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ellmo

if you're an Alien fan, for GOD'S SAKE, do not watch "Prometheus" [yes, spoilers]

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Okay, so I didn't see any thread about this move after it's premiere, there's only that one in which everybody gets their hopes high up - just the way I did before I watched this movie.

The following synopsis will most likely contain spoilers, but there's actually nothing that surprising and revolutionary in the main plot of the movie.

First of all I'd like to say I hated this garbage, every minute I hated it more because I was still hoping for some kind of a redeeming bit, but nothing came even close (well maybe Charlize Theron in a tight suit). The fact is that I find the main story not-half-bad. It doesn't kick ass, but with proper execution it would actually fit as Alien (1979) prequel. Unfortunately this movie includes extremly high density of unacceptably absent-minded characters, half of which are supposed to be scientists sent on a trillion dollar operation. I guess the operation itself was so expensive they could only afford a bunch of complete idiots and ignorants as the ship's the crew.
That said the "AvP" movie still makes infinitely more sense as a beginning of the franchise - even if it's not canon.



Technology

  • For every single prequel to classic movies - they always do this - they portray much better technology than in originals (and Alien movies have a combined plot-span of 250-300 years). I know Alien was made in the late seventies and the way people pictured future technology back then always makes me smile - but also they gave some honest thought about how things work, what is possible and what isn't.
    There were motion-detectors, auto-turrets with limited amount of ammo, orbital space ships with atmosphere-landing smaller vessels on board, Power Loaders used for loading heavy ordnance and medical examination was conducted by performing a medical examination, not by a oversized Tricoder and an android.
    In Prometheus everything is so advanced that you don't need to worry your pretty head over it. IT JUST WORKS OKAY?, unless the script tells it not to work, then it doesn't. I don't expect every single bit of make-believe technology explained to me, but you can't decapitate an android and have it operate like nothing happened and communicate over god knows what kind of wi-fi. In Alien when Ash was decapitated they had to plug him back to energy source and press a few buttons just to ask him a few simple questions. And that was 30 years in the future, or so.
    Prometheus' David is the shit. He watches old movies, he's evil and then he's not, he knows (by heart) the language of the Engineers we have never met, he can fly alien ships, he can show the main character where the aliens live and he can operate wihtout his torso...
    he can't handle Charlize Theron grabbing his android throat tho'

  • And do't get me started on the geologist's hound-spheres. THEY JUST WORK, ok? They fly and scan everything, so that none of the crew's scientists have to do anything sciency - for their own good, because they seem to completely suck at it.

  • btw. space suits were again made with one purpose in mind - make female crewmembers look hot.

Characters
Oh god where do I start. Maybe with the five disposable characters that didn't serve a dick of a purpose:
  • hipster biologist Millburn - I like his cool glasses and his anti-mainstream comment about rejecting the theory of Darwinism, but the highlight of his role is when he gets in contact with an alien life form (which is long dead, but still... it used to be a life form) - he runs away. On the next chance of meeting a new life form - as directed by Captain Janek's information about picking up life signals (I love how they just pick up life signals. Do they have a heartbeat detector with 10 mile range, that works on all life forms in the universe?) - he decides not to meet anything alive on the planet, for the same reason all the scientis have been evading their duties - they might come in contact with a target of their specialization and then they would have to use difficult, sciency words. And all those geeks in the audience would expect those words to make sense.
    The script remedies that by simply killing the silly fucker. He dies killed by a mutated earthworm that - of all the things encountered on this planet - would alone make me scream like a little girl and forget that I was a scientist for a while. That would be the moment where I run.
    Millburn calls this abomination "beautiful" and talks to it, like it was a kitty-kat.


  • badass tattooed geologist Fifield - For a second there I thought I'm going to like this guy, but he was so off, that I knew he's on the soon-to-die list. He's a geologist who has flying spheres do the work for him. He releases them and they scan the environment.
    There.
    His sciency role is complete. We never see him proble a single rock, he never even describes anything in the cave, never uses a name of a mineral - and a highlight of his life, shared with dr. Milburn - when he decides to get back from the cave to the ship, he's immediately lost. Couldn't make heads or tails of this rocks and caves and shit.
    Just another discount scientist on a tirllion dollar mission.


  • that yahoo-attitude male archaeologist, that was supposed to be important, but whose name I don't care about - this guy is even worse, because he's supposed to be a true believer, he claims (like everybody else) that the Engineers created humans, but as always there's not a single bit of information (I stopped hoping for anything of a proof long before, but an information would still be cool at this point) why would anyone think so. All that doesn't stop him from ordering the captain to land on a fucking Nazca-Line, that could give a valuable archaeological information.
    Fuck it - let's land in the middle of it.
    Holloway's (I believe his name was) greatest dream is to discover the race of giants once worshipped on Earth. But as an archaeologist he couldn't care less about all the hieroglyphics around the alien-made caves, nooooo! All he cares about are living alines.
    Finally he finds a (as in a single) alien carcass, which of course leads him to believe that they're ALL DEAD - but you can trust him, he's an expert.
    He came here for answers and he wanted those answers served on a silver plate from an alien, preferably speaking English. I wonder why they didn't send an immigration officer, instead of this mindless, pre-puberty expert. At least he died in flames.


  • Peter fucking Weyland - THE Weyland. A Guy (you get the pun?) with make-up soooooo shitty, it makes you wonder has Ridley Scott ever seen an elderly person. Biff from Back to the Future 2 looked better.
    It's a crying shame that the whole movie at some point unravels itself to be a story about Weyland's search for immortality, only to have THE WEYLAND killed with severed android's head a few minutes later.
    What was the purpose of this? Did you really need to include one of the two most important names of Alien franchise, just to have him killed in one of the most random encounters? Whatever, I don't care about this old fart, because the only Weyland I accept is Lance Henriksen.


  • the woman with funny accent who probably is a medical officer on board - I'll sum up her entire role, by saying that she was one of the two characters involved in connecting the invaluable fossilized head of a dead alien species to a car battery, just to find out what is going to happen.
    OF COURSE it exploded, audience loves exploding severed heads!

  • the man who opens the hatch to see if the twisted, infected body of geologist Fifield was okay. It wasn't.
    Which led us to a scene with mutated Fifled jumping around like an ape (I think it was supposed to be scary) and random people shooting him with handguns. I'm pretty sure the scene was included because the movie staff wanted to shoot stuff on the camera.


  • sweet Meredith Vickers - *SPOILER* Weyland's daughter *SPOILER* - I hope you haven't read the spoiler, because it's imperative to understanding the plot.
    Not.
    It's a completely random fact serving no purpose and having no continuation.
    Meredith is some kind of an officer... I think. Not sure, because it seems she doesn't have any authority over the captain (and why would she, he's the captain) nor the scientists. I think she's there to look hot and to have a chat with the captain about getting laid, so that the 15-year olds in the audience have something to fantasize about.
    The higlight of her life is undoubtably the scene whe she runs from a falling spaceship. I thought people running in one direction to avoid objects falling in precisely THAT direction can only happen in cartoons, but no. It seems like some people really are completely uaware of the concept of left and right.


  • Captain Janek - there are four dick-worth scientists on board and in the middle of the movie Janek enter's main-female-character's cabin with all the answers they never came up with. That's bascially it. There's nothing wrong with this character apart from the fact that this bastard must've sit down and engaged thinking mechanisms, when everybody else was running around like headless chickens.

UNACCEPTABLE BULLSHITTING AROUND
  • This is Alien's prequel and uses the same model of Engineer ship and it's crew. It shows the birth of a Xenomorph (possibly the first one ever)... why does it dick around by not happening on LV-426 (the setting of the original Alien and Aliens movies) ? What purpose does it serve to tell the story before Alien, on a similar planet but not the same one. Hell, they even made effort to crash the ship EXACTLY as shown in Alien, but alas, it's just an incredible coincindence, that somewhere else an Engineer ship with Xenomorphs on board has crashed exactly like this one.
    I think they've changed the setting of the movie post-production, so they wouldn't have to explain why Nostromo's crew 30 years later finds a dead Engineer (okay, okay, Space Jockey) in the pilot's seat and not in a crashed Terran vessel right next to it.


  • So why didn't they start? With all the stupid sub-plots in the movie I almost forgot that the alien race was about to start the ship and deliver death to Earth. So? Why didn't they?
    Because the only pilot got his head cut off by a door? What was this guy in the sleep-pod doing then? Was he just a passenger? Why is he the only one alive? Did he fucking doze off while everybody else was getting infected and apparently throwing themselves on the various walls and doors?
    When they wake him up, he sits down at the control panel (but not before he had his morning dose of killing homo sapiens, mind you), opens the pilot's seat and starts the ship - so there's only one crewmember required to do this and apparently it's easier than Tetris? What does this tell us about Space Jockeys? That despite their incredible technological advancement and supposedly superior intellect, when it comes to using a biological weapon to annihilate a planet, their decision making leaves something to be desired?

    I think it tells us it's time for Ridley Scott to put down the camera.

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ellmo said:

Charlize Theron in a tight suit

This was the only good thing about prometheus.

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I heard people saying it was more a reboot than a prequel, in that it uses the same premises but doesn't fit in continuity.

Also:

the Engineers created humans

This is a plot hook that is both unnecessary in all cases and completely stupid. It just annoys me. "Here's my explanation for what created humans (or even "all of terrestrial life"): aliens!" Cool, and then, what's the explanation for what created aliens?

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Gez said:

"Here's my explanation for what created humans (or even "all of terrestrial life"): aliens!"

The biggest problem with this crap not making any sense is the fact that they deduce aliens created us (I don't know how you create a life other than reproduce) becuase their DNA predates ours.
I'm not sure DNA can predate anything, but if it can then that must mean we were created by the Cro-Magnon people, who were created by Homo Erectus

-_-'

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ellmo said:

For every single prequel to classic movies - they always do this - they portray much better technology than in originals (and Alien movies have a combined plot-span of 250-300 years). I know Alien was made in the late seventies and the way people pictured future technology back then always makes me smile - but also they gave some honest thought about how things work, what is possible and what isn't.


You're comparing a state-of-the-art research vessel (Prometheus) to a run-down hulk (Nostromo). Of course the tech level is different, would you complain about a 18-wheeler looking like shit next to a Ferrari?

ellmo said:

This is Alien's prequel and uses the same model of Engineer ship and it's crew.


The OUTSIDE is similar...but the interior of Alien's engineer ship was a lot different (no cyro-pods, smaller). Probably a different model.

ellmo said:

It shows the birth of a Xenomorph (possibly the first one ever)...


Wrong. The bas-relief seen earlier in the film confirms that the Xenomorphs have been around for a while.

ellmo said:

why does it dick around by not happening on LV-426 (the setting of the original Alien and Aliens movies) ? What purpose does it serve to tell the story before Alien, on a similar planet but not the same one.


What would they gain by doing so? We'd know how the movie ends, with no crashed human ship in sight, and a dead engineer sitting in the cockpit. And remember, the Engineer in Alien is fossilized, not recently dead. 30 years isn't enough for that to happen.

Gez said:

I heard people saying it was more a reboot than a prequel, in that it uses the same premises but doesn't fit in continuity.


Those people are stupid. Prometheus takes place in the same universe, and this is made blatantly apparent multiple times.

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You're talking as if the original Alien was a better movie...

Gez said:

This is a plot hook that is both unnecessary in all cases and completely stupid. It just annoys me. "Here's my explanation for what created humans (or even "all of terrestrial life"): aliens!" Cool, and then, what's the explanation for what created aliens?

Why are you analyzing a film mythology as if it were a logic problem? The point isn't whether or not it makes a step toward solving a conceptual puzzle on some theoretical level, the point is that it actually happened. The question was never about something as general as how organic life could come into being, the question was whether or not humans were specifically created, and if so, what was the purpose behind the creation and where do we fit in to the grand scheme of things - all queries which are quite adequately answered, and to a rather depressing degree. It's essentially cloning on an intergalactic scale, and only as "unnecessary" or "stupid" as cloning already is on earth today.

Besides, we've only got the first part of the story so far. You may as well be annoyed with Fellowship of the Ring because Frodo never made it to Mount Doom by the end of the movie. This is a multi-part story, and there's much more to come. For now, Shaw's off to the Engineer's home world. We'll see what happens there. Until then, we shouldn't be expecting complete answers from a partial story.

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I continue to hold Alien in reverence and enjoyed Prometheus immensely, but couldn't help but feel just that little bit let down by the film, particularly in one respect. Certainly in reading your post it looks to be for completely different reasons, though, and truthfully it seems as if you elected to misinterpret what the film was before you watched it, which is probably what's lead to half the criticism being of a comparative nature. Viewing it as a completely different film with a different interest, scope and setting means you might be able to alleviate some of that suffering. But yes, indeed, there were faults...:

It starts with a comparison to Alien, oddly enough... but don't worry! I'm not being deliberate; it's just with regards to them both featuring as their cast complete crews of people embarking on isolated and perilous missions with an air of exploration.

Watching Alien, I found myself connecting very well with the characters involved because of the small-talk they constantly engaged in. They were basically cap-wearing roadies donning tattered clothes and paying their way, chatting idly over the long haul to stave away the boredom. But in the context of the film this was a deliberate move. It grounded them in place of a much needed reality that would allow for a real and present sense of fear.
In Prometheus there is a much bigger picture (unlike with Alien), and as a result everyone is talking big all the time. Big philosophical questions being posed and pondered around the clock, or at least wherever the opportunity for idle chatter arises, with never a moment to spare. That would be fine, of course, considering that this is largely what the film wants the audience to concern itself with, if it were it not for the fact that I'm less engaged with the characters than I could be as a result and that there's suddenly a heck of a lot of weight being dropped onto the film as to whether it can answer these big questions to a satisfying degree.

I do like that it's asking these questions, though. That's what the best sci-fi films are all about!: films such as Silent Running, 2001: ASO, Blade Runner, or even The Quiet Earth... but because all the best science fiction films pose to us the most grand and interesting questions available -- pertaining often to origin and belonging -- I am forced to compare it to these classics and what I see is a film that might have been better off striving to ask these questions under layers of more immediate plot or setting, overcoming the problem of disengaging characters through "big" dialogue, rather than thrusting the question upon us in a way that inhibits other areas of the film.

The cinematography is bloody gorgeous, as is the alien architecture and raw physicality to everything...: it really feels as though the film takes place on "the factory floor of life's beginnings", quite literally as though the world was engineered through toil and labour; and from out the birthplace of ideas. Talking of tension, as it is still that sort of film, after all; that caesarean scene was one of the most impressive set pieces I have seen in film in a long while, and I gripped the armrests of my chair all the way through it.*

There's no denying it's a well made film, I think. If you really do feel frustrated with it to the point that you can look past the unashamed ambition of it all in a haze of red disgust then I should think it very unfortunate... but not at all surprising.

*Oh yeah, mother/child relations seems to be a recurring theme in the Alien films. I guess this is another aspect of it that Scott thought would be worth carrying over. It would only make sense, of course, being that the whole point of the film is of progeny and/or creation.

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Mr. Freeze said
You're comparing a state-of-the-art research vessel (Prometheus) to a run-down hulk (Nostromo). Of course the tech level is different, would you complain about a 18-wheeler looking like shit next to a Ferrari?

I wasn't talking about Nostromo, I was talking about Sulaco and the Colonial Marines armed with state of the art weaponry.

st.alfonzo said:

I continue to hold Alien in reverence and enjoyed Prometheus immensely, but couldn't help but feel just that little bit let down by the film, particularly in one respect. Certainly in reading your post it looks to be for completely different reasons, though, and truthfully it seems as if you elected to misinterpret what the film was before you watched it

How can I possibly misinterpret that, which I have not seen? I'm interpreting the movie as I saw it and as I understand it. I went to the cinema hoping for a good sci-fi movie, possibly having something in common with Alien franchise. I knew next to nothing about the movie, but that's not the point.
I'm not arguing about the main story. The plot, even as a big picture, is fine. It creates some rules at the beginning of the movie and obeys it.
But the characters are abysmally stupid, useless and didn't deserve any of my sympathy. This entire movie could've worked perfectly without any human crew.

In Prometheus there is a much bigger picture (unlike with Alien), and as a result everyone is talking big all the time. Big philosophical questions being posed and pondered around the clock (...)

Wait a minute, a sobbing quasi-arcaheologist crying that he wanted to ask "them" why they created us does not make the movie philosophical. Neither does repeating the question don't you want to know?". Agree that the movie had a great opportunity to at least pretend it's asking the big question. It could've tried to tell the story of THREE races, but it doesn't. At least I can't imagine asking myself philosphical questions on that basis, not when those complete muppets irritate me.
Movies you mentioned, especially 2001: ASO, it's sequel 2010, even movie Contact do this great, without actually having stupid characters mouth these words.

Prometheus is about gory death scenes and suspense that is not a suspense at all, because most of it is too obvious.

The cinematography is bloody gorgeous

That I agree 100%
It also includes the best two-large-vessels-impact-scene I've ever seen.

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'modern movies suck'

tru dat, but I liked the modern movie 'let me in'... its like a pedo-romance-horror. Horror can be a nice spice.. add some B movie and comedy and you have evil dead II. But if you just eat horror by itself its usually shit, composed mostly of a big titted girl walking through a house with a drawn out chord playing (intended for suspense, but you've learned to be quite bored by this after hearing it in 8 other movies) and eventually a false alarm screeching cat jumps across the screen which doesn't startle you at all. Then you have to start all over, and finally see the bad guy who is just an idiot you don't care about. Its much better to just watch porn to see big titted girls without having to fast forward past a bunch of stupid horror crap.
Most movies are just another branch of the elite controlled media now, with Tom Hanks and all these undeservingly rich asshats as their Joseph Goebbels propaganda henchmen. Probably every time you pay to see a movie or buy one of their DRM filled planned obsolescence storage mediums, it funds the development of robots to enslave us in the future. We fund our own enslavement, that's full spectrum dominance, bizitch!

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gggmork said:

Most movies are just another branch of the elite controlled media now, with Tom Hanks and all these undeservingly rich asshats as their Joseph Goebbels propaganda henchmen. Probably every time you pay to see a movie or buy one of their DRM filled planned obsolescence storage mediums, it funds the development of robots to enslave us in the future. We fund our own enslavement, that's full spectrum dominance, bizitch!

What in the actual fuck are you talking about?

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So, about the movie...

If I don't care about Alien, will I enjoy it? I don't mind a few icebox scenes, as long as the movie can maintain my suspension of disbelief until the credits role.

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schwerpunk said:

If I don't care about Alien

Unwashed heathen...

will I enjoy it? I don't mind a few icebox scenes, as long as the movie can maintain my suspension of disbelief until the credits role.

Maybe? Who knows? The movie is nothing like alien and doesn't touch upon the symbolism and thematics or ideas the original trilogy or indeed even just the original alien that Scott directed did.

Personally, I thought prometheus could've been a lot worse, but it was still pretty bad. If scott wanted to try to tell some stupid story about space jesus why did he have to try to inject it into alien mythos? The xenomorph isn't required to tell this story. Quite frankly the fact that the xenomorphish stuff is in the movie to begin with is utterly baffling because it feels meaninglessly tacked on. It's a sideshow of a sideshow. The underlying theme of the movie is: 'did the space jesuses make life on earth?' The movie itself deals with a couple people that want to figure this out and a bunch of others that don't want to be doing science stuff on a science expedition they signed up for (really wtf?). Then scott had to add in some xenomorph stuff because, by god it has to take place in the same universe for some reason ---> $$$$

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Gez said:

"Here's my explanation for what created humans (or even "all of terrestrial life"): aliens!" Cool, and then, what's the explanation for what created aliens?

God created aliens, and by concealing our true origins from us the old guy's displaying a wicked sense of humour.

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What's odd is that given these sorts of reactions to the film (Prometheus), the title of this thread reads inverse to me in a shallow sort of way. Having enjoyed Prometheus immensely, I'm somewhat disinclined to watch Alien (which I haven't seen) "because" it's apparent that the two are very, very different films. Though actually it's because I dislike horror and probably wouldn't find Alien as interesting as a result, filmography and Ripley aside. :P

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That's silly. You might very well like both. I haven't seen Prometheus, but this thread has me wanting to see it more, even if it's just to see if I agree with everyone else.

Alien is a good movie. If you only ever watch one movie about a monster invading a spaceship (or space station, base, submarine, house, etc.) Alien is a good choice - maybe even the best choice. It's very well made and it aged really, really well. It defined the look of a lot of things that came out since and it also inspired DooM (well, maybe that was more inspired by Aliens...).

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I haven't seen Prometheus and I only skimmed this thread but I certainly will be watching it at some point. I loved the first Alien film and then Aliens was awesome. I'm sure I'll like Prometheus as well.

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Xaser said:

What's odd is that given these sorts of reactions to the film (Prometheus), the title of this thread reads inverse to me in a shallow sort of way. Having enjoyed Prometheus immensely, I'm somewhat disinclined to watch Alien (which I haven't seen) "because" it's apparent that the two are very, very different films. Though actually it's because I dislike horror and probably wouldn't find Alien as interesting as a result, filmography and Ripley aside. :P


It seems to me that there are two very different types of horror movies out there. There are your "classic" horror movies that go on for ten or more sequels, each one less and less interesting than the last, focusing more on primal fears, such as death or pain. Most of these aren't really all that good, IMO. I know there are exceptions, but I've never really felt like the majority of the Saws, Friday the 13ths, or what-have-you, are very frightening.

On the other hand, you have your psychological thrillers, which occasionally veer into the territory of horror. The Thing is a great example of this. It's a horror film, but it's more about the fear of isolation and the inability to trust anyone around you. Alien, likewise, is a sci-fi psychological thriller that also fits into horror. The designs of each stage of the xenomorph, as well as the Space Jockey ship it is found on, all contribute to the feeling of the film and provide a lot more terror than just the threat of death. While death is scary, no film-goer expects to die in the theater, so the concept of death doesn't really work unless it's accompanied by something else that sideswipes the viewer and beats their guard down.

That's just my two cents on the subject, though.

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Membrain said:

While death is scary, no film-goer expects to die in the theater, so the concept of death doesn't really work unless it's accompanied by something else that sideswipes the viewer and beats their guard down.


James Holmes? (who might be a drugged patsy used as a false flag excuse to destroy the 2nd amendment)

Here's another good horror-ish movie:
takashi miike's 'audition' (seems like a normal movie, but stay with it until the end)

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I saw "Prometheus," enjoyed the hell out of it, AND I'm a big "Alien" and "Aliens" fan. I've read about a lot of problems people have with things like character inconsistency, contradictions in the associated "Alien" universe, the stupidity of the crew members, logistical issues that don't add up, plot holes that leave things frustratingly unexplained, painfully obvious religious overtones, the fact that the Engineers seem to just be another race of big, dumb, angry aliens, and you know what? I don't care. I still enjoyed it as a cinematic experience. I think there was plenty of room to have patched up the script and made it truly live up to its potential, but I appreciate what Scott was trying to do so much that I can forgive its issues.

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I feel the term "horror movie" is associated to schlocky, gory films where a bunch of idiotic teens get turned into ketchup fountains by the monster of the week. These movies don't appeal to me. But Alien is not a mindless slasher flick. It's worth seeing even if you don't like horror movies as a genre.

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My mind kept skipping over the word "fan" in the title. I was reading it as "If you're an alien".

Will you guys hunt me down and kill me if I say I've never seen any of the Alien movies?

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chopkinsca said:

Will you guys hunt me down and kill me if I say I've never seen any of the Alien movies?

I'm actually jealous. You get to watch them for the first time and literally experience them like you've never watched them before.

If you have no intention of at least watching Alien and Aliens then I might have to kill you, however. You also might deserve a mercy kill if you watch the entire tetralogy and declare that Resurrection is your favourite of the four.

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I've seen Prometheus in theaters 3 times, and I enjoyed it each time I went to see it. I'm also a big fan of Alien and Aliens. What does that say about me? I'm just an awesome guy, I guess!

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I'm a huge fan of Alien and Aliens, as well as Ridley Scot. I loved Prometheus and think that Scott still has it in him. To me, ellmo's whole rant has some fatal flaws in it, namely that he's being entirely too silly about this whole thing.

For one, he's over-analyzing all the technical details in the movie. HOW does all the technology work? I don't know, HOW does all the technology in any sci-fi work? If it could be explained, it would have been created already. Also, as it has been pointed out before, the technology is more advanced looking in this movie because it's a privately-funded science vessel instead of an industrial vessel (the Nostromo) or a military vessel (the Sulaco). It's like comparing a luxury yacht (albeit one loaded with science equipment) to a freighter or aircraft carrier. When the super-rich build something for themselves, they will get the newest everything because they're rich and can afford to show off (though Weyland's reasons for spending so much money on it had a more personal meaning for him). Corporations, however aren't going to spend that much money unless they have to, and will just use old tech if they can get away with it, and thus you have old freighters with the bare minimum of technology out there still plying the waters. The military uses old tech for the same reasons: budgeting issues. The US Navy has been using the same basic tactics since before World War II, and most of our ships are 30-40 years old with technology that is on average still half that age. Hell, I think they still use CRTs. The reason they don't change this is because their tactics of using carriers as mobile bases with other craft as support hasn't changed for the better part of a century, so there's little reason to replace their vessels.

As st.alfonzo touched on earlier, good sci-fi isn't about providing answers, it's about providing questions. Blade Runner, for instance, isn't about how they made the androids, or how the Voight-Kampff test works, or how their flying cars work. Instead, it's about bigger questions like "what does it mean to be human?" or "is it moral to make a machine identical to a human then dispose of it after it has outlived its use?". Likewise, Prometheus isn't about how all their technology works, but rather big questions like "should man really try to sustain his life indefinitely?" or "is it wise to confront your creator?".

Also, I think ellmo missed the point of literary themes when he thought introducing Vickers as Weyland's daughter was pointless. A common theme in all the Alien movies is parent-child relationships. In Alien, they have the computer named MOTHER to help them, and its control room is comforting and almost womb-like. In Aliens, Ripley's relationship with Newt is a sort of mother-daughter relationship (in the director's cut they show that Ripley's daughter died of old age while she was out in space, and Newt is a surrogate replacement). In Prometheus, Vickers is Wyeland's biological daughter, but he seems to prefer his artificial "son" David to her, and she obviously has issues with this. There are other themes that carry on from the older movies as well, like rape and childbirth. I really appreciated that.

That being said, there were some issues with the movie I had, like the two pants-on-head retarded scientists who were epsecially terrible at their jobs, or the makeup they used for Weyland instead of using an older actor. I assume the latter had something to do with the teaser they used that took place 30-40 years prior with the same actor. Perhaps it was supposed to be in the movie originally. I don't know. It still seemed like a strange choice.

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personally i don't get how people have high expectations of modern sequels, prequels and remakes. i mean, they're usually horrible aren't they? :/ or atleast off the mark.

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Danarchy said:

There are other themes that carry on from the older movies as well, like rape and childbirth.

Besides the facehugger concept, wasn't it strongly implied that the alien fucked Lambert in Alien? If there's one thing that James Cameron didn't get when he made Aliens was the creepy sexual aspect of the titular creatures, and he set a paradigm that continued on throughout the saga.

Anyway, I wish I could join in on the discussion on Prometheus but I still haven't seen it yet :(

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I hated Prometheus because I found the whole movie so laughably retarded. The characters in particular, but as for the technology, one scene stands out as so idiotic that you can't really take the movie serious at all. (There are plenty of others, but this is sort of the magnup opus of retardation in the movie) The abortion scene. That whole operation is so poorly executed that even with the greatest effort can I not maintain my suspension of disbelief through that part. Or maybe I would not. Because the whole movie up to that point had been just this idiotic rollercoaster that I couldn't care less about it anymore. And that she somehow still manage to do everything that she does through the rest of the movie, without dying on the spot.

EDIT: Which I think she should have. Because she's the prime ruler of retardation in the movie. (She and that idiot biologist, but at least he had the good manners to get himself killed early) It's the first time I've watched an alien franchise movie, where I wanted the aliens to win.

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Loved this movie, but then again I'm one of those that prefers 70's and 80's movies to the horse shit Hollow Wood is passing off as movies nowadays, and I'm also a long time Alien fan. ;)

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