PROMETHEUS

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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Burnt Hill » Sun Jun 17, 2012 2:49 pm

Very cool Mac, thank you.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Simulist » Sun Jun 17, 2012 3:07 pm

norton ash wrote:I think it's thoroughly worthwhile to discuss a shite Hollywood movie in terms of the zeitgeist, and Prometheus is particularly interesting in terms of Ridley Scott, the big budget and art direction, and its creation-of-an-awful-world aspect in the context of our awful fucking world.

So do I.

norton ash wrote:This summer, the message is that we're at the mercy of monsters and it was all set up that way, I guess.

The idea that it might have been "all set up that way" doesn't really sound too out-of-the-question, actually. And, well... we may be at their mercy...

But...

... to remain so requires at least a bit of cooperation on our part, I think. Like closing our eyes, placing our hands over our ears, and saying singing "LAHLAHLAHLAHLAHLAHLAH!!!" really, really loud for a long, long time. (I'm reminded of that 'cause today is "Church Day"!)
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Handsome B. Wonderful » Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:53 pm

I saw this movie on Saturday and it was a very good movie. Better than Event Horizon by light years, to borrow a space term. It's entertainment, it was something I used to get away from my everyday world. It was a very good piece of entertainment.

As for underlying tones of statements on humanity or other themes within the plot and story, I'm pretty dense when it comes to those things so any metaphorical meanings were beyond my pea-sized brain. Humans bad? World bad? I don't know, but it seems to me that it portrays a happenstance taking place in a specific time and place and that's just what happens. I think the movie raises more questions than answers when it comes to the lore of the Alien universe created in the original 1979 movie.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:10 pm

Had to throw this review into the mix:

Why the fuck was I ever stupid enough to let myself get geeked about this movie? This dumb motherfucking piece of shit summer tent-pole action/sci-fi stupidfest? Why? Have I learned nothing from my many disappointing movie experiences? Did the whole Star Wars prequel fiasco followed by the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Alien Buttfuckers mess not provide ample evidence that I should lower my expectations if not eradicate them altogether, replacing them with a stone-faced impassivity like that of an Indian watching from a butte while the white men slaughter the buffalo upon which his people depend for their very livelihood? Am I not clued in to how the whole Hollywood thing works by now?

Evidently not, because I let this movie geek me. I let the cool-looking trailers and the neat little viral advertising stuff and just the whole "Holy Shit Ridley Scott is Returning to Sci-Fi and There's Michael Fassbender as an Android and Dragon Tattoo Girl as a Bad-Ass Chick and Charlize Theron as Another Bad-Ass Chick and Stringer Bell as The Negro In the Movie" thing get me all charged up. I bent over, in other words. I bent over and let Hollywood once again ass-rape me so deep that it ruptured the lining of my esophagus. I blame myself for this mess. I should know better. My rage is all focused inward. Against myself. My own gullibility and feeble-mindedness.

snip
But a funny thing happened in the midst of the Lost meltdown, and it happened to Damon Lindelof. Mr. Lindelof the hack TV writer who worked on Crossing Jordan and Nash Bridges before getting lucky and hooking up with J.J. Abrams learned a very profound and important lesson about the fine art of writing for geeks. He discovered, to his amazement, that when creating a TV show that trades on mystery and expectation and encouraging the audience to engage in all kind of creative speculation, the very things that geekdom thrives on, it doesn't really fucking matter if any of it makes sense. Because by the time people realize it doesn't make sense, the show will already be over and you won't have to answer for any of it. You will have already cashed all the paychecks and made your name for yourself in Hollywood and the geeks can kiss your lily-white ass.

The trick Damon Lindelof discovered is not that much different than what the Catholics discovered many many centuries ago when they started doing their masses in Latin even though most of the people attending mass didn't speak a word of Latin. It doesn't matter if it makes any god damn sense to the people out there, the important thing is to string along the faithful, filling them with a sense of awe and mystery, until you've gotten all their money. Damon Lindelof and the pope would have a lot to talk about if they ever met. And not just about footwear.

This discovery of Lindelof's - how to exploit the naive faith of those who've come to be ensnared in your meticulously crafted web of bullshit - would come in handy on his first big movie gig as the writer of Prometheus. In fact, this skill of Lindelof's, acquired completely by accident I believe, was the entire reason he was hired to write the movie in the first place.


http://www.thedailycrabbie.com/2012/06/ ... being.html

Caveat, I have not seen the movie, but I've heard all about the plot holes. Most of the co-workers are giving middling reviews and some were downright confused, although that could be charitably said to 'just be them'.

I'll see it on streaming. Or Rifftrax. Whichever comes first.

Great mythology discussion here though! :thumbsup


on edit- thought I had copied more quote than I had...
Last edited by Twyla LaSarc on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:18 pm

Twyla LaSarc wrote:Had to throw this review into the mix:

Why the fuck was I ever stupid enough to let myself get geeked about this movie? This dumb motherfucking piece of shit summer tent-pole action/sci-fi stupidfest? Why? Have I learned nothing from my many disappointing movie experiences? Did the whole Star Wars prequel fiasco followed by the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Alien Buttfuckers mess not provide ample evidence that I should lower my expectations if not eradicate them altogether, replacing them with a stone-faced impassivity like that of an Indian watching from a butte while the white men slaughter the buffalo upon which his people depend for their very livelihood? Am I not clued in to how the whole Hollywood thing works by now?

Evidently not, because I let this movie geek me. I let the cool-looking trailers and the neat little viral advertising stuff and just the whole "Holy Shit Ridley Scott is Returning to Sci-Fi and There's Michael Fassbender as an Android and Dragon Tattoo Girl as a Bad-Ass Chick and Charlize Theron as Another Bad-Ass Chick and Stringer Bell as The Negro In the Movie" thing get me all charged up. I bent over, in other words. I bent over and let Hollywood once again ass-rape me so deep that it ruptured the lining of my esophagus. I blame myself for this mess. I should know better. My rage is all focused inward. Against myself. My own gullibility and feeble-mindedness.


http://www.thedailycrabbie.com/2012/06/ ... being.html

Caveat, I have not seen the movie, but I've heard all about the plot holes. Most of the co-workers are giving middling reviews and some were downright confused, although that could be charitably said to 'just be them'.

I'll see it on streaming. Or Rifftrax. Whichever comes first.

Great mythology discussion here though! :thumbsup


Pretty much sums up my thoughts. I asked my friends who liked it where they saw it, as I want to see the good cut of it. Evidently the version shown in my theaters was the super sucky one
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:51 pm

8bitagent wrote:
Pretty much sums up my thoughts. I asked my friends who liked it where they saw it, as I want to see the good cut of it. Evidently the version shown in my theaters was the super sucky one


"Lost" was a perverse pleasure of mine although I maybe saw a show or two. My co-workers would spend hours recounting and speculating about that show (and due to shift differentials, I could 'innocently' slip in spoilers based on their conversation, gods, I am so wicked :eeyaa ). They were all so much younger than I and I had to give them the parable of a show called 'Twin Peaks' that set so much up and ultimately disappointed many when the show was cancelled before all of the sub plots could come to fruition.

As soon as I found out the 'Lost' guy had written the new 'alien' script I totally lost interest. Thank you for your bluntness.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Simulist » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:53 pm

I still love LOST and Twin Peaks.

:scaredhide:
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby 2012 Countdown » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:57 pm

Okay, yes, I saw the movie this weekend. Even saw it in 3D! hehe..

So, my words are going to be somewhat repeating what others have said about the stupidity of the characters. They were all very unprofessional. It was like if you went into space with your high school homeroom class, only they were adults. Fucking idiots, all of them really. That to me was the most offensive. Bad. I'm not pinning it on bad actors as I am sure they did what they were told.

But what I wanted to say was yes indeed, Christ CAN be assumed to be one of them. An engineer or whatnot. I cannot unread what I'd read, so who knows if I would have gotten that. After reading that review, its really hard to miss though. The reviewer missed even more hints in that some of their exclamations and dialogue included 'oh Christ' for example.

Also, I kinda liked the ending. Her decision. Sure it begs for another installment, but rather than simply pack it up after that, I like her switch.

Again though, plot holes and stupid characters in their stupid circumstances get in the way.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:06 pm

Simulist wrote:I still love LOST and Twin Peaks.

:scaredhide:


Ahh, you don't have to hide behind the couch. Those shows (almost despite themselves) turned people onto the esoteric, imagination, and delayed gratification. It's all good. :wink

But I knew right away I was being toyed with and I never was able to loosen up to enjoy them. Probably not unlike my dad whose enjoyment of action/war movies was marred by a far too extensive knowledge of airplanes that left him shouting "They didn't use those planes in the pacific theater!" at the screen during the saturday TV matinee.

Go figure.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby Simulist » Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:14 pm

Twyla LaSarc wrote:But I knew right away I was being toyed with and I never was able to loosen up to enjoy them.

I used to enjoy 24 back in the day, before — suddenly one night in 2002 — it dawned on me how propagandistic it was.

Never watched it since.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:07 pm

Man, Twin Peaks was like nothing else. Especially the high weirdness of season 2. Knowing Lynch, I'm not sure it was ever meant to truly wrap up.

Btw, for all the talk of "24" being jingoist pro neocon war propaganda of the Bush era...that show had a crap ton of RI/conspiracy themes woven in. False flag terrorism even wormed its way into the show. But you see this with a lot of shows, like The Shield and of course Fringe. I can't stand any tv shows(cept comedies like Big Bang Theory) but as Ive lamented before...one look through say, Jeff's book or any of the threads on here and youve got yourself an endless treasure trove of ideas for tv shows or films.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Jun 19, 2012 12:30 am

Captain Jack Obvious says:

If you saw this movie, you went in - as with almost all space movies - prepared to accept the premise of interstellar travel, at faster than light speeds, by humans in a ship who sleep for two years in water tanks, without any explanation of where the gravity comes from that pins them to a flat floor at their earth weights and prevents them from decaying into blobs, and without discussion of the relativistic time effects that mean many thousands of years will pass on Earth during their trip. It will be hard to find plot holes or even character stupidities less likely than that.

It's a commercial product: a Hollywood blockbuster. The necessary point of such an undertaking is always to make more money than it cost to produce and promote (in this case, a quarter billion dollars give or take). In practice, in the current movie-watching culture, this means it propels you through a sequence of quasi-tactile and manipulated emotional experiences, which you pay to see on a big screen because it stimulates in a way you may desire. These scenes are arranged around a formula using characters taken from a limited set of familiar templates, who work through a mostly predictable plot. These are the currently minimum requirements of the blockbuster, otherwise it won't get paid for. Given all this, a set of artists or craftspeople are hired for two years to pack in lots of myth, metaphor, variably interpretable messages and design.

I only watch such movies in my preferred mode of intoxication, with the intent to have a good time even if it sucks. On this thread WR said pretty much the same thing. So I did watch this one, and hope to return to talk about it later in this thread. But I can tell you I didn't go in intending to care about mere plot holes.

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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby 2012 Countdown » Tue Jun 19, 2012 1:17 am

Gravity field was accepted and assumed. No problems with that. In fact, why did David/robot have to learn language classes like a human? He's a robot. Just download. But these peoples behavior. Its goofy. And speaking of intoxication, did the lead male scientist think. hey I just found our creators and that was awesome, I think I'll get wasted! And what about after the female lead scientist just finishes giving herself/escaping alien abortion, she goes into the room and discovers Wayland alive (she's all bloody of course) comes staggering in, and no one pays her too much a glance,haha. But those two guys getting lost...now that was formulaic. I accept that. The guys going down with the ship, gotta do it. Compounded with all the other silly stuff though, it was getting in the way of the story. The story had potential I thought, it just wasn't realized. I'm already kinda suckered into the next one as I want to know about these engineers. Kinda.

I'm wondering if Platonia is going to weigh in on this and blow my mind.
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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby justdrew » Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:15 am

well, the 'engineers' (a bad name for them if you ask me, just another little anti-science jab :-) ) remind me of...

Ted Cassidy, Lurch, Ruk, etc...
Image

heh, he narrated the opening of 70s Hulk, didn't know that


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Re: PROMETHEUS

Postby 2012 Countdown » Tue Jun 19, 2012 10:56 am

I am not understanding the insult of 'engineer'. I think its a good as any word. They are engineering life. Maybe 'operators'? Conductors?
They aren't really scientists, they seem to just be doing what they are instructed to do/procedure.

The most frustrating part for me was when the opportunity to have a dialogue with them happened, and he didn't say a thing, just went bizerk. Dude had to know he could do that at any time, no interaction. Raw rage and emotional. Very advanced/mature of him. "Forgive them lord, for they know not what they do"...Christ would likely turn the other cheek. At least have a conversation before turning the place out.

Oh, and in the next one, if they keep going with the 'we want to destroy humanity/earth because of what they did to Christ' angle, I will be very dissapointed.
Come on. Very infantile. Goodwin aside, blame humanity is like blaming the jews. Whatever.
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