Prometheus (the movie that was overhyped)

[Dave (imported)]

It's on PPV and I bought a copy last night.

I thought it would have been longer and more introspective and subtle like "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" but it turned out relatively short and bombastic.

I thought several characters were TSTL and undeveloped as characters. That hurts the movie. This is a crew selected for the mission and several of them act like "Mary Janes" and are simply cannon fodder to horrible deaths.

(TSTL=Too Stupid To Live)

I very cynically can make a case for the movie being a "tail wagging the dog" in that if you start with the scene in ALIEN and then work backwards through this movie, that seems the most likely path to create the script.

And I think that is my biggest complaint about the movie.

[Cainanite (imported)]

I got the very distinct feeling that about halfway through this movie Ridley Scott forgot about what movie he was making. He had sold this to the studio as a prequel to Alien, and all of the production art, marketing, and all the behind the scenes stuff I saw bears this out. The studio thought they were getting a prequel to Alien.

About half way through filming, there is a big shift in what the movie is doing. Suddenly it goes from being a smart intellectual sci-fi, and becomes a generic action horror, with almost zero emphasis on the horror.

You can actually mark the exact moment that this movie shifts its gears. The biologist and the cartographer are trapped in the caves, while everyone else makes it back to the ship. They get word that something is moving near them, and they freak out, and decide to run away from whatever it is. A very wise choice. Suddenly the shift happens.

The two morons now run back to the area with all the strange canisters, and discover the vagina snake. The biologist, who just moments ago was running away from whatever alien presence was moving around down there, decides to pet the vagina snake. Huh? Just a few moments ago he was afraid of any alien creature he might encounter, and after less than a minute passes, his entire personality changes, and he wants to pet the creature that the entire audience knows is going to eat him. It was like he suddenly became stupid, only because the plot needed him to become stupid.

From about that point on in the story, the whole thing becomes a very generic action movie. All of the characters stop thinking. Things happen simply because the plot needs it to happen. It is just sad.

I heard an interview with Ridley Scott, and he admitted to falling in love with a certain HP Lovecraft novel while shooting. I can't remember which one. He claimed his movie was deeply influenced by the book. I suspect that was about the moment Scott stopped making the Alien prequel, and started making this terrible excuse for an action horror. There is a very clear dividing line in the movie. The first half is tense, claustrophobic, and intelligent, just like the first Alien movie. The second half is very hackneyed and generic horror shlock.

I was deeply saddened by this movie. Unfortunately, it is probably going to get another couple of sequels because of how well it did at the box office.

I for one, will not see them.

[Dave (imported)]

Probably the book was "In the Mountains of Madness"

In a Harry Potter and other movies thread I said this:

Obscurely, Guillermo del Toro has announced that he is quitting work on the adaptation of Lovecraft's book - In the Mountains of Madness" ... The why is that PROMETHEUS (That's a movie that might or might not, a cutesy "is" and a cutesy "isn't," a sequel to ALIEN) will have the same set pieces and same themes as In Then Mountains of Madness...

And Guillermo del Toro says he will not work on a duplicative movie.

(Holy effing horse shit batman) is that one hell of a SPOILER...,

Are we that bereft of ideas for horror themes that two such different concepts reveal the same old, same old...

In the story "In The Mountains of Madness" Lovecraft takes the reader with his narrator into a region of the world where the "Old Gods" live and these are the hybrids and worshipers of the Cthulhu's and Soggoths and all those things that "drive the minds of men mad" with horrific dreams and visions. These "Old Gods" existed in the chaos before the universe began. What happens at these particular mountains is that beyond this place of horrors is a gateway to another realm where the the even older, more vicious and stranger things exist that were progenitors of the "Old Gods" and are more horrible and hateful of all life.

One outstanding thing that Lovecraft did was to leave much of these monsters to the imagination and mch of the horror in the minds of the ones who saw them. Lovecraft's stories are cerebral rather than physical. Frankenstein, Dracula and Zombies are physical horrors. Lovecraft's monsters are hidden until the final reveal and then the result is human sacrifice or a lifetime in a sanitarium or asylum.

I agree with Cainanite. This movie is two parts - one philosophical and the other actitioner with blood...

[Dave (imported)]

I went and read a lot of what appears online about what the writers and director and all that gang responsible for the sotry meant it to say.

Also what the deleted scenes were supposed to show and explain but were cut out to leave the viewer thinking and searching...

(insert loud farting noise)

There is a story about the very first STAR TREK movie that might be apocryphal but serves to illustrate a point.

As the story goes, the original plot of ST#1 was that the Enterprise engines go off on a rip-roaring speed mistake and break into the other dimensions with its speed. There Kirk and crew finds "God" and that would be the movie.

Apparently that plot was thrown out and they started again. Who knows if it is true my point in relating it is entirely this:

It's pedestrian, hackneyed, over-worked, and done in every cheesy pulp novel and short story under the sun.

The second half of PROMETHEUS is that first plot that should have been kicked aside.

Aslan the mighty lion of NARNIA is a well developed and thought out stand in for Jesus Christ.

the ENGINEERS of PROMETHEUS are not on that level. They are pulp, half developed ideas.

An over-hyped and mishandled idea saddled with a few images from the original ALIEN.

After all, HR Giger made the first movie really scary with all that imagery why shouldn't it work a second time?

And the answer to that is - poor writing.

Think about EVENT HORIZON or the many layered and very difficult TINKER TAILOR SOLDER SPY or even the sexually explosive GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO. The American and world wide audiences can handle a complex story and should get a complex story.

Even the comic book aspects of THE AVENGERS and THE X-MEN had better philosophical foundations than PROMETHEUS.

[humlind1 (imported)]

I whatced this movie.

And found a stranges, lack of new idees-plot.

The ground ide isnt bad. The ide about where we come from.

What ifs god.

But from that point. and the fact, that it trun to a 3 class child version of Alliens.

And the total lack of continuety in the carracters way of behaviour.

The end made me think. of the worst film in history.

D&D the movie. It make room for a part 2.

If that happens! I know for surten that good have to be allien. Because so evil. that make a secound of this movi.

I do not belive even a totaly inhuman killer will do.

Its 10 time worse then beeing skinned alive.