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Post #1561
192 pages of art deliciousness, yes please:
http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-The.../dp/1781161097
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Retconning and evolution are funny things.
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explain to me why the script was weak and I'll explain to you why it wasn't. I just saw the movie last night, and my friends and I agreed that it was incredible and defied our lowered expectations that were duped by reviewers that didn't get what it was going for or didn't understand its merits. Ebert gave one of the only reviews I've read that was largely on target--he gave it a 4/4.
I was very pleasantly surprised that many aspects of the film reminded me of 2001 and even the Coen's A Serious Man. few movies prior to Prometheus have actually accomplished "philosophical horror"; it was a brilliantly orchestrated movie and functioned on its own merit, apart from being a film from the Alien franchise. if there were a sequel made to this movie, it would be Prometheus 2, and not Alien. it wasn't at all like Alien and didn't try to be. and I loved that. it had higher aims above being a horror movie, and it absolutely accomplished it. in fact, it was MUCH more thought-provoking than The Avengers. after The Avengers, everyone just kind of says "oh yeah, that was great," or "that was part was totally hilarious." Whedon did the best job he possibly could, but Prometheus had more substance, and actually got my friends and me talking about it afterwards. I was completely absorbed by Prometheus and never felt like I was being beaten over the head by existential messages or otherwise philosophical messages.
also, it's worth mentioning that Lindelof pulled out a lot of subtle plants/payoffs in the movie. somehow a lot of people I saw the movie with didn't get how the tentacle aliens got inside the locked room--it was because they were worms that were weaponized by the goo. Fassbender's character also had a lot of nuance to him; I really liked his line going something like, "Doesn't everyone want to kill their parents?" because his only model had been Vickers and her father, bringing about the question of how we as humans derive our morals and knowledge of what is right and wrong. even the Vicker's line that said, "A king has his reign, and then he dies..." which seems to be beating you over the head in the trailer actually works well in the moment, because at one time she's talking about a) Weyland, b) the engineers, c) mankind and d) the eventual reign of AI. even Fassbender's poisoning of Dr. Holloway was well worked in and pretty subtle for a script of a mainstream movie.
I thought the movie was brilliant.
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Wow, this movie was seriously awful.
It didn't have a plot. It was just Hey there's some dots in this cave, so we should go dicking around on a creepy-ass planet for two hours with no discernible end goal.
Also was not digging the creationism themes. Especially how they clearly did not consider that their creators might be assholes.
The entire plot was relayed through bland dialog. Captain Accordion stands in a nondescript hallway and explains that the planet is really a military outpost far away from the homeworld to store biological weapons. How did he figure this out? Why is he only telling it to one person? Furthermore, why the FUCK is nobody disturbed that Jesus-Gal just performed an alien abortion on herself and is running around the ship half-naked. Nobody even fucking noticed. She escapes her doctors, does a space-abortion, and then it's back to the plot? Fucking lock that infected psychobitch UP, jesus CHRIST why is everyone on this ship so fucking stupid?
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I also laughed when you said that they had no discernible goal. Sorry, you lost all of your credibility when the main motives of both Weyland and Shaw/Holloway were VERY clear. Also, they were interesting. Who the hell doesn't want to know where they came from, or why they were made? Seriously, dude, you're grasping at straws here.
What creationism themes? There was no creationism in a religious sense...everything in this film was organically derived. Shaw held on to religion because it was her sole comfort in a realm of philosophical tragedy and chaos; after Holloway was gone, she literally had no one to connect to. Religion was clearly a failing beacon in this film, and Ridley in NO WAY supports the theory of creationism. In fact, he said in an interview that Jesus was supposed to be the Engineer's emissary to fix what the humans were fucking up, and then the humans killed him. That pissed the Engineer's the [I]fuck off[/I].
Unless, of course, you're talking about creationism in the sense of things creating other things, and not in a religious sense. In which case, I guess this movie just wasn't for you? Seeing as all of it was about the idea of Prometheus and giving things life, and the motives behind it. Why was Prometheus so integral to Greek myths? Well, because most people want to know why they were created or where they come from. Simple as that, and this movie got RIGHT at that theme in a brilliant manner. If you didn't notice, Promethean imagery permeated this film to a huge extent: look at all of the examples of self-sacrifice (captain, engineer's head, engineer at the beginning) and the examples of self-preservation (Vickers, the geologist, Weyland) and also the images of torn-open abdomens: abortion scene, mural on the ceiling, Engineer)
There was a LOT more going on in this film than you are giving it credit for. Simple as that.
Okay, how did they not consider that their creators were assholes? Many of the people were cautious about it, David [I]knew[/I] what was going to happen and purposefully brought about everyone's destruction, and their creators weren't assholes. We were. They invited us to their planet; they were happy with us to begin with. Just like humans were with androids, etc. The film clearly implied that there was some past historical event in which humans deeply wronged their creators...hmmmm have human beings fucked up at all throughout the course of our existence on Earth? Like I mentioned before, space emissary.
I don't trust that you know what you're talking about when it comes to dialogue, especially when you include the detail that he's standing in a "nondescript hallway." First of all, why did you include that detail? What are you talking about? You do realize that we should be falling at Ridley Scott's feet due to the fact that most of his budget was spent on actually making these incredibly ornate sets through practical effects, right? And not CGI? Thanks for recognizing his effort and his "nondescript hallways." The captain of the ship was probably ex-military and has been on several space voyages and is all around an intelligent human being. He figured out, just like any experienced, intelligent human might, that the black goo that was [I]clearly being weaponized in front of him[/I] probably used for military purposes, and, seeing that the entire place seemed to be just rows of these ships, he figured out that it was mostly likely an installation. Honestly, that was a totally logical assumption and was exposition that the audience needed, and did not feel out of place at all. I hope you also understand the disposition of the doctors and of David when Shaw was giving herself an abortion (a well-written scene that was reminiscent of the Annunciation, by the way); David wanted to freeze her so that he could keep the specimen inside her and take it back to Earth. Who knows what the doctors knew, or what they were told to do? There were clearly people on the ship that were knew Weyland was there (there were people in the room with him) and we don't know what was going on in that OR.
As for the dialogue, everyone spoke realistically. It's a style that many people choose to use, and I respect it just fine. There were several humorous moments, and David's dialogue was nothing short of brilliant. Much of the poignancy of the dialogue was in the reactions: see Vicker's wordless reaction to Weyland calling David the closest thing to his son, or Shaw's reaction to David talking about her dad dying. David was brilliantly written, as were most of the main cast. You might argue that some of the side characters were two-dimensional (like the geologist being anger, the biologist being curiosity) but the main characters were absolutely not, and the side characters benefited from that.
The film was absolutely, definitely, not seriously awful. I can't believe you could possibly say that.
As someone that lowered their expectations because of just above average reviews, I was blown away.
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The first rule of cinema is "show, don't tell."
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okay, so that's your response to my whole post.
you didn't even read it, because I pointed out MANY things that the movie showed, but didn't tell. clearly it should've told more, because you didn't even understand why they were there in the first place...? if you don't understand why that bit of exposition on behalf of the captain was necessary, you're too idealistic of a film goer and have no idea what it takes to make a mainstream film palatable to a large audience in a modern market
also I go to film school at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, please don't try and explain the ideals of film to me
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I am responding to this:
"I don't trust that you know what you're talking about when it comes to dialogue, especially when you include the detail that he's standing in a "nondescript hallway." First of all, why did you include that detail? What are you talking about?"
I am also intrigued by this:
"You do realize that we should be falling at Ridley Scott's feet due to the fact that most of his budget was spent on actually making these incredibly ornate sets through practical effects, right?"
You seem to be under the impression that style and pizazz make up for the lack of a story. They don't. You can spend as much money and have as many fancy things as you want in your movie, but if they aren't being used to the benefit of the story then you might as well just flush that money down the toilet.
If you truly go to film school, I am surprised that you haven't learned that plot is supreme and style is ancillary.
An example:
Prometheus was meant to be a mind-bending exploration of the concept of panspermiatic origins of human life. Its core themes were miscarried at the most basic level because the plot did not serve them. All of the money, sets and effects (practical or otherwise) do not aid in a nonexistent plot.
A film such as Primer, on the other hand, was made on a budget of roughly three dollars, and somehow manages to relay of the singlemost intriguing, befuddling and generally awe-inspiringly complicated plots ever committed to film. There were no effects or sets. They rented some storage space, put some plastic crates in there and called it a time machine, and it was still somehow incredibly tense and interesting.
TL;DR: Style should serve the plot. Plot should not serve the style.
No amount of money makes up for a film that has no point. I don't even know why this film was made. Either it was a three hour film cut down massively (which I suspect, given it feels as though a shitload of scenes are missing from the theatrical run), or nobody in the writers' room actually had a story to tell. It reeks of fluff, arbitrary horror and an overindulgent budget. Had they told a story with all of those sets and effects, perhaps it would have been better. But all I could wonder as I left the theater was "why did they even make this film?"
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(I suspect the answer to that one is that someone wanted some of that Avatar money.)
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For reference, people defended Alien: Resurrection in much the same way as you are Prometheus.
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Your reply actually makes me frustrated because of how ignorant it is.
Yes, I go to film school, and my major is Writing for Screen and Television, a program in which 26 people are accepted every year out of an applicant pool of 3000+. Again, please don't lecture me about the importance of plot in film; I know more about it than you do. One of the professors I had this past year wrote one of the biggest books on screenwriting, and he knows more about the trade and craft than you or I ever will.
Did you like The Avengers? I'll get to that point if the answer is yes. For the sake of your argument, I sure hope your answer is more than a one-dimensional "yes."
My point is that Ridley Scott's efforts with the set are part of his vision as an artist and creator. He created a universe, and the set design was clearly laborious and indicative of a highly imaginative individual; Scott and H.R. Giger made an incredible team, and their set designs are works of art among themselves, something that you are seriously taking for granted. So you want me to explain how the set design factors into the plot? Sure.
The main room featured in the ship--that of the monolithic face, the xenomorph iconography and the rows of containers--was painstakingly designed to tell a story in and of itself. The architectural design alone gives you a story about our creators, and the idea that the civilization that created us also had "gods" of a sort--the Engineers were about self-sacrifice and the importance of will-power and, through that, the furthering of goals above themselves. The xenomorph is the "destroyer" of their culture; it is that which ends sans purpose or ideals. It is an all-ending weapon. The juxtaposition of the xenomorph and the giant face alone visually conveys (hey! showing and not telling! wow!) the theme of creation and destruction, the cycle of life, and the idea of self-preservation vs. self-sacrifice (the former embodied by humans, the latter by the Engineers).
Oh, and did you catch the mural on the ceiling? The one with the Engineer with its abdomen ripped open? Does that remind you of anything? Hint: Prometheus had his abdomen ripped open over and over as punishment for giving fire to human beings. There are several scenes in which this occurs, not the least of which is the abortion scene. Again, visually conveying information. Funny that you were so quick to say that everything was said out loud in exposition. You doomed your argument when you said that, because most of this film was in visual evidence with no exposition. Think about the beginning of the film: a beautiful, mostly uninhabited planet seemingly populated with a single Engineer. And what does he do? He dissolves himself, spreading his DNA and innards into the planet's lifeblood. I read an interpretation that compared him to a gardener, fostering life on a planet, sacrificing himself to further goals beyond himself, as the Engineers have been shown to do. Hmmm...he didn't say too much of that out loud.
So you can say all you want about how much money he spent on sets, but my point is that he utilized the maximum amount of resources to convey the most detailed, intricate manifestation of his ultimate vision. What's funny is you still fail to recognize that this film had a point, and that the story was just as important as the style. This is the absolute worst movie of this year to use as an example of style over substance. Have you seen Haywire?
The film begged questions that no other horror movie would dare to ask because of its sheer scale and immensity of philosophy. It tackled a modern take on a Greco-Roman ultimate question, and actually did it without beating you over the fucking head with it. The ultimate message was likely existential, aka: the universe is a mass chaos, we are insignificant, it's quite possible that nothing we believe is true and just thin dogma that makes us feel better, and, perhaps most importantly, that these questions don't matter. At the end of the film, we see Shaw leave to answer her remaining questions, though we know she won't be satisfied with the answer, if she even gets that far. In fact, she'll be carrying destruction to that planet in the form of lifeforms contaminated with the insidious black goo.
You want another example of visual storytelling? Okay, let's look at the scene in which the Engineer awakes and beats the ever living shit out of everyone else in the room. What do you think Fassbender asked him? I highly doubt it was what Weyland asked him to. And Fassbender definitely knew what was going to happen. Doesn't everyone want to kill their parents? No, David, they don't. Well, maybe. Are humans all that fucked up?
Anyway, what do you think the Engineer was thinking? [I]I[/I] think it was immediately arrested by the fact that a) there were humans in the room and b) a human's creation was talking to it. These are the humans that are the exact thing that Engineers despise the most: manifestations of selfishness. Look at Weyland and Vickers! Weyland doesn't care about where humans come from or why they're there, he's literally in that room [I]just[/I] to make his life last longer. The Engineer reacts with disgust--as the isolated head does when it is revived, for it thought it had ended its own life for a purpose--and murders the humans. Here the humans were, fucking up their ship, after fucking up their own planet.
Again, let's get some more visual stuff in here. How about subtextual meanings? The entire film is about the Promethean ideal of self-sacrifice. We have the Engineers, who are selfless, and the humans, who are tainted. But the movie ends optimistically, as we have the captain sacrificing his life and those of his men to accomplish goals beyond himself, as well as Holloway begging Vickers to burn him alive. There's hope yet in humanity, and we're left with the sense that we aren't a completely failed experiment.
I'm sorry for you, to be honest. Bummer that you couldn't appreciate this film for what it was. I saw it with my good friends, one of which is a critical studies student at NYU's Tisch film program. He, like me, knows his shit when it comes to film. We both had an identical impression: we were waiting for the film to tank somewhere in the middle or the end because we went in thinking it was going to be mediocre, only to be disproved.
Regardless of what you say, I absolutely stand by the fact that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to this movie. Bottom line: it's not terrible. And, in my own opinion, it was amazing.
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The fact that you're attempting to explain how everything went down in a film on a message board rather than it being evident in the film itself is not helping your case.
Call me ignorant and talk about film school again.
You keep using the word "questions" but you never actually mention what those questions are.
You're saying a whole lot of nothing in a record number of words.
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oh my bad, I guess the film should have told more and showed less. my friends and I thought that everything was absolutely clear. I guess you failed to notice even the most fundamental aspect of the plot (why they were on the planet in the first place); the same plot that you claim was overly simple and poorly scripted.
go ahead and dismiss by arguments and call a great film terrible again, because you have no idea what you're talking about
if you hadn't said "If you truly go to film school, I am surprised that you haven't learned that plot is supreme and style is ancillary" I wouldn't have brought it up again. you're very condescending for someone with nothing to back up your argument
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Oh, I didn't realize I had to actually explain what the questions are. She made it very clear what her questions were throughout the film...holy god, how did you not notice? Her questions are identical to the reasons why she wanted to go to the planet in the first place (again, how the fuck did you not notice this, I seriously have no idea). They're the same questions that the Greeks tried to answer with the tale of Prometheus (hence the title of the movie and the ship! Prometheus!!!!!) The questions are what I've said over and over and over and over again: "who are we, where did we come from, why were we made, why were we destroyed"
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I'm condescending? You're the one pretending film school is a requisite for recognizing quality storytelling.
This is literally your defense of the film, word-for-word:
"The film begged questions that no other horror movie would dare to ask because of its sheer scale and immensity of philosophy. It tackled a modern take on a Greco-Roman ultimate question, and actually did it without beating you over the fucking head with it. The ultimate message was likely existential, aka: the universe is a mass chaos, we are insignificant, it's quite possible that nothing we believe is true and just thin dogma that makes us feel better, and, perhaps most importantly, that these questions don't matter."
You literally just said the film is about philosophy. You fail to mention what philosophy. You infer "questions" and fail to mention what those questions are. This entire paragraph could be reduced to "it's a film about a thing" while still retaining its exact sentiment. Just because you're speaking like the Architect from the second Matrix film doesn't make you an authority on the subject. I used the phrase "panspermiatic genesis of life," that doesn't mean I'm a fucking biologist.
If you're going to continue to pull this film school shit you're going to have to be more specific than "it's a film and it has a theme."
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Oh, you mean the dumb questions that we're never shown why they're asking in the first place.
You're giving a hell of a lot of credence to nonsensical creationism as a plot. Sometimes science fiction requires this thing called scientific literacy. I was willing to forgive the fact that these writers don't know how fucking DNA works, but since you're so inclined to bring that up, I can most certainly talk about how dumb the entire "question" of "where we came from" in this film was.
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uhhhh okay? I stated the questions, and the theme, and I don't even have any idea why you can't recognize the main theme on your own? I think just about anyone realized that it's about PROMETHEUS, and how human beings came into existence, and why we were made, and what the purpose of the universe or humankind is. these are very, very, very obviously the questions proposed by the film. the characters even say it out loud. Elizabeth Shaw specifically asks these questions to the Engineer in person. did you watch the whole movie? I said it in my last post, and I just said it again. how am I not stating anything? we are given these questions, we are never given the answers, and that's the point. the answers don't matter and won't satisfy us.
Let me analyze another scene really quick to demonstrate my hypothesis as to the meaning of the ending, and why the answers don't matter. Maybe in one of your replies you could even analyze a scene of your own! That would be cute. Let's talk about the scene in which Holloway verbally attacks David, his own creation, with whom he shares only contempt (not unlike the Engineers with humans, do you see where I'm going with this?). Holloway talks about why he's disappointed that he never got to ask one of the Engineers why he was made. David asks Holloway, "Well why did you create me?" To which Holloway responds with a taste of disgust in his mouth, "Because we could." David then says something like, "Would you be disappointed if that was the answer your creator gave you?"
That scene, that dialogue, is the point. The answer to the question of "why were we made?" doesn't matter. That's why the film can end open-ended and still be satisfying. Because the answers don't matter.
you haven't analyzed a single scene or a piece of dialogue or a character interaction in any of your posts. I have done that in spades. I'm actually analyzing the film and telling you why it was good, you haven't said literally anything to combat it except for ad hominem attacks as me as someone arguing against you
go ahead and go back to my posts, pick out my analyses, and attack them, please
oh and let me direct your attention back to your original post, in which you talked about themes of creationism that you didn't appreciate. how about you tell me about those examples, instead of constantly talking about my methods of arguing, and not about the film itself?
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Your analysis is as nonsensical as the film. I can't pick it apart when you're simply using the word "existentialism" over and over and over. I wasn't even going to get into the rampant scientific illiteracy of this dumb film, given it's clear whoever wrote it never passed a basic biochemistry course.
That's like asking me to address a film you describe as being "about life."
Every fucking film that has ever been made was about the things you listed. I mean shit, you listed the most basic criteria for something to even be called a motion picture. "It has sets, it's about life, it asks questions." That's like looking at an amoeboid and calling it the pinnacle of evolution because it can eat, die and reproduce.
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okay, good response. I use a lot more than the word existentialism, but that's cool. your argument is seriously bad, you haven't given me one example of anything you've talked about, and I've given dozens of examples of everything I've mentioned
and yes, it's about life. it's about the why's, and not about the what's.
I explained how the sets were important, and what they meant. I explained how it's about more than just life, but about human culture, how it developed, and what it means to be a human--to be consumed by self-preservation instead of selflessness. I explained why the questions are inherently important to humans.
You explained nothing.
It's funny how arrogant you are. You keep acting as if nothing that I've analyzed was intended by Ridley Scott; as if nothing that you didn't understand or catch was actually meant to be.
JK, I take back everything, I made it all up, the film is dumb and nothing I mentioned was created for a reason
Let's go back to your original criticisms. Show me the creationism messages (of the religious sort, if it's the ulterior, than I already explained that) and explain to me how it told too much and didn't show enough. It's hilarious that you even try to argue the latter, given that you didn't understand the most basic plot points that were verbatim uttered by main characters
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You want some whys?
WHY did they go to this dumb planet in the first place, knowing absolutely nothing about it.
WHY did Captain Oldman assume not only that they would find something, but that something could extend his life?
WHY did nobody notice a naked, bloodied woman who had just beaten the shit out of two doctors and performed a space abortion on herself running around the ship with a giant hole in her abdomen?
WHY did David hate his creator?
WHY did David get so much backstory when all he did was push buttons and act creepy for the entire film?
WHY did David poison Ripley 2.0's boytoy whose name wasn't even worth remembering?
WHY did they show an autopsy on the alien head when that spore-explosion never happened again in the entire film and the scene bore no relevance to the rest of the plot?
WHY am I supposed to give a shit what this stupid new space jockey thinks about humanity?
WHY am I supposed to accept this film's dumb premise of the origins of life offhand? WHY not just posit that life is the result of a cosmic fecal movement? (Simply because you can phrase it in the form of a question does not make it a question worth asking.)
And those are rhetorical, because you shouldn't have to use your filmschool prowess to explain shit that was supposed to be evident in the film itself.
I'm not trying to explain a god damn thing. I'm saying the film is a pointless mess with no structure or plot. It's just a string of things happening for no discernible reason. Admittedly, I might accept that if the film were expounding upon the merits of fucking nihilism, but it wasn't. It was a creationist flick whose first concession was to tell the audience to ignore the science part of science fiction, followed by immediately asking dumb questions about the origin of life which have absolutely no merit or worth out here in reality.
The biggest question in the film is "would our creators hate us?"
That question is irrelevant. We don't have creators. That has absolutely no bearing on reality. No wisdom can be gleaned from an exploration of that question, because its answer means nothing. And so, with that theme gone, all the film had to rely on was its story. And its story consisted of a bunch of stupid people doing stupid shit in space for absolutely no god damn reason.
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No, I'm saying Ridley Scott is a hack who doesn't remember how to make a film.
You keep saying the name "Ridley Scott" as though I'm supposed to give a shit. I didn't even know this film had anything to do with Ridley Scott until the opening credits. I didn't know it was a hackneyed alien tie-in until the last eight seconds.
I went in blind, and you clearly went in with some sort of idol worship of Ridley Scott. He didn't even write the film, he produced it. Damon Lindelof got the final draft, of fucking LOST infamy.
You're acting like Ridley Scott can't be involved in a bad film. Can anyone say "Andromeda Strain?"
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Um, the answers to most if not all of those questions WERE evident in the film, dude. Maybe you just weren't paying attention.
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Considering half of those are about the film itself and not its internal logic, no.
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I still thought most of the answers were obvious (although I do agree that some of those questions are legit), and I'm not a film school student. Then again, I went into the theater knowing fully well that it took place in the Alien universe, and was able to connect things on-the-fly to explanations that would seem correct in the world of Alien.
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You hate the movie because you think it's blindly implausible. "hurr durr it has no bearing on reality because it didn't happen." That's the stupidest criticism I've ever heard. Night of the Hunter was stupid because it never happened and there was never that specific priest serial killer that looked like Robert Mitchum.
And you think Ridley Scott can't remember how to make a movie? You have no idea what it takes, and he's made more impressive works than you ever will. I don't have a blind love for Ridley Scott. I think things he's made recently haven't been great. I hated Andromeda Strain. Though he didn't make it and was far from solely responsible for it--maybe you should learn something about how films are produced.
That said, I was very skeptical going into Prometheus. I loved it.
Well, I answered all of your questions. They're all spoiler tagged and immediately after each one. Every single thing you thought didn't make sense actually did. You are likely very poor at watching movies.
Oh, and no, Ridley Scott didn't write it. But if you knew anything about how scripts are processed by studios and credited and uncredited screenwriters and then by the directors themselves, you'd know how much of a hand he had had in it.
Thank you, come again.
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Why can't you let this go?
This film has some major issues with the characters and the plot.
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No. Not implausible. Implausible is fine. Star Trek is implausible. Doesn't mean there aren't lessons to be learned from it.
The thesis of Prometheus isn't just 'implausible' (i.e. flat-out-wrong,) it's irrelevant to reality in every way.
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Just saw this, it was awesome but I had to look away a few times
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Also you missed the part where I said I don't give a shit what your answers are to a bunch of rhetorical questions.
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What do you mean "irrelevant to reality"?
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I mean it's an irrelevant question. It's a nonsensical question. Is has no answer and it has no meaning. I'm trying to think of an example on-par with the complete and utter irrelevance of creationism, but there really isn't one quite so inane. Nobody made a Russel's Teapot film for the same reason: because there is no teapot orbiting Mars, and absolutely nothing can be learned about the world by pretending there was. Simply because it can be framed in the form of a question does not mean it is a question worth asking, and it sure as shit doesn't make your story 'deep' or 'brilliant' to explore such a dumb concept in any capacity but satire.
You can't lean creationism as a lynchpin of a film and expect it to make up for its flaws. It's a dumb idea.
As for "it's in an alternate universe."
I'm sure this film is AMAZING in the alternate universe where 2+2=3. As for this universe, it makes no sense.
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Let me get this straight: Because you think that exploring the concept of who or what created life on Earth is a pointless venture in real life, it shouldn't be the focus of a movie? Because that's retarded. I mean, Prometheus wasn't trying to be a fucking documentary on the creation of life, it was trying to be a goddamn movie. Something to entertain you and make you think, but it's not trying to tell you "THIS COULD BE TRUE HOLY SHIT", it's more like "Wow, this would be scary if this were true but it's not because it's a fucking movie".
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Oh jeez, I'm not gonna get tangled up in this discussion you guys have going. All I want to say to anyone looking for someone else's opinion on the movie is that I enjoyed it very much. It may have it's problems, but it's still entertaining.
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Could someone please explain why the DNA analysis of the Space Jockeys head in the film came back at 100 percent match to human DNA and how it effected the plot? It seemed to be suggesting that we are direct decedents of the Space Jockeys, but then again we had to evolve from that point onward so wouldn't the DNA be totally different.
I am being a bit cynical in this question because I think the movie was poorly written, but Im not sure if Im missing something.
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On a different note, what I found annoying with the movie is the lack of progression of technology. Being a huge transhumanist myself, I just had a minor frustration the whole time with how they seem to have only heavily advanced in space travel. I don't know Alien lore, but how have they come to FTL speeds? That is likely one of the last things any civilization will or would be able to achieve. Yet by 2090 they can't keep Weyland from dying? He is only like 80-something and he looks like an 80-something's asshole.
I don't want to make this a transhumanist thread (I personally believe that most if not all, but especially the rich will be practically immortal by 2090 because of medical and nanocomputing and nanobot advances along with gene therapy), but even IF there was NO acceleration of progress of technological change (which has been exponential all through history with quite literally no breaks), Weyland should still be able to live considerably longer, especially if he was as rich as the movie implied.
There were no mention of non-standard sci fi movie technologies. And for God's sake the Proto-Humans were extremely inefficient and primitive in their spaceship design. They were way less advanced than they would be after what is at LEAST 25,000 years after they have achieved FTL travel. They should be individual Gods of technology.
I let all that stuff slide though for the sake of a sci-fi movie, but it still really bugs me because it is like the difference between someone telling racist jokes, and an actual racist. It just bugs me that people believe the future will be like this (not necessarily good or bad, though bad in my opinion), and they are basing this fact off of movies they see rather than their own research and blablabla.
Final Question:
How the fuck did the supposed Facehugger grow that big? There was nothing for it to consume. Am I supposed to believe he created mass out of nothing? Even if he converted all the air in the room and shifted it on an atomic level to create mass, he would not be that big or weigh that much, and the view of the room showed it was fairly obvious it didn't "eat" any of the metal or ship parts.
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Great thread with great content
I found the movie entertaining, but there are a few problems with the strory, and quite a few plot holes, etc...
Cinematography was amazing though!
There are a few theories...
The DNA matches, Because of the entire “sacrifice” scene in the beginning.
The black goo is some kind of bio-engineered (nanotechnology) “primordial soup”. Space jockeys used this "soup" to terraform planets and populate them with their creation. The point of the black goo was to replicate the DNA of who came in contact with it.
The entire movie is about “finding our creators” hence I do think that the opening sequence is on earth, and is about how life came to our planet.
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But evolving would drastically alter our DNA structure, would it not?
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I don't think it's drastically... The DNA code is there since the begining, only thing that changes drastically is physical aspect. and even that does not represent 0.1% (I'm not sure about this) of your DNA.
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Humans differ between eachother by about .3%
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So I saw it today, if you really try hard to ignore the flaws, it's a great movie. I really had no expectations of it living up to Alien, but it was still good.
But, at the end of the movie, the thing that comes out of the Engineer, was that an Xenomorph? Or some hybrid? Cause it really looks like an Xenomorph
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It's a Xenomorph, or at least some proto-form of it.
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I heard it's an Mala'kak Xenomorph, but I'm not too sure. A quick Google does show that it is a Mala'kak Xenomorph.
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that's not what the engineers are called anymore
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Except the film wasn't even scary, either. There were like two tense scenes in the whole film, and both are only "scary" for the shock value. The rest of the film was a series of pointless things happening. For instance, what was the point of showing Captain Accordion making a fuck-date with blonde robot lady? Why have that scene in the film at all? What did it add?
For a movie to be good on the merits of "making you think," it should beg more real questions than "why the fuck did they make this movie?"
Edited:
Nobody in that writers' room has any fucking idea how DNA works. It's one thing to have stupid stuff like hyperdrives and cryo-sleep and shit like that. It's a whole other ballgame when they're actually trying to sound scientific without anyone on the entire crew passing so much as biochem 101.
The beginning of the film implied The first protein chains on Earth were from a space jockey, and that's why we look alike. The problem comes in when you ask yourself: if we're all from this human-like alien , then why is there so much biodiversity on this planet? Why do dogs look like dogs rather than us? What gave rise to autotrophic organisms if the originator was a heterotroph.
And the answer isn't " they only created humanity, and everything else was already here. " That isn't how it works. A brand new organism can't be born from of a loose amino acid if there's other life present. The process of genesis would take millions of years from the state of being a single amino acid, millions of years for that amino acid to be surrounded by very hungry and bothersome cellular life. Furthermore, why is there such a relationship between the humans and the primates? Why is there such a relationship between the primates and the mammals? It's common knowledge that all life on this planet is interrelated, so positing that it isn't is downright asinine.
TL;DR the morons who wrote this film are scientifically illiterate gas-bags.
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Just got back from seeing the film and...it was good. Not great, but good. Fantastic production values and a strong cast (especially Michael Fassbender, holy shit), but I think it was let down by some writing problems. Perhaps I came into the film with misguided expectations, but I came out of it thinking "Well, apparently everyone except Vickers, Janek, David, and perhaps even Holloway (though he has a couple bad moments) are foolishly naive and occasionally even idiots." I know it's a horror/sci-fi film but they kept doing all those cliche'd things that horror films teach you NEVER to do. Never take off your helmet, never touch something that you shouldn't, NEVER WAKE UP THE THING THAT YOU ESTABLISHED WANTED YOU DEAD (the surviving "engineer" at the end).
There were a few other writing problems that were nagging at me as well. I don't know; I guess I expected something that relied a little less on cliche and more on subtlety, but maybe I shouldn't have been expecting that. Like I said, the film is definitely solid, but I can't see it as a masterpiece of cinema.
Agree x 2
Dumb x 14
Friendly x 1
Funny x 1
Winner x 6
Disagree x 1
Artistic x 2
Zing x 1
