Prometheus [SPOILERS]

[Guest]

I thought the abortion scene was cheesy/funny, not scary. Then I looked around and saw that no one was laughing, and I felt like I may be messed up in the head a bit? Please someone tell me they were giggling at the silliness of it all.

Also thought that David's head being zipped up in a bag was fucking hilarious.

[Grack21]

You're probably messed up in the head a bit. I mean, you post here, its like a requirement.

[ithanos]

Did anyone get the feeling in the second half of the movie that they were watching Sphere all over again?

Friend & I watched it in 3D and from a 3D point of view we think it's the second best example of the format, after Avatar. 3D gets a bad rap, IMO, by the conversion jobs that get released where they throw in 2 or 3 money shots, usually at the start of the movie, and then coast through the remainder of the movie in barely noticeable 3D. Having taken a bathroom break towards the end of this movie I came back and could really appreciate how good the format was.

[oracle86]

I may be in the minority here, but I liked Guy Pearce's makeup. Weyland was born in 1990 according to the timeline of Weyland Industries, and the movie occurs in the year 2093. So yeah, I thought he was quite convincing as a 103 year old man,

[Mr. E]

Not a perfect film Not everything I was hoping it would be. But also not one I view nearly as badly as a lot of people are.

Someone needs to do a research study on how audience opinion influences film perception. So Prometheus comes out and is immediately lambasted because initial audience had high expectations. Then everyone is expecting movie to be terrible. So next wave of audience goes into movie and actually inversely appreciates it despite its flaws because flaws weren't nearly as big as they were led to believe...

If I were a director, I'd make it a point to have my PR people start a self-smear campaign where a bunch of reputable "journals" report and disseminate every single bad thing that happened during production--real or not--and then proclaim that there's no way the movie won't be a disaster. Beat the audience at their own subconscious game.

[Alex.]

My friend wrote the Engineer language for Prometheus. Said it's completely consistent and a working language.

I assume that someone, somewhere is working on translating it?

[GoodGuyA]

Please someone tell me they were giggling at the silliness of it all.

Right here. Could not contain myself. All I could think was "Are they seriously going there? This is less well handled than Alien 3!". The last half of the movie was supremely hilarious.

[Kairi]

I loved the visuals in this movie.

It is a beautiful film to look at and I was with it all the way until one of the characters started running around five minutes after a medical procedure.

Fassbender was great though.

[Francis Buck]

Does anyone else now have the Engineers as their mental image of Nonmen?

http://www.prometheusforum.net/discussion/2118

[williamjm]

Did anyone get the feeling in the second half of the movie that they were watching Sphere all over again?

No, but perhaps mainly because it would require remembering what happened in Sphere. I think about the only things I remember from it were that it was mostly underwater, had a CGI sphere in it and was disappointing.

Someone needs to do a research study on how audience opinion influences film perception. So Prometheus comes out and is immediately lambasted because initial audience had high expectations. Then everyone is expecting movie to be terrible. So next wave of audience goes into movie and actually inversely appreciates it despite its flaws because flaws weren't nearly as big as they were led to believe...

If I were a director, I'd make it a point to have my PR people start a self-smear campaign where a bunch of reputable "journals" report and disseminate every single bad thing that happened during production--real or not--and then proclaim that there's no way the movie won't be a disaster. Beat the audience at their own subconscious game.

Most blockbusters are very dependent on making lots of money in their opening weekend and if the advance hype is bad the opening weekend will probably be disappointing, and even if it gets good word of mouth after that the film will already have started to disappear from the cinema. John Carter's probably a good example of that, it seemed to have picked up a bad reputation before release and had a disappointing debut, and even though most of the people who did seem to see it seemed to like it (at least judging from the comments I've seen), it never really recovered and ended up underperforming.

[Mr. E]

Most blockbusters are very dependent on making lots of money in their opening weekend and if the advance hype is bad the opening weekend will probably be disappointing, and even if it gets good word of mouth after that the film will already have started to disappear from the cinema. John Carter's probably a good example of that, it seemed to have picked up a bad reputation before release and had a disappointing debut, and even though most of the people who did seem to see it seemed to like it (at least judging from the comments I've seen), it never really recovered and ended up underperforming.

Very true. So to expand upon the theory, perhaps it can only be utilized with projects that have a built in fanbase. The Avengers for example. Part of the reason it's getting as much hype and praise (other than its objective quality) is that there were so many ways for it to fail; yet everyone knew it was going to make buckets of money anyway, no matter how bad it was, at least opening weekend.

[Grack21]

Does anyone else now have the Engineers as their mental image of Nonmen?

http://www.prometheu...discussion/2118

Well most of my mental image of Bakker stuff was Giger based. I swear he writes that series while watching alien and taking hits of lsd.

[Kalbear]

I laughed several times during the movie, probably inappropriately. Zipping up David was one bit, but so was the whole scene with the geologist and the biologist. It was so very silly.

I laughed a lot at Vickers dying.

[Rhaquentis]

The movie could have been so much better, and the abortion scene was really... ugh :ack:

And why is it so hard to make characters look deeper and more realistic in sci-fi films? :/

[Kalbear]

It's hard to make good characters deep in any films, but sci-fi and other type films suffer because they tend to be written and rewritten for the big set pieces and the plot destruction. People tend not to go to Prometheus to see a touching tale of the human heart; they want shit to get blown up and then eaten by evil alien things.

This, BTW, is one of James Cameron's greatest strengths in his sci-fi movies (and really in general) - his characterization is very strong while remaining good to the plot. Abyss, Aliens, Terminator 1 &2, True Lies all had very good characterization while still maintaining the narrative flow. Even Avatar wasn't so bad in this vein; it's the weakest of the lot but Sigourney Weaver's character was fairly decent, as were a couple of the other scientists. Then again, I think he thinks about these things a lot more than most folks do

[Sixshells]

I just re-watched the movie and while I still like very much the overall ambiance, the imagery and the music, I think the story and the scenario are a big let down. Lindelof has his strengths from a commercial writing point of view, but he should not have been left unsupervised while hoping he would actually be able to tie up a story together. I didn't know of his involvement beforehand, but after learning that he was, some of the things happening on screen just make so much sense - in the same way it does for the polar bears on Lost : shut up, it does. There is a lot going on in the movie, from different genres, plus all the stuff that didn't make the cut, and almost none of it is done particularly well, which makes me think they bit more than they could chew on this one. Obviously ham-fisted editing didn't help. And the ending sending explanations to a sequel - yeah, that's a cop-out. I can't believe the guy is able to imagine that he can pull off that same lame bullshit after what happened with Lost, without people starting to notice a pattern of suckage.

I personally thought the Ancient Astronauts theme for the Engineers to be a bit of a snore fest (been there, seen that). I would rather have had a similar basic story about the humans stumbling across this dead alien race and starting to piece together elements about the reason of their extinction, all the while risking to unleash the same disaster upon themselves, without the aliens having anything to do with Earth or the human race in the first place. Because not only Ancient Astronauts are a big tired ol' cliché at this point, but the "origin of Life" bits were clearly taking undue screen time, and the Space Jesus stuff that mercifully didn't make it in the theatrical release makes me dread the idea of watching the eventual extended cut.

The rest of the scenario was not exactly boring, but seriously underwhelming. I can't feel sorry for these characters when they so obviously deserve to die and when they make so many stupid mistakes it's a miracle they are even still alive at the beginning of the movie. I didn't care for any of them beyond their use as plot tools (and the plot is not very good, so...). The only thing I found interesting and genuinely well done was David's character, very manipulative and creepy, as well illustrated in his relationship with Shaw (I also liked both actors a lot). But otherwise I think you couldn't find a minute of screen time where there isn't something wrong going on at some level in the story or the concept, an that from the very beginning. It holds up well enough to give the change and the cinematography compensates a lot but that's about it.

[Guest]

Sixshells, I agree about Lindelof. I think if he's involved in any future projects it's a good tell sign that I should avoid it. Unless you like the "everyone gets their own interpretation, and they're all equally valid!" style of writing. Also, the Engineers as ancient astronauts as a *cool new idea* tells me that he hasn't read a lot of scifi. I wish Ridley Scott would insist that his writers be well-read in the genre so as to avoid cliches.

[So1ar]

Also, the Engineers as ancient astronauts as a *cool new idea* tells me that he hasn't read a lot of scifi. I wish Ridley Scott would insist that his writers be well-read in the genre so as to avoid cliches.

yeah...being well-read in the genre you're filming isn't one of ridley scott's strong points.

[The Dude]

Saw Prometheus last night and really enjoyed it overall. Even more so after reading all of the analysis in this thread. As an entry into the Alien series of movies you could certainly do worse. I think that Prometheus easily ranks higher than 3 and 4, but is obviously not on the same level and Alien/Aliens. For the record, I enjoyed all of the Alien movies.

I would guess that we will see a younger Guy Pearce/Peter Weyland in the future movies as either an android or a clone, and I am now really looking forward to those movies.

I'm pretty sure that I will end buying the blu-ray of Prometheus for he extras and detailed re-watch but I do not have high hopes that we will get much of anything in those deleted scenes that actually explains any of the plot holes that people have pointed out.Hopefully, they will add at least a little something.

[Commodore]

Plinkett melts his friend's brain with Prometheus questions