194 replies to this topic

[Barry Matthew Ween]

The very opening of that scene was the medical officer woman scanning the head and finding it free from contamination.

I actually remembered that after I posted my message. Doh'!

After seeing the film, I can actually completely understand why they wanted to distance themselves from being labelled simply as an 'Alien prequel'. Because it's really a very separate story that nonetheless has ties to those movies.

I get that, but it's still part of an overall "prequel" story in my eyes.

[Dave Wallace]

[quote name='steveuk' timestamp='1339278956' post='2443759']
What they could've done is be written better.

Just like the rest of the film. We don't pick these kind of nits in every movie because not every movie has them.[/quote]
Well, these issues were obviously more detrimental to the overall story to you than to me - I think we just have to leave it at that, really.

[quote name='steveuk' timestamp='1339278956' post='2443759']Having big interesting questions is great, but only if they're handled well. I think they were handled really badly. The film might be less dissapointing if it were actually just dumb, but its not, it wants to be smart but it can't do it properly.[/quote]
Really? I felt like parts of this were on a par with 2001. And like that film, it didn't feel the need to insult the viewer by spelling everything out - it allowed us to draw our own conclusions about what certain parts of the story meant.

[quote name='steveuk' timestamp='1339278956' post='2443759']Actually that's never been addressed in the films properly.

It's something the fans know, or that we thought we knew, maybe, but was it actually certain?

Because if you're a regular cinema patron no-one has ever outlined that idea in one of the films. Someone really needed to pin that idea down and present it to people.[/quote]
I don't know about that - one of the girls I saw it with (who has seen the other Alien films, but isn't a hardcore obsessive fan) thought the exact same thing when I was discussing it with her afterwards. I think it was probably more heavily accentuated in Alien3 and Resurrection than in the first two movies.

[quote name='steveuk' timestamp='1339278956' post='2443759']Either way, what happens in the film still makes no sense. Stuff happens because its cool and Ridley likes it. That's the best explanation I can come up with.
[/quote]
I completely accept your opinion and I think I can understand how and why you've reached it, but I think it's doing the film a disservice.

[quote name='Hank Cannon' timestamp='1339279019' post='2443761']
I did not see Raplace's character as being "pregnant." I saw her as being "parasitized" by the infection in her boyfriend. Especially since they did not explain the nature of her sterility. From her reaction, I felt that she may have had a hysterectomy in the past and she knows that if she is pregnant, something is really really really wrong.
[/quote]
Yeah, I think the fact that she knows she's sterile (for whatever reason, she seems very sure) probably makes the 'pregnancy' feel more like a scary parasite than a baby. Although it's interesting that she initially phrases her operation request as a 'caesarean'.

(Why the hell was that medical pod not set up for women, anyway? If they're super-duper expensive bits of kit that they only ever made 12 of (or whatever), you'd think they'd be able to handle girls as well as boys - especially since it was in Charlize Theron's quarters.)

[quote name='Barry Matthew Ween' timestamp='1339280302' post='2443765']
I actually remembered that after I posted my message. Doh'!
[/quote]
It's only a short acknowledgement, easily missed.

[quote name='Barry Matthew Ween' timestamp='1339280302' post='2443765']I get that, but it's still part of an overall "prequel" story in my eyes.
[/quote]
Oh yeah, part of the reason it exists is certainly to 'set up' the Alien franchise. But I like the fact that it has something of its own to say, too.

[steveuk]

The very opening of that scene was the medical officer woman scanning the head and finding it free from contamination.

<SNIP>

Which I thought was a bit unlikely, even before they woke up the head, which I thought was funny, and then it exploded, which I have to say I found funny and appallingly stupid.

This is one of those examples of bad writing. I'd put money on the scene NOT being written with comedy in mind, but it was effing ridiculous.

I also reacted the same way to biologist's broken arm tearing the fabric of his protective suit (making it less tough than those paper overalls you buy in DIY stores) amongst other scenes.

But, to be honest, I'm actually finding it tough to remember a lot of the movie now. I was bloody annoyed when I left the cinema but the film is becoming something for the "forgotten" thread. The lack of a proper plot is making it hard for me to keep it straight in my head.

[Dave Wallace]

Which I thought was a bit unlikely, even before they woke up the head, which I thought was funny, and then it exploded, which I have to say I found funny and appallingly stupid.

This is one of those examples of bad writing. I'd put money on the scene NOT being written with comedy in mind, but it was effing ridiculous.

I have to admit, I found it funny when Shaw started telling the medical officer how to reanimate the dead head by stimulating its nervous system. Because until a couple of hours previous, she wasn't even 100% sure these creatures existed, and now she's an expert on their physiology...

(I just realised: Shaw... sure. I feel stupid for not getting that until now.)

[Chris D]

Just saw it and enjoyed it. It's kind of a mess from a storytelling standpoint, but I didn't seem to really mind for whatever reason. I do kind of wish it has been a straight up Alien prequel, because those were the parts I enjoyed most. All the stuff with the "creators" was pretty much nonsense that never went anywhere. But it was so visually impressive and had such a good cast, I really just went along with it.

Biggest pet peeve? They cast Guy Pearce as an old man. What the hell was that about. He looked ridiculous. I kept expecting him to get de-aged so that his casting made sense. Seriously, this bugged the crap out of me the entire movie.

[Johnny Henning]

Which I thought was a bit unlikely, even before they woke up the head, which I thought was funny, and then it exploded, which I have to say I found funny and appallingly stupid.

This is one of those examples of bad writing. I'd put money on the scene NOT being written with comedy in mind, but it was effing ridiculous.

I also reacted the same way to biologist's broken arm tearing the fabric of his protective suit (making it less tough than those paper overalls you buy in DIY stores) amongst other scenes.

But, to be honest, I'm actually finding it tough to remember a lot of the movie now. I was bloody annoyed when I left the cinema but the film is becoming something for the "forgotten" thread. The lack of a proper plot is making it hard for me to keep it straight in my head.

Yeah, it was an idiot plot worthy of the dry erase board in Cabin In The Woods, but it was a very intellectual idiot plot. In the end, it was a story very reminiscent of 80's B scifi movies but with twenty times the budget.

[craggy]

I think the biologist and the geologist probably had the toughest jobs out of the lot of them, given that they were faced with completely alien geology and biology.

(Why the hell was that medical pod not set up for women, anyway? If they're super-duper expensive bits of kit that they only ever made 12 of (or whatever), you'd think they'd be able to handle girls as well as boys - especially since it was in Charlize Theron's quarters.)

I have to admit, I found it funny when Shaw started telling the medical officer how to reanimate the dead head by stimulating its nervous system. Because until a couple of hours previous, she wasn't even 100% sure these creatures existed, and now she's an expert on their physiology...

(I just realised: Shaw... sure. I feel stupid for not getting that until now.)

eek, just realised now that all the posts I'm quoting are yours Dave, sorry, not intentionally having a go at you but...

The geology isn't that different from Earth. There's some hills. Some rocks. The biology certainly isn't different. The Engineer DNA is a perfect match to our own, right? Stands to reason that not all that much that they'd come up with would be all that different to what we'd have come up with by that point. So the biologist should have been fully capable of doing...his biological...stuff. Except he died cause he wanted to pet the cobra.

The medical pod. Well, it being set up only for males was a way of slapping the viewer in the face with a gigantic fish whilst tattooing the words "WEYLAND IS ALIVE AND ON THE SHIP!" across their forehead. Just in case you missed the slightly more subtle, but still super-blatant reveal earlier. From an in-story point of view, I suppose possibly, maybe...you have to load it up with procedures and they just skipped installing the female portion of it? It doesn't actually make any sense, since I can't imagine it'd take more than 5 minutes. Hell, I'd have thought that the best medical robot pod thing ever in the world oh my god they only made 12 of them ™ would have come with everything pre-installed. Maybe Weyland got David to delete any female specific programs from it, just to be a prick?

The bit that makes less sense is that it was in Theron's escape pod. I'd have imagined it'd be more likely to have been put in the same hidden compartment as Weyland's space-sleeping-bag. Except of course, then Shaw wouldn't have seen it, and they'd have had to think of another way for her to get to the caesarean scene.

[Johnny Henning]

eek, just realised now that all the posts I'm quoting are yours Dave, sorry, not intentionally having a go at you but...

The geology isn't that different from Earth. There's some hills. Some rocks. The biology certainly isn't different. The Engineer DNA is a perfect match to our own, right? Stands to reason that not all that much that they'd come up with would be all that different to what we'd have come up with by that point. So the biologist should have been fully capable of doing...his biological...stuff. Except he died cause he wanted to pet the cobra.

The medical pod. Well, it being set up only for males was a way of slapping the viewer in the face with a gigantic fish whilst tattooing the words "WEYLAND IS ALIVE AND ON THE SHIP!" across their forehead. Just in case you missed the slightly more subtle, but still super-blatant reveal earlier. From an in-story point of view, I suppose possibly, maybe...you have to load it up with procedures and they just skipped installing the female portion of it? It doesn't actually make any sense, since I can't imagine it'd take more than 5 minutes. Hell, I'd have thought that the best medical robot pod thing ever in the world oh my god they only made 12 of them ™ would have come with everything pre-installed. Maybe Weyland got David to delete any female specific programs from it, just to be a prick?

The bit that makes less sense is that it was in Theron's escape pod. I'd have imagined it'd be more likely to have been put in the same hidden compartment as Weyland's space-sleeping-bag. Except of course, then Shaw wouldn't have seen it, and they'd have had to think of another way for her to get to the caesarean scene.

Yeah, the movie is just full of clumsy or clunky decisions combined with a setting filled with elements that seem designed simply to make the plot possible. And even then, there would be no story if the characters weren't insanely incompetent scientists, explorers and astronauts. I mean,

Spoiler

... how exactly could anyone get lost in the giant stone compound when they had mapping drones and were in contact with the ship the whole time? I mean, the guy Fifield, geologist who knows about maps and probably has spent his life exploring caves, gets spooked and decides that he's not needed because this is a biological find and not geological. Fine - okay - as insanely stupid as it sounds that they would not have some sort of "don't split up" protocol in place - hell, as insanely stupid as it sounds that they would just walk into what looks like an alien fortress without sending drones or David in alone to check it out first - as insanely stupid as it sounds that they would enter the atmosphere without doing a survey from orbit to see if there's anything down there or just land a mile from the giant alien forts - anyway, as insanely stupid as all that sounds, I'll let it go just to get on with the story. The geologist gets spooked, decides this is about aliens and not about rocks - and he bolts.

But then, he takes the damn biologist with him...? What the hell? And the biologist is spooked, too? What?

Okay, so he's not much of a scientist, but okay. For the sake of enjoying the story, we'll accept the biologist - who must've been chosen after a grueling crew search ordered by Weyland himself - is just to freaked out to continue. Come to think of it, he was even sorta ridiculing the mission the moment he heard about it in the briefing which indicates to me it's not a great idea to hire somebody and not tell them what you're hiring them for. Another "idiot plot" moment - not that it's a plot hole, but it just requires the characters - Weyland in this case or Vickers - to be dumb as dirt.

Anyway, both these guys are freaked out, somehow they get lost - because the guys back at the ship are apparently interested in something other than the giant alien compound they came to see so they just lose track of the two men wandering aimlessly in the bowels of the thing - and later ridicule them for getting lost. So these guys come across a pile-up of dead aliens, Milburn the biologist says something like "the thing that killed them, I mean, it has to have been dead for thousands of years, right?" To which, Fifield surprisingly does not reply "F**k if I know, mate. To be sure, it's easy to get the two of us confused, but you're the f**king biologist here, aren't ye?"

And then - and I think Steve UK points it out above - you have something that plagues this movie scene after scene. You have a character state something in one scene, and then in a later scene, that same character does something that completely contradicts the attitude and presence of mind they had the scene before. In this case, Milburn says "hey, the thing that killed them can't be alive, can it?" Then, when you next see him, he's confronted by something that looks like a sea viper swimming in black oil and he behaves as if he thinks it's harmless."

On top of that, you have scenes that sound like they took dialogue from Lindelof's script and Spaight's script, cut them into chunks and then rearranged them randomly. The last scene between Shaw and Yannick was this way. It starts off fairly intelligently with Yannick, definitely the worst ship's captain in the history of science fiction, proposing an unusually intelligent thesis concerning what these compounds could be and why they should leave the planet behind and really never should've landed in the first place. Then there is a somewhat clumsy shift into Shaw asking why he came on the mission in the first place. To which Yannick responds that he can't let any of this s**t get back to Earth. What the hell is that supposed to mean? He came on the mission to protect the Earth from something he apparently didn't know they were looking for until the briefing? No, more likely, that scene was just supposed to be about Yannick telling her that he's not letting them bring anything back, even a live Engineer, and they decided it need more "character work."

And throughout the movie, the dialogue and character decisions are that clumsy and ill thought out. Characters start off talking about or doing one thing and then they're on to a different subject that really doesn't relate and/or behaving exactly the opposite of what they were saying and doing earlier.

So it is hard not to think of Cabin In The Woods when watching this movie. This is exactly the kind of "scary movie" where you can see the manipulation of the filmmakers so they can deliver what they think are the most important moments - the thrill scenes.

Visually, it makes a lot of admittedly beautiful but very ham-fisted references to 2001 and other Kubrick, Spielberg or Terrence Malick sorts of movies. The opening sequence definitely and intentionally was meant to invoke the later part of David Bowman's trip through the stargate as he watches the Earth form and cool. David is a walking HAL-9000 - and he is something like a grown up David from AI mixed with a bit of Jude Law's Joe from the same film - and you even have a young man in old man make-up sitting in a chair in a white room near the end. I'm sure there is more - like how the ship at the beginning turns vertical like the Monolith, for example, but they lend a visual intelligence to the movie that the story completely craps on.

As far as the Engineers, I can't really say much about them. I have my own theories, but there aren't really any "plot holes" so much because the film doesn't offer much information about them or why they do what they do. I will say that you can come up with reasons for like

Spoiler

how the Engineer knows Shaw is alive and on the lifeboat ship and how David knows the Engineer is coming for her or why he would even think she's alive, BUT I will say that no matter what reasons you come up with, the only reason that matters is the "Cabin In The Woods" logic that requires Shaw to perfunctorily face the monster in the lifeboat and kill him with the lucky press of a button opening a door to his doom

-- just like Ripley did in alien.

In the end, despite all this, I didn't really hate the movie. I could watch it - it's very watchable - but it isn't ALIEN, it isn't 2001, it's just a monster movie in space. It's better than EVENT HORIZON, for example, but, honestly, just because of production value - the story isn't really better than EVENT HORIZON, SUPERNOVA or ALIEN RESURRECTION.

And even more than those films, it seems to be unintentionally hilarious. The "shocking" socalled Caesarian section scene is quite unintentionally ridiculous. At least I think it's unintentional.

[Christian U]

In the end, despite all this, I didn't really hate the movie. I could watch it - it's very watchable - but it isn't ALIEN, it isn't 2001, it's just a monster movie in space. It's better than EVENT HORIZON, for example, but, honestly, just because of production value - the story isn't really better than EVENT HORIZON, SUPERNOVA or ALIEN RESURRECTION.

Weirdly, I've always liked Event Horizon. Quite possibly simply because Sam Neill is awesome.

[garjones]

Weirdly, I've always liked Event Horizon. Quite possibly simply because Sam Neill is awesome.

I've always liked Event Horizon and I liked Prometheus too.

[craggy]

yeah, I like them both too. Sadly, Prometheus definitely feels like it wants you to think about stuff, but when you do, it makes no sense.

[Johnny Henning]

Event Horizon delivers for the most part, but after seeing it recently, it wasn't nearly as scary or interesting as I thought when it came out. When Supernova came out, it was being called "Hellraiser in Space" but I thought that much more aptly applied to Event Horizon. Actually, I think Hellraiser 3 or 4 actually was Hellraiser in Space, but Event Horizon, Supernova and Prometheus rise above the standard slasher horror picture in that they have higher rated actors and higher aspirations. They also fail to achieve those aspirations.

Sadly, Prometheus definitely feels like it wants you to think about stuff, but when you do, it makes no sense.

Prometheus is a good, but not very good, Summer movie. However, like LOST's final season, in the end its philosophical queries are made irrelevant by its monster matinee style and very lackadaisical handling of the stories and characters.

Spoiler

"Why did the gods make us and why would they want to destroy us?" is an interesting question that leads to more questions, but in this story, why the engineers - not gods - do anything is made somewhat irrelevant by their own self-destruction at their own hands. The answer to those questions only relates to the fictional world of the movie itself and doesn't have any sort of moral or spiritual tone that would resonate outside the theater.

[steveuk]

I'm not sure Scott or Lindelof have an answer to the question? As Shaw says, even if we know who made us, who made the ones who made us?

'Event Horizon' is a disappointment every time I try to watch it. It only has one idea; hell is a place than can be reached through technology, but what's there can reach back to us through that technology as well.

That's a very good idea, but its very simple and you have to do something with it. John Carpenter's 'Prince of Darkness' also runs out of places to take the premise, as do Charles Stross' laundry novels.

A great idea, often combined with other great or good ideas but then... where the complete story?

[John Mosby]

Perhaps that's Prometheus' main problem. It's released in the middle of the summer. Populated with big-names. Hyped as a tent-pole release. Marketed very effectively...

...and then wants to be judged as a theological arthouse film.

[garjones]

Maybe, expectation can be a big thing. It was interesting with Kermode the other week where he had some backlash to his review for The Raid where he was very enthusiastic.

He said he walked in knowing nothing at all about it at all and was blown away by the action sequences, the listenership were going in based on his glowing review and expecting something deeper.

You take baggage in to anything, I went in reading reviews that this was some arthouse theological film (it was released here a week after the UK) and found it surprisingly mainstream.

I noted the point made earlier in this thread that it was an issue that they were sneaking in references to Alien that detracted from the narrative. I haven't seen Alien for years, I spotted the space jockey and some Giger-esque designs and that's about it. Without that knowledge or looking for them it had no influence in my viewing at all.

Steve's criticsm of the 'red shirts' in the geologist scene I don't understand at all,

Spoiler

everyone apart from Shaw and David's head dies in the film

. That some of them may not have had a full emotional journey is not different to a thousand films. That doesn't make him wrong because it irked him but I never even thought about it to be honest.

[Chris D]

Perhaps that's Prometheus' main problem. It's released in the middle of the summer. Populated with big-names. Hyped as a tent-pole release. Marketed very effectively...

...and then wants to be judged as a theological arthouse film.

I don't know, I tend to agree with craggy. In that it's a movie that wants you to think about things, but if you bother thinking about them it makes no sense. Luckily for me, I'm still stuck on the whole Guy Pearce casting shenanigans. A day later and I'm still annoyed about it.

As for my theory on the whole movie. I think it's pretty clear that these "engineers" were at war with the Predators and so they developed this bio-weapon that could be used to create a race of badass monsters. Problem being that they needed to act as incubation systems for this race. Solution: Just go to one of the many humaniod colonies they've engineered and create their army there. I mean, sure they could have just used the bio-weapon on the Predators, but what fun is that? Either that, or the Predators have paid them to create a new race that they could hunt. I really think it's important that we reconcile the AvP movie continuity with Prometheus is all I'm saying.

[Johnny Henning]

I don't know, I tend to agree with craggy. In that it's a movie that wants you to think about things, but if you bother thinking about them it makes no sense. Luckily for me, I'm still stuck on the whole Guy Pearce casting shenanigans. A day later and I'm still annoyed about it.

As for my theory on the whole movie. I think it's pretty clear that these "engineers" were at war with the Predators and so they developed this bio-weapon that could be used to create a race of badass monsters. Problem being that they needed to act as incubation systems for this race. Solution: Just go to one of the many humaniod colonies they've engineered and create their army there. I mean, sure they could have just used the bio-weapon on the Predators, but what fun is that? Either that, or the Predators have paid them to create a new race that they could hunt. I really think it's important that we reconcile the AvP movie continuity with Prometheus is all I'm saying.

Very nice.

Actually, a very similar idea struck me that this was basically a splinter cell of militaristic "engineers" who did intend to use the human race as incubators, but I prefer your inclusion of a war with the Predators.

For me, there did seem to be a "redshirt" principle to most of the deaths meaning they were more functional and took no consideration of character into account. You can't say that about Alien, for example, and, on top of that, they did not tie in well with the theme of the story primarily since most of the deaths were due to simple stupidity or random bad luck - always a bad story choice, in my opinion - rather than anything like Promethean overreaching on anyone's part.

It just seemed like they started with a script that was probably on the level of Alien Vs Predator or Prince of Darkness, like Steve mentions, and then called in Lindelof for a rewrite to add more depth to it rather than really starting over to make sure the elements that interested Scott drove the story. Instead, they ended up with a fairly straightforward monster movie probably a little less interesting than Planet of the Vampires from the 60's - the movie that influences Alien the most.

[steveuk]

<SNIP>

Steve's criticsm of the 'red shirts' in the geologist scene I don't understand at all,

Spoiler

everyone apart from Shaw and David's head dies in the film

. That some of them may not have had a full emotional journey is not different to a thousand films. That doesn't make him wrong because it irked him but I never even thought about it to be honest.

Which Steve? There's a lot of us about.

If it's me (or even if its not) which post don't you agree with?

[Johnny Henning]

I still hope the movie does well simply because I'd like to see a few more movies that aspire to the same kinds of things and don't mind the R-rating, if necessary.

[garjones]

It was PG-13 here. Then again the censors here are obsessed with sex and nudity above anything else. Even moreso than the US.