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Prometheus Review: Are the Answers Here?

ZPowers

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Prom asks lots of broad philosophical questions without even providing a modicum of satisfying responses that rise above the kind of poetry a high-schooler would write.

And the issue here is that it's easy to toss in a "where did we come from?" or "what is life?" kind of 'BIG QUESTION' thing into your story or script, but if you don't have very satisfying philosophical answers, it just seems like a varnish tossed on an otherwise standard action thriller to give it a veneer of lofty intellectual import.

The underlying movie in this case, does work fairly frequently, and even if the thematic stuff doesn't pan out there are a lot of fun original ideas in the script. If it weren't for the lack of pay-off on these questions (perhaps an over-ambitious attempt to be more than it is) and a few dumb moments scattered around, I'd think this was quite an awesome film top to bottom.
 

Totenkindly

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I ran across this and thought it worth posting although being slightly off the topic -- it's a kudos of Scott's ability to frame a scene, at least thematically, way back in "Alien." I agree with it. The movie was very "clean" in many ways, and that can sometimes come off as simple, but it's not, really... this scene was one of the good ones in how it was visually set up.

aliencrew-thumb-510x216-48861.jpg


Look at the frame-grab above from Ridley Scott's "Alien" (1979). I'm not making any high claims for it as a masterpiece of composition, or saying that it has great meaning in the context of the movie, or that it expresses anything typical/archetypal about Scott's style or values (aesthetic, moral). But it sure is a pleasure to take in. You've got the interplay between the right, left and center, the foreground and the background, each in its own space, but visually interrelated. The camera is in the operating room with Dallas and Ash, who are looking at their comatose patient, Kane, whose feet are at left, in a quarantine chamber (because he has a xenomorph hugging his face). In the background, through the window, is the rest of the Nostromo crew, anxiously waiting for news. That's right -- the entire (human) cast of the movie in one shot.

We can hear what the crew is saying as well as what Dallas and Ash are saying (exactly what they're saying is not terribly important, just their worry and uncertainty), though it's not clear if they can all hear one another. The drama is expressed visually: Kane is immobilized, isolated, beyond reach; Dallas and Ash are the intermediaries between his living death (in quarantine) and life, as represented by the rest of the crew, but they don't know what to do; the crew is on the outside looking in, twice removed from Kane who was, until just a short time ago, one of them...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2012/06/alien_in_3d_just_one_frame.html
 

Mal12345

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Continuing your debasement seems pointless. Even on the public scale such as RottenTomatoes, Sunshine got a 75% and Prometheus a 73%, so it seems as far as critical acclaim goes, obviously a number of people favored each movie and a quarter of the raters either had issues or didn't get it. Even people who liked Prometheus generally agree the script was a mess, and some of their liking was just watching the alien(s) at play in the movie.

I agreed that the script was a mess, remember? Then I stated that, despite the messy story, Prometheus has led to more discussion than Sunshine. But every time I say this you want to stop talking to me.

I'm also not sure I ever claimed "Sunshine" was better than "Alien" (I have issues with Alien too, although I think much of it is very good) -- I just found it much more solid and provocative than "Prometheus" for me personally, for reasons I have already stated more than enough times. Obviously it was the opposite for you, since as I've said before, you're obviously keying off different criteria than I am. ZPowers sums up my issue with the movie -- Prom asks lots of broad philosophical questions without even providing a modicum of satisfying responses

Yes. And why should it? What's wrong with being forced to think instead of being spoon-fed answers?

that rise above the kind of poetry a high-schooler would write. The seeds were there, but were not actualized; They have a chance to salvage that in the sequel, if there is one, and I think it'll be by the sequel how Prometheus is ultimately judged -- either it'll be seen as the "opener" in a two-part story, and the second half will bring satisfaction and complete a ladder to the stars, or it will leave everything hanging, showing there were never any grand plan to begin with.

With two androids traveling to the alien home planet, perhaps they will have a chance to find the answers.
 

cascadeco

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I liked Prometheus quite a bit. Really enjoyed it. [Only saw the first two Alien movies, as an fyi]

Part of what made it so enjoyable WAS the fact that I had a lot of questions at the end (I'm of the opinion that movies leaving things more open-ended or with uncertain elements can be a very positive thing), and I liked talking through the questions and potential inconsistencies or silly elements with my boyfriend, also trying to tie things to the Alien movies.

The only real issue I had with the movie was some of the stupid characters. :laugh: But that's not really an issue, per se... as that seems to be almost a prerequisite for every sci-fi movie out there - that one or many characters just do things that seem really stupid. i.e. running along the trajectory of the spinning fallen ship, rather than perpendicular and away, which probably everyone in the theater noticed and which prompted the penny arcade comic mocking it; removing helmets when you're on a foreign planet and there are possibly lethal microbes in the air, or the sheer ridiculousness of the so-called 'Biologist', who seemed to lack any biological training and comprehension of animal behavior/how to treat unknown organisms..... those were my main beefs. Other elements seemed at least in the realm of plausibility, even if questions weren't answered, or further questions were raised. Again, I don't think this is bad, though.

I guess, though, even the 'stupidity' element could be viewed as realistic, depending on the psychology of those involved; i.e. heightened stress, panic mode, utterly foreign and potentially life-threatening environment, causing people to lose their more rational side and therefore be... stupid. lol.
 

Mal12345

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And the issue here is that it's easy to toss in a "where did we come from?" or "what is life?" kind of 'BIG QUESTION' thing into your story or script, but if you don't have very satisfying philosophical answers, it just seems like a varnish tossed on an otherwise standard action thriller to give it a veneer of lofty intellectual import.

Perhaps, until you find out who made this. Prometheus is simply building up to a sequel, that's why there are pieces missing to the puzzle.

The underlying movie in this case, does work fairly frequently, and even if the thematic stuff doesn't pan out there are a lot of fun original ideas in the script. If it weren't for the lack of pay-off on these questions (perhaps an over-ambitious attempt to be more than it is) and a few dumb moments scattered around, I'd think this was quite an awesome film top to bottom.

I wasn't that impressed with it. But then it depends on how much importance you place on the dumb moments. Or let's say, how much credibility the movie loses over such issues as scientists removing their helmets in an alien environment that hasn't been tested for deadly microbes, or running away from the decapitated dead alien but then being fascinated by the living one that killed them. These things just service the plot and by themselves they make no sense.
 

Mal12345

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I liked Prometheus quite a bit. Really enjoyed it. [Only saw the first two Alien movies, as an fyi]

Part of what made it so enjoyable WAS the fact that I had a lot of questions at the end (I'm of the opinion that movies leaving things more open-ended or with uncertain elements can be a very positive thing), and I liked talking through the questions and potential inconsistencies or silly elements with my boyfriend, also trying to tie things to the Alien movies.

The only real issue I had with the movie was some of the stupid characters. :laugh: But that's not really an issue, per se... as that seems to be almost a prerequisite for every sci-fi movie out there - that one or many characters just do things that seem really stupid. i.e. running along the trajectory of the spinning fallen ship, rather than perpendicular and away, which probably everyone in the theater noticed and which prompted the penny arcade comic mocking it; or the sheer ridiculousness of the so-called 'Biologist', who seemed to lack any biological training and comprehension of animal behavior/how to treat unknown organisms..... those were my main beefs. Other elements seemed at least in the realm of plausibility, even if questions weren't answered, or further questions were raised. Again, I don't think this is bad, though.

If there were only those two issues you could be right. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I pretty much knew what kind of silliness I was in for at the very beginning when one of the scientists said that breathing the planet's atmosphere of 3% carbon dioxide was like sucking on a tailpipe.
 

ZPowers

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I wasn't that impressed with it. But then it depends on how much importance you place on the dumb moments. Or let's say, how much credibility the movie loses over such issues as scientists removing their helmets in an alien environment that hasn't been tested for deadly microbes, or running away from the decapitated dead alien but then being fascinated by the living one that killed them. These things just service the plot and by themselves they make no sense.

Yeah, stuff like that moves my grade to probably around a B. I was annoyed throughout the film at how the evolutionary and genetic aspects so totally didn't make sense in terms of how that stuff actually works, for example. What I was getting at is the handful of scenes that didn't get infected with a bit of stupidity were pretty enjoyable.
 

Mal12345

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Yeah, stuff like that moves my grade to probably around a B. I was annoyed throughout the film at how the evolutionary and genetic aspects so totally didn't make sense in terms of how that stuff actually works, for example. What I was getting at is the handful of scenes that didn't get infected with a bit of stupidity were pretty enjoyable.

As for genetics, you implicitly bring up another good point here. At what point should the viewer stop suspending disbelief? As in Sunshine, where no amount of gold shielding could possibly protect a spaceship flying that close to the sun. Or the ending, which I won't spoil, which seems to have more symbolic import than anything else. Because it certainly is a far cry from being scientifically accurate. I could also pick on Alien for portraying a mining ship light-years from its home planet, when there are plenty of asteroids near Earth that make for a far less hazardous and expensive trip.
 

ZPowers

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As for genetics, you implicitly bring up another good point here. At what point should the viewer stop suspending disbelief? As in Sunshine, where no amount of gold shielding could possibly protect a spaceship flying that close to the sun. Or the ending, which I won't spoil, which seems to have more symbolic import than anything else. Because it certainly is a far cry from being scientifically accurate. I could also pick on Alien for portraying a mining ship light-years from its home planet, when there are plenty of asteroids near Earth that make for a far less hazardous and expensive trip.

That's true, though I would make the caveat that Alien isn't as directly about space travel as this film is about our evolution and genetic origins (in both films, there's no indication of near-light speed, so the distance would probably take quite a bit longer than a few years to traverse). I also wasn't particularly bothered in either film that the aliens seem to have the ability to gain mass without eating or taking in anything to build that mass from, because it was more incidental to the plot. RE: Sunshine, I vaguely remember thinking about how silly the sunshields were, but it has been probably four or five years since I saw it.
 

Mal12345

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That's true, though I would make the caveat that Alien isn't as directly about space travel as this film is about our evolution and genetic origins (in both films, there's no indication of near-light speed, so the distance would probably take quite a bit longer than a few years to traverse). I also wasn't particularly bothered in either film that the aliens seem to have the ability to gain mass without eating or taking in anything to build that mass from, because it was more incidental to the plot. RE: Sunshine, I vaguely remember thinking about how silly the sunshields were, but it has been probably four or five years since I saw it.

Maybe Alien isn't "directly" about the questions of "what's out there? and should we be messing with it?" Just as Prometheus isn't directly about the question of genetic engineering and should we be messing with the very basis of life itself?

Both movies imply some basic questions about scientific ethics.
 

Poindexter Arachnid

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I haven't finished watching it yet. Yes I know who the legendary Icarus is. Yes I know the goal of the Icarus I and II is to save the Earth. Yes I know Pinbacker, on the macro level, went crazy and decided to let nature take its course instead of delivering the payload. Yes I know that the lack of O2 on the Icarus II is one of the deciding factors on who gets to live or die.

There is also the similarity with Prometheus where obviously the wrong crews were chosen for the mission. It's really tropish for sci-fi movies like Sunshine to make use of superficial metaphors, but Prometheus took the metaphors to a much deeper level.

You sure cracked that puzzle.
Next.

Yawn.
 

Totenkindly

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I agreed that the script was a mess, remember? Then I stated that, despite the messy story, Prometheus has led to more discussion than Sunshine. But every time I say this you want to stop talking to me.

Actually, you're confusing the hell out of me -- fighting me tooth and nail with what I consider to be spurious discussion tactics and proclaiming how great Prometheus is, then turning around in your posts this afternoon and arguing the other side with Cascade and ZPowers.

I have no clue what you actually believe anymore, it's almost like you're just playing extreme devil's advocate. I don't even know how to position myself in this discussion anymore.

EDIT: Any time I leave a discussion, it's because I perceive that further discussion will be useless unless something changes. I don't like to waste my time or energy beating my head against the wall. I'm only responding now because you shifted in some way and I don't understand it, but it does mean maybe there's a possibility for a change in the discussion as well.

Yes. And why should it? What's wrong with being forced to think instead of being spoon-fed answers?

Maybe I need to explain this differently.

I look at a work of art is stand-alone. It has to be self-explanatory, if it is good. Maybe people will resonate in different ways with it, but this is a very logical foundation: If the work of art is only good depending on who is listening to it, then it's not the work of art that is good but the listener, and if the work of art is consistently good regardless of the audience, then it is the work that is excellent in its own right.

In that light, I don't think Prometheus is a great movie, as the positives of the experience are all generated by the viewer -- it's whatever the viewer is using the movie as a vehicle for, but the movie itself doesn't actually generate any of that, it's all the viewer using the movie to simply explore things they would have already explored within themselves. Again, the goodness is NOT within the movie itself. Everything you've been talking about, I just feel is you 'projecting yourself' onto the movie to make it mean what you want it to mean.

I also feel that it is not self-explanatory; if the movie has to be explained in long treatises by guys arguing over what it means and doesn't explain anything within itself, then it is not a coherent narrative on its own two feet. Compare it to riddles: When you hear the answer to a riddle, you expect an a-ha moment, where the paradigm becomes clear and it all makes sense and you just needed to get in the right frame of mind; but if what you get is some elaborate answer that you could have never figured out on your own by getting in the right frame of mind, then it means the truth of the riddle was not coherent or accessible regardless of how you positioned yourself. In other words, the riddle is a "cheat."

I admire art that is coherent within its own rights, no matter who is observing it, and generates the responses to it, and contains its own definition in a way that can be discovered within itself. (or, ha ha, "I admire its purity. [art that is] A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. ")

I hope this makes more sense.

With two androids traveling to the alien home planet, perhaps they will have a chance to find the answers.

Again, I think I said above that the 'sequel' if one is made is what will determine whether the first movie was part of a cohesive whole or simply a cosmic joke.
 

Poindexter Arachnid

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No, I'm pretty sure you're imagining things.
Since when has the Sun been bright?

Girl--you must be living on the moon.
 

Mal12345

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Actually, you're confusing the hell out of me -- fighting me tooth and nail with what I consider to be spurious discussion tactics and proclaiming how great Prometheus is, then turning around in your posts this afternoon and arguing the other side with Cascade and ZPowers.

I never once said anything about Prometheus being great. I could say that it has been a "great" source of debate, and rightly so, especially in comparison to Sunshine.

I have no clue what you actually believe anymore, it's almost like you're just playing extreme devil's advocate. I don't even know how to position myself in this discussion anymore.

It doesn't sound like you've been reading my comments.

EDIT: Any time I leave a discussion, it's because I perceive that further discussion will be useless unless something changes. I don't like to waste my time or energy beating my head against the wall. I'm only responding now because you shifted in some way and I don't understand it, but it does mean maybe there's a possibility for a change in the discussion as well.

Maybe I need to explain this differently.

I look at a work of art is stand-alone. It has to be self-explanatory, if it is good. Maybe people will resonate in different ways with it, but this is a very logical foundation: If the work of art is only good depending on who is listening to it, then it's not the work of art that is good but the listener, and if the work of art is consistently good regardless of the audience, then it is the work that is excellent in its own right.

In that light, I don't think Prometheus is a great movie, as the positives of the experience are all generated by the viewer -- it's whatever the viewer is using the movie as a vehicle for, but the movie itself doesn't actually generate any of that, it's all the viewer using the movie to simply explore things they would have already explored within themselves. Again, the goodness is NOT within the movie itself. Everything you've been talking about, I just feel is you 'projecting yourself' onto the movie to make it mean what you want it to mean.

There's the mistake. You have confused Prometheus with an art film. It's a philosophical movie, not an art film.

An art film makes a statement about art, just as any other art form makes the same statement. An artwork does not just depict something, it also makes an implicit statement about the nature of art itself. That's how you should distinguish the two kinds of movies, just as for example Avengers should not be considered an art film because it is simply entertainment for its own sake.

I also feel that it is not self-explanatory; if the movie has to be explained in long treatises by guys arguing over what it means and doesn't explain anything within itself, then it is not a coherent narrative on its own two feet.

Give this series a chance. It's only one movie and its obviously intended for at least one sequel. You sound like the online reviewer who complained that Batman "didn't learn anything" in the latest installment. So I sent him a facebook message saying that there's still a chance for Batman to "learn something" in the next movie. Maybe it wasn't time for Batman to "learn something" in that movie, maybe that's for the next movie.

Ridley couldn't have made it more obvious that Prometheus was intended to be a two-parter, at least, if not three or more. That's why your complaint is unfounded, just as the Batman reviewer's complaint was unfounded.

Compare it to riddles: When you hear the answer to a riddle, you expect an a-ha moment, where the paradigm becomes clear and it all makes sense and you just needed to get in the right frame of mind; but if what you get is some elaborate answer that you could have never figured out on your own by getting in the right frame of mind, then it means the truth of the riddle was not coherent or accessible regardless of how you positioned yourself. In other words, the riddle is a "cheat."

People are already cheating by searching for answers that are forthcoming. You treat Prometheus like the classic black-and-white B sci-fi movie which ends with a giant ? mark. I think The Blob ended that way. This isn't like The Blob, not even close.

I admire art that is coherent within its own rights, no matter who is observing it, and generates the responses to it, and contains its own definition in a way that can be discovered within itself.

I hope this makes more sense.

Yes, but objectively speaking, art is art, and Prometheus is not art.


Again, I think I said above that the 'sequel' if one is made is what will determine whether the first movie was part of a cohesive whole or simply a cosmic joke.
 

Mal12345

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Hey, did you see the part with the sun?
...Pretty big.

I do see that you can't part with your misconceptions about the Sensory nature of the world. All is not as obvious as it appears. There was no need for Pinbacker to mention an Icarus ONE years before there was an Icarus TWO.
 

Poindexter Arachnid

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I do see that you can't part with your misconceptions about the Sensory nature of the world. All is not as obvious as it appears. There was no need for Pinbacker to mention an Icarus ONE years before there was an Icarus TWO.

There was no reason the crew used a spaceship to get to the sun.
They should have placed a dude on a kite with some very long string.
 

Mal12345

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There was no reason the crew used a spaceship to get to the sun.
They should have placed a dude on a kite with some very long string.

You didn't say anything about wings of wax. :newwink:

Do you even know what an Icarus is?
 
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