Prometheus

[crisosphinx]

Spoiler incoming:

I thought prometheus was okay until they were attacked. From there on it was a downhill climb. The thing which broke all immersion for me was when the main-character gets infected with an alien in her stomach and the "robot"/David basically implies that he will give her "a slow painful death" (- as well as bringing dangerous aliens back to earth). She removes the alien with a "brutal cutting" in the capsule and severly wounded stumbles out to join David again as if nothing happened. Is this character suicidal/psychotic or both?

After that I had to pause the film and look up who wrote the script. Oh surprise. One of the writers also wrote the series "Lost". That actually explained a lot.

In my opinion they tried to cram too much nonsense into it; just to call it "mystical" or "mind-boggling". It doesn't really pan out that way though, the story becomes muddled instead and looses its "red-thread". I have nothing against films being mystical - but mysteries have to be planned and tied together through a great net of hints and logic.

I liked the environments though. I can probably recommend seeing this movie once - it's worth that, but I wouldn't see it again.

She didn't understand what was going on. Place yourself in her shoes. You just got impregnated from...? Are you even impregnated? Who knows, your stomach hurts, everything is spinning around you and BAM, you might have hallucinated that David told you he wants what's in your stomach.

She was impregnated during the second (or was it 3rd? Cant remember since I haven't seen the movies in a while...) and, again, the same deal happens to her. Just a different twist of events. She also gets the same deal during the 4th movie, but gains special powers.

To the "Lost" director thing... He planned out the entire series. There's just a lot of filler. I never was a fan of the tv show, but the story development was good. Mystical events and and such, in this movie, had already been planned. There are no plotholes int he movie, no loopholes... Everything in that movie has a reason, just like philosophy. Give an example of the "not planned" mystical part, I'll explain it to you. Otherwise, it just, like a prequel does, sets up for the other movies. If that's the case, then BAM, there you go. Answers already there for you. Think of Starwars and how they did what they did (also, this applies to Cranky, Starwars' science was even more abstract and wrong compared to Prometheus ).

---

Come on - you have a film degree, yet you don't understand science fiction. Science fiction isn't a handwave that you can use to explain anything whenever you feel like it. It's a plausible extrapolation from current science. The more that you can root the science in realism, the better science fiction it is. You have FTL drives because they're absolutely necessary to go anywhere in the solar system at a reasonable speed, and you have cryostasis because people think that it's plausible, and both concepts are also very popular. When you write fiction, you try to do as much as possible, with as small changes as possible, otherwise people will not take a movie seriously.

For science fiction, the alien series is made to look realistic. We have FTL, cryosleep, autodocs, cyborgs, and maybe even aliens (other than xenomorphs), but this tech is described in as realistic of a fashion as possible. It is rooted in current science, and that's what made people relate to it and like it. Nostromo wasn't a space yacht for transdimensional tourists, but a boring ore cargo ship, because that's the most realistic thing that we'd be doing with FTL.

In contrast, Prometheus had advanced GPS mapping systems that didn't work at all, and Frankenstein medicine. It botched every chance that it got in dealing with basic scientific concepts of *today*, and most basic procedures, because the writers had aboslutely no clue whatsoever, how science has worked during the recent century. That website that they made, I bet they wrote/edited that just to cover their asses after the movie flopped, and it still cannot patch all the holes. In fact, the patches are so strained, that they just present new holes: If they can scan the air inside every sealed cervice of a base for alien contaminants, then how come they don't pick up the black goo? "Because... ...science!"?

You say that this movie created jobs, like it's some kind of a feat. Digging a hole is a job, and so is making a successful movie. If these guys would just have hired an actual scientist - even a freaking average nerd - they would have made a successful movie, whose sequel most people won't pirate to see.

I understand Sci Fi perfectly well. Film and sci fi are two ends of an equally messy goo. Film involves you to make specific sacrifices to tell and entire story. I'm not saying they did it 100% correct, but dude, you try making a $130 million dollar film. It's not easy. You have conflict of interest everywhere. The actors will do something stupid every once in a while, the lighting, boom operators, cameramen, sound effects coordinators, special effects makeup artist, concept artists, etc etc etc, have to get everything correct. Then you have 3D animation, texturers, modelers, special effects artist, (the list goes on). They did it their way.

It did create jobs. I'm not saying that it's a feat, but you have to give them credit where credit is due. It wasn't a rancid movie. They didn't pick up the black goo because it wasn't in the open yet. Plus it was inside a sealed room and the goo, if you recall, is DNA. It's not a chemical.

Again, place yourself in their shoes. It's not all about science, it's about human interaction and emotion as well.

If you wanted to see a movie where they just pick up the black goo and head home, where is the cliff hanger, where's the story, where's the drama and action that everyone wants to see? A film is for entertainment purposes, I'm not saying Sci Fi is the reason why they don't have to explain anything, it's the film industry. Again, you try making a film, see how hard it is.




What are you? A science major? Programmer? Whatever it is, you don't seem to understand how to create movies/films, you don't understand how to set one up, how much work it involves, how many revisions it goes through and how much the script and function of the movie will change throughout it's process. People send you critique, tell you to change things, expect more out of you, do this and do that. Eventually, what you have left is a fraction of what you originally had. This is probably what you see from Prometheus.

[Cranky Old Man]

To the "Lost" director thing... He planned out the entire series. There's just a lot of filler.

If you really believe that, then I have just one question: What was the black smoke? ...and if you can answer that question, I have hundreds more.

This is how you write Lost: You have no shame, and feel no responsibility towards the viewers, and then you just make shit up. You can make up aliens, time travel, people saying cryptic stuff, rituals, whatever, and while the viewers will stick around, patiently waiting for explanations for years, you Just Don't Give a Fuck. That's how you write Lost. People will stick around until the final episode, waiting for everything to finally be revealed, and then you just go "...and everything was revealed to the characters, off camera. The End". They you'll get tons and tons of hate mail from people, calling you things like "an emotional terrorist", but again you Just Don't Give a Fuck.

There was no "story development", because there was no story at all. There was just people mysteriously bumping into eachother for no reason. Nothing Was Planned In Lost. It featured dinosaurs, black smoke and mystic number sequences, and nothing had any reason for it. It was all just bullshit to sucker people on a massive scale, and people thought that Lindelof couldn't possibly be that evil, because he must have been aware that the viewers would literally kill him dead if he didn't plan everything, or at least he would lose so much credibility that Hollywood wouldn't hire him again. How wrong we were.

Yes, Star Wars is as fictional and bizarre as you can get, but for its time, it was mature and realistic compared to movies like Flash Gordon, and the first three movies didn't feature too bizarre things. That's generally why fans hate the latter movies: They lack maturity, and were literally for kids, while the first movies were for teens to adults.

[crisosphinx]

To the "Lost" director thing... He planned out the entire series. There's just a lot of filler.

If you really believe that, then I have just one question: What was the black smoke? ...and if you can answer that question, I have hundreds more.

This is how you write Lost: You have no shame, and feel no responsibility towards the viewers, and then you just make shit up. You can make up aliens, time travel, people saying cryptic stuff, rituals, whatever, and while the viewers will stick around, patiently waiting for explanations for years, you Just Don't Give a Fuck. That's how you write Lost. People will stick around until the final episode, waiting for everything to finally be revealed, and then you just go "...and everything was revealed to the characters, off camera. The End". They you'll get tons and tons of hate mail from people, calling you things like "an emotional terrorist", but again you Just Don't Give a Fuck.

There was no "story development", because there was no story at all. There was just people mysteriously bumping into eachother for no reason. Nothing Was Planned In Lost. It featured dinosaurs, black smoke and mystic number sequences, and nothing had any reason for it. It was all just bullshit to sucker people on a massive scale, and people thought that Lindelof couldn't possibly be that evil, because he must have been aware that the viewers would literally kill him dead if he didn't plan everything, or at least he would lose so much credibility that Hollywood wouldn't hire him again. How wrong we were.

Yes, Star Wars is as fictional and bizarre as you can get, but for its time, it was mature and realistic compared to movies like Flash Gordon, and the first three movies didn't feature too bizarre things. That's generally why fans hate the latter movies: They lack maturity, and were literally for kids, while the first movies were for teens to adults.

Did you read that I hated Lost? I watched bits and pieces from each episode, enough to conjure the story, but too much filler to read into it. It's like an episode of the Americanized version of DBZ. You're bloody right it was cryptic and the show was interesting, to some extent, but I don't remember seeing any black smoke.

Glad we agree on Starwars. Never watched Flash Gordon, because the movie was uninteresting to me. The other reasons people hated the latter Starwars was due to Lucas literally sitting on his ass in the building next door to where the actors were, telling a guy/ talking through walkie-talkie to tell them what they are suppose to do while he watches 3 monitors going, "hmm... oh.. yeah.. that looks golden... yeah" was his idea of a good director.

Lost, from what I can recall, was interesting the first couple episodes of every season, but was not enough to keep me interested. From what I saw, it's a story about people who have had an experience of catastrophe together, wonder where everyone else is, find them, find out they are being backstabbed, all due the "FATE". I think that series was just a big middle finger to people who had too much time to watch TV, but hey, it was entertainment.

Slowly, but surely we are agreeing on stuff. Now, I like to see how people feel about films and what their points of view are, on things. My feeling, from a filmography standpoint, was that the movie was a success in many points. Just like all the other alien films, the "Science" never really made sense, but that's ok, it's a different universe. Philosophically, it was a little overdone, but it was ok. Religiously, it was a bit annoying. Actor-wise, eh...

[Cranky Old Man]

I understand Sci Fi perfectly well. Film and sci fi are two ends of an equally messy goo. Film involves you to make specific sacrifices to tell and entire story. I'm not saying they did it 100% correct, but dude, you try making a $130 million dollar film. It's not easy. You have conflict of interest everywhere. The actors will do something stupid every once in a while, the lighting, boom operators, cameramen, sound effects coordinators, special effects makeup artist, concept artists, etc etc etc, have to get everything correct. Then you have 3D animation, texturers, modelers, special effects artist, (the list goes on). They did it their way.

It did create jobs. I'm not saying that it's a feat, but you have to give them credit where credit is due. It wasn't a rancid movie. They didn't pick up the black goo because it wasn't in the open yet. Plus it was inside a sealed room and the goo, if you recall, is DNA. It's not a chemical.

Again, place yourself in their shoes. It's not all about science, it's about human interaction and emotion as well.

If you wanted to see a movie where they just pick up the black goo and head home, where is the cliff hanger, where's the story, where's the drama and action that everyone wants to see? A film is for entertainment purposes, I'm not saying Sci Fi is the reason why they don't have to explain anything, it's the film industry. Again, you try making a film, see how hard it is.

What are you? A science major? Programmer? Whatever it is, you don't seem to understand how to create movies/films, you don't understand how to set one up, how much work it involves, how many revisions it goes through and how much the script and function of the movie will change throughout it's process. People send you critique, tell you to change things, expect more out of you, do this and do that. Eventually, what you have left is a fraction of what you originally had. This is probably what you see from Prometheus.

Yes, it's difficult to make an entire film, but the thing that you start with, is a good story, that is written by a good writer. If you simply ask for a good Alien story, you'd get people throwing stories at you in the street, for free. The reason why people think that a movie sucks, is because they know that they could have made it so much better.
When it comes to Alien, the creativity process is simple:
1. Hire a guy with ideas.
2. Hire a scientist (or three).
3. Lock them both up in a room.
4. Let the guy with ideas come up with some good space horror.
5. Have the scientist talk sense into him.

Once you've done that, and made sure that you'll invest money in a story worth investing money in, THEN you make a movie. THEN you can worry about boom mikes and acting and all that, because that's just minor details by comparison. The story is the most important part of a movie. In science fiction, how realistic the science is, is the most important part of the story.

It's not goo. Give me a budget and a popular franchise, and I'll make you a $130 million dollar film that at least has a good story in it. The special effects were awesome in Prometheus, but it's not hard for me to hire that studio. At least I'll come up with a more realistic story. I mean come on: There are four people, and one of them has a map that he shows off. Which ones do you NOT send off to get lost? There are things in this movie that a five year old could have made better.
Conflicts of interest, you say? Send them to my office. If Tom Cruise has a "conflict of interest" with me, he can take a hike. He'll never work for me again. If anybody has any "conflicts of interest" with me, they can fuck off, because I'm the writer. As long as I'm paying their salaries, they're paid to shut up and do as I say.

Yes, the scans didn't pick up the black goo because it wasn't in the open yet, because it was inside a sealed room, and it was biological. ...so again: Why do they remove their space helmets? If they are going to go into closed spaces, and they're going to open sealed doors, and there is such a thing as biological contaminants and airborne parasites, that the scanners will fail to pick up, then why risc infecting not only themselves, but the entire expedition, just because they feel like breathing without a helmet? I say again: These people behave like rednecks. If you're a scientist on a mission, you stay sharp and you stay focused and you are very aware of possible dangers. You follow protocol, and you're smart and professional, because if you upset sombody in outer space, there's no police around to save you from cabin fever.

There's plenty of adventure that can happen even if the people are smart. Most of the stupid things that happened, didn't need to happen that way at all.

Again, a film may be hard work, but you only start filming once the story is worked out. From that point, it's only a matter of scene angles. I do not care what people would think of my story - if they don't like it, they can find other movies. Actors will read the entire script BEFORE accepting or rejecting a role contract.

[MyRedNeptune]

Did you read that I hated Lost? I watched bits and pieces from each episode, enough to conjure the story, but too much filler to read into it. It's like an episode of the Americanized version of DBZ. You're bloody right it was cryptic and the show was interesting, to some extent, but I don't remember seeing any black smoke.

The black smoke is... I don't even know what it is. But I think it's supposed to be the antagonist.


I gave up on Lost after a while. At the rate it was going at, they could as well introduce talking man-fish the next episode and it would still "make sense". And there I was hoping it would evolve into something Jules Verne-esque or of equal proportion.

[crisosphinx]

Yes, it's difficult to make an entire film, but the thing that you start with, is a good story, that is written by a good writer. If you simply ask for a good Alien story, you'd get people throwing stories at you in the street, for free. The reason why people think that a movie sucks, is because they know that they could have made it so much better.
When it comes to Alien, the creativity process is simple:

1. Hire a guy with ideas.

2. Hire a scientist (or three).

3. Lock them both up in a room.

4. Let the guy with ideas come up with some good space horror.

5. Have the scientist talk sense into him.



Once you've done that, and made sure that you'll invest money in a story worth investing money in, THEN you make a movie. THEN you can worry about boom mikes and acting and all that, because that's just minor details by comparison. The story is the most important part of a movie. In science fiction, how realistic the science is, is the most important part of the story.



It's not goo. Give me a budget and a popular franchise, and I'll make you a $130 million dollar film that at least has a good story in it. The special effects were awesome in Prometheus, but it's not hard for me to hire that studio. At least I'll come up with a more realistic story. I mean come on: There are four people, and one of them has a map that he shows off. Which ones do you NOT send off to get lost? There are things in this movie that a five year old could have made better.

Conflicts of interest, you say? Send them to my office. If Tom Cruise has a "conflict of interest" with me, he can take a hike. He'll never work for me again. If anybody has any "conflicts of interest" with me, they can fuck off, because I'm the writer. As long as I'm paying their salaries, they're paid to shut up and do as I say.



Yes, the scans didn't pick up the black goo because it wasn't in the open yet, because it was inside a sealed room, and it was biological. ...so again: Why do they remove their space helmets? If they are going to go into closed spaces, and they're going to open sealed doors, and there is such a thing as biological contaminants and airborne parasites, that the scanners will fail to pick up, then why risc infecting not only themselves, but the entire expedition, just because they feel like breathing without a helmet? I say again: These people behave like rednecks. If you're a scientist on a mission, you stay sharp and you stay focused and you are very aware of possible dangers. You follow protocol, and you're smart and professional, because if you upset sombody in outer space, there's no police around to save you from cabin fever.



There's plenty of adventure that can happen even if the people are smart. Most of the stupid things that happened, didn't need to happen that way at all.



Again, a film may be hard work, but you only start filming once the story is worked out. From that point, it's only a matter of scene angles. I do not care what people would think of my story - if they don't like it, they can find other movies. Actors will read the entire script BEFORE accepting or rejecting a role contract.

There usually not enough budget for extra people who won't bother to help out for free, AKA a scientist. They have things to spend better time on. That's most of the logic right there. With a movie like Prometheus, all the budget went into costume, prop, makeup and special effects on top of all the sound designers, modelers, texturers, etc. A lead animator in that industry will get paid roughly 800-1k for a second of FINISIHED animation, a lot of the other people will be paid roughly anywhere between 30k (new hire, not as much experience) to 60k for a salary. Then you have to pay for all the facilities, programs, food, etc. Actors usually get paid way more than they should.

So if you have 130 million, you'll most likely blow through most of it in the first couple months of producing a film. Since most movies are a year process of filming, in about 6 months, you'll be down at least 90 million. That's just to pay all the people you already have. Then add in all the people you haven't paid yet, who haven't worked yet. Films are expensive. They are hard work. Hiring randoms is a waste of money in the directors and producers eyes. You truly have to factor in every bit of the production before you can say "oh they should've just hired some scientists who would have needed to be paid at least a hundred thousand because you're wasting their time and they might talk about the movie and leak information if not bribed properly" (everyone who works for the film has to sign a contract, a scientist offering ideas is not someone who is working on the film, they are a paid extra, in film terms).

[Acies]

Spoiler incoming:

I thought prometheus was okay until they were attacked. From there on it was a downhill climb. The thing which broke all immersion for me was when the main-character gets infected with an alien in her stomach and the "robot"/David basically implies that he will give her "a slow painful death" (- as well as bringing dangerous aliens back to earth). She removes the alien with a "brutal cutting" in the capsule and severly wounded stumbles out to join David again as if nothing happened. Is this character suicidal/psychotic or both?

After that I had to pause the film and look up who wrote the script. Oh surprise. One of the writers also wrote the series "Lost". That actually explained a lot.

In my opinion they tried to cram too much nonsense into it; just to call it "mystical" or "mind-boggling". It doesn't really pan out that way though, the story becomes muddled instead and looses its "red-thread". I have nothing against films being mystical - but mysteries have to be planned and tied together through a great net of hints and logic.

I liked the environments though. I can probably recommend seeing this movie once - it's worth that, but I wouldn't see it again.

She didn't understand what was going on. Place yourself in her shoes. You just got impregnated from...? Are you even impregnated? Who knows, your stomach hurts, everything is spinning around you and BAM, you might have hallucinated that David told you he wants what's in your stomach.

She was impregnated during the second (or was it 3rd? Cant remember since I haven't seen the movies in a while...) and, again, the same deal happens to her. Just a different twist of events. She also gets the same deal during the 4th movie, but gains special powers.

To the "Lost" director thing... He planned out the entire series. There's just a lot of filler. I never was a fan of the tv show, but the story development was good. Mystical events and and such, in this movie, had already been planned. There are no plotholes int he movie, no loopholes... Everything in that movie has a reason, just like philosophy. Give an example of the "not planned" mystical part, I'll explain it to you. Otherwise, it just, like a prequel does, sets up for the other movies. If that's the case, then BAM, there you go. Answers already there for you. Think of Starwars and how they did what they did (also, this applies to Cranky, Starwars' science was even more abstract and wrong compared to Prometheus ).

---

Your explanation isn't satisfying from my point of view :] In my view it's "grabbing at straws", just to hold some sort of logic together.

If I were to place myself in her shoes I'd stay as far away as possible from someone whom tried to kill me. If I somehow convince myself that I hallucinated I'd still take precautions ~ I have a will to live. If it is so in the movie though, that would go under under my prior thesis on the character - "psychotic". At which she would show signs of not being in "prime mental health" (which wasn't shown in prometheus), which in turn brings me to my next point.

In the Alien movie where the character has been impregnated with an alien (even though circumstances are entirely different) the character shows signs of not being in "prime mental health". That aside, in Prometheus it's not the impregnation itself but the (lack of) logical reaction to her almost being killed by someone else. At the core of any "sane" living thing is the will to live.

I don't have the patience to watch the movie yet again to pick-up on things I didn't like about it. You would most likely be able to supply me with explanations which seem logical to you - but far-fetched for me.

What I meant with the comparison of the "Lost series" and "Prometheus" having the same writer is that they both introduce a lot of new elements and actions just to make it exciting. Often too much, at which story loses its focus and just becomes muddled (applies both to lost and prometheus).

To the "Lost" director thing... He planned out the entire series. There's just a lot of filler. I never was a fan of the tv show, but the story development was good.

I watched bits and pieces from each episode, enough to conjure the story, but too much filler to read into it. It's like an episode of the Americanized version of DBZ. You're bloody right it was cryptic and the show was interesting, to some extent, but I don't remember seeing any black smoke.

From those quotes I can deduct that you haven't seen the series :]

I have seen everything except the last/half of the last season.

In the end though there is no "right or wrong". What you may see as "plausable" I might not. Judgement and interpretation form the experience of the movie - trying to prove what we believe with a logical discussion won't get us far. Discussing is fun though :]

[J.R.S.S.]

Film is the gateway to many worlds, and it's a gateway we control. While our thoughts differ on the usage, the end result is always the same. In the end, we all respect the art.

[crisosphinx]

Film is the gateway to many worlds, and it's a gateway we control. While our thoughts differ on the usage, the end result is always the same. In the end, we all respect the art.

Quite. Whether it be fantastical, realism or another, film provides the expanse into a different dimension. Thought provoking, perhaps, but for all of eternity, it shall open wondrous worlds and life. It's a bit like what life is, as a simple gateway to undiscovered hopes, dreams, happiness and expression.

[Cranky Old Man]

There usually not enough budget for extra people who won't bother to help out for free, AKA a scientist. They have things to spend better time on. That's most of the logic right there. With a movie like Prometheus, all the budget went into costume, prop, makeup and special effects on top of all the sound designers, modelers, texturers, etc. A lead animator in that industry will get paid roughly 800-1k for a second of FINISIHED animation, a lot of the other people will be paid roughly anywhere between 30k (new hire, not as much experience) to 60k for a salary. Then you have to pay for all the facilities, programs, food, etc. Actors usually get paid way more than they should.

So if you have 130 million, you'll most likely blow through most of it in the first couple months of producing a film. Since most movies are a year process of filming, in about 6 months, you'll be down at least 90 million. That's just to pay all the people you already have. Then add in all the people you haven't paid yet, who haven't worked yet. Films are expensive. They are hard work. Hiring randoms is a waste of money in the directors and producers eyes. You truly have to factor in every bit of the production before you can say "oh they should've just hired some scientists who would have needed to be paid at least a hundred thousand because you're wasting their time and they might talk about the movie and leak information if not bribed properly" (everyone who works for the film has to sign a contract, a scientist offering ideas is not someone who is working on the film, they are a paid extra, in film terms).

So basically what you're saying is that they blew their budget. That's a rookie accountant mistake, and usually you can always loan money from the movie company if you really need it. Also, while scientists are expensive, nerds aren't. If you replaced Lindelof with a nerd, I bet you'd have a better and cheaper movie.
Also, the movie makers need to get their priorities straight: Foremost, a movie (Well, most movies.) is supposed to make sense. That's all it really needs to do. Everything else is secondary. There are people who have built careers on doing nothing but complain about movie plots that doesn't make sense. You don't see anybody building careers over complaining about lighting, sound quality or the wardrobe, because that's not as important as the plot. (CGI has a niche too, and the quality of the acting, so those come second to the story making sense.) A plot doesn't cost money. There's a surplus of plots and writers in the world, and most of them can write better stuff than this plot.