Briareos H on 11/6/2012 at 08:43
Quote Posted by Thirith
I must be blind, 'cause I don't see it.
Inline Image:
http://i.imgur.com/3Pmkq.jpgWindows 7 taskbar complete with ie9 and windows media player (is that a skype icon in the notification area?)
Sombras on 11/6/2012 at 15:33
OK, not a review per se, but rather a collection of random thoughts and observations. No spoiler tags here, so if you haven't see it, don't read this. Warning, the geek factor in what follows is enormously high.
Cast: I now have a massive crush on Noomi Rapace. It hit me about half-way through the movie that, silly dialogue and plot gaps (read: chasms) notwithstanding, she's an excellent successor to Sigourney Weaver. I cannot wait to see her in what may end up being another two movies. I was crushed (pun intended) that Vickers (Charlize Theron) got axed. I think that a pairing up of Vickers and Shaw for the next installment could have been great. David (Fassbender) has a lot of potential and I'm pleased that he survived--sort of. My frustration with David's character had nothing to do with Fassbender, but rather with the damned script/plot problems. Charlie (Marshall-Green) was pretty much a throw-away character and I shed not a tear when Vickers inexplicably burnt him to a crisp.
Scrip/plot/story...whatever: Ugh. What a (sometimes beautiful) fucking mess. This was a mini-series length story mercilessly crammed into a feature film format. To sum it up, it tried to do WAY too much. Too many scenes, too many characters, too many mysteries, too many hints that lead to nowhere, too...much. I literally lectured myself the past few weeks to not expect anything on the level of the original Alien, but in the end it's almost inevitable that comparisons be made. Alien was brilliant in its simplicity. Simple plot (albeit, one that hinted at BIG events surrounding it), simple environments, simple scenes, simple characters with credible and understandable motivations. Everything in the move made sense. (Watch Dark Star for for a funny "practice-run" on Alien. Talk about sparse and simple.) Prometheus, on the other hand, suffers badly from just too fucking much going on. It's hopelessly rushed, needlessly complicated, and all too often the characters are at the mercy of this non-stop cascade of shitty and dangerous events. This tossed-up disaster of a story has characters doing increasingly nonsensical shit, which made me, the nerd watching it alone and who has no real problem suspending my disbelief in a movie theater, repeatedly asking "What the fuck. Really?"
Visuals: This is a beautiful movie. I watched it olde schule without 3D and it looked great. CGI was convincing and never had me going "Oh, c'mon...".
Random plot problems/questions: Prometheus left me confused. I don't have a problem with plot twists or mysteries that make sense withing the context of the movie (like in Primer), but a movie should never confuse the viewer. At first I thought the I just wasn't thinking hard enough, but it seems that there the plot had too many inconsistencies and lapses in reason for its own good. In moving too quickly, it begs the viewer to "just trust" that this all makes sense. Well, it didn't. Some things do need some 'splainin'. I wouldn't be surprised if Ridley Scott later says that he had another 1.5 hours of footage that had to get edited out prior to release.
--The Alien/weapon/monster/infection/Other: OK, Alien fans will be quite happy to figure out that we're dealing with our favorite villain here. Kind of. But...what are those cannisters that look much like the alien eggs? What's really in them? They appeared to contain worms or larvae, which may have grown into the "cobras" that attacked the totally dispensable geologist and biologist. (And, what fucking BIOLOGIST sent to study alien species would talk to an unknown, potentially dangerous organism like it's a puppy?) And what do these cobras do? One entered the biologist's mouth--why? Later, it just high-tailed it out of his body without appearing to leave anything or itself having undergone any transformation. The geologist, on the other hand, seems to have had a totally different reaction to being attacked. Apparently some people turn into the Hulk after exposure to the cobras. Huh? Charlie's infection seemed similar to the geologist's, so that means that he's now able to implant an "octo-hugger" in the lovely Shaw? Wh-huh? What turns into fucking what here? Is the cobra an earlier form of the octo-hugger, OR are they different? This is perhaps my biggest problem with the film: what the crew is dealing with is never certain and never totally makes sense. The various forms of the creature in the original Alien series were intuitive: egg-->face-hugger-->chest-burster-->full-on bad-ass alien. Like the rest of the plot, this new version is a mess. You never quite know where the creature's growth starts and where it's going. The ONLY thing that I can think of to explain the difference in alien types/development between Prometheus and the Alien sequence is that maybe, just maybe, the creaturs encountered in Prometheus are another version of the bio-weapon featured in Alien?
-David: I really liked his character. Fassbender plays him well, and the robot's quest for meaning and acceptance by his father-figure could have been so much more compelling. David's surriptitous collection of biological samples made little sense, and his deliberate infection of Carlie even less. Bad, bad script writing here. His character can be redeemed in the next movie.
Vickers: I'm in charge, no, wait, Shaw and Charlie are in charge--no wait, Janek (Idris Elba) is captain, so he's in charge. See me and despair--wait, Janek, want to screw? WHAT!? Shit, Theron should sue because her character was handled so badly. Maybe it's good that Vickers went down like a bowling pin because nothing good was coming from that direction anytime soon.
The Engineers and their Ship: Really cool that their elephantine heads turned out to be helmets! Totally stupid that they ended up being 100% (not 99.98%) genetically identical to us. So, how would that explain them being so goddamn different from us? What happened on their ship is frustratingly vague, and I can't understand why in some past disaster they fled into the room containing so many weapons cannisters. If they were fleeing an alien creature/contagion, why run into a chamber full of them? Why were they arrayed in front of the monolithic Engineer head? And, why would the Engineer pilot wake up, kick some ass, and just take off for Earth with his ship compromised (i.e., humans and aliens running around)? How did the Engineer pilot know that Shaw was still alive after his ship is brought down? Oh, and all the archeological evidence on Earth pointing (literally) to the Engineers? Interesting, but its role in the film served only as a catalyst to get to the Engineers' base. I don't find that part convincing, and I have trouble understanding why humans would be invited to go there, when the Engineers' intentions were to return here.
Final scene: Totally unnecessary, gratuitous, un-scary, pandering, etc. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid.
That said, I'm hooked. I actually did get sucked into the awkwardly phrased question, "Why do they want to destroy us if they created us?" Bring it on.
Renault on 11/6/2012 at 16:42
Just saw this over the weekend, and I agree with a lot of the criticism here, so I won't rehash most of it. Strangely, the thing that bothered me most was the complete lack of common sense and protocol of the whole crew and mission overall of Prometheus. As Sombras mentioned, there was no one person completely in charge (competent or not, we really needed a definitive Dallas or Gorman). It seemed like the whole movie, everyone had their own agenda and just did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, no organization or procedure anywhere.
Also - this is a mission to (hopefully) locate a new species of life whom we know nothing about. How about a security force? What, I think one guy brought a gun. You're telling me there isn't going to be some kind of organized military group going along for the ride? Sure, you can say its a "scientific expedition" but you're not going to protect your umpteen zillion dollar investement? Completely unrealistic and not consistent with the way Weyland operates.
Plus, some things just didn't make sense. Shaw gets impregnated, then gets it out, and then doesn't seem to have an issue with anyone after that. I'd be laying waste to people. Then they just let her come along to meet The Engineer fully knowing that her motivations and intentions are contrary to theirs. Meanwhile the Captain is just basically sitting around, barely doing his job, and then out of the clear blue we learn he has a secret agenda to sacrifice himself if need be. And up to that point, he didn't even seem to care much about what was going on, the most effort he exerted was banging Vickers. Oh, and he might have detected a new lifeform in the tunnels, no big deal though it's gone now. :weird:
I did like Rapace's character during the last half of the movie; she was a little too giddy/goofy in the early stages though. And considering the main goal of most of the other Alien movies was to just "go home" I thought it was a pretty cool ending for her to instead choose to go further out and find the Engineers, when she easily could have just returned to Earth (obviously this is setting up the sequel, but still).
Going back to the original Alien movie - it's been a bit since I've seen it, but do you guys get the impression that the Nostromo just happened to pick up the distress signal in the course of it's normal operations, or was the entire expedition intended from the start to get an "expendable" crew over there to check it out? I'm kind of assuming any Prometheus sequels will link directly to that ship on LV-426, and show that Weyland knew about it the entire time.
Lastly - the amount and type of tech compared to Alien/Aliens doesn't jive considering its a prequel, but I guess there's no avoiding that.
catbarf on 11/6/2012 at 17:25
Spoiler warning here.
Quote Posted by Sombras
--The Alien/weapon/monster/infection/Other: OK,
Alien fans will be quite happy to figure out that we're dealing with our favorite villain here. Kind of. But...what are those cannisters that look much like the alien eggs? What's really in them? They appeared to contain worms or larvae, which
may have grown into the "cobras" that attacked the totally dispensable geologist and biologist. (And, what fucking BIOLOGIST sent to study alien species would talk to an unknown, potentially dangerous organism like it's a puppy?) And what do these cobras do? One entered the biologist's mouth--why? Later, it just high-tailed it out of his body without appearing to leave anything or itself having undergone any transformation. The geologist, on the other hand, seems to have had a totally different reaction to being attacked. Apparently some people turn into the Hulk after exposure to the cobras. Huh? Charlie's infection seemed similar to the geologist's, so that means that he's now able to implant an "octo-hugger" in the lovely Shaw? Wh-huh?
What turns into fucking what here? Is the cobra an earlier form of the octo-hugger, OR are they different? This is perhaps my biggest problem with the film: what the crew is dealing with is never certain and never totally makes sense. The various forms of the creature in the original Alien series were intuitive: egg-->face-hugger-->chest-burster-->full-on bad-ass alien. Like the rest of the plot, this new version is a mess. You never quite know where the creature's growth starts and where it's going. The ONLY thing that I can think of to explain the difference in alien types/development between
Prometheus and the
Alien sequence is that maybe, just maybe, the creaturs encountered in
Prometheus are another
version of the bio-weapon featured in
Alien?
Okay, here's what I got out of it- the pods contain black goo. The black goo, when it hits living matter, breaks it down and reforms it into new stuff, as per the intro. There's a shot or two of earthworm-looking things crawling on the ground around the pods, so they're what gets turned into the cobra things. Why the cobra just runs off without having done anything to the guy is weird, but I think it comes down to the guy already being dead, or maybe it did implant him and they just didn't know. The geologist wasn't attacked by a cobra, he got a face full of the goo and it melted through his helmet.
It seems to me that the lifecycle works like this. Black goo breaks down a living creature, alters its DNA, and creates a new creature- worms become the cobras, the fertilized egg becomes the octo-hugger thing. This altered creature is basically a proto-facehugger, which infects another host just like the facehuggers in the Alien franchise, and the result then is a full Alien. The only thing that doesn't fit is the geologist attacking the rest of the crew, so for that I have no explanation, but the shared attack method of the cobra and the squid seems more than coincidental.
Sombras on 11/6/2012 at 17:27
Quote Posted by Brethren
It seemed like the whole movie, everyone had their own agenda and just did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, no organization or procedure anywhere.
Yup, just a bunch of people running around, reacting to random things. Like they all just took a two-year field trip and got let off the bus.
Quote Posted by Brethren
Also - this is a mission to (hopefully) locate a new species of life whom we know nothing about. How about a security force? What, I think one guy brought a gun.
Yes, that cracked me up, too. I thought that they should have either gone in totally and deliberately helpless, or armed to the teeth. Not just a gun or two.
Quote Posted by Brethren
Going back to the original Alien movie - it's been a bit since I've seen it, but do you guys get the impression that the Nostromo just happened to pick up the distress signal in the course of it's normal operations, or was the entire expedition intended from the start to get an "expendable" crew over there to check it out? I'm kind of assuming any Prometheus sequels will link directly to that ship on LV-426, and show that Weyland knew about it the entire time.
This is still bugging me. Didn't the distress signal in
Alienturn out to be a warning? That would make more sense if it was left by Shaw. I believe that Mother, the Nostromo's computer, confirmed to Ripley that the crew was redirected to LV-426 and that the crew was "expendable".
I also feel like there's some discontinuity between the scene on LV-426 at the end of
Prometheus and what the Nostromo's crew find in
Alien. No sign of the Prometheus in the wreckage of the Engineer ship, and no evidence of Vickers' escape ship nearby. Also, the Nostromo crew found the Engineer pilot still in his "cockpit" and "flight suit", with evidence that he died from a chest-burster. (I ALWAYS assumed, wrongly, that his dying from the burster is what brought down the Engineer ship.) Unless other things were happening aboard the Engineer ship that we didn't know about, that's certainly not the situation we saw at the end of the movie.
Oh, oh, oh, and how is it that Shaw made it back to the Engineer ship when she had already run out of air at Vickers' escape boat? (Little things like that BUG me.)
Sombras on 11/6/2012 at 17:47
Quote Posted by catbarf
It seems to me that the lifecycle works like this. Black goo breaks down a living creature, alters its DNA, and creates a new creature- worms become the cobras, the fertilized egg becomes the octo-hugger thing.
Hmmm, OK. So what about the black goo that the Engineer drinks at the beginning? Same black goo, you think? I assumed that he was "seeding" the Earth by sacrificing his body.
OK, the geologist and Charlie both showed signed of disintegration after being exposed, so I wonder if the same thing was happening to them, and to the revived Engineer's head?
Quote Posted by catbarf
This altered creature is basically a proto-facehugger, which infects another host just like the facehuggers in the Alien franchise, and the result then is a full Alien.
I'll buy that, but why the difference? Also, not nearly as scary as the facehuggers.
Quote Posted by catbarf
The only thing that doesn't fit is the geologist attacking the rest of the crew, so for that I have no explanation, but the shared attack method of the cobra and the squid seems more than coincidental.
I agree. What about this scenario: In the unexplained "re-play" of the Engineers fleeing into the "Head Room" (ha, see what I did there?), were a few of them trying to get away from the one bringing up the rear, the one who ended up decapitated by the door? If he was infected like the geologist, maybe he was terrorizing his fellow crewmembers? He was clearly infected by something when he was revived on the Prometheus.
And some more worthless conjecture: Maybe the Engineers created humans on Earth (and elsewhere?) to serve as host populations for bioweapons to be used against an enemy? If so, seems needlessly complicated. And, on the Engineer ship, either a random fuck-up let the weapon loose, or maybe one of them sabotaged the mission to
save humanity? I like that last idea.
Jesus christ, I think I'm hooked on this.
catbarf on 11/6/2012 at 17:57
Quote Posted by Sombras
I also feel like there's some discontinuity between the scene on LV-426 at the end of
Prometheus and what the Nostromo's crew find in
Alien. No sign of the Prometheus in the wreckage of the Engineer ship, and no evidence of Vickers' escape ship nearby. Also, the Nostromo crew found the Engineer pilot still in his "cockpit" and "flight suit", with evidence that he died from a chest-burster. (I ALWAYS assumed, wrongly, that his dying from the burster is what brought down the Engineer ship.) Unless other things were happening aboard the Engineer ship that we didn't know about, that's certainly not the situation we saw at the end of the movie.
Oh, oh, oh, and how is it that Shaw made it back to the Engineer ship when she had already run out of air at Vickers' escape boat? (Little things like that BUG me.)
The ship on LV-426 can't be the one in Prometheus. The engineer died in a very different location, so there's no way they're the same one, and the ship in Alien presumably did not have the urns full of black goo. Also, I would assume her suit automatically refilled from the escape boat's air. As the movie was winding down, I thought there was going to be some cool connection like the impregnated Engineer waking up, getting on his ship, and barely managing to take off and get into space despite the damage, but it seems that was not to be.
Sombras on 11/6/2012 at 18:04
Quote Posted by catbarf
The ship on LV-426 can't be related to the one in Prometheus. The engineer died in a very different location, so there's no way they're the same one, and the ship in Alien presumably did not have the urns full of black goo. Also, I would assume her suit automatically refilled from the escape boat's air.
Agreed. So, wait, did
Prometheus take place on a
different planet than LV-426??? Seems crazy that two different Engineer ships on two different planets would suffer similar fates.
That makes sense about the suit refilling. See? Just another example of the plot jumping too much and the audience having to work overtime to fill in the gaps.
catbarf on 11/6/2012 at 18:06
Quote Posted by Sombras
Hmmm, OK. So what about the black goo that the Engineer drinks at the beginning? Same black goo, you think? I assumed that he was "seeding" the Earth by sacrificing his body.
I figured same goo, but because he directly ingested it in large quantity it worked quickly. Although, maybe the black goo used in the intro was to seed life like you say, but the one encountered by the crew was an altered form used as a weapon that makes scary nasty shit out of what it destroys.
Quote Posted by Sombras
I agree. What about this scenario: In the unexplained "re-play" of the Engineers fleeing into the "Head Room" (ha, see what I did there?), were a few of them trying to get away from the one bringing up the rear, the one who ended up decapitated by the door? If he was infected like the geologist, maybe he was terrorizing his fellow crewmembers? He was clearly infected by something when he was revived on the Prometheus.
I thought it was more likely that a few of the Alien-things got loose and attacked, and the decapitated guy might have been infected by the Aliens. Or, another possibility, his head was the only part that got infected, because it was in the urn room.
Renault on 11/6/2012 at 18:19
Quote Posted by Sombras
Agreed. So, wait, did
Prometheus take place on a
different planet than LV-426??? Seems crazy that two different Engineer ships on two different planets would suffer similar fates.
They're probably saving that explanation for the sequel, but yes, the planet on Prometheus was LV-223, not LV-426.
