Aliens - 1986 movie (was Dog Soldiers)

[Targan]

Ah, Prometheus. Saw it today. Much to love, but much not to love also. The future tech, the spaceships, the special effects, all good. The script writing, the behaviour of most of the characters, some of the basic science... utter crap. Any RL archaeologist seeing how the two married "archeologists" acted on archeological sites in the movie would want to slap them into unconsciousness. The lemming-like need for a bunch of the characters to throw themselves into life-threatening danger was breathtakingly frustrating.

*SPOILERS*

Hopefully a sequel will answer some of the big questions raised in the film. Like where the Predators fit in. I suspect the Engineers created the black ooze and other bioweapons as part of an ongoing war with the Predators. One thing that confused me was that the Engineers had near enough to identical DNA to modern humans. But some of the contact on Earth with the Engineers was 35,000 years ago in Scotland. There were no Homo Sapiens in Scotland at that time so the contact must have been with Neanderthals, and Neanderthals would have DNA with some pretty distinct differences to modern humans. So how does all that work? And how does it work that we have a fossil record showing the evolution of non-human primates all the way through to Homo Sapiens? For me it's pretty clear that humans evolved here. Did Engineer DNA spark the evolution of primates but early primates had spectacularly mutated Engineer DNA that slowly evolved back into modern human/Engineer DNA? Cough*bullshit*cough.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

** TOTALLY SPOILER **

Three things I'd like to throw in,

1. Prometheus is a sci-fi B-movie replicating an earlier Ridley Scott sci-fi B-movie (using the same plot points, including killing off all the crew until only one lone woman is left, and even the same camera angles/shots in some cases). And it's seriously funny - the man seeking eternal life creates artificial life and then gets beaten to death with the head of the "man" he created! It's hilarious!

It deals with "things man was not meant to know", just like H.P. Lovecraft writes in his Cthulhu stories - there are Elder Beings in the universe, some have motives that are utterly unknown to us and will never be know. The first movie dealt with a Lovecraftian horror, it can't be killed without risk of killing yourself, it's completely alien to us and it cares not one whit about us. It's for exactly this reason that Guillermo del Toro decided not to push ahead with his film version of Lovecraft's story "At The Mountains Of Madness". He considered that Scott had beaten him to the punch because "Prometheus" follows the same story.

"Prometheus" is not a "hard-science" movie, it's a sci-fi B-movie harking back to the 1950s with all the fears of atomic science unleashing giant ants, giant gila monsters or Godzilla to punish us for playing with the metaphorical fire. Just like the title hints at - play with fire and you will get burnt, play with the gods (or try to be god) and you will get burnt.

2. The movie is not going to give answers to everything, not to the characters in the movie nor to the audience watching it. One of the themes is that there are some questions you will never know the answer to, you must accept what you have and accept it on faith. All the people who saw the movie and are seeking answers are doing exactly what the characters in the movie were doing. Scott has given you no answer, just like the characters in the movie received no answer - you're interactively part of the story.

3. The Predators are highly unlikely to feature in any sequel as Scott does not consider them part of Alien movie lore despite the Predator movies hinting that there's a connection.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

3. The Predators are highly unlikely to feature in any sequel as Scott does not consider them part of Alien movie lore despite the Predator movies hinting that there's a connection.

It's a helluva lot more than a hint. And once you've let the genie out of the bottle you can't cram it back in.

There's no reason you can't combine hard science and good science fiction. Heck, the original Alien film was fine as far as hard science goes. Same with Aliens, pretty much. Prometheus is what you get when a series of different writers go to work on what was probably a pretty reasonable script to start with and slowly give it the death of a thousand cuts. And it's also highly symptomatic of what you get when you've got a nice, fat, juicy budget and a target audience with a highly tenuous (if that) grasp of genetics, chemistry, ancient history and paleoanthropology.

I'm firmly of the belief that the best films (or TV programs or whatever) educate at the same time as they entertain.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Targan

It's a helluva lot more than a hint. And once you've let the genie out of the bottle you can't cram it back in.

You can if you're rebooting the franchise. I'm not clear on whether this film is intended to be a prequel or a reboot? If the latter, then going forward the whole Predator link (and the events of both Alien Vs Predator films) can presumably be disregarded by the writers if they wish.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

You can if you're rebooting the franchise. I'm not clear on whether this film is intended to be a prequel or a reboot? If the latter, then going forward the whole Predator link (and the events of both Alien Vs Predator films) can presumably be disregarded by the writers if they wish.

Hard to say. The CEO of Weyland Corporation in Alien vs Predator was a middle-aged Charles Bishop Weyland. The CEO of Weyland Corporation in Prometheus is a very elderly Peter Weyland. The two films are set 89 years apart. I guess Peter Weyland could be Charles Weyland's son.

The sad thing is that the AvP films (well IMO certainly the first one) were better than the later Aliens films. I'd be happier to see Ridley Scott et al keep the AvP canon and dump Alien 3 and 4 than keep 3 and 4 and pretend that the AvP films didn't happen. I'd be happiest of all if Ridley Scott just wrapped it all up nicely together somehow. I find that 99% of the time what I want in a film isn't what I get. Then again I accept the fact that I'm probably a good 20 to 30 IQ points higher than the average target audience and have a damn sight better understanding of how the universe works.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Targan

The sad thing is that the AvP films (well IMO certainly the first one) were better than the later Aliens films. I'd be happier to see Ridley Scott et al keep the AvP canon and dump Alien 3 and 4 than keep 3 and 4 and pretend that the AvP films didn't happen. I'd be happiest of all if Ridley Scott just wrapped it all up nicely together somehow.

Yep, I'd agree with most of that (not sure whether I'd keep the second AvP!). To be honest I pretty much lost interest after Aliens...I don't think I've even seen the third one all the way through, only bits of it.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

The "Aliens and Predators as part of the same universe" idea is only because of an FX set-dresser's joke, really.