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Reasons not to see Prometheus


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- One of the leading cast can't act, and this is appallingly obvious from the trailer; am I the only person to see this?

 

I haven't seen the trailer in awhile, but the 3 main actors that I recall are Theron, Rapace and Fassbender. All of whom I consider talented actors based on previous work and I didn't notice anything in the trailer to indicate an appaling performance. Am I missing somebody? Or am I just a horrible judge of acting talent? <_< This is quite possible. :D

 

As for Ripley's gumpiness, apparently he's always been that way. From the Blad Runner IMDB page:

 

Towards the end of principal photography an incident occurred which has become known as the T-shirt war. The majority of the crew didn't enjoy working on the film, and didn't like working for Ridley Scott, who they considered to be cold and distant. In an article in the British press, Scott commented that he preferred working with English crews because when he asked for something they would say, "Yes gov'nor" and go get it, but things weren't that simple with American crews. Makeup supervisor Marvin G. Westmore saw the article and was disgusted. In retaliation, he had t-shirts printed with "Yes gov'nor my ass!" on the front, and either Will Rogers never met Ridley Scott" or "You soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys" on the back. In retaliation, Scott and several of his closer collaborators had t-shirts made with "Xenophobia sucks" on them.

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oooooooooo. T-shirts. Scary stuff.

 

 

 

And I'd have to say Theron's stuff from the trailer doesn't look like Oscar winning material. But then again, I think acting in most movies in that genre is absolutely awful.

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It's certainly hard being a science fiction fan when most of it is so bad. I'm waiting for a decent interpretation of the Iain M. Banks novels, but I half hope it never happens because the only way for it to be done at a decent level is to take it to Hollywood, and in that circumstance it would inevitably be rewritten by someone who's just done a lot of box office with a Will Ferrell vehicle and thereby utterly destroyed.

 

In that vein, what's wrong with the trailer is simply that what's being said is appallingly banal. Theron is there to look good in the slinky spacesuit; I don't think that's the key issue. The problem is that if that's the best prose they've got in the entire script, I'm not surprised the word-of-mouth is so bad. Performance-wise, in every part of the movie I've seen, Rapace is slightly offputting - maybe it's the accent, but she just seems slightly unsure where to pitch the performance. I'm speaking way beyond my training or experience here, but I get the feeling a lot of actors seem to have this problem with sci-fi. What it reminds me of most of all - again, perhaps because of the accent, but I suspect that's incidental - is the abortive attempt to have Geneviève Bujold play the captain in Star Trek: Voyager. Frankly, she was too good for it, or at least unwilling to play down to the level of the writing, and didn't complete the pilot. Trying to make badly written space technobabble into deliverable dialogue must be a fruitless endeavour, and even though the Prometheus trailer doesn't seem to suffer that problem, it really is all appallingly prosaic and expository. Excessive spoken exposition is apparently a problem throughout.

 

The correct way to deal with this is to write decent scripts, or at least take a decent script and not subject it to the Hollywood scriptwriting process in which it's passed before a couple of hundred people and modified until it doesn't raise anything approaching an emotion in any of them, which seems to be a pretty good way to end up with junk.

 

P

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It's already shown in some European countries and I have to say I wasn't really impressed. The script sucks, it answers a few questions, but generates even more. Characters are not developed properly, their behaviour remains erratic, they don't communicate - they're driven by the story, the characters don't drive the story.

More and more creatures, some occassional action and a handful well-made scenes, that's it. If it wouldn't have been Ridley in the directors chair, we would blame the director...

I give it a weak 7/10

And, like many of Ridleys movies, it seems rushed (especially the last segment) and I was pretty sure there is a 20-40min longer DC - but he negated that in interviews!?

 

The technical quality wasn't too special, either. I saw it in 2D, but occasionally, the image rendering just screamed digital, not in a good way... - "Snow White and the Huntsman" looks better, IMHO. It just seems like a lot of time/talent/know-how is wasted on making it look decent. When even Mr. Ridley Scott cannot make the camera sing, who can? He could have saved money by shooting 65mm 5perf and generate far superior imagery - well, the story would still remain the same... :-(

 

Sorry for the rant, we are used to the majority of bad movies, but this could have been great Sci-Fi but instead it was just (talent involved, budget, background...) wasted.

Edited by georg lamshöft
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screamed digital

I wonder if it'd have been better on Alexa - I rather assume it would have been. Of all the things that are wrong with Red, I guess the most damning indictment is exactly this problem.

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And, like many of Ridleys movies, it seems rushed (especially the last segment) and I was pretty sure there is a 20-40min longer DC - but he negated that in interviews!?

 

 

Not sure what you mean but the interview I heard he hinted strongly that there would be a directors cut.

 

I think it's become a common revenue stream for Ridley these days and shooting on video, I guess theres no reason not to get some extra footage in the can.

 

love

 

Freya

Edited by Freya Black
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I wonder if it'd have been better on Alexa - I rather assume it would have been. Of all the things that are wrong with Red, I guess the most damning indictment is exactly this problem.

 

 

Well I think they were going for a bit of a nasty video look from the get go anyway. I mean if you look at the logo in the trailers, it's clearly saying "hey this is distorted video". They seem to have played it down a bit in later trailers and hopefully in the film but I still find it distracting, so I don't think it would make a difference which video cam it was shot on really.

 

Also I'm not convinced theres anything that special with the Alexa. I think it's more the people who tend to be using it. I'm certainly starting to see stuff where I'm like "wouldn't this have been better shot on an ex3 or HPX250 or something?". Alexa videos where there hasn't been much in the way of grading, just edited right off the sdi feed or something. Certainly we had a thing a while back where everything had to be shot on the red because that would make it good, and now it seems the same situation with the Alexa, but actually sometimes it just isn't the right camera for the job.

 

love

 

Freya

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Ridley Scott mentioned it in an interview

 

I have seen problematic (artificial skin tones, strange look...) on some Alexa-features as well, but the color rendition (affected directly by the optical filters in front of the sensor and it's sensitivity - not only software) seems much easier to handle. Both cameras have been used in high-end projects by specialists, it's not only that. It's also not the limited dynamic range, especially Prometheus was shot on strictly controlled sets - something is clearly off, that was never an issue before.

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It is very clearly an Alien prequel. It even has an Alien ancestress at the end :blink:

 

 

Effects worked fine, acting was ok... even 3D was well made.

 

Without script issues, unoriginal story, & giant tentacle monsters, etc. , would have been a pretty good film after all :ph34r:

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I think calling Tony Scott a "journeyman" director is far from true. While I may not care for some of his script choices and choices of actors, his ability as a director to bring a story to the screen is masterful. In fact, there is only one director that Ridley Scott has acknowledged as far more talented than himself...and that director is Tony Scott. Just Tonys body of work on commercials alone exceeds the realm of a journeyman.

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Saw this last night in Melbourne AU - 'the worlds (3rd) largest screen!' pity they laid down a massive marble floor stating it was the largest which I assume it was for some period of time :D

 

Will start another 'warning spoiler' thread when i have acces to a keyboard.

 

For now will say these posts here serve to lower expectations which unfortunately works in the films favor.

 

3D - I don't understand how it makes the film more enjoyable. Go 2D, worth more for your $$$. By *far* the most spectacular 3D was the IMAX advertising sequence at the top of the film. (The Hobbit trailer was a god awful mess of 3D confusion, definitely seeing that in 2D.)

 

I agree with Georg for the most part, script leaves trail of 'so WTF was that about?' - too many diluted vectors for the 'baddies' to become viable horror (cute ones even), confused motivation, character flips and incoherent situations right from out of hypersleep. You've found an alien civilasation, and all manner if CRAZY poop is going on, regroup Vickers ? No...

 

Ack, dont know where to begin.

 

I guess coming from Alien/Aliens there were two moments of humor that worked, which was fresh.

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I don't know what's wrong with the OP, but it certainly seems like he really wants to hate this film, even though all he's seen is a trailer... he even despises its director for not smiling often enough.... you must have a pretty though life my friend. Chill out.

 

I thought the movie wasn't good, I thought it was quite simply marvelous! I can't even begin to say how much it entertained me, how much of an experience it was for me watching it, and thinking about it for two days so far. And how wonderful it is to finally see a near perfect horror/science fiction film. That doesn't came very often these days...

 

Some people on the web seem to be nick picking on elements of the story that quite simply shows that they just didn't understand the film, or didn't want to, like the original poster, people for some reason don't want to like this film, sad. There are no plot holes, there are no under-developed characters, just main characters and secondary characters, like in all movies I suspect...

 

After reading some of the negative reviews, I was pissed off because like a lot of people I was really looking forward for this film, being a Ridley Scott fan and an Alien fan, this was a must watch. How could they **ck this up? And as much as my mind was polluted by these negative reviews when watching the film, the story, the visuals, the action, the suspence, kept sucking me in, so 20 minutes in, all those fears and all of those negative reviews in my mind, were out cold! I knew I was in for a very special ride!

 

This movie will have a very long life. It's a new tent pole for science fiction, horror, and action.

 

Not everyone will like this film, sure. But that doesn't make it a bad film. It's not perfect. But its a film I'm so glad was done. It's moments like the ones I experienced when watching this movie that made me want to become a film maker, its movies like these that keep the movie going experience something special above all other art/ entertaining industries.

 

Sometimes I wonder if some people in here do like movies at all?!

 

Peace.

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screamed digital

I wonder if it'd have been better on Alexa - I rather assume it would have been. Of all the things that are wrong with Red, I guess the most damning indictment is exactly this problem.

 

 

As anything in this business... if shot in a certain way. The Hobbit to be run on 48fps will scream video for sure : ) Others don't follow the path, as for instance, this one multiple awarded including the Oscar (2010) for the Best Foreign Language Film, even if yet shot from the 1st generation sensor with only announced 11.3 stops ;-)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNd1OIp808

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305806/technical

Edited by Emanuel A Guedes
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Your link is broken. I'm not sure what Richard Boddington has to do with it unless you are suggesting he is one of the talented people the Alexa has fallen into the hands of. :)

 

My point is that I've seen some nasty stuff made with the Alexa and some nice stuff and the people using it are more of a factor than the camera itself.

 

It's not a magic bullet and it has it's own look which I personally think is nicer than the red MX thing but which we may get sick of quickly once we see it on every cheap production out there.

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Alexa is far from cheap.

 

It's a lot cheaper than it would have been had Red not existed, which goes to support something I've been saying for a decade or more - that high end gear, such as Steadicam and camera bodies, is very much market priced.

 

But it's still not cheap.

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Alexa is far from cheap.

 

It's a lot cheaper than it would have been had Red not existed, which goes to support something I've been saying for a decade or more - that high end gear, such as Steadicam and camera bodies, is very much market priced.

 

But it's still not cheap.

 

I didn't say it was, I said it will be used on cheap productions, who will probably rent it in.

I expect rental prices will fall over time too.

 

It will also be used on low quality productions with money to burn too.

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Your link is broken. I'm not sure what Richard Boddington has to do with it unless you are suggesting he is one of the talented people the Alexa has fallen into the hands of. :)

 

 

Cough! Choke! Splutter...!

I shall pretend I didn't hear that!

Your link is broken.

Sorry, try it again.

Well,

bought one for a start!
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I didn't say it was, I said it will be used on cheap productions, who will probably rent it in.

I expect rental prices will fall over time too.

 

It will also be used on low quality productions with money to burn too.

 

Film was used for low and high-budget projects too. I'm sure I rented some of the same Panaflexes used on "Heaven's Gate" on some of my low-budget features made for under $500,000 -- I did a $100,000 feature where we borrowed the same Louma crane used on "1941" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

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You have to bear in mind, David, that Freya and I come from a place where $100,000 would be one of the top few most generously-budgeted features made this year.

 

My point is that high-end cameras, whether Epic, Alexa, or 35mm, get used on big and small productions. Some small productions just find deals or borrow one or make it a priority to get one.

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