Prometheus sucks

[Disgustipated]

hmm, I was going to see the movie until I seen it trashed in this thread. I'll pass on it until it comes out on netflix I guess.

 

[Joecoolyo]

hmm, I was going to see the movie until I seen it trashed in this thread. I'll pass on it until it comes out on netflix I guess.

You're changing your desire to see this movie based on the opinions of one kid in this thread?

You fold faster than Superman on laundry day.

 

[Glassfan]

hmm, I was going to see the movie until I seen it trashed in this thread. I'll pass on it until it comes out on netflix I guess.

It really is a fine movie and ought to be seen on the big screen - in 3D.

 

[Ozbenno]

It really is a fine movie and ought to be seen on the big screen - in 3D.

This...

It really is a movie to be seen on the big screen, won't be anywhere as effective on a TV screen.

 

[Disgustipated]

yeah, I know it sounds strange, but since I heard you can pick up bed bugs even at movie theaters, I've stayed away from them. But I'd still go if it was an epic movie that just can't be missed on the big screen (I'd bring a flashlight to inspect the chairs- as crazy as that sounds). So the question I ask, is this movie epic?

As for 3D I'm still not convinced it's all that. Avatar was alright in 3D, but the movie itself wasn't that great. I'm not sure if 3D is worth the extra price. I find it disorientating and it makes it harder to pay attention to the dialogue and plot.

 

[Quackers]

Don't watch it. It's simply not a good film.

 

[El_Machinae]

I really disliked it, and I'm a giant sci-fi fan. I might have been expecting too much.

The main problem was the stupidity in the film. The stupidity was overwhelming, and it was just as much due to bad writers as dumb characters. The problem is that the stupidity makes us second-guess anything that might be profound or character-driven. "Wait, David's pushing buttons all the time! Is he stupid or does he have a secret agenda?" (secret agenda) But now he's doing something with the goop, how does he know what the goop does, or even that it's important? Why would his boss want a bioweapon released onto his ship so early into the mission, even IF he was interested in what it did?

Did they just carbon-date a space suit? And are they implying that Space Jockey's came to Earth 35,000 years ago to tell humans where to go? But they also told the Hawaiians the same thing? Holy crap, that's like a 34000 year difference in visitations! But the planet they told people to go to was an outpost that died sometime in the past? Wow, that could be really profound, except they carbon-dated a space-suit so I have NO IDEA if the writers are being profound or just stupid.

How did the geologist get lost? Aren't they being monitored on the bridge? Maybe the captain (or Theron) has a secret agenda and was misleading him on purpose ??? Maybe she (he?) is treating the extra crewmen like stalking horses .... oh, wait, 90 minutes later we find out that there's no secret plot, and that yes, a spelunker getting lost while being monitored in real time just happened because of stupidity. It's not like Lieutenant Goreman was freaking out, either, no, things were super-calm.

Who the hell breathes on a 'remarkably preserved' biological specimen of the only aliens ever run into that's thousands of years old? I wonder if that will be important? No wait, it's just stupid too.

So, I found myself watching the movie very carefully, following plotlines and character-driven mannerisms thinking they might be important. And they might have been! I don't know! I might never know, because of all the other idiocy the film threw into the mix.

I really quite disliked it.

 

[G-Max]

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

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.

Keep in mind that by "not that bad", I mean "crap, but not as crap as Revenge of the Fallen". Prometheus is actually bad on the same level as Revenge of the Fallen, and for the same reasons.

As for performances, we're basically comparing Fassbender's to Travolta's, because no one who sees either movie is going to give a wet fart about any of the other characters.

it's a thousand times better than Avatar btw.

Like that's any kind of accomplishment...

But then again they haven't made a true science fiction movie in ages. A movie that focuses on questions rather than answers...

The difference is that other movies usually bothered to offer possible answers.

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.

So it sucked on purpose?

Major events and questions are raised only to cut to another scene, leaving it's meaning or importance up to discussion.

That's often called "lazy, incoherent writing".

I'd say this one more akin to Blade Runner

Especially with its wholesale copying of the "searching for your creator to demand more life from that S.O.B." angle...

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.

Might have been? There's no question.

I think alot of the questions can be answered if you look at the bio goop as a weapon, like the Captain mentioned.

Uh, no. For example, it doesn't explain why the Space Jockey head explodes. It doesn't explain why the one guy wants to play with the alien cobras after previously showing a strong aversion to any alien life, even of the "dead for 2,000 years" variety. It doesn't explain the Zombie Geologist. It doesn't tie the "love the one you're with" scene into any part of the rest of the movie in any way.

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.

...which means absolutely jack, seeing as how he didn't have a hand in the story at all. You might want to consult Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, David Giler, and Walter Hill about that one.

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.

You came pretty close with the Jesus bit. According to Ridley, the Space Jockeys are pissed off at us because Jesus was actually a Space Jockey, and we killed Space Jesus 2,000 years ago.

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

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.

Uh, no? I'm sorry, but "it probably has something to do with the goop" is not a satisfactory explanation.

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.

Oh, yeah. Except that in the movie's opening scene, we were shown that their DNA gets broken down into kibbles and bits when they seed an alien planet with life, making reconstruction of the original data impossible. The movie's whole premise then immediately shifted from "they planted the building blocks of life on Earth and left things alone for 3.5 billion years" to "they designed humans". Thus, the "OMG we're the same species" angle introduces a THIRD possible relationship between humanity and the Space Jockeys, and it contradicts the previous two. And it doesn't explain why beings who are genetically identical to us would look like 3-meter-tall Lord Voldemorts.

As for the head exploding, as was shown in the movie, the weapons turned on the engineers/space jockeys.

Or so the captain assumes after banging Charlize Theron. What was the point of that scene again...?

The procedure on the ship "activated" the biogoop on the head of the space jockey, which exploded it for some reason.

Those last 3 words are the ones that could have been cleared up a bit.

The cobra things are the mutated worms you see burrowing into the bio goop

Mutation does not work even remotely like that.

It seems to mutate any lifeform it touches into a killer version of it, which also happens to the geologist.

I don't recall the geologist turning into a giant cobra-penis.

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?

No. I'm criticizing his decision to do something that had absolutely nothing to do with his mission, and in fact directly jeopardized it.

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."

Yeah, I always put tiny drops of mystery liquids in people's food/drinks when they hurt my feelings.

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."

Maybe the whole movie was just Noomi's morphine-induced hallucination as she's getting an appendectomy in some hospital on Earth. But that doesn't really get us anywhere, does it?

We don't know.

Yeah, that's the problem.

If you are a fan of the Aliens series then you know to never trust the Android!

Bishop and Call were trustworthy. Actually, the androids have a better track record than the humans do in terms of trustworthiness.

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.

Okay, let's remove the zombie geologist scene, the "love the one you're with" scene, and everything involving the exploding head and the "OMG they have the same DNA as us" angle. How is the movie any different as a result?

I read the wiki article on Prometheus before I went to see the movie, and so everything did make sense. The monsters life cycles don't make sense to you because this is a prequal - they haven't evolved into the Nostromo aliens yet.

No, it has nothing to do with being a prequel. The reason why the lifecycles don't make sense is because everything contradicts everything else and nothing is firmly established. This movie makes no more or less sense as a stand-alone than it does as a prequel.

Assuming - and this is my own speculation - that they seeded the Earth to evolve a soldier-species...

Of course, nothing anywhere in the movie even comes close to hinting at that.

a sequal to the prequal

The words are "sequel" and "prequel". No "a".

The butthurt is strong in this thread. Any plot hole or confused characterisation really doesn't detract from the film's good qualities. It's visually stunning and incredibly exciting to watch

I could say the same about The Chronicles of Riddick...

If you look at it as a scientifically accurate representation of how to construct a halfway coherent or intelligible story, then no, you won't really enjoy it, and you probably shouldn't have watched it.

lawlz, I fixed it for you

Scenes that you would think that would look great in 3d didn't stand out as much, such as the dream sequences or the stellar map that David discovers.

My mom said that seeing the observatory in 3D was worth the price of admission by itself...

So no more of this extremely tasteful expanded Alien universe???... make it so!

I actually have that book. It picks up where Resurrection left off and explores Ripley's feelings about how being cloned had robbed her self-sacrifice of its meaning and all this other stuff. It's pretty good when it hits those notes, but it's confusing as to the nature of the terminator hybrids.

G-Max is my hero. I had the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS while watching the movie yesterday. My partner and I raised some of these questions on the way home. 'Wait, so why did...' and 'What about the ...' Prometheus is a movie that has only gotten worse upon repeated reflection. It is, imho, the worst kind of movie. It has pretensions of being a movie full of significant questions but fails miserably when it comes to delivering.

What's this? I don't remember creating a sock puppet...

Nice try, G-Max.

Seriously, that's not me. I admit that it has all of the hallmarks of being a sockpuppet (name generated seemingly at random, no avatar, coming here just to make one post specifically endorsing another poster by name), but it has none of the hallmarks of my sockpuppets; specifically, this poster does not suffer from obsessive-compulsive-point-by-point rebuttal syndrome. Also, if I decided to create a sockpuppet account here, it would be specifically for the purpose of arguing with Cutlass about economics.

If the moderators have any doubts, they can check the IP addresses. All of my recent posts have been made from the same two Starbucks near where San Jose, Campbell, and Los Gatos meet, whereas ELBSeattle will most likely have posted from Seattle.

I feel like the people complaining are the type of people who would watch Hitchcock's The Birds and criticise him for never explaining why the birds started to attack.

We're also the people who complained about the National Air and Space Museum being located in Arizona in Revenge of the Fallen.

And Noomi Rapace in her futuristic undies wasn't too shabby either.

Not as good as Charlize Theron doing pushups in future undies while dripping wet.

You're changing your desire to see this movie based on the opinions of every viewer and reviewer who agreed that the plot holes were huge and innumerable, and the only reason to watch it is that it looks pretty?

Sounds reasonable to me.

Did they just carbon-date a space suit? And are they implying that Space Jockey's came to Earth 35,000 years ago to tell humans where to go? But they also told the Hawaiians the same thing? Holy crap, that's like a 34000 year difference in visitations! But the planet they told people to go to was an outpost that died sometime in the past? Wow, that could be really profound, except they carbon-dated a space-suit so I have NO IDEA if the writers are being profound or just stupid.

Don't forget that Noomi can tell how old a cave painting is just by looking at it. And how does she know the painting is 35,000 years old? She doesn't, but it's what she chooses to believe.

How did the geologist get lost? Aren't they being monitored on the bridge? Maybe the captain (or Theron) has a secret agenda and was misleading him on purpose ??? Maybe she (he?) is treating the extra crewmen like stalking horses .... oh, wait, 90 minutes later we find out that there's no secret plot, and that yes, a spelunker getting lost while being monitored in real time just happened because of stupidity.

Something something electromagnetic interference...

And the captain was too busy trying to shag Charlize Theron to bother helping the science team. I can't say I blame him; in his position, I'd also be paying more attention to her than to them.

Who the hell breathes on a 'remarkably preserved' biological specimen of the only aliens ever run into that's thousands of years old? I wonder if that will be important? No wait, it's just stupid too.

To be fair, there were plenty of other, non-breathed-on alien bodies laying around, and breathing on it isn't really a huge concern when you're sticking non-sterile needles deep into its central nervous system, making it ooze black alien death goo, and blowing it up...

 

[El_Machinae]

I didn't mind dating the cave drawing. They had super-fast carbon-dating technology, and so dating a cave "during a morning" seemed reasonable.

I also didn't mind the lifecycle of the xenomorph. Except the super-fast growth of the titan-sized facehugger, because of the lack of foodstuffs in the medical room. David grabbing and testing the biogoop bothered me much more than the fact that it did something scary.

 

[G-Max]

...except that there was no evidence that they bothered to use carbon dating on the cave paintings. Noomi was just like "hey, where does this hole go... OMG cave paintings! I bet they're 35,000 years old!"

 

[El_Machinae]

Fair enough. My 'feeling' was that she'd spent the morning digging out the cave already. At that point, I'd not yet lost my good feelings towards the movie, so I was willing to 'roll with things'.

 

[Mise]

I could say the same about The Chronicles of Riddick...

Are you recommending that I watch this movie, on the basis that I enjoyed Prometheus for its aesthetic qualities and its raising of questions that are interesting to think about?

 

[Azale]

Are you recommending that I watch this movie, on the basis that I enjoyed Prometheus for its aesthetic qualities and its raising of questions that are interesting to think about?

God, doesn't this describe 99% of all sci-fi movies?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Sounds reasonable to me.

Ooooh, close, but no cigar. The correct answer war "27% of movie reviewers didn't like it", not "all".

 

[Mise]

God, doesn't this describe 99% of all sci-fi movies?

Ehh, even really crap Sci Fi is still more enjoyable to watch than most films that hit the screen.

 

[Azale]

Ehh, even really crap Sci Fi is still more enjoyable to watch than most films that hit the screen.

I agree completely! I think my last post came off as irritated, but it was irritation directed towards Lord of the Nitpicks.

 

[El_Machinae]

I was rethinking my opinion of the movie. I think it would have been a lot better without the opening scene with the Titan killing himself. The rest of the movie would then have been from the perspective of the humans, and so their confusion would have been our confusion. The problem with showing us 'non-observable' events right at the beginning is that we missed them later on in the movie, because stuff that 'made no sense' could've been easily explained. If we only get the human perspective, then stuff that makes no sense is easily accepted.

The Titan suicide implied that it would be a mystery later revealed in the movie, but it wasn't. If therefore could have been a good opening scene for the sequel.

 

[illram]

I heard that it was co-written by some Lost writers, which makes sense as to why some stuff makes no sense.

I still enjoyed it though. And my wife and I were huge suckers for Lost.

 

[Cynovolans]

Someone else didn't like this movie, and he intends to do something about it.

 

[Mise]

Someone else didn't like this movie, and he intends to do something about it.

Wait, who's doing this now?