ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

12 years, 10 months ago - Steve Turnbull

I haven't seen it. Probably won't, probably wouldn't even if all the reviews had been positive. Though I am the sort of person that can just enjoy a film for what it is and worry about analysis later.

But that's not my point.

I think it was Scott Myers on his prolific "Go Into the Story" blog who said that when you have a film that at a script level is bad and yet people go see it and enjoy it:

Then your responsibility as a screenwriter is not to rip it to hell and complain that the buying public is stupid and ignorant (actually I don't think anyone's done that but stay with me). The wise screenwriter should be figuring out *why* it works.

And saying "oh it was the hype" isn't good enough because there have been other heavily hyped movies with massive A list casts that have bombed. In the world of instant social media "word of mouth" is even more powerful and can kill a film dead in a day. Or boost an obscure one to success.

Why has this film worked for the audience? That's who we write for (anything else is just masturbation).

12 years, 10 months ago - Richard Cosgrove

Spoilers below.

> If we leave aside those non-script-related things and just
> concentrate on the writing, can anyone coherently defend this
> car-crash? So far as I could tell, the entire story relies, at
> every move, on supposedly intelligent people consistently
> doing the dumbest thing possible (or occasionally things which
> are both dumb and physically impossible).

You just hit on the point when I nearly gave up on the film: when the landing
party is in the cave and they all take their helmets off. There is no way I would
have taken my helmet off, no matter how nice the air smelt.

I just about lost faith with the script when Punk Geologist and Boring Biologist
got lost in the caves. Despite knowing they were being tracked on a 3D map
of the cave system on their ship, which they could contact at any time, they
didn't radio the ship and say: "Hey, we're lost. How do we get out?"

And I'm not going to get into the whole "We're detecting an alien creature in
the caves. Never mind. I won't tell anyone. It's probably not important

12 years, 10 months ago - Ben Mart

Here's a interesting essay of the themes and motifs of the
film...

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

12 years, 10 months ago - Stephen M. Hunt

Referring to Prometheus Ridley Scott recently said "..it's all about box-office.." which sounded like an apology to me. As you said, its doing good business. Perhaps it boils down to this: would you rather write artistically superior scripts that make little or no money or a film like Prometheus?

12 years, 10 months ago - Louise Pennington

Haven't seen it yet, so perhaps shouldn't comment, but if what you're
saying turns out to be right, have to agree. Alien was excellent, the sequels
good and okay. A prequel with all the skills and talent Ridley Scott can call
upon should be great...

Louise

12 years, 10 months ago - Tony Hemphill

Ha! I watched it last night and was gunning to write about it today. Unbelievable. There were so many odd, unexplanable bits that didn’t move the story on or explain anything -- seemingly there purely for visual effect.

Warning Spoilers below:

After watching it last night here are some questions I had:

What were those ghost ‘recordings’ all about? Who did them, and why? And how did the android know how to switch them on? and what purpose did they actually serve? The ghost things ran past them to where they were all walking anyway only to reveal the body they were going to find in ten minutes anyway. Pointless.

What was the goal? The old guy wanted to ‘talk to the alien' to see if he could live forever? Garbage. And then the thing ??" supposedly a higher intelligent being - just wakes up and just kills everybody like it was hungover from a night out on the Stellas - laughable.

And when the old guy (Biff Tannen from Back to the Future 2 - anyone?) is found to be on the ship ??" what was the point in that? -- there’s no moment where you go ‘oh wow the old guy’s on the ship!’ You just go ‘oh the old guy’s on the ship, ok’ -- what does his presence add to the story? Nothing. He is revealed, and then he goes out and basically gets killed instantly ??" utterly pointless.

Crucially - Why did the Android spike the scientist guys drink? In Alien, the android’s goal was to bring back an alien -- what was the android's goal here? It was pointless. His entire goal seemed to be at odds with everything else and wasn’t explained at all. For me this was a fatal flaw - and for those that might say 'don't compare it to Alien' I'd say 'don't have pretty much the same character, doing the same things (even getting his head broken off) but without the clear goal the android in Alien had!

Furthermore regarding the andriod (who I thought was acted superbly by the way) but: how did the andriod: know where another space ship was (all of a sudden) - and then know how to fly it ??" and then know where to fly off to at the end -- He’s an android, he’s not Nero!

To summarise:
It was confused, rambling, distracting and largely pointless. There were some nice shots and things looked pretty good and largely the acting was good (save for the scottish character - dear lord she was bad - sorry).

But script-wise it was utterly shocking.

If a writer sent that script in cold it would get absolutely nowhere. It just doesn’t make any sense. As a writer it was infuriating.

12 years, 10 months ago - David Gilbank

Yes sir, this film was a travesty. How many of us would've given our front, back, and children's teeth to have a crack at writing this film? Such a large budget and a total disaster of a film.

Case in point: As Naomi staggers through the ship, moments after she has an abortion, she meets Idris who explains to her the entire back story (its a military outpost! Crikey!) Staggeringly bad dialogue as well...case in point: the stupid flirting between Charlize and Idris.

While not exactly a script issue, there were several continuity errors: case in point: naomi has gloves on/off on the planet's surface after running from the crashing space-craft. To me, this suggests that the film-makers didn't care.
As you can tell, I am quite pissed off that i was duped by the lure of great hype and Viral (accurate use of the word in this case) marketing- and that my favourite director has let me down.

You are totally on the button with your words. Interestingly, I have been shouted down on a few blogs etc for daring to suggest that Lord Ridley has created a total dud.

Oh yes, and finally: THE FLUTE. A bloody flute to launch a space ship? Perhaps we should be grateful that the sychophants who pandered to Ridley's daft vision drew the line at his original idea of having a trombone.