Half in the Bag: Prometheus

I can’t believe you guys swallowed this cynical scam of a ‘movie’. Prometheus is the antithesis of storytelling and an attack on everything cinema is supposed to be.

The only complaint I have about Prometheus are the stupid characters. 

Wish these videos wouldnt load so fucking slow. Either host them somewhere decent or put them on Youtube.

The movie is bad because the characters are idiots. They aren’t scientists, they are teenagers who act as stupid as possible to advance the plot.  

 The ending to this was better than the movie.

They went a little easy on the terrible dialogue and wasted potential in the film, other than that I think it was a pretty fair review.

Kids these days…

Having not even seen the trailer for this one, and not even liking the Alien franchise that much, I was utterly disappointed not from a “prequel” perspective, but from a purely storytelling plot-organizing one. The characters do stupid illogical shit all the time. The consequences for most actions are often confusing or nonsensical. One of my favourite ones is how the mohawk guy shout out loud that HE’S A GEOLOGIST AND HE LIKES ROCKS, and then ends up getting lost in a cave while having access to a map that was scanned by the drones he planted himself. Overall, the movie feels like a disjointed mess, like if someone was desperately trying to hamfist some symbollic meaningfulness in a plot written by a 5 year old. Then it all climaxes down to a monster mash and wraps it all up with the possibility for more sequels. I’m terribly sorry to disagree with you guys, but this is not how you write for movies. This is not how you even write for pulp fiction.

So what is troubling me at the moment, is how you guys, who deconstructed TPM to the core of its poor scripting, were unable to spot all of these things and how they contribute to ruin the movie. So seriously, give it a little more thought, and analyze it from a Plinkett perspective. I’m sure things will become more clear from that moment.

That was really even handed, I really liked how you addressed the disappointment backlash.

I think that a lot of people who dismiss justified criticism by saying, “you’re just disappointed because it’s not a direct prequel” are missing the point. This may be a source of disappointment for some, but the real problem with this film is not its disconnect from Alien or that it has unanswered questions. The problem is that the script and dialogue were frequently ham-fisted, predictable, boring and more concerned with trying to appear ‘deep’ than to tell a good story or create interesting characters (Fassbender’s David notwithstanding). It was a reasonably entertaining film, with some amazing artistry, but it was a shadow of what it could have been and this is the most frustrating thing.

This is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. I’ve just read all the comments before posting this, so I know you people will disagree.
But please tell me of these plot holes. I didn’t notice anyone.
Also: People doing stupid things…… that’s like a KEY element in the Alien franchise. You shouldn’t bash this one for doing it. It’s fan service.
Opposite of Aliens and Alien: Ressurrection, I really liked the characters in this one. What was wrong with them? I thought Michael Fassbender was fantastic.

I don’t think this was a bad movie by any means but I really think it would make a good Plinkett review with all of the plot holes and inconsistencies and completely illogical characters.  Not to mention trying to connect it to the Alien series.

I agree with everything you guys are saying but..
 
     Honestly, it didn’t make any sense and Its probably the worst film since The Phantom Menace. 

Also did anyone here started laughing at the part after the crash, where the engineer ship was threatening to crush shaw and the blonde chick, and they BOTH run foward instead of running sideways, only to see Shaw finally rolling to the right in the last moment?

I think the Engineer at the beginning was the real Prometheus metaphor or at least a dual layered metaphor… I think his people, of he stole directly the DNA stuff from the flying saucer people/gods (cause that flying saucer doesn’t look like an engineer ship to me at the beginning) and immediately paid the price. His people maybe then recognised its destructive potential and spread it as a weapon. Its my theory and Im sticking to it. :p 

Sometimes it pays not to analyse a movie like this too deeply. it is after all tied in with  a long standing franchised series upon which it relies very much for its emotional impact.
Consider for example how it might have been viewed if Alien had never been made. Still a beautifully crafted film, the CGI was beyond critiscism but despite this, no more than another run of the mill sci fi extravaganza.The monsters were nasty, the aliens suitably enigmatic and the sets impresssive, but it is nothing we have not seen before.

As with any film, there were a few holes. For example; the character  of Dr Shaw leaping around like a spring lamb after having just undergone major abdominal surgery, the seemingly docile acceptance of their Kamikaze role by the surviving flight crew and the erratic sometimes incomprehensible agenda driven behaviour of the Android.

Sometimes the power in a film comes not from what it shoves into the audience’s face but what it leaves unsaid for them to imagine. This was one of the great strengths of Alien but sadly lost in Prometheus.

All that having been said, on a less intellectual level it was a great film and I enjoyed it immensely, despite the chattering popcorn crunching monkeys sitting in the row behind us.

Well done Ripley Scott. 

I have to say I do agree a lot with this review, personally I didn’t hate Prometheus but leaving the theater I was really disappointed with it, I couldn’t quite place my finger on why at first apart from the obvious issues of low character development etc. but when I discovered it was written by the writer of Lost everything suddenly slotted together… The visuals and direction of the film are incredible, easily matching films like Blade Runner in terms of creating a universe and making it feel real, but the script feels like 3 seasons of Lost compacted into 2 1/2 hours, it has some incredible moments, memorable characters and interesting plot points but little in the film is explained, not only in terms of the overall ideas and questions  the movie puts over (which I’m fine with in a movie) but even in terms of the more minor events in the film.
SPOILERS
For example the excellent scene with Noomi Rapace in the self-surgery capsule is incredibly disturbing and engrossing and certainly feels like a significant moment, but it is never really mentioned again in the film and little to no explanation is given as to why David attempted to prevent her from removing the alien and she doesn’t even become angered with him when he all but confesses to purposefully putting her in harms way and infecting her husband with the black oil, leading to his death. This to me feels exactly like one of the many seemingly pivotal and engrossing moments from Lost which feel significant but are never explored or really even mentioned again by the characters. And this happens a lot in the film, which makes for a very jarring experience as it devalues what feels like important moments in the story and makes the characters feel strange and unrealistic in that they don’t react in a normal way… Noomi Rapace’s response to having her husband killed, android try to kill her, having to self-surgically remove the alien parasite posing as the child she thought she could never have and discovering this was orchestrated by the android and Weyland whom she thought was dead… is to accept everything and immediately go on an away mission to the ship… WHAT!?… So yeah for me Prometheus is a very well made and visually stunning piece of sci-fi with some memorable characters and moments but is let down by a lack of time for develop all 17 characters aboard the ship and a script which left me feeling engrossed and entertained but removed due to the actions of the characters and overall annoyed at the total lack of explanation… a lot like like a certain TV show.

Every time Jay asks “is it this or is it that” the answer is the negative one. Prometheus is a enjoyable visual/audio experience that would probably be improved by muting the poorly written dialogue, vague-to-make-you-feel-stupid-so-you-have-to-say-you-like-it-because-who-wants-to-admit-they-are-stupid “”"depth”"”, and stupid for the sake of action actions of everyone involved.
Also, how could Mike possible ignore the Looney Tunes ship falling scene??? That seems like something right up his alley.

My issue was that you only get to know or care about a few of the characters.  Everyone else might as well been Star Trek redshirts essentially.  That and the supposedly smart scientist earning a space Darwin Award.  Hey, let’s touch the hissing and pissed off space cobra.  What could go wrong!?!?  LOL!  Also, the motive for the Space Jockey/Engineer to hate humans and want to kill us on sight was totally unclear.

Prometheus: Avatar’s evil twin.

I was hoping to love this film. Great look but yeah it does have LOST bs in it. It’s not very deep even though there is a good lije about dissaiontment with the creators. Great look and nice build up in the first half but then everyone starts acting like an idiot. These characters deserved to die in the most horrible ways possible. There are loads of things to nit pick and plain contridiction. Tbh this would be a good plinkett review i loved the action scenes.

For those who said it brings up deep concepts take this dialogue:
Person: Do you have any evidence for this?
Scientist : I chose to believe that?

You do not need a diploma to work out the idiocy of that reply.

There was a noticable echo in this one. Your ginormous surroundings give your voices cathedralic (?) qualities. Fix that, will ya. Loved the review, I’ll stay away from this messy movie. Give us something straight forward – like Robocop.

I don’t really get the hate for Prometheus. It gave me what i wanted, a smart visually stunning sci-fi film. When i first came out after seeing the movie (opening night) i was 100% fulfilled and thought it was great. Then i saw every person who’d mentioned the film was entirely negative about it and had completely unjustified hate (re. ‘worst film evar!’) and i had to second guess myself to think ‘did i miss something’ or was i a moron? Nope, people just put their expectations up too high for anything to reach and get easilly disappointed and react like they’d been slapped in the face over not getting Citizen Kane when they were never promised it.

I enjoyed the movie, but I couldn’t agree with Jay more on not quite being able to wrap my head around Prometheus. There are so many things that irritated the hell out of me, and in retrospect I thought didn’t work at all, but I still felt like I enjoyed the experience of watching the movie. Maybe I need to take more brain medicine before I think about Prometheus again.

Okay tokey…

Yes direction, set design, CGI and casting was great.

However the ‘story’ element was waaaaay lacking.

I’ll let it slide that it appears only 7 pieces of iconography is enough to explain to the crew the purpose of the mission – there could well be more in ancient texts and stories which back up the theory (David learning all the ancient languages helped indicate the level of thought that’d gone into the project). But yeah, 7 old drawings – any questions?

1 Trillion dollars and no risk assessment on the crew or apparent procedures for the mission prior to the waking up part – seems very suspicious.

An elite set of scientists at the top  of their game; let’s take our helmets off in unchecked atmosphere, make wolf noises in an unexplored alien region, smoke marijuana and bypass first contact protocols and quarantine restrictions. Not to mention a geologist not being able to find his way out of a cave, and with all the tech they’ve got.

David ‘try harder’ I-really-should-have-brought-some-mice Bishop was believable within his role, but c’mon fast thinking, multi-tasking robodude – some of those choices were really silly to say the least.

I’ve found an alien head, potentially one of our ancient ancestors. Should we test for DNA and other things first (Like the shape of its brain) – nah, let’s nuke it and then worry about that stuff later.

We’ve got two guys trapped outside in a 200 MPH silicon storm, whose on nightshift or at least turning on the answer machine? No one?? If you can’t be with the one you love – approach unknown creatures within an apparent outbreak of dangerous organisms which wiped out your makers with the one your with.

So those little worm things have been kicking about now for 2000 or so years – I’m guessing they were in the ‘vases’ as that’s the only appear in the story after they’ve been altered – cool, so that’s what’s getting sent to Earth. They come from that black stuff, the proto-life solution stuff, David ‘I’m really not Ash’ Bishop spiked Charlie’s drink with a tiny bit of the stuff. Charlie ‘I’m so upset that I’ve proven the most major thing in humanities history but I’ve got that modern ADHD thing and because they weren’t waiting for me when I arrived I think I’ll go onto my second bottle of vodka’ then pumps Shaw – who is three months pregnant with a squid the next day. Rips it out by doing a complicated caesarian procedure but by approaching her body as male physiology (Serious, they couldn’t have both genders equipped as standard??) whilst in the meantime…Charlie has now became semi-Engineer like – so what’s that black goo actually do?

First contact: Weyland, David, Shaw and two non-important characters are finally there, meeting their makers. The guys probably all like, WTF, where’s my crew, how did these guys wake me up, shit man, I might be in trouble, let’s play it cool and see what’s going on. Then Shaw goes all Alanis Morrisette undermining any gravity the moment would have, Engineer dudes like cool, GTG, GTFO and takes them down. Nice one Shaw!!

When I build my artificial lifeforms I like to add little things like wireless transmitters which allow for decapitation and torso movement independently - maybe not as standard but certainly on a mission like this. It certainly wouldn’t have undermined any of the previous (later) androids we see as they get split down the middle, or decapitated and then shocked in the spine nitpicking but this far in why stop?

I’ll buy into the captain taking Shaw’s word for it that the ship is returning to Earth, but his two co-pilots don’t seem to sell the scene that they are going down with their ship and pilot, reminds me of Paris and Harry Kim from Voyager – just dumbasses with no understanding of what they’re into.

When me and someone else are running from a giant coin which has crashed middle up. I like to let us run into opposing directional axis’s away from said coin – the chances for one of our survival doubles instantaneously. Were I either a top scientist or in charge of a trillion dollar operation I would like to think these same instincts ring true.

Charlie/Shaw/Squid Baby then impregnates Engineer who survived that crash – what’s that going to produce then and won’t it come looking for David and Shaw whilst the galavant to the rest of the Engineer empire who haven’t given a damn about that world for at least 2000 years anyway – probably don’t even know about Earth or nuttin’

I’ll let slip the need for the Engineer guy at the beginning, it was visually stunning and they’ve placed the drawings across the Earth at around 35,000 years BC – so perhaps the fact that there was grass and trees means they aren’t the origins of life on Earth, just the missing link which made for mankind’s ascent from beast – fits with the Prometheus theme too.

Now this isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the film – as a comedy it was as good as any teenage camping film turn slasher (PG-13 but Rated R). The direction, set design, visuals and actors were mostly top rate. I’d say it’s slightly better than Avatar but not by much.

It got my partner and I talking about it for a good hour or so afterwards – which is a good thing. We generally agreed on the miners from Alien being sceptical and cautious (With a great slug of changing group dynamics in there for good measure) approaching this ‘mystery’, the marines of Aliens were perfect within their roles as wise cracking, testosterone fuelled bad-assness. Now these are the only two film Ripley Scott says he counts as part of this ‘universe’ so we’ll stick with them.

Why were his scientists on this maiden voyage of such importance to the most powerful man of Earth so foolish and inept at solving a problem together. Had they thrown a few ‘Intellectual Property’ clauses and ‘Need-to=know’ restrictions in there I could see it being a sci-fi representation of the lacklustre attitude so prevalent in contemporary society, However he didn’t and he’s 74 and so does he love/hate science for his fine age but knows it will end soon ergo the underlying plot?

There was plenty of background elements in the run up to this film, the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) was quite long (But crappy too!) so I expect to see lots of things on the released home edition, perhaps even including a better script – but as a cinema release I was left thinking that it’s pretty much a mediocre film which rides on the back of Alien and Aliens popularity and whilst worth seeing at the cinema – shouldn’t be praised as something brilliant or remotely ‘epic’.

If this is his swan song then I can kind of see what he was going for – but he seems to think his audience are the same bunch that was around in 2004 when LOST first came out and I think the recoil from that will take years to relax again, and that’s if it ever will.

Hey a wall of text!! Well, Ridley Scott is worth my writing it and cheers to anyone still reading it!

tl;dr for the /b/ronies: Film sucked, but is still watchable.

loved the ending. take that continuity!
 

Enjoyed the review, I’ll just add in my opinion that I didn’t like the movie, but I would definitely recommend it, 

It’s not a bad movie, it’s just not a good movie either, and in this day so many bad movies are intentionally made, if we could just have movies that aren’t bad, I think that would lead to a slightly better world, but on to my criticism of the movie

So in the beginning it’s stated that there are 17 crew members on the ship, and it’s stated that some of them are only there for security purposes, It’s also stated that when they wake up that the two archaeologists are in charge of the mission, David, the robot, who i think was the best part of the movie, then takes the black goo he finds on the alien ship and feeds it to one of the two archaeologists, so why would he poison the person who was 50% in charge of the mission, on wikipedia it’s actually stated that he was receiving orders from the old man, so why did the old man want the archaeologist poisoned? Did they know that the two archaeologists were sleeping together? and if so, then why would they want to use their two people in charge as Guinea pigs? Why can’t they just poison one of the security guards? Since it seems like anyone else on the ship can operate an ax or flamethrower, 

Go see it and make up your own mind. It’s not a bad movie, at worst you will be disappointed or left feeling “meh.” But you aren’t going to leave the theater going “I just wasted 2 hours of my life.” The plot has a lot of shortcomings and overall the film suffers from a lack of cohesion and thematic inconsistency. 

It’s interesting that a lot of people are calling it the ‘abortion’ scene’. 

Damon Lindelof’s writing is a study in raising your curiosity or imagination, yet ultimately never paying off whatsoever.
I would prefer that he switched professions.

The most interesting thing about audience reaction to Prometheus is that the truly enthusiastic responses are very, very limited.

I could be wrong, but as far as I can tell most people hate it, some say “Well, it’s very flawed and it’s got problems and a lot of it is just f*cking stupid, but at least it’s not as bad as Attack of the Clones”, while others take it up a notch and utter thus: “It’s pretty good, so I don’t really understand all the whining”. BUT, only about seven people have said “It’s awesome”.

Mike and Jay seem to gravitate between the second and third of those two reactions. And they, like so many of the half-way fans, base their sporadic praise on the fact that so many people truly despise it. Jay implies that in a world where movies such as Jack and Jill are possible, we should be grateful for something like Prometheus. But that is just silly, because what Jay doesn’t realize is that Prometheus is merely the big-budget sci-fi equivalent of Jack and Jill.

There are many, many people out there who for some god-forsaken reason continue to give the Star Wars prequels top marks. Only a tiny minority of people are thus-far giving Prometheus a similar glowing recommendation. It’s still early days for Prometheus, but I expect the reactions will remain as such. As well they should. Prometheus is at least equally as insulting as The Phantom Menace, and in Red Letter Media terms I’m stating that as a fact.

What I mean by that is that most of Plinkett’s criticism of The Phantom Menace is equally applicable to Prometheus. For one single example: the three-way lightsaber duel at the end of TPM is totally uninteresting, despite its rigorous choreography and impressively understated CGI, because at that stage we couldn’t care less about the three characters involved. It’s exactly the same when Noomi Rapace is in the medical pod in Prometheus, the ONE MOMENT that all the semi-fans of the movie agree is terrific; to me, it was just one in a two-hour spate of yawns because I didn’t know enough about her character to care if she got rid of that uninteresting squid-alien or not. (And incidentally, after she removes the beast and locks it in the medical room, why the f*ck didn’t she at any point feel the need to mention to another crew member “By the way, you see that door over there? Well, don’t open it, because inside that room is a vicious, snarling monster that I just had to rip out of my uterus.”)

Worst. Film. In. Years.

Yeah, well the ending of this HITB  is the proof that the theory that was popularized in the underground afew months ago IS TRUE. ?Recession like in the ’30s? no way – this time we’ll do it over 4 or 6 years and they will never know what fucked their butts!

I think that The Phantom Menace is popping up a lot in Prometheus discussions not because this film is that bad (nothing could be that bad, except, possibly, for Cool World), but because the letdown is that bad. For people who deeply feel aesthetics and story as connections to their youth, films can be very important. Camus said “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” George Lucas shat on what was one of the last simple triggers to that place for people raised in my generation. I think the promise of Ridley Scott, one of the greatest visual stylists in sci-fi, returning to the genre for the first time in decades was something really fun to anticipate. And then to tack on the issues it promised to deal with (Could life have been seeded on earth? Have extraterrestrials visited earth in our past? Is it possible that humanity has been monitored or tampered with by a more powerful intelligence? What if that intelligence was indifferent? Or worse, malevolent?), all of it presented with the kind of scope and wow now possible with all of the advances made in special effects… how could you not be psyched beyond belief? 

But we all got Lindelof’d. He’s an advertising genius posing as a storyteller. The amount of carelessness involved in his writing is really cynical. When, at the end of Prometheus, the lead character essentially re-asks the same questions posed in the trailer and advanced marketing  material, promising they will be answered in a sequel if we’ll just wait a little bit longer and spend some more money, I felt conned. 

I’m letting the butt hurt flow through me. Look, the reason I was disappointing in Prometheus is the stunning promotion of the film promised a truly intelligent, unique new mythology that just happens to bookend with the original Alien films. Instead the film makes the same sloppy mistake that all prequel films seem to do, poorly and shamelessly re-hash the source material.

I thought the first 45 minutes were great, then the film seemed to chicken out and revert to horror schlock, abandoning any creative ideas it proposed in the first half. If Scott truly wanted to make a monster movie that was tied to the Alien franchise, why bring in a bunch of run-of-the-mill monsters when you’ve got face-huggers and xenomorphs?

John McTiernan returning to Die Hard is an example of a director coming back to a series after some time and it being successful. 

Yup. 

Jay, I don’t know what corner of the web you’re on, but where I’m coming from, all I hear is, “fuck you if you didn’t enjoy it.”  Three days in and I’m already feeling like the hate for this movie is vastly overstated.

A very interesting look at what it all means: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html 

Lett’n your fanboy get in the way, eh, Jay? Which then makes Mike hold back, which you can see in  the show, ’cause you two are buds.

Well, right on but the movie, not the visuals, and not some of the acting, are shit. 

I think a lot of people here just want to hate the movie. There’s a certain level of picking apart before it becomes senseless nitpicking and you just defeat the whole point of your criticism. Hell as Jay said, if it upsets you that much, there’s no hope for you.

Another laughable thing is how everyone is chanting how they should “rip” more into it, as if to say its comparable to hollywood shlock, some kind of big pandering film to rake in the dollars. Since they’re film makers and know a whole fuckload more than most of you, I find the review entirely reasonable, and you should take that more into account before losing your shit.

This film was not a stellar sci fi flick like Alien, but it was by no stretch a bad film. Getting your knickers in a twist and blubbering as hard as for something like Phantom Menace is ridiculous and it’s just becoming an unending hate bandwagon at this point.

No it’s a bad film.  I completely disagree with Jay.  There’s hope for
me.  I saw Avengers and while I didn’t think it was the greatest thing
since sliced bread it was an effective film.  Pacing was good, story was
solid, each character had a purpose and didn’t overshadow the others. 
And it was entertaining.

Prometheus suffered from lazy writing, plot contrivance, and absolutely
no authentic characters.  Forget all the problems with bending the
bounds of realism for things we know to be true: i.e. you don’t just get
up from having your stomach cut open and walk around, many of the
character’s actions didn’t make any sense whatsoever.  And because
of that none of them felt genuine.  I couldn’t suspend my disbelief and thus
couldn’t connect with the film on an emotional level.  I simply didn’t care
what happened. There was no investment.

I really wanted to like this film, and if it was just a case of
disagreeing with the creative direction Ridley took I’d state that, but
this was just awful storytelling.  It failed on several basic levels and
that’s the issue.

Lol That was like a M.Night ending lol thought you really at his house??

God damnit you assholes.  I just spit my cereal all over my screen from seeing Mike’s face after he asks if there is a smoke monster.

Jay, I’m 100% with you on Lost. I had a lot of faith, but all I heard in the end is that they didn’t care about “mythology” stuff, so much as the “emotions” of the characters. All I could say is that if they didn’t care about mythology, then why did they use it so much, from beginning to end?

Ultimately, I felt like a cat whose owner just bought a laser-pointer. Which is quite insulting, unless you’re actually a cat.

Its clear to me, it seems, that the world is filled with to many jaded cynics because of the money-grubbing nature of Hollywood. It is true that some of the worst movies that have been made like ‘The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Jack and Jill’ were simply empty vehicles for marketing, or to make profit. I will, however, exclude Jack and Jill from further comment because it is clear that it was a feature length commercial that financially exploited a fan base that already happens to find entertainment in ineffectual family-values type comedy, poor taste and fart-jokes.

However, when we look at the shallow computer generated environments of the Star Wars prequels we realize that there is a visual style at work; but this style ultimately tells us nothing about what kind of atmosphere the characters interact with or inhabit. Not only this, but no attention is even payed to characterization to compensate. These things, or rather, lack of things, compound on each other to give us nothing but a soulless digital product bereft of meaning, than an actual work of art. I mean, when in a visual medium like film, is the lofty attempt –the questions– made to reach some grand meaning when you can slap-dash some vapid, meaningless, sterile, non-interactive CGI environment populated by equally vapid, meaningless characters?

When visual style is combined with proper atmosphere, characters almost have no need for deliberate characterization because the environment reflects on them and makes them more real — sometimes just the characters’ reactions and responses to it are enough. To this end I would say that the Star Wars prequels were not so much a commercial for products like Jack and Jill is (though the prequels pandered to a wide audience and there was extensive product marketing outside of it) but itself was a product.

There is also nothing wrong with having a dedicated fan-base to go see your movie; dare I say the original ‘Alien’ at the time of release already possessed a fan-base particularly amongst those enjoyed the slasher/horror genres.

When I went in to see Prometheus, I did not think of it as an ‘Alien’ prequel. It would be a mistake to think Ridley Scott would try to replicate everything about ‘Alien’ again but in the past; rather, I considered it to be a fresh approach to the franchise universe, and as a science-fiction horror based on its own merits. Barring problems with the pacing after the first act, I think that a true effort was put in to create something different that we have not seen before, and to build a proper atmosphere.

This movie invites many interesting ideas, and it would be a shame to paint it with broad strokes just because we have become so bitter and cynical from being mistreated by other money-making scams that only possess superficial similarities. Similarities like fan bases and inconsistent plots. There is a difference between this movie and those movies; both in terms of its effort and attention to setting, atmosphere, acting and its ambition to set up and ask questions — these are not faults. Its main faults are arguably in its execution.

We must temper the bad with an appreciation for the good; unless all movies nowadays are always going to be flawed to the point of being awful, no matter what they do right. People who believe the latter are pretentious idiots. 

last minute or so of this review = greatest thing I’ve ever seen

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the inevitable Ridley Scott Blu-Ray Director’s Final Ultimate Edition Cut 2.0. Wherein Ridley Scott attempts to make the movie make sense but adding twenty-some-odd minutes of expository dialogue.

Sorry mike and jay, this movie was as well thought out and deep as transformers the dark side of the moon.   And that movie also looked pretty.   I belive this should have ended with a cheque from riddley scott popping up on screen.

I have a great idea riddley.  Lets show the alien RIGHT AT THE START OF THE MOVIE and ruin all the mystery and suspense for the rest of the movie right there.   Even george lucas had better sense then that. 

What I love the most are all the haters frothing at the mouth for this site to eviscerate the movie, and what the two reviewers most have a problem with is the haters! 

I largely agreed with their points, but if there is one movie that you should NOT be half in the bag for, it might be this film.  It requires a lot of concentration, a little guesswork on your part, and maybe even a repeat viewing.  What I wanted those two to say the most, though, was that THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

It’s not bad that a movie doesn’t spoon-feed you the answers.  It’s not bad that your prequel doesn’t end where the first movie begins.  It’s not bad that you ask more questions than you end up answering.  The best sci-fi movies aren’t the ones with characters who do believable things or who fight the scariest monsters, they are the ones that ask those questions.

2001: A Space Odyssey did nothing but ask questions, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact tried to do nothing but answer questions.  Which is the better film?  I’m not saying Prometheus is either film, but if I were forced to describe it, I’d have to say that it’s Ridley Scott attempting a balancing act between the two. 

I think Jay hit the nail on the head with the question, “is this too smart for me or am I too smart for this movie?” I see many fans talking about symbolism and theming, trying to pick out how different images and ideas are represented. But character development? Plot? Scene cohesion? Dialogue? It seems like detractors are the only ones who care about the story being told, and how it’s being told.

its funny how people are picking this film apart when there are even worse offenders in terms of logic and plot inconsistencies, like that movie a few years ago that everyone loved, what was it? oh yeah, the dark knight (a film I had the same reaction all the haters of prometheus seem to be having to), honestly I have no idea what makes it ok to praise one film and deride the other, is it the genres? because with all this nitpicking theyre about even with the stupid plot holes and unrealistic characters. Oh yeah, if you’re going to reply to this please try and use your brains

Despite looking incredible, basing a sci-fi movie on Erich von Daniken’s half-assed theories IS science schlock!!! Cave paintings surviving 35,000 years in a damp Scottish cave?
Really Ridley? Come on! Why not open with apes warily approaching some mysterious hooded being (bit of a homage to 2001 perhaps) instead of the whole Japanese tea ceremony thing? That made no sense.
He made such obvious use of the Alien lore to get us into the theatre and then fed us a hacked script. Ridley tried so hard to make it ‘NOT Alien’ and into some Chris Nolan “big idea” movie it fails as anything other than a half-thinking-mans Transformers. 
It almost works, until just after we all think the Engineers have died off, but after that point things start falling apart. Even the transformation of the Space Jockey into the Engineer exoskeleton was believable enough. Its Ridley’s legacy to ruin if that’s what he wants but at least have a decent script for crying out loud. Some of the lines and “revelations” are appalling. The Shaw “I can’t have kids” scene…that was awful. 

Couldn’t Vickers have claimed that Peter Weyland’s body was on board because he wanted to be buried at the birthplace of his creators? That’d be a pretty kosher reason for an extra cryotube, no? I’d buy that. I’d probably even help carry his casket into the tomb.
RIP wrinkly Guy Pierce. Wait…he’s alive??? And now a first generation facehugger is impregnating him? Oh the irony!

Pity Weyland-Yutani didn’t make Sham-Wows: John Hurt or Tom Skeritt might have wiped the dust off the stasis capsule in Alien and discovered an Engineer, given they were covered in what looked like remarkably thin clear plastic. Shame about that.Why didn’t the scriptwriters just leave Shaw (and maybe Vickers) alone on the planet to die with just a David-head for company? I expected that to happen once Prometheus did its kamikaze run instead of that stupid “There’s more ships” bullshit. Which David can fly, despite no longer having hands to manipulate the controls and star map nor lungs to play his flute to activate it.AND HOW DOES A ROBOT THAT DOESN’T NEED TO BREATHE PLAY A FLUTE???
Holloway makes a big deal of pointing this out: a remarkably snotty attitude towards a “artificial person” for someone about to meet a superior being who created HIM.Maybe our stranded trio discover the alien beacon (that eventually lures the Nostromo to the planet) and perhaps hear a distant scream as Weyland-Alien is born…ooh, ominous!!! Keep us in the dark and drip feed us plot development damn it, that’s how the first movie worked!The scriptwriters tried to be too clever and tripped themselves up. How about the Engineers ramming the Prometheus to prevent their dangerous technology being stolen? Puts them back in the role of mysterious good guys who probably won’t rip Shaw to pieces when she gatecrashes their homeworld with a talking head and a stolen ship.

I wanted this movie to be great. It just wasn’t!

What is the meaning behind Space Cop ?

Get off your lazy fucking ass and give us what we want you
fat homo. No one cares about Half in the Bag!

Martin Scorsese, The Departed. – Director going back to his roots.

For those who hated it – you’ll get a chuckle from this: 
http://digitaldigging.net/prometheus-an-archaeological-perspective/

Awesome stuff as always.  I love the little bits of humour you two put in.  Keep it up.  I watched it twice today.

That a director of Scott’s calibre — was not the HEAD-writer on this project . . . is a big, bright RED FLAG.

The Plinketty voice trailer for this got me pumped! Need a proper Plinkett destruction of this movie ….

Hater be hating

Do a Plinkett review and rip this film apart. I’m begging you RedLetterMedia!

  Prometheus
is a hilarious comedy in the tradition of “Spaceballs” and “Men in
Black” about a motley crew of forgetful, scaredy-cat scientists who go
into space and try to find their alien creator. They find maps in caves
that are their invitation, but this turns out to be a hilarious trick,
like a mousetrap for retards.

The first scene is a giant, german-looking albino steroid guy who
drinks some coffee out of an ashtray and gets sick and falls in the
waterfall. Special effects reveal that he has little, tiny ladders in
his blood called D&A. This guy looks like a member of the Blue Man
Group, except White. There is a UFO flying overhead that is never seen
or mentioned ever again in the movie. Just one of the many pranks that
the writers and director have put in the movie to trick you with.

Next we meet these two very forgetful and silly scientists and they
get to go into space on a beautiful ship. It is taken care of by a gay
robot who does stuff like dye his hair and dress up like Robocop with a
colander on his head to entertain himself. If C3PO had a human face, he
would be this guy. All of the silly bungling scientists wake up from
hyper-sleep in time to watch a hilarious hologram of a guy in an “old
man” mask that looks like the Emperor from Return of the Jedi. I think
he is wearing the old guy mask to get some laughs from the wacky
scientists, but no one notices it. There is another funny guy with
unconventional hair and tattoos who is really mean to everyone – that’s
so true! Guys that look like that are always dicks!

The spaceship starts to land on the planet, and as luck would have
it, lands exactly near the alien castle on the very first try without
even looking around too much – another hilarious example of serendipity!
These guys are so lucky and fun to watch! The crazy scientists go into
the alien castle and two of the guys get so scared that they decide to
go back to the ship and get lost, even though they have flying
superballs that make 3D maps of everything. Those two bungling doofuses!
They are like “Dumb & Dumber” or “Abott & Costello”. The rest
of the gang finds more poisonous coffee and somehow the gay robot steals
a whole pot of it without anyone noticing. He’s such a Sneaky-Pete!

Everyone has to go back to the ship at the last minute because the
Captian pranks them and waits until a violent storm is nearby before
telling them about it! Haha! This guy is great! The two bungling idiot
scientists get stuck in the castle and decide to goof-off all night.
They try to pet a space cobra that lives in the poisonous coffee, but it
kills them, which I think is what ALL cobras wish to do, space or no.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, the gay robot does a HILARIOUS prank on the
whiny scientist who wears a hipster scarf. He puts a little poisonous
coffee in this jerk’s drink and gives him pink eye and diarrhea
(probably). Haha! That’s like a whoopee cushion x100! Luckily the
scientist has enough health left to hump his forgetful girlfriend one
last time before he is all the way super-sick from the bad coffee. As
one last prank to his fellow scientists, he suits up and goes back to
the castle with them, even though he secretly knows he is very, very
sick. Haha. What an inconvenience to the rest of the group – the ulimate
prank!

The mean lady burns him later. The forgetful scientist gets pregnant
with a white octopus and has to take it out using Michael Jackson’s
special oxygen bed. Now here is where the movie gets really hialrious,
because she TOTALLY forgets that the alien squid is in there and just
leaves to go do some errands! HAHAHA! It turns out that the funny guy in
the old man mask is really hiding on the ship and he does some funny
slapstick “old man walking” with a cane! I love it!

Everyone goes back to the alien castle for yet a THIRD time, this
time to prank the space jockey who lives there. This guy is trying to
take a nap, but they keep buggin him! Man, I hate that too! Anyway, they
wake him up and start yelling at him, but he is SUPER cranky and kills
everybody really fast, exactly the way I would have done it. The funny
guy in the old man mask gets a GIANT bump on his head, just like on Bugs
Bunny when someone gets an anvil dropped on them! Just another
hilarious example of the comedy stylings of Ridley Scott. Luckily,
without too much trouble the forgetful scientist sneaks away and easily
convinces the funny captain to crash his ship into the space jockey’s
ship so he can’t prank everyone on earth with the old “poison coffee
routine.” The mean lady gets crushed because the alien ship starts to
roll like a big wagon wheel and she runs DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ITS PATH
for big laughs from the audience. Classic slapstick.

Now here is where the set-up with the very, very forgetful scientist
girl really pays off with BIG LAUGHS. She goes back to Michael Jackson’s
bed area and it turns out that the alien squid that she forget to throw
in the garbage is now HUGE! This part reminded me of the hilarious
movie “Men in Black” where Will Smith gets alien tentacles wrapped
around him and screams in a high-pitched voice! Classic Sci-Fi comedy
moments all around! Anyway, the forgetful scientist tricks the cranky
nap-albino to go near the giant squid, and guess what? It gets him good
so she can get away once again with plenty of luck on her side. Amazing!

The movie ends when the forgetful scientist makes friends with the
gay robot head that killed her boyfriend and wanted to do the same to
her, but hey – let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget. They sail off
together in another ship to go have more zany, whacky space-comedy
adventures together! Hooray!

Oh, but wait! At the very, very, very end, an alien hatches out of
the cranky nap-guy’s belly and spits out its dentures! I wish the funny
guy in the old man mask had done that too! I can’t wait to see this one
again this weekend. I think there are many, many, many other jokes and
riddles that were never explained or that I missed while I was laughing
at the other stuff. Intentional plot holes are the ultimate prank on the
audience. It’s like the whole movie just gave you two middle fingers
with simultaneous fart noises.

Ten out of ten stars! See this one with your little kids!

In all fairness to Prometheus. It was beautifully filmed and had some amazing special effects, moments of real tension and horror too. It also wasn’t boring which means a lot in any film, though it did feel like its length of 126 minutes. It just had a stupid plot, lame characters and bad dialogue; the plot is complicated only because it was poorly written, not because it was an intricate story. Because it’s so atmospheric and well made I’d give it a 6/10. Compared to most films that come out in the cinema it’s a 10, but in the harshness of reality and film history, it’s just slightly above average.
An example of the poor narrative: How many people actually realized that the worms in the earth were mutated by the black goo and changed into those phallic snake creatures that attacked the two scientists? Not many I’d bet. 

You talked extensively about the movie while never really addressing a lot of the legitimate problems the movie had- you vaguely discuss your ‘disappointment’ and then gush over how pretty it was.  I’m really ‘disappointed’ too- in the fact that you guys didn’t go for the jugular on this one.  The movie was bad.  Discuss those points. Don’t put on kid gloves and dance around the problems.  The characters were poorly written.  They had no realistic motivations.  They put themselves in ridiculously bad situations over and over.  And not a single character’s death ultimately meant anything.  People died and it didn’t affect the plot or the characters.  In Alien, every death was important.  In Prometheus, it was what they did when they couldn’t figure out how to wrap up the script.

It’s worth noting at the end how when the bag of trash catches the dumpster at the midpoint and spills much of its contents, at the end there’s still…. Half in the Bag.

Emperor voice: “Stop asking perfectly logical questions!”

I agree with this review.

Not the worst ever, just mildly disappointing with a lot of vague questions that didn’t need to be raised.

 yes, they’re called plot devices, but unless they’re executed with very high craftsmanship, they’re generally considered bad. really, really bad. because you were either too lazy or too unoriginal to come up with something uniquely entertaining/clever. you could easily blow up the death star if darth vader accidentally dropped a pile of proton torpedoes into the explodey hole, but that’s stupid.

I would love to see Ridley Scott doing a ‘Dead Space’ movie. could be good?

the only reason prometheus sucked was the audience was promised Aliens and got tentacles.
the rest is just ripping on the movie.

A director that years later went back to his roots and made another film just as sound as its predecessor?  I would say James Cameron – Terminator (’84) and Terminator 2:  Judgment Day (’91).

The story / movie logic, character development, plot holes, etc. were just terrible in Prometheus.

Personally, I think the best sci-fi doesn’t intentionally ask big questions but in the end some how manages to do so.  Usually, the big questions are posed subtly within a finely woven narrative.

Examples:  Inception and The Road.

The only props that I can give Scott is that the DP work was extremely nice.

great episode, loved it.

was a bit oversaturated at time though

Guys, seriously? I went to see this movie with a friend, and literally the only good thing we could say about it on the way home was “jesus, the Plinkett review of this is going to be the stuff of legends”.

There was nothing of value in this godforsaken travesty of a film.

I didn’t really give a shit about the Star Wars prequels when they came out. I guess I was too young to be pissed off about them. Regardless, your complete and utterly brutal deconstruction of that trilogy was not only hilarious, but also taught me (a layman) a lot about movie-making and story structure. In my humble opinion, this was an absolute stroke of genius on your part, and is the reason I come back to redlettermedia to this day.

This movie was in no way better that those Star Wars prequels. The exact same mistakes you brought to my attention in those original critiques were repeated in this movie. The fact that I even noticed them is entirely the result of you teaching me some basic concepts of film-making.

I don’t know why you pulled your punches on this. I’m sure you have your reasons as professionals. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this movie is a piece of shit for the very same reasons that you ripped lesser movies to shreds over. Give this movie an honourable death – death by Plinkett.

An example of a good late sequel is The Colour of Money. 26 years after The Hustler and directed by Martin Scorsese.

Real believable environment with totally unbelievable characters and situations, if the scientists in this movie are a good representation of a real team of scientists then i’m afraid for the first ones that go to Mars they will certainly perish, on this movie they all behaved like rookie scientists not highly trained ones, why?

1 – Taking the helmet of on a totally strange environment, even if the air is breathable, they never tested for any strange agents in the air.

2 – A geologist that gets lost in a cavern like system even when he has is “dogs” mapping the passages.

3 – A biologist  that decides to ignore a life time discovery that a real biologist would never ignore, even in a life threatening situation, and decides to treat a totally strange and alien life form has if it was a puppy.  

About the aliens is even worse.

A billions or trillions years old alien race with interstellar traveling capability for billions of years before humans looks technologically not very advanced from us, still uses stasis pods not very different from ours, use a flute to start its machines?! Ok sound could be a very cool way to make them seam really advanced but making that sound with a flute, camon more imagination people, and still uses touch to control that same machines, when we humans will be able to control machines with our minds even on this century.

On the movie the Engineers made all life on Earth, and Ridley or who made this nonsense history decided to make their DNA 100% equal to ours that is TOTALLY impossible, why? Because they are VERY different from us, just because they have human features that does not means they have 100% the same DNA as we. If that was true they would be EXACTLY like us, not have a totally different skin, blood, eye’s system. And don’t forget that if they made all life on Earth then they also made all the other animals and their DNA is totally different from ours the most similar to us is the Bonobo monkey and is only 98.7%, but it seams they “forgot” that we are not the only animal on Earth. 

You guys said the best scene in the movie was the operation one but this is what i think of it. 

1 – A futuristic operation pod like machine that still uses common anesthetics and metal graphs, they where trying to make it believable by using familiar medical practices i know, but if it is a futuristic machine then it should use futuristic tech, tech that we are working now not totally possible in the moment but will certainly be possible on the future, like some kind of nanotech liquid/gelatinous glue for example, that would be a fantastic futuristic medical tech to close wounds, not metal graphs that is 20 early 21 century tech and on that kind of wound would make all the walking about (that we see in the movie) certainly impossible. 

2 – Why anyone disregarded that same operation and the alien life form “dead” on the operation room, is beyond me, especially the android when he seamed so interested on the pregnancy and the “baby” before.

Blegh, I don’t seem to
be able to watch your recent reviews any longer without it skipping
all the time. My ‘pooter is only a few years old so there shouldn’t
be any problem. Is there a magic video codec I’m missing?Anyway,
I thought the film was pretty good. I’ve noticed that most of the
vitriol comes from those expecting another film in the guise and tone
of Alien. I don’t think the John Williams-esque theme that kept
popping up helped satiate their preconceptions. I mean, I can get the
idea there were some rather inexplicable character actions like
the guy (the biologist guy, Milburn) putting his hand out, rather
like Steve Irwin, to a new alien species and being fascinated by it
and yet having no interest in the dead corpses, but the scene where
he bites it is really no more naive than Kane shoving his face
directly over a pulsating egg in Alien. There are all sorts
of ridiculous things that characters do in Alien that are comparable
to the ones in Prometheus. Why did Ripley go back for the cat, why
did she follow through with the self destruct sequence after finding
Parker and Lambert dead instead of heading straight for the escape
shuttle and putting herself in even more danger, why did no one
question Ash as to why he didn’t spot an alien embryo inside Kane
when he was under observation…I didn’t like things such as
Fifield and Milburn getting lost or not being guided by Janek when
they were being monitored or even the fact they go lost in the first
place. It seems like there should have been a slight mention or
reason for this that consisted of a minute of film. Still, it’s
hardly the ‘disaster’ many are spouting it out to be. Some just didn’t
like the ‘feel’ of the film and so they nitpick on inconsequential
shit to tear the movie down and claim it was rubbish, whereas with
Alien they let it slide.

I’m not going to claim
Prometheus is a classic mind bender like 2001: A Space Odyssey,

but if that film was
made today it would have gotten trounced by the same people for
similar reasons.

This is undoubtly the modern day “Star Wars: Phantom Menace”. A prequel to a genius classic movie with a simple concept, strong story and characters, made by an almost unknown Director with a vision and motivation to create a great picture.

Ridley pulled a lesson straight from George Luca’s notebook on this one. A completely shallow movie that overcomplicates thing – not in the good way. The story becomes too complex for the writers even, as the story doesn’t follow up on most questions being asked, characters are flat, uninteresting, illogical and lack motivation for their actions.

Too many flaws between this and Alien, and even too many logical errors on it’s on in this movie alone, regardless the link between Alien or not. 

This is not a smart movie at all. There’s not that much to “wrap your head around” here, and neither is it any point asking “What was the point of it” or the message of the movie. The message was: “You are all fucking morons at a 13 year old mentality who will waste your money watching this shit for our lazy moviemaking and financial benefits”. We all got fucked watching this movie. Indiana Jones raped in our minds all over again. Jar Jar Binks haunting out dreams and lost all hope in humanity.

Good day, sir.

I actually keep coming back to the removal of the space helmet. That was really, in a big way, a jumping off point, where I could no longer really accept the movie as “smart”. As Jay points out – microbes. Also, spores, molds, and fungus. Also, synthesized alien chemicals that maybe can’t be picked up by their equipment. Also, non-biological particles like asbestos that might be harmful. Also, what if it just plain stinks? Like, stinks like a rotten eggs fart, and is so bad that it makes ya puke.
Okay, one wacky daredevil who wants to push the envelope I can maybe buy, but why would ALL of the other scientists immediately remove their helmets also, just because he didn’t immediately start choking and die? A smart script implies a smart audience. A smart audience of a sci-fi flick will be (and was) thinking of such things. So what was the purpose of removing the helmets? In what way did it further the story? I keep thinking that it’s really for, like, recording purposes. But the dialogue came through just fine in later scene when dipstick and his buddy are poking at hissing penis monsters, fully helmeted.

So yeah, it’s at that point that I felt that the movie was telling me to chill out and kick back, because this is supposed to be a popcorn flick. We’re just not gonna get hung up on piddling technical details like “scientists wouldn’t behave so illogically” because it’s cooler (or more likely, easier to record sound) if they don’t wear helmets. But the movie took itself way too seriously from then on (casual interracial sex aside) and seemed to push concept more than story.

“Prometheus is a good movie compared to Battleship and Jack and Jill.”
Why even review movies with that mentally?
Jay talks about people complaining immediately after seeing the movie, but it has been out in Europe for more than a week. People have have seen it and had time to think about it. Complaining about people complaining, instead of reviewing the movie, why bother reviewing movies at all?

So, so, so much butt-hurt in the comments, only that should tell you its really a movie you should go see.  

 Sucks.

 Prometheus – Hivers slightly different script:

———————————————————————————————————

1. Caveat one: Its far easier just changing something then creating something entirely new
 2. Caveat to the caveat one: Ridlley Scott and the writer didnt create something entirely new but built it from existing materials, movies and stories.

———————————————————————————————————–

- Wayland seeks immortality from the get go.

- His bid for it is creating androids like David.

Who is a prototype experiment one step away from next design which will
allow Wayland to upload himself into a new seemingly immortal android
body.

- The discovery of young scientists and their convictions throws a
proverbial wrench in his plans by presenting another option that may be
available.

- twist – he uploaded himself into the android body of Charlize. Or someone else in the crew.

Its just a copy of him so he doesnt feel threatened personally – therefore he goes to investigate and keep full control at situ.

- Space jockeys are not genocidal maniacs. They are also pressured by
their own mortality – as any other living creature in universe. Those heads are not their helmets – but their heads. therefore they are not 3 meters tall superhumans but those sad elephantine creatures. (The elephant man references)

- nano-goo is something they found (not their creation) and their own bid for immortality of a
different kind. Insert various metaphysical themes into it.

- nano-goo has its own plans. But, at first it plays nicely seemingly
under some control of the last living space jockey that is as we see, largely
mutated nano-remade being in the movie itself.

- Space jockey interacts (not – talks. although he could learn from humans), with humans and comes to find them aggressive
and a danger which humans prove through their behavior – and by
revealing their history to him.

He starts to think of them as a Virus.

- He goes full mental when he discovers David and Wayland (Charlize – whoever) androids are completely synthetic -

- which is a complete and utter anathema to Space Jockeys – them being all biologically inclined as they are.

- Nano-goo feels the same.

-Takes over space jockey completely or they join forces in eradicating
human ALIEN SCUM. Both start producing different creatures to attack and
destroy these horrible insane ALIENS, improving design as they go.

- Everyone dies at the end.

- Last human alive erases all data on Prometheus about the position of Earth exact location, before being killed.

last shots:

Nano goo (in form of one of the monsters) switches on emergency S.O.S. signal on Prometheus that Nostromo catches years later.

- creates last flower pods of facehuggers using human and space jockey bodies as building material.

- Sets in for a long wait.

I can’t see the clip. I’ve allowed flash, don’t know what else to do. I really want to watch this,but blip doesn’t seem to work for me

I`m very glad that Prometheus wasn`t directed by Peter Jackson. If that movie was a minute longer I would`ve peed myself.Paleocontact and directed panspermia were two most original premises that Lindelof could come up with? Come on, it`s 2012… It`s like beating a horse that has been dead for a couple of decades now. At least make up your fucking mind which one of these you wanna do. Typical Lost writing: throw more nonsensical crap at the audience, we`ll come up with some half-assed explanation on the fly in the sequel.
Also am I the only one who`s deeply disappointed that Giger’s mysterious “Space Jockey” biomechanoid turned out to be Dr. Manhattan`s evil albino twin?

Cracking up at Jay at 1:53. What you were *trying* to say was…

Prometheus was amazing, sorry guys this is the first time I’ve seen you miss the mark.  I really thought that Mike would understand the themes and symbolism but yeah, you missed it.   Funny as always though!

Jay, you yourself said the film is all setup and no payoff just like Lost. Why are you willingly falling for the same trick again?

 So how about you fat lazy fucks get to work on releasing
that quigley plinkett review instead of this stupid eating fried chicken
and moving scenery around half in the bag bullshit that nobody gives a fuck about. And where the fuck is my pizza roll again?

I think we will have to wait for the directors cut to come out before we can make a final assessment on this movie. As for the reason why they stayed away from the title of prequel and reboot is because they wanted to make a film inside the same universe, which I think is a fresh idea. It’s kinda like all the Marvel movies that can crossover. It lets us revisit familiar concepts but with a different story. I enjoyed the movie but Damon’s influence is clearly seen and brings it down with the bringing about of more questions than answers.

Eh, just my take on what Jay said about the fan hate.  Yeah there are worse movies like Jack and Jill.  However noone expects Jack and Jill to be good.  It’s beyond stupid.  Ridley Scott is a real director, and Blade Runner was the most influencial sci fi movies at that time.  And Alien was a classic. 

   People expected this to be good.  When some people were let down, they became angry because it came from a good director.  Noone should be upset by Bucky Larson or other crap. Everyone knows they were going to be nothing but crap.

  Haven’t seen the movie yet, but at this point I’ll wait for cable.

Director that came back to a series successfully: Wes Craven when he did New Nightmare.

Prometheus was good insofar as it finally shed light on the Space Jockey/Engineers; those guys were long overdue for some screen time. What I didn’t like was the loss of footing from the second act onward as well as the absence of common sense from the characters. How could any of the crew have possibly missed a hybrid squid locked away in Charlize’s med bay? Charlize and Idris went back there to shag. Does the film expect us to believe they just happened to miss that thing squirming around in there? And then there’s the hacking of plot points from Alien Vs. Predator. Jay probably knows what I mean, as he’s seen it. The whole “Weyland puts together a team of specialists from all across the world to be the first to investigate a [insert whatever place/thing/situation here] based on data from several differing ancient cultures on Earth” was the bulk of Prometheus. And hell, they even had a line about the necessity of guns on the mission, just like in AVP. Then there’s the weird sex and birthing of strange creatures from Species and Splice and the egocentric corporate head honcho and his power-hungry daughter using extraterrestrials for immortality and domination like Hunter and Lucretia Borgia in Predator: Concrete Jungle (video game). Oh, and let’s not forget Hunter Borgia’s reverse-engineered Predator technology that he called Prometheus Tech. Seriously, they couldn’t come up with anything else? Cannon fodder, cliches, and stupidity aside, the movie was okay. The visuals were impressive and I really did like the Engineers a lot. I’m only looking forward to the sequel to get to know those people more. But I will give the movie another point for its ending arrangement: Shaw zooming off into the cosmos on a stolen alien ship with nothing but an android’s head as company really is like something from a pulp comic or maybe Heavy Metal Magazine. That was just cool. Somehow, it felt right to me. The rest of the movie just fell short. It was like filler, and nonsense filler at that. It was the kind of condescending crap they put into movies like Transformers, which doesn’t belong in a movie such as Prometheus. If they wanted the movie to be smart, they should have hired a smarter writer. Not the guy from Lost. Shed less light on distracting plot points that don’t add up to anything and give us something we really are not expecting, like Shaw and David’s Head in their Grand Theft Engineer Cruiser.

I see that Budweiser is putting out a new Adam Sandler Movie, you know what to do!

By the way…. how did you get back there? We need a conclusion!

Am I going insane, or is there a bell ringing throughout this review?

I love you guys and your reviews, and you’re probably right that I should just stop watching movies ha.  But I hated this movie.  I appreciate that you guys gave it a chance, but I think the reason people hated this movie goes beyond the science shit and, you know, how nothing made any sense at all.  Some of the basic elements that you pointed out in the Star Wars prequel reviews failed here.  There was no protagonist to this movie.  I mean, it started with David the Robot, and in fact it was the exposition of that character that made me excited . I thought that this would be the story of how David discovered the world around him and use abilities to edge out over humanity and gain independence.  And that would have made it really clever, having a protagonist who’s this weird distant robot who’s kind of an evil asshole and understands everything and has motivations we don’t understand.  But then it turns out he’s just working for his father.  Oh fuck.  It was really a huge letdown within the movie itself, to build up the character of David only to have his head rolling on the floor and then to suddenly switch the main character to Noomie Raspace.  

I guess I just kind of expected you guys to rip this movie a new asshole.  And actually I agree with a lot of what you say.  I thought the first half of the movie was amazing.  But by the end all I really liked was that a) Fassbender did very well and b) Charlize looked pretty hot.  Anyway, love the review even if I don’t really agree.  

The secrets of “Prometheus” explained…

Albino Lord Voldemort-icus, Pliopithecus, Pronconsul, Dryopithecus,
Oreopithecus, Ramapithecus, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Advanced
Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Early Homo Sapiens, Solo Man,
Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man.