Vivian on 31/5/2012 at 17:27

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I DO think that reducing Giger's input was only ever a bad idea though. He has a lot of weird shit that could be fully realised with CGI (in fact, I literally thought that was Scott's game plan until the more mechanical look leaked out).

Hey, seeing as we are all Alien nerds, have you guys heard this? It's pretty good, spoony ambient stuff themed around the Nostromo: (http://coldspring.co.uk/discography/csr34cd.php)

Vivian on 1/6/2012 at 11:39

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General spoilers abound (warning), but the fanboys over at AvPGalaxy don't seem exactly blown away either (3.5/5): (http://www.avpgalaxy.net/alien-movies/prometheus/review/)

Most of their complaints seem to be that it spams plotpoints at you and then doesn't do anything with any of them. Strangely like Lost, now why would that be?

SubJeff on 2/6/2012 at 02:05

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SPOILERS MOFOS. MOFOING SPOILERS

Just shows you that you shouldn't pay attention to someone who is a member of AvPGalaxy. That review is awful. The only thing I agree with is that the score was all wrong - too grandiose all the time. Having now seen it I have to conclude that the reviewer is someone who didn't get Inception either. I think he'd have a stroke if he watched Primer.

I give Alien a solid 9.5/10. It's the most perfect sci-fi film I've seen.

I give Prometheus an 8. It had almost everything; the cast, the sets, the idea, the way it all pans out. The answers. But it just lacks... something. I just don't feel as satisfied as I could have been. I think I wish we'd seen the genesis of the Alien earlier, and I wish the Engineer had spoken back to David. I also wish that they'd had the chance to explore more, read more (David says he'll be able to but never gets around to it), to examine the other jockey bodies.


As to that AvP guy's confusion - It should be pretty clear by now that the biotech behind the Alien takes some essence from the host/infected organism. This obviously explains the "proto" Alien and the snake things (there are worms in the soil). The weapons biotech - and it IS weapons biotech, which is why it's on this planet and why they have ships to transport it in this and Alien/Aliens - obviously has a few stages to go though; host infection, host offspring birth, host offspring facial infection of another host (because it's a facehugger) and finally Alien.

I'm also seeing a lot of people complaining because they don't get that it's not the same planet as that in Alien. That's LV 426, this is LV 223.

So we're asking why? Well the Engineers planned to infect Earth 2000 years ago. It could be because of all the horrible crap we were doing then, or it could be because we were only seeded in order to be hosts for this biotech in the first place. Given that one of them is in stasis I'd say that they planned to be in stasis for a long time so I'm going for the biotech angle. Either way, I'm just not that bothered and I couldn't get my head around why Shaw did. Just the finality of it? What's more important is "are they going to try again?"


I'd say definitely worth it. And it being premier night I was treated to a geek fest of Tyrell Corp, superhero and Deus Ex t-shirts. Oh, that last one was me. :p

SubJeff on 2/6/2012 at 09:03

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Tell me about these plot holes.

Neb on 2/6/2012 at 15:29

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The star map points to LV-223 – a seemingly unremarkable outpost, and one among many – clearly to get the characters there and the plot rolling along, but it's really a cheap device that doesn't make any sense and is dropped at the first possible convenience. You could argue that the sequel will wrap it up or tease you to find the answer, but just like Prometheus can't be judged next to Alien, there's also a point where it has to stand on its own without its eventual sequel.

Shaw gets an abortion after violently knocking out two colleagues, and no one is waiting for her outside the room, or interrupts her mid operation, or even gives it more than a brief mention when she strolls back with a large, stitched up incision. Natural character interaction and exposition is stunted so that the proto-facehugger remains undisturbed, finally defeating the engineer at the end.

Shaw's faith verges on breaking suspension of disbelief as she seems to have insight into how the plot works, while everyone else (including the audience) barely gets any answers. After the engineer ship takes off, Shaw manages to convince the captain to sacrifice himself on a whim. This is the guy who moped around with a tartan towel around himself for most of the beginning, nonchalantly commenting on radar blips to stranded crew mates. His copilots readily join him in death without a second thought. It's all a clumsy manoeuvre to get Shaw and David alone, having to cooperate at the end. It's interesting, but it really wasn't worth what we had to go through to get there.