Yes, I am aware of that. Still takes a team of people to actually design and manufacture costumes, sets, etc. Not all people in these fields are created equal.
Yes. You can look at every good visual director and you will notice that throughout their career they have worked with different DPs and crew, but the photography, staging, camera operating, and editing in their films are consistant.
Ridley has identical shots and pan zoom moves from The Duellists in Kingdom of Heaven. Or in Alien where the Alien is coming for Lambert compared to the Black Dress is coming for Lili in Legend.
Even this Ridley Scott ad at 10 seconds is photographed and lit near the same as when Rachel meets Deckard at Tyrells in Blade Runner
Corporate guy screws over the whole crew.
Innocent thing (cat/girl) runs around and needs to be saved by Ripley
The period where they land on the plant in need of help but are uncertain who, why, or how to help.
Some jump scares involving harmless pets (cat vs hampster) before anythign too serious happens.
The motion tracker.
Characters running through vents (which, admitedly doesn't make a whole lot of sense in Aliens because, if Alien proved anything, it is that the alien likes moving around in vents)
The use of headmounted cameras near the begining of the movie for people back at a base to monitor and see what those in the field see.
(These are just some quick, off the top of my head similarities- I know there are more but I'd have to watch the movies side by side again and... frankly I don't have the time)
They even end exactly the same.
Running around from an alien while something is about to self destruct, achieve escape, but wait, the alien is on the escape craft! Let's blow it out into space.
Corporate guy screws over the whole crew.
Innocent thing (cat/girl) runs around and needs to be saved by Ripley
The period where they land on the plant in need of help but are uncertain who, why, or how to help.
Some jump scares involving harmless pets (cat vs hampster) before anythign too serious happens.
The motion tracker.
Characters running through vents (which, admitedly doesn't make a whole lot of sense in Aliens because, if Alien proved anything, it is that the alien likes moving around in vents)
The use of headmounted cameras near the begining of the movie for people back at a base to monitor and see what those in the field see.
(These are just some quick, off the top of my head similarities- I know there are more but I'd have to watch the movies side by side again and... frankly I don't have the time)
They even end exactly the same.
Running around from an alien while something is about to self destruct, achieve escape, but wait, the alien is on the escape craft! Let's blow it out into space.
Corporate guy screws over the whole crew.
Innocent thing (cat/girl) runs around and needs to be saved by Ripley
The period where they land on the plant in need of help but are uncertain who, why, or how to help.
Some jump scares involving harmless pets (cat vs hampster) before anythign too serious happens.
The motion tracker.
Characters running through vents (which, admitedly doesn't make a whole lot of sense in Aliens because, if Alien proved anything, it is that the alien likes moving around in vents)
The use of headmounted cameras near the begining of the movie for people back at a base to monitor and see what those in the field see.
(These are just some quick, off the top of my head similarities- I know there are more but I'd have to watch the movies side by side again and... frankly I don't have the time)
They even end exactly the same.
Running around from an alien while something is about to self destruct, achieve escape, but wait, the alien is on the escape craft! Let's blow it out into space.
You clearly don't know what beats or characters are. Continued allusions to the first film are completely different. And they're uncertain who they're helping or where they are? Again, have you seen Aliens?
You clearly don't know what beats or characters are. Continued allusions to the first film are completely different. And they're uncertain who they're helping or where they are? Again, have you seen Aliens?
Go to alien planet under pretense of examining a signal (or lack there of)
examine source (or lack of source)
encounter alien(s)
briefly mistake an innocent for the alien
Alien(s) begins to pick off crew
Remaining crew retreats to forumlate a plan
Remaining crew gets attacked before the plan can be come to being
Remaining crew heads for escape vehicle
Oh wait, innocent character is in danger.
Must rescue character before getting on vehicle
Self destruct sequence is initiated during this time
Innocent character saved, rescue vehicle boarded
Rescue vehicle actually contains alien
Blow Alien out Airlock, day is saved.
Characters
Ripley= Ripley (cheating, I know)
Ash+Lambert= Burke (Company stooge with a little bit of sissy whiner)
Dallas+ Kane = Hicks (The obvious hero, mostly laid back but willing to do what it takes to save the day)
Cat = Newt
The rest of the character's in Aliens hardly have a character so... I don't have much to work with as far as comparisions go.
The character's are, admittedly a bit less convincing, but I don't really see any more direct comparisions within Prometheus either.
Characters
Ripley= Ripley (cheating, I know)
Ash+Lambert= Burke (Company stooge with a little bit of sissy whiner)
Dallas+ Kane = Hicks (The obvious hero, mostly laid back but willing to do what it takes to save the day)
Cat = Newt
And again this. The approach to writing and characterisation is so much different in Aliens. They feel like movie characters in Aliens, much less so in Alien which had a documentary feel to it at times.
Also your description of Burke as a combination of Ash and Lambert is awful.
It's so reductionist. I could probably describe Aliens as a remake of Superman or something if I took your approach.
And again this. The approach to writing and characterisation is so much different in Aliens. They feel like movie characters in Aliens, much less so in Alien which had a documentary feel to it at times.
Also your description of Burke as a combination of Ash and Lambert is awful.
I agree that the approach the the character's is completely different. One is natrualistic and the other is crap 80's cheese. But I still feel they are rather similar in practice.
And maybe you could explain to me how I am so wrong about the narrative structure. That would at least solve this cognative dissonance we're having here.
And that reductionist aspect is the point of what I'm saying. Sculli claimed Prometheus was a remake of Alien, which I don't see beyond a reductionistic view. So I'm giving Aliens the same treatment.
Finally saw it today. I feel conflicted by this film. I think I reacted to it similarly to most people in these threads. Visually, it is breathtaking. But the dialogue is poor and forced in a lot of scenes. Characters behave in inexplicable ways. The score was bad (the composer kept trying to shoehorn the main theme he came up with into every scene). I also thought the whole connection to Alien was really tacked on and unnecessary. The last scene felt like an afterthought, not really relevant to the plot. I almost feel like it should've been a stand alone film, not related to that franchise.
SFDebris recently reviews Alien, and brought up an interesting point about the way suspense was used in the first film, that really can't be experienced by anyone today. That in the film, there was really no indication how the main character was. Without knowledge of the future series, there's really nothing to indicate Ripley is our hero. She's presented as just another member of the crew. Until he dies, you're kind of led to believe that Dallas is the hero, being the captain and all. Being so well known, it's almost impossible for anyone to experience that when watching these films.
Thought it was thoroughly entertaining. It felt a little rushed and the script was throwing ideas out left and right, but I have a feeling the eventual director's cut will fix some of the issues.
There was a lot of potential for the story to come across as silly with the jockey, and I think it did a nice job avoiding that.
Some moments were EXTREME. And you can still tell they kind of held back with the gore, which is a shame.
The ending sucked... so it better get justified with a sequel. I'm going to be mad otherwise. Pretty much everything is still left up in the air.
Alien and Prometheus' structure are very similar in terms of story beats. The first act is almost identical:
Alien/Prometheus - Crew of the _____ arrive in orbit of LV____ and are awoken from cryo by ____ on company orders to go an investigate a derelict alien environment. They all go to eat breakfast and then discuss exactly what they're doing there.
Alien/Prometheus- Upon investigating said alien environment full of many containers of life, one of the crew brings back an alien parasite to the ship.
In Aliens, Ripley isn't on the Sulaco till the start of the second act. Which is one hell of a big second act that includes a huge amount of shit going down from finding Newt, the colonist catacombs where marines die, the dropship being totaled, the atmosphere processor venting and Bishop leaving for the APC.
In Aliens, Ripley knows what is happening from page one. There is no guesswork. And the marines are soon on board with her. It isn't the same exploring the unknown (which in Prometheus comes as predictable stuff) that leads characters to second-guess each other. After the colony scene, everybody is on board with Ripley except for Bourke.
Then of course we have stuff like
Alien/Prometheus - The android acts questionably against the female protagonist's best wishes and we get aliens coming out of stomachs on board the ship.
Bishop changed this expectation up quite nicely, saving the day in fact. Whilst David was all over the place. He was both a threat and not a threat, because character writing is hard and Shaw forgave him pretty damn quickly. Killing your boyfriend isn't as bad as trying to kill you with a newspaper, I guess.
Ripley in Alien and Shaw are painted very much alike - despite Shaw's faith angle. Nobody listens to her and things go wrong all the way into the third act, before she's chased while running for her life.
Ripley in Alien is very different from Ripley in Aliens - who is determined from the start and is running into danger at the end of Aliens.
Then of course in Alien/Prometheus there is a lot of running and axe-grabbing before the film finally end with the heroine heading back out into the stars while she narrates 'This is ____, last survivor of the ______, signing off.'
The tone of Prometheus - like every other facet of the film, tries to mirror Alien's but isn't as focused. It almost feels like fan fiction in its attempt to appropriate the beats from Alien.
The tone of Aliens is very different from both. Aliens is a rollercoaster that starts off ridiculously slow, then ramps up and up and up and then explodes and doesn't stop for over an hour.
Prometheus is more like Alien than Aliens that's for sure. It's more like Alien than Alien is like Aliens too. I don't get what's so hard to understand.
It's funny the amount of people that come in here and say 'I'm a huge Alien/Aliens fan' because they're two totally different types of movie. Folks need to watch Alien again I think.
Sadly like many I'm kind of mixed on it. It's a beautiful film. I don't really like watching movies in 3D but it wasn't obnoxious and the screen didn't look dark like mud humping shit so I could actually see the film.
I tried to stay away from as many trailers or information as much as I could. So aside from the short theatrical trailer and knowing it was Ridley Scott directing and earlier he said he was doing an Alien prequel and then saying well no I'm not doing an Alien prequel now and that it had Charlize Theron starring in it I had no idea what the movie was about. Heck I thought Charlize was the main star of the movie from what I read about and saw in the trailers.
The movie though, it seemed very schizophrenic. Perhaps that was my own fault though cause I saw the writers in the credits. As soon as I saw Lindelof as one of the writers I started to groan. Like many, I loved Lost at first but then kept watching the train wreck that it became until the very end hoping for a payoff. To be fair the first half of the movie was pretty awesome in scope and didn't seem disjointed and lead to nowhere except for one small part at the start of the movie so I was really starting to dig it. But like others said, the last half started to fall apart for me.
What I meant by schizophrenic though is that the movie didn't really seem to know what it wanted to do or where it wanted to go. Just like in Lost there would be a good idea and instead of following up on the idea it just threw it out and started over.
Like the start of the film.
What was the point of the Engineer drinking the melty cup and then dying? He watches a ship fly off. I don't think its the same world as LV-223, maybe its Earth? But that would mean the black goo is on Earth now. So its not Earth. Granted it could have been thousands of years before 2093 so it could have been LV-223 but then that doesn't make sense because the Captain from the Prometheus says that the moon is a military installation far from where life lives.
It just adds questions, is never resolved and its a pain in the ass.
Like take Fifield and Milburn,
the geologist and biologist who get sprayed with acid or mouth fucked by a
Vagina Penis
(tee hee) and then turns into a Roid Zombie and causes havoc upon part the crew?
They weren't essential to the story. What happens to them doesn't do anything for the plot. And the rest of the crew's reaction to what happens is like "ho hum" lets do other stuff. In fact, most of the crew act like that the whole movie. Nobody acted like how a human being would act, yet throughout the movie Shaw keeps blathering on about being Human and the importance of it. Everyone acted like an idiot especially Fifield and Milburn.
You find alien life for the first time (assuming of course) and you call it baby and want to tickle it? Why the fuck are you in that creepy chamber anyway? Why the hell didn't they just stay put until the morning? Why did the Captain act like an asshat and not really answer their question if the "lifeform" was moving or not because that's the only reason why I could think that the two got the heebie jeebies and started wandering around some more (dead space jockeys aside).
Then we get David
putting the black shit into the drink for Holloway to drink. Why would he do that? How does he know it would do what it would do? How did he know that if he put the black shit into the drink and then if Holloway had sex with Shaw that they'd have a squid baby? I mean I can see that he could read the Engineers language but that's pretty specific. And besides if he could read or knew what would happen, WHY would he let it happen? What did it do to further his "cause" of killing Papa Weyland? I mean I THINK that's what David is about, he alluded to it, fits thematically with his character, I think. But the problem is half the time David acts like he's really a robot with a soul and the other half of the time he acts like he's just doing Daddy's programming. That COULD have been good and interesting, but the problem is you don't know his reasoning for anything. Seriously, its like LOST with Jacob and the Man in Black all over again.
So yeah there's a bit more I guess, but hopefully you guys got the point. Visually I loved the movie, but it just felt like there was three different movies going on. It felt like the screen play got shredded. And now I just looked up in Wikipedia about Lindelof's involvement. And it all makes sense. He wanted to tweak the script and make it more than just an "Alien prequel." I think he had some good overarching ideas but just like in Lost (yes its unfair to blame everything on Lost on him, sorry) there were so many dead end loose plot holes that don't go anywhere and never really pay off in any way.
However, I liked the movie, honestly. I didn't think the ties to Alien really hurt it. I thought Noomi Rapace was great. I thought Theron's character was wasted and not utilized well. I thought Idris Elba's character was great. It felt weird to me though in that for a movie that is supposed to be within the Alien Universe, it felt like the Anti-Alien movie. What I really liked in Alien was that all the characters felt like schmoes with real dialogue. Granted both crews acted like idiots when it came to being in a crisis. But the characters in Alien felt like real people, talked like real people, and more or less acted like real people until really stupid shit happened. I mean when you find out Ash is an android... hell when the crew finds out Ash is an android its like WHAT THE FUCK!? At least for a few minutes. In Prometheus, when something happens that would be on the WHAT THE FUCK level, most of the crew is like "Yeah well, that's weird but we got a script to stick to so lets keep going on."
lol forreal. My sister saw this film before me and when she came home she was like "You'll love Fassbender, he's like a grown up Haley Joel Osment from AI"
I actually thought David and his motivations were crystal clear the whole time. He was the most rounded and interesting character. He wants to be free but at the same time he is constricted by programming
to help Wetland right up until the end. His choice to spike the drink was seeing if it was some miracle super-health evolution drug that could help Weyland. He even got the guy's permission before hand in a really sneaky way.
Honestly I don't think I could be happier with his character or how Fassbender played him. It is the others that had flaws.
Saw it last night. It was very good, but it did have superfluous scenes or lines that made the whole thing kind of odd. David and Noomi easily stole the whole movie.
I do like that they opened up a whole potential story arc, while also firmly tying into the rest of the movies.
Anyone know, how much time passes between the end of this movie and the others movies? We could not remember last night, it was over 100 years right?
I agree that the approach the the character's is completely different. One is natrualistic and the other is crap 80's cheese. But I still feel they are rather similar in practice.
And maybe you could explain to me how I am so wrong about the narrative structure. That would at least solve this cognative dissonance we're having here.
And that reductionist aspect is the point of what I'm saying. Sculli claimed Prometheus was a remake of Alien, which I don't see beyond a reductionistic view. So I'm giving Aliens the same treatment.
My roommate and I are completely on your side with this one. We just rewatched Alien and Aliens before Prometheus and felt like the overall structure was identical.
Alien and Prometheus' structure are very similar in terms of story beats. The first act is almost identical:
Alien/Prometheus - Crew of the _____ arrive in orbit of LV____ and are awoken from cryo by ____ on company orders to go an investigate a derelict alien environment. They all go to eat breakfast and then discuss exactly what they're doing there.
Alien/Prometheus- Upon investigating said alien environment full of many containers of life, one of the crew brings back an alien parasite to the ship.
In Aliens, Ripley isn't on the Sulaco till the start of the second act. Which is one hell of a big second act that includes a huge amount of shit going down from finding Newt, the colonist catacombs where marines die, the dropship being totaled, the atmosphere processor venting and Bishop leaving for the APC.
In Aliens, Ripley knows what is happening from page one. There is no guesswork. And the marines are soon on board with her. It isn't the same exploring the unknown (which in Prometheus comes as predictable stuff) that leads characters to second-guess each other. After the colony scene, everybody is on board with Ripley except for Bourke.
Then of course we have stuff like
Alien/Prometheus - The android acts questionably against the female protagonist's best wishes and we get aliens coming out of stomachs on board the ship.
Bishop changed this expectation up quite nicely, saving the day in fact. Whilst David was all over the place. He was both a threat and not a threat, because character writing is hard and Shaw forgave him pretty damn quickly. Killing your boyfriend isn't as bad as trying to kill you with a newspaper, I guess.
Ripley in Alien and Shaw are painted very much alike - despite Shaw's faith angle. Nobody listens to her and things go wrong all the way into the third act, before she's chased while running for her life.
Ripley in Alien is very different from Ripley in Aliens - who is determined from the start and is running into danger at the end of Aliens.
Then of course in Alien/Prometheus there is a lot of running and axe-grabbing before the film finally end with the heroine heading back out into the stars while she narrates 'This is ____, last survivor of the ______, signing off.'
The tone of Prometheus - like every other facet of the film, tries to mirror Alien's but isn't as focused. It almost feels like fan fiction in its attempt to appropriate the beats from Alien.
The tone of Aliens is very different from both. Aliens is a rollercoaster that starts off ridiculously slow, then ramps up and up and up and then explodes and doesn't stop for over an hour.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how 80% of the plot doesn't overlap with Aliens. You're ignoring aspects of Aliens to make your case stronger I mean, for instance:
In Aliens no one cares what Ripley has to say- she isn't believed by Corporate and the Mariens all laugh at her. It isn't until things go horribly wrong that people even start to care what she thinks. Much like what happens in Alien.
And I'd say the tone of Prometheus is more classic science fiction. It's about mysteries and wonder but things just takes a turn for the worse. Alien is more gothic slasher horror. So you have science research expedition vs truckers in space vs space marines. I think each core group reflects the respective movie's tone quite nicely.
I'm sorry but if you're saying Prometheus is that much like Alien than Aliens is that much like Alien as well.
my theatre rarely adjust contrast accordingly and whatnot, so I end up with the darkest movies ever thanks to the glasses. The fact that this movie is pretty dark by itself probably isn't gonna help.
Alright, dont know what's in everyone's pipe but I loved the shit out of that movie.
There's a couple things I didnt like, as with any movie, but I certainly didnt felt like it was super ambigious or confusing like i've been told. It was entertaining, suspenful, writing was alright, acting was really good, and it had a certain Ridley Scott touch that I feared would be missed, but it's all still there. The plot wasn't the best ever, but it had all the things i'd expect from a Ridley Scott sci fi film.
Genuinely loved it. Guess one could argue that my expectations were lower since the reception, but still.
Now to the bad part: It looked like SHIT on my theatre. When it started everything was blurry and crappy so I took my glasses off to see if anyone was having the same experience and nobody could care less (the fuck). The whole movie looked reeeeeeeeeally bad at parts, colors messed up, blurry, double-images, weird ghosting.
Left the theatre and went speak to the manager, she told me she was aware of the issue since it was some "new technology" bs and the guys projecting the film werent able to get the hang of it in time. She said she was sorry and offered to give me two tickets to see any movie I wanted any time, lied and told her I was with 3 other people and got myself 4 tickets that i'll probably be spending with Spiderman or something.
Still, super pissed since it really harmed the experience in a big way and i've been waiting for this for so long.. need to sleep on it. Fuckin theatres.
