I finally saw it. 8/10. An intelligent movie with a summer blockbuster production. On par with Inception, but below truly great cinema like Alien. Though I avoided all trailers/tv spots/promos/'hype', the movie still fell short of my expectations. Blade Runner is Ridley Scott's masterpiece, and a far better movie. I didn't find it as thought-provoking as other posters. This is a combination of Avatar's epic space visuals minus its clichéd plot and elements of horror and religious symbolism. Movies I think that are mind-blowing: 2001, the Matrix, the Fountain, Eternal Sunshine, the Prestige, Donnie Darko, Solaris, Children of Men, and Memento. I agree with emjohn and justxyank when they say too much of the film is hidden to truly appreciate its deeper meaning. After reading ten pages of fanboys and diehards share viral videos, screen captures, and interviews, I like the movie more. But an audience member should not have to go through such lengths. Parts I disliked: Spoiler -the geologist and biologist who got lost before the particle storm. That whole segment was flawed, especially because one moment the biologist was scared, the next moment he wanted to touch the mutated worm. -the zombie crab that attacks the crew. -lack of communication and anger between Liz Shaw and the people inside the clinic tending to Weyland. She's covered in blood, having given birth to a monster, yet she says nothing to anyone. -holograms to show what happened. Like some narration, it's lazy writing and it treats the audience like children. The ending and its implications: Spoiler I hope they make a direct prequel to Alien rather than showing what Mrs. Shaw and David find from the Engineers' home planet. I want to leave what they find up to my imagination rather than a ham-fisted explanation from an Engineer/Space Jockey that human beings lost their ways and so it was decided that we were to be annihilated. Like cowboy_bepop said, I really hope an extended version like Kingdom of Heaven is released which makes the theatrical version look much inferior. Deleted scenes in a blu ray menu aren't good enough. It needs to be seamlessly incorporated like the Lord of the Rings Extended version.
Prometheus IMAX vs. RealD vs. traditional 2D/35mm I watched the whole movie on IMAX 3D, 20 minutes on RealD 3D, and 20 minutes on 2D. If you are an A/V enthusiast/cinephile, the 2D version is best. This was very surprising because most 3D fans said for movies filmed using 3D cameras, it is better to watch them in 3D, and many said the 3D in Prometheus was amazing and polished. With the exception of Hugo and Avatar, I think 3D is a gimmick. The (Regal Marquee) IMAX sound calibration was really off. The center channel was so loud, I heard clipping during some scenes with just dialogue and no loud noises. The person I watched this movie with owns a Theo Kalomirakis-designed home theater and his system sounded much better than the IMAX . The back surround channels also sounded very shrill throughout the movie. Maybe because of the (Wiki) Loudness War, the sound engineer for Regal calibrated the IMAX this way? The 2D version was better because the aspect ratio was 2.35:1 so I got to see more of the movie rather than the cropped image in IMAX 3D. Also, the 2D version was sharper whereas the IMAX 3D sometimes seemed blurry. In addition, the 3D in both the IMAX and RealD force the viewer to look at a circle inscribed in a rectangle so the corners of the screen are out of focus. The 2D lets you see the whole screen at once. Lastly, the sound in the 2D version was better calibrated. No hot center channel or shrill surrounds. However, the third person in our group loved the IMAX version best. She couldn't detect anything wrong with the sound or with the image. She said the 2D was boring and the bass wasn't boomy enough. This is the same person who goes to Best Buy, and thinks the brightest and most colorful display is the best. Unsurprisingly, she keeps her TV settings at the max picture/brightness and listens to very bass-distorted pop and rap music in her car. If this sounds like you, go watch it in IMAX. Two coworkers, one who saw Prometheus in the BFI London IMAX and the second at the Darling Harbor Sydney IMAX, agreed with me on the sound issues, but they said the picture size trumped the cropped image and loud surround. Yet, if you get great center seats at a 2D theater, I think the IMAX size advantage is largely diminished. I hope this helps people in deciding which version to see it in.
3d has never done anything for me except for avatar. i accidently saw this in 3d yesterday with a friend. still would have preffered to see it in a normal screen. oh well. pretty good movie. i as well hope that they edit a good 30 minutes into the dvd version.
Spoiler Yea can anyone answer that part about what David said to the Alien? It looked like he repeated something he read/or saw early on in the movie when he was on the ship? Before he awoke everyone else...
Nothing will every match a movie like Alien because it was such a watershed event. we're all to familiar with it to ever be shocked by that stuff again. Scott has the task of trying to create something that can still be engaging despite the fact that the cat has long been out of the bag. I think his intention was to create more mystery and that's part of the creepiness. With Alien is was the fear of the unknown. With Prometheus it is simply the unknown. He keeps us in the shadow of darkness, never giving us the answers we want, just like the characters don't get their answers. So many of these movies have nice neat explanations that come across as hollow. But for this movie, I think his point is that there is only ever more questions. There is no answers. And that is the horror of prometheus, that we - both the characters and the audience - walk away even more confused and unsettled than where we started. Blade Runner was panned when it first came out. It wasn't considered a masterpiece at all. I have a feeling Prometheus will age better with time as people begin to understand what the movie was really about.
This is my interpretation Spoiler There are different types of "engineers". The scientist engineers came to earth and other planets and planted life. Humans go this planet that is inhabitable where there happens to have a military base for the engineers. David is tired being a second class citizen and wants to be free. He sees the only way that he can become free is by wiping out the human race. When David talks to the military engineers, he tells them that the humans are here to wipe them out. The military engineer gets pissed and sets a course to earth to wipe humans out.
Spoiler they were already planning on going to Earth to wipe out humans before David told him anything.
Spoiler Because it was the only way to save himself. Think of how lonely he would be if he just laid there until his battery ran out.
Nope, turns out that David was transferring Weyland's message of asking the Engineer for immortality. The Engineer got mad at something the humans did supposedly 2000 years ago, along side the question with how he was hitting Shaw, he was raged at what there creation has come.
I dislike that part too but this is what I want to think and I hope that was all part of Ridley's plan. Spoiler Maybe they both got lost and acted stupid because they were both stone high with Fifield stash? Another thing is that they thought they might feel their way out without the help of such device that got them into there in the first place? I don't have a problem with them continuing with this story. It's opening a whole new Mythos. I do want to see a whole new and hopefully awesome world of the Engineers. There are so many possibility and cool story they go forward with if it's done right.
It has to last a long time - those space flights are long. I mean, if this is the biggest problem with the film...what about the fact that they traveled 35 light years in only 4 years? Since when the humanity overcome faster-than-light travel. To me that's a bigger deal than old food.
Given the hype that movies like Avatar and Prometheus created, many like me thought they would be game changers. As hackneyed as the plot of Avatar, it was a landmark f/x movie that single-handedly pushed 3D tech into consumer technology. As it stands, Prometheus doesn't seem to be a landmark film. What made Alien so great and live up to the hype? For me it was: the simple but brilliant script which slowly builds the tension like a pressure cooker, claustrophic yet incredibly vast and labyrinthine setting, the creepy score by Jerry Goldsmith, and the evil villain who we rarely see. I didn't expect Ridley Scott to use the same formula as described above, but he could have used certain elements like setting and atmosphere. Everyone here agrees Prometheus has incredibly visuals, but that's not enough to be game changer. To be a landmark film worthy of Ridley Scott, either the sound should have been top notch like Black Hawk Down, the cinematography like the Duellists, etc. For instance, one of the characters like David might have been so curious that they woke up after they got back from exploring the 1st day while everyone was sleeping and slept out of the ship to go back into the pyramid by himself. Imagine that creepy valley at night, the half a mile distance to the pyramid slowing being covered on a ATV, a robot exploring on his own fueled by curiosity and having no fear of death like a human. I had a nightmare where I was David doing the above and it was very scary lol. Unfortunately the movie didn't offer that to me. I like your idea about what makes Prometheus a different horror movie. But I would be more terrified if I had experienced this fear, confusion, and mystery while I was in the theater and not reading Clutchfans. As long as a substantially-improved director's cut like Kingdom of Heaven is released to mitigate the cons frequently discussed like character development and rushed plot device, your prediction will be right that this movie will be better appreciated as time goes by. Random thought: I didn't like the score very much. It didn't have the beauty that Blade Runner did under Vangelis, the eeriness of Alien(s) by Goldsmith, or the grandeur of Gladiator by Hans Zimmer.
Has this been posted? I enjoyed this: http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/7436 It give me more hope for an epic sequel.
Alien didn't have a lot of hype. There was no premiere, no big ad campaign. It's total budget was 8.4 million dollars. That's really small for a Sci Fi film even for it's time. Alien was widely panned by critics, at best mixed reviews. But it turned out to be a huge commercial success for its time - 80 some million bucks. I thought Prometheus was pretty creepy - Spoiler particularly the squid baby inside her. Having that thing removed from her was pretty horrific if you ask me. And scott really did play with us during the film I thought it was brilliant how he had a probe detect a life form and those guys knew something was there. We were sure it was a xenomorph, but it turned out not to be the treat we thought it would be. In fact, both guys would have survived had they not gone into the black goo chamber. And David was the creepiest character I've seen in a movie in a long time. I thought it was one of the most fascinating, complex characters in sci-fi and you don't really know who's side he's on, or if he even knows. His moral justification in giving the goo to Halloway was really disturbing yet strangely plausible. And his attempt to put Shaw under to preserve the alien baby in her was weird too. Just disturbing. I find David detestable yet fascinating at the same time. He stole the show as far as I was concerned and his role will be remembered as being awesome.
