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


crocodile

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Let me preface this by saying I'm not a huge fan of Alien, though I really like Aliens and even Alien3 to a degree. That being said, I liked Prometheus.

I thought the film was pretty good. Everyone saying that the characters are stupid puzzles me, because some are acting on ulterior motives, and others are just paid help. I don't really see how they are different than any other docs we've seen in the universe but whatever. The two Doctors (Shaw and Halloway) are motivated by their ideals, and its not hard to believe their actions based on this. The others are basically their because they were paid and have no investment in anything but money. That being said, I would have worked the two lone docs scenes differently, but I don't feel like they were totally out of place.

Additionally, I would have completely reworked the third act. I would have had the zombie doc attack before Halloway was killed, thereby leaving Vickers actions not as cold and ruthless as they came off as. I also would have switched Vickers and Shaw at the end, with Vickers going with Weyland to the ship and escaping. I still would have Shaw be the sole survivor, but I think having Vickers abandon her father and the like would have been a bit more productive as well as giving Charlize something else to do than chat with Idris Elba.

All in all, I really didn't hype myself up too much so I suppose that helped my enjoyment of the film. It'll be interesting to see where they go with the sequel, considering that the movie has done well enough financially I'm sure they will try another.

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We saw this on Weds, and both my brother and I were gripped the whole way through. A few unresolved plot issues, but it looked fantastic (cinematography, effects and 3D) and I was very impressed with most of the performances.

Streitenfeld's music fit perfectly I thought - really lent something almost disturbing to the film, which considering the subject matter, was appropriate.

If there's a sequel, I'm definitely in.

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I think the black goo was something like the Genesis devise in Star Trek 2.

1)If you drop it on a barren planet it will create life

2)If you drop it on a populated planet it will wipe out everything before creating new life again.

3)If you drink it it just dissolves you into genetic material (the opening scene Engeneer) or alters your DNA and you become a mutant (the guy who had a drop of it in his drink). The dose seems to determine the outcome

The black goo cannot act alone though, it needs a catalyst ( a living species) to get going. I think the "snake" that attacks the scientist in the Head room it just a mutant from a worm that was on the floor of the cave (there's a shot of someone stepping on one at some point)

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Although the black goo is kind of ambiguous, its purpose is not that confusing. The black goo is simply a mutagen. It happened to coincidentally mutate the DNA of the engineers to create life on Earth (or the engineer probably knew that would happen). The xenomorph was not intentionally created and it was simply an unexpected product of the mutagen at work again. My guess is that when the engineers created the substance, they didn't expect to be so unpredictable and uncontrollable.

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Why do people have to argue about everything on the Internet?!?

The film doesn't require you to read anything to understand it. It's OBVIOUSLY got a religious bent to it. Now, unless those explanations were written by anyone who actually worked on the film, they amount to nothing more that what's happening here. And who wants to have a work of art explained to them anyway? You like it or you don't. I loved it. It's a great film that's full of ideas regarding that age-old concept that we call "belief".

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Putting religious or mythical references in a film if fine, as long as it's somewhat explained or doesn't prevent understanding the movie at a superficial level. It does not excuse the film being mostly illogical with stuff just thrown in there for us to guess. It doesn't excuse the characters having absolutely no common sense. The movie is incoherent within itself

The movie both fails in making coherent the mythical elements it wants to bring forth and setting up the the "Alien series" universe

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I suspect that these things will be elaborated on in the sequel. I almost kind of wish we could have gotten a big 4-hour epic covering everything, but that of course wasn't going to happen. I do feel like the pre-tag ending with Shaw and David had a nice FOTR-esque quality of ending on a good note but setting up the dynamic of the journey ahead.

I think the black goo was something like the Genesis devise in Star Trek 2.

1)If you drop it on a barren planet it will create life

2)If you drop it on a populated planet it will wipe out everything before creating new life again.

3)If you drink it it just dissolves you into genetic material (the opening scene Engeneer) or alters your DNA and you become a mutant (the guy who had a drop of it in his drink). The dose seems to determine the outcome

The black goo cannot act alone though, it needs a catalyst ( a living species) to get going. I think the "snake" that attacks the scientist in the Head room it just a mutant from a worm that was on the floor of the cave (there's a shot of someone stepping on one at some point)

I think you're mostly right. However, a worm thing did show up in Holloway's eye, which leads me to believe that the snake/xenomorph stuff is all more intrinsically tied up in the black goo than it may seem (which makes sense, considering the xenomorph on the mural--and I wonder what that little structure with the green stone underneath that was...).

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Learning that Ridley had a sequel planned the whole time makes me appreciate it more. If one is made with more or less the same cast and crew, it could be one helluva pair of films.

People don't fret over unanswered questions when they think they'll be answered in the future.

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Indeed, and I find all of the speculation and investigation into the mysteries and ambiguities of the film quite a bit of fun, really.

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I liked this film a lot. I think you just have to tune out the questions and enjoy it as an action/suspense film. Yeah, whatever, nothing made any sense. But it was really fun to watch. Great editing. I liked Streitenfield's score; it actually sounded a lot like Goldsmith's Alien. Lots of creepy effects and broad, spacey harmonies.

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  • 1 month later...

Prometheus Blu-ray details:

http://www.dreadcent...ls-uncovered-uk

Deleted scenes section: 40 minutes

That website says 35 minutes. Interestingly, it looks like the bulk of the deleted scenes (15 minutes) were from right at the end of the movie.

So what happened, did they scrap the idea of making a director's cut that has extra scenes integrated back in?

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It's going to be difficult to prove because I might rent it on digital TV (then I'm still going to see it HD, more or less). I believe Quint when he says that the problem with Prometheus is Lindelof. It actually makes perfect sense.

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The only problem with Prometheus is the plot and script - the cinematography, set design, special effects (for the most part), etc were all top notch.

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The only problem with Prometheus is the plot and script - the cinematography, set design, special effects (for the most part), etc were all top notch.

What about the acting? Is it still low-key and underplayed like in Alien where they were like a bunch of factory workers straight out of a '70s documentary?

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Some of them were ok, some of them were annoying. A lot of them had to deliver stupid lines and follow stupid ideals but the actors did the best they could with the material

The film has a completely different tone than Alien cause its not a bunch of blue collar guys thrust into a situation they didn't want to be a part of, its a pack of scientists craving one thing or another from the planet. It really fails at everything it's trying to do except make you think about a few things and scare you in one brilliant suspense sequence

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There's very few redeeming features at play in Prometheus. The main theme is nice and the film looks technically very clean, but sadly poetically vacant, there's no tangible fabric to the framing, no detail beyond the shiny veneer. The movie is fading from consciousness fast.

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Which is sad to me...it could have been so interesting and "cool." I fairly liked the movie but so many things that bothered me. Jason's review back when the film came out pretty much summed up my thoughts about it.

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Are you guys coming from the stance of having seen the original Alien?

My brother and I have never seen any of the other films and we were both gripped by Prometheus. Just wondering if there's a franchise-expectation problem here, or if you just thought the film sucked.

There were definitely lots of plot holes, and one or two things weren't quite as effective as they could've been, but I came out very satisfied.

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Of course I've seen the original Alien! Grew up watching it over and over again and recently watched the new Blu just before I saw Prometheus

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i re-watched alien yesterday.

Can someone explain to me why the xenomorph is cozily located between pipes in the escape pod and does not have any urge to kill ripley?

It's rather strange. If it was hurt.. but i dont remember it being hurt or sick or something...

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Of course I've seen the original Alien! Grew up watching it over and over again and recently watched the new Blu just before I saw Prometheus

What Rich meant is that people were going in and automatically comparing everything in it to Alien. I hadn't seen it for years prior, and enjoyed Prometheus a lot.

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I find it interested that the first script writer Jon Spaihts is going to be on one of the commentaries since from what I understand they basically went in a different direction. I'm curious as to what elements they retained and I hope he's candid about what happened.

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I'm sure it's going to be one of these ass-kissing commentaries: "We realized my approach was not the good one, so that Lindelof guy came and wrote a totally new script, which was way better than mine in pretty much every way. I am thankful Ridley & co decided to ignore my screenplay entirely. Blah blah blah...."

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Look who's talking!

But, yeah, it's true.

You're joking, right? These days I hate way more movies than I like. Hardly anyone's making good movies any more!

I gotta start contributing to the Last Film you Watched thread more, I watch a ton of films I don't mention here.

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Are you guys coming from the stance of having seen the original Alien?

My brother and I have never seen any of the other films and we were both gripped by Prometheus. Just wondering if there's a franchise-expectation problem here, or if you just thought the film sucked.

There were definitely lots of plot holes, and one or two things weren't quite as effective as they could've been, but I came out very satisfied.

While I've seen the original Alien, my problems with Prometheus have nothing to do with that. I went into the movie knowing it would have a differny tone/ feel than alien...that's totally fine. And there were parts of the movie that did grip me and excite me and I felt like " sweet, this is going to be cool!" But then there were moments that totally took me out of that...characters doing things that defy logic....it was an experience of being sucked into the story and then taken out of it by things that made me think WTF???. And then the very last scene left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Some of them were ok, some of them were annoying. A lot of them had to deliver stupid lines and follow stupid ideals but the actors did the best they could with the material

The film has a completely different tone than Alien cause its not a bunch of blue collar guys thrust into a situation they didn't want to be a part of, its a pack of scientists craving one thing or another from the planet. It really fails at everything it's trying to do except make you think about a few things and scare you in one brilliant suspense sequence

What I mean is that the acting and the registration of the characters in Alien is unusual natural. It wasn't dramatized in a Hollywood way. It didn't feel as if they were acting, which made the terror more real.

I wonder whose idea it was to go for natural performances. I've never seen it in any of Scott's other movies. It could be Dan O'Bannon was responsible for this.

Alex

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Some of them were ok, some of them were annoying. A lot of them had to deliver stupid lines and follow stupid ideals but the actors did the best they could with the material

The film has a completely different tone than Alien cause its not a bunch of blue collar guys thrust into a situation they didn't want to be a part of, its a pack of scientists craving one thing or another from the planet. It really fails at everything it's trying to do except make you think about a few things and scare you in one brilliant suspense sequence

What I mean is that the acting and the registration of the characters in Alien is unusual natural. It wasn't dramatized in a Hollywood way. It didn't feel as if they were acting, which made the terror more real.

I wonder whose idea it was to go for natural performances. I've never seen it in any of Scott's other movies. It could be Dan O'Bannon was responsible for this.

Alex

Prometheus has absolutely none of that.

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Some of them were ok, some of them were annoying. A lot of them had to deliver stupid lines and follow stupid ideals but the actors did the best they could with the material

The film has a completely different tone than Alien cause its not a bunch of blue collar guys thrust into a situation they didn't want to be a part of, its a pack of scientists craving one thing or another from the planet. It really fails at everything it's trying to do except make you think about a few things and scare you in one brilliant suspense sequence

What I mean is that the acting and the registration of the characters in Alien is unusual natural. It wasn't dramatized in a Hollywood way. It didn't feel as if they were acting, which made the terror more real.

The recreation/dining scenes in Alien feel like they were directed by Mike Leigh. Prometheus is at the opposite end of the spectrum in that regard.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Some of them were ok, some of them were annoying. A lot of them had to deliver stupid lines and follow stupid ideals but the actors did the best they could with the material

The film has a completely different tone than Alien cause its not a bunch of blue collar guys thrust into a situation they didn't want to be a part of, its a pack of scientists craving one thing or another from the planet. It really fails at everything it's trying to do except make you think about a few things and scare you in one brilliant suspense sequence

What I mean is that the acting and the registration of the characters in Alien is unusual natural. It wasn't dramatized in a Hollywood way. It didn't feel as if they were acting, which made the terror more real.

The recreation/dining scenes in Alien feel like they were directed by Mike Leigh. Prometheus is at the opposite end of the spectrum in that regard.

"Prometheus 2", starring Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, and Timothy Spall! Ha-ha!

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