Incidentally, I’m rewatching the original Alien today and I’d managed to completely forget the bit where Ripley goes after the ship’s cat. :smack:
It’s not quite as bad as the ship’s biologist deciding that the hissing cobra-like reptile is “beautiful” just before sticking his hand in its face, but it’s pretty bad. The rest of the movie makes up for it, though.
I was actually surprised this isn’t how the movie went, to be honest (as you say, it would have been a far better approach)- although I’m sure if they had, the internets would be full of people complaining they saw his revelation as the villain some a light year away.
Actually, a number of people have pointed out that the “magical blips” you’re carrying on about fall pretty squarely into the “acceptable conventions of science fiction movie” category - ie using technobabble to explain minor elements of future tech which move the plot forward.
It in no way compares to, say, the protaganist having an alien life form cut ouf her in an emergency operation and then never, ever mentioning it to anyone or running into the people who were trying to stuff her into cryostasis against her will shortly afterwards and acting like it never happened, or that no-one comments she’s covered in blood and bandages and has recent surgery scars.
The director’s cut will be interesting vieweing, though. I’m prepared to acknowledge a lot of my criticisms of the film’s plot and characterisations could be rectified by some additional footage.
This isn’t really a plot hole, but I found it rather dubious that they weren’t recording the suits’ feeds, given how cheap data storage is likely to be by the 2090s. The fact that they had to send a recon team to search for the two lost blokes was a bit dubious. My thought was “go to the archival data and scrub around on the footage until you see something disconcerting.”
Hell, if the video storage and transmission WAS too expensive to be doing round-the-clock (which is dubious if for no other fact than department stores in the MODERN DAY have at least ephemeral data storage on potentially dozens of camera feeds that run 24/7), you’d think if they have AI good enough to make an android, they’d have the feeds hooked up to something that would BEGIN recording (or sound an alarm, or alert the pertinent ship personnel via automated message over the intercom) if it detects sounds of distress coming from the mic feed.
Again, this isn’t a plot hole – it’s not people being stupid or acting in a way that contradicts tech they’re established as already having. It’s just that realistically, it seems like they’d have something like that. Hell, they could have even handwaved them not being able to do that because the silicon storm cut off their feed before they disappeared so they don’t know what happened.
There was a line in there right before the Captain wandered off to shag while he had two stranded men about how the sand storm was mostly screwing up the data transmission from them.
I had to share this which, even if you hated the film, you’ll probably still think is pretty excellent.
Am I misremembering that when the 2 guys were lost during the storm, the captain was basically rolling his eyes at them and trying to get rid of them so he could go relax? I recall distinctly like he was treating him like some hysterical idiots that he wanted to just go away, rather than being concerned over stranded crewmembers in legitimate danger. It was one of the bigger WTF moments.
Yeah, I remember that too. He’s just being a flat out dick to the two guys in that scene. It’s really bizarre.
Okay, I’ve been reading the whole thread, and I don’t know if we resolved this issue or not, but a lot of people said Shaw’s leap of logic about the aliens changing their minds about killing us makes no sense. While I agree this movie has a LOT of leaps of logic, I don’t agree about this one. IF you accept the movie never lied to us (i.e. they DO want to kill us), the explanation goes as follows:
No, it’s not the only possible explanation, they could have just died off on their homework before they could attack us, for one, but I don’t think it’s as bizarre a conclusion as people make it out to be. What I can’t defend is Shaw being so damned SURE about it, there’s plenty of explanations that don’t involve them changing their minds. Fuck, maybe the guys on this planet were a fringe group of terrorists trying to kill us and the rest of the damn civilization didn’t know anything about them.
I think the Onion review sums it up very well. I can overlook phlebotinum. And when characters do stupid things because they’re panicking, it can be kind of annoying, but under the right circumstances I say to myself, “A normal human in that situation would be scared beyond the capacity for rational thought. I can hardly nitpick it sitting in a nice safe theater with a bucket of popcorn.” In Alien, I certainly yelled at Lambert in my head to tell Dallas *where *the fuck to go, not just scream “Get out of there!” And yet, this very morning my husband didn’t quite close the freezer door, and I was worried it would slam open against the wall, knocking all the magnets and associated detritus off. I managed to blurt out, “Not closed - Thing! Door, door, door!” Imagine how articulate I’d be if an alien were attacking him!
But the characters in *Prometheus *don’t have the two excuses of the Alien crew: they’re not just ordinary laymen, and they are doing stupid things not because they are scared shitless, but in fact doing stupid things that omit the slightest modicum of human survival drive and fight-or-flight reaction. I’d expect a panicky person to do something dumb while fleeing from the genital-space-cobra. I’d expect a non-archaeologist to Woo! around the alien ruins. But too many people did stuff that isn’t just stupid, it’s stuff no person in their position would ever do. That tipped the scales for me. YMMV.
I realized I’d seen that sort of behavior before when it came to the biologist and the cock-cobra. Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. I almost wish that actor would’ve played that up. “Oh, lookit that beauty rioght thar! She’s got a prehensile blah blah blah.” Snap. Crunch. Squirm. It was no surprise when Irwin got a poisonous barb through the heart, and there’s no way the filmmakers excepted us to be surprised at this guy’s doom. Our reaction comes from knowing, specifically thanks to the Alien movies, just how nightmarishly grisly his pending death will be. A classic shout-at-the-screen moment for me.
After I thought about the movie later, I wondered if Weyland purposefully assembled such a Scooby Doo team because - even in cryosleep - the clock was ticking. He needed a bunch of pawns to go in, touch everything, and find what was to be found in short order. When a proper expedition, even by the standards of Darwin’s day, would have been too chancey of a delay. For the richest guy in the world, inches from death, whatever was to happen was going to happen now. I think even Weyland must have realized what a long shot it was, but in his situation, it’s either force your hand or fade into oblivion. There’s only one way a megalomaniac would play it.
An interesting thought. Weyland did not want or need cautious, by the numbers scientists and explorers. He needed human cannon fodder who would very quickly find whatever there was to find and get busy with it until he and David and his people could jump in and take their shot at immortality for Weyland … which is exactly how it was played. Good thinking.
I wonder why the folks who strongly disliked the movie aren’t more frequently casting it as a tale of two halves. I mean, in the first half, all of the movie’s strengths are presents in abundance, while almost none of the recurring complaints show up. (You could point to the stupidity of the underlying “It’s an invitation!” assumption, but then every other character treats that notion with the appropriate level of skepticism and derision.) Wouldn’t it make sense to cast one’s objections in terms of “an amazing first half [up to, say, the sand storm], but then the movie comes down with a case of the stupids”? (Ok, there’s also the fact that a couple of the scientists think that dead aliens are a waste of their time, but on its own this is a minor point.)
And, framed like this, maybe it makes more sense why some of us don’t seem to care about the various problems? By the time the bad decisions, inconsistencies, and plot holes start to accumulate, we’re already way invested in the movie. As I implied earlier, sitting in the theater I noticed almost every single one of the complaints mentioned in this thread, marked them as flaws … and absolutely did not give a fuck, because the movie in toto was amazing.
The problem with this explanation, aside from it not even being hinted at within the movie itself, is that Weyland is a minor character who’s barely present on screen while we spend most of the movie in the company of a bunch of idiots who don’t even display normal emotional responses to the situations they find themselves in. What about this is supposed to be interesting or entertaining to the viewer? What is the advantage, in narrative/dramatic terms, of having characters like this instead of a crew of people who are perhaps reckless or out of their depths but still behave in a consistent, plausible manner? It’s certainly possible to make an entertaining movie about characters who aren’t very bright, but the characters in Prometheus aren’t merely stupid.
A macho Crocodile Hunter-esque biologist who finds creepy critters fascinating would have been one thing, but what little character development the biologist received prior to the snake scene depicted him as a genial dweeb who was easily frightened. Later Shaw seems to have totally forgotten her alien pregnancy ordeal the moment it’s over. No one else is concerned, distressed, or even irritated when she shows up covered in blood. This isn’t the way dumb people behave in real life. It’s not the way dumb characters in well-written movies behave. It’s not even implausible in an entertaining way, it’s just bad. I realize that fans of Prometheus may manage to contrive some sort of in-world explanation for this (we’ve already had the suggestion of “they’re under the influence of a mind-altering substance”), but that doesn’t change the actual movie. If the characters’ behavior makes no sense without additional, external explanation then that is a major flaw in the movie. A good movie would have established why these people acted the way they did.
That is basically what people have been saying. Everyone, or nearly everyone, who has been critical of this movie has said that there were things about it that were good, like the special effects and Fassbender’s performance. Back on page two I said:
If some of us seem to be focusing more on the negatives than the positives then I’d say that’s partially because the early part of the movie didn’t amaze us enough to make up for the later parts, and partially because some of the defenders of the movie in this thread have chosen not to focus on its strengths either. This:
is a position I can respect and understand even if I don’t agree with it, and if there had been more of these kinds of remarks in this thread and less fanwanking of the script’s flaws or even just less of Spoke’s “Comic Book Guy! Comic Book Guy! YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF COMIC BOOK GUYS!” posts then I personally would have been more inclined to talk about the parts of this movie that were good. But the way this thread has played out has, if anything, lowered my opinion of Prometheus.
Yeah, the reason this film upsets me, is that it had everything it needed to be truly great. Money, direction, actors. All they needed to do was write a script that wasn’t stupid.
This is as good as the average Michael Bay movie, but people don’t expect anything out of him, because he’s a sloppy idiot and doesn’t care about writing intelligently. Turning Scott into Bay is a tragedy. And wasting this film’s promise is, well, a waste.
Well, I think the praise/criticism was more balanced before Spoke came in and started calling everyone with criticisms comic book guys. Then we felt the need to flesh out and defend those criticisms, and the tone of the thread turned more critical.
FWIW, I wasn’t angry that I’d wasted my time with the movie or anything like that. It was interesting enough that I was entertained during it. It’s just one of those movies where on the drive home, you come to realize “wow, that was really stupid” and then it becomes entirely forgettable. Dissapointing, because they were a real scriptwriter away from having a great movie - they had all the other elements.
In much the same way that internet threads critical of Ben Affleck’s acting make you think less of Ben Affleck’s acting, no doubt.
Ooh, me too! Me too! I hate Ben Affleck, toooooo!
Dude, seriously, are you genuinely this upset that people are disagreeing with you about a movie, or are you just messing with us?
Oh, different opinions on movies don’t bother me. But internet groupthink drives me nuts. And that’s basically what Lamia is unintentionally copping to.
Psst. Prometheus isn’t a well-written film.
Do you even realize that you’re the one engaging in fanboy squealing here?
