PROMETHEUS

[arachnaut]

To paraphrase Shaw -

This is so wrong: Madagascar 3 beats Prometheus at the box office

http://news.moviefone.com/2012/06/10/bo ... 84630.html

[arachnaut]

I had just resurrected a very dim memory of an old science fiction short story - probably written in the 1950's or earlier - that had the beginnings of life as a theme.

In this story, a scientists makes some sort of atomic rocket which when it takes off, ignites the world and destroys all life. The astronaut lands and struggles to sea so that his decaying body can restore life on earth.

I've checked over all my old anthologies and I can't find anything that matches.

It reminded me of the beginning scene in Prometheus.

EDIT: Found it:

Alfred Bester: Adam and No Eve, 1941.

The rocket ship uses the nuclear disintegration of iron as a fuel and the catalyst leaks out.

[Homebelly]

So you will have to grant that Ridley must have thought this scene important.

Uh. I'm not saying the scene wasn't important.

I'm saying the character reactions were fucking 'ho-hum', ridiculous, and completely unrealistic. Even if the CREW had known prior that there was intelligent life in space (which absolutely nothing in the dialogue supports, btw. quite the opposite), don't you think the discovery of a MASSIVE FUCKING ALIEN SITTING AT A HUGE WICKED COOL CANNON might elicite more of a response than 'wow, looks like he might have been here a long time.' ?



It's also quite obvious by Ripley's later conversation with Ash that Weyland Industries knew about this planet and the plan was for the Nostromo to go there the entire time and check it out. Did they know about intelligent life and the Space Jockey and eggs? Hard to say. Now that we have Prometheus, however, I'm guessing they knew quite a bit.

Aren't Alien and Prometheus set on different planets.. or moons.. or what ever?

I have always guessed that Weyland knew about the life on the original planet from alien.
In fact i suspected that the whole point of the original mission was to go there and that the crews idea of what the mission was was only a diversion.
The idea being to use them as bait to find out what the deal was.
Its been a long time since i watched it, but i have watched it a bunch of times and every time i feel like Ash is holding back and maybe even dropping very subtle hints he knew the deal. In fact the whole idea of ash being on board seems a bit wrong in light of the nature of the original mission.
Having watched Prometheus i'm almost convinced.

I'm betting there is going to be at least one sequel and that that sequel.. or maybe the one after it.. will close the circle with alien.
I'm not sure how, but i'm guessing that one of the remaining space ships from the planet in Prometheus makes an escape, but crashes on the alien planet that the nostromos ends up going to.

[beatmunga]

I had just resurrected a very dim memory of an old science fiction short story - probably written in the 1950's or earlier - that had the beginnings of life as a theme.

In this story, a scientists makes some sort of atomic rocket which when it takes off, ignites the world and destroys all life. The astronaut lands and struggles to sea so that his decaying body can restore life on earth.

I've checked over all my old anthologies and I can't find anything that matches.

It reminded me of the beginning scene in Prometheus.

EDIT: Found it:

Alfred Bester: Adam and No Eve, 1941..

Great find arachnaut!

Alien seemed so original when I saw it back in the day, and yet over the years so many older works have come to light which Ridley seems to have pinched bits from - Planet of The Vampires, Quatermass, Old Dr. Who, Mountains of Madness, It! etc.

The 'plagiarism/influence' is often in tone as well as story.

[slatepipe]

I had just resurrected a very dim memory of an old science fiction short story - probably written in the 1950's or earlier - that had the beginnings of life as a theme.

In this story, a scientists makes some sort of atomic rocket which when it takes off, ignites the world and destroys all life. The astronaut lands and struggles to sea so that his decaying body can restore life on earth.

I've checked over all my old anthologies and I can't find anything that matches.

It reminded me of the beginning scene in Prometheus.

EDIT: Found it:

Alfred Bester: Adam and No Eve, 1941.

The rocket ship uses the nuclear disintegration of iron as a fuel and the catalyst leaks out.

good work feller

[Pitch Black]

...pinched bits from... Old Dr. Who.

"Elizabeth Shaw" FFS!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Shaw

[Goddard]

Alien seemed so original when I saw it back in the day, and yet over the years so many older works have come to light which Ridley seems to have pinched bits from - Planet of The Vampires, Quatermass, Old Dr. Who, Mountains of Madness, It! etc.

The 'plagiarism/influence' is often in tone as well as story.

I wouldn't be to haste with plagiarism accusations addressed to Ridley.
The original "Alien" script came from Dan O'Bannon and Roland Shusett. Ridley was only hired by Walter Hill and David Giler (after seeing Ridley's debut movie "The Duellists") to direct.
And he created the masterpiece...

[Goddard]

To understand Ridley Scott footprint in the original "Alien" you may enjoy the first attempt to make a movie based on O'Bannon's script.
The movie is "Dark Star" directed by John Carpenter and starring Dan O'Bannon himself...
They were almost there, but not completely... Ridley made it "a bit" better.
Cheers.

[snakedogman]

Yeah, believe me. I was totally prepared to despise this movie and went into it with as low of expectations as possible.

I just don't get the criticisms other than people are just expecting Alien.

I mean, have any of those people seen that WRETCHED Danny Boyle Sunshing movie? omfg. This was an interstellar masterpiece compared to that flick.

Heh I actually had to think if Sunshine after seeing Prometheus and couldn't help but think I'd probably prefer Sunshine over Prometheus. Though I haven't seen it in a while. I thought Sunshine was pretty good (although not perfect). I definitely had suspense and more interesting characters, two things sorely lacking in Prometheus.

With Alien being such a character-driven film I can't understand how Scott handles the characters in this film. Almost everything they do seems completely devoid of logic or reason, and none of them are really set up with any character at all. It's not that this film should have been like Alien, but you still need good characters. It's more interesting when people start dying if you actually care for some of them. Instead, at every point these people were just asking to get killed.

Still, I enjoyed the beauty of the design and the scale of it. I thought the 3D looked good too. The surgery scene came close to the original chest-burster scene in terms of sheer nastyness which I thought was quite a feat.

[arachnaut]

The commonalities in Prometheus and Alien are the future history - Weyland and his industrial empire, the android series, and the terraforming operations.

The Alien moon 'Acheron (LV-223)' is not the same as the Prometheus moon LV-422 or whatever they were numbered - I forget those sort of details.

It seems obvious that at least one sequel has to be made to finish the plot.

Also keep in mind that Ridley is more fundamentally interested in the visual than the logic of a scene - so he stretches credibility with no remorse if it makes the scene more spectacular.

There is a wealth of information in the DVD set called 'Alien Anthology' which has all the Alien movies in all their releases with huge amounts of audio narrative from the original authors and producers and cast members (except for the director of Aliens 3 who is still pissed, I guess).

I listened to Ridley's narration throughout the 1979 Alien release and his 2003 director's cut. All of his talking points were firmly rooted in the visual arts and all of his design decisions were based on the look and feel. The science was important, but not too important and subject to liberty and artistic license. In his outer space, there are always sounds in the vacuum, because that just seems right.But don't forget the studio tag line for Alien - In space no one can hear you scream.

A bit of ancient history: In 1979 I was working as a telecommunications software engineer for ROLM corporation. We were designing a state-of-the-art distributed tecommunications product using a proprietary real-time OS. We named the OS 'Alien' because it was such a monster.

[beatmunga]

To understand Ridley Scott footprint in the original "Alien" you may enjoy the first attempt to make a movie based on O'Bannon's script.
The movie is "Dark Star" directed by John Carpenter and starring Dan O'Bannon himself...
They were almost there, but not completely... Ridley made it "a bit" better.
Cheers.

Particularly with regard to creature design...

Dark Star



Alien



Really, although it is my all time favourite film, Alien is quite unoriginal in its story, narrative and tone.

I'm convinced that what makes the film still seem fresh today is the combined design talent of Giger, Cobb, Moebius and others. Ridley's genius was perhaps his taste in employing these nutters (although O' Bannon did, in fairness, bring Giger to the table).

[ikeaboy]

Here's an interesting read on the movie...

http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html#cutid1

That's a good read and fair play to the writer for figuring that all out and connecting the dots. He has a great grasp of myth, ancient religion and science fiction. If we take his analysis as correct then the film makers have really overshot the mark and the result is the unintelligible elements of the film. It's pointless having symbolism and thematic elements that grand in a movie when very few are going to get them and on top of that your efforts to shoehorn all that stuff in results in what could only be interpreted as slack untidiness by anyone whose attention is on the meat and potatoes like the characters and situation having an understandable, plausible internal logic.

I do like the film a little more after reading piece but that's cause I'm impressed by that kinda shit as, doubtless, people are who are close to the production, but should we be? I'm not impressed by the fact that impresses me

[Machinesworking]

Hey guyz the directer explains stuff you're hypothesizing about, really!

http://www.fandango.com/movieblog/inter ... 16238.html

...and yeah it wasn't a good movie at all from the perspective of script and wooden acting.

[simpleton]

I was just wondering, do these Aliens have dental implants?

[ikeaboy]

I was just wondering, do these Aliens have dental implants?

Isn't that what were all wondering?