Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Ruin Explorer]

Me too. I like its aspirations and how it pushed back the boundaries of the setting in interesting ways. There are some dumb things that people justifiably hate, but a lot of the hate towards it is based on stuff people are reading into the movie and then getting mad about, rather than things that are actually on the screen.

I think you have to death of the author (misusing, I know) the movie pretty hard because everything Scott has ever said about the movie basically doubles-down on the dumb, including that NASA agrees with Erich von Däniken (!!!). So I don't think it's really reading into it. It's a profoundly stupid movie.

Re: expanding the setting - yes, it does do that, but pretty much in exactly the same ways as a bunch of 1980s and 1990s Alien/Aliens comics did (most of them with terrible art sadly), and they did it because Ridley Scott himself had outlined his vision of what Alien's backstory was (contrary to the intentional ambiguity of the script/screenplay), and those comics based themselves off that. So to me, having been a huge "Anything Alien/Aliens"-related fan in the 1990s, it felt extremely predictable and staid in the ways it was doing that, because apparently the only update to his ideas from the 1980s Scott had had was to add in even worse ancient aliens stuff (you want to wind me up, tell me humans didn't - or worse, couldn't have - evolve) than he originally had.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As George Lucas will tell you, if ain't on the screen, it ain't canon. I liked Prometheus raising (but not answering, contrary to a common complaint) questions about where humans came from, raising (but not answering) what the xenos actually are, etc.

It is definitely a movie that would have benefitted from Ridley Scott handing it off to someone else instead of doing it himself. But he's obviously become very focused on his legacy after his brother's death and has gotten very aggressive about this franchise, even at a time when his skills are in obvious decline.

 

[MGibster]

I really, really, WANTED to like Prometheus. I wanted to love it, more accurately. Alien and Aliens are two of my favorite movies of all time. I think Alien 3 is underrated and has a lot of good in it. I've defended Resurrection (except the ending) countless times.

And I liked a few things about Prometheus (like the visuals, and some of the cast, especially Fassbender, Rapace, and Elba), but so much about it was SO dumb.

Once of the neat things about Alien is they treated the audience as if they were intelligent. There are a lot of unanswered questions. What did the Company know about the LV-426? Who was responsible for sending Nostromo to investigate? Why was the Space Jockey carrying all those eggs? While it's fun to talk about these kinds of things, none of those questions need to be answered for us to enjoy Alien. From my point of view, Prometheus wasn't a movie that needed to be made, but I could have forgiven that if it had at least been good. Which it wasn't.

As far as Coventant goes, I had a choice to go to the theater to see it or Wonder Woman. I choose poorly.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As far as Coventant goes, I had a choice to go to the theater to see it or Wonder Woman. I choose poorly.

You went to a double bill and saw both?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As far as Coventant goes, I had a choice to go to the theater to see it or Wonder Woman. I choose poorly.

When I was 10 my dad gave me the choice between seeing Roger Rabbit and Mac and Me, I think you can guess which I chose. I regret this still 35 years later.

I will say this - Mac and Me truly opened my eyes to what a "bad movie" looked like and allowed me to see, unprompted, how gross product placement could be. Really set me up for life in a way there!

 

[Ryujin]

When I was 10 my dad gave me the choice between seeing Roger Rabbit and Mac and Me, I think you can guess which I chose. I regret this still 35 years later.

I will say this - Mac and Me truly opened my eyes to what a "bad movie" looked like and allowed me to see, unprompted, how gross product placement could be. Really set me up for life in a way there!

We learn little from our successes, but our mistakes...?