Prometheus sucks

[G-Max]

I just saw Prometheus. I went into it expecting it to combine the worst elements of Mission to Mars and the first Alien vs. Predator, and you know what? It was even worse than I expected. Oh, sure, the cast is solid and there are some very leet grafix along the way, but the plot sucks. From the android's motivations to the monsters' lifecycles, nothing that's presented here makes any bloody sense at all. This is probably because it's literally the exact same plot as the first AvP, except that instead of Predators, there are Space Jockeys, and instead of investigating a pyramid in the hostile alien environment of Antarctica, the characters are investigating some anthill-like buildings on a hostile alien planet that looks suspiciously like Iceland. In both movies, they're investigating these structures because someone found identical markings on ancient ruins all across the planet (which will bring up bad memories of not just AvP, but Revenge of the Fallen and probably whatever the History Channel is showing nowadays as well). Naturally, the characters who were smart enough to bring weapons in AvP were among the first to die, so the character in Prometheus who thinks that a gun might come in handy when exploring some dark spooky tunnels on a freaking alien planet is also among the first to die. Hell, both movies even have a Mr. Weyland who comes along on the expedition because he's dying. What are the differences? Well, in AvP, the Predators' motivations and the Xenomorphs' lifecycle are pretty well-established (we see the queen laying eggs, we see what hatches from the eggs, etc., so you know how things work even if you haven't seen the previous four films), whereas by the end of Prometheus, we still have no idea why the Space Jockeys want to kill us or even how many different kinds of monsters are running around, much less what their relationships are to each other. Pretty much the only one who knows anything is the android, who apparently learns all about the Space Jockeys, their language, their machinery, etc. after sticking his fingers in some sparkly slime and wiping it all over the nearest alien control panel he can find.

And you know what? It STILL doesn't explain anything about the ship that the Nostromo crew found or how those eggs got there.

 

[Azale]

Definitely going to see it now.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, Charlize is in it, that is a good reason to go see it.

 

[G-Max]

I'm sorry; saying "the plot sucks because it's the exact same plot as AvP" was the wrong way to phrase it. Starbucks was closing, so I had to rush things. A better way to say it would have been "It has the exact same plot as AvP, except way worse, as if you had handed the AvP script off to the writers of Revenge of the Fallen and asked them to make it a half-hour longer by adding nonsensical cul-de-sacs and plot threads that go nowhere"

Here are some of the worst plot elements:

- The entire "Darwin was wrong" angle. I'm sorry, but if the premise of your whole movie is "Darwin was wrong", then you'll need to back it up with something slightly more convincing than "Darwin was wrong, now look at the pretty CGI"

- "The mural is changing!" Excuse me, but what mural? I just see some walls that look as though someone sprayed really bad explosive diarrhea all over the place. And we never find out why the diarrhea walls change into other walls that also look like diarrhea, nor does the wall-changing effect actually figure into the plot or the alien biology or anything else whatsoever in any way.

- The entire "let's bring the Space jockey head aboard our ship. Oh crap, it just exploded" plot thread. The characters never learn anything about the Space Jockeys by bringing the head aboard, and we never even find out why it explodes. The insistence on bringing it aboard does set up the movie's first real action sequence, which involves a storm of golfball-sized rocks and possibly a flying cow a la Twister, but nothing is really at stake in this scene because we haven't gotten to know any of the characters at this point, nor would knowing anything about them make a difference because we can't tell who's who because they're all in identical spacesuits. Hell, we can't even tell what's happening or whether or not anyone is dying because everything is obscured by the damn rock storm. Seriously, everything about the severed head and the rock storm could have been removed from the script and it wouldn't have affected anything.

- The cobra things. Where do they come from? What do they do after entering a person's mouth? Are they native to the planet, or some stage of the monsters' lifecycle? We never find out how they fit into anything, and their only purpose in the movie is to kill off two characters who were totally useless to begin with. One of those two characters even goes through the trouble of saying that he's a useless addition to the expedition due to being a geologist in a movie that isn't Dante's Peak.

- Speaking of which, the character who admits to being useless later shows up as a zombie for no apparent reason. I'm absolutely not kidding. The characters are like, "hey, where'd that useless guy go? Let's go look for him. Oh crap, he's a zombie! Kill him!" So they kill the zombie geologist, and... go back to doing whatever they were doing before they decided to go looking for him. This whole scene could have been left on the cutting room floor and you'd never have known that anything was missing, and with no zombie geologist to explain, you can safely get rid of everything involving the geologist, the cobras, and... whoever that other guy was who wanted to play with the alien cobras because he has apparently never watched monster movies.

- The entire plot thread with the android bringing an alien pod aboard the ship and slipping something into one of the human characters' drinks, which leads to another human character giving birth via C-section to the space squid seen in the "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" music video. In the case of the Nostromo, the android's orders were clear: ensure that the alien gets to Earth alive, preferably delivered into the hands of Weyland-Yutani bio-weapons people. On the Prometheus, however, the android's mission turns out to be "help Mr. Weyland talk to the Space Jockeys so he can live forever". So why does he infect the crew? Not only does that have nothing to do with his mission, but it DIRECTLY ENDANGERS his mission. And how does he even know what's inside the pods or how to open them? Even if we assume that he must have somehow picked that up from wiping sparkly digital magical alien snot all over those Space Jockey control panels, this still doesn't explain why the infection has one set of effects on the initially infected human (the consequences of which are never revealed because he dies before the infection can run its course) and a completely different effect on his girlfriend. I'd say that this plot thread goes nowhere, but that wouldn't be true; it actually sets up the means by which the movie kills off a Space Jockey that we already assumed was dead. So, in other words, it's still totally useless.

- Why is Mr. Weyland even in this movie, anyway? He does nothing. You could cut his whole character out of the movie and just have the android waking up the Space Jockey and getting decapitated, and nothing would change. What's worse is that, instead of getting an actual old person to play him, Ridley Scott got the fortysomething Guy Pearce and then put him at the mercy of Hollywood makeup artists who have apparently never seen an actual old person, so he ends up looking more like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

 

[_random_]

I enjoyed it overall, but I agree with a lot of your complaints. The visuals were fantastic though (not just the special effects, but the cinematography and stuff too). I feel like if they'd cut a few elements (the zombie geologist) and explained a few others better (the space baby, how Darwin was wrong), we'd have a very good movie here. Still, since we're listing nitpicks, I'll add one:

-Why would a robot dye its hair? If you think it's thematically important for him to be a blond for some reason, could you at least properly dye the roots so that it's not glaringly obviously fake blond when you do all those shots of its disembodied head lying on the floor.

 

[G-Max]

the space baby

lolwut? Are you talking about the squid baby?

we're listing nitpicks

They're not "nitpicks" if, put together, they make up half of the movie's running time and its entire premise.

Why would a robot dye its hair?

'cuz otherwise, he'd just be "the gayest Hollywood robot since C-3PO", and the writers were aiming for "even gayer than C-3PO"? I have no idea.

EDIT: not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[_random_]

lolwut? Are you talking about the squid baby?

Yeah.

They're not "nitpicks" if, put together, they make up half of the movie's running time and its entire premise.

Well, some of them aren't as bad as you're claiming. I might address those later.

 

[G-Max]

Oh, another thing that Ridley managed to totally screw up: the things that look like chestbursters bury themselves inside people instead of bursting out, but the thing that looks like a giant facehugger comes out of a person's body? Has this guy even watched his own movie, or any of the others, ever? SRSLY WTF

EDIT: I just realized a major plot error. The Space Jockeys left maps all over our planet telling us to come and visit not their home planet, but an uninhabited rock upon which they would later build a bio-weapons lab? SRSLY WTF

Prometheus has a lot of cool ideas, but does nothing with them and doesn't tie them together in any meaningful, or even meaningless, way.

 

[Quackers]

Don't watch it, it's rubbish.

Alien + Aliens are so much better.

 

[K7avenged]

So in other words: The dumbest scientists on earth depart on a mission based on a theory more suspect than the ingredients of a back alley chili dog. They then lose all common sense and self preservation and die a horrible, cliched death?

Oh, and robotic surgical suites must be programed for either a male, or female. It can not handle both. And we install the male one into a female's room because why?

 

[Mise]

I can more or less forgive the frequent plot holes, terrible screenplay and bizarre characterisations because it was visually stunning and very exciting to watch. I also thought that the questions it raised were worth considering, though it was a shame the film didn't bother answering any of them.

 

[_random_]

Yeah, it was a lot more engaging than it was satisfying.

 

[Azale]

If I can enjoy Battlefield Earth and Mass Effect 3, I can enjoy this.

 

[Mark Havel]

I think it's a typical Alien movie, except made in the 2010's. The title implied some promises of greatness and awesomeness, it's just a nice horror movie set in a sci-fi universe that also happens to be a prequel of Alien. When I watched the Alien movies, I thought there were rather nice, but certainly not that good and probably not deserving to have so many sequels.

So there are some plot-holes and WTH? scenes, but that's part of being an Alien film. I mean: how is it that a small spiky thing of maybe 20 cm and 500g manages to grow past two meters and 100 kg in a few hours in the first Alien; same question asked with the octopus-like. Actually, that's even worse in Prometheus, because, where did it find all the organic materials to grow so fast in a purely artificial room? At least in Alien, you could still theorize that it somehow ate the crew.

 

[G-Max]

So in other words: The dumbest scientists on earth depart on a mission based on a theory more suspect than the ingredients of a back alley chili dog. They then lose all common sense

Lose? You say that like they had any to begin with.

Actually, the geologist and his friend were smart enough to say "Dead bodies? I'm GTFO of here", so they apparently DID have some common sense, which they apparently DID lose sometime prior to the "hey, let's pet the cute alien snakes" scene.

Oh, and robotic surgical suites must be programed for either a male, or female. It can not handle both. And we install the male one into a female's room because why?

I was wondering that last night. The movie did make it clear enough to me that the thing was more of a museum piece than a modern medical machine, though.

it was visually stunning and very exciting to watch

I could say the same thing about The Matrix Revolutions or The Phantom Menace, but that doesn't mean I'd recommend them to anybody.

If I can enjoy Battlefield Earth and Mass Effect 3, I can enjoy this.

Battlefield Earth, aside from being a 2-hour movie that felt 3 hours long, was actually not that bad. It was certainly a hell of a lot better than Prometheus.

I think it's a typical Alien movie, except made in the 2010's. The title implied some promises of greatness and awesomeness, it's just a nice horror movie set in a sci-fi universe that also happens to be a prequel of Alien. When I watched the Alien movies, I thought there were rather nice, but certainly not that good and probably not deserving to have so many sequels.

The first Alien was just a standard horror movie that got way more attention than it deserved because of the Last Supper scene and because H.R. Giger made everything look so unique. The sequels all had a lot more emotional and thematic substance to them, particularly the Special Editions of the second and fourth movies.

So there are some plot-holes and WTH? scenes, but that's part of being an Alien film. I mean: how is it that a small spiky thing of maybe 20 cm and 500g manages to grow past two meters and 100 kg in a few hours in the first Alien

Our biology is tailored for an environment in which food is scarce and nearly all of it goes toward keeping us alive, leaving very little left over for growth. There's no reason why an organism's biology couldn't be re-engineered for extremely rapid growth in a food-rich environment; we're already on this track by doing things like pumping cows full of rBGH. We're also never given a definitive timespan of the first movie; for all we know, the alien found the kitty kibble and the crew didn't see it again for a week or so, until someone was like "hey, maybe we should go catch that critter so it doesn't chew through the power cords or something while we're in hypersleep."

 

[Azale]

Ok, you've officially lost all credibility

You whine about "plot holes" and then say Battlefield Earth wasn't that bad? Really guy?

 

[_random_]

Battlefield Earth was entertainingly awful, but it was still awful. The plot was much worse than Prometheus's, and the visuals and performances, which were great in Prometheus, were well below the bottom of the barrel.

 

[Lillefix]

A bit disappointed at first that it wasn't an Alien remake, but it's grown on me.

Some problems with editing and the plot, but overall I liked it quite a lot. And it's a thousand times better than Avatar btw.

 

[OrsonM]

Man I loved this movie, it's seriously the best sci-fi movie I've seen since... well... cannot recall seeing such a good one in a long while. But then again they haven't made a true science fiction movie in ages. A movie that focuses on questions rather than answers... now that's rare. Going back this type of Sci-fi used to be more common in pulps and novels, but it's lost ground to a more derivative action oriented kind of Sci-fi (which can be good in it's own right of course, but never the less... not really all that Sci-fi there).

I've seen a lot of little lists of things that are supposed to be "plotholes" in the movie (they are all really cute, btw), but throughout the movie all of these things are actually presented as ambiguous on purpose. The movie has an almost episodic structure that resembles more a surreal movie than the previous action tone of the previous movies. Major events and questions are raised only to cut to another scene, leaving it's meaning or importance up to discussion. It's major topics of biology, reproduction, perfection, rebirth, memories and creation are up there, either to be picked up or dismissed.

I'd say this one more akin to Blade Runner than Alien, a pleasant surprise indeed.

 

[illram]

Obviously they have sequels planned, so I think some of these larger holes were planned. As for the movie itself, while the script was cheesy and some of the alien biology truly confusing, the cast was great, the FX were awesome, the cinematography was great, and I thought it was generally entertaining. I also applaud the Michael Fassbender's turn as David, I thought he might have been the best android of the Alien series so far. He was genuinely creepy.

As for G-Max's questions, and ***spoiler alert from here on out*** I think alot of the questions can be answered if you look at the bio goop as a weapon, like the Captain mentioned. Ridley Scott said many times that in the original Alien, he thought the Space Jockey's ship was a "bomber" of sorts, carrying the alien eggs to go massacre its enemies. Here, we have the same thing, except we are their target. Why? Who knows. They apparently were on their way 2000 years ago... maybe they want to kill Jesus? Maybe they see their creation (us) as failing because we have turned to religion? Faith is a big theme... I dunno. Maybe this space jockey is of a different faction than the original engineer we see in the beginning and he wants to undo his enemy's handy work? Maybe the engineer in the beginning was murdered and they want to eradicate the world that their crime accidentally seeded? I kind of like the fact that they don't really tell us.

- "The mural is changing!" Excuse me, but what mural? I just see some walls that look as though someone sprayed really bad explosive diarrhea all over the place. And we never find out why the diarrhea walls change into other walls that also look like diarrhea, nor does the wall-changing effect actually figure into the plot or the alien biology or anything else whatsoever in any way.

I think that had something to do with the bio goop weapon reacting to lifeforms being in the room. David noted it was "sweating" and the goop seemed to react to the presence of people. Who also happened to be their target, so.... makes sense.

- The entire "let's bring the Space jockey head aboard our ship. Oh crap, it just exploded" plot thread. The characters never learn anything about the Space Jockeys by bringing the head aboard, and we never even find out why it explodes.

uhhh... they learn that they have the same DNA as us. That is the whole point of the film, so yeah they did learn something. As for the head exploding, as was shown in the movie, the weapons turned on the engineers/space jockeys. The procedure on the ship "activated" the biogoop on the head of the space jockey, which exploded it for some reason. Do we have to have everything explained to us? I don't think so.

The cobra things. Where do they come from? What do they do after entering a person's mouth? Are they native to the planet, or some stage of the monsters' lifecycle?

The cobra things are the mutated worms you see burrowing into the bio goop, which is a clue to what the bio goop does. It seems to mutate any lifeform it touches into a killer version of it, which also happens to the geologist.

Speaking of which, the character who admits to being useless later shows up as a zombie for no apparent reason. I'm absolutely not kidding.

See above.

The entire plot thread with the android bringing an alien pod aboard the ship and slipping something into one of the human characters' drinks, which leads to another human character giving birth via C-section to the space squid seen in the "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" music video. In the case of the Nostromo, the android's orders were clear: ensure that the alien gets to Earth alive, preferably delivered into the hands of Weyland-Yutani bio-weapons people. On the Prometheus, however, the android's mission turns out to be "help Mr. Weyland talk to the Space Jockeys so he can live forever". So why does he infect the crew? Not only does that have nothing to do with his mission, but it DIRECTLY ENDANGERS his mission. And how does he even know what's inside the pods or how to open them? Even if we assume that he must have somehow picked that up from wiping sparkly digital magical alien snot all over those Space Jockey control panels, this still doesn't explain why the infection has one set of effects on the initially infected human (the consequences of which are never revealed because he dies before the infection can run its course) and a completely different effect on his girlfriend. I'd say that this plot thread goes nowhere, but that wouldn't be true; it actually sets up the means by which the movie kills off a Space Jockey that we already assumed was dead. So, in other words, it's still totally useless.

So you're criticizing one of the redeeming character/plot developments in the movie, i.e., the android non-human and how he decides to play his part in the mission for his creators? It was blatantly obvious that the android did have feelings, and did resent his creators treatment of him ("why wear the suit, you can't breathe!") so I thought that element and why he did what he did was one of the cooler parts in the movie. For instance when he infects Holloway (or whatever his name is) and Holloway tells him we created him "because we could" and he responds "how disappointed would you be if you heard the same." Maybe they want to destroy us because they can. Or whatever. Maybe David didn't ask the Engineer what they wanted them to ask him, maybe david said "here they are, they are still alive, can we go kill them now, I hate them they are real dickheads." We don't know. But again, David's motivation was, I thought, one of the deeper character developments in the film and I enjoyed it. If you are a fan of the Aliens series then you know to never trust the Android!

Honestly most of your criticisms are nitpicking; "we could take this whole important part/character of the movie out and it would be the exact same!" Except it wouldn't , it would be totally different.