The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => The Forum of Interesting Things => Topic started by: What Came Before on June 02, 2013, 12:20:00 am
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This thread was inspired by Curethan's recent avatar selection. Freaky how the Engineers look like Nonmen a bit eh?
Anyhow, I didn't really like this movie (aside from Fassbender upstaging everyone with excellent acting and the cinematic visual candy), but I'd like to hear what everyone thinks.
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Haven't seen it yet, so I won't stick around in this thread.
...but I loved the piccies of the engineers when I saw them. :)
Here where I got my avatar, it contains images from the footage that didn't make the cinema release.
Feast them eyeballs. (http://www.prometheusforum.net/discussion/2118)<<click
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link seems to be dead...
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really? it's working fine for me...
here is the long form so you can try a cut'n'paste
http://www.prometheusforum.net/discussion/2118
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Spoil me on how the space jockey got so big? Or are engineers always that big? Or am I remembering it wrong (I kind of remember this huge thing in the chamber - I assumed it was a huge creature in a massive chair? Been a long time since I've seen alien...
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So, I can't be the only one who immediately thought of the Nonmen when I saw the prologue? Perhaps a little less ripped, but otherwise it was right on the money for my mental image of them.
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No, I'm pretty sure that's what every Bakker fan's first thought was. :D
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No, I'm pretty sure that's what every Bakker fan's first thought was. :D
Shit, yes, especially in those hooded robes concealing ridiculous musculature. But OTOH, Ishroi could very well look like bodybuilders. I wonder what Scott has to say about it.
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I typed "Non-Men" into Google Images search and the first result was Sergeant Weenie Arms from Cow and Chicken.
(http://www.deviantart.com/download/58030759/Are_you_Non_Men__by_hangemhigh13.jpg)
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I really hate this movie. It's not like it's the worst film I've ever seen, but I really despise it. One, as a sci-fi, I feel it has a special responsibility to uphold some respect to science, or hell, just common sense. Needless to say, much of it doesn't even make any sense. Two, it's appalling to me how Ridley Scott just ruined his own franchise, which started with such a classic scifi horror Alien, by churning out another pointless schlock.
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I really hate this movie. It's not like it's the worst film I've ever seen, but I really despise it. One, as a sci-fi, I feel it has a special responsibility to uphold some respect to science, or hell, just common sense. Needless to say, much of it doesn't even make any sense. Two, it's appalling to me how Ridley Scott just ruined his own franchise, which started with such a classic scifi horror Alien, by churning out another pointless schlock.
Perhaps Ja-Ja Binks could have run into a scene?
Just saying, it could be worse...
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I really hate this movie. It's not like it's the worst film I've ever seen, but I really despise it. One, as a sci-fi, I feel it has a special responsibility to uphold some respect to science, or hell, just common sense. Needless to say, much of it doesn't even make any sense. Two, it's appalling to me how Ridley Scott just ruined his own franchise, which started with such a classic scifi horror Alien, by churning out another pointless schlock.
Perhaps Ja-Ja Binks could have run into a scene?
Just saying, it could be worse...
Some respect to science: The movie mentions how fast they are traveling and how long they took to get where they are going. They also mention that the planet is in some other star system far away.
I'm pretty sure the nearest star, in reality, is 4 light years away. I did the calculation (because it immediately sounded wrong as stated), given their provided information, and they traveled about 2 light years to get to their "planet in a system so far away the ancients couldnt see the star in the night sky".
Simple math errors bother me :P. Im sure there are more egregious errors elsewhere in other scientific disciplines, but math, like simple multiplication, should be done correctly.
They should have just said they traveled at warp(insert random integer) for 3 years and got to some random system in some random galaxy, then i'd have no complaints. I'm 100% ok with bending space-time.
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As someone who studies biology (as a beginner :) ), I'll tell you what bothered the hell out of me: in the opening scene, one of the aliens dissolves himself in a river. The implication clearly is that his race "seeded" Earth (using this ludicrous method -- looks to me they could have just used a syringe).
The problem is that in that panning shot prior to the dissolution, we see hills and mountains that are thickly forested. In other words, the Earth, whenever this happened, was already a planet teeming with life. Every piece of available evidence points to the fact that humans share a common origin with every other species on this planet . Humans do not have a separate "creation" event. All species share the same ancient origin. If the movie wants to say the aliens seeded the first single cell life on a barren earth 3 or 4 billion years ago, fine; but to suggest they came in and created humans long after other species have evolved? *shudder in nerdy horror*
Note that the movie even explicitly shows the DNA double-helix dissolving in the river! The irony, of course, is that DNA is the strongest evidence of common origin: the same triplet genetic codon will produce the same amino acid -- which makes proteins, which make life -- in every species.
As for Ja Ja Binks, meh. I never cared much for the original Star Wars anyway so it doesn't really matter much to me how much the prequels sucked. But I do care about Alien (and the very fine, though very different, immediate sequel Aliens).
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Maybe the dissolver dude made the tree's and grass but screwed up, so they go and melt him in the river. You know, religious practice?
Okay, I'm just making it up and not believing it in my heart of hearts! :)
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Word of God states that the planet in the intro is not necessarily even meant to be Earth. The message is supposed to be "the Engineers create life by sacrificing the life of one of their own" (so they feel their creations owe them that life), not specifically "this is how they made humans".
Their later showing up in cave paintings is supposed to indicate that they came back to Earth long after first seeding life there (not necessarily what's shown in the intro) to 'guide' the evolution of primates and eventually humans. Then we pissed them off by nailing their last emissary to a piece of wood and they decided to terminate the experiment.
In any case, it's a bad sign when a movie's creator has to come out and explain this sort of stuff in interviews because the movie itself did such an awful job of making it clear.
I long ago gave up on expecting movie directors and scriptwriters to understand evolutionary biology at all. Getting horribly killed by an alien penis-monster seems to be the best those in my field can expect from Hollywood. :P
I actually quite enjoyed Prometheus, but purely as a movie-goer seeking a couple of hours of relatively mindless entertainment, not as a former evolutionary biologist.
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I started getting angry when she opened a hole to a new cave painting and they were just shining lights on them and breathing on them. 35,000 years old and they're destroying them! agh.
Then the stupidity continues, and they remove their helmets cause the gas mix is okay. WTF? the gas mix is fine, but what about all the potential pathogens in the air! this oversight MIGHT make sense, except experts on cave paintings would realize just how damaged they could be or that their breath could be to this alien enviroment. (naturally the paintings dissolve). Then I just lost it when the BIOLOGIST, when confronted with the complete corpse of an extraterrestrial is the one that wants to leave, he's not interested at all in his own field. why the fuck did they bring a biologist if not to have someone interested in this shit.
And then the autopsy is, 'let's zap their brain with electricity and see what happens' and they explode the only known extant xeno brain oh well.
the moronic level of stuff in the scientists is just so frustrating, it's possible this could have once been an interesting idea, but this is just really stupid in how it wound up. If this is what lindlelof is like, I'm glad I never watched lost.
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And then there's the geologist, whose primary function is mapping the damn cave system with those drone things, getting completely and irrevocably lost as soon as he leaves the group. It's his drones doing the mapping. Why the fuck does he not have any way to contact them to find out where he is in the cave system that they are mapping?
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Right? by that point I was just fucking infuriated by the out of character bullshit.
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On the other hand, how movie worthy is slow, thorough, scientific practice?
It's a bit semantic apocalyptic in how the boys own adventurers of yesteryear crash into the expectations of today and simply do not survive, and yet nor would the action and excitement expectations survive contact with actual scientific practice!
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yeah, but compare to the way things were handled in Alien, seems much more realistic than the journey to moronville of Prometheus.
Which is a shame, because I'd like to take the movie's attempt at big ideas more seriously, but when its execution of consistent characters is less than one-dimensional, it's sort of impossible to take anything seriously.
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Just to contribute to this, I believe that Prometheus is far more concerned with philosophical implications than with scientific. Science fiction doesn't have any responsibility to actual science (that's why it's "fiction"). Science fiction, rather, challenges us to think critically about radical alterities and inhuman conceptions of the world/universe.
I wrote a non-academic response to Prometheus after it came out, wherein I try and defend what I interpreted as its primary concerns (which I think it handles very well):
http://roadsidepicnictalks.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html
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Didn't read your paper (sorry I'm lazy today), but I would agree with your post. Some people tend to focus on the 'science' part too much and ignore the 'fiction'. If it takes place in space, if there is an alien, or if there is a laser beam, its science fiction :P.
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Also hated this movie. I think that a lot of the general story about the engineers could have been the same, but it was presented in such a convoluted way. Three cheers for Aliens, the best one. Prometheus was such a let down after its kick ass trailer.
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Aliens 2 also deserves distinction, no?
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Aliens 2 also deserves distinction, no?
Ima get mah geek on:
1) Alien - 1979
2) Aliens - 1986
3) Alien^3 - 1992
I must agree, AlienS is the best of all! :)
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Lol. Yeah. My brain has been (hopefully) temporarily incapacitated. I can tell you about... Emotions or something about Child Disorders, maybe?