I quite liked it. It started out great, and the cinematography was good old fashioned grand sci fi sets, great lighting and all.

Just after the cesarian scene though, i had to run after my girlfriend who got a bit goried out and ran to the bathroom (shes been looking forward to this film more than me, she just cant stomach anything to do with wombs). When we returned there was weyland, Alive and suiting up to go aboard the ship, and some characters had disappeared. I hear fifield comes back and kills em all, and weyland was there in stasis all along. What the hell?! We were gone less than 10 minutes!

Then Shaw is tagging along, getting all involved after just having a fucking squid taken out of her, and then the makers go all batshit and shes convincing 3 random guys to fly into the ship. 

Its all a bit nuts. That said, i loved the atmosphere and acting was pretty good, but i prefered g mans script.

DKR looks a treat.

g.man wrote:

How are the glasses they sell you at these 3D showings Tempy? Can you get them on over your regular specs? If not it's a bit of a fail for me.

regards

g.man

You've seen my big Woody Allen glasses right? I can fit them over them. The normal 3D ones are a little awkward but the IMAX ones are like comedy Dame Edna specs, you have to return them after. They were a little awkward but I managed sufficiently.

Saw this tonight. Very disappointed. I've read all the posts and comments in here and pretty much agree with all of them. I guess one could argue until the Cows come home but the bottom line is the writers didn't put any effort into the script so why should we put any effort into dissecting it. Having said that, I really can't help myself.

I would imagine, like all civilisations throughout the ages, there are factions amongst 'The Space Jockeys' - And as a running theme throughout the entire film, Science and Faith clash and combat each other constantly throughout the development of the films core plot - I guess if you want to be literal in interpretation the Space Jockey in the films beginning could be seen as their societies religious representative [robes... hoods, I am Monk trolol ect...] out to create or do whatever the fuck while the dudes we see on LV-223 are Military in nature and inherently nasty.

One of the most irritating issues for me in this film was David. His motives and why he does what he does. A couple of things the. 

1) His line "Big things have small beginnings" as he dabbles with the Bio-Chem

This very line implies to me that David already knows what the Bio-chem is and how it works before even seeing it run it's course. This means that Weyland Corp had prior knowledge [or maybe David just accumulated the knowledge through text] to The Space Jockey's shenanigans on LV-223 or other remote outposts.  In fact he obviously knew what it was capable of, and while perhaps couldn't predict that Holloway and Shaw would 'shack up' he probably had good reason to believe it was a possibility.  To what end, I don't really know. But there was a Xenomorph motif on one of the Space Jockey walls at one point indicating that the creature already existed - I though the birth of the Xenomorph at the films end was the first of it's kind but I'm obviously mistaken.

If that's so and if the Bio-Chem mimics hosts/infected slightly is it possible he was anticipating a Queen Birth - To Weaponise the Xenomorphs? -- I've no fucking clue really, but this is how David's action have left me. A bit bamboozled.

2) What does he really say to The Space Jockey?

We assume he asks what Weyland orders him to but David seems quite independent and somewhat resentful of his Human counterparts throughout the film so I wonder is it possibly he says something entirely different to what Weyland has asked? I dunno why, but I think the absence of subtitles leaves this open for discussion.


3) "Try Harder" - Orders from Weyland 

Again, to me, this implies co-shared knowledge of something other than  just 'looking for Space jockeys. Weyland was perhaps looking for the Bio-chem as a means to extend his life or genetically evolve him to conquer death. I suppose you could say perhaps he was just asking David to try harder to find The Space Jockeys but it hardly seems likely given the secrecy of the scene and general vibe of it all. 

I could type fuck tonnes more really but I feel like at 2am my thoughts are barely coming out as I want them to and most of you have already covered everything that was on my mind. I must say though, I am disappointed. It certainty wasn't what I was expecting - which was a thinking man's Sci-Fi.

Another site has posted some shots of the new/proto xenomorph.





Anyone one else think that this evolves into the Alien(/queen) proper when it comes into contact with the black fluid (in effect becoming self sustaining (or at least into a streamlined life cycle)). A bit reaching but plausible within the film and the effect the black liquid has.

I enjoyed the film (despite some things).

The alien at the end is blatantly the Queen.

Some really great points raised in this thread and a great opening post. The script/plot was a mess and reeked of re-writes, meddling, concessions to such-and-such and just pure lack of skill and imagination. It sounds really keyboard warrior to sit here slagging it all off, but the prospect of this film meant a hell of a lot to a lot of people. Alien and Aliens are two of my all-time favs and I've seen Aliens over 50 times easily. It really does suck when you wait this long for the next instalment from the the creator and it turns out to be such a mess. If it wasn't for the glimpses of those classic set-pieces like the space Jockeys "Navigator" chair rising through the floor and the "derelict" ship taking off at the end, it would just been a scrambled, badly acted, sci fi film. The Scottish woman was SOOOO AWWWWFUL!

Fan fiction could easily provide better canon, but some fat geek's story will never get $150,000,000 spent on it. It's such a shame that more control for the plot wasn't put in the hands of someone more capable of doing justice to the first two films. Maybe it's the times we're living in.... I tried to console myself with this thought when I left the cinema. "You can't expect a summer blockbuster to deliver a true piece of Art" But then I thought about Moon and how beautiful, well written, well acted and how awesome the tone of the thing was... and I got sad. Moon is not a blockbuster I know, but I'd have loved to see what Duncan Jones would have done with Prometheus.

Ridley Scott has made far more shite than he has made pearls. He's too old, too arrogant and too jaded to pull this stuff off anymore it seems. Prometheus looked incredible, but that was always gonna be a given. Ridley's eyes seem to be the only thing that still work. Or maybe they don't and the DOP should get all the credit. I seriously loved the opening aerial shots and was genuinely dripping in anticipation for the rest of the film, 5 mins in.

There are very, very few films that I truly love and almost all of them were made between 1975 and 1985. Something magic was in the air then and boundaries were being pushed, smashed and trampled left right and centre. Something new needs to happen and it's only gonna come from the minds of the young. We need more Duncan Jones'.

So now what? Prometheus 2 to look forward to? More rambling, incoherent bollocks plot and other new characters you simply cannot like or care about. wooo.

I saw it in 2D on a 4k screen in a VUE cinema and the picture was the best I have ever seen. Absolutely stunning. As others have mentioned, a directors cut on Blu Ray will be interesting.

Also, how many Space Jockey, "Horseshoe" ships are there? Do they all look the same? What was the round ship in the opening that drifted up through the clouds?

Tempy wrote:

The Horseshoe ships appear to be military/science vessels, so maybe the big circular one was just something normal?

On the ship rolling over them at the end, anyone else get the same feeling when you watch Road Runner cartoons and you see Wile E Coyote run away from a falling tree and you just think "Why are you running in the same direction that the tree is falling? Run to the side!". Except that was a Saturday morning cartoon and wasn't designed to crush the dreams of over hopeful 20-30 year old men

Saw this last night - I'm afraid I haven't read all the comments in this thread, but G's opening piece pretty much sums it up.  I genuinely enjoyed the first 2/3 of the movie, but the final act destroys all that went before it by revealing that the writers have literally no idea what they're doing.  The whole thing collapses into an incoherent mess, leaving you in little doubt that it has been rewritten so many times that no-one had an overall idea of the plot anymore.  Seriously, don't people proof read these things?

It's excusable in a dumb summer blockbuster movie, but this had pretensions to being more.  It felt like a massive missed opportunity, because there are things there which are genuinely interesting.  I felt the DNA altering killer goo in itself was kind of intriguing, if only it had been handled with consistency.  The is she/ isn't she an android stuff with Vickers could have borne interesting fruit.  (She can't be an android, a robot would know to step to one side when a thing's rolling towards you...). Making the birth metaphor of the original Alien more explicit was sort of lazy, but also genius.  Fasbender and Theron both put in great performances.

But none of it adds up.  There's no internal consistency whether we have a sequel or not.  Characters and plot points get dropped and never picked up.  It's desperate to explore Big Themes, but doesn't know what to do with them, or what it actually thinks.  The majority of characters act in ways which are entirely inconsistent with what little they establish of their personalities.  (Flee life forms, but pet monsters.  Do anything to achieve the mission, but constantly put the mission in peril.  Map out an entire region, but be the only one who gets lost.). Whole chunks of the story seem to be completely ignored by characters within it (the super strong zombie geologist - why did that happen, from a story point of view, given that no-one refers to it or acknowledges it subsequently.). 

I enjoyed the body horror birth scene, but even then - why go to the effort of telling us that it does men only?  I know it's Weyalnds pod, but the extra information is unnecessary, and undermines the whole scene, because suddenly Shaw has to be able to reprogram the thing.  Even then it makes no sense as, weirdly, a device programmed for men would struggle to remove a foreign body from the womb, because you know, men don't have them. Just stupid, needless exposition that serves only to undermine the scene, and acts as a microcosm of what's wrong with the film as a whole.

Awful, embarrassing mess made all the worse by tantalising you with how good it could have been.  The showing I went to had people laughing at it by the end...  (The afore mentioned run from the rolling ship.)

Oh well.

Well said.

@ Tin Reebax, but you can have one too if u liek.

Why do these things go so wrong? HOW?

PS I liked it.

Thing is Reg, I'm not poring over details, these are things that struck me during the film itself. If that stuff hits you whilst you're watching pure spectacle then it has to be pretty severe.

Mark Kermode - "A thumbs up! 7.5 out of ten" Short interview with Ridley Scott on the Mayo Kermode podcast.

Tempy wrote:

Thing is Reg, I'm not poring over details, these are things that struck me during the film itself. If that stuff hits you whilst you're watching pure spectacle then it has to be pretty severe.

Exactly.  I've seen it once, and I can reel off a whole litany of things that simply didn't make sense.  In that respect it did at least keep my attention, and in the films defence, it's certainly triggered lots of discussion.  Still, people were genuinely laughing when I saw it.  (I'm pretty sure the whole rolling, falling spaceship routine wasn't meant as a Buster Keaton tribute.)  

My disappointment isn't related to how it treats Alien - the franchise has been so abused over the years that I'm passed caring.  It's down to how it treats the audience.

Ridley also said there would be another 2 Prometheus movies after this one before we get to Alien. That is, if Prometheus makes enough cash.