Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012) - Alien prequel

So you've read the final shooting script?

I think you can come up with a better analogy. Everyone knows that if you light a stick of dynamite it blows up. Everyone on the internet knows that you don't have to see a movie/read a book/hear an album to know you don't like it.

John K.

 

There is visual information and dramatic acting that makes the scene different than some anecdote you've seen in this thread. There's context, and non-verbal information, and everything you've read on this thread has been someone else's reporting, and there's in my opinion a lot of axe-grinding here, not the most accurate source. So far most of your observations I think are quite off the mark, and you haven't seen the film.

You seem to just like making negative comments over and over, it tickles you I guess, but it doesn't mean your observations have any weight for me.

 

WTF? I've read some dumb things on this forum but that's a beauty.

 

I think there's either a typo or he was being sarcastic.

 

I think he was being sarcastic.

 

Then I'm the dummy.

 

That's a punchline to the joke:
What was the last things the redneck said before he died....

 

C sections using a futuristic robot still qualifies as science fiction imo. I see hair splitting going on here.

 

I finally saw the movie this afternoon, and thought it sucked. Very, very well-shot, beautiful sets, fantastic production design. Hated the story and characters.

This is major abdominal surgery where all her stomach muscles were severed. A relative of mine went through this some years back, and it takes you days just to get to the point where you can walk again, because many major nerves and muscle groups are all tied to your stomach. You ain't gonna be running down a hallway 15 minutes after this kind of surgery -- whether or not it's done by robots.

I'm also very bummed out with the idea that aliens smart enough to create us would turn out to be a@@@@les.

BTW, I can now verify that the script I mentioned about six months ago was the exact movie that was released.

There's pain, and then there's PAIN. If she had a real horizontal C-section, she would fall flat on her face for the first day or two, completely unable to walk (with or without drugs).

There are films where the leap of faith is ten feet, vs. one across the Grand Canyon. I can't do the latter, but I can deal with the former.

Lots and lots and lots of stupid stuff in this movie. A few at this link. I could do a wide Google search and get more, but I have to do more important things, like organizing my Crystal Geyser water bottle caps.

The whole deal with the multi-trillionaire Mr. Weyland was real, real stupid, too. Maybe Scott Wheeler could comment, but I thought the old-age get-up on this character was the fakest, worst, rubbery BS "old man" makeup I've seen in years. Hell, Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man looked 1000 times better, and that movie was made 40 years ago!

 

I think it's funny what some viewers will buy into and what they will not. Because a c-section is something familiar today, there can be no accepting a stretch that depicts an almost instant recover. But all the truly fantastic elements that are far removed from our life experiences are gobbled up with not a whiff of complaint. I had no problems with the quick recovery even while acknowledging that her recover was unlikely in real life. In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

My thoughts during the C-Section: Eh... I'm willing to go along with space flight and aliens, I can go along with massively improved surgical techniques too.

 

I definitely liked the movie's look and overall production and thought it was well worth seeing for that alone, but the plot and characterization took me out of the experience more than once, and almost none of the deaths carried any heft. They were cool to look at, I guess, but I was invested in virtually none of them. In fact, I was thinking that if you send an incompatible and untrained group of yahoos on a mission without strong leadership or a plan, what do you expect is going to happen? Most of their deaths were entirely anti-climactic, imo. Perfectly fine for a cheap SyFy production with z-list actors. Not so much for a $150 million "Alien" movie with top talent. Not for me anyway.

 

All of those stupid arguments countered:

Q. Why did the crew not explore the rest of the planet?
They didn't have time. The film depicts their first landing point where they discover traces of an alien civilization and soon encounter problems.

Q. Would the match really be perfect if humans carried a certain amount of Neanderthal DNA as has recently been proven?
The god-alien was on a lifeless planet. We presume that his blood created all life on Earth, including the Neanderthals. They were part of the "program", the big picture.

Q. Surely if human and genetically engineered alien genes are to combine you would get something in between?
It wasn't a pregnancy. It was an implanted alien organism via the sperm/*****.

Q. Would the octopus resembling creature be able to grow so much when it was locked up without anything to eat?
What do we know? This organism was unlike anything humans could understand. A genetic-nano-biological creation/program.
Many insect stages don't eat during their short lifespan but they grow like hell because of a pre-stored energy source.

Q. Do androids have that stuff built-in?
Again. it's science fiction. We assume that the consciousness and communication systems were located in the head area.

Q. Huh? What just happened?
The creature made its implant into the nearest living organism. What's the problem?

Finally, about the operation booth and the girls ability to walk afterwards. What do we know about the surgical techniques of the future? For all we know, the gel that was administered at the beginning of the operation might have liberated super fast healing agents. The sealing of the abdomen might have done this also. Super rapid muscle rebuilding compounds. Nano-bio muscle reparatory fibers made by Stark Industries Inc. This is science fiction!
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

 

You also send people more than 2 lightyears into space, and the only weapons you have are handguns and a flamethrower?

You're a 140-year-old rich guy, kept alive by the best science the world has to offer, and you journey out into space to meet the aliens who created us, hoping they'll make you live a little longer? My answer to him would've been: a) what makes you think we can communicate with them at all? b) what if they don't care? c) what if they're hostile? [Which is what happens.]

I think Kubrick would be pissed-off if he knew that somebody was gonna borrow so heavily from 2001, then try to make a monster movie out of it and screw it up. And I tend to doubt that David Lean would appreciate the direct references to Lawrence of Arabia. And I think the alien/human pregnancy bears a momentary resemblance to Rosemary's Baby.

All good drama has to follow the rules of story-telling -- SF doesn't get a free pass just because it's speculative. The best science fiction and fantasy stories still make sense within the boundaries of the universe contained within the story. To use one example I often name, the Harry Potter stories are models for logic and common sense -- provided you can buy into the magical world and characters. The limitations of what they can and can't do are part of what make the story work... or in this case, not work.

 

For me, the whole movie largely makes sense if in the future a trillion dollars really doesn't buy a lot of talent. The surgical pod only has software for males and cannot tell that its patient clearly is not a male? Definite cost-cutting there. If not cost-cutting, then perhaps gross mismanagement based in nepotism.

Either makes a lot of sense, but still does not make for a compelling story or characters we care about.

Most of us don't care if a scifi/horror movie featuring worm/snake/squid/zombie aliens makes a whole lot of sense. That's not the point. There are really stupid moments in Prometheus that take some of us out of the movie and make the deaths really cheap.

That's fine for "Jason X", but some of us hoped for better.

 

Agreed. Those are weak points.

Scott was pissed that he wasn't consulted for "Aliens". This time, it's his movie so that legitimizes it. However, he should have paid more attention to detail.

Yes but I don't think it can be criticized for that. The same idea was in "Alien 3" after all. It happened to Ripley - it's part of the theme.

Totally agree. I was only countering the arguments on the link you posted which I think are very weak arguments. As I said earlier, I wasn't happy with the characters and some of the incidents. It's far from perfect but I thoroughly enjoyed it. (I also thought "Avatar" was terribly flawed but I thoroughly enjoyed it).

 

G'day,

I was passing by an Imax theatre tonight and thought "Bugger it, I'll see Prometheus in 3D". The 3D was similar to that of Hugo ... immersive and subtle rather than a stacking of vertical frames and objects coming out towards you.

It made a bit more sense to me on second viewing, but the script is still very weak.

The deaths, as mentioned above, carry no weight. Beardy Biologist gets a phallic snake down the throat ... okay that's got a bit of Alien about it. Gruff Geologist gets acid in the face then turns into some kind of zombie ... that made no sense at all. Zombie Geologist kills some red shirts ... why should I care? The Last Engineer king hits Scottish Lass and Snarly Soldier ... ho hum. A Man Called Horse is clobbered with the head of his robot ... kinda ironic to be killed be yer own creation, and a robot without its head is kinda Alien. Ice Queen fails to understand trigonometry and runs the wrong way ... meh.

The Long Dead Engineers had the decency to die via exploding abdomens (shades of the Prometheus myth) but none of the humans. Way to ruin an Alien movie, dudes.

As for the C-section ... well I'm guessing that if the anaesthetic spray is good enough to relieve the pain of surgery, then one of the lasers that seals the incision might have done some nano-magic to repair the muscles, etc.

And I'm sure that there was a post-coital scene that I saw in the 2D version (the crusty cap'n arising from the Ice Queen's bed, with her asleep in the background) that was not in the Imax 3D version. Or maybe I blinked.

--Geoff

 

I think too much is being made of this. That gigantic ship was not a regular shape and as it swayed and began to descend it would understandably throw a meagre human being into a panic or a frozen state like a rabbit in the headlights, not knowing which way to turn. In the horror of the moment, do humans react in a strictly ordered and logical pattern? No. So it works as a scene.

 

I didn't think much of that either. I just thought getting steam rolled to death was hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwOfShX41I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLlUgilKqms&feature=fvwp

 

There's no smiley for sarcasm, but even so I thought it was pretty clear.

John K.

 

That I wasn't bothered about. I suspect it's a set-up for the next movie--if there is one--where there are two competing factions in the aliens, one who seeds planets to generate new life, and one who is trying to prevent that and using its fellow aliens to create the destroyers. It would also explain the piles of alien bosies and the past images of some of the aliens fleeing...something.

John K.

 

The biggest stretch, for me anyway, was interpreting the cave paintings as "these big guys made us." They're pointing at 5 sphere's for Christ sake! Where the Hell did this theory come from? Why couldn't they just have been alien visitors? Maybe they were teaching mankind how to juggle round stones? Alien entertainers! Take my squid baby, please!

Anyway, still loved the film albeit flawed.

 

The fact that the same star configuration was in all of the various cavepaintings/monuments/tombs led them to investigate.

 

Yeah, sorry John, I jumped at it too quickly after a rough day.

 

That was a bit of a cheap Von Däniken idea that we have already had in so many sci-fi films. I wish they had found the clue to the moon base by other means.