Escape to the Movies: Prometheus

[irishda]

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, although I had two problems with it; one that I typically do with sci-fi movies and the other with other people's characterization of some of the characters.

First, I fucking hate the scientists in sci-fi movies. They're always just so retarded and dismissive of genuine concerns. Even in instances where they're supposed to be the good guy. Not just the biologist

Spoiler

randomly deciding to pet an alien life-form, whose physiology he's clueless about, but even Elizabeth's plan at the end: Hey, those aliens really hate us and want to kill us. I better go to their home-freaking planet and ask them. Honestly, if the sequel is just 5 minutes of her walking up to an alien all indignantly and asking, "Why do you hate us?" before getting her head ripped off, I'd still buy a ticket.

It's this attitude of "we have to know" that just grinds me. I'm more the kind of guy that takes David's position: "Why do you have to know?" To me that was easily the most thought-provoking question in the whole movie, and then it just gets blown off with a retarded, "Because...I'm a human, you wouldn't understand."

The second problem I had was Charlize and Michael Fassbender's characterization by some as bad guys. But they never really seemed like that.

Spoiler: explanations why

Charlize always acted in the best interests of the majority, especially when the boyfriend was infected. Fuckin' right you don't just let someone on board with an unknown ailment that's wrecking his shit. And as for the "ulterior motives", she never had any. Her father had the other motives, and she was pretty opposed to his decision. And Michael, he never really did anything unsavory. Even the poisoning of the boyfriend, he only did it after the guy said, "I'd do anything for this mission." The robot just took that shit literally. The specimen in Elizabeth was just an unintended consequence. It wasn't that he was evil, it was more that he was a child who was curious about everything.

 

[Domenic Curro]

There seems to be a lot of "it was an all-right movie" going on here.

That movie was bad! Shaw couldn't pick an accent, her boyfriend was a dummy, and the writing was poor. I can count the number of line each character speaks on my hands.

Evil blonde chick reacts stupidly to finding out that aliens exist, in that she demonstrates that she doesn't care, and that her concerns are elsewhere... ALIENS EXIST! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE A PERSON?

Boyfriend acts stupidly after finding out aliens exist, that they are all dead, and that he can't talk to them. He found his maker and now all he can do is cry about how he have a chat over Starbucks with them.

Stupid scientist stupidly approaching an obviously hostile acting alien.

Out of nowhere awkward lines:
"This device only does Male operations."
"I can't create life, what does that say about me."
"You wouldn't understand because you're just a Robot."

I do not need to go on.

 

[RTK1576]

Having gone to see the movie today after having read a number of mixed reviews, I personally found that I liked it. Yeah, it has a fair number of flaws (too much Idiot Ball, for starters), but I think the scope and ideas behind it make it worthwhile.

I liken it to last year's Super-8: a flawed movie that you either liked despite the flaws or you couldn't because of said flaws (but you regret not liking it). You can see where Ridley Scott was trying to go and he gets maybe 3/4 of the way there.

This is the kind of movie you have to see to make up your own mind. On that basis alone, I'd recommend watching it.

 

[Tono Makt]

I saw it this weekend (it was out last friday in europe), and here's one I really have to disagree with you on Bob.

This is a failure, and a bad one at that.

The visuals are great - it's well shot, and most of the CG is pretty neat. The music is nice if not exactly smooth. The acting is surprisingly good, considering what these people had to work with; especially Theron and Fassbeder stand out.

But the script is insultingly stupid. The whole basic plot makes absolutely no sense, even in its own framework, and every single character not played by Charlize Theron is borderline retarded and / or so insultingly improfessional as to seem so. Fassbender's robot can't help it; he was apparently made that way; the rest must have been dropped on the head a few times at birth ...

A few weeks late, finally saw the movie tonight, and going to echo this post.

This review seems to be alot like the rankings in College Football; my beloved Michigan Wolverines have been highly rated for years (with a couple of years that we shall not speak of) in the various polls. They get this rating because in 1997, they won the National Championship. And from about 1890 to sometime in the 1960's, they won a whole lot of championships. And they were a good team from the 1960's to 2006ish. Ergo, Michigan is a good football team.

Notice how I have only mentioned one season individually, that being 1997? Yeah. Michigan of 2012 is going to end up rated in the top 25 before the season starts because... erm, it's Michigan. Ergo it's a good football team. And it's going to stay in the top 25 for a few weeks even if it loses because it's Michigan. If the exact same set of players played the exact same games with the only difference being that they were playing for the Maine Lobster Claws instead of the Michigan Wolverines, they wouldn't be noticed by the rest of college football let alone get ranked.

Where am I going with this? Ridley Scott = Michigan. Bob = College Football Pollster. This movie gets a good rating because it's Ridley Scott, ergo it has to be a good movie. If this had been done by, say, Michael Ricardo Rodriguez, it would be torn apart. If it had been done by Uwe Boll, it would be a biatch fest about how terrible Uwe Boll is. But it's Ridley Scott, so... dude, it's Ridley Scott!

Personally I left the movie feeling rather annoyed. I didn't enjoy the movie, I didn't enjoy how I needed to have a fairly large understanding of the Alien universe to have any idea what was going on. (not just the movies, but the comics. Which are usually rather good, but then they were Dark Horse comics, so written for adults in mind.)

Spoiler

I particularly didn't enjoy the random idiocy of the human characters (seriously, the geologist and the b-scientist start off as geologist telling b-scientist to f-off to suddenly the two decide to be buddy-buddy and flee a 2000 year old corpse... then the guy who MADE the probes gets lost??), the annoyingly predictable Bad Android who doesn't seem to have much of a motivation for his actions. I was willing to overlook the leaps in characterization for the Captain and his two co-pilots who go from being cardboard cutouts to noble heroes willing to lay down their lives to save Earth, and the Vickers as Spurned Daughter of Weyland twist, but the more I look at the movie as a whole the less I'm willing to overlook. And I'm not even going to get into the Engineers and Xenomorphs. Just... blargh. So disappointed.

I hope that a Directors Cut comes out for this movie, since I don't really see a sequel being made unless they need to keep the copyright (a la Fantastic Four, Spiderman and X-Men franchises) going for a while longer. This movie begs for a sequel but doesn't deserve one.

 

[Brett Bowling]

I was pretty satisfied with the whole thing except for the begining.

I was able to figure out the significance of every detail except for the very start, what was the point of marshmellow man offing himself like that.

 

[SonofSpermcube]

I still haven't seen Prometheus, but the description of the downplayed Alien references put me in mind of another thing that had some downplayed Alien references: "Cyberantics: A Little Adventure." This was a science fiction children's book about a robot ant published by Dark Horse Comics in 1992. It was EXCELLENT. There was so much going on in this book...the straightforward narrative about the ant, the footnotes about ant biology, and the backstory about the ant's creator. Anyhow, it was a tie-in to a Dark Horse Comics Alien miniseries, Aliens: Hive. Both are worth seeking out.