Prometheus - Ridley Scott's 'Alien Prequel' (or not)...
Discussion
croyde said:
I was hoping it would be better than I remembered but boy was it a stupid film. A great shame 
I know, you have to switch off some many WTF sensors its hardly worth the watch.On a good tv, with good surround sound it’s a nice thing to watch, and if you ignore the misktakes theres a half decent story there. I have a take on it:
The Engineers spread their DNA in the hope of creating life. It works and they visit Earth leaving the star maps in the hope they follow them finally.
In the passing eons the Engineers change from being benign to creating weapons of war. Or maybe they were worried about life they create being stronger and more dangerous than they were. They create a bio weapon which turns all life into chaos, which in turn stops an enemy in its tracks. As a precaution they arm the very planet they left directions too with this weapon. On the face of it that’s a perfect idea. The planet looks to have no intelligent life, the weapon stored away so can wait until needed. If a life form turns up and is dangerous, they release the black goo, it kills the lifeform and they can find out where it came from and send one of the planets ships out armed with the goo.
Then something happens, maybe a life form does rock up and start killing the Engineers. For all their technology maybe they aren’t good at fighting, hence the drop and forget nature of the black goo. The hologram of the engineers running in the tunnels is the crew getting wiped out by said lifeform. They were running to where the goo was stored to release it, but never made it and the room sealed tight, beheading the unfortunate Engineer.
One Engineer jumps into a ship, to escape. Maybe hes infected with the goo, or maybe an attacking life form gets on board and is infected, who in turn infects the Engineer. He then hatches a chest burster and crashes onto LV422 (the planet in Alien)
The last alive, jumps into statis pod and is left there for who knows how long (going by the wreak in Alien its quite some time).
Then hes woken by the humans, unsure of who they are, or how much of a threat they are they chat via David (in the cut scene) and finds out the human thinks hes a god by creating David, the engineer rips Davids head off and kills Weyland.
The Engineer then wants off the planet so uses the ship, is stopped by the human ship. He then climbs out and sees one still alive and is clearly properly pissed and runs after her. He gets done in by the Tenticled goo monster and finally the human wants revenge so heads off to “paradise” to deliver so goo back to them.
The attacking force could be anything, even another cast from within the Engineers. Or maybe they used the goo and infected themselves by accident. Hopefully it redeems itself in the next film. (multiple fingers and toes crossed)
Dakkon said:
I have always had the sense that the film has been too harshly cut in the editing room and key scenes that would provide a bit more sense to the film have been left out, or perhaps I am being too generous?
Have a look at the write-ups of the deleted scenes. It adds to the story (like explaining why that muppet pets the goo mutated snake thing) and has scenes explaining why the captain was so ready to smash his ship into the alien one. But they certainly don't explain away allot of the films issues really.Dakkon said:
I have always had the sense that the film has been too harshly cut in the editing room and key scenes that would provide a bit more sense to the film have been left out, or perhaps I am being too generous?
I've read up on the deleted scenes and yes it certainly clears up one or two things. Does make me wonder why the hell they were cut in the first place though. They would have added a few extra minutes to the running length tops.The excuse I've read from is that apparently it didn't forward the plot. WHAT??? It wouldn't have stopped the film from being a mess but definitely would have cleared up some of the biggest WTF moments.
I don't know if Ridley had complete autonomy, the film certainly smacks of "studio interference". Either that or Ridley has gone from a genius film-maker to mongoloid in a very short space of time.
Also moving away from Prometheus slightly and looking at the film industry in general, Hollywood seems to produce far more bad films then good. Out of the hundreds of films per year, I think possibly only 10% are any good and maybe another 20% are above average, the rest range from below bar to downright dire. Now considering we are talking about multi-million dollar investments, those odds seem pretty dire to me. I certainly wouldn't bet my own money on it.
So what goes wrong, at what stage does a film which in theory has all the right ingredients, loose the plot (no pun intended). Prometheus had a director with a good track record, a decent cast and a £100m+ budget but still ended up a disappointment so where does it go wrong? Is it at the script stage? The shooting stage, post-production. Is the fundamental way films are made at fault with disparate teams all doing different things at different times, shooting scenes out of sequence to blame?
At what point do the people making the film realise if what they are making is any good? Is it at the editing stage where they finally get to see all the footage they have shot and think "yes we've nailed this" or "oh oh, this looks s
t" (by which point I'd argue that it's already too late). Are the people involved in a film for months and months even able to be objective about it at this late stage? Do they even know (or care) that they are producing crap or is the pay cheque worth it. It just seems very strange to me that such a huge investment in time, manpower and money more often than not produces results which are more often than not, unsatisfactory.
So what goes wrong, at what stage does a film which in theory has all the right ingredients, loose the plot (no pun intended). Prometheus had a director with a good track record, a decent cast and a £100m+ budget but still ended up a disappointment so where does it go wrong? Is it at the script stage? The shooting stage, post-production. Is the fundamental way films are made at fault with disparate teams all doing different things at different times, shooting scenes out of sequence to blame?
At what point do the people making the film realise if what they are making is any good? Is it at the editing stage where they finally get to see all the footage they have shot and think "yes we've nailed this" or "oh oh, this looks s
t" (by which point I'd argue that it's already too late). Are the people involved in a film for months and months even able to be objective about it at this late stage? Do they even know (or care) that they are producing crap or is the pay cheque worth it. It just seems very strange to me that such a huge investment in time, manpower and money more often than not produces results which are more often than not, unsatisfactory.spats said:
I have a take on it:
The Engineers spread their DNA in the hope of creating life. It works and they visit Earth leaving the star maps in the hope they follow them finally.
In the passing eons the Engineers change from being benign to creating weapons of war. Or maybe they were worried about life they create being stronger and more dangerous than they were. They create a bio weapon which turns all life into chaos, which in turn stops an enemy in its tracks. As a precaution they arm the very planet they left directions too with this weapon. On the face of it that’s a perfect idea. The planet looks to have no intelligent life, the weapon stored away so can wait until needed. If a life form turns up and is dangerous, they release the black goo, it kills the lifeform and they can find out where it came from and send one of the planets ships out armed with the goo.
Then something happens, maybe a life form does rock up and start killing the Engineers. For all their technology maybe they aren’t good at fighting, hence the drop and forget nature of the black goo. The hologram of the engineers running in the tunnels is the crew getting wiped out by said lifeform. They were running to where the goo was stored to release it, but never made it and the room sealed tight, beheading the unfortunate Engineer.
One Engineer jumps into a ship, to escape. Maybe hes infected with the goo, or maybe an attacking life form gets on board and is infected, who in turn infects the Engineer. He then hatches a chest burster and crashes onto LV422 (the planet in Alien)
The last alive, jumps into statis pod and is left there for who knows how long (going by the wreak in Alien its quite some time).
Then hes woken by the humans, unsure of who they are, or how much of a threat they are they chat via David (in the cut scene) and finds out the human thinks hes a god by creating David, the engineer rips Davids head off and kills Weyland.
The Engineer then wants off the planet so uses the ship, is stopped by the human ship. He then climbs out and sees one still alive and is clearly properly pissed and runs after her. He gets done in by the Tenticled goo monster and finally the human wants revenge so heads off to “paradise” to deliver so goo back to them.
The attacking force could be anything, even another cast from within the Engineers. Or maybe they used the goo and infected themselves by accident. Hopefully it redeems itself in the next film. (multiple fingers and toes crossed)
Interesting theory. I hadn't considered that angle. Thanks for posting it. The Engineers spread their DNA in the hope of creating life. It works and they visit Earth leaving the star maps in the hope they follow them finally.
In the passing eons the Engineers change from being benign to creating weapons of war. Or maybe they were worried about life they create being stronger and more dangerous than they were. They create a bio weapon which turns all life into chaos, which in turn stops an enemy in its tracks. As a precaution they arm the very planet they left directions too with this weapon. On the face of it that’s a perfect idea. The planet looks to have no intelligent life, the weapon stored away so can wait until needed. If a life form turns up and is dangerous, they release the black goo, it kills the lifeform and they can find out where it came from and send one of the planets ships out armed with the goo.
Then something happens, maybe a life form does rock up and start killing the Engineers. For all their technology maybe they aren’t good at fighting, hence the drop and forget nature of the black goo. The hologram of the engineers running in the tunnels is the crew getting wiped out by said lifeform. They were running to where the goo was stored to release it, but never made it and the room sealed tight, beheading the unfortunate Engineer.
One Engineer jumps into a ship, to escape. Maybe hes infected with the goo, or maybe an attacking life form gets on board and is infected, who in turn infects the Engineer. He then hatches a chest burster and crashes onto LV422 (the planet in Alien)
The last alive, jumps into statis pod and is left there for who knows how long (going by the wreak in Alien its quite some time).
Then hes woken by the humans, unsure of who they are, or how much of a threat they are they chat via David (in the cut scene) and finds out the human thinks hes a god by creating David, the engineer rips Davids head off and kills Weyland.
The Engineer then wants off the planet so uses the ship, is stopped by the human ship. He then climbs out and sees one still alive and is clearly properly pissed and runs after her. He gets done in by the Tenticled goo monster and finally the human wants revenge so heads off to “paradise” to deliver so goo back to them.
The attacking force could be anything, even another cast from within the Engineers. Or maybe they used the goo and infected themselves by accident. Hopefully it redeems itself in the next film. (multiple fingers and toes crossed)
Guvernator said:
So what goes wrong, at what stage does a film which in theory has all the right ingredients, loose the plot (no pun intended). Prometheus had a director with a good track record, a decent cast and a £100m+ budget but still ended up a disappointment so where does it go wrong? Is it at the script stage? The shooting stage, post-production. Is the fundamental way films are made at fault with disparate teams all doing different things at different times, shooting scenes out of sequence to blame?
At what point do the people making the film realise if what they are making is any good? Is it at the editing stage where they finally get to see all the footage they have shot and think "yes we've nailed this" or "oh oh, this looks st" (by which point I'd argue that it's already too late). Are the people involved in a film for months and months even able to be objective about it at this late stage? Do they even know (or care) that they are producing crap or is the pay cheque worth it. It just seems very strange to me that such a huge investment in time, manpower and money more often than not produces results which are more often than not, unsatisfactory.
There's the old adage, 'nobody sets out to make a bad film.' At what point do the people making the film realise if what they are making is any good? Is it at the editing stage where they finally get to see all the footage they have shot and think "yes we've nailed this" or "oh oh, this looks s
t" (by which point I'd argue that it's already too late). Are the people involved in a film for months and months even able to be objective about it at this late stage? Do they even know (or care) that they are producing crap or is the pay cheque worth it. It just seems very strange to me that such a huge investment in time, manpower and money more often than not produces results which are more often than not, unsatisfactory.
I've read this article,
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/22988/does-the-pro...
Seems there were too many changes, too much input from different players. Which made the thing morph from an Alien related film to something that isn't actually a sequel...yet still draws on the franchise, leaving a clumsy and misguided dog's breakfast of it all.
Shame.
One looks back to Alien³, it too suffered from the same fate of people moving on, studio input, and was a mess. We can look at Aliens and Alien, both were totally owned by their auteur creators, Cameron and Scott respectively. The difference in appreciation as a viewer? Huge.
DamienB said:
Prometheus made enough money to warrant a sequel? Really? REALLY? Jesus christ!
$403,000,000 worldwide according to Box Office MojoTBH, that's actually not that great a return if you think about it, Avatar for example made almost $3,000,000,000. I can only assume word of mouth affected ticket sales.
Edited by SWoll on Wednesday 13th May 19:30
croyde said:
They made money out of idiots like me thinking that I had missed the point and that it can't of been that bad so I went to see it again a few days later
If it makes you feel better, I saw Avatar twice at the cinema, concluded the 2nd time that it was vapid st, and then still bought the BluRay when I bought a BD-player. 
funkyrobot said:
All the talk of this film has made me want to watch it again.
Haven't seen it since it was at the cinema.
Don't do it to yourself. It was on telly the other night, I managed to make it about a 3rd of the way through (to the snake petting scene) before thinking nope, not gonna happen and giving up in disgust.Haven't seen it since it was at the cinema.
SWoll said:
DamienB said:
Prometheus made enough money to warrant a sequel? Really? REALLY? Jesus christ!
$403,000,000 worldwide according to Box Office MojoTBH, that's actually not that great a return if you think about it, Avatar for example made almost $3,000,000,000. I can only assume word of mouth affected ticket sales.
Edited by SWoll on Wednesday 13th May 19:30
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