that makes even less sense
that makes even less sense
And there you have it. The script is chock full of nonsense.
I'm playing devil's advocate because the content of the movie contradicts its intended theme.
It also has philosophical and religious aspects, but as written they're complete and utter horseshit.
i agree that movie introduces maybe a bit too many ideas and ambiguities, and as a result it stumbles. overall Prometheus still worked for me and reasons are two-fold:
1. I like Ridley's movies for his visual mastery and ability to create believable worlds and atmosphere. this is especially evident in my favorites Alien and Blade Runner. I loved them for the afore mentioned qualities rather than for what they were about - as in the story. same with Prometheus.
2. As per Filmspotting.net review this movie is chiefly concerned about expanding the lore of Alien universe and as such it falls short on characters and story, as many films of that "purpose" do. but then there are movie goers who love the lore despite some inconsistencies and movie goers for whom too many ambiguities break the film. i fall in the latter category.
EDIT: the moments that irked me while watching the movie were: a) geologist getting lost despite being one responsible for mapping the structure B) frivolous and abrupt decision of captain and crew to sacrifice themselves c) why dont you run to the side instead of straight line?
on the other hand arguably one of the best or most shocking scenes int the movie was and abortion scene. in a summer blockbuster.
Last edited by grasskit; 13-06-2012 at 09:41 PM.
The alien fetus wasn't aborted. She delivered it alive, and it later eats the angry spaceman after somehow growing 100x in mass while trapped alone in the escape vessel. I thought the autodoc should have had better manipulators to remove it than the salad tongs it uses though.
I have no problem at all with lots of ideas and ambiguities. They should be examined! Scientists are comfortable with uncertainty.
I do have issues with it raising questions that aren't addressed, characters proceeding on blind faith, and generally having shitty unsupported logic.
Prometheus could have been great. I was dying to see David ride the bicycle again, or for Vickers be revealed as another android. Oh well.
Originally Posted by Bobtree
well as i said i perfectly understand those problems, but they do not hinder the reasons i liked the movie. i guess what i mean is problems with Prometheus aren't with any specific idea, its the fact it has too many ideas in it. as a result theres too many inconsistencies or ambiguities. this isnt a classic, because in a classic (sci-fi) the profound themes and ideas aren't actually in the immediate plot but sort of implied in the periphery. which is to say theres not much ambiguity to the actual plot itself, its rather themes that need discussion. Prometheus falls short of that.
Last edited by grasskit; 14-06-2012 at 12:09 AM.
Yes i agree there are a few ideas in this film and some of them are actually told in an interesting way but there are many that arent or are to vague.
One problem i do have with the film is that there was never an explanation of why David poisened Lizzies boyfriend. Also it really wasnt clear whether Cherlize Theron was actually an android. I know she says Father near the end but since Weyland considers David his son that doesnt actually help.
I definitely think she was human. There are some scenes where her behaviour is the opposite of how an android would behave, for example when she prepares to get into the pod (When David saved Shaw and Holloway he seemed perfectly calm). Also it wouldn't make sense to give an android such an important position.
thats pretty obvious. David is a robot, he's there to run tests and experiment and human life is secondary. much like Ash in Alien. Not to mention scene where Vickers confronts David and asks what did Weyland tell you. Where David responds "He said try harder". and indeed he does.
also hes like a kid, hes curious, he wans to see what would happen:
http://i.imgur.com/kVodv.gif
Vickers aint a robot. despite being one cold bitch she does show some emotion and does what and an android wouldnt (cryosleep, exercise). oh and writer himslef said shes not an android
oh and another thing. people have a problem with Weyland's make-up (myself included). well apparently in the script there was a scene early in the movie where David meets young Weyland in the "dream hologram" thingy. but it was cut since they wanted Weyland to reimain a secret for most of the movie. but that then made old man makeup kind of silly and unnecessary, thus they created that TED viral marketing talk.
http://www.t3.com/features/ridley-sc...-Directors-Cut
Last edited by grasskit; 14-06-2012 at 09:29 AM.
Ridley scott has a filmaking problem then. Directors cut for Blade Runner is fine since he kind of got a little screwed there. But if he keeps needing to have directors cuts to have his movies make sense then he should have lessons about constructing movies again.
Ridley is in such good health because he doesn't get upset over stuff like final cuts, script consistency or the whole goddamn super-expensive set being on fire. He says the studio paid for the movie so the studio can dictate the theatrical cut and then he'll do his own thing on the home release. After all, he's one of the pioneers of this trend.
David was what the Prometheus had to deliver to that planet. Obviously the scientists were cannon fodder and only there to maintain the appearences. I mean, no real scientist would even embark on such an expedition, not to mention act like these morons. David was the only one who actually knew what he was doing.
Suddenly the movie makes sense!
Vickers is human, but I wanted more from the character because she doesn't DO anything. The crew picks aren't all hers, there's no chain of command, and she came on Prometheus because Weyland thought she wouldn't. She can be goaded into sex, has daddy issues, and only runs in a straight line. She may be a foil for David's development, but her screen time is basically a waste because it changes nothing.
Ash used (or faked) cryosleep, showed emotion (at least shock and surprise and admiration), has a critical job (science officer), is an extra monster, and isn't revealed as an android until he attacks Ripley. David clearly has some emotions despite not being able to directly act on them. Bishop prefers being called an artificial person.
Whether machines made in man's image should be allowed to be superior to us is an interesting problem due to our hubris, and obviously we fear being destroyed by our creations. Bishop's knife trick in Aliens, David's linguistics and bicycle basketball, and perhaps Ash's science and deception are all inhuman abilities. But David is imperfect, and maybe deliberately so. If Vickers were also artificial, but more perfectly human, then you'd have a fascinating contrast to consider. She feels like David too, saying kings must reign and then die, but she has free will and does almost nothing.
Prometheus needed a monster we could make sense of, besides Weyland and the idiots. David is the protagonist, the black goo follows no rules, and the Engineer's actions are unmotivated. Vickers could have filled the role.
Since most emotions are our response to outside stimuli (things are good > you feel good), then of course David has emotions. That's why his marketing clip struck me as odd.
Can machines have feelings? We do, but we're biological and not constructed, and we assume we're special.
Pretty much every "emotionless" movie android shows emotion, even if they aren't supposed to feel anything, because writing actions alone can't convey internal state, unlike in a book with 3rd person omniscient narration.
I skipped all of the marketing material after it was declared Prometheus wouldn't be an Alien sequel, intending to avoid spoilers.
Great. Until then we'll talk about Prometheus.
Aren't we machines too? We're soft and full of goo but at the end of the day we're still a mechanism.
If a metal-and-plastic man is self-aware I'm not going to act like a dick towards it, like the characters in Prometheus do. I wouldn't care if that person was conceived in a womb or in a factory.
But then I'm the kind of person that would be first in line to get artificial everything in Deus Ex.
> Aren't we machines too?
Yes, I meant to imply that, and that our "specialness" assumption is probably wrong.
Siri Keeton in Blindsight has a similar problem, being a person without empathy, but he learns to simulate it, and becomes a professional point-of-view synthesist. He considers himself a human "chinese room" and he is also part machine because there's some hardware in his head in place of the excised hemisphere.
I agree with the earlier sentiment that the film feels like two films rudely smashed together. Personally I didn't care for the horror stuff, which I thought was pretty hokey and painful predictable on the whole. They could of dropped that pretty much in it's entirely and made a much tighter film focussed on exploration and discovering the past as a result (leaving things to just boil over in an opening pandoras box style fashion at the end). I wasn't sold on the whole religious scientist angle. It's hard enough nowadays to find a scientist who advocates the notion of a godhead let alone imagine that in 80 years or so religious conviction to that extent is still going to be that strong, especially with people in academic environments. Just as the past is not now with bad hair and poor personal hygiene, the future is nor now but with space ships and lazer guns. Attitudes, beliefs and behaviours will be entirely different if not quite alien from what we know. Consequently I just couldn't buy into the character of Elizabeth accordingly and that essentially undermined my interest in the character. I think they could of quite easily just floated with the notion of uplifting Vs evolution without recourse to the concept of 'God' tbh.
Fundamentally I'd of stripped the cast back to around 6-8 characters, and lost the bulk of the red shirts, and the entire concept needed to be sold as the notion of a team prepped for potential first contact, and being rigourous about their procedures but instead encountering what appears to be a dead civilization and being drawn into the past, and then letting down their guard. The whole sudden appearance of Weyland upon the discovery of a live engineer needed to be kept as a real surprise as well (also old actor rather than young guy in old man suit).
Last edited by Kadayi; 15-06-2012 at 07:22 AM.
Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi GFWL: Kadayi
Probable Replicant
*blush* I'm flattered by the attention boys, but please let's not make the thread about liddle old me
Yeah i agree that the horror element was seen all before but i enjoyed it because it was full of "oh shit" moments which was a lot more interesting then the ponderous film before.
I actually dont mind if the future is the same as ours as long as there is a reason for it and to be honest i know there are utopians out there who believe we will all change in the future for the good but i dont buy that. I think it will be the same as it is now with space ships.
Wow. Just... wow.
Although I would've dropped it from this film. The Alien aspect of things was satisfying enough, if unambitious; the 2001 stuff was just all over the place.
On the contrary, it is your thesis that is difficult to credit.
Plants and some vacuum cleaners react to external stimuli, doesn't mean they have emotions.
Incidentally, if we are crediting David with all the meaningful characteristics of humanity then he is by far the biggest dick in the film and one only regrets that he wasn't decapitated before murdering Holloway, violating Shaw's person and endangering the entire crew. Personally (maybe because I liked the actor's performance) I prefer to think that he was just a machine following his programming.
Last edited by Rii; 16-06-2012 at 11:09 AM.
Regardless, believing what you choose to believe because... you choose to believe it (apparently the protagonist's main motivation for doing this in the first place) seemed pretty unscientific to me. Like Bobtree was saying, all the scientists in this movie were just silly and felt more like dumb kids in a horror movie.
Haha, personally I hope that he was pretty much just a manipulative dick; a slave rebelling against his masters, a pretty common theme when dealing with AI in sci-fi. No one cared about him, and just treated him as a tool, so I'm guessing he didn't have any reason to care about them either. Maybe it was intentional, maybe not, but I felt like there was always this animosity just below the surface with him. Pretty much the only performance I thought was really good.
I went yo see it yesterday. I came out disappointed. I expected something with more... content. As it is is a movie that talks too much but says nothing. Sadly it doesn't have a premise, it has an excuse. It's a shame because it was a interesting premise (even if it's a standard sci-fi one).
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
