199 replies to this topic

[craggy]

Hmm. I came across this http://cavalorn.live...135.html#cutid1

It’s the first person I’ve seen give a pretty well founded and logical explanation to the movie. Pretty interesting read all in all.
The movie is still a darn mess and it has some of the worst dialogue I’ve heard, though.

good and all, although I sort of got most of that already. One problem I have with it: the planet is called LV-426

yes folks, that's the problem I have with it. the name of the planet is wrong, compared to the one used in Aliens. the rest of it is entirely plausible.

[Johnny Henning]

If it does anything like the same money as 'Inception' I'll be stunned.

Even if you like 'Prometheus' its still not as good as Nolan's film.

It's also being compared to Super 8, so it'll like make more than that movie and less than Inception. Hasn't it already made like $50 mil worldwide?

[O.S. Georg]

good and all, although I sort of got most of that already. One problem I have with it: the planet is called LV-426

yes folks, that's the problem I have with it. the name of the planet is wrong, compared to the one used in Aliens. the rest of it is entirely plausible.

Well, apparently this movie takes place on LV-223 and not LV-426 (check the FAQ on IMDb). This also explains the why the people in Alien (and Aliens) do not find the wreckage from the Prometheus expedition. I thought it was LV-426 too, but it’s a different planet all together.

[craggy]

that's just confusing. it's almost as if they've planned further films to make more money off of us explain the situation further.

[John Mosby]

There's a lot of set-up to *almost* join dots... but in the end you have to buy the fact that everything that happens in Prometheus pretty much isn't relevant to Alien if Alien starts off with a *different* planet.

Anything like the crashed ship, space jockey and ultimately a xenomorphic host with the look of the one in Alien, must just be an amazing repeated co-incidence... which makes the Alien connection even more superfluous to proceedings.

[Johnny Henning]

That's not so bad though. The idea is that this is an intergalactic species - the Engineers - so they would be or have left traces of themselves on many worlds. Essentially, Alien's set up wasn't that the Nostromo had found the Space Jockeys' planet, but that it had found the wreckage of the Space Jockeys' ship.

Like if a group of islanders with little industrial knowledge found a crashed bomber and then proceeded to blow themselves sky high when they tried to open one of the bombs.

In PROMETHEUS, it seems like the idea is more a spin-off that takes place before the other movie than a prequel. This is what happens when a different group of primitives finds an old air force base on a remote island.

I guess the only real "tie-in" is to explain that the Weyland-Yutani corporation has foreknowledge of a massively advanced race of extraterrestrial alien engineers that they've kept from the rest of mankind including most of their own employees. Unless, of course, (and this is complete speculation, but I should spoiler)

Spoiler

It turns out Shaw or one of the Prometheus' human crew pilots a ship from LV-223 and, infected by an alien somehow, later dies and crashes on LV-426

[garjones]

I can't help but feel if it was the same planet we'd end up with a different nitpick about why they crew in Alien didn't find human remains or know about the previous visit.

It's somewhat ironic that the entire concept came out a scene in Alien that was never explained at all.

[steveuk]

It's also being compared to Super 8, so it'll like make more than that movie and less than Inception. Hasn't it already made like $50 mil worldwide?

I'm waiting for what it does in its second weeks everywhere.

[Christian U]

Didn't I tell you all when the first pictures came out and the future wasn't dirty enough that this would be no good? Didn't I? Didn't I?

My other reason for being sceptical was that there's not a single Ridley Scott movie past Alien and Blade Runner that I thought was brilliant. And he made quite a lot of them.

(I am fully aware that neither has anything to do with how Prometheus turned out, I just couldn't resist to get my I-told-you so in )

[craggy]

I can't help but feel if it was the same planet we'd end up with a different nitpick about why they crew in Alien didn't find human remains or know about the previous visit.

It's somewhat ironic that the entire concept came out a scene in Alien that was never explained at all.

well, the crew in Alien wouldn't have been told about the first mission. Ash maybe, but he wasn't going to be telling anyone. Similarly, Burke in Aliens might have known, but it's equally likely he heard Ripley's story, saw a few bucks in the thing as a bioweapon and organised everything in-house, not passing the full details up the corporate ladder.

[O.S. Georg]

The aim is to make a Prometheus two. That would extend things and have it tie into Alien. Also the plan would be (possibly) explain some of the things that are really a matter of debate at this point (like the black goo)

[Steve Sensible]

The aim is to make a Prometheus two. That would extend things and have it tie into Alien.

Scott has said there are at least two movies between Prometheus and Alien.

[Tonycal]

Overall I thought it was good.

To me it seems people wanted this to be an Alien prequel (creatures killing humans) It is in the same universe, but it isn't a true prequel.

I relate it to comic books. Take the Marvel universe. Many of the same charcters in habit NYC, some even have the same villains or make appreances in each others comic.

Also the line 'Big things have small beginnings.' holds true in Prometheus. It is a small organism that infects another organism which later on creates the xenomorph in Alien.

All I will say is I'm glad I saw it. It was different than I expected and I enjoyed it.

[steveuk]

Overall I thought it was good.

To me it seems people wanted this to be an Alien prequel (creatures killing humans) It is in the same universe, but it isn't a true prequel.

<SNIP>

Nope, that's not the problem.

Those of us who don't like the movie just don't think it makes sense or has characters with much character (except David) or many braincells.

Fix those problems and they can leave the xenomorphs out entirely, no worries.

Unfortunately, in addition to those problems, it is meant to be a pre-prequel of sorts and (as Steve just pointed out) connect to 'Alien'... eventually.

[O.S. Georg]

I didn’t mind that it didn’t have xenoes. I just thought the writing was horribly bad, nothing anyone did made sense – well, except for David. I loved David. Oh and I don’t mean sense as in their motives, but everyone reacted in completely random ways. They seemed to have no feeling and no sense of character.
Like the biologist that is too afraid to examine the dead humanoid, but wants to cuddle a space cobra. These things really point to bad writing. As does the badly written dialogue.

[Tonycal]

I think some of you need to re-watch Alien and Aliens. The characters and dialogue is pretty basic in those films as well.

Yes I agree some people in the movie were random. So yes some of the writing wasn't stellar. Maybe I just went into the film thinking different than many of you.

[steveuk]

I think some of you need to re-watch Alien and Aliens. The characters and dialogue is pretty basic in those films as well.

Yes I agree some people in the movie were random. So yes some of the writing wasn't stellar. Maybe I just went into the film thinking different than many of you.

Need to watch them again? You think the kind of people who post here don't watch them pretty often anyway?!?!?!

It's horses for course as usual, but my objection remains that whatever you think, or I think, the characters in the film really didn't think!

[Tonycal]

Need to watch them again? You think the kind of people who post here don't watch them pretty often anyway?!?!?!

It's horses for course as usual, but my objection remains that whatever you think, or I think, the characters in the film really didn't think!

I'm not saying some of you haven't watched these films multiple times. All I was stating how they are all pretty basic and general.

The only character who is really dumb and random is the biologist. He is just a pawn, no one special. So I didn't even pay him that much attention. And I've worked with Doctors, PTs, managers who are quite dumb and random in real life.

But I do get the points you all are making. They just didn't effect me as they did some of you.

[Dave Wallace]

I just saw this movie last night, and I'm surprised by how much negativity there is in this thread, as I really rather enjoyed it. It felt like Scott was consciously trying to make a modern '2001' (there were so many nods to that film in the opening half hour that I lost count), but with a lot of explicit links to the previous films in the Alien franchise too.

The vast majority of the complaints I've seen tend to be fairly petty ones that revolve around elements of the story which were unexplained - but that doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation, and the ambiguity of certain points is (I think) perfectly fitting for a film that has as one of its main themes the idea that we choose our beliefs and explanations based on our own life experiences and feelings.

I don't think any of the core plot of this film was weakened by the unresolved elements within it - I think all the really important stuff was addressed for the purposes of this movie (although it certainly doesn't spoonfeed you - right from the beginning, plot points are often heavily implied rather than explicitly spelled out, crediting the audience with a certain amount of intelligence). And those elements that weren't fully explained within this movie all pose interesting questions that could be explored in future - or could be left satisfyingly ambiguous.

(I especially think that most of the ambiguous plot points around the engineers should be left like that, given that the whole film was about us trying to discover and understand aliens that are completely beyond our experiences or understanding).

It's not a flawless film: the script is clunky in places, with some embarrassingly clichéd dialogue that we've all heard a million times recycled shamelessly. And for me, the weakest moments were those where the film chose to spell things out too obviously: the setup of the medical bay, the lifeboat pod, or the scene with Charlize Theron trying to say the word "father" as dramatically as possible.

Also, I would question why they didn't use an older actor to play Weyland, unless they're planning on revisiting his younger self in potential sequels/prequels.

Finally, I think the film would have been better without that final coda: if you've seen the previous alien movies, you know exactly what that proto-facehugger has done to the Engineer. Seeing the end result felt somehow anticlimactic, and too much like fan service.

[steveuk]

I'm not saying some of you haven't watched these films multiple times. All I was stating how they are all pretty basic and general.

I get that and I was joking along.

'Alien' is pretty basic, 'Aliens' is a bit more complicated but both of them make a lot more sense than 'Prometheus'. 'Aliens' in particular was one of the films that established James Cameron's credentials as a filmmaker. Its relentlessly efficient and well constructed.

The only character who is really dumb and random is the biologist. He is just a pawn, no one special. So I didn't even pay him that much attention. And I've worked with Doctors, PTs, managers who are quite dumb and random in real life.

But I do get the points you all are making. They just didn't effect me as they did some of you.

Like I said, horse for courses, individual taste and all that.

But I hope none of the doctors you've worked with were as dumb as the people in 'Prometheus'.

<SNIP>

The vast majority of the complaints I've seen tend to be fairly petty ones that revolve around elements of the story which were unexplained - but that doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation, and the ambiguity of certain points is (I think) perfectly fitting for a film that has as one of its main themes the idea that we choose our beliefs and explanations based on our own life experiences and feelings.

<SNIP>

Wow Dave. "Petty"?