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Prometheus, epic stuff (pg. 20)
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| Meat187 |
| Saw it yesterday. Maybe I'll write some longer comments later, for now I can say it was very flawed but not all bad. |
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| Trance-MB |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Oh crap. This will come to German cinemas only in August.
I don't think I can resist the temptation of piracy until then. Why the hell does it take this long?? :mad: |
Well after seeing it, it's not because of the "nachsynchronisirung" of the Makers :)
Something you probably also know by now. |
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| wotyzoid |
Saw it today and I though it was fun. Definitely not the best sci fi I've seen but there were a lot of elements I found extremely interesting. I agree with Stu especially about David and Dr. Shaw, I though they were genius characters for a big budget hollywood film.
the surgery pod =
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Endlesswave
I get what you're saying j but I still had a great time watching it and also check out this:
Prometheus explained |
Just noticed this and read through the link. It all makes sense and I wouldn't particularly argue with any of it, but the most important part is the line about mythic resonance obscuring the plot. This is a classic case of a film where the subtextual and symbolic levels have become destructive to the actual narrative. Ridley Scott has previous with this, with his logic-busting addendum to the Bladerunner script that Deckard may actually be a replicant. Another notable sci-fi film off the top of my head that commits the same crime is eXistenZ. Certain scenes might make sense on a symbolic level with the benefit of this interpretation, but on a straightforward narrative plane they are still absolute ing gibberish, and there is no excuse for that. Great stories reconcile their narrative mechanics with their symbolic apparatus. In Prometheus the latter rends the former apart. |
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| Meat187 |
Some thoughts:
- The movie looks right. These days it's extremely easy, given the wonders of CGI, to make such a movie look like people running around a video game or comic book world (Star Wars prequels). Instead it looks like people on an alien planet. Well done.
- I'm not sure about the characters. Dr. Shaw is great, but I doubt she could carry such a movie alone, like Sigourney Weaver did. David is interesting but weird. He's revealed to act on the old guys account, but some of his actions make no sense. What was the point of infecting that guy with the alien goo? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not sure he's a great character. The old guy looks silly and doesn't do much himself, but at least he has a clear motivation. Charlize Theron's character is completely useless and there is no reason for her to be in this movie, or to be revealed as the old guy's daughter.
- The plot holes are endless, but I don't care so much for them. Maybe there can be an explanation that holds everything together, maybe not. I'm OK with incomplete information, the movie doesn't have to explain everything to me. If I find it interesting, I'll piece it together. Problem is, nothing about it is interesting.
- The script reeks of being made up as they went along. Damon Lindelof wrote it, and he did the same ing thing in Lost. Add mysterious crap, resolve some of it, raise more questions... oh , show ended and nothing makes sense... whatever.
- The script reeks of laziness. So many things happen because they are convenient and not because they make sense. Like the two guys who get scared and want to gtfo, then get lost and later happily play with an alien snake thing. Shaw and that guy having sex right after he was infected for whatever reason. Convenient storm out of nowhere. The alien goo doing different things to different people, so you can shove all the ideas in.
- The movie doesn't focus on anything. It looks like a disconnected mess. As I said, it's OK to not explain every last detail, but so much crap is in there for no reason. Think about the scene at the beginning, where they find the cave painting. Why is it in the movie? Everything is explained again by the old guy, and it turns out the planet is not the engineers home anyway. If you need an excuse for people going there don't waste time on it. Invest the time in your characters and let a hologram of Tupac explain it. Don't break the outer space atmosphere. If it's important then have it play a role in the movie. But no, what the movie shows and tells seems to be selected completely at random.
- Same goes for the subtext. They could have focused on the relationship between creator and creation, e.g. by having David play a clearer and more central role. But they didn't. They could have focused on religion. But they didn't. They could have focused on how mankind has lost it's path by doing terrible things and thus the friendliness of the engineers. But they didn't.
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| netroM |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Some thoughts:
- What was the point of infecting that guy with the alien goo?
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Weyland wanted results (of any kind). David wanted to see what would happen, hoping the results would make his creator satisfied/just for the sake of curiosity. |
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| tranceOzone |
Seen it twice now. Big fan. I'm a huge sci-fi fan and there's literally NOTHING out there these days, so when this came out I was disgustingly excited. I thought it was effing fantastic, even though it was a little mis-matched and mis-guided at times. Classic Ridley style, and even though it wasn't the most creative film of all time, it was a HELL of a lot better than most of the other garbage gracing our lives.
Visuals 10/10
Plot 7/10
Acting 6/10 (although Michael Fassbender was a 10)
Sci-fi elements 8/10 |
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| Guest |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Some thoughts:
- Invest the time in your characters and let a hologram of Tupac explain it.
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Proper lol'd :stongue: |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by netroM
Weyland wanted results (of any kind). David wanted to see what would happen, hoping the results would make his creator satisfied/just for the sake of curiosity. |
This has nothing to do with Weyland's motivation. What results does he want? He wants to find out why the Engineers created mankind (even though the script totally begs the question of why anyone would think that in the first place, another major plot hole). How does putting some unknown alien slime in a guy's drink achieve that? What if it simply poisoned the guy and he keeled over and died? What the hell would it prove? If David somehow knows it's a "bio-weapon" (another begged question - nothing we see is enough to lead to this conclusion, not least because the slime would make an unbelievably ty weapon) from his research, he can just tell Weyland that. Deliberately infecting a member of the crew with it is going to severely endanger the mission, and consequently any chance of finding the answers he's looking for.
And for once in an Alien-related film, the driving force of the company is not finding potential bio-weapons (always the weakest link in any of the scripts). If Weyland is implausibly interested in that kind of thing, it only makes sense for him to conduct any such experiments in a carefully controlled environment. What happens in the film is the equivalent of stealing biological weaponry from another nation and then letting it off on the plane journey home to test whether it works. It's absolute madness.
This is what I meant earlier. Nothing in the film makes sense, and whenever someone tries to come up with an explanation it merely makes you actually think through the internal logic of the script more carefully, which makes you realise the film is even more ing stupid than it first appears. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| :stongue: loving your posts system-j! |
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| netroM |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
This has nothing to do with Weyland's motivation. What results does he want? |
He told David to "try harder". That's when David poisoned that guy.
I agree though, the plot isn't anything special. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
:stongue: loving your posts system-j! |
Seriously, I could rant off like that over just about any plot point in the film. The script is so illogical it's practically surrealism. It blows my mind that large numbers of people don't seem to notice just how nonsensical it is. Do these people put absolutely no thought into understanding a plot? Is a film just a sequence of vaguely related flashing images that can appear in any order whatsoever, provided something explodes and someone has ? I'm especially dismayed by the many professional critics who are praising this film. You should not be ing allowed to accept money to "review" cinema if you can't spot a script this broken. Roger Ebert, who once gave Die Hard (one of the most tightly plotted action movies ever made) a negative review because "Inappropriate and wrongheaded interruptions reveal the fragile nature of the plot and prevent it from working", gave this film four stars and proclaimed it a "magnificent science film"? What the bloody ? Proof, if ever it were needed, that the majority of critics are absolute cretins who whine on about modern films being style over substance and hollow special effects extravaganzas, but are actually prepared to ignore rampant stupidity provided you embellish your bucket of with moody cinematography and some half-cooked metaphysical mumblings.
| quote: | Originally posted by netroM
He told David to "try harder". That's when David poisoned that guy. |
Oh well, that makes perfect sense then. |
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