Author Topic: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within  (Read 12915 times)

andygates

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #50 on: 11 June, 2012, 01:33:42 pm »
Utter bobbins.

Some of the baffling stupidity might be redeemed by a longer cut, and there were moments: "Why did your kind make me?" "Because we could, I guess." "Imagine how disappointed you would be to find that" is awesome and will stick with me, and the autodoc was deliciously grim -- but so recklessly dumb and irrational and silly.  Everything was puppet to the Plot, and the plot was meh and holey.

The Alien universe has always had annoying vagueness about it: is this the only life they've found? We assume not from the Sulacco "another bug hunt" line but nothing sentient, obviously.  What sort of tech are they sporting?  Why do they land on the exact place the plot is waiting?  GAH!

Etc, etc. 

For pretty-but-a-let-down, it may take the crown from Sucker Punch.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
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Wascally Weasel

  • Slayer of Dragons and killer of threads.
Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #51 on: 11 June, 2012, 02:27:21 pm »
Yes but in defence of Sucker Punch at least when you are seeing a dragon and a WW2 bomber dogfighting you know that the film isn’t meant to make sense.

LEE

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #52 on: 11 June, 2012, 04:14:09 pm »

redshift

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #53 on: 12 June, 2012, 12:43:51 am »
I thought it was going to get ugly when the viral campaign became so self-important.  When the 'hidden websites' thing started, I really knew, and I'd got bored of the campaign by then.

I went to see it and laughed like a drain.  I think I enjoyed the spectacle because I'd already twigged it wasn't going to be the film everyone wanted it to be.  Like I said elsewhere, it was beautifully made, but content-free media is the new cinematic experience.  Welcome to the future.

Avengers was a better movie, and considering the premise of that, that's saying something.
L
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Wascally Weasel

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #54 on: 12 June, 2012, 08:05:24 am »
Prometheus: The Alien franchise jumps the squid.

Charlotte

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #55 on: 12 June, 2012, 08:09:04 am »
I merged the threads - no film this poor deserves two...
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Kim

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #56 on: 12 June, 2012, 02:55:51 pm »
On which note, has anyone seen Sarah Palin vs The Space Nazis yet?

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #57 on: 12 June, 2012, 03:28:30 pm »
I think the thing that annoys me most about Prometheus is that it made me stop gushing about how good Avengers was, to gush about how bad it was.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
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AndyK

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #58 on: 12 June, 2012, 04:44:04 pm »
Iron Sky was better than Prometheus.

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #59 on: 12 June, 2012, 10:48:14 pm »
Space Jesus and cut scenes.

Why was Engie so grumpy? Why were they so keen to wipe us out? Because the Engies sent Space Jesus and we nailed him to a tree.  No, really. 

(I'd admire the chutzpah of that in a five-page short in F&FS or Astounding, and it's been done and done, but I can see why they cut that. The laughter would have drowned out the tentacle-thrashing)

Why was Guy Pearce in rubbish makeup the old guy?  Original plan was to have Fassbot read his dreams too, with lots of establishing character stuff featuring Young Weyland, but they cut that after signing the contract. 

Neither of which fill me with huggy warm glows, but, you know...

Quote
Questions...

I no have answers. I just do eyes.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
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ian

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #60 on: 13 June, 2012, 09:12:23 pm »
I quite enjoyed the spectacle (especially in Imax 3D eyepokeyvision) but, yeah, the story. As far as I could tell, basically
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LEE

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #61 on: 14 June, 2012, 12:02:06 am »
Space Jesus and cut scenes.

Why was Engie so grumpy? Why were they so keen to wipe us out? Because the Engies sent Space Jesus and we nailed him to a tree.  No, really. 

(I'd admire the chutzpah of that in a five-page short in F&FS or Astounding, and it's been done and done, but I can see why they cut that. The laughter would have drowned out the tentacle-thrashing)

Why was Guy Pearce in rubbish makeup the old guy?  Original plan was to have Fassbot read his dreams too, with lots of establishing character stuff featuring Young Weyland, but they cut that after signing the contract. 

Neither of which fill me with huggy warm glows, but, you know...

Quote
Questions...

I no have answers. I just do eyes.

Aha..THAT was Guy Pierce, I forgot he was in it.  I HATE young people made-up to look old.  It almost never works (it certainly looked ridiculous in this case, nice ass for a 90 year old I thought).  Why not get an old bloke to play an old bloke?

Now I know why Ridley only allowed the principle actors to read the script for an hour before returning it.

Jakob

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #62 on: 24 June, 2012, 01:16:06 am »
Just came back from the cinema and while it was visually stunning, the story was a load of tosh. Plot-holes the size of a galaxy, completely irrational characters, etc. Very disappointed.

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #63 on: 24 June, 2012, 10:31:26 pm »
Just got back from seeing it...

Oh dear. Plot holes you could drive a bus through and annoying (stupid) characters you wanted to punch (repeatedly).

Pretty disappointing all round  :hand:

ian

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #64 on: 25 June, 2012, 11:36:46 am »
I think something to do with the ten phases of Hollywood scriptwriting:

  • They option your story / script/ whatever. You are very happy. Really happy. You are checking flights to LA and entertaining thoughts of hot tubs in the hills.
  • Famous directors are reading your script. There's talk of actors. People you have heard of. Oh my.
  • They want to do some minor changes. 'Tighten it up,' that kind of thing. Your are cool with that, they know what they are doing. You are a neophyte in the movie world.
  • The rewrite (yes, it's now a 'rewrite') is being done by the producer's nephew. OK, he was probably bought up by the movies. It'll be fine.
  • It's a bit of hack job. But they at least sent it back to you for an opinion. You do so. The creative process is, after all, iterative.
  • Silence. No more further communications on the script. Your agent tells you this normal. Entire teams will be working to turn your script into the director's final vision. However, he's going to have chase the studio, because you haven't been paid.
  • They're making the movie. You still haven't been paid.
  • Final production. You're almost happy enough to forget you haven't been paid.
  • Release date. It's still your baby. Assemble friends and family. First night tickets (paid for yourself).
  • Two painfully long hours later, you watch the credits roll like the last rites. They even spelt your name wrong. At least you can pretend that it wasn't you that wrote it.

Tigerrr

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #65 on: 25 June, 2012, 11:46:45 am »
This film suffers from the same problem that underlies so much of american culture. Its the assumption that the look of things, and the pace of it will be enough to satisfy. Its why you get supersized sandwiches that taste of nothing much, why the join between disneyland and real america is so hard to spot, and why american sports have goals every 10 seconds but are completely boring.
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LEE

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #66 on: 25 June, 2012, 01:21:37 pm »
and why american sports have goals every 10 seconds but are completely boring.

Except Baseball where nothing happens for hours but is very enjoyable.

I don't think any Hollywood film gets released without substantial "focus group" surveys.  You are trying to make a epic, thought-provoking, film whilst trying to hold the attention of some middle American teenager (with his baseball cap on the wrong way around).

Perhaps this sort of film is best made by the French with a low budget.  Prometheus looked great but I expect everyone who has so far commented on it would trade its $200 million good looks for a truly thought-provoking $20 million storyline.

Wascally Weasel

  • Slayer of Dragons and killer of threads.
Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #67 on: 25 June, 2012, 03:06:27 pm »
“Sometimes you do your best work with a gun to your head”.

I wonder how much a big budget really helped this story?  One of the many things that has made certain films so successful has been the way that filmmakers have had to work to tell their story within a limited budget, this is what made Alien so damn good in the first place.  It’s the editing in Jaws that makes a lot of the impact for me, which was done in part to distract people from what would otherwise have been an obvious crap fake shark. 

I also think that Ridley Scott has become much too dependent on the post-theatre edit to tell his version of a film.  I think he is right in that people have more time to watch a film at home and are less affected by length but I think that means that he has lost some of the tightness and consistent internal logic of his earlier films, as well as tension and believability.

Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, of which I am a big fan, was somewhat mangled in its studio release – not just deleted scenes but deleted entire characters, story threads and a completely different emphasis in others - including all of the opening scenes set in France which are markedly different and less clumsily anti-clerical than in the theatrical release.  The motivations of many central characters are completely different and more adult in the extended edition and I think of all of Ridley Scott’s films to date (up until Prometheus) he felt that the studio editing of this film had destroyed its meaning most (he makes quite an impassioned speech for him as an intro to the extended DVD edition decrying the numerous studio forced edits).

Part of the problem of Kingdom of Heaven was that the studio really wanted it to be Gladiator II whereas that wasn’t the film Scott had made at all, although you wouldn’t know it from the trailers.

I do wonder what an extended, more adult Prometheus cut might look like but I guess I would say that I did enjoy the theatre cut of Kingdom of Heaven when I first saw it*, despite thinking it flawed but I didn’t really enjoy Prometheus the first time round, other than enjoying the visuals as many others have said.


*So much so that I ended up at the off-licence in my armour, very drunk and buying more wine.  The Director’s Cut of Robin Hood couldn’t rescue that film, likewise the extended cut of Gladiator was a cynical studio cash in, which just adds in some deleted scenes (and which were scenes that Scott was perfectly ok with losing; he is on record as saying that the original theatre edit of Gladiator is effectively the Director’s cut).

Jakob

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #68 on: 25 June, 2012, 08:45:11 pm »
Why american sports have goals every 10 seconds but are completely boring.

Basketball aside, which other American sports has goals every 10 seconds?

Football? No. Hockey? No, Baseball? No.

AndyK

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #69 on: 25 June, 2012, 08:54:51 pm »
Why american sports have goals every 10 seconds but are completely boring.

Basketball aside, which other American sports has goals every 10 seconds?

FootballRugby in padding? No. Hockey? No, Baseball rounders? No.

FTFY.  ;)

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #70 on: 25 June, 2012, 08:55:22 pm »
Perhaps this sort of film is best made by the French with a low budget.  Prometheus looked great but I expect everyone who has so far commented on it would trade its $200 million good looks for a truly thought-provoking $20 million storyline.

Add some Canadians: for $30m you can get Splice, not perfect but good stuff and Dren rocks. 

Or by the British: Moon is great, and cost £5m.

Or by the Finns and Australians. Iron Sky was utterly dumb and delightful, had a third act that was actually pretty deep, and cost €7.5m. 

There's plenty of good stuff out there not relying on a jillion dollar budget and a script mangled to anodyne blether.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
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Jakob

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #71 on: 25 June, 2012, 09:36:42 pm »
District 9 cost around $30mil and still got nominated for a VFX oscar...however, it's a rarity.

Prometheus problem was using the scriptwriter from 'Lost'.

Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #72 on: 26 June, 2012, 09:47:27 am »
No-one has suggested that Weyland's "daughter" might have been a robot too...

Tigerrr

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #73 on: 26 June, 2012, 07:56:51 pm »
Why american sports have goals every 10 seconds but are completely boring.

Basketball aside, which other American sports has goals every 10 seconds?

Football? No. Hockey? No, Baseball? No.

Hmm you may be right. I have absolutely no idea what I was trying to say. No idea at all. 
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Gus

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Re: Prometheus - spoiler warnings within
« Reply #74 on: 26 June, 2012, 08:05:38 pm »
No-one has suggested that Weyland's "daughter" might have been a robot too...
Didn't the Captain of the Prometheus suggest that ??