Aliens Director James Cameron: Prometheus "Didn't Add Up Logically"

[SonOfVoorhees]

An thats what happens when you turn a single movie into a trilogy. It messes it all up. Anyway, i liked Promethus and it was logical to a point but i dont think they explained it well. I liked the evolving of the tar stuff until it became an early alien. An explains why they take the characteristics of their host. I think alot of it can be fixed in a sequel.

Worst thing about the movie. If you change the script from an prequel to its own seperate movie. Then dont have an alien crash on a planet. Because finding the ship was a major plot point in Alien. So having another ship crash on a different planet is plain stupid and personally, i have no idea why they didnt just make that planet LV 426. After all they cant have them crashing again in promethus 2.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I thought the first half of Prometheus was good, it had the same kind of buildup as the original Alien film.
But THEN in the other half, the whole thing went off the tracks suddenly to become hilariously bad, like the director and all the actors took acid or something.

I mean:

Spoiler

They suddenly get attacked by the mutated crewmembers, light them on fire. The husband guy starts freaking out, he ASKS to be put on fire, which they do. His wife only seems somewhat shocked by this, gets a tentacle monster cut out of her belly, her womb is stapled close. After which she jolly well starts running around in the tracks of a giant spaceship that's rolling around, threatening to crush her and the other chick (why they keep running in its shadow is another matter entirely).
I mean... LOLWUT?

Had to check whether I was drunk and imagining things or whether the film was just that bad in the second part. Sadly, it was the latter.

 

[Nadia Castle]

I didn't think it was that bad until the last 15 mins. Seemed like a good enough sci fi movie with a few vague connections to the other Alien films. Then when the spaceship crashed I though 'oh cool, so that was the ship they found in Alien, and the aliens themselves must have been a bio weapon like the black goo. No wonder that space jockey was pissed, he must hav been infected and preserved himself to stay alive!'.

Then suddenly they stapled on a final chase and an ambiguous ending that completely buggers that up. Presumably because they couldn't have the main character die at the end and had to add the unbelievably stupid sequel hook. So may little mistakes. I've never written a film in my life but if you just had a few little things it would have been great. Instead of the stupid 'surprise' ending, what if the holograms had shown the space jockeys being chased by some Xenomorph variant, then that's it for aliens. Imagine if it had ended like 'The Thing' the ship destroyed, the space jokey dead in the exact position from the first film with his chest rippling. Just the last survivor with Davids head, alone on the planet as the planets engulfed in the Storms you see when the Nostromo arrives. But hey, LOST ambiguity is apparently what the masses want....

 

[Metalrocks]

still like Prometheus as such but yes, it does have some plot holes and i also hope this will be fixed in the sequel.

 

[Kyrian007]

So he admits it didn't add up, but yet he did nothing about it?

What exactly was he supposed to do about it?

Director Ridley Scott
Writing Credits

Jon Spaihts ... (written by) and
Damon Lindelof ... (written by)

Dan O'Bannon ... (elements) and
Ronald Shusett ... (elements)

Those guys... they might have done something about it, but I fail to see how James Cameron should receive any of the blame when he had 0% responsibility for Prometheus.

But much like Cameron I found Prometheus better than 3 or... whatever that other one (the one that tried to pass the Ripley torch to Wynona Ryder) was. Not as good as Cameron's Aliens or the original, but it is a positive direction for the franchise.

 

[Mahorfeus]

Yeah. I still generally disagree with the idea of calling Prometheus a "prequel." I mean, it certainly comes first in the Alien chronology. But it doesn't really connect to it in any way. I like that it indirectly explained what the derelict ship from the first Alien movie was all about. It didn't take place on the same planet, but knowing that the Space Jockeys were involved gave just enough hints to suggest what might have happened.

It wasn't a terrific movie, but it was most certainly an enjoyable one. It had a decent premise, some awesome shots, a couple of really intense scenes... only thing that really got to me was the idiot ball that the supposed experts seemed to be passing around.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I know I'm a heretic but I think Resurrection it the best Alien movie.

Other than the weird alien sex part, but that was just the director being French so its understandable.

I think Resurrection perfectly blended horror, humor, and action. And unlike many movies the protagonists had actual character so you cared about what happened to them.

Also Ron Pearlman

 

[V4Viewtiful]

Prometheus aimed high but wasn't competent enough to reach, excluding the mythos of Aliens all the philosophical stuff about faith and creation (and other theological stuff) are they either avoided answer or addressed them idiotically.

The best character ended up being the android as every other character was stupid. I heard the argument that they wanted disposable people but then why put your life in the hands of guys who are barely competent.

It looked good though. (Space Jockey was apparently too small.)

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

The man who came up with Unobtainium is saying something didn't add up logically.

Yeah.

I've intensely disliked James Cameron for a while now and even if he's a tad correct, this does nothing to change that.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

I liked it despite its flaws, still, I just wish they released the Director's cut version, with the scenes this video mentioned. Like the map part, and David's full speech.

 

[DishonoredElderSouls]

I thought there were some interesting visuals and narrative points in Prometheus, despite it not being perfect. And though I may be called out as a monster for this statement, I could not give less of a shit about anything James Cameron says. He has directed almost exclusively bland and inhuman films, and makes serious bank off of every one simply because people believe they have to help him do so (remember how there were tons of news articles reporting on how Avatar was likely to become the new highest-selling film of all time because Titanic had done so before and this movie had cool special effects? Well, of course everyone rushed to the theatres on the belief that they were helping make cinematic history).

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The visuals were gorgeous and Michael Fassbender was good in it as usual.

Everything else was complete hogwash. I've only seen the theatrical version, but boy was it tosh.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

i never saw Prometheus but Alien Resurrection was one of my favorite films and i am unhappy that this James Cameron clown whoever he is is making disparaging comments about it and anyway who does James Cameron think he is anyway some sort of bigshot movie director though to be fair he was right on aliens 3 it was kinda of crap imo

Hey, he made Aliens, T2 and True Lies. I hated Avatar but he's alright in my book.

 

[Therumancer]

[

I actually take the exact opposite approach, because if they had committed to it being an Alien prequel, a proper one, then it fills in a lot of the plot-holes. Like, "Why is it a silica based life-form that developed in an entirely different environment to Earth and who's sole means of reproduction is parasitism managed to become the dominant life-form in an eco-system" and the answer is that they aren't traditional life-forms, they're B.O.Ws, all the Aliens are Biological Warfare gone horribly wrong.

In terms of themes, this would be a pretty awesome addition to the Alien/Aliens series because that fits the theme so well. Corporate greed and military overkill being prominent in both, the idea that the progenitor race of humanity did the same thing helps to build on what starts as a simple-ish premise of extremely hostile alien life to a critique of intelligent life consistently developing self-destructive behaviour (I think I read somewhere the reason the awoken 'Space Jockey' goes on a killing spree is because he had an Alien egg implanted and that's why he was so furious, these stupid little monkeys had killed him. Although, now it doesn't make any sense except that they're all pricks and now they want to kill us but, GAH)

In that same universe the only other alien life displayed is the Predators and their society is going down a different but still destructive route, hampered by their own limited technology by societal demands. And even they misappropriate the 'Nuke' that is the Aliens, which as we've seen goes horribly wrong a few times.

As it stands, Prometheus's world as a standalone is too riddled with holes for me to properly enjoy it. A lot of the scenes are homages and takes on scenes from Alien but without the alien and replaced with psuedo-material which doesn't help with any of the themes because it doesn't make sense (and also my shocked disbelief that none of the scientists think finding worms on a planet IN SPACE is noteworthy, you just found alien life friends, NONE OF YOU ARE INTERESTED?). They needed to either commit to it being about the Giant dudes (which would likely have lacked the action scenes, flamethrowers, black goo) or commit to it being about why they died out (in other words an actual Alien prequel). This halfway trip, combined with scientists not knowing how a star chart works, is what made the film such a wash for me.

Well, the thing is that "Prometheus" if taken as a reboot can get away with having a lot of unanswered questions because it's the start of a new series, and it plans to answer those questions as the series develops. Most arguments about how "it doesn't make sense" come from trying to tie it together with the other movies... and honestly, part of the problem with the "Alien" series so far is that it's a mess and no answer to a lot of those questions is going to make sense. As far as the other problems go, well that's an issue with science fiction, characters do behave rather unrealistically to the point of it generating a ton of tropes. A lot of that is because your dealing with movies with a limited run time, and realistic behavior could drag down the movie. For example your commenting on why they didn't react more realistically to the whole "we've discovered life in the form of space worms" encounter, but at the same time if they did, 30 minutes of screen time dedicated to oohing and ahhing over this at the expense of moving the plot forward would generate as many, or more, complaints. I mean "hey isn't that the movie where they spend a quarter of the run time poking a rubber worm" is not going to exactly going to help. Besides since they already suspected there were aliens here (and more advanced ones) them being less excited about the Worm might just be because they expected it, and they simply took it as a sign that other things they were looking for were close, especially with the signs of civilization all around them.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

I always wondered what an Alien film would look like with the magic of modern CGI. Prometheus answered that question, and not many other questions.

Spoiler: Watch Lyle McDouchebag tear it a new one.

 

[Nowhere Man]

The problem with Prometheus was having Damon Lindelof as final writer to the screenplay. He even accepted fault for it and won't have a part in the sequel Paradise (or whatever they're going to call it).

 

[faefrost]

I'm not sure what the controversy is here? Cameron gave pretty much the same answer regarding Promethius as everyone else. It was gorgeous. It was thought provoking. But at the end of the day there were too many scissor marks on the story, and the logic fell apart. You can even tell in the theatrical version where scenes were switched around at the last minute, and how it made things worse. Good. But not really great. You left with the feeling of liking the world but still feeling un appeased. Un filled. The movie really wasn't what you wanted.

His views on the other Alien sequels are not exactly outside the mainstream either. There aren't that many fans of 3 beyond Jim Sterling. After the romp of Aliens, Alien3 was just to brown. To dull. To small and too dark in all the wrong ways. It wasn't scary. It wasn't fun. It wasn't really attention grabbing. Oh boy Rippley stuck on a planet of rapists with an Alien. Heck John Carpenter did Alien3 better when he called it The Thing. Alien Ressurection has an overly broad spread of really really good (the crew of the Betty) and really really bad (whatever the fluq that thing was at the end.) it swung wildly between horror, mildly campy, hard SciFi, and never really found its center. What it did have was just a little too by the numbers. Expected set pieces for no real reason. Story twists for no reason, etc. I still like it better than 3, and it's one of my guilty pleasure movies. Personally I think its neck and neck with Promethius. Although I could give Promethius the win just on asking better more complex questions. AR's story was really just the plot of any standard FPS space shooter.

Why would anyone be surprised that Cameron likes a movie like Resident Evil? He used to make movies like that. He was rather succesful at it. Remember the first Terminator was fairly low budget schlock that hit it big. I can see him enjoying something like Resident Evil or even a Michael Bay flick before I could see him wading into some Woody Allan art house type drek?