PROMETHEUS with spoilers

[DerickA]

Not that there's anything much to talk about in regards to something I thought was pretty straightforward, but the sci-fi nerds are foaming at the mouth on Ain't It Cool. The one big thing I agree with is how that last shot was pretty patronizing. Someone pointed out that the xenomorphs were dormant for over 2000 years on the planet they go to in ALIEN. Is that true? Is that a glaring mistake?

[Tom B]

Everything looked great, Fassbender was really good and the first half was fine but then it just totally lost me. There was such a wacky and immediate shift in tone, what with the guy getting flamethrowered to death, then the squid monster birth and the mohawk guy turning up as a zombie. That whole final expedition with Guy Pearce in his old person make-up and everything was just nuts, I had no idea or interest in why people were doing what they were doing. Did the girl know that David was essentially responsible for killing her boyfriend and putting a squid in her tummy? Or did she not care? It was just silly but still being Very Important And Serious. The goofy-looking giant turning up and going crazy was very funny though, so well done to Riddles for some top-class chuckles there.

ALSO:
The magic dream viewing machine.
One of David's primary directives being to find a cannister of alien goop and feed it to someone.
The magic self-surgery machine in Charlize Theron's room.
The magic self-surgery machine in Charlize Theron's room being calibrated for male patients despite Charlie Theron being a female lady (or was this meant to play into Weyland being on board? Like the machine was intended for him? Or an indication that she was a robot? OR WHAT?)
Everything involving Guy Pearce.
Everything involving the Noomi Dragon Tattoo's dead dad / Christianity / inability to have kids.


I've not read any AICN talkbacks or anything, but is this along the lines of what people are complaining about? Or are people more concerned with how it fits in with the other ALIEN films?

[ExpendablesFan]

No one wants Guy Pearce in a movie more than me but if someone is going to just play an old person, cast an awesome old person. He looked like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble.

[Luke Erik]

What puzzled me was that the engineer in ALIEN had a chest burst, but in PROMETHEUS the "same" engineer in the same setting makes it out for a while without removing his armor.

"Plenty of ships" indeed, but this was the only part of the movie that didn't set well with me.

The line "You are a shit pilot" made the entire theater (all twelve of them)  got the biggest laugh. 

[Brandon]

No one wants Guy Pearce in a movie more than me but if someone is going to just play an old person, cast an awesome old person. He looked like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble.

He looked like Old Biff from Back to the Future 2, especially when he called the weird pale giant a butt-head.

[Wolfe]

I didn't think much of it. For all the talk about how it was about ideas, it pretty much wasn't at all. It just grafts the notion of humans being engineered by aliens onto a pretty standard creature feature without exploring it in any real way. It doesn't give us any insight on why the Space Jockeys made us and then wanted to wipe us out. It just puts a pin in that until the sequel, which will never be made after this movie drops off a cliff next weekend. To get to the point where it looks like there might be some sort of elaboration on their motives and then to have it just start beating everyone up was irritating. You could see Lindelof's "we'll figure this out later, except probably we won't" fingerprints all over it.

And there was so much ridiculousness. I laughed out loud in the cesarean scene when the claw popped out of the ceiling looking exactly like those stuffed animal games in arcades (and also when it stapled the living shit out of her). Also, what was up with the dead guy out in front of the ship springing to life as a superpowered zombie monster? What is something that dumb doing in an ALIEN movie? And pretty much everyone but Elba and Fassbender gave a spotty performance, particularly Theron, who's a little terrible in it. There's a moment toward the end where she's running to the escape pod and sort of flails and shrieks that also made me laugh. And the Jockeys being big bluish-white humans was stupid-looking.

It seemed to me like the movie was originally written to line up much more directly with ALIEN before someone in the mix started thinking franchise. I bet there was an earlier draft where that was the planet from ALIEN and that was the same Jockey and ship the Nostromo discovers. I wish they had kept it like that. I mean, even if they do make another one, what are whatshername and Fassbender's head going to do when they land on the Space Jockey planet? It didn't seem like they thought that through one bit. I would also guess that originally the movie had the standard facehuggers and chestbursters in it before they decided to distance themselves from ALIEN for no reason and use weird snake/squid offshoot versions and the black oil from THE X-FILES instead.   

But hey, better than AVP.

[Wolfe]

He looked like Old Biff from Back to the Future 2, especially when he called the weird pale giant a butt-head.

YES. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what it was that he was reminding me of, and it was absolutely Old Biff.

[Wolfe]

One of David's primary directives being to find a cannister of alien goop and feed it to someone.

Yeah, what the hell was that about? If the mission was for Pearce to get the Space Jockeys to extend his life (no idea why he thought that was a viable plan at all), then why did Fassbender bother with putting the black oil in that dude's drink? How did that help their mission in any way? How did he even know what would happen?

This movie is not good.

[ExpendablesFan]

He looked like Old Biff from Back to the Future 2, especially when he called the weird pale giant a butt-head.

Yes, good call.

[ExpendablesFan]

Who was Fassbender talking to telling him to try harder in his cool yellow visor if Weyland was asleep?

[ExpendablesFan]

The magic self-surgery machine in Charlize Theron's room being calibrated for male patients despite Charlie Theron being a female lady (or was this meant to play into Weyland being on board? Like the machine was intended for him? Or an indication that she was a robot? OR WHAT?)

Not to mention there were two other females on board.

[ExpendablesFan]

We should really rename this thread, The Making Fun of Prometheus Thread. I have a lot of material. This movie was cool looking, but dumb as a rock.

[Wolfe]

Why was that scientist guy acting like the creepy alien cobra was an adorable bunny rabbit?

[DerickA]

What radio channel were the geologists on when Idris Elba tells everybody to come back to the ship?

[DerickA]

No one wants Guy Pearce in a movie more than me but if someone is going to just play an old person, cast an awesome old person. He looked like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble.

Do you think they went after Peter O'Toole? There is no way they cast a young person to play this character just so they could do viral ads of him young.