Prometheus trailer

I'm going to watch this movie this afternoon or tomorrow (around dawn for you US guys...).

Yeah, 5 stars to me is perfect. Flawless, etc. The last 5 star sci-fi I saw I THINK is Aliens (for me), I'm trying to remember if there was an awesome sci-fi since that.

Aliens is very good. Not as confined as Alien (although on its own, the confinement is a plus), but still not enough breadth for me to be the "perfect" sci-fi movie.

Aliens was an old-fashioned Western shoot-em-up. It was a good film but there wasn't a whole lot of thinking going on.

S.

After reading the chat here about Moon just now, I found it on Netflix and watched it. Wow what a great film. So heavy, powerful, gut-wrenching and (thankfully) satisfying. I was (am) totally absorbed into it.

Despite some recent bad buzz, I saw Prometheus last night. Yeah, disappointing.

It starts out great. Probably the first half of the movie, I was enthralled. Great cinematography, interesting ideas, some neat-looking effects with holographs, and a general sense of wonder that I haven't gotten from a movie in years.

But. I didn't like any of the characters by this point, despite having a very favorable attitude towards Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce. If anything, I almost liked the characters played by Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, because at least they made sense to me. In particular, I had a big problem with Noomi's overly-religious scientist and her asshole husband who apparently thought that he was playing a fratboy. Their relationship didn't add up, and they didn't sell me on the science either. Too many of the rest of the characters just lacked any characterization at all, so their deaths made no impact.

The horror element didn't work for me. Not sure why. The effects were credible. Maybe it was my depraved indifference to these crappy characters. They were awfully stupid, for one thing. I know that if I ever end up on a totally alien world that has never been explored before, I will not be in a hurry to take off my helmet, especially when the temperature is said to be -12. Even if that's celsius, that's pretty unpleasant. And then there is the whole potential for alien germs. Another character got absurdly friendly towards an alien snake monster, which seemed both stupid and unlikely. Even when poor Noomi's scientist character ends up in a situation at least as terrifying as anything seen in the Alien movies, I just didn't care. Maybe I'm too depraved and psychotic to feel empathy for these characters. Or maybe the dialogue and characterization sucked.

I think that's where the blame for this mess ultimately belongs. Prometheus was written by Damon Lindelof, the head writer for Lost. So he may be great as asking interesting questions and setting up cool situations, but he totally sucks at follow-through. The fundamental aspect of storytelling is to get people interested in what happens next. But when what happens next doesn't make any sense, you start to lose the audience. I also expect that Lindelof is responsible for the lame religious aspects to Prometheus. It isn't impossible to successfully mix religion with science fiction, but when the combination goes wrong, you end up with crap like the last season of BSG, the last season of Lost, or Prometheus. It's too bad that Dan O'Bannon died a few years back, he should have been one of the writers for Prometheus instead of anybody involved with Lost.

it was written by the guy that wrote lost. THis explains alot.

The characters in the film suffer from the fact that theres too many of them, so none of them ever really get fleshed out and theres whole situations that never get dealt with..


This film would have been better if they had halved the number of characters, aliens, plot lines and done a little well rather than a lot crap. Lost is a TV show that lives on throwing new crap at you to prevent you from thinking over all the plot holes that have emerged so far. This film sort of does the same Rant Over.

Hatchling wrote: After reading the chat here about Moon just now, I found it on Netflix and watched it. Wow what a great film. So heavy, powerful, gut-wrenching and (thankfully) satisfying. I was (am) totally absorbed into it.

You fucker...you were the LAST one to see it, because it's gone from NetFlix now.

Yeah, Moon was fantastic. I saw it close to a year ago on Netflix. It was just sitting there quietly, as a suggestion for something I might like, and boy did I.

Wow, I enjoyed it. Not without reservations, but as a whole it was fun. Excepf the ending...

I was a little bit disoriented. The similarities/references make it impossible to watch it without comparing to Alien. The differences confuse me.

Lots of plot holes though. Alien has simple plot with a major plot twist. This one is layer upon layer of plots and several twists that are rather impactless. This make for a good number of incosistencies. The end is bad though. Do they think it's Millennium Falcon???

Hatch, how did you like the scene where he calls his girl back on Earth? I was a TOTAL MESS after that scene. Probably the 3rd most I've ever cried in a movie. It's so tragic his situation.

Oh wow, I remember Moon now. You guys kept talking about it so I looked it up. That was a good film.

See, that's my kind of science fiction. Broody and deep. And in the case of Moon the plot-line is firmly dependent on the SF nature of the film. The setting is critical to the story.

Aliens was a cowboys & indians film. Lots of shooting, no connection to the setting whatsoever. That same movie could be remade in the old west, or as a WWII movie, or a tall ship movie . . . fun enough to ride on but it's not technically very interesting. It was a safe movie to make. That's how Cameron's stuff feels to me.

S.