Ok, All About Eve.
Go.
Well, I was referring to scifi fanboys, but you’re right, I probably should have used a different word. Maybe this one? 
And even discounting that, they saw a few other pyramids/mounds just on their initial descent. And after exploring just one of the mounds for* ~20 minutes*, main scientist dude gives up all hope and comes to the conclusion that there are no living aliens on the planet and that the expedition was pointless. WTF? It’s like he’s read the script already.
Hmm. But the air inside the dome had less carbon dioxcide and more oxygen, which they attributed to some mechanical process. Or maybe it was the worms.
SNORT!
No, I’m a big science fiction (and movies in general) fan from way back, but I can’t see Prometheus as a gem, not by any stretch of the imagination, except perhaps for its visual imagery. It’s not that I can provide a list of objections. One can, as you note, come up with lists of objections for any movie, or any work of artm, for that matter. But Prometheus is a work lacking in coherence and filled with non-sequiturs. Characters do things for no discernible reason, do profoundly stupid or ilogical things (most glaringly in areas where we’re givemn to believe that they are knowledgable or skilled), display knowledge of things they have no reason to have knowledge of, violate the laws of common sense, and ndulge in much mock-profundity. When you dig into the actions and the background things msake even less and don’t corroborate each other.
Still 73% Fresh out of the Top Critics on Rotten Tomatoes. 74% factoring all critics.
I won’t even argue box office, as that is analgous to the argument that McDonald’s makes the best hamburger, but I’ll gladly throw in with the professional critics. Not flawless by any stretch, but still really, really good.
Also, this movie doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Considering Alien Cubed, Ressurection, the AvP garbage, I’m astonished out how good Prometheus is. It’s head and shoulders above anything in this universe since 1986! 1986! I’d be just as pleased and astonoished if Zemeckis made a similarly good Back to the Future movie in 2012.
i don’t agree with you at all. Ash was lying. Even Ripley knew he was lying, but she didn’t know why.
What’s frustrating about Spoke is that he seems to be just ignoring people when they suggest he’s wrong about something.
Actually when I showed my fiance Alien to get prepped for Prometheus she pointed this exact thing out. Even if Ash is designed to let the alien grow, no one else thought to scan Kane as they did when he had the facehugger on him just to make sure?
I had to tell her to just go with it.
They’re space truckers. What you’re suggesting is akin to a modern-day trucker shoving a doctor aside and saying “Well doc, you SAY the operation was a success, but let me take a looksie in here…”
Ash is their science/medical officer. Why would they have any reason to doubt him if he says Kane is fine?
No, you just still haven’t explained the magical blips. So Ash was lying about the pressure sensor? Then how did the detector produce such precise blips? Remote detection of DNA? :dubious:
IIRC, It wasn’t just Ash who put Kane into the scanner to see what was inside and everyone was curious and looking from the window. You can’t imagine even, say, Lambert, who was freaking about every other little thing, asking did we scan Kane to make sure he’s fully ok?
It seemed ridiculously stupid not to ask Ash if that had been done (if he lied, Kane would have caught him), but then there would be no movie in that case.
FWIW, I side more with the Prometheus was a gem of a movie argument (or at least very, very good). The flaws, IMO, are overshadowed by the visual imagery, the wonder of exploration of an Alien world, and the gradual reveal of the Engineers and their plan with the gradual increase of terror - until the end when it became a wonderful thrill ride (after the still living Engineer was awoken).
It doesn’t matter. It’s advanced technology. I’ve established WHY it’s there, and why Ash’s explanation of how it works is a lie. It’s a tool that pushes the plot forward in an understandable way, while also revealing a little something about our characters. It’s not a plot hole like you’ve repeatedly suggested.
I can’t explain the FTL drive or the cryosleep pods, either, but you don’t have an issue with the technology there. This whole conversation arose because you stated that “a device that detects micro-changes in air density through a door is a plot hole.” The device doesn’t work that way, and the fact that it doesn’t work that way is a plot point in the movie, therefore it isn’t a plot hole.
Do you play this game with the sensors in Star Trek, too?
Edit: this was in response to Spoke.
Sorry. I’d love to buy this – there’s nowhere near enough good SF out there – but I just don’t. It’s not some nitpicking fanboy set of criteria – the film simple doesn’t work at all for me, on any level. Too much is thrown about with disregard , it seems to me, for good plotting, good science, good science fiction, or even common sense. If I’m rooting for the people to die because they appear to be too stupid to live, something’s wrong.
Of course not. Because it’s silly to engage in this sort of nitpicking. Which is my point.
:smack:
Recognizing that characters behave erratically or against character as the plot dictates isn’t nitpicking.
Noting that the movie does not answer the central premise (that is repeatedly mentioned throughout the movie) isn’t nitpicking.
But I think you and I are destined to disagree about this. Let’s find something we can agree on, instead. What are your feelings on chocolate?
So you think that people who blindly love and defend sci-fi are the people who are criticizing this movie? Because, you know, they hate sci-fi?
No one is blindly hating on the movie. There’s a lot of “I was really impressed with the visuals but [here are some major character and plot problems” type criticisms. You think you’re defending the movie, but you’re really just embarassing yourself - everyone is rolling their eyes at you, the way you dismiss any criticism as only the sort of minutia that nerds would pick up on - even though most of the criticism has been about the characters and plot rather than the technobabble.
Spoke I think you’re right, most films take liberties in order to move the story along and if you look long and hard enough, you’ll find issues.
The question as posted early is what is your theshold for such issues. In most action films, the hero takes so much damage that in the real world he should be unable to move, let alone figh on. However we suspend our belief because we are in the story…we just ‘go with it’.
However sometimes the theshold is just too high, I think Prometheus breaks that theshold. I don’t care about the worms, or measurments or whether the medistation is designed for men.
My nitpick: Why didn’t the engineer head decompose once it was exposed to the atmosphere? I get that they ‘vaccum sealed’ it to transport it the ship, but they were examing it in a room that wasn’t. Hell they weren’t even following basic containment procedures. In fact, shouldn’t the head been mummified to some degree? But that’s ok, I can let that go.
Spoke, No one questions the impregnation, what at least for me is unbelievable, is the behaviour of the crew during and after the event. Which is more than just nit-picky.
Geez man, she even carries David’s body out of the ship; all this with her abdomen stapled shut a few hours ago? It’s obvious to me that not one writer is married to woman who had a c-section, 'cause I’ll tell you there ain’t no way she would have be doing all that moving, without ripping those staples out and bleeding to death.
I absolutely understand the need to have the story move, but if they needed Shaw to do move the story along, then they should’ve had someone else be infected.
However they wanted to ‘explore’ childbirth, infertility or virgin births or some such nonsense and wrote themselves into corner, so it had to be Shaw. "Cause like, her lady-bits didn’t work and now they do, only **irony **it’s a squidbaby. Oh lordy…what is she going to decide? Keep it? Well she’s going need to build an addition on the house, cause you know how fast they grow…big too. Oh no, she’s chosen to remove it, her only chance to be a mother…
Really good writing doesn’t compromise key elements of logic and human behaviour in order to move the story along or, explore some conceptual bullshit or worst keep the star alive.
I think that’s why Alien works so well, there wasn’t a really a top name star to protect or project, in fact most of the more recognized actors got killed early on. Ripley didn’t need to be infected in order to carry the story. You could lose the Captain in the early scenes and not effect the story. It was truly an ensemble cast.
In Prometheus you have two main characters, David and Shaw and the rest are just red shirts. I felt bad when the crew on the Nostromo died. I felt nothing when the crew of the Prometheus died, because no one bothered to humanize them. They were just props, no different than the black goo and it least that stuff did something.
In Alien, Ripley knows but can’t prove until later, that Ash is up to something; so she is always wary of him. We as the audience share in that distrust of Ash. In fact we see a little more Ash’s conduct than Ripley does. That creates an attachment to Ripley’s character and in fact to the entire crew. As we are witness to their betrayal.
In Prometheus we see David being outright distrustful, we know he’s ‘bad’ guy. Later Shaw directly experiences David’s behaviour and what does she once she frees herself? Does she go to the Captain and tell him what’s happening? No she goes to David, listens to David, goes off with David. Really?
Now I can fanwank this behaviour away of course: Shaw wanted to believe so badly, that she was willing to (like her man), do anything and everything, including working with David in order to meet her makers. I should share in Shaw’s passion, instead I think she’s a stupid cow and lousy scientist. That IMO is because of bad writing and character development.
We as the audience should feel a connection to the crew, who like the crew of the Nostromo is for the most part expendable, but we don’t or at least I didn’t. I didn’t care whether any of them lived or died, because no one bothered to develop the characters; except for David.
In Alien, I screamed at Lambert to move out of the fucking way, so Parker could use the flamethrower on the alien, but she didn’t and i understood why. She was scared shitless and I could understand being that scared, that sure of death, that you just stand there waiting for it.
What scene in Prometheus generates that type of emotional connection? The closest thing would be the extraction of the squid from Shaw, but even that pales in comparison to Lambert and Parker’s death; because of the way Prometheus handled the aftermath…like nothing happened.
This doesn’t mean that you’re wrong to like the film. Taste is subjective. Still i think it has to be able to stand on its own and I don’t think it does. People are trying way too hard to defend it and if it’s this hard, then clearly something fundamental is wrong with it. I believe it fails because the writers of Prometheus want to keep secrets more than they desire to tell a story.
Will it become a classic, maybe; but I think that more an indicment of what passes for classic film-making these days.
I just realised that Shaw was the one struggling with her religion, correct?
Is it Christian based?
And she had to perform an abortion on herself.
Deliberate irony by the writers?