Spoilers Alien: Questions

[Paul Farquhar]

Other way around; the Doctor Who episode was from earlier this year.

Alien was a rip off of “The Ark in Space” broadcast four years earlier.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Alien was a rip off of “The Ark in Space” broadcast four years earlier.

It's a pretty old trope. It's also a riff on the voyage of the Demeter in Bram Stoker's original Dracula.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think even a smart group would have eventually died in Prometheus, since Weyland wasn't going to let them leave. They just would have died differently.

But it would have made a better film.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a pretty old trope. It's also a riff on the voyage of the Demeter in Bram Stoker's original Dracula.

I don’t think Dracula gestated in the body of a crewmember in cryogenic suspension.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I like this theory and it would just take a single line from Vickers, either to herself during the staff meeting or when talking to Janek in their scene together to lampshade it. I think it would have helped a lot to say "yeah, we know these guys are screw-ups; that's why they're here."

I remember the line from the first time I saw the movie, and noted it, and that it absolutely did not adequately prepare me for the level of insane stupidity/incompetence/outright perverse behaviour that I went on to witness.

Like screw-ups to me, means people are kooks theory-wise, drunks/drug addicts, people who got someone killed by being lazy or distracted or not following procedure, serial sexual harassers, etc., and whilst we get like, kind of a nod to the former with the implication that two archaeologists are considered kooks, none of that really implies the basic level of incompetence and just bad-brain-based-stupidity we witness. It's like "Scary Movie" levels of character behaviour (that's probably an insult to Scary Movie). Also the movie when goes to huge lengths to assure as that said kooks are not kooks, they're Visionary Geniuses Maaaaaaaan.

(Also, "crew of screw-ups" is a classic trope, and never before has it meant "Basically the Keystone Cops" in an action or horror movie.)

If people did dumb things because they were high, or had some specific problem that caused them to screw up, you could have quite an effective horror movie, if a predictable one. But that's not what happens in Prometheus. Instead people just run around like morons for no explicable reason.

I think even a smart group would have eventually died in Prometheus, since Weyland wasn't going to let them leave. They just would have died differently.

That seems like it would have made for a much more interesting movie!

But Ridley Scott is only interested in blowing smoke up his own arse. The entire construction of Prometheus is not as a horror movie, but as an opportunity to express some silly ideas, that reek of, I dunno how else to put this "shallow thinker who read too much pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy drivel in the 1980s, snorted too much coke, and thinks he's a philosophical genius". The movie definitely thinks it has Big and Important things to say, Scott basically said as much - he was very clear that he believes Ancient Astronaut nonsense note - it's not in the movie merely as a plot device. It's the sort of thing Scott actually believes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don’t think Dracula gestated in the body of a crewmember in cryogenic suspension.

You haven't read it in the original Romanian, I see.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I should add that I actually wasn't surprised by Prometheus being "like that".

Okay I was surprised by the sheer dumb-ness of the characters. But the general "excuse for pompous/pretentious bollocks" deal it had going did not, because Ridley Scott basically said everything he wanted to do in Prometheus in one or more interviews in the 1980s, where he complained very plaintively that he was very unfairly not considered the writer/sole genius of Alien, and that he had all these cool big ideas which weren't exactly in the film, but to him informed it (pretty much exactly the ideas in Prometheus, so really only even relevant to the "alien spaceship" part of the movie), and he didn't understand why the actual writers got credit and he didn't (hint to Ridley Scott: because they wrote the movie, you wanker! Your storyboards doubled the budget they offered you, maybe focus on that?). He also complained about Aliens (the movie) existing and "contradicting his vision" (again, which wasn't in the script or on-screen), and stated even back then that he had wanted to do a sequel and it would have been very different (he later said "oh actually Aliens was good" but by later I mean 25 years later).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This thread is slowly turning into an argument that RPGs can do this stuff better which, yes, obviously. (My copy of Mothership is arriving on Saturday!)

 

[Ryujin]

I remember the line from the first time I saw the movie, and noted it, and that it absolutely did not adequately prepare me for the level of insane stupidity/incompetence/outright perverse behaviour that I went on to witness.

Like screw-ups to me, means people are kooks theory-wise, drunks/drug addicts, people who got someone killed by being lazy or distracted or not following procedure, serial sexual harassers, etc., and whilst we get like, kind of a nod to the former with the implication that two archaeologists are considered kooks, none of that really implies the basic level of incompetence and just bad-brain-based-stupidity we witness. It's like "Scary Movie" levels of character behaviour (that's probably an insult to Scary Movie). Also the movie when goes to huge lengths to assure as that said kooks are not kooks, they're Visionary Geniuses Maaaaaaaan.

(Also, "crew of screw-ups" is a classic trope, and never before has it meant "Basically the Keystone Cops" in an action or horror movie.)

If people did dumb things because they were high, or had some specific problem that caused them to screw up, you could have quite an effective horror movie, if a predictable one. But that's not what happens in Prometheus. Instead people just run around like morons for no explicable reason.


That seems like it would have made for a much more interesting movie!

But Ridley Scott is only interested in blowing smoke up his own arse. The entire construction of Prometheus is not as a horror movie, but as an opportunity to express some silly ideas, that reek of, I dunno how else to put this "shallow thinker who read too much pseudo-science and pseudo-philosophy drivel in the 1980s, snorted too much coke, and thinks he's a philosophical genius". The movie definitely thinks it has Big and Important things to say, Scott basically said as much - he was very clear that he believes Ancient Astronaut naughty word note - it's not in the movie merely as a plot device. It's the sort of thing Scott actually believes.

Last paragraph is pretty much bang-on, though he's too deeply ensconced in his own rectum to ever be called "shallow" anything.

Weyland-Yutani: One day since last accident.

 

[Anonym]

I say here again:

That Prometheus, Covenant and any sequel to this series was a huge mistake and has been proven to be a huge mistake. It changed the theme of the entire Alien series from cosmic horror to a ridiculous anthropocentric religious story made by an overconfident old boomer who took too much cocaine and should have retired a long time ago.