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So Ridley Scott is directing an Alien prequel... (The official Prometheus Thread)


crocodile

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Alien blows Avatar away in pretty much every conceivable way.

Am I missing something or is it international captain obvious day and nobody told me?

What is your point?

Is this my dad's better than your dad or something? Because if it is then I wish you'd dabble in (excitable) childish frolics more often, since you're quite fun when you do.

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There's no point, it's just wondering what happened to the former sci-fi herald James Cameron after four magnificent films. As for Alien, yes, it oviously destroys anything in Avatar. I hope Prometheus is more centered around this new story and doesn't get too much into the Alien territory.

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There's no point, it's just wondering what happened to the former sci-fi herald James Cameron after four magnificent films.

Hmm, I've never really thought of Cameron as a serious sci-fi visionary, though. He's more the Spielberg of science fiction, I think. Highly polished, weighty blockbuster fair, lots of explosions and pioneering fx. I don't think he's in any way at all a profound film maker working in that genre, though. Do you? Or did you, at one time?

I don't really measure any 'downfall' in Cameron's career, by all accounts.

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There's no point, it's just wondering what happened to the former sci-fi herald James Cameron after four magnificent films.

Hmm, I've never really thought of Cameron as a serious sci-fi visionary, though. He's more the Spielberg of science fiction, I think. Highly polished, weighty blockbuster fair, lots of explosions and pioneering fx. I don't think he's in any way at all a profound film maker working in that genre, though. Do you? Or did you, at one time?

I don't really measure any 'downfall' in Cameron's career, by all accounts.

My impression is that he has a genuine love and knowledge of science-fiction and actually made several great films inspired by that. The first Terminator is brilliant filmmaking and manages to create an iconography out of few mediums and basically using the imagination. Aliens is a film I want to have sex with. The Abyss is an inmense adventure, perfectly written, perfectly executed, with some scenes I can't forget. The second Terminator isn't as good as the first one yet it's kind of a classic for my generation. Then he made True Lies, which I don't like and afterwards (I can't remember any of Titanic, I was a kid when I saw it) he stopped making fiction and came back years later with what was supposed to be what he he always wanted to make, and that had lots of potential. He had both the abilities, the interest and the mediums to create something memorable again, not only for the genre but for film in general. This combination doesn't actually happen very often. And somehow it didn't happen. It was boring since the script. More than that, I never thought that the guy that made me truly gasp at some fantasies in his previous films would come up with the Disney blue things as an "interesting" alien. Avatar is a film that retains all of Cameron characteristics, which funnily enough are the worthwhile side of the film. But the interesting dialogue and characters, the way of carrying the audience into the discovery of incredible things, seems to be absurdly gone to be a film set on an alien planet. It's a superficial Cameron. Now he's making sequels to that instead of going on to something else, seems to have it in high regard and wants to make an actual geeky franchise out of it. All of this puzzles me.

In short, the Cameron that I liked used to scare the shit out of me without making an horror film, then Avatar happened. Interestingly, I read some people that worked with Cameron and they said he's softened up over the years (we're talking the guy that made Ed Harris punch him).

I want to see Titanic now.

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From what I can make out in the trailer, it does look promising, but..."Could be it's end"? Really? Come on, guys. Obviously the trailer was still in the works ("Card 1," "Card 2"), so hopefully someone jumps on that before it actually goes out.

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Anyway, I personally believe any semblance of "Cameron the sci-fi visionary" started and ended with 1984's The Terminator. Everything since then has been bums on seats.

Taking Cameron out of the undeserved equation, I think a far more valid question would be what happened to John Carpenter, or even Sam Raimi?

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Anyway, I personally believe any semblance of "Cameron the sci-fi visionary" started and ended with 1984's The Terminator.

And even the origins of that film are, shall we say, controversial.

Taking Cameron out of the undeserved equation, I think a far more valid question would be what happened to John Carpenter, or even Sam Raimi?

I think Raimi got pulled into Hollywood too much. He's best at low-budget horror/thrillers. That said, DARKMAN is better than all of his Spider-Man movies and it still had a high budget.

John Carpenter, I'm not sure. Maybe his heart left the business.

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What I miss the most about Raimi is the crazy-arsed camera work. He was so inventive, his angles and framing bordered on the barmy! Yeah, his direction was once truly outstanding.

John Carpenter, well, I just can't get my head around what happened there. Trying to think what his last decent movie was, and all I can suggest is They Live, which was rubbish but good. Such a waste of a talent.

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The only sci-fi visionary in cinema that comes to mind is Stanley Kubrick. I'm not calling Cameron that, I'm just saying that he was brilliant.

No Ridley Scott? Jack Arnold? George Melies?

Scott doesn't even come close. I might give you Melies, but what Kubrick managed to work out for its year is astonishing.

If anything, science-fiction is an underdeveloped genre in film.

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It's one of my favourite films. But I'm not sure it breaks much new ground.

Honestly, Scott would be my second choice for the "visionary", but more for the regular quality and care put into his two science-fiction films than anything else.

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It was, for Hollywood. But the point is, you can still see the film noir. What can you see in 2001?

This is useless anyway, you could be the best filmmaker at a given genre without the need of being absolutely original or a "visionary" or anything.

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His mixture of film noir and sci-fi was pretty novel in Hollywood at the time.

I think he's brilliant in presentation.

It's one of my favourite films. But I'm not sure it breaks much new ground.

Story wise, no, but the presentation was certainly new. I was a big sci-fi fan and I know I had never seen anything like it before in cinema. Since then, Blade Runner has become a name for a certain visual style and mood. The amount of detail was astonishing. Alien and Blade Runner have had a huge impact on how movies look (with an almost obsessed attention for detail, design and lighting). If anything, he introduced Metal Hurlant. Cameron has never pushed the aesthitic values as Scott or Kubrick did, whose films can be watched purely on an art level. Cameron has always been more interested in making exiting rollercoaster rides.

Alex

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Cameron has never pushed the aesthitic values as Scott or Kubrick did, whose films can be watched purely on an art level. Cameron has always been more interested in making exiting rollercoaster rides.

Yep. Same as Spielberg, back in the day. Both directors specialised in the sorts of rollercoasters one wanted to experience again and again. Nowadays men like Michael Bay seem unable to capture anything worth more than a single ride, if you're lucky.

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The difference is, Spielberg had soul, and his greatest action-adventure flicks (first three Indys,JP, JAWS etc.) always had a subtext to them. They weren't just rollercoaster rides. Cameron like Bay, is just a one man popcorn machine.

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Well Cameron's Aliens had more depth than just a popcorn thrill ride, especially the Director's Cut. I mean the once deleted scene of Ripley realizing her daughter died at 80 years old was both bizzare and sad all at once. And her interactions with Newt and the way she becomes her makeshift mother are also very touching and something you wouldn't have expected to see in the type of horror/action film it was advertised to be. Even all the other characters have a very well-rounded amount of character and/or backstory whereas in today's films of a similiar vein would be thinly drawn.

It's too bad Avatar couldn't reach this kind of great writing level that Aliens did. You can tell it tried too, but it resulted in being done in a bland way, personally. But at least Avatar tried, and the same can't be said for film by Michael Bay and the like.

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I find Aliens emotive and terrifying, with some funny moments here and there. Great film.

The script of Avatar was going in the wrong direction since the treatment. The script reduces the characters to mere archetypes that feel more like Mary Sues than actual archetypes.

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I'm not happy with the lack of other things in the theatrical...

A reveal killer? It's a sequel, you've seen the title at the start, and I think you're supposed to have seen the first one :lick: That early scene in the planet is not a reveal of anything.

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No, I meant the Newt reveal. I remember seeing it years ago for the first time and being genuinely shocked and endeared that a little girl had turned up alive in all that darkness and death. Not to mention I was roughly her age at the time.

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Doesn't make any difference to me, I look at these things objectively. I think such a sequence hurts the film.

It was the same with the theatrical cut of FotR vs. the EE: I hate how the Bilbo vanishing trick is ruined by the earlier shot of Isuldur putting on the Ring. Totally mucks up the "language" of the film.

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It was the same with the theatrical cut of FotR vs. the EE: I hate how the Bilbo vanishing trick is ruined by the earlier shot of Isuldur putting on the Ring. Totally mucks up the "language" of the film.

Or Smeagol/Gollum arguing with themselves in the beginning of the extended TTT.

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Ah yes, another fucking annoying addition.

Back to Aliens though, I think Newt's family intro also ruins the profound air of mystery when we see the marines enter the installation to find what looks like a "last stand". Before the DC we employed 100% of our imagination to piece together are own frightening ideas about what might have happened before the soldiers arrived on the scene, but then years later Cameron felt it necassary that we get at least a good picture of how life was there before the Xenos took over.

Stupid, stupid.

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I think it will be at least a good film of the kind we don't see much. My only concern is the music. The only thing I've heard from Streitenfeld is Robin Hood and I found it quite uninteresting despite two or three tracks.

Robin Hood is great. Streitenfeld is a promising composer, but his other work is not the correct way to evaluate what he will do with Prometheus.

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