489 replies to this topic

[Harrad]

Just saw it. What was Ridely Scott thinking. After groundbreaking stuff like Blade Runner and Alien (altho not my fav), Prometheus is profoundly derivative of both Alien and Aliens (Cameron's and my fav). It steals all the main subplots from Alien, but does add a overarching main plot with a "big" theme. The story is so silly that one can't take it seriously. There are some neat "techno" things in it--a nice auto-mapper portable remote--but even this seems odd. Its in the same universe but before Alien, yet seems to be more advanced technologically than all the Aliens. The continual stupidity of the choices the charcters make however undermines any ideas that make sneak through. "This is a scientific expedition, we don't need guns."

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

So wait to rent on DVD then? What's the 3D like?

[Harrad]

Ser_not_appearing_yet, on 08 June 2012 - 10:30 PM, said:

So wait to rent on DVD then? What's the 3D like?

Didnt go 3D..I imagine its ok..Never made a bad movie into a good one, tho...

[kalbear]

There were some profoundly different vibes between Alien and this as well. One of the biggest - and one that on thinking of, I dislike more and more - is that  they were a bunch of uncurious motherfuckers, especially for a science team. The original Alien had the facehugger autopsy, discovering the ship, the discoveries about the acid, etc. We were as fascinated as they were in finding all this stuff. Here, we have us sticking a needle in a head and watching it explode. There was almost no discovering, even after there was shown so much to discover. The best we  got was 'it's human!' which as far as discoveries go, kinda sucks. When we have this actual alien onboard, not a single person gives one shit. When we discover a plague that turns people into  zombies, do we study Charlie in any way? Figure out what caused it? Nope. No one gives a single shit about what happened, just that OMG Charlie's gone! And now I'm preggers. The hazmat team doesn't study her in any way either. Fortunately we get Idris Elba playing the accordion.

[Harrad]

Kalbear, on 08 June 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

There were some profoundly different vibes between Alien and this as well. One of the biggest - and one that on thinking of, I dislike more and more - is that  they were a bunch of uncurious motherfuckers, especially for a science team.

Agree with you. Ridley apparently embraced the snarkiness of our times. Why not be personable on a 17-person mission for several years. Instead this group starts nasty and gets nastier.

[All Men Must Rhyme]

Honestly, I thought it was shit. It looks nice, is all I can say for it. The minor actors had better performances, the storyline wasn't really explained properly, the characters were all assholes who acted completely out of character (lets go into this place, take our helmets off because the robot suggested it, and touch a load of things that we came to find in the first place). The main actors were shit really. Don't see the appeal in Fassbender at all, don't even recognise the two lead women in the film. I think one possibly played the chick in the third terminator movie, but I didn't understand her whole character at all. She was a bitch, but she's still willing to sleep around with the crew, treats all of the scientists that she hired as if they aren't important to whatever her real motive was, and is ultimately waiting for her Dad to die. I was just confused and really uninterested in the whole thing.

[Ser Robin Hill]

Oh well, I have tickets to see it today in 3D.  I am hoping you are all out of your minds.

[peterbound]

Deathwalker, on 09 June 2012 - 09:15 AM, said:

Oh well, I have tickets to see it today in 3D.  I am hoping you are all out of your minds.

Pretty sure they are.  KB is really the only one I trust in this thread, and the other's complaints/arguments are disjointed and seem rather weak.

[Raidne]

Maybe this is just way better in IMAX 3D. I thought it was great.

What hazmat team, btw? The geologists you mean? The one biologist? The doctor? Tech was better because this was a fully funded team, not a mining transport. And David was doing all that research, but he kept his findings to himself and you have to read between the lines.

What's our read on the prologue?

[UnCleos]

The cinematography and direction from Ridley is without a doubt spectacular.  A visual feast easily on par with Avatar in my opinion, every seen looked beautiful.  That being said, the dialogue and writing in general was extremely disappointing.  My understanding is that Damon Lindelof, the writer of lost, was tasked with rewrites over Spaights original script for the film. Let's just saw he butchered it good and proper.  Dialogue is clunky and awkward, as well as completely moronic at times.  And the characters?  Oh boy.  They seem to lose any sense they have towards the middle of the film.

The aliens themselves were alright.  Two scenes were particularly impressive involving the first encounter with a serpent-like creature, and a medical procedure to remove a friendly little guy.  There is a scene at the very end of the film which seemed to pander to the idea that this was an Alien prequel, it was cool but just felt really cheap and pointless.  And the ending is a complete copout that leads into a sequel to this 'prequel'.  Cringe worthy.

All in all, a disappointing experience but still much better than most of the cliche and crap blockbusters to come out.  If you like the original Alien and Ridley Scott in general, it is definitely worth a look.  But do not expect anything close to Alien or Blade Runner, you will be incredibly disappointed.

[AndrewBaelish]

(Spoilers ahead!)
I thought... as. A prequel to Alien... it was an odd way to go about it.
But.
As a sci-fi film? Effin amazing. I've come to the conclusion you all are crazy. What was not to like in this movie?
Idris Elba? Hilarious
Michael Fassbendar? Probably my favorite (sorry Bishop) from the series. Creepy, yet... cool at the same time.
Charlize Theron? It's Charlize Theron... what's your point?
Noomi Rapace? Really great lead for the movie in my opinion.

The cinematography? Everything looked beautiful (and terrifying). It was amazingly shot. The scene in the ship with David finding the map was crazy.

The music? It was really repetative, but I thought it was a really cool theme.

Ohhh, and everything from the squid removal scene, up to the end with the Alien Queen making her appearance, was insanity. Utter insanity.
The theatre applauded at the end. I would have. But my friend and I were literally sitting there just staring at the screen just thinking about what we had just saw.

For things I didn't like? I didn't think the first 30 or so minutes were all that great. It was really weirdly paced.
I did not like the part, after the squid scene, where Elisabeth is just walking through the ship covered in blood, and nobody reacts. They're just like
"hey! What's that on your stomach? Staples? That's cool. Excuse us while we go about our day!"
And the old age makeup for Guy Pearce, was really kind of horrible.

All in alll, I liked it better than Alien (sorry, never been the biggest fan of the original) and a little less than Aliens. A... 9 out of 10 for me.
And definitely going on my top ten of the year.

[kalbear]

Raidne, on 09 June 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

What hazmat team, btw? The geologists you mean? The one biologist? The doctor? Tech was better because this was a fully funded team, not a mining transport. And David was doing all that research, but he kept his findings to himself and you have to read between the lines.

the two people - one of which was some sort of doctor - who were in full hazmat gear when shaw was preggers. She hits them, runs slowly away from them into the autodoc, spends a few minutes there, then hobbles around the ship for a while. Do those two catch up with her? Care that she has removed a xenomorph that they know about out of stomach and on to the ship? Nope. No one even mentions it again. The scene itself was awesome, but it is so nonsensical in setup that it robs the scene of dramatic tension. Compare that to the similar scene in aliens when ripley and newt fight off the facehuggers - in that, their being isolated and needing help is part of the tension.

And everyone's okay with her coming with weyland to see god, too? Why would weyland let that happen? Why would the captain let that random facehugger on his ship?

If there were multiple ships and the most important thing for the engineers was to get to earth, why would he go to shaw? Why would shaw think she needed an axe anyway? Why would David assume he was going to get shaw? How does this engineer know how to open our airlock?

Why would a biologist think for a second that an alien creature would be harmless and get close enough for it to attack? Why would the guy responsible for mapping tunnels be the one who gets lost, and how do you get lost when you have a 3d map with coordinates on your arm?

So much dumb. It didn't help that almost none of the characters had any kind of personality. Sorry, but backstory and daddy issues are not a replacement for characterization.

[Harrad]

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

So much dumb. It didn't help that almost none of the characters had any kind of personality. Sorry, but backstory and daddy issues are not a replacement for characterization.

I agree except that there wasn't zero personality. There was plenty of personality but it was all snarky and nasty. Did anyone notice the self-abdominal surgery, followed by a quick recovery into an action sequence? C'mon people! The other thing that may be explained later is why the "god-like" creators turned into ravening killers. Wouldn't one think after being revived the last guy in the blueman group would at least chat with his saviors before tearing them into little pieces. I am gonna hope they were all infected with brain aliens that affected their judgement. How about the idea that the god-like creators set up a weapons of mass destruction planet? I guess even gods got snarky.

[Howdyphillip]

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

the two people - one of which was some sort of doctor - who were in full hazmat gear when shaw was preggers. She hits them, runs slowly away from them into the autodoc, spends a few minutes there, then hobbles around the ship for a while. Do those two catch up with her? Care that she has removed a xenomorph that they know about out of stomach and on to the ship? Nope. No one even mentions it again.

I assumed that there was no big search by Weyland because Shaw reported that she killed it when when ran it through the decontamination process. I didn't think that needed to be spelled out. As for the other scientists, We don't have any idea what their actions were because the story follows Shaw and Weyland off the ship at this point. It could be easily assumed that they went to explore.

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

And everyone's okay with her coming with weyland to see god, too? Why would weyland let that happen? Why would the captain let that random facehugger on his ship?

At this point the old man has very little time to live, he can either spend it in conflict and use up his time detaining her, or he could go and meet his objective by including her. He probably had some remorse for killing her husband as well and including her in the discovery would have been his twisted way of morally redeeming his self .

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

If there were multiple ships and the most important thing for the engineers was to get to earth, why would he go to shaw? Why would shaw think she needed an axe anyway? Why would David assume he was going to get shaw? How does this engineer know how to open our airlock?

This is part of what makes the movie so great. A lack of a full understanding of the motivations the Engineers have. It is obvious that they have marked humanity for destruction and were going to extreme measures to do this. Since there wa no reason for the Engineer to believe that he was any threat to him, why not take care of the human right among them. It makes sense to me because the consequence of him not killing her was that she went straight to his home planet.

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

Why would a biologist think for a second that an alien creature would be harmless and get close enough for it to attack? Why would the guy responsible for mapping tunnels be the one who gets lost, and how do you get lost when you have a 3d map with coordinates on your arm?

I know inquisitive and naive people in all field of work. He may have been so exited in the discovery that he set aside caution.

The guy got lost because he panicked and fled. All the maps in the world doesn't stop a person from being so scared that they make a bad decision.

Kalbear, on 09 June 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

So much dumb. It didn't help that almost none of the characters had any kind of personality. Sorry, but backstory and daddy issues are not a replacement for characterization.

I thought all of the characters had very unique personality and back stories.




I went to go see this movie last night, and it blew me away. It achieved the same level of greatness that the other Ridley Scott SF movies have. It told a fascinating story. What if you spent a lifetime trying to meet God, and when you met him he kicked your fucking ass? What is more important the audience was left with an incredible amount to ponder on and discuss. In that way, it borrowed the best parts of both Blade Runner and Alien. This is now my second favorite movie of the year right behind Cabin in the Woods.

Edited by Holafernando Torres, 09 June 2012 - 01:20 PM.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I get the feeling a lot of this movie got left on the cutting room floor for time.  The same thing happened to "Kingdom of Heaven".  The directors cut of KoH was a completely different movie from the theatrical version.

[kalbear]

Legend of korra showed me what bugged quite a bit here - in that the antagonists are smart and scary - but the heroes triumph because they are clever. Here, the heroes triumph out of perseverance. They're most of the time stupid and are making up at best for their own mistakes. Again, compare to the first two alien movies, where ripley figures things out and makes a plan. And wins despite the long odds. No one figures out anything here. Everyone is just reacting to actions - and the plot requires they react in the stupidest way.

Meh.

I'll address the points above later, but one central point is that if you require your audience to fill in all the parts that make sense chances are you've failed. Lost did that too and it didn't make much sense either.

[Durckad]

Saw it last night.  I'm not really disappointed, but it's certainly not as good as it could've been.  This is mostly copy-n-pasted from another forum.

Spoiler

I'm not going to say that the movie is full of plot holes, but it is full of characters doing dumb things and some incredibly shitty pacing issues.  For example, Prometheus arrives at the planet and almost immediately just happens to drop out of orbit right near where they need to be.  No scanning, just 'Hey, look, straight lines!'  Then, at the very end, David just says 'There're more ships' and then suddenly they're on one and flying off.  Pretty weak there.  The two scientists encountering the killer worms?  Funny that they flee from that doorway earlier, but come on back when they're all alone.  

Also, nobody seemingly bats an eyelash at Weyland suddenly appearing on the ship or Shaw running around half-naked, covered in blood and with a stapled midsection.  Actually, that entire sequence going from when David tells Shaw that she's pregnant to Weyland's appearance is very odd, almost nonsensical and the fact that no one seems to notice that the med-room now has a giant, quickly growing squid-thing in it.

The structure of the movie is just really weird. The first half mirrors Alien quite a bit, but the second half is missing the threat of, well, anything to really drive the action.  All the action is driven by a series of semi-related occurrences; the alien lampreys, the mutated scientist, squid-baby and then, finally, the Engineer.  I won't say it's unsuccessful, it'll probably require another viewing before I come to that conclusion, but it's certainly missing something to unify the movie, something to drive the action other than the questionable decisions made by the characters or the black, mutating goo.  At no point did I really feel as if the entire crew was in jeopardy, they could just leave at any time really (notwithstanding Vicker's orders not to).

Actually, I think the 'Weyland Reveal' is the one plot point that just fucks up the flow of the movie.  It's incredibly pointless and it lacks any sort of, I dunno, gravity.  I know when I saw the movie, I was more like 'Oh, it's Weyland um what?' There're hints dropped throughout the movie, but he isn't present long enough to build any sort of relationship with the audience.  He's just... there and then he dies.  Even David doesn't get much chance to interact with him and there're hints that their relationship is a bit... acrimonious.

My solution?  Make him a part of the crew from the very beginning, lower his age by about 10 or 15 years (that gets rid of that awful makeup), but keep it so that something is killing him, something terminal.  The first half of the movie is driven by Shaw's desire to find the Engineers and then, when shit goes down, the second half is driven by Weyland's belief that he can cheat death itself.  That gives a little more conflict with the crew and something other than black goo that drives the action.  

Plus, it means Guy Pearce is on screen longer and that's never a bad thing (unless he's covered in that crap make-up).

That said, it's pretty clear that some of this stuff isn't intended to be answered in the movie; the goals of the Engineers and the nature of the goo (bioweapon doesn't cut it, it's an extremly shitty bioweapon) so I hope, if there's a sequel, that they give the script a little more polish.  There's definitely an interesting story here and I hope they can find it, though maybe I would be pleased with just Noomi Rapace and Micheal Fassbender's head flying around the universe, solving mysteries.

So, in conclusion, great effects, the film is a pleasure to watch.  The acting is great all around, though Fassbender and Theron are the stars here.  The plot and writing are pretty weak at points, but it's not enough to make the film bad.  It's creepy, it's entertaining, but I'm still a bit disappointed.  Here's hoping that in 5 years Ridley releases the Director's Cut that's an hour longer and fixes up the questionable parts of the film.

[Harrad]

Lets start from the very beginning. A very good place to start. The blueman group comes to Earth and altruistically takes an alien cocktail so that they are decomposed into constiuent DNA thus creating the human race. This happens during "recorded" caveman history 35000 years ago, so present-day Noomi can find the maps. As one of the characters mentions, this flies in the face of 200 years of Darwinian theory and evidence. No big deal for a society that doesn't believe in science, even though they are sitting in an air-conditioned theater watching 3-D movies with a 7.1 sound system. The blueman DNA is a 100% match to human DNA. As it turns out its also a 95% match to chimpanzee DNA that has been on Earth for millions of years, or Neandrathal, or Australopithicus, and on and on.

A partly (at least) scientific group in a society that can create a trillion-dollar expedition to another star in 4 years doesnt have the sense of the expedition to find Dr. Livingtson in darkest Africa in the 1800s--take some protection from the unknown. They dont know any of the protocols for encountering ET life, that we have today, and don't follow any of their own quarantine procedures. A plot that depends upon extreme stupidly of all the characters is apparently satisfying to the same viewers who think science is on an equal footing with mythology and gut feelings.

[naz]

I agree with all the disappointed reviewers. I expected more from this director and cast. We get great visuals, some fine moments by Fassbender, and the germ of a great story, but major writing deficiencies abound for all the reasons mentioned above and that pretty much ruined it for me. Not one of the characters does anything smart in the entire movie (except the robot on occasion) and this group of sloppy scientists is supposed to be the best that Weyland can send for a trillion dollars? They're not even briefed on the nature of the mission until they fucking get there?? That's a huge and stupid risk. They are going to potentially find the biggest discovery in the history of mankind and there is NO planning at all and no scientific protocols, save from the robot. Why send all these idiots at all in that case? Just send the robot. Or a whole crew of robots.

Someone made a point earlier about comparing the tech of a scientific crew vs. a mining crew (1st movie) or military crew (2nd movie). But if you use that justification, then it has to apply to the character's behaviors and motivations. In Alien and Aliens, all of the actions each character takes is directly in line with how they're presented to be earlier in each film. In this one - nothing. No one acts they way you'd expect them to.

It's funny; as I watched that Damon Lindelof interview on the Verge a week ago, he almost had me convinced about the justification for ambiguity in film and tv, but this was just ridiculous. Very sloppy writing and an atrocious misuse of an otherwise fantastic cast. Whoever said that there's probably an hour of great footage that was cut out of this is probably right, because I can't imagine Ridley Scott and this cast making such an empty film, devoid of characterization. Let's pray for a Director's Cut worthy of the story.

[Werthead]

Visually a stunning movie. Great production design. Stunning effects. Beautiful cinematography. Real sets which are awe-inspiringly huge. Some really effective moments of horror. Fantastic acting from the core actors (Fassbender, Theron, Rapace, Elba) and effective acting from everyone else. Excellent Game of Thrones trivia cameos (Lysa Arryn was the ship's medic, Marillion was the co-pilot).

Plot made very little sense. This was the worst bunch of scientists ever hired to do anything in the history of science. They had floating robots with mapping sensors built in? Awesome. Why not launch them from outside and then check the results before going in and putting yourself in physical jeopardy?

Also, a dead guy's just walked up to your spaceship and appears to have turned into something from The Thing. Do you 1) keep the door shut and keep an eye on it for, say, five hours after reviewing recordings of it walking up to your ship, or 2) open it, prod it with your toe, shrug and turn away? Hmm.

I also want to see what's going on with the planetoid designations. Prometheus takes place on LV-233, not LV-426. It's possible they are both moons around the same gas giant (as shown in Alien, but not in Aliens because, as Cameron said at the time, they forgot about it, but it's definitely still there) but this does raise awkward questions about the Company not properly surveying the other moons when they colonised the planetoid. Obviously, they'd have rapidly found that 233 had a semi-breathable atmosphere and would have been easier to terraform, not to mention having the massive alien pyramids on it.

Happily (and no doubt to be disproven the second Prometheus II appears) there is a solution: in Alien LV-426 is shown to be located in the Zeta Reticuli-2 system. Zeta Reticuli is a binary system, but the two stars are 28 light-days apart and take 170,000 years to circle one another. Each star could have its own extensive solar system (and based only on our own system, ringed gas giants are ten a penny). In fact, the Engineer homeworld could be located in the same neighbourhood as well. Assuming that the Engineer homeworld and LV-223 are not emitting any signals, there's no reason the colonists on LV-426 would have had any reason to have checked them out.

Of course, we have a problem wherein the Company would have known about LV-223 all along and apparently not checked it out after Prometheus failed to return, which is a possible plot hole.

Quote

If there were multiple ships and the most important thing for the engineers was to get to earth, why would he go to shaw? Why would shaw think she needed an axe anyway? Why would David assume he was going to get shaw? How does this engineer know how to open our airlock?

I agree with most of your other criticisms (and have lots of others), but this one did make sense. We saw the Engineer watch Shaw run off, hesitate (possibly thinking about chasing after her?) and then power up his trusty space cruiser to get on with business. A few minutes later Shaw's friends rammed his ship, blasting it out of the sky. Him going, "Fuck this shit, all my mates are dead, I've been asleep for 2,000 years waiting to get on with this mission and now I'm stranded on this shithole with malfunctioning bioweapons. Where are the rest of these assholes?" and going off to kill them does make sense at that point.