Prometheus (aka Alien prequel)

[PortlandCardFan]

Seriously this is the new Transformers. You watch it once and get lost in the spectacle and go "that was neat".

Then you rewatch it and go WTF?

Spoiler

I want to play a game called "Staples Olympics". The goal is to see how far you can run, jump, and climb before the staples in your stomach burst apart. Apparently it is pretty freaking far.

That is a serious WTF moment right there!!!

 

[MadCardDisease]

Seriously this is the new Transformers. You watch it once and get lost in the spectacle and go "that was neat".

Then you rewatch it and go WTF?

Spoiler

I want to play a game called "Staples Olympics". The goal is to see how far you can run, jump, and climb before the staples in your stomach burst apart. Apparently it is pretty freaking far.

My favorite WTF moment Happened at the end:

Spoiler

Oh no! A giant spaceship has crashed to the ground and is rolling towards us. Lets run in the direction that the giant spaceship is rolling.

Visually the movie was perfect.

There was some good acting and bad but mostly good. In the end the script didn't give the actors much to work with. So I'll give them the benifit of the doubt.

 

[Shane]

Spoiler

The med pod was for poppa wyland. I think...

Yep

 

[Shane]

Sigh... Yet another disappointment in the Alien series.

I had such high hopes for this one especially with Scott directing and producing this. Saddly I was totally let down. There were just so many scenes that were outrageous and over the top. I think it was the poor script that doomed this one from the start.

Over the top?? How so?? Or in what way?

 

[Cheesebeef]

Yep

i guess that makes sense... but why make a pod for just one person?

seriously... Charlize Theron's character was beyond pointless in this movie.

the more i think about it, the less i like the movie. but... i'm not paying for my memories, I'm paying for my ass to be entertained while i'm sitting in the theater and this did enough for me to be satisfied with the movie from at least a movie going experience.

 

[Shane]

i guess that makes sense... but why make a pod for just one person?

seriously... Charlize Theron's character was beyond pointless in this movie.

the more i think about it, the less i like the movie. but... i'm not paying for my memories, I'm paying for my ass to be entertained while i'm sitting in the theater and this did enough for me to be satisfied with the movie from at least a movie going experience.

That's about how I feel. I enjoyed while I was there and the special effects with the other planet and human like aliens were very well done. It entertained me and that's really all I care about. It did get a good chuckle out of me when idris Elba asked charlize if she was a robot?

 

[PortlandCardFan]

Agree with Cheesy and Shane... Hey, that could be a new show title. Kinda like 'Starsky and Hutch' or 'Cagney and Lacey'...

 

[Chaplin]

i guess that makes sense... but why make a pod for just one person?

That's a good question, but it definitely is a character point for Weyland. He certainly seems like the type of person that would spend billions on something that can only be used by him.

seriously... Charlize Theron's character was beyond pointless in this movie.

This is one of my biggest gripes. She was so one-dimensional. But towards the end, her acting made her out to be something more--her decision-making and facial expressions showed that there was some motivation there. The problem is that that motivation was never revealed. There's gotta be more to her in the deleted and cut scenes. Such a great actress to waste like that.

the more i think about it, the less i like the movie. but... i'm not paying for my memories, I'm paying for my ass to be entertained while i'm sitting in the theater and this did enough for me to be satisfied with the movie from at least a movie going experience.

I'm with you here, although I probably liked it more than you did. The thing that really got me was all the hints at Alien and even a little Blade Runner--that's what kept me enthralled.

 

[MadCardDisease]

Over the top?? How so?? Or in what way?

I hold the Alien series to a higher standard when I watch. Alien and Aliens are my favorite Sci-Fi horror flicks of all time. They are as close to perfect as you can get IMO. Great scrips. Perfectly Cast. Amazing sets and special effects. Truly thrilling movies.

Now you take Prometheus:

Spoiler

The characters development in this film was shallow, boring, and at times non existant. Theron's talent was wasted on a useless character. Sadly the one decent character was an andriod devoid of emotion.

All of my negative thoughts on the movie point back to the horrible script and poor character development.

As Sanders already brought up... Two dudes get "lost" in essentially only 2 corridors and they were the ones who mapped the thing. The whole reason they left the group was to get away from the room they ultimately decided to hang out in. Then one dude wants to pet the little "beautiful" slimy worm thing. Seriously?

And what was up with that room anyways? It was like a shrine to the weaponized aliens that the "Engineers" created. Yet this was supposed to be a military research facility. I can understand the cargo hold full of the weaponized aliens. What the hell was that shrine there for? It made zero sense as the movie progressed.

Oh and the one dude that died just suddenly ends up back in front of the ship. Lets just open the door see whats going on after all that has already happened. Oh snap... the dead guy is now superman with roid rage. Talk about over the top.

Then, how did that squid thing get inside that chick and how did it grow 10 times bigger in just a couple of hours? The entire squid thing was lame IMO. Why go away from the little alien that bursts out of your stomach?

Then the chick, after stapling her stomach closed, runs around like Carl Lewis. Yeah right!

The scene with the Captain and his Co-Pilots just happily crashing their ship into the alien spacecraft. Probably the cheesiest part of the movie. The dialog and acting there was beyond horrible.

Then the whole spaceship rolling towards Theron and squishing her. Seriously??? They would have been better off with it just crashing into her. The whole running away from a "rolling" spaceship in the direction that it was rolling was ridiculous.

I was fine with the overall back story. Aliens created us. They decide that it was a mistake. They make some horrible stuff to finish us off but it backfires. I'm cool with that story. The story was just horribly executed compared to the original two movies. Not to mention the character development was just plain lame. That's a shame because Prometheus' visuals looked just as good as the original two.

 

[redheat]

Plot holes aside, great sci fi movie. This article may help you enjoy it more. Lots of spoilers...

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

 

[MadCardDisease]

Plot holes aside, great sci fi movie. This article may help you enjoy it more. Lots of spoilers...

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

Nope, the characters and script still sucked even after reading that.

Although the dude did have some interesting takes on the core of the movie. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Over the top?? How so?? Or in what way?

Because it was so jarringly non sensical it kept taking away from the movie while I was watching it?

 

[Chaplin]

Hopefully, like Kingdom of Heaven, the inevitable Director's Cut will address a lot of these issues.

 

[MadCardDisease]

Clearly they need to bring in James Cameron on the Prometheus sequel. Seeing as that won't happen they at least need to hire some new writers.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

Hopefully, like Kingdom of Heaven, the inevitable Director's Cut will address a lot of these issues.

This is my thought as well.

My buddy summed it up even better...first 2/3rds of the movie was awesome.

Last 3rd you just feel like some studio hack said "We need more goofy horror movie stuff"

 

[MadCardDisease]

This is my thought as well.

My buddy summed it up even better...first 2/3rds of the movie was awesome.

Last 3rd you just feel like some studio hack said "We need more goofy horror movie stuff"

Was the first half of the movie really awesome? I thought it was OK and there was a bunch of eye candy, but I think they failed to develop the characters early on which made me not care when they died off one by one.

I can barely name maybe a handful of characters from Promethus and I just watched it the other day:
David
Shaw
Vickers
Weyland

Now with Aliens, which I haven't seen in a decade, I can name off the top of my head:
Ripley
Burke
Newt
Hudson
Vazquez
Hicks
Bishop
Spunkmyer
Gorman
Apone

In Aliens you got a good feel for each of the characters and knew something about each one. Then the characters continued to evolve throughout the movie.

In Prometheus they failed to develop the characters. They were all pretty much forgetable IMO.

 

[Chaplin]

Was the first half of the movie really awesome? I thought it was OK and there was a bunch of eye candy, but I think they failed to develop the characters early on which made me not care when they died off one by one.


In Prometheus they failed to develop the characters. They were all pretty much forgetable IMO.

I thought the first half was terrific, I loved the slow burn as they introduced the characters, and especially the creatures and environment.

But then right when whats-his-name gets infected, everything speeds up 200% and doesn't let up. Pacing was very strange. Maybe it's because I'm an editor, but it was VERY noticeable.

 

[chickenhead]

I think I'd heard enough bad reviews that my expectations wer lowered and I wasn't actually that disappointed. But I totally agree with everything C_S is saying: so much didn't make sense. And not in a purely confusing way--more in a "characters are introduced with motivations that conflict with later actions" sort of way.

Okay, maybe I was purely confused by why they put Guy Pearce in unrecognizeable Freddy Krueger makeup rather than using a more age-appropriate actor in more reasonable makeup. But that's just me.

The main thing that bugged me, however, was the storyline of the Engineers creating life on earth. Not for personal religious reasons or anything, just because...what's the point? Think about Alien: so much of its brilliance is that at the end, much of the mystery is intact. The draw to Prometheus is that we might find out what the fossilized alien in the original was, and if it randomly encounted the xenomorph like the humans did, or if there's a greater relationship (no way I was going to miss that).

So the way they explain it is that the dead alien's race CREATED HUMANITY!? And that the xenomorphs are a biological weapon meant to destroy us, presumably because of some transgression? And later on, the Nostromo (also a Weyland ship) is going to randomly answer a distress beacon from a derelict ship belonging to these very same aliens with a xenomorph that humans now had a hand in creating?

Shut up.

I mean, I hear there are two movies between Prometheus and Alien that may connect the dots, and I don't know who has the greater story credit here or and where the line is between Ridley Scott and Lindeloff: but this feels like a Lost-type progression. Where something with unbelievably tight mystery and suspense in the beginning is allowed to spiral into a quasi-mythological universe where confusing plot points are glossed over because of "meta" concerns.

That's the part that disappointed me. There's so much room to expand the story within the existing framework (the alien and its civilization, the xenomorph, the Weyland company, human society at the time). Why put all this other stuff on top of it?

 

[Dr. Jones]

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/prometheus_2012/
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes..... Roeper said it was one of the best movies of the year.

I will be seeing it tomorrow night.

 

[Chris_Sanders]

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/prometheus_2012/
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes..... Roeper said it was one of the best movies of the year.

I will be seeing it tomorrow night.

So what did you think?

 

[PortlandCardFan]

So what did you think?

I think Roeper is delusional! Best movie of the year?

 

[MadCardDisease]

I think Roeper is delusional! Best movie of the year?

I know. Dude must have been high while watching it.

 

[Covert Rain]

I enjoyed it. I went in expecting a popcorn movie that would be enjoyable. So, I don't disagree with anything Chris said in his post above. However, it's a movie about Aliens so I pretty much suspended belief before I walked into it. So, I didn't get as hung up on the plot holes and ridiculous decisions people made in the movie.

Definitely didn't live up to the hype but still enjoyable IMO.

By the way....JC would be awesome to make a sequel to this movie. Probably what the series needs.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Well..... they renovated my local theater and didn't tell the interwebs. Only option I had was 3D and I refused. I just hate those glasses over my actual glasses.

I will have to reschedule.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Brian in Mesa]

Going to see it in 3D tonight.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2.