what was cool about xenomorphs.

Predator 2, for all of it's problems, understood it was a movie about the Predators as a race. That carries through all the Predator movies. Even the offshoots.

Alien 1 doesn't feel really dated in my eyes. The computer hardware of course is, but the film wouldn't play out differently if they had touchscreens in the cockpit. The rest of the film still holds up.

Alien 4 is actually  great IF a) You watch it as a standalone film (As an Alien follow-up it's not serious enough and tonally-off) b) You are OK with the mild camp.

I don't see a world where Alien 4 can be great. It's pretty much a disaster from start to finish. Also, as a standalone movie it would make even less sense.

I could get behind Weaver controlling a xenomorph army... but that ship sailed.

There is a core to Alien that works and a sense of nostalgia that can be capitalized on - but I think we're ready for a reboot that learns from the weaknesses of the earlier films.

Forgot to ask before, but out of curiosity, which version of Alien 3 did you watch?

Directors cut based on the words on...  the bluray.

schild likes some over written bullshit movie for edge lords? Surprised. I mean I wished I liked Prometheus. But I can't be 13 again.

prometheus being for edgelords is new.

what particular narrative in the movie puts it so close to the edge that its for "edgelords?"

Idiots scientist goes to the edge of nowhere to find their alien jesus for no particular reason besides having daddy issues. Than they all die one by one, because I-robot has daddy issues. Than they discover sleeping alien god who never wanted them like a dad regretting not pulling out your mom and proceeds to kill more people like there isn't already two nonsensical alien monstrosities rampaging outside. Than everyone dies, no one learns anything and we don't even get a good sequel bat. The end. Watch that movie with Lincoln Park as the sound track.

what

Also, what the fuck is an Edgelord ?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=edgelord

Really need to change that 'medium' to 'totally'.

that was maybe one of the worst descriptions of a movie i've ever read

Also, terrible use of the word 'than' when he means 'then.'

GRAMMAR SNAKE HO!!!!!

Thank you kindly.

TBF, I had to go look it up too.

I didn't. I love the term. It just doesn't fit here at all.

This conversation is better than the movie Prometheus. 

It's also more fun than Alien/Aliens.

ʘ‿ʘ

I'm just going to say this.

Anyone who seriously says Prometheus is a better film than Alien and/or Aliens has lost all credibility as a person that understands film making in any capacity but particularly script writing.

The script for Prometheus is so awful that it is almost mind blowing how bad it is. The directing isn't awful but it is very "off" and the editing isn't particularly good either.  It and Robin Hood coming so close together made me seriously question if Ridley Scott had, at some point, lost all talent or had some kind of stroke that caused him to lose the ability to understand good film making. It's like Ridley Scott's mind was scooped out and replaced by Zach Snyder's. Prometheus was Alien if directed by Zach Snyder.

I can only surmise that Schild is engaging in some kind of elaborate troll to get a rise out of people.

To put things in perspective his favourite movie of all time is (was?) Independence day.

ID4? What? I just really like Jeff Goldblum. Who doesn't.

My favorite film of all time is Clockwork Orange. Followed closely by Shawshank Redemption. Though I watch the latter like five times a year and Clockwork like once every 3-5 years.


This requires one views Alien as a franchise as something worth more than eating popcorn. It is not that for me. Across the board, the scripts for all of the Alien movies are bad. Rating degrees of bad is a silly exercise, though I'm indulging it simply because I'm watching a whole fuckload of horror franchises. I'm not even sure why one would argue they're otherwise.

When you say "script", what is it that you mean?

Do you mean plot? Do you mean dialogue? Do you mean the combination of plot, described visuals, characterization and dialogue in a series of scenes?

Plot for Alien is not really very different than a number of other jump-scare films. I wouldn't call it distinguished, but neither would I call it bad. It follows the archetypical structure of a jump-scare horror movie, to a significant degree.
Dialogue for Alien is decent but mostly not memorable.
Combination of plot/dialogue/visuals/characterization is in a number of cases very distinctive; it's what makes the movie a cut above. Just watch numerous later Alien-imitators that did the same rough thing and you'll see it, especially if you can remember how original a number of these elements felt back when the movie came out. Working-class spaceship characters: that felt new and even watching now still feels well-scripted, authentic. The organicism of the space monster/ghost: that feels really vivid and well-scripted from egg to chest-burster to full-on Giger monster.

Plot for Aliens is a pretty punchy and somewhat original action movie narrative. Predator has a similar structure, but it came out after Aliens. I'm kind of hard-pressed to think of many movies that preceded it that followed the "big well-armed squad of soldiers cut down by a remorselessly competent and terrifying set of monster/alien/etc. enemies" before that. There's a few war movies that followed that structure a bit--Apocalypse Now, maybe Zulu Dawn, etc., where the presumed 'good guys' turn out to be overconfident and overmatched by a sort of exotic/alien threat and barely make it out alive.
Dialogue for Aliens is really memorable. There's a ton of quippy lines that people remembered coming out of the theater and continue to use even now.
Combination of plot/dialogue/visuals/characterization is hugely distinctive. There's at least three insanely memorable set-pieces. The 'faceless grunts' are extremely memorable, even the crudely archetypical ones. (Tough black sergeant, inexperienced snooty officer, slimy corporate weasel). There's a fairly clever "reconstituted nuclear family" emotional core at the heart of the script.

There's a reason why both movies were imitated frequently and why most of the imitations seemed inferior. The scripts, taken as a whole, are a big part of that.

The Thing predates Aliens and Predator and I'd say it does Aliens better than Aliens.

I love The Thing, but it's a way different movie than Aliens. It's closer to Alien, but it's also got a lot in common with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In fact, that's the genius of it--it combines the "we're being stalked by a ghost/monster in this haunted house" with "the monster could be anyone". What's also interesting is that though it didn't *immediately* create imitators the way Alien and Aliens did, it eventually did, but many of the imitators have also been pretty smart and interesting.

I mean, if someone wants to say that Carpenter's The Thing is a superior movie to Alien, I will completely agree. I'm not sure it's a good comparison to Aliens.

Yeah in terms of underlying themes, both are about the Other and the alien in our midst. Alien though is about not knowing where or whence that menace might spring from, the fear of being trapped with it. The Thing is about not knowing whom it may spring from, that other parts of my group may turn out to be Other. It's somewhat like both being about fear of Commies but Alien is an in the Jungle with the VC flick while the Thing is a McCarthy era thriller.

That was a terrible analogy but I'll stand by it.

As others have said, the Thing and Aliens aren't even the same genre beyond very broadly "Sci-Fi monster movie."

I don't want to go full on movie analyst here but there is a reason the original Thing movie was from the 50s. The remake keeps that feeling very well with the paranoid "anyone could be the one out to get us" vibe. What makes the Thing timeless is that it could apply to any situation where you don't know who the enemy is. For example, in current times it could easily be an analogy for "is that guy a terrorist with a backpack bomb or just a student on his way to class?"

Alien is also timeless because it is very much about the fear of violation of your body and, arguably, even more about simply "what is out there in the darkness?"

Aliens will likely not be as timeless simply because it is largely about a distrust of the government and corporations and about soldiers being sent in to die by people who don't care and/or understand. I hope that particular feeling isn't here to stay though who knows.

Prometheus is about...uhhh...good visuals. And a pretty heavy handed Jesus as space alien analogy.

I would wager until Prometheus came out, outside of nerd culture the name Weyland-Yutani meant nothing and likely still means nothing. I would also say that particular theme falls flat on its face with the general population. Hell, your average movie fan's deepest critique of most movies is "this was good" or "this was bad."

As for the Thing and Alien not being in the same genre, I wholly disagree, but honestly I don't care much about arguing the differences past the surface. Both movies give me the same thrills, The Thing just does it better. Unidentified/Previously Unknown horror terrorizes group of unsuspecting people on a largely small set.

The Thing is definitely scarier and more disturbing than any of the Alien franchise.

The Thing and Alien, no plural, are in the same genre, or close.

The Thing and AlienS, plural, are not in the same genre.

Alien and AlienS, plural, are not in the same genre. They share the same IP and setting, but they're very different in genre terms.

Can we at least agree that Damon Lindhof makes everything he touches worse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaKqOMGPWc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaKqOMGPWc)

Best movie ever I swear