Heh. Well, yes. I’m just saying, I really like the idea of a movie that’s about what would happen if this guy actually met aliens, and it’s frustrating that I can’t tell if that’s what this movie is about or not.
Finally got around to watching this movie, I’d heard bad things about it but watched it with an open mind.
I’m not particularly difficult to please and can accept characters doing strange and illogical things in an unfamiliar high-pressure situation but, wow, just wow, I’m amazed the Prometheus didn’t implode like an empty tin can given the neutronium level of density inside.
I can just imagine a deleted scene after they have woken up but before they landed.
“OK, glad you’re all here, as you’re already aware this crew has been carefully selected to maximise tension and minimise efficiency…”
“Shut up Captain! I don’t know why we even have to listen to you anyway!”
“Exactly, as I was about to say we need to make sure that this mission fails in spectacular fashion, you’re already been briefed about behaving in completely irrational and illogical ways when ‘on the ground’, anyone have any other ideas?”
“Well I was kind of planning to act like a five-year old spoiled child who has had his toys taken away”
“Excellent, anyone else?”
“If I find anything weird, alien and dangerous looking down there I’m going to poke it with a stick.”
“Good, good, try to get as many other people killed with you as possible”
“Captain, I thought you might abandon your post at a completely inconvenient time and in a manner inconsistent with your character portrayal up until that point”
“That’s a good idea, I’ll make a note of that.”
“I just thought I’d talk in a completely incomprehensible thick Scottish accent”
“Sorry? I didn’t quite make that out, anyway, bear what I’ve said in mind, by the way, make sure you are all rude and hostile to David for no apparent reason and David, you’re doing just fine on the whole ‘creepy and supercilious’ thing, keep it up”
“Thank you Sir”
“OK, lets go screw this up!”
I think my favourite bit was female researcher Shaw completely negating the heroic sacrifice she’d just talked three of her comrades into making about ten minutes before.
“Actually, I think I’ll go and talk to these homicidal maniacs who just tried to kill me and wiped out my entire crew”
“Are you sure thats wise?”
“Of course, I’m sure they’re actually really nice!”
Ummm, they may have changed their mind about exterminating the human race before but that just means they can change it back again. I can just see the conversation when she rocks up in a stolen ship.
“Where did you say you’re from? Earth?..Earth…why is that so…ah! I thought we’d wiped you guys out millenia ago! Dave, hey Dave! Warm up the planet-killers we have a little house-cleaning to do.”
And personally I am so frikking sick of sci-fi movies being nothing more than haunted houses in space, walking around darkened corridors with only torchlight for illumination stopped being scary a long time ago, if it ever was.
It’s a Ridely Scott film, so I refuse to believe that there aren’t valid reasons for all the choices.
If humans acted stupidly, its because part of the story being told is that humans are stupid (in their pride and technology). The story draws on myth and religion quite openly but also with some sophistication and complexity. So rather than get bogged down in criticising the details, I prefer to stand back and try to see the larger story that is being told, and hoping to God that all he niggling questions will be answered in the next installment.
The thing is, I don’t know about you, but unlike Ridley Scott I’ve actually met human beings before, and while lots of them are plenty stupid, they’re not *that *stupid.
I’ll say the same thing here I say about Starship Troopers: when you make a bad movie on purpose, you’re still making a bad movie. There’s a huge difference between a bunch of space truckies breaking quarantine because they’re afraid their co-worker is going to die and a biologist seeing a space cobra rear up and spread its hood and not recognising that as a sign to back the fuck off. The former is a realistic and understandable character flaw, the latter is just an idiot plot where people commit suicide because the plot demands it.
OK. Do I need to link you to some Youtube Epic Fail videos? With motorbike surfing? homemade gasoline bombs? I thought not 
Actually the crew on the original Alien movie ship could also be called very stupid - so stupidity is a tradition of the Alien franchise, right? The only difference is in magnitude.
I could fanwank explanations for most of the ‘stupidity’ in the latest movie, but, it would be easily dismissed because there’s no evidence to support any explanation.
I thought Starship Troopers was an OK movie. Probably because I’ve never read the work upon which it was based. But the movie is not objectively bad. So far as I can tell, the only people who really hate it are the people who wanted the movie to be based on the book. I understand that standpoint very well so I don’t blame them. I would almost certainly feel the same if I had ever read the original.
Blockbuster movies have an unspoken promise that humans always do the right thing, even when what seemed wrong at first only later turned out to be right. Or, if not ethically right, then at least justifiable from the standpoint of the ends justifying the means.
But unlike in movies, in reality humans don’t always do the right thing, whether it be by stupidity, carelessness or malice.
And sometimes, things go to shit.
It would pretty exceptional story-telling to reasonably explain all the bizarre actions in the movie, as I said I’m perfectly willing to accept people making strange and illogical choices under unfamilar and high-pressure situations but this went way beyond that.
If you are financing and preparing such a mission wouldn’t you select a crew that got along and were competent in their respective fields for a start.
If the humans are stupid the Engineers aren’t much better, ‘superior species’ indeed, I’m not seeing much evidence of it.
In the scene with the alien navigation system he seems to be genuinely experiencing joy and wonder regarding it. I read the novelisation of the Aliens movie a long time ago and I recall Bishop pausing to admire the pretty colours made by an arc-welder and that he was aware that he had been programmed with a sense of artistic appreciation.
Of course it gets into the question of at which point does a simulation of something become so accurate that its as valid and real as the thing being simulated.
Yes, but unlike Dr. Holloway you aren’t a complete jerk. In a movie of unlikable characters he stood head and shoulders above the rest.
David and the Captain were the only characters that you cared about at all, at least for me, and the latter lost a lot of points because of his frankly bizarre conversation with the lost crewmembers and then abandoning his post to have his jollies.
Strangest looking man I’ve ever seen, unless you mean she was originally male and had a sex-change? I bet the Captain would have had a surprise otherwise.
That could have been an interesting avenue to explore, that in that time sex-changes are somewhat more common, effective and acceptable than now, although still eye-brow raising for a lot of people.
btw speaking of that unless its set in another timeline entirely I don’t see how we could have interstellar ships just 70 years from now.
It doesn’t matter when it’s Arcturian.
Well played!
I just read the Alien - Engineers script posted earlier and to me it was far superior to what eventually became Prometheus. I find myself wishing that that script was the story as it made far more sense and I liked the direct prequel story arc that tied it into Alien.