Post by Harkovast on Dec 22, 2014 21:54:29 GMT
*warning this review is long and has a shit ton of spoilers. I feel like I have to exorcise this film from my body*
PrometheARSE. That pretty much sums up this movie. Its a load of arse that is up its own arse and results in a steaming turd.
This movie bugs the shit out of me, not only as an ALIEN fan (even though the majority of that franchise is now terrible) but also as a sci-fi fan. Which is so bloody annoying, because it is almost a decent sci-fi flick, but piggy backs on the success of ALIEN and while grabbing on to it's back, slips its dick up ALIEN's bum and rapes it.
Sigh... anyways I'm just going to go through the movie's plot and highlight some things that were terrible (more accurately this is going to be a rant, where I occasionally throw in plot points).
The film had a marketing campaign that was pretty cool, with adverts for 'David' an android made by the Weyland company. Very Bladerunner-esque, in a good way and allows you to see the androids in a positive light. Theres also a cool TED talk by Weyland which is pretty interesting too. I'd recommend watching them, because they are really good even if the film is shit.
More importantly, if you paid attention to any buzz about the movie, Prometheus was going to be a Prequel to ALIEN, because the universe had been ruined by shitty sequels and ties to the godawful AVP movies. Not only that, they were going to explain the whole deal with the space Jockey! You know, that huge monster in the first ALIEN that was 4 times the size of a man and had an alien burst out of it (Where did that Chestburster go anyway?). This was gonna be great, Ridley Scott the director of the first film, back in the spotlight making a canon prequel. You can't get any better than this.
Okay, so the film starts. Cue overhead vistas of a planet (I assumed it was Earth, but apparently Ridly Scott got pissed off about people thinking that, so I guess its some unimportant planet that has nothing to do with anything). It pans to a big saucer UFO, like the ones out of independence day. Okay... then you see this big Albino man in a robe. Errr, okay, so this is obviously an alien. But not THE Alien? The only other Alien we know of in this franchise is the space jockey and this film is going to explain what they are all abou- OH.
OH.
Yeah, in the first scene, it dawns on you that the space jockey is a big albino man. You remember the wierd freaky giger design of the space jockey? It had an elephantine face, was using this big wierd inhuman looking cannon, in a scary spaceship that looked like a nightmare and not anything close to resembling what would be practical for humans, or anyone that acted like humans.
Apparently all that is a big bald man. He's wearing only a loincloth so we get to see everything. At least Dr. Manhatten got his little blue nob out. No, not even a little nob would make this scene any better.
Then this big white fuck pulls out this cup of black gunk and drinks it, causing his body to turn black and fall to pieces as the camera zooms into his body, through his blood and into his DNA, where his DNA double-helixes turn black and disintegrates. He falls off a cliff into some water. It's really slow and painful, eating the guy from the inside. This must be a form of ritual suicide. It then shows his blood in the water creating life.
Okay, I'm going to have to tackle a few things here. First, the concept isn't a terrible one – life on earth originated in what we call the 'Cambrian Explosion' which is as far back as we can date where life began. This is addressing that issue, which is fair enough. The problem is, this isn't 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why, in an ALIEN movie are we giving two fucks about how life originated on Earth? This is a heavy topic (which the film realises) dealing with the origins of man, bringing religion into question, and also doesn't address the age old question of 'where did we come from', pushing the burden of proof to 'why did the Engineers make us and where did they come from'. Again, this isn't something I have ever wanted to consider in as film about ALIENS.
Imagine if they did this in a Predator movie. Aliens and Predator are now like two peas in a pod, the two franchises are bound together like a pair of BDSM deviants (we should just let them both Auto-Ausphixiate in the closet...) Anyway, imagine if in Predetheus, the upcoming Predator prequel, it had Predators create human life. It would just be 'WTF' that isn't the point of the movies. Actually it would make MORE sense that Predators created us to hunt than engineers made us. Fuck me...
Anyway, I'm only on the first scene and I want to die. Give me some black goop so I can end it all.
So after that debacle we go to 2089, in the future, but also in ALIEN past. Movie, it doesnt matter what year it is. A pair of archeologists find a cave painting of a figure pointing at some circles. The archeologists jizz themselves and say that it's "just like the others they have found".
Then the scene changes to a spaceship at a planet, its 2093 now! It does the ALIEN thing of having text pop un on the screen to tell you the name of the ship and stuff, but its in orange here instead of the original white. Here's where we have 2 problems.
First, because the film is up it's own arse it is called Prometheus, trying to sound intellectual, but it is also the name of the ship. They planned for a series of these films. Is the next one going to be called Prometheus 2? (spoiler the ship blows up at the end) because that don't make no sense. The original name for the film was Alien: Engineers which y'know, keeps the Alien name in there. How about they called first Alien film NOSTROMO instead and call the Aliens sequel USS SULACO while you are at it. Maybe the next film will have a new arsty fartsy title and not mention Prometheus at all to make it extra confusing.
The second problem is the ship is really fancy – the CGI is top notch and it looks great. It has touch screens inside, super duper healing stations, holograms and better cryotubes to sleep in than the other movies. I've heard this defended as this ship is paid for by a big company so has state of the art technology.
This does make some sense, but I don't like it for 2 reasons. First, the ALIEN franchise (except the 4th ResARSErection film) are dark. And not just because they struggled to find the light switches, but also the technology sucked balls. Yes the Nostromo was a shitty Tug that was probably 50 years out of date. But everything was run down and shitty in all of the films. The USS Sulaco (the marines ship in Aliens) didn't seem that high tech. The APC in Aliens wasn't full of flashy touchscreens, the colony base was run down and shitty even before the aliens got there. Even in Alien 3 at the end when the company comes to get ripley, they go in one of the spaceships from Aliens (or a Conestoga Class ship if you are a lifeless fucking nerd like me). So yes, the Prometheus ship looks and feels awesome with great sets but it doesn't fit in the ALIEN universe.
Inside the ship we get to see David, the android walking around the ship. Its cool to see (this was originally planned for Bishop in Aliens, to have him wandering around empty corridors while the crew slept). David is the best character in the film, and the most human and likable. He also poisons the crew and gets them murdered. And is a robot. That should tell you something about the rest of the crew.
David watches Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O' Toole, mouthing words of the film showing he's watched it loads and dies the roots of his hair blond. He also plays basket ball and throws it in a hoop in some bizarre call-out to alien resurrection for some fucking reason. He spies on people dreaming in cryo-sleep. I like this because it makes him creepy. I don't like that people dream in cryosleep and upload it to floppy disc for people to watch as movies. Thats dumb.
The crew wake up and reveal themselves to be assholes. A mohawked cockney wanker (a geologist) tells a biologist that hes here to make money not be friends. Ooh he must be the 'tough' one, except the fact he looks like a total prat. Idris Elba is the ship captain putting up a Christmas tree (doesn't seem that important, but is part of a pointless reveal later on that is ridiculous). Charlise Theron is the hardnosed company leader called Vickers. There are about 10 extras who dont get names and wander about waiting to die. No one is likable (except Idris Elba).
The next scene is amazing. The amount of fuckery packaged into 5 minutes must be some kind of record.
Vickers tells the crew the mission. They all signed on without knowing the mission for some reason. The movie could just have had them all know what the mission was about before they signed up, but nope they are all clueless.
We get a posthumous hologram of Guy Pearce as an incredibly old Mr Weyland who funded the expidition (and is dead now). This fails on every level. Firstly, the technology is too good - in Aliens there is a deleted scene where ripley is sat in a small garden on the Gateway Station at the beginning of the movie. There is a crappy tv screen on one of the walls that flickers displaying plants to make the area look like a jungle. It is 80's special effects so looks ropey, but it also makes the universe technology feel more industrial and run-down.
Holograms feature a fair bit in this movie. The space jockey technology uses it (which is cool because they should have better tech than us) and the humans use it to make a 3d map of a ship - which looks snazzy but doesn't really fit. Remember in Aliens when they all stood round a map of the complex that was a shitty 2d screen they had to scroll round? That is the tech of Aliens. Maybe the 3d hologram of the complex was broken. "How did they turn off the holograms man? They're animals!"
Even the hologram effects dont cover up how monumentally rubbish the old man make up on Guy Pearce looks. In the original script, David was going to see Weyland's dreams and see him as a yound man on a yacht living the playboy lifestyle. This scene was cut, probably because its an awful idea - we KNOW that Weyland was young once, its something a lot of old people have in common. But they decided to keep Guy Pearce and put embarassing shitty looking makeup on him which is really jarring with the good special effects. Get an older actor you fuckwit Ridley!
Oh wait, how about you don't? Fuck this Weyland fetish the Aliens series has somehow gotten. In the second movie there are signs plastered around the colony "Weyland-Yutani. Building Better Worlds" Its 'the Company' that the corporate suit Burke works for and that tries to capture the Alien to use as a weapon.
The shitty AVP movie had a Mr Weyland to try and tie it Aliens, getting Lance Henriksen to play him (the guy who played the Bishop android in ALIENS). This makes no sense that he looks like a military android hundreds of years in the future and was just a way to get an original actor back. So far so dumb, AVP is fan fiction at best so doesnt really fit with Aliens continuity.
Prometheus takes this as inspiration and has the 'Weyland' part of Weyland-Yuytani be this really important part of the Universe. No one but fuckwit nerds like me even knows the name Weyland-Yutani. It was just the evil company that wanted to steal the Alien and are bad guys. But no, we have Weyland be the lynchpin who creates the androids, build the terraforming stations and discovers the Aliens/engineers and is on a quest to discover human existence. They are inches away from going back and rewriting Burke from ALIENS to be one of his great grandkids and im surprised Jonesy the cat isn't a decendant of one of his pets. This series is going in Star Wars Prequels territory.
Right, so this young man in old man makeup calls david 'the son he never had' and then says he isnt human and has no soul (which is a recurring theme in the movie). Well fuck, the only likable character is getting shit on by a guy that doesnt even look like a realistic human. Star Trek had a great episode ("measure of a man") where it discussed the idea of whether robot life is sentient and deserves rights like humans do. The judge who makes the ruling says "I don't know if Data has a soul. I don't know if I have one." which is brilliant. Blade Runner, which Ridley fucking directed even addresses this issue! You can't verify the soul and then declare someone not having it! Bah...
So that fake-old fucknugget introduces the 2 archeologists from earlier, who show ancient paintings and carvings from different periods of history that all show a large figure pointing at globes in the sky. They assert from this that it is a star system, they have managed to find it and that is Prometheus is orbiting the planet now. This obviously doesn't make sense, a star map isn't a 2D object and celestial bodies move so they wouldnt be in the same place as when these ancient civilisations scrawled them on walls. But fuck it, I'll let it pass.
Then one of the Archeologists, who is our main character - a woman named Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace) says that this is an invitation by an alien race called the Engineers who created human life (which is what we saw in the first scene with the big albino dude).
Err what? Where did you get that from. In the words of Redlettermedia "Did you read the script?"
The Biologist asks if she is going to throw thousands of years of Darwinism out the window. Wait, what? Darwinism? Why is the Biologist using a Creationist term designed to ridicule evolution? Then the mohawed twat from earlier (the geologist) asks if she has any proof, and she smacks him down with the reply "It's what I choose to believe".
WHAT THE FUCK? Are you fucking Mulder? Or an archeologist whos beliefs should be founded in fact and evidence? The crew accepts this by the way, she wins the argument - scene over.
How do they come to these conclusions from paintings on a wall? Why do they name a race that there is no evidence for existing, know they created humans and know that these odd carvings from 1000s of years ago are an invitation to this star system? And the worst thing? The opening scene of the movie proves all this babbling nonsense to be true. I guess "Darwinism" was wrong. There is an episode of Red Dwarf (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0d8SXedEx0) where Rimmer finds a garbage pod, is convinced it is an alien space ship and comes up with a whole background for them including giving them a stupid name. A Brilliant episode, but it shouldn't be in an ALIEN film!
We are only 20 minutes in to the movie. Fuck my life... Maybe it will get better? (It won't)
A boring scene with Charlese Theron (Vickers) and the Archeologists. Vickers drinks neat Vodka in this scene because even though shes a woman, shes got balls. I bet they are hairy too. Theres foreshadowing with a medical bay in her quarters (which is also an escape pod).
Next David gets mocked by the archeologists. We learn that David spent the 2 years while everyone was in hypersleep learning all the languages on earth so he will be able to communicate with the Engineers. I would prefer my aliens to have totally alien minds and take time to communicate with or be impossible (like you know, the Xenomorphs). But the Engineers are big humans so you know that David will talk to them later in the movie, after reading and deciphering their Heiroglyphics. That is how language works after all - if you can read it you can speak it. Thats why we can speak dead languages and programmers who can read code can all talk in binary to each other as their own little language.
David actually says "I can communicate with them, provided your Thesis is correct" to the male Archeologist who scoffs at him that his thesis could be wrong, where David reminds him of what a Thesis is. See movie! You do know some scientific methods. But its another reason to hate the arrogant humans.
We get a landing scene reminiscent of ALIEN and ALIENs which is really awesome. David quotes Lawrence of Arabia and when questioned he says "its something from a film I like". What a soulless fucker David is, liking things. They find the alien ship because the see a road and "God doesn't build in straight lines". That is why Bees that create hexagonal hives are the Devils work.
The crew put on super modern space suits (because all the low tech outfits of the Nostromo Crew, Aliens Space Marines and the elite commandos at the end of Alien 3 didn't have the budget of Mr Super Man Weyland). Some guards want to bring flamethrowers because as everyone knows, short ranged innacurate weapons banned by the geneva convention are often needed on archeological digs and first contact situations. But its an ALIEN movie so there has to be a Flamethrower. I bet someone will say "kill me" and get flamethrowered later, just to be original. I hope its Ridley Scott.
David gets insulted some more and we are off into an alien cave! We get to see helmet-cam perspective like in ALIEN and ALIENS but with near-perfect clarity so there is little to no tension. I guess the space marines in ALIENs couldnt afford good helmet cameras.
Mohawked twat, the geologist throws up a pair of energy balls that fly around the cave and scan the area, sending a 3D map back to the ship. It's a pretty neat effect, maybe they should have brought some of those those in Aliens, but no its probably better for marines to run around in the dark. The geologist howls like a wolf and calls the little energy balls his 'pups'. What a wanker.
The caves are reminiscent of the halls of the ship in ALIEN, but carved out of rock. It looks great, but isn't the environment for humans. Even big white bald ones that like to drink silly putty and disintegrate. Here is where they all take their helmets off, asphyxiate and die. Oh wait, I'm not so lucky. So the man archeoloigist (there are 2 archeologists, Shaw the woman and this dude) finds out the air in this place is breathable, so starts taking his helmet off. Shaw says "dont be an idiot" he replies "dont be a sceptic" takes of his helmet and is fine.
This movie hates sceptic thought and rational thinking. I'm fine with a cocky character being like 'fuck it' and taking his helmet off, but it should be that he is irrational, not berating the others for being sensible. You can't go to certain countries on earth without getting certain jabs for deseases, why would you take that risk on an alien planet? They should quarantine this fucker.
Or they should all take their helmets off. Sigh...
They wander some more, David finds green gunk on some alien heiroglyphics, fiddles with the goo and says "impressive". That could be alien jizz for all he knows.
An interesting fact: In the original script, the engineers were going to see on a different spectrum to humans, so the walls would have text and shit on them that David could see. That would be pretty awesome because its unexpected and ALIEN. Also then the derelict ship in the first ALIEN film could have had hidden secrets on it that the explorers didnt notice because they didnt see it.
Or there could just be "impressive" green jizz on writing on a wall. The heiroglyphics are a control panel so David just starts pressing it. My fingers are crossed that its the self destruct button!
Oh its a recording of a hologram. Damn! Actually the hologram is shitty quality which is cool, because ALIEN tech isnt great. Oh wait, that means the Engineers have shittier holograms than Mr Why-land. Anyway, it shows a bunch of Spacejockey children running down the corri- What those arent children, but adults? but they are only a foot or so taller than David. Space Jockeys are HUGE, their arm is as big as a man! I guess not. The space jockey in the first film must have been a freakishly huge one.
So 3 disappointingly human sized space jockeys, oh I mean Engineers (fuck, I may as well just call them Quagaars like Rimmer...) run down the corridor into a room. The last one falls over and the door to the room comes down and chops his head off. Okay... You know, if you wanted the humans to find a dead engineer there are cooler ways to have him die than industrial accident. Maybe the totally impractical architecture for humanoids in their homes was a bad idea.
Anyway, they find the decapitated body of the engineer. (the whole reason for the expedition was to find the engineers) and the 'tough' mohawk wanker geologist runs away after saying "I love rocks not dead bodies" and the biologist joins him. Because the last thing a biologist would care about on an expedition to find alien life would be to find alien life. They use carbon dating on the alien body (which makes no sense on an alien planet) and find the body is about 2000 years old.
They go into the room (I'd prefer to be watching The Room) and find the head of the engineer in it's helmet, a load of black pods reminiscent of alien eggs, and a big statue of a bald human head (which is an engineer). All of this might be creepy - the human head statue, not seeing what the engineer looks like under his helmet if they hadnt shown us the engineer in the first 5 seconds of the film. There might even be some mystery to this mystery plot.
There are earthworms in the soil on the ground in the room for some reason and a mural of the Xenomorph Alien on the wall (which makes no sense given the direction the films plot goes).
The air is preserved inside, so the engineer head hasnt rotted, and the black pods begin to sweat and react to the humidty in the air or something. Black gunk comes out of them begins to form organic shapes. The murals on the walls change shape because they think they are Rorsharchs mask. Then suddenyl a storm is coming in so they all have to run away back to the ship, with the black pods morphing and growing. Its a pretty cool sequence, you don't know what the pods are turning into and is pretty mysterious - as the earthworms get in the black goo.
Actually wait a second. What the fuck are those worms? The name has an implication EARTHworm, did the crew bring them in stuck to their shoes? Or were they dormant in the soil and then got to the black pods when the door opened and reanimated them. What a crock of shit. I dont care about earthworms in my Aliens movie. WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT WRIGGLY WORMS?
So they put the engineer head in a plastic bag, David grabs a black pod and they have 15 minutes to get in their vehicles and drive back before the storm gets them. Cue a corny 'Marines we are leaving' line and they all leave except the Biologist who is scared of alien bodies and the geologist who set his 'pups' out to map the place. They got lost. Mapping drones that he was so familiar with that he named them his pups, constant communication with the ship and they got lost. I hope these guys die.
When they get out, it appears that this planet is Eternia and Castle grayskull is here: i49.tinypic.com/f00l5f.png Seriously. That is in the movie.
They race back to the ship outrunning the wind and just as they get in, they drop the engineer head. So Shaw (the female archiologist) runs out to get it and is blown away by the storm! Yay shes dead! Only she isnt. The bloke archiologist risks the ship by opening the doors and going out to save her. Well that was 5 minutes wasted.
So now we have the engineer head and the scientists are going to do some SCIENCE! They may as well put on Dr Insano glasses on for this bit. They realise the Engineer is wearing a Helmet and take it off, revealing the big white bald head (that we knew they were from the beginning).
Then they reanimate the head with electricity, like they are frankenstein or something "Tricking the head into thinking it was alive." I tried to trick myself into thinking I was watching a good movie, but I failed. They put too much juice in the head, it twitches and black goo comes out and it explodes, with green blood. I think this is what David found on the control panel earlier. But maybe it was jizz. They take DNA samples from the remains and find out it his DNA is a match for humans. No shit, they are just big boring humans.
Next scene, david is talking to a body in a cryotube using the helmet he uses to see peoples dreams. He meets Vickers in the hallway, she asks "what did he say" and david replies "I dont think he'd want me to tell you". Hmmm a cryotube with a man in it that has more authority than the lead person from the company. I wonder who that could be...
David takes the black pod that he brought back and takes some of that fucking black goo that is everywhere and puts it in the drink of the male archeologist "big things come from small beginnings". This is wierd, but the male archeologist is an asshole to David, getting drunk because the engineers are all dead and he wanted to meet a live one. They have been here for less than a day to one small part of the planet, and he's given up. Oh and hes an archeologist so should be used to dead civilisations. What a prick. Anyway black goo goes in his drink! We assume the mysterious man in the cryotube told him to do this.
Next we go to the geologist and biologist stuck in the cave. They come across a huge pile of dead engineers that have had chestbursters come out of them. On the map of the caves on the ship a 'ping' of something moving gets them rattled. This is a very accurate 3D map, with a spcific location of where the lifeform is. A bit better than the motion tracker from Aliens. And a lot less scary/suspensful and interesting. The ping noise is shittier too. Idris Elba is all laid back about the whole thing. The ping stops, he calls it a glitch and the 2 numpties in the cave decide to move to the opposite end of the cave – into the room with the pods. Genius.
Male Infected archeologist gets randy and comes into Shaw's room (they are a couple, but their chemistry is terrible). They talk about the engineers being a match for our DNA and creating humans, Shaw says "I can't create life" in the worst delivery imaginable. She gets a pity shag.
Idris Elba plays the accordian while drinking and shags Vickers because he asks if she is a robot and to prove she isnt, she has sex with him. I dont care if shes a robot or not. This plot goes nowhere and has no point. Why are the crew all having sex and getting drunk while 2 people are trapped in an alien cave with piles of alien bodies and the alarm system pinging?
Back to the 2 poor saps abandoned by their crewmates in a hostile alien environment. They are in the room of black goo pods. Mohawked wanker smokes pot through his suit, when an alien snake appears. Its meant to have come from the black goo going on the earthworm, and is incredibly threatening, hissing and assuming an aggressive posture. The biologist starts making cooing noises at it. They try signalling the ship but they are all getting drunk and having sex like its a frat party (seriously), so no one can answer. The idiot biologist calls the alien snake beautiful as it hisses then bites him, wraps round his arm breaking it. They cut it, but yep acid for blood. This melts geologist mohawks mans helmet who falls in the black goo. The snake then mouth rapes the biologist like a facehugger without the huggy bit. So due to negiligence by themselves, the crew and pretty much everyone, those two are dead. Good.
The infected archeologist wakes up and finds a black worm wriggling in his eye. He immediately alerts the crew to a possible alien contagion. They quarantine him, saving his life and that of the crew. Oh no, wait. He says nothing and covers it up pretending nothing is wrong. They all suit up and go back into the funhouse alien caves.
David finds a door when exploring and finds a room of the black pods, all piled up in racks liek stockpiled weapons. Then he goes into the room with the space jockey in from the first movie (but without the big gun, just a big flat platform).
He finds a control panel which is the most ridiculous thing ever. You squish on little buttons that look like balloons, then play a space-flute to bring up a holographic map of the galaxy. David stands in the middle of the holographic orrery in wonder spinning around, in awe of being able to hold a holographic planet in his hands. Just like someone with no soul would do. Then he finds an engineer in a cryo-tube who is still alive. Finally, We might get some answers!
The rest of the guys go to the black pod room where they find the biologists body. The infected male archeology reveals the face he is totally fucked, eyes going black and obviously infected, so they run back to the ship as he starts mutating.
Vickers does a Ripley from Alien and refuses to let him on board. While carrying a flamethrower. Hmmm, I wonder what he will say? "Do it, do it!" Ooh original! Then he dies a slow death from flamethrower while screaming as he is set aflame. I'm all for 'the right to die' for the terminally ill. There's a big debate in the UK as to whether a law allowing people to commit suicide would be abused to kill those that are incapable of making the choice themselves. No one in the histroy of for fucking ever has asked to be set on fire as a mercy. There are cleaner ways to kill people than to set them on fire. When that Tibetan monk set himself on fire as protest, it was meant to be so horrific that it got attention. He wasn't doing it because he had a terminal illness.
So this is the culmination of the plan David had when he put black goo in the guys drink, it made him violently ill then he got set on fire. I'm not sure what he wanted to achieve. I think he was just seeing what would happen. Which is a bit mental, it could have had one of many unforseen consequences, but I guess he is an android and just doesnt give a fuck.
Next, Shaw wakes up on a medical table, and David tells her that she is pregnant. But she said she was barren earlier! That means she has an alien baby inside her made from the black goo from when the archeologist man shagged her. "It's not exactly a traditional fetus". David drugs her then torments her saying her God has abandoned her and tells her he watched her dreams. They are going to put her in cryo-sleep but she escapes, running to Vickers quarters where there is a medical bay.
She manually performs a Caesarean on herself with the medical table that is really hi-tch but is only programmed to do operations on men. But Vickers is a woman. Who could this be for? Could it possibly be that mysterious man in the crytube from earlier who has more authority than Vickers. A man who would need a medical Unit and is the only man we have seen so far that can tell Vickers what to do? I wonder... they also tried to hint that Vickers was a robot so she wouldnt need a medical unit at all, but that doesnt matter.
This scene is almost cool, but is just too ridiculous. The machine slices her open, then a grabber like the ones you use to pick up soft toys as the fair comes down and pulls out a freaky squid monster in her womb. Totally gross, but pretty awesome, the problem is it looks more like a facehugger than a chest burster AND WHAT THE FUCK HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH ALIEN?
Are these proto-aliens? Why do these movies have to fuck with the life cycle of the Alien Creature? Aliens gave us the queen, which makes sense that the alien egg is layed by something. Alien 3 had the Alien retain properties of it's host, which is actually pretty cool and adds a lot to the mythos (imagine what could have come out of the space jockey? Was that where the queen came from?) Alien resurrection had the queen give birth to the fucking newborn abomination. AVP: Requiem had the predalien spit loads of eggs into a person, then have multiple 'bellybursters' pop out of them.
STOP MESSING WITH THE LIFECYCLE!
So Shaw pulls out her umbilical chord (which would probably kill her, its not like pulling a tooth) and gets her belly stapled back together and shes off running out the door, taking painkillers occasionally like shes Max Payne or something. Hey Shaw, could you give me some of those painkillers? Lets move on...
Zombie time! That asshole mohawk geologist is sat outside the ship with his legs over his head www.skritz.com/wp-content/uploads/2...bie-670x278.jpg why? Who cares at this point. They open the doors, he jumps around smashing people with his fists until they flamethrower him and run him over with a truck. He killed a bunch of extras. No fucks were given.
At this point I've had it with the black goo. Firstly, it looks stupid, its reminiscent of the slobber the aliens did, which became insane drooling by alien resurrection but now gunk is the cause of everything? Also it doesnt have a name, It's just black goo. Black fucking goo. And it doesn't have a defined purpose or effect it just messes with shit. It turns earthworms into alien snakes, the geologist becomes a zombie. The infected archeologist's sperm became a wierd squid thing that could grow in the womb of a barren woman. What is the point of all this?
If this wasn't an Alien movie I could buy it as a genetic weapon that randomly mutates its host, but in the Alien universe we have a defined Alien-Host relationship in the original Xenomorphs. Why pile this shit on top of that mythos and muddy the waters? If aliens came from this goo, are they also still randomly changing? Because they seem to be settled into a pattern of how their lifecycle works.
Shaw now runs into a room where SHOCK HORROR! Mr Weyland has been taken out of cryosleep and is still alive! Woohoo, plot twist! Actually I dont give a shit, and his makeup is still terrible. No one cares that shaw has got rid of the alien squid baby or even mentions it. They explain the plan of the mission is so that Mr Weyland can ask the Engineers for immortality, and David found one alive in the cryotube in the cave! Shaw wants to leave, but Mr Weyland asks if she has lost her faith? See, its questioning religion and life, how deep! But why do they think the engineers have immortality serum? You've found piles of them dead all around the cave, they aint that immortal. Plus if the last one alive is in cryosleep then he must be worried about aging, or does he do that because hes realised the film is boring so wants to sleep it out?
Idris Elba, the captain comes to Shaw and says they have to leave. Shaw says "dont you want to know what the last engineer has to say". Idris replies "I don't care". Oh, how I empathise. He is the second best character in the movie. And he only gets about 10 lines of dialogue.
Vickers meets weyland and does this big reveal of her calling him 'Father' as if its like Darthvader revealing to luke. Its as tired as the "I can't create life" Shaw sputed earlier. There is some awful delivery of lines in the film.
David tells Shaw "I didn't think it was in you. Sorry, poor choice of words." when he sees she is coming on the mission to see the engineer. David is a complete dick, yet I still prefer him to the humans in this film.
They go to the room with the engineer in. David reveals that the engineers were targeting earth, and they realise the black pods are a biological weapon to destroy our planet. David wakes the engineer up out of cryosleep and talks to him in an alien language, because he can speak alien now. The engineer looks at him, then tears his head off, and clubs Weyland with Davids head killing him. An android in an Alien film getting his head ripped off, nice and original. Shaw runs away and the engineer kills the rest of the crew in the room (only the pilots, Vickers and idris elba the cpatain are alive now, with Shaw running away.
The space jockey uses the controls in the room, brining up the all-familiar big gun the space jockey was sitting in the first ALIEN (albeit he is a midget version). He brings up the holo-map and is targetting earth. Oh noes! We find out part of the caves is actually the ship out of the first alien, and as shaw runs out then it begins to take off, on a course to earth! Shaw does a load of gymnastics running to the Prometheus because she hasn't had massive internal surgery an hour earlier.
Vickers gets in a tiny escape tube that shoots her out of the prometheus (if you remember her living quarters was an escape pod, so she doesnt bother using that. Why was that in the film again?) as Idris Elba and two pilot extras ram into the engineer ship stopping it from taking off.
This is what causes the infamous running in a straight line scene, where Shaw and vickers run in a straight line as the engineer ship rolls vertically after them like a wheel. Shaw rolls to the side at the last minute and vickers gets squashed.
The engineer is alive and escapes, then comes after Shaw (who is the only human alive). The squid baby in the escape pod has grown to a mssive squid monster and grabs the engineer and face rapes it like a massive facehugger.
Shaw goes to david's head, who is still alive. David can fly the alien ship to the alien homeworld, so that is the plan. David says he doesnt understand why they must go there, and shaw replies "thats because im a human being, and you're a robot."
What a bitch. Then she stuffs his head in a bag and they go to the alien ship while Shaw does a final log like the one Ripley does in Alien. Which must be the one that the Nostromo picks up in the future right?
NOPE
All of this movie is set on the planet LV-223, the one in the ALIEN films is LV-426. Unless you are a cretinous fucking nerd like me, you probably wouldn't be able to make that distinction. So this isn't the same planet, its a slightly different planet where very similar events occur. The 'end of the credits scene' is complete fan-wankery where a shitty looking alien looking thing bursts out of the engineer. He isnt sat in the big gun, because this isnt the same ship. I guess no one will hear Shaw's final log.
This movie is ARSE. It looks great, it attempts to have deep philosphical concepts, but ultimately presents a ton of random questions and answers nothing we really cared about from the ALIEN series. Now i'm just confused as to how the Alien eggs all got put in neat rows in the first alien. What was that thin blue mist that covered the eggs? Was there a queen on the first alien engineer ship? Are Xenomorphs just a random result of the black goo that happens to be the ultimate killing machine, or is the black goo mutating until it finally becomes that lifeform?
www.thatvideosite.com/v/5496/red-le...etheus-spoilers
These are the questions you will ask yourself after watching this movie.
Also you will ask how much a Hitman would cost you to assassinate Ridley Scott. And then you will buy one for yourself.
PrometheARSE. That pretty much sums up this movie. Its a load of arse that is up its own arse and results in a steaming turd.
This movie bugs the shit out of me, not only as an ALIEN fan (even though the majority of that franchise is now terrible) but also as a sci-fi fan. Which is so bloody annoying, because it is almost a decent sci-fi flick, but piggy backs on the success of ALIEN and while grabbing on to it's back, slips its dick up ALIEN's bum and rapes it.
Sigh... anyways I'm just going to go through the movie's plot and highlight some things that were terrible (more accurately this is going to be a rant, where I occasionally throw in plot points).
The film had a marketing campaign that was pretty cool, with adverts for 'David' an android made by the Weyland company. Very Bladerunner-esque, in a good way and allows you to see the androids in a positive light. Theres also a cool TED talk by Weyland which is pretty interesting too. I'd recommend watching them, because they are really good even if the film is shit.
More importantly, if you paid attention to any buzz about the movie, Prometheus was going to be a Prequel to ALIEN, because the universe had been ruined by shitty sequels and ties to the godawful AVP movies. Not only that, they were going to explain the whole deal with the space Jockey! You know, that huge monster in the first ALIEN that was 4 times the size of a man and had an alien burst out of it (Where did that Chestburster go anyway?). This was gonna be great, Ridley Scott the director of the first film, back in the spotlight making a canon prequel. You can't get any better than this.
Okay, so the film starts. Cue overhead vistas of a planet (I assumed it was Earth, but apparently Ridly Scott got pissed off about people thinking that, so I guess its some unimportant planet that has nothing to do with anything). It pans to a big saucer UFO, like the ones out of independence day. Okay... then you see this big Albino man in a robe. Errr, okay, so this is obviously an alien. But not THE Alien? The only other Alien we know of in this franchise is the space jockey and this film is going to explain what they are all abou- OH.
OH.
Yeah, in the first scene, it dawns on you that the space jockey is a big albino man. You remember the wierd freaky giger design of the space jockey? It had an elephantine face, was using this big wierd inhuman looking cannon, in a scary spaceship that looked like a nightmare and not anything close to resembling what would be practical for humans, or anyone that acted like humans.
Apparently all that is a big bald man. He's wearing only a loincloth so we get to see everything. At least Dr. Manhatten got his little blue nob out. No, not even a little nob would make this scene any better.
Then this big white fuck pulls out this cup of black gunk and drinks it, causing his body to turn black and fall to pieces as the camera zooms into his body, through his blood and into his DNA, where his DNA double-helixes turn black and disintegrates. He falls off a cliff into some water. It's really slow and painful, eating the guy from the inside. This must be a form of ritual suicide. It then shows his blood in the water creating life.
Okay, I'm going to have to tackle a few things here. First, the concept isn't a terrible one – life on earth originated in what we call the 'Cambrian Explosion' which is as far back as we can date where life began. This is addressing that issue, which is fair enough. The problem is, this isn't 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why, in an ALIEN movie are we giving two fucks about how life originated on Earth? This is a heavy topic (which the film realises) dealing with the origins of man, bringing religion into question, and also doesn't address the age old question of 'where did we come from', pushing the burden of proof to 'why did the Engineers make us and where did they come from'. Again, this isn't something I have ever wanted to consider in as film about ALIENS.
Imagine if they did this in a Predator movie. Aliens and Predator are now like two peas in a pod, the two franchises are bound together like a pair of BDSM deviants (we should just let them both Auto-Ausphixiate in the closet...) Anyway, imagine if in Predetheus, the upcoming Predator prequel, it had Predators create human life. It would just be 'WTF' that isn't the point of the movies. Actually it would make MORE sense that Predators created us to hunt than engineers made us. Fuck me...
Anyway, I'm only on the first scene and I want to die. Give me some black goop so I can end it all.
So after that debacle we go to 2089, in the future, but also in ALIEN past. Movie, it doesnt matter what year it is. A pair of archeologists find a cave painting of a figure pointing at some circles. The archeologists jizz themselves and say that it's "just like the others they have found".
Then the scene changes to a spaceship at a planet, its 2093 now! It does the ALIEN thing of having text pop un on the screen to tell you the name of the ship and stuff, but its in orange here instead of the original white. Here's where we have 2 problems.
First, because the film is up it's own arse it is called Prometheus, trying to sound intellectual, but it is also the name of the ship. They planned for a series of these films. Is the next one going to be called Prometheus 2? (spoiler the ship blows up at the end) because that don't make no sense. The original name for the film was Alien: Engineers which y'know, keeps the Alien name in there. How about they called first Alien film NOSTROMO instead and call the Aliens sequel USS SULACO while you are at it. Maybe the next film will have a new arsty fartsy title and not mention Prometheus at all to make it extra confusing.
The second problem is the ship is really fancy – the CGI is top notch and it looks great. It has touch screens inside, super duper healing stations, holograms and better cryotubes to sleep in than the other movies. I've heard this defended as this ship is paid for by a big company so has state of the art technology.
This does make some sense, but I don't like it for 2 reasons. First, the ALIEN franchise (except the 4th ResARSErection film) are dark. And not just because they struggled to find the light switches, but also the technology sucked balls. Yes the Nostromo was a shitty Tug that was probably 50 years out of date. But everything was run down and shitty in all of the films. The USS Sulaco (the marines ship in Aliens) didn't seem that high tech. The APC in Aliens wasn't full of flashy touchscreens, the colony base was run down and shitty even before the aliens got there. Even in Alien 3 at the end when the company comes to get ripley, they go in one of the spaceships from Aliens (or a Conestoga Class ship if you are a lifeless fucking nerd like me). So yes, the Prometheus ship looks and feels awesome with great sets but it doesn't fit in the ALIEN universe.
Inside the ship we get to see David, the android walking around the ship. Its cool to see (this was originally planned for Bishop in Aliens, to have him wandering around empty corridors while the crew slept). David is the best character in the film, and the most human and likable. He also poisons the crew and gets them murdered. And is a robot. That should tell you something about the rest of the crew.
David watches Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O' Toole, mouthing words of the film showing he's watched it loads and dies the roots of his hair blond. He also plays basket ball and throws it in a hoop in some bizarre call-out to alien resurrection for some fucking reason. He spies on people dreaming in cryo-sleep. I like this because it makes him creepy. I don't like that people dream in cryosleep and upload it to floppy disc for people to watch as movies. Thats dumb.
The crew wake up and reveal themselves to be assholes. A mohawked cockney wanker (a geologist) tells a biologist that hes here to make money not be friends. Ooh he must be the 'tough' one, except the fact he looks like a total prat. Idris Elba is the ship captain putting up a Christmas tree (doesn't seem that important, but is part of a pointless reveal later on that is ridiculous). Charlise Theron is the hardnosed company leader called Vickers. There are about 10 extras who dont get names and wander about waiting to die. No one is likable (except Idris Elba).
The next scene is amazing. The amount of fuckery packaged into 5 minutes must be some kind of record.
Vickers tells the crew the mission. They all signed on without knowing the mission for some reason. The movie could just have had them all know what the mission was about before they signed up, but nope they are all clueless.
We get a posthumous hologram of Guy Pearce as an incredibly old Mr Weyland who funded the expidition (and is dead now). This fails on every level. Firstly, the technology is too good - in Aliens there is a deleted scene where ripley is sat in a small garden on the Gateway Station at the beginning of the movie. There is a crappy tv screen on one of the walls that flickers displaying plants to make the area look like a jungle. It is 80's special effects so looks ropey, but it also makes the universe technology feel more industrial and run-down.
Holograms feature a fair bit in this movie. The space jockey technology uses it (which is cool because they should have better tech than us) and the humans use it to make a 3d map of a ship - which looks snazzy but doesn't really fit. Remember in Aliens when they all stood round a map of the complex that was a shitty 2d screen they had to scroll round? That is the tech of Aliens. Maybe the 3d hologram of the complex was broken. "How did they turn off the holograms man? They're animals!"
Even the hologram effects dont cover up how monumentally rubbish the old man make up on Guy Pearce looks. In the original script, David was going to see Weyland's dreams and see him as a yound man on a yacht living the playboy lifestyle. This scene was cut, probably because its an awful idea - we KNOW that Weyland was young once, its something a lot of old people have in common. But they decided to keep Guy Pearce and put embarassing shitty looking makeup on him which is really jarring with the good special effects. Get an older actor you fuckwit Ridley!
Oh wait, how about you don't? Fuck this Weyland fetish the Aliens series has somehow gotten. In the second movie there are signs plastered around the colony "Weyland-Yutani. Building Better Worlds" Its 'the Company' that the corporate suit Burke works for and that tries to capture the Alien to use as a weapon.
The shitty AVP movie had a Mr Weyland to try and tie it Aliens, getting Lance Henriksen to play him (the guy who played the Bishop android in ALIENS). This makes no sense that he looks like a military android hundreds of years in the future and was just a way to get an original actor back. So far so dumb, AVP is fan fiction at best so doesnt really fit with Aliens continuity.
Prometheus takes this as inspiration and has the 'Weyland' part of Weyland-Yuytani be this really important part of the Universe. No one but fuckwit nerds like me even knows the name Weyland-Yutani. It was just the evil company that wanted to steal the Alien and are bad guys. But no, we have Weyland be the lynchpin who creates the androids, build the terraforming stations and discovers the Aliens/engineers and is on a quest to discover human existence. They are inches away from going back and rewriting Burke from ALIENS to be one of his great grandkids and im surprised Jonesy the cat isn't a decendant of one of his pets. This series is going in Star Wars Prequels territory.
Right, so this young man in old man makeup calls david 'the son he never had' and then says he isnt human and has no soul (which is a recurring theme in the movie). Well fuck, the only likable character is getting shit on by a guy that doesnt even look like a realistic human. Star Trek had a great episode ("measure of a man") where it discussed the idea of whether robot life is sentient and deserves rights like humans do. The judge who makes the ruling says "I don't know if Data has a soul. I don't know if I have one." which is brilliant. Blade Runner, which Ridley fucking directed even addresses this issue! You can't verify the soul and then declare someone not having it! Bah...
So that fake-old fucknugget introduces the 2 archeologists from earlier, who show ancient paintings and carvings from different periods of history that all show a large figure pointing at globes in the sky. They assert from this that it is a star system, they have managed to find it and that is Prometheus is orbiting the planet now. This obviously doesn't make sense, a star map isn't a 2D object and celestial bodies move so they wouldnt be in the same place as when these ancient civilisations scrawled them on walls. But fuck it, I'll let it pass.
Then one of the Archeologists, who is our main character - a woman named Shaw (played by Noomi Rapace) says that this is an invitation by an alien race called the Engineers who created human life (which is what we saw in the first scene with the big albino dude).
Err what? Where did you get that from. In the words of Redlettermedia "Did you read the script?"
The Biologist asks if she is going to throw thousands of years of Darwinism out the window. Wait, what? Darwinism? Why is the Biologist using a Creationist term designed to ridicule evolution? Then the mohawed twat from earlier (the geologist) asks if she has any proof, and she smacks him down with the reply "It's what I choose to believe".
WHAT THE FUCK? Are you fucking Mulder? Or an archeologist whos beliefs should be founded in fact and evidence? The crew accepts this by the way, she wins the argument - scene over.
How do they come to these conclusions from paintings on a wall? Why do they name a race that there is no evidence for existing, know they created humans and know that these odd carvings from 1000s of years ago are an invitation to this star system? And the worst thing? The opening scene of the movie proves all this babbling nonsense to be true. I guess "Darwinism" was wrong. There is an episode of Red Dwarf (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0d8SXedEx0) where Rimmer finds a garbage pod, is convinced it is an alien space ship and comes up with a whole background for them including giving them a stupid name. A Brilliant episode, but it shouldn't be in an ALIEN film!
We are only 20 minutes in to the movie. Fuck my life... Maybe it will get better? (It won't)
A boring scene with Charlese Theron (Vickers) and the Archeologists. Vickers drinks neat Vodka in this scene because even though shes a woman, shes got balls. I bet they are hairy too. Theres foreshadowing with a medical bay in her quarters (which is also an escape pod).
Next David gets mocked by the archeologists. We learn that David spent the 2 years while everyone was in hypersleep learning all the languages on earth so he will be able to communicate with the Engineers. I would prefer my aliens to have totally alien minds and take time to communicate with or be impossible (like you know, the Xenomorphs). But the Engineers are big humans so you know that David will talk to them later in the movie, after reading and deciphering their Heiroglyphics. That is how language works after all - if you can read it you can speak it. Thats why we can speak dead languages and programmers who can read code can all talk in binary to each other as their own little language.
David actually says "I can communicate with them, provided your Thesis is correct" to the male Archeologist who scoffs at him that his thesis could be wrong, where David reminds him of what a Thesis is. See movie! You do know some scientific methods. But its another reason to hate the arrogant humans.
We get a landing scene reminiscent of ALIEN and ALIENs which is really awesome. David quotes Lawrence of Arabia and when questioned he says "its something from a film I like". What a soulless fucker David is, liking things. They find the alien ship because the see a road and "God doesn't build in straight lines". That is why Bees that create hexagonal hives are the Devils work.
The crew put on super modern space suits (because all the low tech outfits of the Nostromo Crew, Aliens Space Marines and the elite commandos at the end of Alien 3 didn't have the budget of Mr Super Man Weyland). Some guards want to bring flamethrowers because as everyone knows, short ranged innacurate weapons banned by the geneva convention are often needed on archeological digs and first contact situations. But its an ALIEN movie so there has to be a Flamethrower. I bet someone will say "kill me" and get flamethrowered later, just to be original. I hope its Ridley Scott.
David gets insulted some more and we are off into an alien cave! We get to see helmet-cam perspective like in ALIEN and ALIENS but with near-perfect clarity so there is little to no tension. I guess the space marines in ALIENs couldnt afford good helmet cameras.
Mohawked twat, the geologist throws up a pair of energy balls that fly around the cave and scan the area, sending a 3D map back to the ship. It's a pretty neat effect, maybe they should have brought some of those those in Aliens, but no its probably better for marines to run around in the dark. The geologist howls like a wolf and calls the little energy balls his 'pups'. What a wanker.
The caves are reminiscent of the halls of the ship in ALIEN, but carved out of rock. It looks great, but isn't the environment for humans. Even big white bald ones that like to drink silly putty and disintegrate. Here is where they all take their helmets off, asphyxiate and die. Oh wait, I'm not so lucky. So the man archeoloigist (there are 2 archeologists, Shaw the woman and this dude) finds out the air in this place is breathable, so starts taking his helmet off. Shaw says "dont be an idiot" he replies "dont be a sceptic" takes of his helmet and is fine.
This movie hates sceptic thought and rational thinking. I'm fine with a cocky character being like 'fuck it' and taking his helmet off, but it should be that he is irrational, not berating the others for being sensible. You can't go to certain countries on earth without getting certain jabs for deseases, why would you take that risk on an alien planet? They should quarantine this fucker.
Or they should all take their helmets off. Sigh...
They wander some more, David finds green gunk on some alien heiroglyphics, fiddles with the goo and says "impressive". That could be alien jizz for all he knows.
An interesting fact: In the original script, the engineers were going to see on a different spectrum to humans, so the walls would have text and shit on them that David could see. That would be pretty awesome because its unexpected and ALIEN. Also then the derelict ship in the first ALIEN film could have had hidden secrets on it that the explorers didnt notice because they didnt see it.
Or there could just be "impressive" green jizz on writing on a wall. The heiroglyphics are a control panel so David just starts pressing it. My fingers are crossed that its the self destruct button!
Oh its a recording of a hologram. Damn! Actually the hologram is shitty quality which is cool, because ALIEN tech isnt great. Oh wait, that means the Engineers have shittier holograms than Mr Why-land. Anyway, it shows a bunch of Spacejockey children running down the corri- What those arent children, but adults? but they are only a foot or so taller than David. Space Jockeys are HUGE, their arm is as big as a man! I guess not. The space jockey in the first film must have been a freakishly huge one.
So 3 disappointingly human sized space jockeys, oh I mean Engineers (fuck, I may as well just call them Quagaars like Rimmer...) run down the corridor into a room. The last one falls over and the door to the room comes down and chops his head off. Okay... You know, if you wanted the humans to find a dead engineer there are cooler ways to have him die than industrial accident. Maybe the totally impractical architecture for humanoids in their homes was a bad idea.
Anyway, they find the decapitated body of the engineer. (the whole reason for the expedition was to find the engineers) and the 'tough' mohawk wanker geologist runs away after saying "I love rocks not dead bodies" and the biologist joins him. Because the last thing a biologist would care about on an expedition to find alien life would be to find alien life. They use carbon dating on the alien body (which makes no sense on an alien planet) and find the body is about 2000 years old.
They go into the room (I'd prefer to be watching The Room) and find the head of the engineer in it's helmet, a load of black pods reminiscent of alien eggs, and a big statue of a bald human head (which is an engineer). All of this might be creepy - the human head statue, not seeing what the engineer looks like under his helmet if they hadnt shown us the engineer in the first 5 seconds of the film. There might even be some mystery to this mystery plot.
There are earthworms in the soil on the ground in the room for some reason and a mural of the Xenomorph Alien on the wall (which makes no sense given the direction the films plot goes).
The air is preserved inside, so the engineer head hasnt rotted, and the black pods begin to sweat and react to the humidty in the air or something. Black gunk comes out of them begins to form organic shapes. The murals on the walls change shape because they think they are Rorsharchs mask. Then suddenyl a storm is coming in so they all have to run away back to the ship, with the black pods morphing and growing. Its a pretty cool sequence, you don't know what the pods are turning into and is pretty mysterious - as the earthworms get in the black goo.
Actually wait a second. What the fuck are those worms? The name has an implication EARTHworm, did the crew bring them in stuck to their shoes? Or were they dormant in the soil and then got to the black pods when the door opened and reanimated them. What a crock of shit. I dont care about earthworms in my Aliens movie. WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT WRIGGLY WORMS?
So they put the engineer head in a plastic bag, David grabs a black pod and they have 15 minutes to get in their vehicles and drive back before the storm gets them. Cue a corny 'Marines we are leaving' line and they all leave except the Biologist who is scared of alien bodies and the geologist who set his 'pups' out to map the place. They got lost. Mapping drones that he was so familiar with that he named them his pups, constant communication with the ship and they got lost. I hope these guys die.
When they get out, it appears that this planet is Eternia and Castle grayskull is here: i49.tinypic.com/f00l5f.png Seriously. That is in the movie.
They race back to the ship outrunning the wind and just as they get in, they drop the engineer head. So Shaw (the female archiologist) runs out to get it and is blown away by the storm! Yay shes dead! Only she isnt. The bloke archiologist risks the ship by opening the doors and going out to save her. Well that was 5 minutes wasted.
So now we have the engineer head and the scientists are going to do some SCIENCE! They may as well put on Dr Insano glasses on for this bit. They realise the Engineer is wearing a Helmet and take it off, revealing the big white bald head (that we knew they were from the beginning).
Then they reanimate the head with electricity, like they are frankenstein or something "Tricking the head into thinking it was alive." I tried to trick myself into thinking I was watching a good movie, but I failed. They put too much juice in the head, it twitches and black goo comes out and it explodes, with green blood. I think this is what David found on the control panel earlier. But maybe it was jizz. They take DNA samples from the remains and find out it his DNA is a match for humans. No shit, they are just big boring humans.
Next scene, david is talking to a body in a cryotube using the helmet he uses to see peoples dreams. He meets Vickers in the hallway, she asks "what did he say" and david replies "I dont think he'd want me to tell you". Hmmm a cryotube with a man in it that has more authority than the lead person from the company. I wonder who that could be...
David takes the black pod that he brought back and takes some of that fucking black goo that is everywhere and puts it in the drink of the male archeologist "big things come from small beginnings". This is wierd, but the male archeologist is an asshole to David, getting drunk because the engineers are all dead and he wanted to meet a live one. They have been here for less than a day to one small part of the planet, and he's given up. Oh and hes an archeologist so should be used to dead civilisations. What a prick. Anyway black goo goes in his drink! We assume the mysterious man in the cryotube told him to do this.
Next we go to the geologist and biologist stuck in the cave. They come across a huge pile of dead engineers that have had chestbursters come out of them. On the map of the caves on the ship a 'ping' of something moving gets them rattled. This is a very accurate 3D map, with a spcific location of where the lifeform is. A bit better than the motion tracker from Aliens. And a lot less scary/suspensful and interesting. The ping noise is shittier too. Idris Elba is all laid back about the whole thing. The ping stops, he calls it a glitch and the 2 numpties in the cave decide to move to the opposite end of the cave – into the room with the pods. Genius.
Male Infected archeologist gets randy and comes into Shaw's room (they are a couple, but their chemistry is terrible). They talk about the engineers being a match for our DNA and creating humans, Shaw says "I can't create life" in the worst delivery imaginable. She gets a pity shag.
Idris Elba plays the accordian while drinking and shags Vickers because he asks if she is a robot and to prove she isnt, she has sex with him. I dont care if shes a robot or not. This plot goes nowhere and has no point. Why are the crew all having sex and getting drunk while 2 people are trapped in an alien cave with piles of alien bodies and the alarm system pinging?
Back to the 2 poor saps abandoned by their crewmates in a hostile alien environment. They are in the room of black goo pods. Mohawked wanker smokes pot through his suit, when an alien snake appears. Its meant to have come from the black goo going on the earthworm, and is incredibly threatening, hissing and assuming an aggressive posture. The biologist starts making cooing noises at it. They try signalling the ship but they are all getting drunk and having sex like its a frat party (seriously), so no one can answer. The idiot biologist calls the alien snake beautiful as it hisses then bites him, wraps round his arm breaking it. They cut it, but yep acid for blood. This melts geologist mohawks mans helmet who falls in the black goo. The snake then mouth rapes the biologist like a facehugger without the huggy bit. So due to negiligence by themselves, the crew and pretty much everyone, those two are dead. Good.
The infected archeologist wakes up and finds a black worm wriggling in his eye. He immediately alerts the crew to a possible alien contagion. They quarantine him, saving his life and that of the crew. Oh no, wait. He says nothing and covers it up pretending nothing is wrong. They all suit up and go back into the funhouse alien caves.
David finds a door when exploring and finds a room of the black pods, all piled up in racks liek stockpiled weapons. Then he goes into the room with the space jockey in from the first movie (but without the big gun, just a big flat platform).
He finds a control panel which is the most ridiculous thing ever. You squish on little buttons that look like balloons, then play a space-flute to bring up a holographic map of the galaxy. David stands in the middle of the holographic orrery in wonder spinning around, in awe of being able to hold a holographic planet in his hands. Just like someone with no soul would do. Then he finds an engineer in a cryo-tube who is still alive. Finally, We might get some answers!
The rest of the guys go to the black pod room where they find the biologists body. The infected male archeology reveals the face he is totally fucked, eyes going black and obviously infected, so they run back to the ship as he starts mutating.
Vickers does a Ripley from Alien and refuses to let him on board. While carrying a flamethrower. Hmmm, I wonder what he will say? "Do it, do it!" Ooh original! Then he dies a slow death from flamethrower while screaming as he is set aflame. I'm all for 'the right to die' for the terminally ill. There's a big debate in the UK as to whether a law allowing people to commit suicide would be abused to kill those that are incapable of making the choice themselves. No one in the histroy of for fucking ever has asked to be set on fire as a mercy. There are cleaner ways to kill people than to set them on fire. When that Tibetan monk set himself on fire as protest, it was meant to be so horrific that it got attention. He wasn't doing it because he had a terminal illness.
So this is the culmination of the plan David had when he put black goo in the guys drink, it made him violently ill then he got set on fire. I'm not sure what he wanted to achieve. I think he was just seeing what would happen. Which is a bit mental, it could have had one of many unforseen consequences, but I guess he is an android and just doesnt give a fuck.
Next, Shaw wakes up on a medical table, and David tells her that she is pregnant. But she said she was barren earlier! That means she has an alien baby inside her made from the black goo from when the archeologist man shagged her. "It's not exactly a traditional fetus". David drugs her then torments her saying her God has abandoned her and tells her he watched her dreams. They are going to put her in cryo-sleep but she escapes, running to Vickers quarters where there is a medical bay.
She manually performs a Caesarean on herself with the medical table that is really hi-tch but is only programmed to do operations on men. But Vickers is a woman. Who could this be for? Could it possibly be that mysterious man in the crytube from earlier who has more authority than Vickers. A man who would need a medical Unit and is the only man we have seen so far that can tell Vickers what to do? I wonder... they also tried to hint that Vickers was a robot so she wouldnt need a medical unit at all, but that doesnt matter.
This scene is almost cool, but is just too ridiculous. The machine slices her open, then a grabber like the ones you use to pick up soft toys as the fair comes down and pulls out a freaky squid monster in her womb. Totally gross, but pretty awesome, the problem is it looks more like a facehugger than a chest burster AND WHAT THE FUCK HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH ALIEN?
Are these proto-aliens? Why do these movies have to fuck with the life cycle of the Alien Creature? Aliens gave us the queen, which makes sense that the alien egg is layed by something. Alien 3 had the Alien retain properties of it's host, which is actually pretty cool and adds a lot to the mythos (imagine what could have come out of the space jockey? Was that where the queen came from?) Alien resurrection had the queen give birth to the fucking newborn abomination. AVP: Requiem had the predalien spit loads of eggs into a person, then have multiple 'bellybursters' pop out of them.
STOP MESSING WITH THE LIFECYCLE!
So Shaw pulls out her umbilical chord (which would probably kill her, its not like pulling a tooth) and gets her belly stapled back together and shes off running out the door, taking painkillers occasionally like shes Max Payne or something. Hey Shaw, could you give me some of those painkillers? Lets move on...
Zombie time! That asshole mohawk geologist is sat outside the ship with his legs over his head www.skritz.com/wp-content/uploads/2...bie-670x278.jpg why? Who cares at this point. They open the doors, he jumps around smashing people with his fists until they flamethrower him and run him over with a truck. He killed a bunch of extras. No fucks were given.
At this point I've had it with the black goo. Firstly, it looks stupid, its reminiscent of the slobber the aliens did, which became insane drooling by alien resurrection but now gunk is the cause of everything? Also it doesnt have a name, It's just black goo. Black fucking goo. And it doesn't have a defined purpose or effect it just messes with shit. It turns earthworms into alien snakes, the geologist becomes a zombie. The infected archeologist's sperm became a wierd squid thing that could grow in the womb of a barren woman. What is the point of all this?
If this wasn't an Alien movie I could buy it as a genetic weapon that randomly mutates its host, but in the Alien universe we have a defined Alien-Host relationship in the original Xenomorphs. Why pile this shit on top of that mythos and muddy the waters? If aliens came from this goo, are they also still randomly changing? Because they seem to be settled into a pattern of how their lifecycle works.
Shaw now runs into a room where SHOCK HORROR! Mr Weyland has been taken out of cryosleep and is still alive! Woohoo, plot twist! Actually I dont give a shit, and his makeup is still terrible. No one cares that shaw has got rid of the alien squid baby or even mentions it. They explain the plan of the mission is so that Mr Weyland can ask the Engineers for immortality, and David found one alive in the cryotube in the cave! Shaw wants to leave, but Mr Weyland asks if she has lost her faith? See, its questioning religion and life, how deep! But why do they think the engineers have immortality serum? You've found piles of them dead all around the cave, they aint that immortal. Plus if the last one alive is in cryosleep then he must be worried about aging, or does he do that because hes realised the film is boring so wants to sleep it out?
Idris Elba, the captain comes to Shaw and says they have to leave. Shaw says "dont you want to know what the last engineer has to say". Idris replies "I don't care". Oh, how I empathise. He is the second best character in the movie. And he only gets about 10 lines of dialogue.
Vickers meets weyland and does this big reveal of her calling him 'Father' as if its like Darthvader revealing to luke. Its as tired as the "I can't create life" Shaw sputed earlier. There is some awful delivery of lines in the film.
David tells Shaw "I didn't think it was in you. Sorry, poor choice of words." when he sees she is coming on the mission to see the engineer. David is a complete dick, yet I still prefer him to the humans in this film.
They go to the room with the engineer in. David reveals that the engineers were targeting earth, and they realise the black pods are a biological weapon to destroy our planet. David wakes the engineer up out of cryosleep and talks to him in an alien language, because he can speak alien now. The engineer looks at him, then tears his head off, and clubs Weyland with Davids head killing him. An android in an Alien film getting his head ripped off, nice and original. Shaw runs away and the engineer kills the rest of the crew in the room (only the pilots, Vickers and idris elba the cpatain are alive now, with Shaw running away.
The space jockey uses the controls in the room, brining up the all-familiar big gun the space jockey was sitting in the first ALIEN (albeit he is a midget version). He brings up the holo-map and is targetting earth. Oh noes! We find out part of the caves is actually the ship out of the first alien, and as shaw runs out then it begins to take off, on a course to earth! Shaw does a load of gymnastics running to the Prometheus because she hasn't had massive internal surgery an hour earlier.
Vickers gets in a tiny escape tube that shoots her out of the prometheus (if you remember her living quarters was an escape pod, so she doesnt bother using that. Why was that in the film again?) as Idris Elba and two pilot extras ram into the engineer ship stopping it from taking off.
This is what causes the infamous running in a straight line scene, where Shaw and vickers run in a straight line as the engineer ship rolls vertically after them like a wheel. Shaw rolls to the side at the last minute and vickers gets squashed.
The engineer is alive and escapes, then comes after Shaw (who is the only human alive). The squid baby in the escape pod has grown to a mssive squid monster and grabs the engineer and face rapes it like a massive facehugger.
Shaw goes to david's head, who is still alive. David can fly the alien ship to the alien homeworld, so that is the plan. David says he doesnt understand why they must go there, and shaw replies "thats because im a human being, and you're a robot."
What a bitch. Then she stuffs his head in a bag and they go to the alien ship while Shaw does a final log like the one Ripley does in Alien. Which must be the one that the Nostromo picks up in the future right?
NOPE
All of this movie is set on the planet LV-223, the one in the ALIEN films is LV-426. Unless you are a cretinous fucking nerd like me, you probably wouldn't be able to make that distinction. So this isn't the same planet, its a slightly different planet where very similar events occur. The 'end of the credits scene' is complete fan-wankery where a shitty looking alien looking thing bursts out of the engineer. He isnt sat in the big gun, because this isnt the same ship. I guess no one will hear Shaw's final log.
This movie is ARSE. It looks great, it attempts to have deep philosphical concepts, but ultimately presents a ton of random questions and answers nothing we really cared about from the ALIEN series. Now i'm just confused as to how the Alien eggs all got put in neat rows in the first alien. What was that thin blue mist that covered the eggs? Was there a queen on the first alien engineer ship? Are Xenomorphs just a random result of the black goo that happens to be the ultimate killing machine, or is the black goo mutating until it finally becomes that lifeform?
www.thatvideosite.com/v/5496/red-le...etheus-spoilers
These are the questions you will ask yourself after watching this movie.
Also you will ask how much a Hitman would cost you to assassinate Ridley Scott. And then you will buy one for yourself.