Prometheus

[Robert Donnell]

Prometheus, what can I say, I just saw it last night.

This is a prequel to the movie Alien, and they screwed it up at every turn.

So why am I bashing a SciFi/Fantasy of any sort when I love them so? Well this is the best example of what not to do. In Alien, Aliens, Alien vs Predator, etc we have a well established time line, life cycle for the alien creature which Prometheus utterly ignores. Furthermore the mistakes they made were unforgivable. (Bob breaks into song: “Unforgivable that’s what you are.”)

So here is my list of things that they should never have done:
A. Broke cannon, what had been established in prior movies.
B. Turned the movie into a “Lets bash the stupid Christians at every turn.”
C. Respecting the beliefs of a non-specified Pagan religion, you don’t get it both ways.
D. Broke the laws of physics, again.
E. Turned the movie into a “Lets bash the stupid Gun Owners at every turn.”
F. Out of control robots, it has been done too often.
G. High tech multi billion dollar spaceships manned by untrained illiterates.
H. Made Corporation owners, ultra-evil, ultra-rich, greedy, stupid murderers.

I swear to God it is as if you got together six each, socially awkward, Maoist, bad writers who had never seen the movie Alien and gave them cart blanch.

To be honest I am a very poor third rate hack writer who could benefit from a good proof reader, spell checker and a good Editor, but I can do better than this.

[ProfessorBrainfever]

"B. Turned the movie into a “Lets bash the stupid Christians at every turn.”
C. Respecting the beliefs of a non-specified Pagan religion, you don’t get it both ways. "

I honestly don't remember either of these things happening. Of course, not having any religion myself, it easily could have gone over my head.

[Robert Donnell]

Well the Protagonist has a discussion with her Father where a positive belief in some sort of afterlife is professed. Later she is told that it was a stupid idea to have “True Believers” on board and that they were merely employees not leaders of the expedition. It is what you would call a hostile environment.

For the record, I am an Atheist but my culture is that of a Middle Class American Christian and I take swipes at Christians as a nasty insult at my own values.

The bottom line ultimately is that as a viewer of the movie I feel like a nasty insult has been aimed at me by the Hollywood establishment who made the movie. My point is that as a writer one should never insult your readers.

[ProfessorBrainfever]

Later she is told that it was a stupid idea to have “True Believers” on board and that they were merely employees not leaders of the expedition. It is what you would call a hostile environment.

Well, yes...but the people who say those things aren't the most sympathetic of characters, and the Christian is clearly the hero of the piece.

If the villain of the film makes fun of something you like, that isn't necessarily a message the film is trying to portray.

[soulless]

So here is my list of things that they should never have done:
A. Broke cannon, what had been established in prior movies.
B. Turned the movie into a “Lets bash the stupid Christians at every turn.”
C. Respecting the beliefs of a non-specified Pagan religion, you don’t get it both ways.
D. Broke the laws of physics, again.
E. Turned the movie into a “Lets bash the stupid Gun Owners at every turn.”
F. Out of control robots, it has been done too often.
G. High tech multi billion dollar spaceships manned by untrained illiterates.
H. Made Corporation owners, ultra-evil, ultra-rich, greedy, stupid murderers.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and quite enjoyed it for what it is, a fun and somewhat beautiful sci-fi flick.
but to your points...
A. I don't see how it broke any canon, except with the AVP movies which to be honest are best forgotten about. Everything can be easily fitted in with the 4 real Alien films.
B + C. I didn't see a problem with the religious aspect, though I can't see where the "christian bashing" comes in, even with the original ideas for why the engineers want to wipe us out that were removed from the film.
D. Pretty much all sci-fi fiction, in every form, does this for reason of drama. Its poetic licence, again no problem there.
E. Actually not a bad point
F. Androids are a staple of the Alien films but David seemed quite in control to me.
G. Some of the crew did seem to make quite odd decisions which have been picked up by lots of people around the world. Maybe some of this will be fixed in the impending directors cut on Blu-Ray (and hopefully DVD so I don't have to spend on a Blu-player just yet)
H. Again, this is a staple of the Alien films, and its the same company (well half of it, they haven't merged with Yutani yet) so what would you expect.

[dragonangel517]

I have started several drafts as a response to this, then abandoned them. I simply can't reply with out getting snarky, so I will just say this. It's a movie. A piece of fiction, nothing more. A piece of fiction someone else wrote, someone else's vision. I enjoyed every moment of it, and hope to see a sequel.

[Robert Donnell]

This is not a review of the movie, this is me the writer cringing at all the huge gaffs and rookie mistakes that never should have made it to the screen.

As a writer, I hear again that a good editor would have made the writer fix these mistakes before publishing and that the self published books are for this reason not worth reading high school quality pulp. Then I see mega-buck Hollywood movies do this low quality work and wonder where their editor is.

All the while I struggle to meet the minimum standards for publishing.

[Krieger]

I'll admit, the plot's a mess. But aside from some of the things which are purely a matter of taste (religion bashing, etc.), what are some of the actual story telling issues that you noticed, and how would you change them?

[Robert Donnell]

Well they changed the spacefaring Geiger-esque aliens into 100% human Greek Gods intent on the destruction of all humanity for no good reason. That added nothing to the plot, I would leave the ENGINEERS as truly alien Aliens.
Next they made the mistake of putting those same Greek Gods on Earth at many points in our past, well why didn’t they just wipe us out 35,000 years ago? I would dump that.
The hyper paranoid female has a medical machine that can not do surgery on human females, I would cut that out. Then it does it anyway.
I think that I would put back in the normal Alien Creature as the bioweapon.
I might spend some time on Character development. Why are some characters sniveling cowards (who would not have gone into space in the first place) and others Suicidal macho types? While there are some who would willingly sacrifice themselves for Humanity I am pretty sure that none of those crewmen knew the extent of the threat.
To be honest about it, I would cut every bit of dialog after landing and start over. I have a book that starts with a premise, what if UFOs are real? I started in one direction and deleted it to start over, same story just without unworkable characters. They should have done the same.

[JCFarnham]

I think I'm right in saying it had a different writer involved in it compared to the other films. That accounts for a lot of peoples problems with it. Frankly, as objective as we want to be, admit it, we're comparing it to Alien. By that criteria its going to be a bit off.

That being said, to me, modern motion picture writers aren't worth much. A lot of things have pretty wonky writing... And then you get someone like Joss Whedon or Steve Moffat who balance the equation.

As always scifi is sidelined. The golden days this isn't.. but I like to think its getting better with the success of the avengers and such.. sorry.. I like to HOPE.