Nicker on 26/2/2017 at 20:25
Quote Posted by Thirith
I don't think that
Prometheus has any pretenses about explaining the origins of humanity.
The prologue is all about how humans were made in their image. It's an attempt at a creation myth.
Quote Posted by Thirith
The stuff about the Engineers is its premise, not its message.
But it's an unnecessary premise and it's not carried by the plot. It's just complication without complexity.
They are trying to explain the design decisions of the original movie. But we don't need to know who the giant, dead navigator is in Alien. It's just another technologically advanced victim of a chest bursting space plague.
It's foreshadowing. You can't out tech mother f^#@in' nature.
Prometheus tries to invent relevance where it is not needed using writing that is incompetent.
Tocky on 27/2/2017 at 04:54
I think they ought to roll with the origin thing. Forget the colonists and go for what happens to the protagonist of Prometheus when she follows the trail back to the home planet of our creators. Prometheus was no Alien but done well the sequel to it could be fantastic. Meeting our creator? The one who sees us as so inferior? The one who needs a lesson from the pupil? A morality play is a good thing in the right hands.
I wish they had a reboot on Alien 3. Killing off Newt so a dull story of prisoner mistrust and very little redemption could take place was stupid. Just Newt being alive would enhance the story line. It took an idiot not to see that.
icemann on 27/2/2017 at 05:29
That's what Alien 5 was going to be about. It wasn't going to be called Alien 5, but I've forgotten the name it was going to have.
Was going to bypass Alien 3 onwards and go in a different direction with Michael Biehen + Newt being in the cast + Sigorney Weaver.
Thirith on 27/2/2017 at 05:34
@Nicker: Obviously the beginning of the film is a creation myth, but I'm sure Scott never looked at the film as anything other than fiction, and as such, the problem of Prometheus IMO isn't the premise, it's the execution. It's the uncharacteristically stupid protagonists, it's the silly ways of dispatching characters. The film doesn't cohere. The premise of mankind meetings its creator, and guess what? It turns out they hate our guts! There's potential in that, but that potential was squandered by a script that at the very best should've been a first draft.
Also, and this is an example of the stupidity of the script, for all the parallels to Alien, it turns out that neither the ship nor the Engineer in question are actually the ones found in Alien, because it's a whole different planet that just happens to have a similar but not identical name. Unless they somehow reverse-engineer (ha!) that whole thing, which wouldn't make it less stupid, though.
Tocky on 27/2/2017 at 06:04
It takes a writer. It always does. There is absolutely no fucking substitute for writing. It takes somebody who loves the genre. Beyond that it takes somebody who loves mankind. Sure there are writers who hate mankind who write well like Updike seems to but not for science fiction or even movies in general. There is no heart without that love. Without heart that fight to the death struggle is pointless. Without heart a win is meaningless even. Intelligence is even a poor substitute. That drive to survive which has bought us our current place is no small thing. It did not bring a single person here. It brought us all here, those of us not giving the ultimate sacrifice. And when combined with intelligence, as science fiction often does, it is a wonder to behold.
I would go see that Alien 5.
Nicker on 27/2/2017 at 06:30
I agree, Thirith. It was a squandered opportunity to either make a simple monster movie or a deep dive into the meaning of life, the nature of courage, a metaphor for growing up... It managed to miss all marks by aiming perfectly between them.
If had started from a place of calm, like the ISS or a moon mission, staffed by stable, hand picked professionals, informed by well rehearsed procedures - then the descent into chaos would be a journey. Instead it went from dumb to dumber.
I thought it would be tying up story threads introduced in Alien. Instead it starts a whole new narrative.
And I don't think this new addition is going to fix those problems. Not judging by the writing thus far especially.
Kolya on 27/2/2017 at 10:55
Good riddance to any Prometheus sequels. The idea that humans could create a film about an advanced interstellar civilisation was damned from the start.
We cannot even make films of past human cultures that aren't reflective of our contemporary selves. Not even 100 years ago in the same country. That's how narrow our scope is.
Sulphur on 27/2/2017 at 11:19
If I had the resources, I'd make a movie about silicate aliens who communicate through microwave packetbursts that alter the recipient's molecular makeup as part of the message. It'd also have a scene with spontaneously thawing frozen pasta, because we've got to have something to relate to.
Thirith on 27/2/2017 at 11:26
Quote Posted by Kolya
We cannot even make films of past human cultures that aren't reflective of our contemporary selves. Not even 100 years ago in the same country. That's how narrow our scope is.
Why is this necessarily a bad thing, though? What you've written there fits Shakespeare's plays as well - he *always* looked at other cultures in order to say something about his own - and they're pretty okay, all in all.
Vivian on 27/2/2017 at 12:04
Good Scifi is always a mirror. That's basically its function.
