Topic: Prometheus

[scottws]

I just heard about this movie for the first time yesterday. It looks incredible. At first I thought it might be some sort of prequel or alternate telling of the Alien movies, but it turns out that is not (though it was originally conceived as such).

Check out the trailer:

Edit:  Sorry, I was hoping the mobile link would automatically translate back to the full web link on a real computer, but it apparently does not.

[Xessive]

Damn that looks good!

[Pugnate]

Actually it started off as a prequel. It still is sort of. It is in the same universe.

[ren]

It has to be an Alien movie. Even the trailer is set up in the exact same way as the original (which is the greatest trailer ever, by the way).

Internet people were hypothesizing that the Alien name was removed as an easy way to not have to deal with all the elements that have been added to the series over the last twenty years. Also, that the increase in future-tech since what was displayed in the original Alien in the 80s would mess up the whole prequel vibe.

I'm excited to watch this. There hasn't been any good horror/sci-fi space movies since Moon.

[ScaryTooth]

Supposedly it's more focused on the "Space-Jockey" species from the first movie and the origin of Xenomorphs.

[scottws]

Every preview of this movie I see gets me more and more excited.  I haven't been this excited for a movie for a long, long time.  It looks fantastic.

And yes the tie-ins to the Alien series are clear.  That is definitely the space jockey series and the same ship (design) from the first movie.

[sirean_syan]

I think they're approaching the movie as a prequel to Alien as if the next movies never happened sort of like Ren said. I can't recall the exact text or article, but Ridley Scott said something along the lines of this being about the world where his and Giger's Alien came from, not the world that it became after Aliens started. Still, it was a bit of a wishy washy statement and somewhat vague (probably intentionally). It's probably a bit of a way to get publicity.

It definitely looks cool. I'm not exactly sure if I'll have a chance to see it at the theater but I would like to. I probably haven't seen a new movie since the Dark Knight and wouldn't mind if this broke the trend.

[Quemaqua]

I haven't even watched a trailer. I'm interested, though. Nothing else has interested me in ages. Pretty much just this and the next Batman.

[ScaryTooth]

When I went to see Avengers, a 3D trailer of Prometheus played, and it was amazing looking in 3D. Freaking beautiful looking movie. Definitely go see it in 3D if you can.

[ScaryTooth]

Just got back from seeing Prometheus.

I won't say much about it. But I did really like it. Special effects were incredible. Lots of great eye candy. But I think the story falls a little short. All and all, great Sci-Fi.

***SPOILERS****

 I felt it had almost nothing to do with the Alien movies. Sure the Space Jockey was there, but it mentioned almost null about them. And I didn't fully understand what happened at the very beginning? Was that Earth? I assume the "Engineer" sacrifices himself at the beginning by drinking that stuff to seed life on Earth.

[PyroMenace]

I just got back from seeing it.

LOVED the way it looked but I already got that from the trailers. The overall ideas of the plot seemed interesting enough but everything else... sucked. This movie was so full inconsistencies of characters motivations, characters just being really stupid, scenes that didn't make much sense. I just felt it was a bit of a mess. Overall I was pretty disappointed by it.

[scottws]

I saw it on Friday night.  I was actually really surprised how empty the theater was.  We saw it in 3D at 8:30pm on opening night, but it was like going to see a movie that's been out three weeks on a Sunday early afternoon.  Then again, the IMAX theater was right across and had an overlapping showing.

Regarding the movie itself, I agree with Pyro for the most part but came away feeling more positive than he did.  The set pieces, digital or otherwise, are simply phenomenal.  It is definitely one of the more breathtaking movies I've seen.  But, as Pyro said, you already get that sense from the trailers.

The movie was mostly well acted, but I had issues with a few of the characters and some of the scenes.  It is an overly long, and fairly slow-paced movie, but even with that I felt like they left out some important bits on the cutting room floor and didn't cut some stuff they should have.

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Charlize Theron's character was a complete waste, though it's always nice to look at her in movies.  One part that really surprised me coming from Ridley Scott was the whole "Luke, I'm your father" scene with Weyland and Vickers.  First of all, it was really poorly executed.  Everyone could see it coming a mile away.  Worse still was that it basically was completely inconsequential.  It didn't have any bearing on anything whether or not Vickers was Weyland's daughter, because Vicker's character was very wooden and undeveloped.  And speaking of Weyland, he was a slightly less useless character.  The supposedly posthumous hologram thing they did with him at the beginning , but then they reveal that he's actually in cryosleep on the ship.  Again, the execution was poor.  There wasn't a strong feeling either way about his character and so his physical, live presence just didn't really matter.  He didn't affect the plot either way and his makeup was horrible.

In the end I'm very biased because Alien and Aliens are two of my favorite movies, but despite the movie's issues, I did come away being intrigued by Ridley Scott's new direction for the universe and wanting my questions answered.

[Quemaqua]

I dug it. There were some problems, but no worse than anything else, really. Basically every character in Aliens was completely worthless except the ones who survived. The characters were paper-thin cannon fodder. A couple of the characters in the third film were halfway decent, but the movie itself got stupid after the first third or maybe the first half. The 4th was pretty much completely worthless, and if Joss Whedon hadn't redeemed himself by doing lots of great stuff since, I'd still want to crucify him for writing that monstrosity.

So yeah, I had my issues with the film, but it was still fun and the visual style was pretty great. The original Alien continues to far surpass all the rest of them in my eyes, and I do wish Prometheus had gone more that route, gone more for minimalism rather than tossing in a bunch of fairly gratuitous stuff, but it certainly was more on that side of things than any of the other movies. I didn't like the stuff Scott mentioned, and I thought the ending was sort of hackneyed, but enjoyed the exploration, the crazy creatures, and even the creature at the end—

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the alien, I mean, which I thought was kind of interestingly different and neat-looking

.

I was satisfied. If they dropped some of the poorly done or more comic-booky shit I'd have been a lot happier, but it didn't make so many missteps that a sequel couldn't take a more realistic/minimalist tone. Which is absolutely what I think it should do. Like I said, my favorite of all 5 films is Alien by a fucking landslide.

[scottws]

I totally agree with you about Alien: Resurrection.  It was on TV a couple of months back and I watched it again for only the second time to see if I'd maybe tolerate it for what it was rather than going in excited for an Alien sequel.  It is complete and utter garbage.  That said, while the screenplay is pretty poor I think the bigger problem was the casting and direction, neither of which Wheedon was responsible for.

Que, I'd be interested to hear more about the things you thought were poorly done or "comic-booky" in Prometheus.

[ren]

I saw it yesterday at an absolutely packed theatre which was a bit surprising considering how long it's been out. But it was a tuesday (cheap movie day) and one of the hottest ever days on record in toronto so maybe people were desperately seeking air conditioning.

It was awesome. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I even liked it better than Alien. To be fair I haven't seen Alien in a very long time so I might eat my words later but I just want to stress how much I enjoyed it. The character development was bad but not bad enough to take me out of the movie. It was completely inconsequential actually, and only seemed to exist to drive further into the exploration of the alien world. That's all I wanted to see so I can't complain.

[Quemaqua]

Scott: Mostly just the stuff you complained about, some of the too-obvious character stuff, or poor motivation, and

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the ridiculous idea of the old guy being aboard the ship

. Not that anything was really so awful as far as content, it was just carried out in this sort of silly and over-dramatic way most of the time.

[MysterD]

I caught Prometheus (movie) on HBO tonight.

And yeah, I liked it - it was good and extremely well put-together (Especially on special effects and that stuff).
 
Like some of y'all mentioned...
some of the stuff was pretty predictable to me

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(seeing the old man hologram early on - my first thought was, "Yeah, he's alive..." and indeed, he was...)

;
and flat-out ridiculous & just completely unnecessary

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Vickers being Weyland's daughter

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Despite some of its above missteps, the first hour was extremely intriguing w/ its ideas (i.e. going to find your makers); and the last hour turned more into a typical sci-fi action flick.

At/in the end...

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...I couldn't help but smile, w/ the alien popping out at the end...

And oh, BTW...

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That C-section scene was disgusting, hehe.

Bring on a sequel!