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General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Graelyn on 08 Jun 2012, 13:16
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Holy shitballs.
Go see this movie, in 3D if at all possible.
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Absolutely beautiful movie, some great concepts, trainwreck plot. Shitty Lost-writers do not speculative fiction movie writers make.
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Not likely to see it soon due to :effort: and costs involved with going to the pocket-shaped black hole that is the cinema, but saw this via twitter earlier and lol'd - apparently we're still using Windows 7 in the time this movie takes place: http://i.imgur.com/oDzET.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/oDzET.jpg)
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Yep, will have to see it.
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Just home from it. Trying to write up a response that's fair and informative without being spoilery. Failing, so you'll get my personal responses.
It's worth seeing: a nice example of movie-making which revisits a bunch of the familiar themes and tropes from the Alien franchise, while trying to add a couple more layers of "let's be meaningful".
That said, I wanted to apply inappropriate physical violence to most of the crew for their extreme and repeated stupidity, and the attempt at a religious/faith-based underpinning plot has me considering the possibility that if that's humanity then I'm a robot. (Alas, I don't possess the most pertinent other trait of robots as shown in this film.) It's very much a product of its cultural background. That means I'm automatically an outsider, viewing it as an unrealistic morality fable built on wishful and shoddy premises.
It's not a great film, but it is an intriguing one. To me it's worth the price of admission and the chance to rip into it over dinner afterwards. I do look forward to the puzzle-game aspects of it: exploring some of its fridge-logic elements to see if they can be stitched together and explained away, and waiting to see what useful information was left in the discarded edits files which might be restored in an extended cut.
(If you're a UI geek it had a couple of interesting offerings. Not quite up there with Minority Report in shaping the conceptions of future UI, and disappointing in not doing (at least) one thing which would have made sense in the context, but still fun.)
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Going to see it tomorrow. I wasn't even born when either Alien or Blade Runner were released, and I demand to see at least one Ridley Scott film in the cinema :)
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Oh how I wanted to love you, o' Prometheus, but you turned out to be a shit film.
Looked great, all that jazz and you could see that it had some nice themes buried in there that could've been explored decently, but it never did. Up to about the mid point I was still hopeful that it would turn out good, still willing to shut my eyes to the horrible deficiencies in what had already transpired, but what ensued was that it was pretty much a train wreck in all departments.
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Looked great, all that jazz and you could see that it had some nice themes buried in there that could've been explored decently, but it never did. Up to about the mid point I was still hopeful that it would turn out good, still willing to shut my eyes to the horrible deficiencies in what had already transpired, but what ensued was that it was pretty much a train wreck in all departments.
Wait...I thought this thread was about a new Sci-fi movie, not Eve.
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Fascinating review (http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html). I don't agree with all of it, but one thing I do like about this film is the conversations like this that you can have about it.
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[spoiler]Why I like Prometheus : It definitely succeeded in carrying the feel of the first Alien movie as a horror movie, while introducing its own values. It answered questions and provided more about the Space Jockeys (Engineers) that long time Aliens fans have contemplated for probably a decade now. There is plenty of room for a sequel, but in doing so it may shed the atmospheric value of Alien that it managed to carry on to an extent. Spin off series, perhaps.
Why I didn't like Prometheus : It felt like it suffered design indecision about half way through the movie and carried it on towards the end. The question of the meaning of God and the sanctity of life, as shown in the drama between David (Android) and Shaw (Human), was not handled in a subtle manner befitting it - but slammed and sledged through a wall.
The introduction of the Weyland-Yutani CEO trying to cheat death was not a fitting subplot, and over all was also not carried well. Those resources could've been spent refining the God and religion debate about humans and creation. It injected the counter part notion of what death means, but that flopped around as a by product rather than a standing piece.
The Android, David, should have been more carefully hidden in my opinion - its a classic reveal to show one of the crew members as being The Android and betraying everyone. From minute one me and my brother signaled him out, because they didn't even try to hide the fact. He was quite unrepentantly The Android, and was basically a giant dick the whole movie.
What conflicted me about the movie : The body horror and the Space Jockeys (Engineers).
The Aliens series is very tactful about its body horror - its not gender specific, fears that can realized by both men and women can be transmitted. Face Hugger goes to town on your orifice, and sometime later you get Kool Aid Man jumping out of your chest in a shower of jello. Psychology fans will note it shares the primal fear of being raped, and by having it target a non-gender specific area it triggers the fear in both sexes.
Shaw's pregnancy scene after having sex with her infected husband squicked me on levels that haven't been molested since Aliens Versus Predator 2, a movie in its own right that belongs in a refinery. She essentially goes through rapid gestation of a proto-Face Hugger embyro, horrifically warping the normal female pregnancy cycle. As a man this offended me more than it horrified me - This is very distinctly something happening to her as a woman, and my primal fear was not being triggered. The same tactlessness that happened in AvP2 (movie) felt like it happened here, but to the credit of Shaw's character she was able to beat the body horror and survive. It wasn't enough to make me walk out on the movie, but it sure tanked how much I was enjoying the film up until then.
The Space Jockeys, as fans call them, are an old and very sketchy race that has existed in the Aliens mythos. Players of the Aliens Vs Predator games (particularly #2) will be familiar with them in their role of creating the Aliens. Who they are, what they do what they do, and why they do it is never clearly explained - only ever guessed at. Prometheus gives a hint to their motivation, but it serves more to pose another question rather than answer the old ones floating about.
Me and my brother discussed their role in the movie a fair bit, and our general conclusion always ended up with the question posed - why create life, then destroy it with organic bioweapons (The Aliens)? Not even the old speculation from the game communities can provide a meaningful answer. I personally would love more exploration in this area, but as a main stream media it may not deliver it in the way it would suffice. Their role over all felt very clumsy; they touched upon great Sci-Fi and Meaning of Life questions, but never developed in that direction after introducing them.[/spoiler]
My general thoughts and feelings after watching the movie. Would recommend it to see it for a taste of the Aliens experience, would not call it a great movie or one to see multiple times.
Fascinating review (http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html). I don't agree with all of it, but one thing I do like about this film is the conversations like this that you can have about it.
This is a very good review for an academic analysis of the movie, and thank you for showing me it. I agree with a lot of his speculation, and he raises good points in particular to the nature of the main Plot McGuffin.
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Good linked article.
[spoiler]I have my own little pet theory, that there are two groups of Engineers, or some sort of internal conflict perhaps. I'll call them the seeders and the cleaners. You'll notice the ship in the intro scene is different than the Engineer ships on LV (a giant round 'mothership' opposed to the biomechanical half-circles we are familiar with). Maybe the first Engineer we see is from a different sort of group than the ones the Prometheus crew encounters? The life creators and the life destroyers, perhaps in some sort of lengthy internal conflict? If I remember the Engineer in the first seen looked quite different than the violent ones on LV, he seemed naked and more 'pure' without the 'armor' suit the one in stasis had. Or maybe he and his were marooned or banished to Earth and the only possible revenge they could think of was to start the human race and point them in the direction of their enemies? Who knows. Of course hearing the Jesus thing straight quoted from Ridley does change things a bit...[/spoiler]
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Interesting and thorough analysis of the film. Might add some value to it if you came away feeling :meh: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/uswn1/prometheus_everything_explained_and_analysed/
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Interesting and thorough analysis of the film. Might add some value to it if you came away feeling :meh: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/uswn1/prometheus_everything_explained_and_analysed/
Ken, that's a repost of the review I linked above (which seems to be going viral). More and different comments, though...
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Interesting and thorough analysis of the film. Might add some value to it if you came away feeling :meh: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/uswn1/prometheus_everything_explained_and_analysed/
Ken, that's a repost of the review I linked above (which seems to be going viral). More and different comments, though...
:eek: I reposted a link to a repost of the link that you posted?
[spoiler](http://static.tumblr.com/5deuomv/TPXm08rb7/inception_meme__1_.png)[/spoiler]
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I'm not a fan of Aliens movies, or of horror in general, so I'll probably not see it.
I do appreciate that they did not mask this fact in the trailers, like Species did (which I got suckered into watching at the theater :eek: ).
Going slightly off-topic, I'm finding it disappointing how few 'hard sci fi' movies are being made these days. Even a remake of 2010 (or just doing 2061 and 3001) would be a great thing for me. It's one of the reasons I was so happy to see another Tron movie come out, and now its related TV series (despite it being aimed at kids).
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[spoiler]One thing I did like was the gruesome body-horror of the Alien removal scene. I'm not usually one for gore and all that shit, but I liked it because it was very much a female scene - which is great, because the Alien franchise has often portrayed female issues in odd ways.
What was that scene about? Pro-choice.
Society wants women to keep their babies (Weyland wants the alien baby as its valuable to them) and from a certain point of view to reduce them to baby making machines (Shaw's own desires were not important to Weyland). Well, Shaw would have none of it. She gets to decide what she does with her own body, so she goes to the surgery machine. BEEP! It tells her that it (and thus the birth control it can provide) is only for men (think about it, fellow reader). Well, she says fuck dat and proceeds regardless.
Of course, in a sense the power of that scene is diluted when it turns out the Alien isn't dead, but has turned into a Cthulhoid creature that saves its mother, but it still doesn't take away the fact that Shaw made a choice about her body for herself.
So yeah, there were some interesting themes in there, like that, but unfortunately it was buried in that other crap and obfuscated by characters acting non-sensically.
[/spoiler]
Edit - to comment on that review.
Yeah, I don't think that commentary was totally off mark, but to me it gives way too much credit to script's telling of that story. The dying-and-rising God themes were pretty obvious to me too, but I think the writer of that commentary was a bit too enthused about finding them in there and consequently lifted it to greater heights of storytelling than is merited.
I think they could've been great if explored in depth, but instead the storytelling seemed focused on.. well, not on anything really of substance. I wonder at which script revision the various themes of the movie were entered and at what point they started to perhaps compete for screen time. It would be interesting to know.
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I have just come back from seeing this film.
I liked it. It was by no means perfect but, for all it's faults, is better than most mainstream SF films have been lately.
It's not really worth paying extra for the 3D version though.
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It's not really worth paying extra for the 3D version though.
I tend to agree, if cost's a concern for you: the 3D was nice, but not necessary. I'd prioritise seeing it somewhere with a good sound system, though, because the liver-quivering subsonics contributed to my enjoyment of it as spectacle. (My "local" is one of the theatres refurbished by the WETA crowd. They care about things like sound quality. It's good.)
I'm enjoying the critical analysis around it. That's where I get to be an active participant interacting with the story-as-told and the other people joining in to generate our own stories about what's going on, and it's turning out to be a lot of fun with this one. Sometimes a flawed work can be better for that than a more complete one, since there's more space for creation and different possibilities.
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Saw it last night, and quite enjoyed it. I can honestly say a film has never before left me quite so simultaneously baffled and disturbed :P
[spoiler] I fully understand what people meant about the incredible stupidity displayed by several members of the crew. Some of it was almost comic.
Something I discussed with several of my friends was to do with the reason for the Engineers to turn on humanity. We decided that is was possible that the Engineers were worried that humanity could 'usurp' them, or like a child comes into it's inheritance after it's parents die, that humanity would become 'better' than the engineers. The same fear could be said to exist between the human members of the crew and David. David learns faster, is stronger, is much much harder to kill, is more intelligent and more adaptable than humans. Could they be afraid that he is 'better' than they are? [/spoiler]
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I saw it today. I mostly echo what has been said above.
[spoiler]One of the things where Ridley Scott is great is metaphors. They were plenty and extremely well elaborated in the first Alien (penis shaped aliens, "universal rapes", and a lot of deliberate choices in the screenplay, etc). There is a sequence in Prometheus where Shaws husband comes into her room and starts to speak to her about the engineers and life creation, then while doing so he steps right into the hologram of one of the engineers, and takes exactly his place while he continues to speak. They are plenty of other ones like this.
On the good things the screenplay is great (well, thats Ridley Scott), especially at the beginning before landing on the planet, and the movie looks good (big budgets and all...). Interesting questions and concepts are shown.
On the weird and/or bad things, I may have a lot to say :
- The sheer stupidity of the crew, as said above. Wtf ? Humanity can create pretty accurate and believable human cyber replicas, and they can not even create the simplest robot ? They have to send a whole team of humans direction into that tomb ? Come on, it is not 1969 anymore. NASA sends robots everywhere on the solar system firstly because its less costly, and a lot easier to do, but also, where risks are obivous like that you send automated vehicules. Seriously, they have never heard of probes ? They really had to come into that wreck to drop these little scanning spheres ? They never heard of "security protocols" ? Every second of that movie makes it sound very little believable considering at each moment they just do stupid unsafe things.
- What was the purpose of that movie ? To expand on the Alien universe and lore a little ? Well ok, it brought some interesting concepts, logical explanations and concerns, but didn't it break a little the whole atmosphere and mysticism around the aliens ? These engineers look pitiful, btw. Welcome back to die again, musculous lord Voldemort. But this time, raped in the throat, yarr.
- Plot holes and stretched things. As already stated above several times, I do not have much to add.
- What the heck was that zombie ? That was so alien... to the alien concept that I wondered if it was something related to the aliens. Why the hell does he starts to kill everybody, while everybody is actually walking, living compatible meat for alien reproduction ?
- I hate that obnoxious hollywoodish christian morality. Nobody noticed that all the atheists died when the only survivor were two believers ? Yes two believers, even David believes in creators, except he knows who are his creators and ends up to start to believe in Shaw's ideals. Shaw's husband continuously talks about pragmatic things where he says everyone can create life, they humans are already gods, etc. He dies. The engineers are depicted as gods, but actually only pretending to be. They die. Shaw tells that even if they have found their creators, she still believes in something greater that created them (God ?). I would not have minded if she had not that damn rood around her neck. This is christian. It is an obvious link to religion. Vickers only try to flee when the captain and the last men of the crew suddenly decide to suicide gank the engineer ship. She dies, the coward she is. Ofc Shaw starts to think to retaliation at the very end and think about a whole genocide, but thats not a big deal heh, since these engineers are not really human ? I may have seen something that isnt really in the movie, but well...
- Edit : also I forgot to add the fact that Ridley Scott pulls the exact same strings on the scripts and the story he used in Alien (ex : the poor dude(s) a little stupid that meet the real alien first and an unfortunate end, the people that comes back infected from the wreck in the ship, the betraying android, etc etc). If you have seen the first Alien, then you have pretty much seen Prometheus. That's a bit a shame imo, he could have invented some new things.
That said, I find it a good movie still, that was still enjoyable.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]The movie is pretty obviously one more of a long list of anti-transhumanism fiction. I agree wholeheartedly, btw, but yeah...
From the spoilers people have stated, there's pretty much no transhumanist stone left unturned. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#Controversy) From what I've seen, the cut content pretty much seals the deal.
Moral of the story; technology is bad, humans are stupid, and only by believing in something greater than ourselves do we truly overcome our limitations.
:bash:[/spoiler]
I want to see this movie, but I'll probably have to drink quite a bit before, which means I'll be waiting until it's on Blu-Ray. I enjoy all the Alien movies (with the obvious exceptions being Resurrection and AVP2), so seeing a fresh take by the man who started it all is something I want to see. But yeah... I have issues with Lindelof writing the script. :bash:
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Saw it last night, and quite enjoyed it. I can honestly say a film has never before left me quite so simultaneously baffled and disturbed :P
[spoiler] I fully understand what people meant about the incredible stupidity displayed by several members of the crew. Some of it was almost comic.
Something I discussed with several of my friends was to do with the reason for the Engineers to turn on humanity. We decided that is was possible that the Engineers were worried that humanity could 'usurp' them, or like a child comes into it's inheritance after it's parents die, that humanity would become 'better' than the engineers. The same fear could be said to exist between the human members of the crew and David. David learns faster, is stronger, is much much harder to kill, is more intelligent and more adaptable than humans. Could they be afraid that he is 'better' than they are? [/spoiler]
My take:
[spoiler]Think Nietzsche (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZqyL7lznKE). Specifically, take the whole "Transhuman" concept applied to the "Ubermensch".
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In the words of my favorite ex-EVE dev, "It may not make sense at first".
Meaning, the "alien" is a solution to a problem humanity cannot see... it's own humanity.[/spoiler]
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It was enjoyable to watch. I wouldn't watch it again, nor do I think it was good enough to me personally to warrant a discussion point here.
The religious underpinning was unfortunately quite pedestrian/lowest-common-denominator, though.
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Hate to be the typical wining fanboy, but I effing hated it. I wanted them to die. Very little characterization that made the first two movies so good.
Just...ugh.
:(
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That said, I wanted to apply inappropriate physical violence to most of the crew for their extreme and repeated stupidity,
Oh my god yes.
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I was recently in a lecture where we were discussing creation mythology. This lead to Adam and Eve, and the lecturer put a picture up on the screen of a painting by William Blake.
[spoiler](http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/william_blake_the_temptation_and_fall_of_eve.jpg)[/spoiler]
Something that struck me immediately was the similarity between the engineer at the start of the film, and Blake's depiction of Adam.
I guess as they say, Nothing is original :D
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For Kala.
[spoiler]
I'd like to throw an Osiris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris) layer in there: skin tone (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kZ9aC4aF8oI/T0oIn_IV5uI/AAAAAAAAAYk/v3lTIlK3LhY/s1600/osiris+egyptian+god+pictures.jpg), build, death and "dismemberment", association with a kind of immortality, and coffin-like containers for body storage.
[/spoiler]
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I really wanted to like this movie. I didn't.
A few days after, I picked up the original Alien and watched it for the first time. Wow. Does it have interesting themes? Yep. It also has great character building, good pacing, a well done plot based on believable circumstances, and the horror is scary without being icky or gratuitous.
I also have to note that the sets are very well done. Other than a few of the computer screens, the design is up there with 2001 in still coming off as possible future-tech. One of the reasons I have problems with some older sci-fi movies is that the FX are obviously fake or everything feels like a product of its time.
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I have always loved the Alien and Predator movies. I went to Prometheus, and enjoyed it. Then a few days the questions popped up in my head while at work.
And then I finally realized by what my dad had said when he said it was "poorly done" and "non-consistent". I think that Scott was suffering from Lucas syndrome, in which case, nobody was telling him his ideas were bad anymore. But that may not be the case. It could be the script writers? It felt like a few scripts mushed together.
Also THAT THING AT THE END didn't feel like it belonged at all. Though, it was fun to see.
I remember going wide-eyed when they [spoiler]opened the helmet[/spoiler].
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The script writer was the same guy who wrote for Lost.
Film critic Hulk did the Damon Lindleof Intervention (http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-the-damon-lindleof-intervention/). It's a long article written in HULK SPEAK, but very perceptive about how treating the same theme the same way can do damage to audience engagement in a film.
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And then I finally realized by what my dad had said when he said it was "poorly done" and "non-consistent". I think that Scott was suffering from Lucas syndrome, in which case, nobody was telling him his ideas were bad anymore. But that may not be the case. It could be the script writers? It felt like a few scripts mushed together.
According to some rumors, people were telling him. Which is why the studio apparently brought in Lindelof to rewrite the script (which, originally, was more straightforward and dealt with the same topics in a more heavy-handed fashion according to other rumors). Ridley apparently also wanted Prometheus to be a $250 million movie, and according to other rumors, Lindelof's script was in competition with a rewrite by Ridley Scott himself. Lindelof's script was chosen because it was more budget conscious.
That's just rumor though.
What isn't rumor is that this could have ended up as another John Carter or Waterworld. Without the viral marketing and secrecy around the script, it might have even slipped under the radar and been another in a long string of quiet sci-fi flops. The marketing pushed this movie as an experience, something that couldn't be missed. It's the same way Lost was marketed, now that I think of it...
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Film critic Hulk did the Damon Lindleof Intervention (http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-the-damon-lindleof-intervention/). It's a long article written in HULK SPEAK, but very perceptive about how treating the same theme the same way can do damage to audience engagement in a film.
Nice Hulk review. Thank you for that link.
The anecdote in the first of the comments has me going :eek:.
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Cleolinda's 15-minute summary: http://m15m.livejournal.com/23209.html
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Hulk's review is pretty much spot-on. Great job, Hulk!
Also, the first comments are priceless and utterly, mind-bogglingly illuminating along with the review - or maybe just happily coincidental. But awesome. Poor little Damon, spurned so by his father and now inflicting his own horrible narrative upon us all.
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Also, just for random reference, I give you...
The Modern Prometheus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein#Modern_Prometheus)
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. ;)
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Film critic Hulk did the Damon Lindleof Intervention (http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-the-damon-lindleof-intervention/). It's a long article written in HULK SPEAK, but very perceptive about how treating the same theme the same way can do damage to audience engagement in a film.
Nice Hulk review. Thank you for that link.
The anecdote in the first of the comments has me going :eek:.
Hulk's response ("THATS LIKE A SUPER-VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY") was hysterical and spot on.