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


crocodile

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Both it and AvP are big guilty pleasures/beer movies for me. They weren't at first, especially the latter, but I've come to appreciate them for the hugely entertaining shite they are. Death Race 2000 is another ace movie in the the same vein.

But I still can't work out whether or not the director is aware of his niche.

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Thinking about this today, I can honestly say I'd rather watch Event Horizon

Event Horizon is underrated. Its falls apart in the end, but it has some really creepy parts. And it looks great.

Great old school sets and optical SFX but terrible, primitive CGI.

I'd rather watch a Michael Bay film or some other shit.

?

Reviews are pretty positive. 33 reviews: 82%

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Havent seen the film in ages. just remember it gave me a knot in my stomach. Sam Neil is very creepy.

I should warn you, the DVD from Paramount looks like a joke. Completely out of focus. Perhaps the UK edition looks better.

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BloodBoal, I resisted the urge to post spoilers (because some people have a tendency to look at them anyway), but yes, I was dying to mention THAT Fifield scene the other day after seeing it.

BY FAR the worst moment of the movie, it was offensively bad, and just so embarrassing - he's jumping off the walls, really Ridley? Ghastly direction and writing, it was bottom of the barrel stuff.

And that feeling of cold you have - leave it a day or so and the realisation of how abysmally awful the movie is will set in.

A year from now Prometheus will have faded into obscurity. You can quote me on that.

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Wow. Just wow.

I know I'm wired almost the exact opposite way as most people here when it comes to...well, most topics, it seems. But I'm really surprised to see all the negative comments. I thought at least there would be more balance.

This is the most beautiful science fiction film I've seen in many, many years (except maybe AVATAR, but that was more in fantasy territory) and just pure ART. Classic Scott. It's not perfect, though. There are a couple of things that prevent it from being an 'instant classic', but on a scale from 1-6 where 6 is the best, it's a clear 5+ in my book.

I'll be watching it again shortly, and can't wait to delve further into the details -- whether the visceral experience or the more cerebral (the mythological themes).

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Thor, you are as reliable as clockwork.

If you hadn't of loved this movie the sun would not have risen in the sky this morning ;)

Glad you liked it old boy, but I do take issue with your "Classic Scott" statement. WTF are you smoking?! Seriously, you're demeaning Alien and Blade Runner with such a wild and reckless claim!

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Thor has this sweet norwegian gullibility when it comes to Hollywood schlock. :)

Seriously, although the movie is over 2 months away in Germany, i'm happy to see it now for myself. I can't believe i doesn't manage to fly on a higher plane than SNOW WHITE, which i saw yesterday. And even that had entertaining parts, so...

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Thor, you are as reliable as clockwork.

If you hadn't of loved this movie, the sun would not have risen in the sky this morning ;)

Glad you liked it old boy, but I do take issue with your "Classic Scott" statement. WTF are you smoking?! Seriously, you're demeaning Alien and Blade Runner with such a wild and reckless claim!

I often find it fascinating how we're all born as humanbeings into this world, but can have so radically different perspectives and tastes in things.

I do think it's classic Scott in many different departments. A strong auteur film. Also, I'm not one to immediately reach for the ALIEN comparisons. That's just unfair for a whole variety of reasons. It takes place in the same unvierse, but it's a whole new film with a whole new aesthetic. If you had expected ALIEN 2 or more of the same, I can see why you were disappointed.

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Seriously, although the movie is over 2 months away in Germany, i'm happy to see it now for myself. I can't believe i doesn't manage to fly on a higher plane than SNOW WHITE, which i saw yesterday. And even that had entertaining parts, so...

Clarify, are you saying you have somehow seen it? I'm not quite sure.

Thor, you are as reliable as clockwork.

If you hadn't of loved this movie, the sun would not have risen in the sky this morning ;)

Glad you liked it old boy, but I do take issue with your "Classic Scott" statement. WTF are you smoking?! Seriously, you're demeaning Alien and Blade Runner with such a wild and reckless claim!

I often find it fascinating how we're all born as humanbeings into this world, but can have so radically different perspectives and tastes in things.

I know I'm wired almost the exact opposite way as most people here when it comes to...well, most topics, it seems.

Indeed!

Also, I'm not one to immediately reach for the ALIEN comparisons. That's just unfair for a whole variety of reasons. It takes place in the same unvierse, but it's a whole new film with a whole new aesthetic. If you had expected ALIEN 2 or more of the same, I can see why you were disappointed.

You misunderstood me: I did not compare it to Alien in the way you think I did. I would never compare the content of Prometheus to that of Alien; these are two very, very different films. No, I was merely alluding to quality when I brought up Alien AND Blade Runner. It was direct response to your "classic Scott" statement, which I thought was obvious.

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I often find it fascinating how we're all born as humanbeings into this world, but can have so radically different perspectives and tastes in things.

That's all very relative. I still have to read the first comment that says "Finally, for the first time Scott understands how to make a decent science fiction movie". Other than that, the critics and audiences over at Rotten Tomatoes are mostly positive, especially the audience, I must say.

The thing that really alarms me are the bits of dialog that I heard. Unlike Scott's previous SF films, there seems to be a lot of clichés and needless exposition. I'm so glad Hampton Fancher is currently writing the script for BR 2 and not Lindelof. I only pray that David Peoples will do the rewrite again.

Alex

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Hollywood was not paying him as much as he was getting in Europe, and he did not get a lot of respect.

Yeah, using that organ to underscore a dramatic scene and getting laughs from the audience because of it didn't really help him gain the respect he was after. But still; Morricone is BY FAR my favorite composer besides Williams and I think MTM has some awesome moments. Not the organ part though...

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You misunderstood me: I did not compare it to Alien in the way you think I did. I would never compare the content of Prometheus to that of Alien; these are two very, very different films. No, I was merely alluding to quality when I brought up Alien AND Blade Runner. It was direct response to your "classic Scott" statement, which I thought was obvious.

Well, I meant 'classic Scott' in the sense that it plays to his strengths; he's able to put his trademark auteurisms all over it. 'Classic' in the sense you think of is hard to discern so shortly after the premiere. We'll see in a few years. I think there are a couple of elements that prevent it from becoming an 'instant classic' (which sometimes happens), but who knows how it's perceived in 35 years?

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An, I see. I'd have exchanged "classic" with "vintage", but yeah; I'd still disagree: I just don't recognise the vintage Scott style much in this movie at all.

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Yeah, using that organ to underscore a dramatic scene and getting laughs from the audience because of it didn't really help him gain the respect he was after. But still; Morricone is BY FAR my favorite composer besides Williams and I think MTM has some awesome moments. Not the organ part though...

I think I got that info from a documentary that pre-dated Mission to Mars

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At the end of the day, De Palma could've asked him to jettison the organ.

He should have. MTM is not a bad score. It's the organ that's REALLY out of place and is the one thing people remember about it. Nobody ever mentions great tracks like 'Where?'.

I saw the film in London back in the day at a packed Odeon theatre and the moment that organ reared its ugly head a substantial part of the audience bursted out in laughter. The only time I ever witnessed people reacting in such a way to a score...

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An, I see. I'd have exchanged "classic" with "vintage", but yeah; I'd still disagree: I just don't recognise the vintage Scott style much in this movie at all.

Flickering lights. Rain, dust and other particles swirling through the air. A strong, female protagonist. Beautiful vista shots. Backlit, foggy atmosphere. Long lenses. A philosophical undercurrent (especially the theme of mortality). And so on and so forth. Personally, I found it all in PROMETHEUS.

What made it even better for me is that despite these philosophical undercurrents, the narrative managed to be totally engrossing and focussed. This isn't always the case with his films, but he hit a homerun here (disregarding some elements towards the end, which may or may not be 'holes' in terms of the universe, depending on how you see it -- I'm not going to give any spoilers here).

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Flickering lights. Rain, dust and other particles swirling through the air. A strong, female protagonist. Beautiful vista shots. Backlit, foggy atmosphere. Long lenses. A philosophical undercurrent (especially the theme of mortality). And so on and so forth. Personally, I found it all in PROMETHEUS.

But for me none of them were done with any conviction. It felt empty. Aside from the genuinely beautiful opening vista shots (and music), there was nothing here which suggested visual and thematic depth - it was all face-value, glossy sheen stuff. And even the aforementioned opener seems far less standout when you consider that the BBC produces the same calibre of photography every year with its natural history documentaries.

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But for me none of them were done with any conviction. It felt empty. Aside from the genuinely beautiful opening vista shots (and music), there was nothing here which suggested visual and thematic depth - it was all face-value, glossy sheen stuff. And even the aforementioned opener seems far less standout when you consider that the BBC produces the same calibre of photography every year with its natural history documentaries.

Well, that's your right.

Personally, I found details (subtle and not-so-subtle) throughout the duration of the film that made me go "wow, typical Scott!". I hope to explore them even further in my second viewing.

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Reviews are pretty positive. 33 reviews: 82%

F*ck reviews! Revenge of the Sith had 80%.

The problem, Alex is not that it's a badly crafted film. But the script is so weak and embrassing that it fails to generate anything but boredom. Scott can still do it, but he needs a damn good writer.

Karol

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I remember Empire giving AotC 5 stars. They never lived it down.

Didn't Kingdom of the Crystal Skull get quite a few positive reviews as well?

It's just a hype and expectation thing - something even the journos aren't immune to. Myself? Well I was one of those who thought The Phantom Menace was "amazing" when I first saw it.

The script for Alien is nothing special.

No, but it's supremely economical. And compared to Prometheus, it IS special.

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The script for Alien is nothing special.

No, but it isn't embarassing either. It's dry, every-day feel to it creates a sense of realism. In Prometheus every character is a philosopher and talking about meaning of life and plot points. Reeeeaaaally clunky stuff.

And Quint, KOTCS had 77%.

Karol

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In Prometheus you can see they were trying for that 'kitchen sink normality' which the Alien script has. But it feels forced instead of natural. It feels contrived.

The Alien script is in fact a very good one, because it is always believable.

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The major difference between the two is that in Alien, you get a bunch of normal people in a mundane enviroment and then something horrific and extraordinary happens to them. In Prometheus, you've got big egos and knowledge of universe on board with tremendous expectations and... nothing in this scale ever happens to those people. Even the main characters are somewhat disappointed and underwhelmed when they "get there".

Karol

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The script for Alien is nothing special.

Agreed. That film is ALL about execution, not story, which is as thin as it comes ('people flee from monster in dark corridors'). As an artistic statement, however, it's very profound. Some audiovisual exploration of Freudian themes barely rivalled before or since.

PROMETHEUS expands the whole philosophical agenda to be about that and more, while at the same time keeping the story focussed. That's just marvelous.

ALIEN is probably the reason I got interested in films in the first place, so I've had monumental expectations for this film for 25 years, at least (when I first started to speculate what it would be like if Scott returned to the universe to tell the pre-story), and that it managed to fulfill my expectations is an unbelievable feat. Even though I tried to psych myself DOWN before the film and let it come to me rather than meet it with all my years of 'luggage'.

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It's a good story anyway.

Thor, the reason people were impressed and remember Alien is because of the script. You know, the opening, the encounter of the eggs, the diner scene, when Ash tries to choke Ripley, the escape in the small ship only to find the creature there, when they find the facehugger dead, when Ripley doesn't want Kane in, when they reactivate Ash's head, Ripley looking for the cat, and more... and the order of all the events in a perfect succesion making the situation more and more tense... You can have all the awesome "execution" you want, but without all that, the film wouldn't be good or memorable.

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Possible spoilers below.

Saw Prometheus. Didn't like it. At all. Mostly because you really don't give a damn about any of these characters. The 'philosophical' aspects are paper thin at best so stop praising that, because it's not worth it.

I was completely turned down when the characters had to turn the mysterious and incomprehensible surroundings (the alien ship, the 'black ooze', etc.) into a plot for convenience sake. Nobody would ever conclude on the discoveries made the exact motivations of the alien race, why that one dude was still in hibernation, etc. But these characters do. I hate that really. If the question "Now how the F*CK would they know that?!" keeps popping up in my head a couple of times during a movie I know I'm watching a dud.

Now there were some good moments, especially the scary scenes, but to be honest; even shit like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning has that.

So after Lucas failed to succesfully return to an old franchise/style with Star Wars, Spielberg with Indy and now Scott with Prometheus, I guess it's up to Peter Jackson to do that what other giants couldn't do. Go Hobbit..!

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Yeah, cheesy and god awful, bless him!

Seems like a lot of you don't know that Morricone essentially composed a symphony that was chopped and edited to fit the film. He didn't compose to picture. I personally love the score, the organ is probably the most difficult instrument to utilize in music.

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