Prometheus

I agree. Donnie Darko has mysterious elements that are not fully explained, but is an amazing movie. The mystery is presented in such a way that you have to decide and interpret for yourself. And watching it multiple times, I have come away with different ideas on what some of the story is about.
Because the writer did a good job. (understatement)
Prometheus's writer did a crappy, third-rate hack job. And Cameron should have rejected it, plain and simple. Instead, he gave in, and the result was... typical hollywood block-buster effluence.


Cameron did reject it. He was approached to make a prequel and he wanted to do it. But he said that if you're going to make Aliens vs. Predators and water down the franchise I want nothing more to do with it. They did, so he didn't.
From what I gather, the original script was quite good and is a direct prequel to Alien. Then Ridley Scott askes Lindeloff to look at the script. No re-write, just to make some suggestions. But, I guess Ridley liked the suggestions so much that he asks for a complete rewrite and the rest is teenage hood ruining filmmaking.

I guess I got myself too excited for this movie. I first saw Alien about 10 years ago in the Filmmuseum and it blew me away. And then I heard a prequel was being made and OH MY GOD, it's being directed by Ridley Scott. This is gonna be the best. movie. evah!

But it wasn't. It obviously wasn't a bad movie in that it made a lot of money. But like the prequels to Star Wars it was made with a different generation in mind.

I still think it sucked, I mean how are you gonna make a horror movie when everything is universally bright. Dammit, Ridley.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Sorry. Meant Scott. He should have known better too.
A brightly lit horror movie is possible.

As for it being for a different generation: no. Even the densest teen can recognize regurgitated kibble is not steak. They are just less likely to care.
 

Sorry but no filmaker gets even the teensiest credit for scripts that were rejected or altered, scenes that were deleted, or all the other stuff which COULD have made an interesting or exciting film - but didn't. You get credit only for what you actually released to the theaters. Did it have potential to be better than it was? I have no doubt. But it doesn't matter. The movie that it became is still a steaming pile of incomprehensible stupidity. You can't expect moviegoers to care what happens to your characters if you don't get them to care ABOUT your characters on any level. You can't expect people to believe anything at all smart is going on under the surface if all your characters are doing the dumbest things imaginable. You can't expect them to appreciate anything you're trying to say metaphorically if you're relentlessly distracting them with plot holes the size of mountains and shallow, unappealing characters.

Epic fail from someone who had until then been a reliable talent. I keep thinking about this movie too - but only in terms of how much more amusingly I could heap scorn and derision upon it.
 

You can't expect moviegoers to care what happens to your characters if you don't get them to care ABOUT your characters on any level.

THANK YOU. This, to me, is where most movies and TV shows fail. And that includes a lot of movies and TV shows that are very popular. If I don't care what happens to the characters in some way or other, I stop watching. And if watching the characters is like crawling through a sewage pipe, I stop watching. If the show ignores the laws of physics for a cheap joke (and it isn't a comedy or cartoon), I stop watching. Then I bitch and whine about it.
 

I still don't know why Charlize Theron's character was in the film. Yeah, I get the relationship she has with her pops mirrors that the human race has with the Engineers, but that whole story line really doesn't need to be in the film. ... If you take out Charlize's character, it doesn't change the story one bit. The only thing she really does is not let the infected Dr. Holloway back on the ship when he's infected, and that action could have easily been given to another character--anybody still on the ship.

I really enjoyed Prometheus, and am a huge fan of the Alien series in general. I have now seen Prometheus twice but not the extended version, and have read a few articles about it but not a lot. So some of this may be contradicted by other sources, and it's all tainted with my enjoyment. But here's my explanation for the raison detre of Vickers:

As a character, the most important role that Vickers played was to be rejected by Weyland. To understand this, you need to back up a bit and review one of the key themes of Prometheus: the creation of life that comes from the sacrifice (i.e. destruction) of the creator. This self-sacrifice is a key philosophy of the Space Jockeys. It is shown first hand in the opening scene where a Jockey kills himself to start life on a desolate planet, and is the basis for their biotech. Rejection of this philosophy and embracing entirely selfish principles is (ambiguously) the reason they want to destroy mankind.

If Weyland had no offspring of his own (for either biological or sociological reasons) creating David as an artificial son could actually be a sympathy provoking act, as some sort of last desperate attempt at reproduction. Likewise, it's critical for us to see that Vickers has made a (begrudging) attempt to shepherd her father across the galaxy and help him fulfill his goals; if she had been left on earth it could be because she aggressively rejected him instead of the other way around. But by shunning his own flesh-and-blood offspring that is willing to serve him in favor of David, Weyland becomes a true monster. This is the reason that the Jockey kills Weyland (with David's body) when he is awakened; as emissaries for mankind, an old man who refuses to die and his artificial son are the embodiment of the abomination that the human race has become. If Weyland had met the Jockey with Vickers present, the confrontation would have been entirely different.

Vickers' character also exists to embody a number of key symbolic roles and relationships, more than the one possible allegory you mentioned. Vickers' backstory is designed to be the exact opposite of Shaw's; Shaw was motivated by the death (sacrifice) of her father, while Vickers was motivated by her father's refusal to die. And Vickers and David combined are the recreation of Weyland; they are opposite sides to the same coin. They are obviously juxtaposed in a number of ways (male vs female, emotional vs apathetic, etc), but they are also similar in their goals, stubbornness, and acting.

Plotwise, Vickers plays a number of seemingly minor but critical roles. For one, she is the one who distracts Janek so that Millburn and Fifield are not heard when they are attacked. The fact that she does this with sex is interesting as a comparison to David (who uses sex as a weapon to infect Shaw), to Shaw (who has sex for love while Vickers has sex for pleasure), and to the original Alien movie (which is partially an allegory for rape). I suppose the role of distractor could have been acted out by someone or something else, but it wouldn't have had any of the sexual undertones.

In an even more important role, Vickers is the only reason that Janek ejects the escape pod before ramming the Jockey ship. She is the only person left on the ship with selfish motivations that is more concerned about saving herself than saving humanity. This is obviously critical to the end of the movie, and the role could not have been carried out by anyone else without creating another self-driven character specifically to fill this role.

So I think Vickers is pretty critical to the movie. I also give credit to Theron for her acting job in it, simply because I recognize how hard of a role it was to play. So much of Vickers' mannerisms and motivations are controlled by others, and so much of Vickers story is told in scenes where she isn't present that it must have been really difficult to understand and portray the character properly.
 

Prometheus was a disappointment. Looked beautiful, needed a few more passes on the script, I didn't mind the Ancient Aliens angle --why didn't they get that crazy-haired guy for a cameo?!??!-- but ended by setting up what could be a fantastic, if extremely difficult-to-actually-write sequel.

I kinda regret seeing it at home. I think on the big-screen a lot of my criticisms would have been subdued by pure visual splendor.


483678_10200631032205603_267739631_n.jpg

It was quite beautiful on the big screen but some of the decisions made by the crew were pretty boneheaded.
 

I thought it was a good movie, but it didn't tie in well with the aliens movies. However I thought it was a nice addition to the aliens universe.
 

Remove ads

Top