Prometheus - Part 6

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How is it?

I thought Prometheus was really amazing. It has beautiful and breathtaking images and the 3D was probably the best I've ever seen. Overall the acting was great, especially Fassbenders who gave a brilliant performance as David. The story is ambiguous and so is the ending, but in a curious way for wanting more I think
 
Don't forget that the original Alien also had a similar mixed reaction from critics: http://alienseries.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/bad-alien-reviews.html

Ironically quaint in hindsight.

Ditto for Blade Runner, dubbed "Blade Crawler" and "Blood Runner." Though I wouldn't say that 80%+ of French reviewers liking Prometheus is "mixed" - they've been kinder to it than the original Alien reviewers were ("imaginative poverty ... disco-inspired sets" ... !?) :oldrazz:
 
Yeah, "disco-inspired sets" is my favorite. I didn't know you were a member of the Hype (just like GothamAlleys!). Very cool. Big fan of your blog--kudos.
 
I thought Prometheus was really amazing. It has beautiful and breathtaking images and the 3D was probably the best I've ever seen. Overall the acting was great, especially Fassbenders who gave a brilliant performance as David. The story is ambiguous and so is the ending, but in a curious way for wanting more I think


Ambiguous really? I thought it was supposed to slightly set up the first Alien?
 
I think people need to recognize that not every film needs character development. The original Alien, a masterpiece, had barebone characters. Because characters aren't the point of that film; it's atmosphere and visuals are.

The characters might have been bare-bone but I loved how much they felt like real people and even without much development you really felt for and related to them. Some of the characters from Prometheus seems more wooden and distant so to speak.
 
I think people need to recognize that not every film needs character development. The original Alien, a masterpiece, had barebone characters. Because characters aren't the point of that film; it's atmosphere and visuals are.

The original Alien did have character development; you got a good sense of each character's personalities, vested interests and interrelationships with each other. It was revealed in things like appearance, action, indirect dialogue and facial expressions.

Nowadays, too many audience members think "character development" has to involve inane dialogue where characters verbally and literally tell the audience what they're thinking.
 
One thing that Alien did was play with your expectations. Ripley the heroine, Ash the android, they weren't expected. This allowed for mystery and surprise. This also allowed for Ripley not necessarily to development, but for her character to unfold in front of our eyes as the scenario change.
 
The original Alien did have character development; you got a good sense of each character's personalities, vested interests and interrelationships with each other. It was revealed in things like appearance, action, indirect dialogue and facial expressions.
That's not character development. Character development is the change or growth of a character throughout the narrative.
 
I was looking up tickets and show times on Fandango. They have the runtime listed as 17 minutes. :D
 
The negative reviews are coming out of France... why are people concerned? I think the suprise should be that the cheese eating surrender monkeys actually gave positive reviews for the film... and this is coming from someone who is of french blood!
:dry: :doh: You might be of french blood, but that's still very insulting and way over the line here.

I'm not French myself (quite far from), but I assume there's French people visiting this board and reading that insulting statement, as we all know various part of the world are by now.

Also, France has a great history of moviemaking during the history, it's not like French reviewers has less knowledge on how to watch and make movie reviews than their US collegues. And that's being said with some possible cultural diversities aside.

Of course movie reviews might slightly differ from certain countries, but when I see insults drawn by cliches on the same level as primates like this, I can't but react. As far as I know, people has got probations here for simular statements..
 
This might be old news that I've missed since I've kinda been avoiding interviews, but I was just watching the HBO First Look in which Ridley was actually referring to David as [blackout]"a Replicant."[/blackout] Has he been doing this the whole time in interviews? Because I had a little internal geek out when I heard that.
 
How bad was the first look in terms of spoilers? It comes on right before Tosh and I want to watch it, but if it is bad I'll have to skip it.
 
How bad was the first look in terms of spoilers? It comes on right before Tosh and I want to watch it, but if it is bad I'll have to skip it.
I'm not very good at catching all the significant details in quick shots (pretty much everything spoilery in the trailers I didn't notice until they were pointed out online), so I'm probably not the best judge. But for whatever it's worth, I didn't feel spoiled by it at all.
 
Thanks. I give it a look then, and if it gets too bad I'll just change it.
 
The characters might have been bare-bone but I loved how much they felt like real people and even without much development you really felt for and related to them. Some of the characters from Prometheus seems more wooden and distant so to speak.

They weren't really bare-bone though. You understood who they are. You don't have to create a character out of history. We aren't who we are by out past (though our past can determine that), we are who we are by what we do and say.

And when you combine the written personalities with the fantastic actors, you get things like two guys arguing and annoying Ripley over bonuses. Or a crew member freaking out and losing their ****. Or Ripley in a constant battle to control the situation. You get to know who they are by their interactions.

Love Alien to the death. I hope Ridley kept that same dynamic.
 
:dry: :doh: You might be of french blood, but that's still very insulting and way over the line here.

I'm not French myself (quite far from), but I assume there's French people visiting this board and reading that insulting statement, as we all know various part of the world are by now.

Also, France has a great history of moviemaking during the history, it's not like French reviewers has less knowledge on how to watch and make movie reviews than their US collegues. And that's being said with some possible cultural diversities aside.

Of course movie reviews might slightly differ from certain countries, but when I see insults drawn by cliches on the same level as primates like this, I can't but react. As far as I know, people has got probations here for simular statements..

I wasn't about to reply anything to his post, because... whatever. But I must say I'm glad someone noticed it was offensive. So, thanks I guess.





Now on to Prometheus.

I already posted a short non-spoiler review in the "last film you watched" thread, and it's pretty similar to the other reviews I've read so far.

The only real problem is that the writing seemed lazy at times, with characters we've already seen in one or two of the films from the franchise, and new creatures I did not quite understand. [BLACKOUT]I mean, I always assumed there were the facehuggers and that they gave birth to the aliens, and that was it. but in Prometheus you see snake-like monsters that enter their victims' mouths to do God-knows-what in them -they merely appear to die from it or turn into super-strength zombies depending on who they are-, octopus-like monsters that come out of bellies and then lay eggs down their victims' throats, which then in turn become kind of aliens but not really, etc. Why not stick to the already existing creatures?[/BLACKOUT] Didn't really get it. Anyway.

I also didn't like the fact that it didn't tie all the loose ends. At some point you think they've pretty much set up the situation for Alien, and then they all turn it upside down and make it different, and you kind of go [BLACKOUT]"so wait, is this the Space Jockey from Alien or is it another one? Cause he certainly didn't die in the same place as the one from Alien". [/BLACKOUT]But at the same time, it leaves room for a sequel, and I'm a sucker for this kind of film, so why not?


I also want to add for those of you who have read the "massive spoilers" fromp two pages back that the summary is at best incomplete, and sometimes inexact regardiung certain details [BLACKOUT](For instance : Meanwhile, David learns that Shaw is infected and removes a Proto-Xenomorph from her, with orders from Weyland to freeze it and bring it back to Earth for further studies. is absolutely wrong, since David actually hoped Shaw would become impregnated with the creature and die from the "birth", so why would he remove it? Shaw has to remove it by herself, in what I think was a great scene). [/BLACKOUT]Anyways, details. But don't judge the plot by this highly-spoilerish summary. It doesn't necessarily do it justice.

As far as the rest of the film is concerned, I really enjoyed it a lot. Ridley Scott is my favourite science-fiction director (my two favourite SF films are Blade Runner and Alien), always offers us awesome images, a great atmosphere, and an art direction that's overwhelming at best, stunning at worst (back to school, James Cameron).

I didn't care much for the 3D, but I never do.

I give it an easy 8/10 and I definitely will go back and watch it again while it's still in theaters, and I urge you all to do the same and not wait for the blu ray unless you have professional quality equipment at home.
 
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Just throwing this out there. If you don't own the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set, it's going to be on sale on Amazon today.
 
I know, kinda glad I've been dragging my feet on buying their blu-rays now lol.
 
I've never like the style of Hollywood Reporter and Variety reviews. The reviews seem to end anticlimactically.
 
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