Re: Prometheus (2011)

[Pak-Man]

I was reminded of this Sam & Max exchange:

(On the moon. Max has removed his helmet.)

Sam: So let me get this straight. We can breathe here then?
Max: I guess those candy-butt astronauts didn't have the stones to try it.
Sam: I could never say that about an astronaut.

[mattwnelson]

Hey wait a second. I just remembered something. Back when Guillermo Del Toro's At The Mountains of Madness project sadly fell apart, he said that one of the reasons was that Prometheus had stolen his thunder in a few scenes. Which ones would those have been?!
The only thing to come to mind is when they wake up the Engineer and try to talk to it, only to have it just outright kill them. That seems like a Lovecraftian "humans are irrelevant to higher beings" type message. But was there anything else?

Well, there's also the Cthulu-style facehugger at the end. I suspect Del Toro is speaking more of the imagery and set design than themes.

[Darth Geek]

From CHUD a while ago:
http://www.chud.com/92360/del-toro-says-prometheus-has-drunk-up-at-the-mountains-of-madness-milkshake-2/

You might actually be inclined to think that the connection might actually help Del Toro's project were Prometheus to become a success and interest studios in similar films, but Del Toro went on to clarify that the two films having the "same premise. scenes that would be almost identical," kills even that marginal hope.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

So, the packaging for the Blu-Ray 3D set says "your questions will be answered", supposed to be 7 hours of extra stuff.  Anyone go through them yet?

I haven't seen the movie yet, haven't been avoiding spoilers so have read just about all of them, will probably watch it tonight or Saturday night.

[Space version 2.0]

I watched the alternate/deleted scenes, and it actually did help explain a little bit.
For instance:
The original version of the transformed Fifield scene showed him further along and more deformed, looking more like a Xenomorph. I think that was even mentioned in the description for that alternate scene, that he was turning into one, which explains why there was an image of one in the room with the vases of goo.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

  Been thinking about this a bit since watching it Saturday night.  Not sure why since I didn't care for it all that much, probably because the sad thing is there is serious potential for a great movie in there.  If the scientists were acting like real scientists it would have changed the laughable bits into tension building bits.  That and a few other tweaks to the personalities of the characters could have saved it big time.

  Or they could have built the tension better and made it plausible that the people were panicky and that's why they were acting stupid, but they failed miserably at that.

  Not sure we still need spoilers at this point but I'll use them anyway, my complaints about the opening scene:.

  The biggest problem I see and haven't seen addressed other than in jokes is the opening.  For the engineers to have created life (or even just animal life), that scene would have had to have happened a minimum of 600 million years ago.  That's when the first simple animals evolved.  Did they come back every 100 million years to cause the impacts and other extinction events that shaped the evolution of life on Earth?  That's a hell of a long term project.  They themselves should have evolved a lot in that much time...  They could have put that scene 65 million years ago, while the Earth was scorched after the Chicxulub impact and mammals were about to become dominate.  But that's still a hell of a long term project.  Only way it could make sense would be something like 2001, come in and mess with our apelike ancestors.

  Of course all that could be overlooked if the movie was better, a good movie allows for more suspension of belief.

[Pak-Man]

  The biggest problem I see and haven't seen addressed other than in jokes is the opening.  For the engineers to have created life (or even just animal life), that scene would have had to have happened a minimum of 600 million years ago.  That's when the first simple animals evolved.  Did they come back every 100 million years to cause the impacts and other extinction events that shaped the evolution of life on Earth?  That's a hell of a long term project.  They themselves should have evolved a lot in that much time...  They could have put that scene 65 million years ago, while the Earth was scorched after the Chicxulub impact and mammals were about to become dominate.  But that's still a hell of a long term project.  Only way it could make sense would be something like 2001, come in and mess with our apelike ancestors.

Of course all that could be overlooked if the movie was better, a good movie allows for more suspension of belief.

I don't want to turn  this into the religion thread, so take the following as story/theme only, and not a concept that I'm trying to sell anyone: One of the big themes in Prometheus is the concept of God vs. Creationism. The way that some Christians (myself included) maintain a belief in both Creationism and Evolution is the idea that the being that created us was SO omnipotent, that all He needed to do was push the first domino way back in the big bang and everything fell in place in the exact way He wanted. He created humans by setting events in motion in such a precise way, that we evolved as a result of very exact planning. Prometheus is taking that role and placing it in the hands of a super-advanced alien being. So while it's far-fetched to believe that they could have planned everything out THAT well, thematically it works because these aliens essentially have God's fire (And there's the legend of Prometheus again!). 

[MartyS (Gromit)]

  The biggest problem I see and haven't seen addressed other than in jokes is the opening.  For the engineers to have created life (or even just animal life), that scene would have had to have happened a minimum of 600 million years ago.  That's when the first simple animals evolved.  Did they come back every 100 million years to cause the impacts and other extinction events that shaped the evolution of life on Earth?  That's a hell of a long term project.  They themselves should have evolved a lot in that much time...  They could have put that scene 65 million years ago, while the Earth was scorched after the Chicxulub impact and mammals were about to become dominate.  But that's still a hell of a long term project.  Only way it could make sense would be something like 2001, come in and mess with our apelike ancestors.

Of course all that could be overlooked if the movie was better, a good movie allows for more suspension of belief.

I don't want to turn  this into the religion thread, so take the following as story/theme only, and not a concept that I'm trying to sell anyone: One of the big themes in Prometheus is the concept of God vs. Creationism. The way that some Christians (myself included) maintain a belief in both Creationism and Evolution is the idea that the being that created us was SO omnipotent, that all He needed to do was push the first domino way back in the big bang and everything fell in place in the exact way He wanted. He created humans by setting events in motion in such a precise way, that we evolved as a result of very exact planning. Prometheus is taking that role and placing it in the hands of a super-advanced alien being. So while it's far-fetched to believe that they could have planned everything out THAT well, thematically it works because these aliens essentially have God's fire (And there's the legend of Prometheus again!). 

That still doesn't solve the issue of the plan being way too long term.  Unless you are saying that they themselves have stopped evolving and they have stopped working on their own technology?  Seems to me in 600 million years they could have come up with a "few" new technological tricks that would make their little biology project obsolete.

So even if you wanted to go with that theme it's still not plausible.  The other thing that kills that theme is that they had their accident, if they were so good a planning out 600 million years of a planets evolution, they should have seen their own problems coming.

Not that it really matters, like I said in the "last movie you watched" thread, even if you come up with good explanations for everything it still doesn't fix the problem of having a movie with a shipload of unlikeable characters doing a lot of stupid things.

[Wiccan3]

Awww, I thought it was about the Titan!
Movies about Gods are so popular these days and Prometheus's story could have a few genres depending on how it's written.

Prometheus: The Action Movie. Prometheus, the trickster Titan, creates man from clay and is accused of stealing fire from Mt Olympus.

Prometheus: The Horror Movie. For stealing fire from the God's, Prometheus is on trial. The Verdict: GUILTY. The sentence: Chained to a rock while Zeus's eagle devours Prometheus's live everyday. Every night his liver regenerates. (Like mine after a Guinness pub crawl)

Prometheus: The Romance Movie. Prometheus is rescued from his chains by Hercules. But Zeus had proclaimed that Prometheus must forever be bound to the rock. Hercules then takes one of the links from the chain and along with a piece of the rock and fashions the world's first ring which he presents to Prometheus to wear forever. Ahh, romance.

I had no idea that it would be yet another Alien movie.

[Starman!]

I finally saw it. It's not as bad as people have been saying but it's got some problems. It could be better but it's enjoyable enough.