Prometheus
- Thread starter Lain
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Damn, I was just about to make a thread on this! Stupid need to have breakfast before doing anything ...
Anyway, my interest is piqued. I feel that Ridley Scott kid of lost his touch in the 2000s; he hasn't made a decent film since GLADIATOR, and he hasn't made a truly good film since 1982 with BLADE RUNNER. So I'm hoping that by returning to science fiction, he can recreate the magic. The cast looks remarkably good (Rapace, Fassbender and Pearce all all great) and the script was written by Damon Lindelof, the only guy who fully understands "Lost" and wrote most of the series' better episodes. So it looks promising.
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Lain
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Damn, I was just about to make a thread on this! Stupid need to have breakfast before doing anything ...
Anyway, my interest is piqued. I feel that Ridley Scott kid of lost his touch in the 2000s; he hasn't made a decent film since GLADIATOR, and he hasn't made a truly good film since 1982 with BLADE RUNNER. So I'm hoping that by returning to science fiction, he can recreate the magic. The cast looks remarkably good (Rapace, Fassbender and Pearce all all great) and the script was written by Damon Lindelof, the only guy who fully understands "Lost" and wrote most of the series' better episodes. So it looks promising.
I think sci-fi is his forté, but then it's possible that perhaps Alien and Blade Runner were just strokes of luck.
Anyway, slightly random, but.. the trailer actually gives me a bit of a Mass Effect vibe...
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There was no luck involved in them.
ALIEN worked because it was genuinely scary. When it first premiered, there were reports of people leaving the cinema simply because the film was too fightening. There was a real sense of danger to the characters, and the score rarely gave cues to suggest something was about to happen. The sets were all constructed in a way to be very unsettling; most of the corridors and doors were actually the same set used over and over again (so that you new knew exactly where everyone was on the ship, adding to the sense of isolation), and they were actually designed to resemble genitals to make the film subconsciously disturbing.
BLADE RUNNER, on the other hand, is driven by a metaphyiscal narrative. It questions identity and purpose and what the defining elements of humanity are, and it uses the science fiction setting as a backdrop for this. The film is open-ended and littered with contradictory evidence as to whether or not Deckard is a human or a Replicant.
Based on what we know of PROMETHEUS, I see elements of both ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER. The ALIEN connection is obvious, given that it is a sidequel (a prequel to the films, but only loosely connected) and there are people screaming and being attacked all through the trailer. The BLADE RUNNER elements show through in the central premise of the film: that an expedition to find the origin of humanity as a species uncovers something that could kill everyone. It's roughly similar to the experiments at CERN trying to find the Higgs-Boson particle. Even the title of the film, PROMETHUES has connotations for the film. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was a titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity. For this, he was punished for all eternity. The connotations for the story of the film are dire: the expedition will likely go somewhere that humans were never supposed to go, and in the process of investigating it, unleash something nightmarish.
So I think PROMETHEUS has all the right parts in place. The central premise sounds very good, so we could get the thinking-man's horror film from Ridley Scott.
Lain
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You misunderstood... I didn't mean that Alien and Blade Runner's successes were strokes of luck, I meant that maybe it wasn't primarily due to Ridley Scott being at the helm. That perhaps he was just fortunate to be involved with all the right people for those projects, and wasn't actually the prime reason they were so great.
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The direction of many of his projects post-BLADE RUNNER has actually been pretty good. It's the other elements of the films, like the script (ROBIN HOOD), the score (BLACK HAWK DOWN), the cinematography (AMERICAN GANGSTER) on so on that have all contributed to him losing his touch. But he's got a pretty good crew for PROMETHEUS.
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I've heard rumours that PROMETHEUS's story will be inspired by HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. And given the subject nature, with humankind searching for its origins, I would not be surprised to see elements of Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey - particularly the last two novels, which were never filmed - worked into the plot.
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A fifteen-paragraph treatment of the story has been leaked online, though I personally am not buying into it - it contains far too many elements of William Gibson's original draft for ALIEN 3.
Yeah, that one's fake. It's actually fan fiction. If the people that posted it all over the 'net had spent two minutes actually researching it instead of just parroting it like every other website, we wouldn't have so many people claiming it was "real". There's a bit more to that synopsis at the beginning, you see.. the part they left off that says "I MADE THIS UP."
It's interesting that you mentioned the Lovecraft inspiration, though. That would be awesome. Hell, I might actually try to write that one myself, depending on where the movie goes with it.
Ibonibo
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New trailer, in glorious HD:
Looks intense.
Looks intense.
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According to screenwriter Damon Lindelof, the film was written around a central premise: "What if there was a scientific discovery that could end belief in God?". Not disprove the existence of God, but end it. The trailer clearly reflects that theme.
I can definately see the Mountains of Madness influence in the new trailer 👍
It's looking more and more like my dream movie.
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International trailer:
Less tension, more about the epic science fiction angle.
Less tension, more about the epic science fiction angle.
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I'm scared by the promise this film holds and the posibility that it won't deliver. The writers suck, no doubt about it. They are using a classic film for reference and direction as such, they are going with Sir Ridley as the director and they are using a group of actors who might be pushing for the spotlight.
I so want this film to be good... Scrap that I want it to be great, Ridley is a fantastic director, don't get me wrong I hated Gladiator and found Black Hawk Down dull (that might be an odd statement to make for a film packed full of action, but I don't respond well to the Bay effect in making films) but the man delivered three of the best scifi movies ever made so it's possible given the best script he will deliver a stonker of a film experience.
I don't care for the two guys doing the pen work, given the gravitas Ridley brings to the project then these guys might have brought their A game. As for the Cast, films like this work with a cast that's small and everyone has a great back story, or no story for anyone. If you have only a few people who you know allot about but the rest are a collection of scientists in this field or that, or this guy can build like an ex A-Team member then you have small parts for people and the two with the back story's have to carry allot of cast and the film and most times they crumble, Alien worked because you didn't get a back story for anyone until you are watching the events unfold, even though Ripley is written to survive, you aren't sure who will until the last second. Then for Aliens it's ok to give her more back story and let her carry the film because she is well liked and established with your audience.
Using Alien as jumping off point is a great idea, allot of untapped universe surrounds not only the space jockey and his ship, but LB426 as a planet and Waylend Corp. and it's interest and knowledge of what was there when we get to Alien later down the line. What will be needed is sensitivity to what everything looks like or you will end up with Star Trek Enterprise syndrome. Everything looks so far advanced or modern to fit within the timeline of the stories afterwards. If Ridley gives everyone the shaft and does everything too far removed then people won't like it and film fans are a fickle bunch.
I so want this film to be good... Scrap that I want it to be great, Ridley is a fantastic director, don't get me wrong I hated Gladiator and found Black Hawk Down dull (that might be an odd statement to make for a film packed full of action, but I don't respond well to the Bay effect in making films) but the man delivered three of the best scifi movies ever made so it's possible given the best script he will deliver a stonker of a film experience.
I don't care for the two guys doing the pen work, given the gravitas Ridley brings to the project then these guys might have brought their A game. As for the Cast, films like this work with a cast that's small and everyone has a great back story, or no story for anyone. If you have only a few people who you know allot about but the rest are a collection of scientists in this field or that, or this guy can build like an ex A-Team member then you have small parts for people and the two with the back story's have to carry allot of cast and the film and most times they crumble, Alien worked because you didn't get a back story for anyone until you are watching the events unfold, even though Ripley is written to survive, you aren't sure who will until the last second. Then for Aliens it's ok to give her more back story and let her carry the film because she is well liked and established with your audience.
Using Alien as jumping off point is a great idea, allot of untapped universe surrounds not only the space jockey and his ship, but LB426 as a planet and Waylend Corp. and it's interest and knowledge of what was there when we get to Alien later down the line. What will be needed is sensitivity to what everything looks like or you will end up with Star Trek Enterprise syndrome. Everything looks so far advanced or modern to fit within the timeline of the stories afterwards. If Ridley gives everyone the shaft and does everything too far removed then people won't like it and film fans are a fickle bunch.
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I admit, I was a little concerned about the writers to begin with, but my doubts have been eased. Spaihts is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, and he's apparently written a lot of screenplays that have been put on the "Black List" - scripts that have impressed a lot of producers, but for various reasons have never been made - and he apparently specialises in science fiction. He was originally commissioned to write a prologue to ALIEN, and whatever he did, it was enough to get Ridley Scott's attention.
Once Scott came on-board, the writing passed over to Damon Lindelhof. I was worried about him because "Lost" was really a rather poor show (particularly in its second half), but Lindelhof laid a lot of the early groundwork and most of the early interest, particularly relating to the nature of the DHARMA Initiative, which was one of the better aspects of the show. And with PROMETHEUS, he's not under the thumb of JJ Abrams - the most over-rated man in Hollywood - way he was with "Lost".
Once Scott came on-board, the writing passed over to Damon Lindelhof. I was worried about him because "Lost" was really a rather poor show (particularly in its second half), but Lindelhof laid a lot of the early groundwork and most of the early interest, particularly relating to the nature of the DHARMA Initiative, which was one of the better aspects of the show. And with PROMETHEUS, he's not under the thumb of JJ Abrams - the most over-rated man in Hollywood - way he was with "Lost".
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Well that sound allot better than the rumblings on various blogs and forums who are trash talking the writers, I hated Lost and didnt stick with it, but its nice to hear Spaihts may have given good groundwork and if it was this that twigged Ridleys interest then we maybe ok. I have this on my watch list and I know for certain that it will be a day one for me.
CodeRedR51
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Accidentally saw the trailer for this as a YouTube advertisement looking through UFO videos and it instantly went on my "must watch" list for this year which includes:
1) Dark Knight Rises
2) Marvel's The Avengers
3) Prometheus
1) Dark Knight Rises
2) Marvel's The Avengers
3) Prometheus
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Oh, don't get me wrong - I thought "Lost" was horrible. It was plagued by dozens of issues from the outset; the cast was about four characters too many, plot elements were introduced to engineer meetings between unnecessary characters and thus create equally-unnecessary subplots, story devices were written in with no clear idea of where they were going, the writers had a tendency to ignore short-term character arcs and instead focus on long-term story development and hope that piling mystery upon mystery would keep audiences interested, over-reliance on detailed back-stories that had little bearing on the events in the present and you needed to explore the expanded universe (ie tie-in novels, video games, etc.) to understand some important elements like the numbers. By the time they introduced the parallel stories showing what would have happened if the plane had not crashed, it was obvious the writers had no clear indication of where they were going and were just making things up in the vague hope that they would somehow get to their ultimate objective. There were a lot of unnecessary episodes. Most of the mistakes seem to arise with hanging their shingle over JJ Abrams' door. The man is incredibly over-rated, and has no real creative input, but assumes control over projects because his name gets audience attention.
However, the stuff that did work - like the DHARMA Initiative, and pretty much everything that came out of it - was Damon Lindelhof's creation. If the show had simply stuck to these elements and ignored the metaphysical concepts, it probably would have been much stronger. So I think that if PROMETHEUS is more in line with these elements, the film will actually be pretty strong.
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This film is looking amazing, ever since i saw Alien the Space Jockey has always sparked my imagination. Finally we will get to find out more about him & to top it off we'll get to see more of H.R.Giger's twisted designs.
@Sprite, The planet is called LV-426.
@R1600Turbo, you should add World War Z to that list. If done correctly this could be a great movie.
@Sprite, The planet is called LV-426.
@R1600Turbo, you should add World War Z to that list. If done correctly this could be a great movie.
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CodeRedR51
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That was Ailens. A James Cameron film.
I really cannot wait for this. I'm a massive fan of the first two films. The second two didn't quite live up to my expectations and the less said about the AvP series the better.
Finally another proper Alien film. (Although it's not about Xenomorphs!)
CodeRedR51
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New Trailer.
