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I saw it last night in imax 3D and thought it was amazing. Fassbender pretty much stole the show. Obviously the script isn't perfect(thanks Lindelof, you fuck) but really the only problem I had was that it felt like there was music playing during every scene. I love the soundtrack but I felt like just the ambiance of the world or just the dialogue of the characters would have been enough sometimes. As a die hard Alien fan I would give it a solid 8/10.
The scene with the surgical machine was pretty great. The rest could have been better but overall I liked it.
Overall I really liked it, and can get past certain things because it's a sci-fi movie after all.
But the black goo, which is pretty central to the plot, is never really explained. I think the goo the Engineer drinks in the opening sequence the same as the goo in the canisters. But then there's the goo worms - are those the sacs that you see when David takes the canister apart, and they just incubate in DNA-destroying goo until they're ready to go fuck people's faces? The zombie thing really annoyed me, because no one else had that reaction to the goo or the worms. I'm assuming he died from the acid to the face and then the goo regenerated his DNA as some sort of superhuman? Who knows. And I'm still kind of shaky on the connection between the goo and the worms (plus the tentacled fetus thing), and which one is the weapon (if that's the theory we're supposed to go with). And if this moon was a remote bio-weapon manufacturing outpost, why leave directions to it on a planet that you may be planning to destroy in the future?
The only reason I'm so confused about these loose ends is because it's an otherwise well done movie, and I'd hate to think that so many impressive scenes were just thrown together without regard for whether they all made sense.
^it's called evolution, dude.
Here's how I see it (I actually broke this down back on Page 1):
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1. Engineer in the opening sequence is where life on Earth came from. He was dropped off (we see the spaceship leaving as he approaches the waterfall). He drinks the black goo, which melts him down to nothing, he falls into the water and his molecules reform into new DNA (let basic Darwinism take over from there: i.e. water based life forms that evolve into walking fish that evolve into...etc).
2. By the time we get to the Prometheus venture, the black goo is the key, the worms are the next step, the penis monster is the next, the squid monster is the next, culminating with the alien we all know and love.
3. My theory is that the Engineers were going to send more black goo to Earth to continue their experiment. Afterall, they had created life and eventually man, now time to introduce a new species and see how man reacts: they are more Scientists than Engineers.
4. The zombie thing made sense. We never got to see how the doctor that David infected reacted to the goo. Having the Geologist come back all tweaked out showed us what would have happened to the Doctor had he been allowed to "evolve."
I think everybody gets hung up on the Aliens as weapons since that's what we were led to believe Weyland wanted them for in Alien and Aliens, as well as Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection
As for the cave paintings? I don't think they were left by the Engineers. The cave paintings, to me, signal that the Engineers made frequent trips to Earth to check the progress of their work. That's what all good scientists to: study and monitor the outcome of their experiment.
That's just my two cents on it, but it seems like most folks are over-thinking the film and glossing over a lot of the subtle details that were pretty obvious if you just took a little time to piece it all together after seeing it.
What worked from me was seeing it with a buddy and his son and then us talking about it aftewards and filling in the blanks.
That said, everything is open to different interpretations, but I'm pretty happy with my conclusions and feel that the film made pretty good sense and was an enjoyable piece of escapism.
If I think about it now, however, I'm kind of bummed that they felt the need to explain the Aliens. Part of the awesomeness about the original Alien movie is that their presence is never explained. The air of mystery was part of what made that film percolate. Nowadays, for whatever reason, Hollywood has decided that the mass audience needs everything explained away, thus we keep getting sequels that reveal all the mysteries that have made many films so cool. It's kind of nice to have some ambiguity from time to time.
^^^^Agreed - that was the first 3D movie I ever saw that really blew me away....either 3d has evolved greatly, or I was finally smoked up enough to get the full effect. I thought the plot was tolerable, but agree with most in that they let something really special slip away with too much BS and in prob trying to sequel-ize as a priority.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay P
I saw it on IMAX 3-D and thought it was visually awesome (note I have not seen IMAX 3-D before this other than Tron....). Dookey - good write up above - I tend to agree with you. Overall, I enjoyed the movie.
Loved it.
Some flaws, but if you like the franchise it is certainly better than the last couple. And I'm not counting AVP stuff, the Predator should never have been introduced to this world. Just saying.
It's very open ended, but to me that lets you answer your own questions rather than have everything be spelled out. And there's certainly room for more prequels and a sequel, too.
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
Meaning of life. Spoilers abound. Suck it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jslee
WOW ........ just WOW
After reading parts of that "dissertation", specifically the sections about the inert evil black goo, it's quite obvious that the screenwriters totally watched John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness several times before sitting down to the typewriter.
Most of the stuff cavalorn presented makes a lot of sense and fills in a bunch of holes from a casual view of the movie. The engineers wanted to destroy humanity because Jesus was an engineer and humanity killed him. whoa
His black goo theory is a bit of a stretch w/o provide evidence - it reacts to the good/evil of the beings around it???
GHOSTBUSTERS DID IT!Quote:
Originally Posted by Elkhound Odin
I saw the 3d version, and visually it was everything a sci-fi movie should be. I loved seeing the clip of Lawrence of Arabia in 3d.
I sort of got the feeling that this was experiment come full circle. That when humans evolved enough to follow the clues and seek out the engineers, that it was time for them to start over by destroying us all. Or that they were on their way to do that 2000 years ago, but shit went fubar. And in between, and after baby jesus, we evolved passed what they had planned for.
About 3/4 of the way through, it got choppy. I hope the blue ray release includes the scene where Charlize gets tagged.
looked great, but story was generic - i give it a meh.
should have gone by my if commercials start 2 months before release it's not going to be good rule.
I don't think you can really call out Ridley Scott for ripping off other sci-fi movies. Maybe repeating himself, but not ripping off.Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Snowballs
For starters, calling out Scott is ridiculous. He was merely the director, the man responsible for the visual images we saw. He interpreted the words that were given to him via the screenplay.
If you were to call anybody out, it would be the screenwriters: Jon Spaihts (wrote The Darkest Hour, a pretty mediocre sci-fi/horror movie) and Damon Lindelof (created/wrote Lost, also wrote Cowboys & Aliens, the latter of which was a pretty mediocre sci-fi western).
Saw it last night. Incredible. Loved it.
If you like the first Alien movie, go see this one.
Fucking hell that was all I needed to know. Wish I was privy to that before shelling out $13 for this thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by dookey67
LOST - one of the best shows ever ... until it became one of the worst. After the final episode, David Chase and Larry David probably high-fived each other.
This pretty much sums it up for me as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by brice618
In the other Alien movies you start with a premise and the humans are left to their own devices to try to devise a solution and survive. There was something visceral and personal about the character's struggles. In this one, Scott jumped into the philosophical realm, using the aliens as a plot device. It's not what I was expecting.
As a stand alone movie I thought it was barely passable, interesting ideas and good special effects, but as a prequel to the Alien franchise it fell short, and by more that a little.
Saw it. I actually liked the score and of course the chutes in the background on this 'moon.' I spent most of my first night asleep trying to fill in the holes, especially the beginning sequence and how that relates to whole film and the ending. I guess the positive note is that I can't wait to see what the Blu-ray provides with additional scenes.
It was a movie, I enjoyed it a bunch.
Crack open life-force, you don't know what you'll get.
Brian DePalma's Mission To Mars (2000) was just on AMC...
and while I saw it some 12 years ago in the theaters, seeing it again now, especially in the fairly recent wake of Prometheus, it's interesting, to say the least.
Some of the similarities that exist between the two films are striking (i.e. it's seems rather obvious that the screenwriters of Prometheus were more than casually familiar with M2M).
Man, I thought M2M was terrible... even worse than Red Planet.