Duck and Cover

It's frustratingly close to greatness. I agree with Pooper re: the lack of characterization and emotional dynamics; the characters don't feel like real people so much as archetypes, written by sci-fi geeks with tin ears for dialogue. Also, each one of them seems to surrender all common sense about halfway through the movie, coincidentally right around the time the plot starts to unravel and flail. *spoiler*(The stuff with Weyland toward the end...whatever. He was on the ship the whole time? He's Vickers' father? Come on, geeks! Focus! Bring it down a notch!) The philosphical sci-fi elements are fascinating, and the monster-movie moments are top-drawer, but the script doesn't mesh them into a satisfying whole. (Also, 3D remains, in my mind, a lame gimmick. Prometheus uses 3D well, but it's still lame, it still has a way of making everything on screen seem compact and dim rather than vivid and expansive, and it still doesn't work at the edges of your visual field. I would have rather seen it in 2D, to be perfectly honest.)

On the plus side, Ridley Scott is in top form; the direction is rock-solid despite the hit-and-miss script, and the suspense builds just as methodically and purposefully as it did in Alien. He's a master at this stuff. By the time that scene rolled around, I was a bundle of nerves and wanted a cold compress. The sets, effects, creature designs, and sound are all phenomenal. Also, Michael Fassbender is brilliant.

It was a delicious orthogonal. I should probably kill myself as I actually find myself anticipating the sequel.

The guys I was planning to go watch the premiere with ended up having some scheduling conflicts, so I haven't seen it yet. So far the reception from everyone I know whose seen it thus far have been very mixed, but I'd still like to see it for myself.

A "friend" thought it was great. A "friend" has horrible taste in movies.

But the whole "mixed dac reception" did make it fairly more interesting. I might catch this, yet.

MadBill wrote:...I actually find myself anticipating the sequel.

You're in luck! Oh, wait...

For some reason the parts that make absolutely no sense have me intrigued and not disgusted. I don't understand these changes in my body and I am scared.

Tofu Man wrote:
But the whole "mixed dac reception" did make it fairly more interesting. I might catch this, yet.

DAC is the best place to make yourself an opinion of a movie you've never seen

I saw it on Saturday, and I was high as fuck. So, in other words, it was pretty great. I'm never too picky with my movies, though, but I'd give it a watch. The scientists do tend to do stupid things though, just like every other movie.

Burning Oasis wrote:I saw it on Saturday, and I was high as fuck.

See? ONLY way to see a motion picture.

Manoil wrote:

Burning Oasis wrote:I saw it on Saturday, and I was high as fuck.

See? ONLY way to see a motion picture.

Without a doubt! Death to Smoochie is the only movie that doesn't suck less while high.

This movie was hot dog shit. Thread over.

Wolfman Walt wrote:This movie was hot dog shit. Thread over.

I didnt see it! Dont stop the thread, instead repeat everything you all said about the movie again so I can read it and make up my mind.

Not considering it along the same continuity of the rest of the Alien movies, my only frustration lies with her fixation on her little cross even after finding out the origin of the species was nothing to do with her religious beliefs. "Oh, we came from you and the bible is blatantly disproven? I still want my crucifix, for old times' sake. Girl's gotta accessorize, ya know."

Actually, I think that was explained with something along the lines of, "WELL WHO MADE THEM?!" Really, there's any number of ways to legitimize that part and quite frankly, was one of the lesser dumb things I found in the movie. Yes. Still dumb, but it was negligible compared to the fucking geologist spelunker who can't navigate his way out of a paper bag, even though he's supposed to be one of the best in the world.

geologist spelunker lied on his resume to get the job

The thing that bothered me was the scene after the two crew members were seperated and had to stay in the ruins. The glaring void of motivation for dumbass A to poke at the alien that just formed out of goop on the ground with a stick directly after being scared pissless in the previous scene. And hairbrain dumbass B when he didn't bolt when he saw the guy he supposedly doesn't give a flying fuck about attacked by it. I don't care how high you are you're going to run when you see something that moves that isn't human when on an alien world.

And what the fuck was David up to? Did he malfunction or something?

What was David's motivation for "infecting" Holloway with black goop?

Damon Lindelof: I'd say that the short answer is: That's his programming. In the scene preceding him doing that, he is talking to Weyland (although we don't know it at the time) and he's telling Weyland that this is a bust. That they haven't found anything on this mission other than the stuff in the vials. And Weyland presumably says to him, "Well, what's in the vials?" And David would say, "I'm not entirely sure, we'll have to run some experiments." And Weyland would say, "What would happen if you put it in inside a person?" And David would say, "I don't know, I'll go find out." He doesn't know that he's poisoning Holloway, he asks Holloway, "What would you be willing to do to get the answers to your questions?" Holloway says, "Anything and everything." And that basically overrides whatever ethical programming David is mandated by, [allowing him] to spike his drink.

Weak.

We do get alot of mileage out of the whole "ethical programming" query in Hollywood, do we not?

He wasn't as much poisoning Holloway as completely overriding any realistic protocols for contact with an alien civilization or any of their artifacts. The idea that a robot would spike someone's drink with an unknown substance of alien origin, quite possibly contaminating the entire ship and endangering the safety of the crew and the success of the mission, especially after having seen that recording of the 'Engineers' running wildly for their lives, leaving one of their comrades behind to expire, after what appears to have been a spill or leak of the very same substance, just doesn't sit right.

Considering that it wasn't a vital plot-point (Holloway could just as well have contaminated himself with the stuff as the dumb jock he was) in order to kill off the character and give his wife the squid, it felt like he just wanted to repeat the formula of making an android act against human interests.

The retarded behavior of the biologist and geologist certainly felt forced and unnatural (Let's go, it's scary down here *10 hours later* Hay, this is fun!) and Halloway's attempts to simply ignore the numerous signs of contagion made me sigh, but nothing really came close to Dave's fucked up experiment.

I talked to Anti about it, and I think his greatest beef was the head-explosion gag; that they didn't use the head for anything remotely original or interesting made it obvious then and there that the plot was paper-thin. Great effects but shitty fucking story.

I watched it again and Prometheus is still a piece of shit. Back when it came out people tried to defend it by saying how great the visuals were. The visuals suck. The alien design sucks. The inside of their spaceship looks like a hotel suite. The jockey ship sucked and was boring and dark and stupid. Every creature looked like boring shit and terrible. The story was nonsense bullshit. The acting sucked, every character was stupid and pointless, and god damn even the soundtrack was bad. How the hell did Ridley Scott manage to make Alien Resurrection look good in comparison I'll never understand.

Prometheus is to the Alien franchise as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was to Indiana Jones. Hell, I'd say worse because at least Harrison Ford is mostly likeable no matter how bad the movie is and Prometheus is meant to stand on its own. Terrible. Fucking Cowboys and Aliens is better than Prometheus. Anybody who likes it is wrong. You are just wrong and should never say anything ever again about any subject because your opinions on everything are forever tainted.

Mad Max RW wrote:Prometheus is to the Alien franchise as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was to Indiana Jones. Hell, I'd say worse because at least Harrison Ford is mostly likeable no matter how bad the movie is

No way, Crystal Skull was a lot more retarded and unwatchable. If they put in some shitty sidekick and had a cgi scene of him swinging on vines with monkeys, I might be a bit more inclined to agree with you. At least I didn't have to feel sorry for any of the actors in Prometheus.