26 replies to this topic

[SilentWolff]

Went and seen it today.
If your a fan of the Alien movies you will like it alot, I thought it was a worthy prequel and a must see imo. I like a lot of the little things that payed homage to the originals and answered questions that the previous films didnt have time to. Go see it in IMAX 3D, the images are simply stunning at times. Thumbs up!

[Fresh Meat]

I thought it was the worst thing I have seen besides "the day after tomorrow". it has no coherent plot, nothing really ties together, the characters behave artificially, and irrationally. What was the great message there? I would go on but I do not want to give any details away. I wouldn't even mind this movie if it didn't attempt to associate with Alien, it is definitely its own monster.

It did look cool and there were some good deaths.


I didn't see it in 3d the GF gets sick :/

Edited by Fresh Meat, 22 June 2012 - 07:06 PM.

[Threat Doc]

SilentWolff, I enjoyed it a great deal as well, and fully agree with you on all you said.

[Atlai]

I didnt realize it was a prequel to Alien.


Now i want to see it more,

[MacabreDerek]

Starting to feel me and my group who went to go see it on opening night are the only ones who thought it was a complete waste of time and money.

[Calon Farstar]

I was not dissapointed by the visuals... I was disapointed by the plot.

If I remember correctly the alien-founder-whatever was found in the navigators chair with a hole in his chest..... And in Aliens you would think the colonists would have found all the "temples" and the human remains.......

Visuals rocked though!

[Arkojotuun]

Id say the best state of mind to see that movie is one that doesnt want it to be a prequel, Prometheus is its own story set in the same universe. Thus it brings up more questions than it truly answers.

[sumdumfu]

terrible movie, even on its owm merits. the 'scientists' act like a bunch of kids on a deserted island a la lord of the flies. mysterious goo? yes lets touch touch touch it! alien atmosphere? who needs space suits when i look this good with my helmet off. aggressive alien snakelike thing? why, might as well be a kitten so lets friggin grab it!

and that's just (some of) the obvious stuff. i get that it was trying to be intelligent and though-provoking, but never is it good practice to leave essential plot details out (especially in the name of self-importance). it's just needlessly confusing and more than a little pretentious. themes, characters, even settings can be left mysterious, but plot is the narrative backbone and cannot be left in a jumbled state.

i enjoy intelligent forms of art probably more than most people, and if i sound angry it's because i had really high hopes for prometheus being another ridley scott masterpiece a la Alien or Bladerunner. instead it was just a scifi mess with maybe the worst script/screenplay i've seen for a major production in a long time; honestly, this was 70's B-horror flick schtick. but at least Scott still knows how to make a film look amazing.

[THELONGSHANKS]

I thought this was about Victor Steiner-Davion's 'mech!

But ok I want to see the movie too

[Nufsed]

If you watched all of the Alien and Alien vs Preditor films then Promethius was just confusing! 1Annunaki (The film they banned) would have told the story of the creation of mankind the way Ridley Scott tried to imply but without the confusion. But hey who knows? I'm just a simple Mech jockey!...

[xenoglyph]

Calon Farstar, on 22 June 2012 - 09:27 PM, said:

I was disapointed by the plot.
If I remember correctly the alien-founder-whatever was found in the navigators chair with a hole in his chest.....

In the movie they show the Prometheus flight suits wrapping around the guy. I interpreted it as: the hole in the suit was from the Prometheus guy tearing his way out of the suit after crashing.

Definitely no Blade Runner here, but I still thought it kicked ***. Some of the characters were idiots but movies wouldn't be fun if everyone was cautious and sane all the time. The movie didn't really have any slow spots and my girlfriend who hasn't seen the Alien movies (I failed her as a bf on this front) liked it too.

[Threat Doc]

Mason West, on 22 June 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

I didnt realize it was a prequel to Alien.

Now i want to see it more,

Yes, despite all the naysayers, if you actually know anything about the Alien series of movies, you'll get a kick out of seeing the tie-in's they have, though this is still supposed to be it's own movie, as well.

MacabreDerek, on 22 June 2012 - 09:20 PM, said:

Starting to feel me and my group who went to go see it on opening night are the only ones who thought it was a complete waste of time and money.

Apparently not, and that's sad. Perhaps you just didn't pay enough attention to the Alien series.

Calon Farstar, on 22 June 2012 - 09:27 PM, said:

If I remember correctly the alien-founder-whatever was found in the navigators chair with a hole in his chest

That was on LV 426, not LV 233, this was not the world terraformed beginning around 2160, this is the world they found before that, in 2092 (?)

sumdumfu, on 23 June 2012 - 02:57 AM, said:

the 'scientists' act like a bunch of kids on a deserted island a la lord of the flies.

Do you consider yourself to be a relatively intelligent person? If so, think of something, any one thing, that excites you so much that it's very difficult for you to sit on your hands and NOT act like a little kid. If you can't think of anything, perhaps you need to take up a hobby outside? Anyway, the scientists ARE big kids, in this. If I got the opportunity to fly nearly 2000 light years to find the origins of mankind, I would barely be able to contain myself, despite my most professional, even military-minded, demeanor and, thus, I would seem to others like a little kid. No spoilers... must not put spoilers...

Quote

mysterious goo? yes lets touch touch touch it! alien atmosphere? who needs space suits when i look this good with my helmet off. aggressive alien snakelike thing? why, might as well be a kitten so lets friggin grab it!

I agree those parts were pretty damn silly; however, this is a horror movie, meant to be creepy horror rather than jumpy horror, and horror movies, in general, are pretty damned stupid. This movie, however, had more to it than your typical mostly naked large-breasted female getting sliced right between the knockers because she decided to go upstairs and see what the noise was, even though the whole of the audience watching the movie are screaming for her not to. These parts you've mentioned, however, bothered me as well; Ridley's losing his touch in that regard.

Quote

and that's just (some of) the obvious stuff. i get that it was trying to be intelligent and though-provoking, but never is it good practice to leave essential plot details out (especially in the name of self-importance). it's just needlessly confusing and more than a little pretentious. themes, characters, even settings can be left mysterious, but plot is the narrative backbone and cannot be left in a jumbled state.

Except for the mentioned parts, the story was absolutely coherent to me, made near-perfect sense, and I'm looking forward to seeing the sequel... no... spoilers... (must fight the urge to talk completely about this movie)

Quote

i enjoy intelligent forms of art probably more than most people, and if i sound angry it's because i had really high hopes for prometheus being another ridley scott masterpiece a la Alien or Bladerunner. instead it was just a scifi mess with maybe the worst script/screenplay i've seen for a major production in a long time; honestly, this was 70's B-horror flick schtick. but at least Scott still knows how to make a film look amazing.

It took me several viewings, perhaps a half-dozen, before I understood Bladerunner, even though I love the cyberpunk genre, while this film I understood absolutely the first time, and was blown away.

I've run the Aliens Adventure Game, by Leading Edge Games, since it came out in '93, I have the Colonial Marines Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and have read that all the way through, I've seen the Alien series of movies, plus AvP and Requiem (which was thoroughly stupid by the way), and maybe that's what it takes to completely understand this movie. I will say, however, as a fanboi of the Alien series, almost as much as BattleTech (no burning at the stake, thank you), that I got every last frame of this movie. As intelligent as we Human beings can be, with as many street smarts as possible, we are still big dumb animals, with the added detraction of arrogance and ignorance of all but our own desires, and that being said, it becomes perfectly plausible for a fear-struck biologist to see a snake-like totally alien creature, sort of freak out, and start acting like the thing could be a beloved pet. The black ooze, to a rock guy, looks like oil, so why not touch it. As for the alien atmosphere on LV 233, they're thinking they're in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, expecting to find our makers and, knowing our makers made us and, thus, most likely share a very similar environment, when that environment is detected why NOT take off your helmet. Honestly, as the man in the movie, would you expect danger going to a place like that, or would you be so much in awe of the environment, the fact you're around 2,000 light years away from home, and having been stuck on a spaceship with canned air for 2.5 years, would it bother you to take off your helmet. Keep in mind that one of the ways the U.S. Army taught me to test an atmosphere for possible chemical contaminants and poisons was to take off my helmet after a long draw of breath, determine if the atmosphere burns my skin, then determine if it burns my eyes, and then determine if it burns my longs. This is standard training here on Earth, and it would be standard for other atmospheric conditions on alien worlds, as well.

[collosus]

For those people that wish to see more about the plot, you should definitely watch the director's cut when it comes out... adds around 20 minutes of footage, and usually adds up to the plot (much like happened with blade runner as well).

[SilentWolff]

Interesting that there are so many polar opposite opinions. I don't understand the no coherent plot argument though. It had a clear plot. Hell, I went half baked and followed the plot perfectly. I thought it was pretty clever. Was the movie perfect, no, but then again what movie is?
I would say though, to really enjoy and appreciate the movie you HAVE to be an Alien fan. Otherwise I can see it being a mediocre film for others.
I cannot understate the absolutely brillant visuals though. I thought it was done better than even Avatar. IMAX 3D is just amazing when the movie is done right.

Edited by SilentWolff, 23 June 2012 - 07:51 AM.

[MacabreDerek]

Kay Wolf, on 23 June 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

Apparently not, and that's sad. Perhaps you just didn't pay enough attention to the Alien series.

I'm sorry Kay Wolf, but as a person who has seen all the Alien series (More times than I care to admit) I am going to say the film doesnt hold up. The film's tie-ins do not hold this movie up, in fact, they tear it down. The plot is a complete mess, and and most of the scenes make me scream 'WHY?!', either by acts of complete stupidity, or the complete inability to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

The movie on it's own does not maintain suspension of disbelief, and as an aliens prequil it actually feels like to drags you out of any moment it might have had because you go on for quite a while before a visual cue, word, reference, etc. winks at you about it being a part of the aliens cannon.

A 'Smart' movie makes sure communication is clear, and that the ideas hold water. Prometheus on the other hand tries to be as convoluted and vague as possible, runs into situations where common sense goes out the window without provocation, and in the end uses the idea of throwing big questions at us like a hook that eventually turns on itself. The reality is is often tries so hard to become a suspense/horror film at times that it in fact turns into a parody of itself (The entire theater laughing as a man's arm is horribly mangled and broken to point of compound fracture for instance).

It really does sound like you're at the point where you're in denial, trying to convince everyone around you it's good, but in truth are trying to convince yourself. I can understand that position, I've been there a few times myself. At the end though, if you've seen the ailen's movies, and you're lost, that's a bad thing. If you've come in expecting a good movie and you're lost, it's a bad thing. If you had no idea it was an aliens prequil and you're still lost, it's a bad thing.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt (Not something I do often) to say I may be missing a few elements, but if that's the case, that's often because something wasn't conveyed in a clear and consice manner, which is just terrible film making. Would love to discuss the plot in a private setting just to see if someone could explain the thousand and one acts of stupidity and plot-holes that destroyed my ability to immerse myself in the film.

[Catamount]

Kay Wolf, on 23 June 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

Do you consider yourself to be a relatively intelligent person? If so, think of something, any one thing, that excites you so much that it's very difficult for you to sit on your hands and NOT act like a little kid. If you can't think of anything, perhaps you need to take up a hobby outside? Anyway, the scientists ARE big kids, in this. If I got the opportunity to fly nearly 2000 light years to find the origins of mankind, I would barely be able to contain myself, despite my most professional, even military-minded, demeanor and, thus, I would seem to others like a little kid. No spoilers... must not put spoilers...

Not having seen the film, I wanted to get opinions here, and I have to say, this jumped out at me, too, and you're absolutely right.

Scientists are big kids; anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn't work with them on a daily basis (or works with the most boring, unenthused scientists on Earth). Basically, scientists are like this (NSFW language)

And no, were I in their situation, I wouldn't even pretend to be able to contain myself

Edited by Catamount, 23 June 2012 - 09:19 AM.

[Threat Doc]

MD, we will have to agree to disagree. I enjoyed the movie, felt it was thought-provoking enough that my family and I talked about it, literally, for the rest of the day, and had absolutely nothing negative to say about it. This from a family that has at least one negative comment to make about every 9 of 10 movies we see. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it, and I doubt very seriously you've made the connections I was able to make immediately. When it comes out on DVD, rent it from a reputable box store, if there are any left, and watch it a few more times in order to make all of the connections.

@ Catamount, and all the rest who felt the movie was good or agree with the points I made, thank you for your support, and I hope we can talk about another movie in the future.

I, however, will be leaving this, and several other conversations, because I just finished with a week-and-a-half of moving house, and I have so much to catch up with for AU it's ridiculous. Thank you for the good conversation, and take care.

[Catamount]

I guess I'll have to come back and settle this debate once I run off and see it

[MacabreDerek]

Kay Wolf, on 23 June 2012 - 09:24 AM, said:

MD, we will have to agree to disagree. I enjoyed the movie, felt it was thought-provoking enough that my family and I talked about it, literally, for the rest of the day, and had absolutely nothing negative to say about it. This from a family that has at least one negative comment to make about every 9 of 10 movies we see. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it, and I doubt very seriously you've made the connections I was able to make immediately. When it comes out on DVD, rent it from a reputable box store, if there are any left, and watch it a few more times in order to make all of the connections.

I'll just leave this here as my final contribution. I'll agree to disagree.

[Mchawkeye]

I thought the movie was great. the visuals were cracking, the sets, effects and production design top notch.
I really enjoyed the plot and the subtext(s), and if it was guilty of anything at all it would be trying to cram in to much smart. Which considering Most films try to remove the smart altogether, I'm not really complaining about...

In fact, the one thing that really,really annoyed me was that womans Scottish accent. Which considering she is Scottish, and indeed lives near me I believe, is a bit odd.