Linkara gives his thoughts on Prometheus!
Friday, June 8, 2012
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32 comments:
Thanks for teh fast review I'm plannign to see this in a few hours.
Also I completely get what you mean by not "needing" action. I often feel that a well done script and acting can more than make up for a good fight scene or explosions.
I don't think I'd like this movie, but thanks for the review.
Oh, by the way.
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw was also the name of a companion of the Third Doctor. I wonder if that was meant to be a nod to Doctor Who or just a coincidence?
Sooo you're saying this movie needed a strong smart character like Ripley to make it work?
Couple of things: First off, the whole "Ancient Astronauts" thing really isn't a new idea; it's been around for a while.
Secondly, the Nostromo in the original film wasn't ordered to retrieve a sample. It was coming back from a mining run. Ship's AI diverted it when it picked up the signal.
Ridley Scott should stick to era/ period pieces. His strength is in attention to detail. Ridley Scott's best movie (my opinion, even though Ridley Scott fans will agree) is Kingdom of Heaven's director's cut. He was good at sci-fi in the 70s and 80s. While I liked Prometheus, I liked it for a Space Jockey prequel and not an Alien prequel. If this does well enough to green-light a sequel, I hope someone like Matt Reeves directs it (with Ridley Scott's production credit).
"Dr. Elizabeth Shaw was also the name of a companion of the Third Doctor."
Glad to know I wasn't the only one who saw this.
---
Video response:
Oddly, critics seem not to have actually called David the villain outright in any reviews. People have said he's the most interesting due to his personality and ambiguity in his motives, but we don't know if some of his actions were due to orders or choice.
You're right in that the biggest problem with this was the writers. I liked the story but they really got the wrong people to do a film. With too many characters, mornonic moments and a grand theme which is very vaguely defined with only hints at answers later it's showing a lot of hints of Lost. The direction was good, effect were great, acting was good, everything else was fine, it was just the writing which was sub par. If it does get a sequel hopefully it will contain a much tighter script.
There is one thing about this. If you don't mind me asking, have you ever read any of the Aliens vs Predator comics which spawned the films? Sorry, I was just wondering if that's why you had a more positive opinion of the first film.
I totally agree with this review. The movie wasnt bad, it was just......meh.
Trust me Lewis, you wouldn't like AVP:R; it was worse than the first AVP, and that one was bad too, not because it wasn't rated R (Freddy vs. Jason was rated R and that one sucked), but because the characters aren't interesting and almost come off like 1-dimensional versions of the characters in Alien, there was barely any action between the opposing sides, the predator looked awful and damn near liefeldian with a thick, unnecessary musculature, and the writing was just bad.
Yet SOMEHOW, the sequel was worse than the first one. After seeing it, I wanted to stand up and say "please excuse my language"
"FUCK YOU FILMMAKERS!!!! You took two franchises that had great characters, actually scary moments, and watered it down to a basic and lazy slasher flick with teenage stereotypes who are unlikable, more alien facehuggers just as a ploy to up the kill count, which by the way nice job in completely ignoring the established life cycle of the aliens like what happened in that completely unneeded sequel Alien Resurrection, just...... Fuck You!"
Okay, I'm calm now, kind of disappointed Prometheus under-delivered, but what are you gonna do.
Okay, you've pretty much summed up everything I thought.
Except your thing about the SJ's worshipping the xenomporphs.
I just never thought of that. That's brilliant! I'm sure that's what happened.
Nitpicks:
The squid from Men in Black and the Phantom Menace never got out of med bay - the outer rooms were trashed when the life pod crashed.
When you say a character was immolated then returned 20 mins later - that was a different character. It was the guy whose face got burned (who I call 'Poochy' because his first line in the movie is basically 'I'm the edgy hip nasty character with attitude) - he came back to the ship and attacked.
This is set on a different planet to Alien; that's LV 426, this is LV 224 (or something); so they're close but not the same planet.
Oh, I did get a DKR trailer - and Cabin in the Woods.
Linkara, are the people who tell you you'll hate AVP Requiem the same ones who told you you'd hate the first one?
(I didn't hate the first one, but didn't particularly like it, either. Never saw Requiem.)
(The phrase 'Please prove you're not a robot has rarely been more apt.)
This is more or less how I felt about the movie, though I never got the idea that the Engineers worshipped the xenomorphs; I though they created them as a biological weapon. (And I also went on TVTropes and came up with a theory about them using them against the Predators at some point in order to allow Alien vs Predator to remain in continuity).
As far as the prior movies go, I liked the first three Alien movies (though I watched the directors' cuts of all of them; apparently, the director's cut of Alien 3 is quite different to the version that was released in cinemas). Alien Resurrection had some good ideas, but failed in the execution due to events behind the scenes.
I quite liked Alien vs Predator; it's a fun action movie, and it seems like everyone making it knew full well they were doing a shallow popcorn flick and just decided to make the most entertaining popcorn movie they could.
AVP: Requiem, on the other hand, is an absolute steaming pile of shit, of the kind of quality that Internet reviewers go after.
I liked the visuals of Prometheus. I feel that they tried to keep it relatively realistic rather than openly alien.
With regards to the pregnancy bit, we can do C-Sections today without using a general anasthesia. In the movie Elizabeth repeatedly doses herself with painkillers. We would give an epidural and cover up the area with a sheet since a lot of pain is visual (It's why closing your eyes makes an injection seem less painful).
But I did actually like the movie. The opening sequence was quite spectacular and the plot seemed a bit scatterbrained wasn't bad. It was enjoyable. Not Alien/s territory but in the good half of the spectrum of science fiction.
hey lewis you know your history of power rangers reviews y dont dont you do the same thing with star treck. now to be honist im not that big of a fan of startreck i do like som movies and the borg. but the main reason yis tat llike yur opinons and i like lewis beter then linara because im more intrested about you and id like to know more cuzi find it entertaning. y startrek because its the most important thing of your life cuz you said you all way watched it and id like to know more
You keep saying Vickers is the most intelligent character in the movie, and at first I agreed with you.
But then I thought - who hand-picked most of those idiots for this major, vital, dangerous scientific expidition in the first place?
Including a *biologist* who pickes up a worm that he identifies as 'reptilian' (having apparently never heard of snakes).
Actually the do a scan when they get to the hole. They say that it can sustain human life, however it's not wise to do so just in case they're reading is wrong.
That alien is a Facehugger alien from the original when it attacks the space jockey.
My biggest issue with this movie was how dickish some of the crew were to David, simply because he's a robot. Yeah, I get that it could be referring to how he reminds them of how they'll never be immortal and how they'll lose their youth and such, but as scientists, you'd think they'd be more open minded (and for the non-scientists, just less dickish). I know this was in Aliens too but that made more sense.
Also, that trailer you mentioned about the drug dealers? If I'm not mistaken, that's Savages, directed by Oliver Stone (I know you don't care but at least you'll know the name so you can not waste your time researching it if you were ever going to).
Though, we did get the DKR trailer (the "this isn't a car" one") and a new Amazing Spider-Man one ("Oh no! You found my weakness! Small knives!") but I'm curious, have you decided to see the Amazing Spider-Man or did you just want to see more interesting trailers than what you were provided with?
Well I can say you got better trailers than I did. Admittedly one of them was DKR, but in exchange for that we also got Rock of Ages or as I call it nostalgia for middle aged housewives that plot was outdated in 1992, and the Jason Statham action thing with Autistic plot device child (The general feel of the trailer made me feel like while geeky things are getting less geeky, everything else is getting more geeky).
As for the film itself for someone who has never seen any of the Alien films I liked it although I am almost certain that it gained nothing being in the Alien universe. Also the idea of David and the scientist whose name leaves me going to confront the makers sounded like a really cool film until I found out that the makers have an actual name and in turn many of the questions I have are most likely answered in the Alien films and in turn wouldn't be answered(although I guess I have some movies to see).
Hey. HEY.
Freddy vs. Jason was an excellent film.
I think it's obvious that a lot of people worked on this movie for a very long time since it really seems like they tried to stitch a bunch of different ideas together.
A sequel would probably be much better since they'll have much greater focus.
And I think that this is almost as much a sequel to Blade Runner as it is a prequel to Alien.
Also, Superman vs. the Elites will be out, are you going to get it?
Anonymous:
Freddy Vs. Jason was okay at best.
I remember on the commentary their pride at finding a house just like the one in the Elm St. movies... even though it's nothing like it.
Or are you more a Friday The 13th fan than Nightmare?
Oh, my Cthulhu you liked Resurrection and AVP too! My respect for you grows even more! AVP:R isn't that bad it's pretty good to me and I find it funny that it looks like some elements from the AVP movies were used here even like the whole Scientology thing of aliens creating and influencing human development and some of the tech they used!
The plot is a lot different than I was expecting! From the earlier trailers and what little was given away I was thinking one of 2 possibilities! 1.) it was going to be a prequel to Scott's original cut of Alien in that how the xenomorph operated was a lot different than what was established in the sequel. In that it wasn't a hive species in how it reproduced, but it cocooned other species and turned them into eggs which needed another human to act as a host for the facehugger/chestburster which would've been fine and all, but I was more into the hive and queen set up. 2.) it was going to have a very similar setup as the 1st Aline in that the crew go down to that planet and find that temple/ship and bring one of those canisters on board their ship and it releases some sort of virus and slowly mutates 1-3 of the crewmembers into like proto-xenomorph and it be like Alien in that these people are trapped on a ship on a planet that is hostile with these mutant/alien hybrids trying to kill them and maybe at the end it's reviewed they're turning into either the Xenomorphs themselves. And, the Space Jockeys were just humans in weird looking space suit or the mutated crew-members! You know what I mean like a better version of those 90-00s space horror movies they made like Super Nova(2000) or those deep sea horror/sci-fi movies like Sphere(1998) or even like the Species franchise!
Ok I just saw this today finally and I'm sadden to report myself that I gotta agree with Spoony on this one more than Brad! The movie was visually beautiful and was very well made, but the story was very, VERY flawed!
And, I'm kind of even more sadden to say this movie kind of ruins the origin idea of the Xenomorphs for me. Mostly because it made more sense for them to be a race of hive-like creatures that breed by using host that they take a little DNA from to adapt for their new environment. If they were engineered by the Jockeys/Engineers I'd hoped it wouldn't have been so muddled and confusing. I was hoping if they did go the rout that the movie was set in the same universe as the Alien movie but wasn't about the Xenos that it be just hinted at that the Jockeys probably made more than one kind of weapon on that LV-426 planet, but apparently all they were doing on that planet was making those canisters of that Black-Alien-Death-Ooze! Which purpose and effects confused me... At one point it decays a person or alien away into a pool of pure genetic material and the next time we see it used it mutates worms into Alien-Penis-Cobras and a guy into a violent hydrocephalus superman with sperm strong enough it can impregnate a woman that is completely sterile! It actually reminded me more of how the alien/virus/whatever you'd call it in the Thing movies worked or that Black-Alien-DNA-Ooze from the 2nd "Species" movie that turns the astronaut guy into a male of that... species! If anyone remembers those movies they'll know what I'm talking about!
The Jockeys were a disappointment too. I was hoping if anything we'd never get a clear look at their true faces to keep a little mystery about them or if they did show their faces they looked maybe more alien than just being 10ft tall with completely white skin. Also that brings up the opening of the movie. So they were the alien race that fertilized life onto Earth billions of years ago and all life here can be traced back to them having one guy drink the Black-Ooze and melting his genes down and releasing it into the water... so shouldn't that DNA test, they done on the ship in the movie and says that the Jockey's DNA matches humans, say it has genetic markers in-common with all life on Earth from amoebas to zebras and even plants!?
The Proto-Xenomorph at the end was a let down as well... I might've actually forgiven some things if an actually Xenomorph-Chestburster came out of that Jockey at the end. But comparing that thing to a xenomorph is like comparing an iguana to a crocodile! They have a lot of things in common but they totally different things!
Also this movie had one flaw that really ruins a movie for me is none of the characters I liked... hell I out right hated most of them which isn't good as it makes me happy to see them die not shocked or scared. The only likable characters was David the android( I'm convince if the whole movie was just him taking care of the ship and his other daily jobs on-board the ship the 2 years it took them to get from Earth to LV-426 it'd been a better watch) and the Captain(and his likability began to wain when he suddenly goes from the guy that drives the ship and makes safety calls to the guy that's aware the company is evil and must be stopped like he's been a member of some group trying to stop them). The only other character they could've made that'd been more likable is if they got pet of some sort on board like another cat, a dog, or a monkey!
The worse character was Noomi Rapace's as she came off as selfriteous and terrible at her job. As Spoony put it she's not a good scientist since most choices she(and all the other scientist) make have ZER0 logic behind it! Like removing your helmet just because the air reads as breathable... that just meant it had no poison in the air not that it wasn't full of deadly alien germs! The one guy who was suppose to be a geologist, but from the way he looked and talked(the whole badly used line from the 1st Alien) I just thought he was another hillbilly member of the ship's work crew, made no sense! Like Spoony up there put it he and the other nerdy guy, who did at least look like he might be a scientist, where freaked out by a long dead headless Jockey but one of them(the nerdy one who wasn't high he wasn't the one smoking at all) starts to instantly start screwing with what amounts to a freaking alien cobra! There is no excuse for that unless they were trying to say it was hypnotizing him some how(just based on him saying how "beautiful" it was... it was literally a scrotum that opened up into a cobra's hood), but that just might be coming up with an excuse for them. Also most people I know in real life would be more than happy if we some how found any proof of alien life... it could just be an alien's toilet seat on Mars, but the one guy in the show gets so mopey to the point of drinking because he didn't get to talk to any aliens with-in his 1st what 15 hours on the planet!? That dude's an asshole and if anything I blame him more for most of the bad stuff that happened in the movie. They landed on the planet were their all of 5mins and the Captain guy said they only had a few hours of daylight left they should wait til morning before doing anything, but nope they need to go inside that day, and what happens? They get 2 guys lost(granted one of them had a mapping thing with him) and killed, and almost got himself and his girlfriend killed in a storm that was blowing razor-sharp bits of rock around!
And finally Guy Pierce! Why hire a guy in his 30s to play a man in his I guess 90s to 120s if you're not going to have a scene of him as a young man with in the movie somewhere?! Even then it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a guy that young playing that role! It's made more sense if they hired him to play Weyland in the promotional stuff for the movie like those viral marking things and then get a real old man actor to play him in his later years! I knew what was going to happen in the movie thanks to this review and wiki but I was sort of expecting Weyland to inject himself with that Black-Alien-Death-Ooze and de-age back to his younger self since that stuffs effects seem to range into whatever direction the script says and then he mutates into a monster and dies! That's probably been in a better movie though! Hell he looked more like the Judge character from "Nothing But Trouble"!
As I said before this reminds me more of one of those 90-early 00s sci-fi horror films that came out like once or twice a year like the last big example is like "Pandorium" a few years ago I think or "Super Nova"!
Crap! I just realized that it wasn't LV-426, but LV-223... which is good and bad as it means this might not have been the actual origins of the Xenos but it's still asking the audience to know a lot of crap!
The watch is that Ben Stiller comedy and the premise sounds funny but none of the characters in it look to be that funny to me! the big thing about this movie is it was titled Neighborhood Watch and then they changed their mind after the Florida watchmen shooting!
Django unchain is the Terinteno(sp?) movie and it look interesting but I'm not a western person!
Well i'm glad to see you had a very similar experiences as me at this movie Linkara hope to hear a MiB3 review from you at some point! Hey do you own a copy of the original MiB comic? I've been looking for them but they're rare and costly!
Wow, Brad was the only one that really liked it.
I didn't think it was that bad. I thought the visuals were great and David was such a bitch!! He alone was worth the price of admission. Plus, Guy Pearce is awesome in anything even in fake-looking old age make-up. :)
I also thought the surgery scene was fricking horrifying. Spoony thought it was funny!! All I can say is, I don't want to watch what he watches.
Yeah, it barely touches the profound themes but you know what after suffering from those AvP travesties (The first one wasn't awful but it wasn't good either; the second one was one of the worst I'd ever seen), this was a breath of fresh air.
you pretty much had the exact same reaction i did to this movie. i really don't know if i liked it or not. it's just...aside from the characters acting like complete morons a few times, the movie is otherwise solid. i think this is the first movie i really developed expectations about. i usually try not to, but that's the thing about viral marketing: you think you're getting a taste of what the film will be like, but you're really just getting bits of backstory.
sounds like you got pretty much the same trailer pack too, except i got the TOTAL RECALL trailer instead of whatever that cop movie was you mentioned.
I'm pretty sure the escape pod was wrecked because it was ejected from the ship and crash landed, not because the squid thing wrecked it and went back into the lab.
Out of all the reviews I've seen, I agree with you and Film Brain, but add in the rage of Spoony.
The story was so badly written, that there were times I imagined myself scribbling out all the notes the writers made. This to me like fan service to everyone who wanted to see another xenomorph-like creature burst out of someone's chest. The pseudo-philosophical allusions, the visuals, the 3D, the characters, and the plot was nothing but padding and filler.
The only thing this film got right was David, who ended up moving 75% of the plot and performing 90% of the work.
The biggest offense of all though, was leaving us with the same questions the initial premise gave us: Who are our creators? Why did they want us to find them? And the bonus: Why did they want to destroy us?
I somehow suppressed the urge to scream "This movie sucks!" in the theater. Urgh...
We all had high hopes for this one. Much like we had for the Thing prequel that came out last year. However with this one, director of the original Alien, Ridley Scott, was at the helm.
When it came to The Thing prequel, most regarded it as mediocre. Not the worst flick. But not nearly up to par with John Carpenter's 1983 film.
Like The Thing, Alien is an iconic film. It's even regarded by mainstream film critics as one of the best films ever made. And like most hit horror films it spawned sequels. Some good. Some wretched.
2007's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, killed the franchise. It is a film that is on par with Batman And Robin. A true contender for "the worst film ever made" title.
So like so many other film franchises, Hollywood thought it was time for a remake/reboot in the form of the prequel Prometheus.
But hey! We have Ridley Scott on this prequel! No way could it suck right?
Wrong.
If you can divorce yourself from all the previous films, it's mediocre, at best.
Compared to the previous films, it's garbage. You will long for a four hour director's cut of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
A "meh" film made worse by the fact that because of it we will never see "At The Mountains Of Madness" on the big screen.
Go see Battleship. At least you will go into it knowing it will suck.
One out of five stars.
Overall, I was comparing Prometheus to the Michael Bay Transformer movies in the back of my head while watching it.
Prometheus was practically Shakespearean in comparison to the Transformer movies, there was at least some attempt at being a smart movie, and it did have me wondering about who the Engineers were and why they did what they did.
I guess that's saying something. We've devolved so much in movies that any attempt at being smart is better than 2 hours of mindless CGI.
I think it would have been a better film if Ridley Scott would have watched the original Alien and took a nod from that movie.
The original was made for $11 million, and it used creativity, storytelling, and everything it could to tell a nice tight scary story.
Prometheus had it's moments. I'd say that for someone who's an Alien fan, watch it. It's better than Alien 3 and Alien Ressurection.
I'd say the Alien series has run its course unless you get some really good science fiction and horror writer to develop a compelling story.
It's on the fence of being a good movie. I won't complain that I saw it.
It needed a Ripley type character. Someone smart, vulnerable, but brave.
I really like this movie. And one of the reasons is that it doesn't really try to be an Alien movie. It's not called "Alien: Origins" or something like that, which they easily could've went with, it's called Prometheus and delivers what the title promises: The creation of man in the Alien Universe.
That being said it really could've used scientists who actually behaved like scientists.
Still haven't gotten around to seeing this movie, though I'm with you, I like Alien: Resurrection (I like it a lot more than Alien 3) and AvP, though I'll admit my liking it at first was picking out PARTS of a comic and novel series with the Predators that was really damn good.
I think for AvP they needed to realize that we will see movies with little to no humans in it just fine.
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