I can come up with some criticism for this movie, but I think your atheistic bias turned you a bit in the wrong direction here. At the very least, this movie carries with it a message of religious ambiguity, and the strengthening of belief as a result- there are no answers at the conclusion, and while "God" is not given as the final correct answer to being, it is certainly given as one possible alternative. In my mind this is part of the brilliance of the film's theme. Searching for answers in spite of overwhelming failure and uncertainty is the driving force behind both science and religion. Ridley Scott was NOT trying to say that "God is an alien" or "God is a bastard", he was saying that frankly, we can't know, but "god" help us if we ever stop searching.
What's with all the spoilers in this video? :| Not only talking about a reveal from the end of the movie, but saying who the villain is and who the android is, etc... Normally, if Bob is posting a video that includes spoilers, he throws up a big spoiler warning at the beginning so that people who prefer to avoid spoilers (like me) can turn the video off. I mean I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know how much this will affect my enjoyment of it, but if we aren't supposed to find out that it's a prequel until the end of the movie, then Bob shouldn't mention it in the review and certainly shouldn't put it in the blurb underneath the video!
I've been avoiding spoilers up until this point and didn't realize that the movie is a prequel. (I was under the impression it was an Alien reboot) So, that reveal could have been a crowning moment of awesome for me, but now... I'm just feeling peeved because it's been spoiled. Bob, if you're reading this, could you please, in future, put spoiler warnings ahead of spoilers? You've done it in the past and I was counting on you to do it this time too, and I feel like you've let me down.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around all the people on this thread saying to ignore the plot holes and stupid character reactions, and "just enjoy the movie". If you ignore plot and characters, what is left? Pretty pictures? Are we as an audience to just take the mindset of toddlers watching dancing lights?
I understand that some art can be enjoyed without deep analysis or much thought, but there is a point in "storytelling" art where this cannot apply. If you introduce characters and then have them perform actions completely contrary to the background that you provided with no explanation, it can derail the participation of the observer. As an observer, in one way or another, I am meant to become engrossed in the story.
An example I can give that I've heard others use before is "Michael Bay" movies. These movies are usually described as mindless action fests with under-developed or poor characters. You can view these "mindlessly" and still experience some visceral enjoyment.
But, if, in Transformers, Optimus Prime suddenly started killing humans with no explanation given, the audience is presented with actions that they would not be able to gloss over, at least in my opinion. This would be a thought provoking scene, and that thought would be "What the f*ck?!" I believe actions like this make for bad storytelling and derail any chance I can have at enjoying a movie.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around all the people on this thread saying to ignore the plot holes and stupid character reactions, and "just enjoy the movie". If you ignore plot and characters, what is left? Pretty pictures? Are we as an audience to just take the mindset of toddlers watching dancing lights?
I understand that some art can be enjoyed without deep analysis or much thought, but there is a point in "storytelling" art where this cannot apply. If you introduce characters and then have them perform actions completely contrary to the background that you provided with no explanation, it can derail the participation of the observer. As an observer, in one way or another, I am meant to become engrossed in the story.
An example I can give that I've heard others use before is "Michael Bay" movies. These movies are usually described as mindless action fests with under-developed or poor characters. You can view these "mindlessly" and still experience some visceral enjoyment.
But, if, in Transformers, Optimus Prime suddenly started killing humans with no explanation given, the audience is presented with actions that they would not be able to gloss over, at least in my opinion. This would be a thought provoking scene, and that thought would be "What the f*ck?!" I believe actions like this make for bad storytelling and derail any chance I can have at enjoying a movie.
So, Halloway is purposely infected by David, and David makes no effort to hide this to Shaw after his death. Shaw says nothing to him about it. Then David finds the gestating alien growing inside Shaw and instead of giving her treatment, sedates her. Then those two other doctors don't help her either, and Shaw has to attack them to get to the autodoc pod. No one chases her, even though she's on a tiny ship, could be found easily, is in crippling pain, and is a biohazard that could potentially lead to the death of the entire crew if she isn't quarantined. After she manages to save her own life, there isn't even so much as a "What the hell, David?!" from Shaw or a "What the hell, Shaw?!" from the doctors she attacked.
Shaw then joins a small group of people, half of whom she knows had a part in nearly killing her and successfully killing Halloway, and goes back into the ruins with them. Seriously, they already nearly killed her once, they're known to be ruthless in the pursuit of their goals, are not bothered at all by casualties, probably consider her an inconvenience or a liability, and can order the other members of the group to off her as well. And she goes with them into this place where it's very easy to die even when you can trust the people you're with.
We have people doing things to each other that in any other movie would make them mortal enemies, and afterwards everybody acts all ok with it. It makes no goddamn sense!
I'll admit the DNA stuff is something I only thought of when I saw your post. I'm really just saying that I can get the concept to SORT OF make sense in my head, although it takes some mental maneuvering. I'm also aware that this is a lot more effort than I generally spend to get myself to like a movie. I don't think it's a bad movie at all, but it's definitely a disappointing one, and it really shouldn't have been.
As for the Christianity stuff, I noticed the cross, the "virgin birth", etc. but at the time I thought it was just using Christian imagery as a placeholder for religion in general. I thought it was a broader "belief" vs. "fact" statement, but in hindsight I see I was wrong. There's another interview with Scott where he admits that at at least one point during production the Jockeys were definitely returning to earth because we'd killed Jesus, one of their own. Don't know if this is still the running theme or not. The Christianity theme felt pretty out of place in the movie, and I'm not sure why they were so intent on shoehorning it in.
It seems pretty clear that Ridley Scott started to make an Alien prequel, then decided to branch out with a "Blade Runner-ish" exploration on what it is that makes us human, and didn't really flesh the idea out in time to make a complete movie about it. I thought the conversations and even motivations of David were very poignant, and was surprised at how strong the android theme was in the movie, while the actual extra terrestrial stuff felt totally rushed.
If anyone's still interested in exploring the themes of the movie, I think this guy ( http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html ) has some pretty good ideas. In particular, that you can divide the important characters by those willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others (Prometheus myth, Janek, Holloway, the engineers, etc.) and those willing to sacrifice others for themselves (Weyland, David, the xenomorph), and there's a pretty consistent thread that ties that theme together
I enjoyed the movie. Once I had time to digest it after leaving the theater, there were some bad uses of character as a plot device. The two guys down in the ship when they're hanging out in the giant head room. What the hell was that? Some of the writing for Theron's part was kind of shitty and was poorly delivered in some places. Indeed Fassbender was great as the android who kind of hates humans. I did kind of wish for a little bit more of an explanation as to why David did what he did during the movie, but didn't follow through. All in all, I'd give it a 3.5 out 5 mostly because I miss having good Science Fiction at the theater.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, although I had two problems with it; one that I typically do with sci-fi movies and the other with other people's characterization of some of the characters.
First, I fucking hate the scientists in sci-fi movies. They're always just so retarded and dismissive of genuine concerns. Even in instances where they're supposed to be the good guy. Not just the biologist
randomly deciding to pet an alien life-form, whose physiology he's clueless about, but even Elizabeth's plan at the end: Hey, those aliens really hate us and want to kill us. I better go to their home-freaking planet and ask them. Honestly, if the sequel is just 5 minutes of her walking up to an alien all indignantly and asking, "Why do you hate us?" before getting her head ripped off, I'd still buy a ticket.
It's this attitude of "we have to know" that just grinds me. I'm more the kind of guy that takes David's position: "Why do you have to know?" To me that was easily the most thought-provoking question in the whole movie, and then it just gets blown off with a retarded, "Because...I'm a human, you wouldn't understand."
The second problem I had was Charlize and Michael Fassbender's characterization by some as bad guys. But they never really seemed like that.
Charlize always acted in the best interests of the majority, especially when the boyfriend was infected. Fuckin' right you don't just let someone on board with an unknown ailment that's wrecking his shit. And as for the "ulterior motives", she never had any. Her father had the other motives, and she was pretty opposed to his decision. And Michael, he never really did anything unsavory. Even the poisoning of the boyfriend, he only did it after the guy said, "I'd do anything for this mission." The robot just took that shit literally. The specimen in Elizabeth was just an unintended consequence. It wasn't that he was evil, it was more that he was a child who was curious about everything.
There seems to be a lot of "it was an all-right movie" going on here.
That movie was bad! Shaw couldn't pick an accent, her boyfriend was a dummy, and the writing was poor. I can count the number of line each character speaks on my hands.
Evil blonde chick reacts stupidly to finding out that aliens exist, in that she demonstrates that she doesn't care, and that her concerns are elsewhere... ALIENS EXIST! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE A PERSON?
Boyfriend acts stupidly after finding out aliens exist, that they are all dead, and that he can't talk to them. He found his maker and now all he can do is cry about how he have a chat over Starbucks with them.
Stupid scientist stupidly approaching an obviously hostile acting alien.
Out of nowhere awkward lines:
"This device only does Male operations."
"I can't create life, what does that say about me."
"You wouldn't understand because you're just a Robot."
Having gone to see the movie today after having read a number of mixed reviews, I personally found that I liked it. Yeah, it has a fair number of flaws (too much Idiot Ball, for starters), but I think the scope and ideas behind it make it worthwhile.
I liken it to last year's Super-8: a flawed movie that you either liked despite the flaws or you couldn't because of said flaws (but you regret not liking it). You can see where Ridley Scott was trying to go and he gets maybe 3/4 of the way there.
This is the kind of movie you have to see to make up your own mind. On that basis alone, I'd recommend watching it.
I saw it this weekend (it was out last friday in europe), and here's one I really have to disagree with you on Bob.
This is a failure, and a bad one at that.
The visuals are great - it's well shot, and most of the CG is pretty neat. The music is nice if not exactly smooth. The acting is surprisingly good, considering what these people had to work with; especially Theron and Fassbeder stand out.
But the script is insultingly stupid. The whole basic plot makes absolutely no sense, even in its own framework, and every single character not played by Charlize Theron is borderline retarded and / or so insultingly improfessional as to seem so. Fassbender's robot can't help it; he was apparently made that way; the rest must have been dropped on the head a few times at birth ...
A few weeks late, finally saw the movie tonight, and going to echo this post.
This review seems to be alot like the rankings in College Football; my beloved Michigan Wolverines have been highly rated for years (with a couple of years that we shall not speak of) in the various polls. They get this rating because in 1997, they won the National Championship. And from about 1890 to sometime in the 1960's, they won a whole lot of championships. And they were a good team from the 1960's to 2006ish. Ergo, Michigan is a good football team.
Notice how I have only mentioned one season individually, that being 1997? Yeah. Michigan of 2012 is going to end up rated in the top 25 before the season starts because... erm, it's Michigan. Ergo it's a good football team. And it's going to stay in the top 25 for a few weeks even if it loses because it's Michigan. If the exact same set of players played the exact same games with the only difference being that they were playing for the Maine Lobster Claws instead of the Michigan Wolverines, they wouldn't be noticed by the rest of college football let alone get ranked.
Where am I going with this? Ridley Scott = Michigan. Bob = College Football Pollster. This movie gets a good rating because it's Ridley Scott, ergo it has to be a good movie. If this had been done by, say, Michael Ricardo Rodriguez, it would be torn apart. If it had been done by Uwe Boll, it would be a biatch fest about how terrible Uwe Boll is. But it's Ridley Scott, so... dude, it's Ridley Scott!
Personally I left the movie feeling rather annoyed. I didn't enjoy the movie, I didn't enjoy how I needed to have a fairly large understanding of the Alien universe to have any idea what was going on. (not just the movies, but the comics. Which are usually rather good, but then they were Dark Horse comics, so written for adults in mind.)
I particularly didn't enjoy the random idiocy of the human characters (seriously, the geologist and the b-scientist start off as geologist telling b-scientist to f-off to suddenly the two decide to be buddy-buddy and flee a 2000 year old corpse... then the guy who MADE the probes gets lost??), the annoyingly predictable Bad Android who doesn't seem to have much of a motivation for his actions. I was willing to overlook the leaps in characterization for the Captain and his two co-pilots who go from being cardboard cutouts to noble heroes willing to lay down their lives to save Earth, and the Vickers as Spurned Daughter of Weyland twist, but the more I look at the movie as a whole the less I'm willing to overlook. And I'm not even going to get into the Engineers and Xenomorphs. Just... blargh. So disappointed.
I hope that a Directors Cut comes out for this movie, since I don't really see a sequel being made unless they need to keep the copyright (a la Fantastic Four, Spiderman and X-Men franchises) going for a while longer. This movie begs for a sequel but doesn't deserve one.
I still haven't seen Prometheus, but the description of the downplayed Alien references put me in mind of another thing that had some downplayed Alien references: "Cyberantics: A Little Adventure." This was a science fiction children's book about a robot ant published by Dark Horse Comics in 1992. It was EXCELLENT. There was so much going on in this book...the straightforward narrative about the ant, the footnotes about ant biology, and the backstory about the ant's creator. Anyhow, it was a tie-in to a Dark Horse Comics Alien miniseries, Aliens: Hive. Both are worth seeking out.
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