One of the biggest mysteries of Alien was the lore behind the Space Jockey. Just to have Ridley ruin it all by making it nothing but a glorified space suit. One of the biggest reasons I kind of hate this movie.
Biologists not wearing respirators in an unknown environment, cartographers not knowing how to read maps and getting lost, xenobiologist attempting to pet the first alien life form he sees.... There are some very dumb characters in this.
Prometheus set in 2089-2093 range, Alien set in 2122. Think early 90's and 2020's for example. How far technology has come in that period of time. What most advanced stuff from that era can compare to what we have today.
It doesn't make sense. It's not that Bezo's yacht has tech different from regular tech. Yeah, it may be more fancy. But otherwise I don't think he owns something that regular people can't have.
Except they keep the high tech aesthetic in Covenant which is just a colony ship. It's simply a stylistic choice by Ridley that doesn't make sense in-universe. The Star Wars prequels made the same mistake.
@blakemeads9225 They were space truckers. These were scientists specially chosen to go on a super secret mission to an unexplored planet to possibly find an alien civilization
That's the one thing I DON'T have a issue with. Have you ever tried to run a football field length? That ships gotta be that size at least in width, and I don't know about you, but running that in a panic of death if you fail sounds really hard. I've always found it dumb that's what people usually point out with this movie filled with so many dumber issues.
One very key thing you guys did not appear to recognize: if you go back and watch the original Alien, the ship that the crew of the Nostromo finds is one of those Engineer ships, and they even examine a dead Engineer in the movie, which is their first clue about the chestbursting. They also land on a planet that may or may not be nearby, based on the name. In this film, the crew travels to LV-223; in the original Alien, the Nostromo stops on LV-426. Also, not that it's important, but one way the difference in technology between Alien and Prometheus can be easily explained away (for the most part, anyway), is that in Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are essentially space truckers. Much like our real-world truckers still communicate using CB radio (or did; not sure if they still do), it would make sense for the Nostromo, a blue collar working rig, to have much less fancy technology than a scientific expedition financed by (and secretly including) Peter Weyland himself.
Plus and this is really important, both the budget and production quality over the decades between the two movies: Have come a long way. Making a modern expensive movie, look and feel as crappie if not crappier than its decades old forebearer would probably not get past the films financiers nevermind the audience.
I think it's supposed to be the same planet, based on the ship's final position when it lands. They probably forgot what they called it in Alien, or an in-universe explanation is they were using an alternate naming system, which happens in Astronomy even now. Same star or object in the sky might have multiple designations depending on the catalog used.
@@robertcampbell8070 This is because they had 2 for the Space Jockey. (And yes, I will NEVER refer to it as an Engineer). One of the sets was scaled down. The actors you see in the space suits are actually children. If you look close, you'll see that the Space Jockey appears larger in one, and smaller in the other. Prometheus is what happens when you DON'T have Dan O'Bannon writing the script. It is also an example of what happens when people who don't respect the original try to make a prequel. Prometheus is also what happens when you cobble together a script that was cribbed off of several episodes of the History Channel show Ancient Aliens.
25:00 To this day idk why they cut the scene where they talked with the alien and instead just had the 9000 IQ alien go on a Hulk rampage the second he woke up.
I think the idea is supposed to be that humanity is a failed experiment. Whatever they had in mind for them wasn’t what they actually got when their creation is face to face with them. Kind of like the parent who really wants kids but then ends up hating them because the kids didn’t turn out how they wanted. So I think the rage was meant to illustrate the Engineer’s frustration at their hard work and (literal) sacrifice resulting in an inferior lifeform. Given how eugenicist they seem to be with bioengineering new species, I’d imagine they view it as a great tragedy that one of their own died in order to create this species of lesser beings. So his rage-filled barbarism is just an extension of that frustration. At least that’s my interpretation
I think it really pushes the indifference towards his creations, not even trying to communicate with them. To the engineers, we are bad product - that’s all.
@@SceneOnFilm Yes after doing research after watching the movie that much is clear, after watching the deleted scene especially. You know, some context to why he is going on a rampage.
The Reason this movie is divided and disappointed many is that it was built as the movie that was going to answer the question of where the space jockey from the first Alien movie came from. However the script had a rewrite with Damon Lindelof (writer from Lost) and we got his classic answering questions with more questions. So at the end of the film you still dont know anything about the space jockey origin and are left with more questions that make the timeline even more confusing. It gets worse in Alien Covenant, cuz its a sequel to this movie, but you can tell they just abandon any plans of answering the questions, they literally wipe the slate clean and it just turns into a slasher film at the end, completely destroying the timeline and yes these are some of the dumbest "scientist" ever captured on film.
To me it took all of the questions around the Space Jockey and answered them with one sentence: "It's just a stupid space suit". Ridley utterly squandered the lore that could have existed around the Jockey. I guess the only question remaining unanswered is who was inside it. Was it an Engineer or someone else?
George's reaction to taking off the helmet is exactly mine when I saw this in the theater. For a team of super duper experts they are really, really stupid in this movie.
There’s a very important detail in this movie that I feel like most people overlook (and it’s directly hinted at several times at the beginning of the movie), that this expedition was very hastily put together by a superstitious old man with a god complex. And the people he brought along probably wouldn’t be the best and brightest. They would be people who are willing to take the risk for money.
@@calvinallen3424 “It’s what I choose to believe.” I don’t remember that step in the scientific process… And up to that line, I assumed the robot was gonna get everyone killed.
@@blakemeads9225 I feel like they make a specific point that these are supposed to be leaders in their respective fields. To be fair, I haven't watched it in forever so I could definitely be remembering that wrong.
The biologist trying to touch the snake alien thing is the stupid decision that made me the maddest in this film. Like who does he think he is, Steve Irwin?! And the thing is CLEARLY doing a threat display when it flares its hood out and he still tries to pet it, such an obviously dumb move!
"We recruited one really good captain, a few solid workers and then a bunch of people we scraped out of the finest clown colleges in the world to go on this incredibly crazy difficult space expedition." There's some effective imagery and individual moments/performances but yeah the general story and what actually happens is a real mess. The bit where that guys helmet is melting into his face stuck with me for a long time though, gah.
What annoys me in this game is how stupid all the scientists are. The guy who maps the caves get lost. The biologist is attacked when he tries to touch a clearly aggressive life form. People can only run in straight lines... other than that, I do like the movie.
I have known some very naive biologists that would absolutely touch a new species with a gloved hand. Being a biologist doesn't give you expertise on animal behaviour. That's its own specialization.
@idiot_city5444 Yeah....the weird horror element in an otherwise magnificent movie about humans sacrificing themselves for mankind. Yeah....slimey sun zombie....so....fun.
It should also be named the "Prometheus School of Not Paying Attention" otherwise people would see that Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do run sideways at 27:53
@@ttanza4004Manoeuvring around obstacles while *_still staying in the path of the rolling spaceship_* isn't the same as running _out from underneath_ it. Spoiler Alert! Vickers _(Charlize Theron)_ still got squashed and Shaw _(Noomi Rapace)_ only survived by plot armour, not intelligence. Both would have survived if they'd *actually* run sideways, which they didn't.
Oh how the lyrics of Teen Spirit fit this movie… “I feel stupid and contagious” - that sums up all the characters to be fair, some are stupid, some are contagious (well, they are exposed to a contagious pathogen). “Here we are now, entertain us” - sadly, Ridley Scott did not entertain many of us sufficiently.
Yep. He also makes big scientifically idiotic mistakes like taking his helmet off on an entirely new planet and he antagonizes the android for seemingly no reason. He reads less to me like a doctor and more like a frat boy with daddy's money.
It should also be called the "Prometheus school of people not paying attention to the movie screen" otherwise they would have seen that Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do indeed run sideways from the falling derelict ship at 27:53 in the video above.
Unfortunately, that is how people do behave. I've watched people do this with avalanches. Head down, in the path of the slip instead of across and out of it. We often see people startled by a moving object which would have missed them, actually jump into its way. Panic is a core emotional response. Emotions aren't rational or logical.
@@AdeboFunkyVoodoo Yup, Safety Training always includes 'flee perpendicular to the wind / smoke plume' - and people are always like 'of course, what else' - but people really don't do it unless they're trained to.
"Guy Pearce in crazy old-age makeup." Part of the build up of this film was releasing at least one video vignette before the actual release of the film. The specific piece I'm thinking of was called 'The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023', in which Guy Pearce plays a younger Peter Weyland. There was a similar video released before 'Alien: Covenant' - it might be worthwhile to watch or else you're going to be similarly confused by particular casting decisions in that movie.
The tech in this movie looking better than Alien (1979) never bothered me. this is the CEO's ship. of COURSE it's fully kitted out. and the Nostromo is held together by duct tape since it's for the scut workers.
Kinda like in the Star WArs prequels, everything looks lush and detailed and like art and then when the Empire takes over, everything is gray, souless and industrial. What I don't like is when Star Trek has TV shows that take place in the same era as TOS and they don't even bother trying to have any sort of continuity visually or lore wise. Just say it's a reboot.
That's not an excuse. The design language remains the same regardless whether something cheap or expensive. It changes largely with time, not with price. I've had a $100 Chinese smartphone, and yet some people said about it 'wow, it looks so expensive.' I now have a phone that costs 5 times as much. Still, doesn't look or work significantly different. And if I buy a phone that costs 10 times more, it will still look and work largely the same. If we make comparison to phones, in movies it's like everyone uses smartphones, 100 years passes, and then everyone uses only rotary landline phones for some reason.
@HistoritorJimaldus if your talking about Warhammer 40K the humans intentionally regress due to AI going rogue and trying to kill humanity plus the fact that Chaos can use AI.
The bit that always kills me with this movie is the whole not taking any weapons to a possibly hostile alien world because “we’re doing science” nonsense. I once watched a PBS Nova special about a recent paleontological dig somewhere in the Arctic Circle and they had an actual official policy that EVERY person on the site was to carry a rifle when outside the camp’s buildings because it was Polar Bear territory and dinosaur bones aren’t worth losing your life over. P.S. for my fellow animal lovers, I don’t think they ever even had to use the guys except to scare off occasional bears that got a little too curious.
There’s plenty of stories all throughout history of explorers making dumb decisions out of arrogance and getting themselves and others into dangerous situations, often leading to catastrophe and death. The expedition in this movie was funded and organized by a superstitious old rich man with a god complex. Of course things wouldn’t be done up to code. Lol
I guess it was an hidden order by weyland. You don't wanna anger god in your last moments. He didn't care about safety of the crew. He just wanted to gamble on the last moments of his life for immortality without any kind of misunderstanding. He knew if engineers got angry he's certainly done anyways.
Yeah where Polar Bears are concerned a kilometer is too close for comfort. You need to make sure your personal space is huge and you'll defend it if they get too near.
Prometheus set in 2089-2093 range, Alien set in 2122. Think early 90's and 2020's for example. How far technology has come in that period of time. What most advanced stuff from that era can compare to what we have today. Can you imagine movie about reachest men set 30 years prior to this day there they will have blu-ray, iPhone analog, modern day pc etc and not call it bullshit or sci-fi.
The first half of the movie showed a lot of promise, but then Scott for some reason thinks it was spicy to reveal her as Weylan's daughter, and Weylan only wanted to ask the Engineer for immortality, and Shaw only wanted to know why the Engineers hate us. It really diminished the movie and seriously lowered the bar. I don't get why he thought we would find those things so interesting. Also, for whatever reason, the "invitation" star pattern lead us to a weapons facility, not their home world.
I always imagined that this script started out with a bunch of scientist characters acting like scientists, and someone said 'snarky space truckers were a lot more fun in the first movie, so make them act more like that'.
That's certainly the justification used in production, but it doesn't track. Sure, a luxury yacht is going to be far nicer than a cargo ship, but the core systems like navigation and pilot controls would be similar. Aljen was a product of the 70's. The green screen clunky displays and illuminated buttons were a fitting, blue collar space design for the time. But PromCov took the redesign too far. It should have stuck closer to the design of mother's den. Remember that these films are supposedly 20 years before Alien. The way PromCov depicts it, modern cargoships should still be sailing with wooden barrels, sextants and brass fittings.
I think the problem is that Ridley Scott is an excellent director but he isn't a good writer/producer. Alien, Blade runner, Gladiator etc = not written by him. Prometheus, Covenant etc = co-written and produced by him. 🤷
@@rosswhite5975 I'd put it this way; Scott is a Director, period. Not a writer/director like Tarantino or Nolan. And despite being a Great Director he doesn't always pick the best scripts. He'll even start shooting a film with only half a script, as he did on Gladiator, but as that film demonstrates, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a disaster.
The redhead geologist is me in multiplayer co-op video games. A cautious, risk assessing strategist who's the first to die because I try help someone who is the exact opposite.
I discovered the "Prometheus school of some people not paying attention to the movie screen" at 23:57 (in the video above) when Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do indeed run sideways from the falling derelict ship.
Couldn't agree more with George, I think this movie's biggest flaw was one of it's writer being Damon Lindelof, (a writer from Lost). He's one these writers who's big into the mystery box trope and doesn't realise that not every story needs one.
If certain things weren't cut....the whole Davis Engineer conversation was in the script with a full breakdown as to why the engineer flipped out and why they were coming to wipe out humans
@@jlight191 To add on: One thing that has always bugged me about this movie is how the Captain declares that they were at a weapons facility. I later found out there was a cut scene that explains him going on a mission to a weapons facility which had an issue to explain how he makes that deduction.
I honestly love these two movies, Prometheus and Covenant. I can see some of the point people have against it but if you look past some of the simple stuff like dumb scientists as many say, these two movies are very poetic, about life itself, creation, art and the biggest part of it is David which by the way absolutely stellar performance from Michael Fassbender. You'll see more of what I mean in the next one :) after Ripley of course, David is my most favorite character out of the ENTIRE franchise. He's incredibly interesting.
To anyone whos gonna say things like "its just a movie they dont need to be realistic" or "people in all alien movies are dumb!" no, this movie specifically made them to be doctors, explorers and scientists, sane ones too unlike Alien 4. so to have them forget something as basic as helmets would be like if in Aliens, all those soldiers suddenly forgot to not hold their rifles by the barrel and burned their hand, thus rendering them unable to fight. this movie made people dumb just to move the plot along, rather than coming up with actual scenarios to justify them.
I think the point was that they were meant to be particularly curious, adventurous scientists (with a few exceptions), but they push it a little too far once or twice to make something happen and it leads the audience to be less charitable to the decision-making of all the characters
I've dated professors/doctors. Just because you know a lot about something, that really doesn't mean that you are competent at life. In fact, it often indicates the exact opposite. A head full of quantum gravity equations, often doesn't know how to hold a simple conversation or navigate a highway.
@@brooklynnewyork23 That's true and it's also believable for a crew of essentially miners to want to show humanity to another of their crew. Just the simple fact that no one questioned Shaw when she says "I choose to believe." is enough to break immersion.
This movie is definitely flawed but it has some INCREDIBLE scenes. The C-section, David watching the alien holograms, the snake thingy attacking…plus the music is amazing.
Which is why it's bizarre that they didn't make sure the script was at least mediocre rather than dogshit. At least in this kind of case you can blame it on a famous writer/director being too stubborn(or surrounded by yes-men) to be told the script needs polishing.
It's one of the things that doesn't change, thank goodness. The other is the big eyes and shoulder roll by Simone at the end. I have to stay to watch that as George spits out names creatively designed to be as hard as possible to say at speed. Makes my day.
I love the opening sequence showing the Engineer sacrificing himself to seed his DNA onto this barren, but promising world, thus creating humanity as we know it. Then Prometheus finds a derelict Engineer military outpost, with ships stocked with a weaponized version of the pathogen they previously used to seed many worlds, the previous inhabitant Engineers having been presumably destroyed by said pathogen escaping. I still really, really like this movie, despite its obvious issues, because it was beautifully done and the premise above is so compelling. Alien: Covenant does a great job of continuing the story and answering some of the questions intentionally left unanswered by Prometheus. Really hope Ridley Scott gets around to making the 3rd part of this trilogy soon. I'd love to see how he ties it all together.
facts. i feel like there were alot more ideas surrounded that that never came to fruition. i know they did do some advertising with a young wayland on youtube before this movie came out.
@@CapnLubeHandles Yeah, and Guy Pearce was great in that fake Ted Talk, but they really should have cast some actual old guy with a similar look, because that old man makeup was rough...
Noomi Rapace who played Dr. Elizabeth Shaw was AMAZING in the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy films. Hopefully you get a chance to react to them one day as well. :)
To be fair, studies have shown that under extreme stress, people do REALLY STUPID things. I can't justify pretty much anything else in this film, but not running sideways is something that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
If it was a second or two, then we'd make allowances for panic, but that running scene seemed to take forever, and I ended up screaming "just turn dammit" at the screen.
Obviously realistically people do stupid things and in that situation your first thought would be to just run away not necessarily off to the side, you also only have your own pov and not larger shots of the scene like the audience does when viewing it in its entirety, however when you watch it the obvious thing to do to survive is to go off to the side and that annoys audiences because they've thought of it and the filmmakers haven't so the death should've been directed in a way that the only way to survive is by running in a straight line if you want her to be crushed by the ship.
George describe the intentions well. For many years Ridley Scott talked about wanting to return Alien and explore the origin of the "space jockey" in the chair. He mentioned it in commentary tracks, etc. Everyone went into this expecting one movie and as it ended, it seemed to fall into place (the ship, literally falling into place), but not quite so. Then he starts talking about a trilogy. The second movie barely did well and a third from him is probably on hold indefinitely. Instead, the studio went in the direction of the "Romulus" movie that came out this year.
Commenting as the review starts, but i could not finish this movie when i first saw this. The two scientists leaving when they find the "scary room" and proceed to be lost. I was so mad cause they just showed that they mapped the whole cave system and one of them was supposedly the top geologist and he can't read a cave. I finally finished it loke a year later when my friend had us watch it. I do not regret stopping it the first time.
My cope for that is the silica storm trashed the signal to the pups scanners and the minimap was a "cloud only" solution kinda like google maps when no offline maps are saved.
I had the urge to turn it off when they took off their helmets, and again when they freaked out about finding an alien corpse in the alien building, and again when they got lost despite the map, and again when the zoologist tried to pet the alien cobra... unfortunately I ignored those urges and finished the movie, hating every minute of it. The only good thing about that movie is that it made me a lot more picky about what I watch(and what I finish watching), saving me countless hours of boredom and frustration in the years since.
One way I think of the more advanced tech, is that this is a cutting edge exploration ship so has high tech equipment while the original ship was a freight hauler so had more bare bones old tech.
Thank God, finally someone is not dumb and noticed the xenomorph carving on the wall. Prometheus and Covenant are not direct prequels. Basically they are "the David experiment". David learn about xenomorphs, reading the carving on the wall and understand the black liquid should have something to do with it, and the fact that was the menace the space jockeys were run away from. When he asks the captain how far he would go for the love of science, and got a "a lot", he putted a stain of the black liquid in his glass to see what happens. It's not a direct prequel, xenomorphs already exsist for years. Since people kept on thinking these were prequels, 20th Century Fox forced Scott to not going further and dropped the trilogy. The reason why the engineer kills David and Weyland is because he perceived Weyland as someone who made the same mistake they made with the xenomorphs, creating something without consciousness and ready to kill without regrets if necessary, just because he likes the idea of living forever. So an android is not so different from a xenomorph in the engineer's eyes. There's an entire dialogue between David and the engineer, which was cutted off the release version for this. In this version, where the engineer just looks David after understood Weyland desires, and he kills them both without saying a word, the scene has much more power.
@@ZombieALX I didn't say it's not a prequel, I said it's not A DIRECT prequel. It's an own story, doesn't lead to Alien. Ridley Scott himself told it by saying "they're set before, but they're not direct prequels. It's a paralel story placed in the same universe". The more you keep on saying they're prequels, the less is the probability Fox will release the last movie of the trilogy.
@@lucasdolding6924 I didn't say it's not a prequel, I said it's not A DIRECT prequel. It's an own story, doesn't lead to Alien. Ridley Scott himself told it by saying "they're set before, but they're not direct prequels. It's a paralel story placed in the same universe".
Prometheus starts: Elizabeth Shaw sets out in search of the creators of humanity. Two hours later: Elizabeth Shaw sets out in search of the creators of humanity.
To understand the meaning of the engineers, watch the deleted scenes on youtube. It will tell you a lot. A lot of important information was cut out. The deleted scenes explain everything
I saw this in theaters and went into it having NO IDEA it was related to the Alien franchise. I thought it was a standalone sci-fi movie. I grew up in the 80s watching the Alien movies so naturally it was a shock.
@@djsone3499yeah same! this was the first movie in the franchise i ever saw actually.. and i didn't realise until Alien: Covenant came out years later that it was related to those Sigourney Weaver movies i'd heard about lol
As many have pointed out, one of this movies biggest flaws is "supposedly smart people doing stupid things" but to me, the worst thing is giving the aliens an origin story. The fact that they came out of a lab is far less interesting than the idea that space is full of unknown stuff, and some forms of life might just be simply terrifying. If you had to explain where they came from, they shoulda just come from a planet with a particularly brutal environment that evolved MANY varieties of especially deadly species. Like planet Australia or something. The fact that the were engineered in a lab by very human looking aliens makes them so much less scary.
plus, the whole chain of evolution doesn't make much sense here if you take it as a prequel: human(and parasite) + human = giant squid facehugger + alien giant = ¿kinda xenomorph? - but then how the f*ck we jump from that into alien queens laying facehuggers eggs.
I don't necessarily disagree, however right from the very start, in the first two movies, the _'source'_ of the Xeno creatures was a crashed alien ship, not a natural habitat, so it was heavily implied that the owners of that ship were involved in their creation.
@@Foxtrot369 Why is that implied? He could have landed on a planet, got a facehugger stowaway and crashed once the chestburster did its thing. That's what I always assumed.
9:50 Yeah I got frustrated when he took off his helmet. If humanity gets to the point of landing on another planet with life, I could only imagine the protocols that would need to take place. Removing your protective gear and potentially endangering the entire crew would be worthy of a criminal trial. Ridiculously irresponsible.
9:45 Tech Sgt Chen: "Sniff sniff. Whooh uh whooh. Seems OK." I'm not sure the audience is divided, I think that each audience member is themselves divided. It's a really fun movie that contains incredibly stupid moments in it (guys touching things they shouldn't for no reason, running directly away from something they should have run to the side from, etc.). Great vehicle to move Rooney Mara from a great job in "Dragon Tattoo" to Hollywood, but sadly it didn't work as well as I wish it would have.
LOL! The squid monster! For every father who has seen their wife go to thru a c-section in the delivery room, delivering their new little squid..... Yup been there, done that!🤣
I was very disappointed that you guys didn't realize that that's the same type of ship that they found in the original Alien as well as that the pilot that had a chest burster that they found in the original alien is a progenitor just like the guys in this movie, but you never saw it with its mask off.
And yes I understand it's been awhile since you've seen Alien. I've had my whole life to watch it several times so I guess I can understand you're not recognizing it.
@@idiot_city5444I wouldn't go that far. I actually like both of them and we have the hindsight of watching the movie. Probably many many times over many many years.
@@sumelar So a creature bursting out from your body or having to cut yourself to get something out is grape? Please, don't try argue semantics. The genre is body horror, not "grape" horror. Sure, "forceful insemitation" is part of it but the focus and the horror is what comes after. Otherwise by that logic any movie with a parasite is about "grape"
George's analysis is spot on. This movie had so much potential and really kewl elements but falls apart with baffling characters, decisions and plot directions. Plus Ridley Scott seems to have this burr up his ass about religion/creationism vs science/evolution (which is why the scientists are so dumb). He continues this theme in the next movie.
I've sat down and TRIED to like this movie so many times because I love the premise and potential. It looks so amazing and the atmosphere is perfect. But its just so flawed I end up switching off
I love that Simone recognised that actor from The OC, no other reactor i've watched has mentioned that. He played Trey Atwood, Ryan's trash older brother that Marissa has to shoot to save his life AKA the scene that originated the 'mmmmm whatcha say' meme! he will always be an icon to me lol
I genuinely hate it, because it's a fantastic movie in every aspect except the actual script. Such a waste of the amazing work of hundreds of people, because Ridley Scott can't write a decent script to save his life, and no one seems to have the balls to tell him.
Even though this got mixed reviews, I still think it was very well made as far as the storyline and the special effects. They actually spliced together footage from Jordan and Iceland to create the visuals for the planet they went to.
I don't think there's a movie I have gotten more entertainment out of than this one. Dunking on it with my friends, listening to others dunk on it. It all adds up to a movie I had about as much enjoyment out of as the LotR trilogy, even if for wholly different reasons. 10/10, will dunk on again.
If this wasnt attached to the alien ip, i'd consider it a pretty cool sci-fi with alot of stupidity and annoying things. But as an ALIEN film, it can simply f'**k off! First simply by the fact that ALL the tech (ships, holograms, computers, the android etc etc) is by far superior to anything in alien 1. Its so disrespectful, saying this is a "prequal". The concept of engineers is so lame, uninteresting and badly designed. This is just a powertrip by Ridley to make a movie about things that he's interested in. Ai, god, the origin of humans and other bs. It should simply not be linked to alien! Neither should Covenant. Romulus is well made and somewhat "okay". But that movie has tons stuff that feels off or just wrong and an mostly an uninteresting cast. The Alien franchise ended with Alien 4 in my book.
I really enjoy the first half of this movie and feel really annoyed by the second half. It sets up so many interesting questions and then it just turns into a bad Alien (1979)/Aliens (1986) imitation. Like what's the point of setting up the Engineers if all the Engineer character gets to do is punch people lol. I don't mind that the Engineers take on a firm antagonistic role at all, but it just feels like squandered potential with the way it's executed. Such a frustrating film, but nobody will ever take away my massive enjoyment of the first half I still feel when watching it, even with all the extremely silly decisions some characters make.
Noomi Rapace, who plays Elizabeth Shaw, is the "original" Lisbeth Salander in the Sweedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She's such an stellar actress, legit one of my favorites, and we only see a fraction of that in this movie! She was recently in an AppleTV sci-fi/drama show called Constellation where she plays a scientist and astronaut, I highly recommend it~
The Bulk of this movie is set in 2093, 28 Years before the events of the 1979-Original. And I guess you can explain in-universe the difference in how advanced the technology here is in comparsion to the _Nostromo_ is that the _Prometheus_ is a brand new high-tech Science Vessel with all the gimmicks a crazy Billionaire like Weyland could afford/think of, while the _Nostromo_ was a rusty, used-up Commercial Vessel that was probably commissioned long before the _Prometheus_ was even designed. In other words: One is a shiny Prototype Sports Car, the other a 70s Truck.
its incredible how many poeple dont remember the big chair guy in the 1st alien movie when it appears in this one
Yep, the Space Jockey.
Only it's a different one in this movie.
One of the biggest mysteries of Alien was the lore behind the Space Jockey. Just to have Ridley ruin it all by making it nothing but a glorified space suit. One of the biggest reasons I kind of hate this movie.
Cause we rather forget that this movie exists and preserve our memories of the 1st one
I was sure they were gonna immediately recognise it from the first Alien! 😂 Still glad to see another Prometheus reaction!
Biologists not wearing respirators in an unknown environment, cartographers not knowing how to read maps and getting lost, xenobiologist attempting to pet the first alien life form he sees.... There are some very dumb characters in this.
Truckers in space, Marines in space, Prisoners in space, Scientists in space...and idiots in space.
Now that I think about it, the idiocy on display by these scientists does sync up perfectly with the idiocy of the scientists in Resurrection
The only smart person is Vickers actually with worrying about the biohazards
And Romulus is scrappers in space.
@@danielpeckham5520 But then she is stupid a run in the same direction the ship is falling
the sad thing is that last one can represents Covenant too
The visible tech difference makes sense if you think of the Nostromo as an Amazon delivery van and the Prometheus as Jeff Bezos’s personal yacht.
Perfect way of putting it! I’ve been trying to explain this to people. These were explorers, the Nostromo were closer to commercial truck drivers
Prometheus set in 2089-2093 range, Alien set in 2122. Think early 90's and 2020's for example. How far technology has come in that period of time. What most advanced stuff from that era can compare to what we have today.
Still doesn't really work. Ridley messed that up along with tons of other stuff
It doesn't make sense. It's not that Bezo's yacht has tech different from regular tech. Yeah, it may be more fancy. But otherwise I don't think he owns something that regular people can't have.
Except they keep the high tech aesthetic in Covenant which is just a colony ship. It's simply a stylistic choice by Ridley that doesn't make sense in-universe. The Star Wars prequels made the same mistake.
This whole movie is anathema to George’s love of “competent people doing things competently”.
I feel like Shaw and David both do fit that description though, with Shaw’s surgery scene and David’s scheming. The rest of the cast though, yeah…
Sci Fi "Dumb and Dumberers"
I mean, the characters in the original movies weren’t exactly MENSA members themselves.
@blakemeads9225 They were space truckers. These were scientists specially chosen to go on a super secret mission to an unexplored planet to possibly find an alien civilization
My favorite aspect of this was the geologist who maps the place gets lost.
"I have thoughts about this movie, they are not all good" - George
and he hadn't even gotten to the running away from the rolling spaceship scene 🤣
Everyone says run sideways but nobody notices that they do run sideways at 27:53
You mean the "prometheus school of running away from things"
That's the one thing I DON'T have a issue with. Have you ever tried to run a football field length? That ships gotta be that size at least in width, and I don't know about you, but running that in a panic of death if you fail sounds really hard. I've always found it dumb that's what people usually point out with this movie filled with so many dumber issues.
I like to think that "The Martian" was Ridley Scott's apology to all Scientists everywhere for how they were portrayed in this film.
One very key thing you guys did not appear to recognize: if you go back and watch the original Alien, the ship that the crew of the Nostromo finds is one of those Engineer ships, and they even examine a dead Engineer in the movie, which is their first clue about the chestbursting. They also land on a planet that may or may not be nearby, based on the name. In this film, the crew travels to LV-223; in the original Alien, the Nostromo stops on LV-426.
Also, not that it's important, but one way the difference in technology between Alien and Prometheus can be easily explained away (for the most part, anyway), is that in Alien, the crew of the Nostromo are essentially space truckers. Much like our real-world truckers still communicate using CB radio (or did; not sure if they still do), it would make sense for the Nostromo, a blue collar working rig, to have much less fancy technology than a scientific expedition financed by (and secretly including) Peter Weyland himself.
Plus and this is really important, both the budget and production quality over the decades between the two movies: Have come a long way.
Making a modern expensive movie, look and feel as crappie if not crappier than its decades old forebearer would probably not get past the films financiers nevermind the audience.
I think it's supposed to be the same planet, based on the ship's final position when it lands. They probably forgot what they called it in Alien, or an in-universe explanation is they were using an alternate naming system, which happens in Astronomy even now. Same star or object in the sky might have multiple designations depending on the catalog used.
Weyland industries the successor of Tyrell Corp - Ridleys homage to the Blade runner universe.
The only issue is that the Engineer in Alien is clearly a giant, dwarfing the Nostromo crew. Obviously just a simple retcon, but still noticeable.
@@robertcampbell8070 This is because they had 2 for the Space Jockey. (And yes, I will NEVER refer to it as an Engineer). One of the sets was scaled down. The actors you see in the space suits are actually children. If you look close, you'll see that the Space Jockey appears larger in one, and smaller in the other.
Prometheus is what happens when you DON'T have Dan O'Bannon writing the script. It is also an example of what happens when people who don't respect the original try to make a prequel.
Prometheus is also what happens when you cobble together a script that was cribbed off of several episodes of the History Channel show Ancient Aliens.
David: "I want to create a perfect being."
Idris Elba and Charlize Theron knocking boots: "Already working on that."
25:00 To this day idk why they cut the scene where they talked with the alien and instead just had the 9000 IQ alien go on a Hulk rampage the second he woke up.
I think the idea is supposed to be that humanity is a failed experiment. Whatever they had in mind for them wasn’t what they actually got when their creation is face to face with them. Kind of like the parent who really wants kids but then ends up hating them because the kids didn’t turn out how they wanted. So I think the rage was meant to illustrate the Engineer’s frustration at their hard work and (literal) sacrifice resulting in an inferior lifeform. Given how eugenicist they seem to be with bioengineering new species, I’d imagine they view it as a great tragedy that one of their own died in order to create this species of lesser beings. So his rage-filled barbarism is just an extension of that frustration. At least that’s my interpretation
Simple answer: Ridley Scott has lost his mind. How else do you explain Gladiator 2?
@@johnman9386 A 300 million dollar budget to work with?
I think it really pushes the indifference towards his creations, not even trying to communicate with them. To the engineers, we are bad product - that’s all.
@@SceneOnFilm Yes after doing research after watching the movie that much is clear, after watching the deleted scene especially. You know, some context to why he is going on a rampage.
The Reason this movie is divided and disappointed many is that it was built as the movie that was going to answer the question of where the space jockey from the first Alien movie came from. However the script had a rewrite with Damon Lindelof (writer from Lost) and we got his classic answering questions with more questions. So at the end of the film you still dont know anything about the space jockey origin and are left with more questions that make the timeline even more confusing. It gets worse in Alien Covenant, cuz its a sequel to this movie, but you can tell they just abandon any plans of answering the questions, they literally wipe the slate clean and it just turns into a slasher film at the end, completely destroying the timeline and yes these are some of the dumbest "scientist" ever captured on film.
To me it took all of the questions around the Space Jockey and answered them with one sentence: "It's just a stupid space suit". Ridley utterly squandered the lore that could have existed around the Jockey. I guess the only question remaining unanswered is who was inside it. Was it an Engineer or someone else?
@@nodak81 Why are you so bent out of shape over it being a space suit? What did you think it was going to be?
George's reaction to taking off the helmet is exactly mine when I saw this in the theater. For a team of super duper experts they are really, really stupid in this movie.
dumbest smart people
It's why I can't like this or Covenant. They are all supposed to be scientists, and all think antithetically to scientific procedures.
There’s a very important detail in this movie that I feel like most people overlook (and it’s directly hinted at several times at the beginning of the movie), that this expedition was very hastily put together by a superstitious old man with a god complex. And the people he brought along probably wouldn’t be the best and brightest. They would be people who are willing to take the risk for money.
@@calvinallen3424 “It’s what I choose to believe.” I don’t remember that step in the scientific process… And up to that line, I assumed the robot was gonna get everyone killed.
@@blakemeads9225 I feel like they make a specific point that these are supposed to be leaders in their respective fields. To be fair, I haven't watched it in forever so I could definitely be remembering that wrong.
“The search for our beginning could lead to our end” was also the tag line for “Human Centipede”...
Thumbs up for the joke, but also 🤮
Bravo
😂😂😂
Ohhhhhh 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
I find that hard to swallow. 😂🤮
The biologist trying to touch the snake alien thing is the stupid decision that made me the maddest in this film. Like who does he think he is, Steve Irwin?! And the thing is CLEARLY doing a threat display when it flares its hood out and he still tries to pet it, such an obviously dumb move!
Especially considering his reaction to the harmless corpse of an alien they encountered right before that.
Kane in the first movie saw eggs and put his face over top and got face hugged same thing.
Congratulations Shaw it’s…a squid
I understood that reference.
I'll just get up and run around after major surgery...
Did anything about that seem weird to you?
@@antonycharnock2993Hey, she had…staples. 😝
Squidward Shaw.
All I'll remember from this movie is what George correctly called "such a stupid death"
"We recruited one really good captain, a few solid workers and then a bunch of people we scraped out of the finest clown colleges in the world to go on this incredibly crazy difficult space expedition."
There's some effective imagery and individual moments/performances but yeah the general story and what actually happens is a real mess. The bit where that guys helmet is melting into his face stuck with me for a long time though, gah.
Noomi Rapace is the main hero in original "Girl with the dragon tattoo" trilogy.
What annoys me in this game is how stupid all the scientists are. The guy who maps the caves get lost. The biologist is attacked when he tries to touch a clearly aggressive life form. People can only run in straight lines... other than that, I do like the movie.
*The guy who maps the caves get lost.*
AND has a map on his wrist. AND has radio contact with the Captain who could have also guided them back.
Game?
To be fair they were pretty dumb in the original alien 😅
I have known some very naive biologists that would absolutely touch a new species with a gloved hand. Being a biologist doesn't give you expertise on animal behaviour. That's its own specialization.
Knowledge in something a scientific field doesn't make you an intelligent person in the ways of everyday life .
I love the opening scene to this film. The big lad boshes a Jägermeister and falls to bits. Man, I've been there.
Every time I see Benedict Wong in a space-related movie it makes me re-watch Sunshine.
Good choice Sunshine is a favourite of mine.
Easily the most underrated Sci-fi. Incredible film
Love when the crispy scientist is chasing them
@idiot_city5444 Yeah....the weird horror element in an otherwise magnificent movie about humans sacrificing themselves for mankind. Yeah....slimey sun zombie....so....fun.
@peartree8338 it's the best part about it, cope harder
27:45 Ah yes, the _'Prometheus School of Running Away from Things'_ - DING
Came here to write this 😂
It should also be named the "Prometheus School of Not Paying Attention" otherwise people would see that Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do run sideways at 27:53
Shaw rolled 10 feet tops and was fine😂
@@ttanza4004Manoeuvring around obstacles while *_still staying in the path of the rolling spaceship_* isn't the same as running _out from underneath_ it.
Spoiler Alert! Vickers _(Charlize Theron)_ still got squashed and Shaw _(Noomi Rapace)_ only survived by plot armour, not intelligence. Both would have survived if they'd *actually* run sideways, which they didn't.
"Sin Count"
George: You know what this smells like to me?
Me: Teen spirit?
Oh how the lyrics of Teen Spirit fit this movie…
“I feel stupid and contagious” - that sums up all the characters to be fair, some are stupid, some are contagious (well, they are exposed to a contagious pathogen).
“Here we are now, entertain us” - sadly, Ridley Scott did not entertain many of us sufficiently.
This was not studio interference. This was ENTIRELYY down to Ridley Scott's hubris.
The husband character is the most infuriating. He has helped discover a treasure trove of alien technology and he is pouting like a child.
Yep. He also makes big scientifically idiotic mistakes like taking his helmet off on an entirely new planet and he antagonizes the android for seemingly no reason. He reads less to me like a doctor and more like a frat boy with daddy's money.
@@ItsLexy That's actually really good comparison. lol
He was sad that he’s not Tom Hardy
It’s referred to as the Prometheus school of running
...of running away from things.
@@lobachevscki Yeah that's kinda the essential part of that meme lol
It should also be called the "Prometheus school of people not paying attention to the movie screen" otherwise they would have seen that Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do indeed run sideways from the falling derelict ship at 27:53 in the video above.
Them running from the ship rolling towards them was so dumb that it became a meme.
Unfortunately, that is how people do behave.
I've watched people do this with avalanches. Head down, in the path of the slip instead of across and out of it.
We often see people startled by a moving object which would have missed them, actually jump into its way.
Panic is a core emotional response. Emotions aren't rational or logical.
@@AdeboFunkyVoodoo Yup, Safety Training always includes 'flee perpendicular to the wind / smoke plume' - and people are always like 'of course, what else' - but people really don't do it unless they're trained to.
People are too harsh on that scene, in that moment most people would have done the same thing just running blindly in one direction without thinking.
It's been a trope forever. I doubt that you'll find anyone in films that does anything more than move straight when avoiding a hazard.
I know, but common sense and logical thinking often go out the window in those kinds of situations. I hate to admit it but I'd prob be the same.
12:52 - Oh, poor George. :( In the next film, the characters will land on an unfamiliar planet without helmets. Only in earflaps.
And then, to add insult to injury, one gets infected through the ear!
A bunch of extras from Idiocracy have stumbled into an Alien movie.
I usually refer to this movie as "Alien starring the Scooby Gang", but this works too! 😄
Hide your Apples, Simone's comin'
"Guy Pearce in crazy old-age makeup." Part of the build up of this film was releasing at least one video vignette before the actual release of the film. The specific piece I'm thinking of was called 'The Peter Weyland Files: TED Conference, 2023', in which Guy Pearce plays a younger Peter Weyland. There was a similar video released before 'Alien: Covenant' - it might be worthwhile to watch or else you're going to be similarly confused by particular casting decisions in that movie.
It happens. Casting locks them down and the script changes. In "Passengers", Andy Garcia was credited and then only showed up as a one shot cameo.
The tech in this movie looking better than Alien (1979) never bothered me. this is the CEO's ship. of COURSE it's fully kitted out. and the Nostromo is held together by duct tape since it's for the scut workers.
Kinda like in the Star WArs prequels, everything looks lush and detailed and like art and then when the Empire takes over, everything is gray, souless and industrial. What I don't like is when Star Trek has TV shows that take place in the same era as TOS and they don't even bother trying to have any sort of continuity visually or lore wise. Just say it's a reboot.
I mean in the year 40,000 they’re using parchment and wax seals and using spaces to stoke the plasma furnaces so….
That's not an excuse. The design language remains the same regardless whether something cheap or expensive. It changes largely with time, not with price.
I've had a $100 Chinese smartphone, and yet some people said about it 'wow, it looks so expensive.' I now have a phone that costs 5 times as much. Still, doesn't look or work significantly different. And if I buy a phone that costs 10 times more, it will still look and work largely the same.
If we make comparison to phones, in movies it's like everyone uses smartphones, 100 years passes, and then everyone uses only rotary landline phones for some reason.
@HistoritorJimaldus if your talking about Warhammer 40K the humans intentionally regress due to AI going rogue and trying to kill humanity plus the fact that Chaos can use AI.
I can understand a certain difference in tech between the two "classes", but this feels too much for comfort.
George is the "Guy" of this reaction. "IS THERE AIR?! YOU DON'T KNOW!".
The bit that always kills me with this movie is the whole not taking any weapons to a possibly hostile alien world because “we’re doing science” nonsense. I once watched a PBS Nova special about a recent paleontological dig somewhere in the Arctic Circle and they had an actual official policy that EVERY person on the site was to carry a rifle when outside the camp’s buildings because it was Polar Bear territory and dinosaur bones aren’t worth losing your life over.
P.S. for my fellow animal lovers, I don’t think they ever even had to use the guys except to scare off occasional bears that got a little too curious.
There’s plenty of stories all throughout history of explorers making dumb decisions out of arrogance and getting themselves and others into dangerous situations, often leading to catastrophe and death.
The expedition in this movie was funded and organized by a superstitious old rich man with a god complex. Of course things wouldn’t be done up to code. Lol
I guess it was an hidden order by weyland.
You don't wanna anger god in your last moments. He didn't care about safety of the crew. He just wanted to gamble on the last moments of his life for immortality without any kind of misunderstanding. He knew if engineers got angry he's certainly done anyways.
Yeah where Polar Bears are concerned a kilometer is too close for comfort. You need to make sure your personal space is huge and you'll defend it if they get too near.
9:50 Galaxy quest flashback when they just randomly take off helmets for no good reason.
Is there air? You don't know! 😄
@@korganrocks3995Seems fine to me...
Could those be the miners?
The technology difference has been explained that rich and powerful have much advanced tech than worker grunts.
Prometheus set in 2089-2093 range, Alien set in 2122. Think early 90's and 2020's for example. How far technology has come in that period of time. What most advanced stuff from that era can compare to what we have today. Can you imagine movie about reachest men set 30 years prior to this day there they will have blu-ray, iPhone analog, modern day pc etc and not call it bullshit or sci-fi.
It's still too advanced
The first half of the movie showed a lot of promise, but then Scott for some reason thinks it was spicy to reveal her as Weylan's daughter, and Weylan only wanted to ask the Engineer for immortality, and Shaw only wanted to know why the Engineers hate us. It really diminished the movie and seriously lowered the bar. I don't get why he thought we would find those things so interesting.
Also, for whatever reason, the "invitation" star pattern lead us to a weapons facility, not their home world.
Good morning! Welcome to the Prometheus school of running away from things!!
"Run sideways", said everyone.
I always imagined that this script started out with a bunch of scientist characters acting like scientists, and someone said 'snarky space truckers were a lot more fun in the first movie, so make them act more like that'.
Earlier drafts of the script make a lot more sense!
And now you've learned lesson #1 from the "Prometheus School of Running Away from Things"
The first guy to die in Alien was the biggest star on the cast at the time.
The Nostromo was an old tow barge, the Prometheus ship is a cutting edge science vessel. The tech is gonna be better than in Alien
That's certainly the justification used in production, but it doesn't track. Sure, a luxury yacht is going to be far nicer than a cargo ship, but the core systems like navigation and pilot controls would be similar. Aljen was a product of the 70's. The green screen clunky displays and illuminated buttons were a fitting, blue collar space design for the time. But PromCov took the redesign too far. It should have stuck closer to the design of mother's den.
Remember that these films are supposedly 20 years before Alien. The way PromCov depicts it, modern cargoships should still be sailing with wooden barrels, sextants and brass fittings.
@AnonEyeMouse yeah, it doesn't work whatsoever
"We're back to Ridley Scott directing this one."
Yeah... that's not really a good thing anymore.
Yeah, a part of me doesn't want to see Gladiator 2. Because I believe it never needed a sequel. The original is a masterpiece.
@@thegunslinger1363Same. It really looks god awful. Ridley Scott only makes bad movies now.
I think the problem is that Ridley Scott is an excellent director but he isn't a good writer/producer. Alien, Blade runner, Gladiator etc = not written by him. Prometheus, Covenant etc = co-written and produced by him. 🤷
@@rosswhite5975 I'd put it this way; Scott is a Director, period. Not a writer/director like Tarantino or Nolan.
And despite being a Great Director he doesn't always pick the best scripts. He'll even start shooting a film with only half a script, as he did on Gladiator, but as that film demonstrates, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a disaster.
@@Unpainted_Huffhines if you replaced the word "really" with "necessarily" I would agree with you 100%.
The redhead geologist is me in multiplayer co-op video games. A cautious, risk assessing strategist who's the first to die because I try help someone who is the exact opposite.
The start of the term “Prometheus school of running away from things. “
George discovers the Prometheus school of running away from things.
I discovered the "Prometheus school of some people not paying attention to the movie screen" at 23:57 (in the video above) when Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron do indeed run sideways from the falling derelict ship.
Couldn't agree more with George, I think this movie's biggest flaw was one of it's writer being Damon Lindelof, (a writer from Lost). He's one these writers who's big into the mystery box trope and doesn't realise that not every story needs one.
Oh Lindelof? No wonder. He loves setting up mysteries, but hates answering them in awesome "perfect twist inducing but seems completely logical" ways.
If certain things weren't cut....the whole Davis Engineer conversation was in the script with a full breakdown as to why the engineer flipped out and why they were coming to wipe out humans
You mean like the first movie? Which only introduced mysteries and didn't solve any?
@@jlight191
To add on: One thing that has always bugged me about this movie is how the Captain declares that they were at a weapons facility. I later found out there was a cut scene that explains him going on a mission to a weapons facility which had an issue to explain how he makes that deduction.
Also "mystery box" is such a tiresome buzzword...
When I saw this it was as though the entire theater muttered "WTF" in unison at then end.
Only wong & idris deserved to live in this movie
For such a visually arresting film, it's soooo disappointing the flaws it has.
I still like watching it. The performances are very good as you would expect.
I honestly love these two movies, Prometheus and Covenant. I can see some of the point people have against it but if you look past some of the simple stuff like dumb scientists as many say, these two movies are very poetic, about life itself, creation, art and the biggest part of it is David which by the way absolutely stellar performance from Michael Fassbender. You'll see more of what I mean in the next one :) after Ripley of course, David is my most favorite character out of the ENTIRE franchise. He's incredibly interesting.
To anyone whos gonna say things like "its just a movie they dont need to be realistic" or "people in all alien movies are dumb!" no, this movie specifically made them to be doctors, explorers and scientists, sane ones too unlike Alien 4. so to have them forget something as basic as helmets would be like if in Aliens, all those soldiers suddenly forgot to not hold their rifles by the barrel and burned their hand, thus rendering them unable to fight. this movie made people dumb just to move the plot along, rather than coming up with actual scenarios to justify them.
I think the point was that they were meant to be particularly curious, adventurous scientists (with a few exceptions), but they push it a little too far once or twice to make something happen and it leads the audience to be less charitable to the decision-making of all the characters
I've dated professors/doctors.
Just because you know a lot about something, that really doesn't mean that you are competent at life. In fact, it often indicates the exact opposite. A head full of quantum gravity equations, often doesn't know how to hold a simple conversation or navigate a highway.
While you're not wrong, Ripley crew breaking quarantine in the interest of being humane, is exactly what starts off this entire franchise.
Booooooooooooo
@@brooklynnewyork23
That's true and it's also believable for a crew of essentially miners to want to show humanity to another of their crew.
Just the simple fact that no one questioned Shaw when she says "I choose to believe." is enough to break immersion.
This works really well as a Dead Space prequel. Including the ship full of Unitologists.
This movie is definitely flawed but it has some INCREDIBLE scenes. The C-section, David watching the alien holograms, the snake thingy attacking…plus the music is amazing.
Which is why it's bizarre that they didn't make sure the script was at least mediocre rather than dogshit. At least in this kind of case you can blame it on a famous writer/director being too stubborn(or surrounded by yes-men) to be told the script needs polishing.
i like that it's been years and George is still just as baffled by Simone's intros
It's one of the things that doesn't change, thank goodness. The other is the big eyes and shoulder roll by Simone at the end. I have to stay to watch that as George spits out names creatively designed to be as hard as possible to say at speed. Makes my day.
I love the opening sequence showing the Engineer sacrificing himself to seed his DNA onto this barren, but promising world, thus creating humanity as we know it. Then Prometheus finds a derelict Engineer military outpost, with ships stocked with a weaponized version of the pathogen they previously used to seed many worlds, the previous inhabitant Engineers having been presumably destroyed by said pathogen escaping.
I still really, really like this movie, despite its obvious issues, because it was beautifully done and the premise above is so compelling. Alien: Covenant does a great job of continuing the story and answering some of the questions intentionally left unanswered by Prometheus. Really hope Ridley Scott gets around to making the 3rd part of this trilogy soon. I'd love to see how he ties it all together.
A young actor in old man makeup for no reason like some flashback is still the funniest thing in this franchise.
facts. i feel like there were alot more ideas surrounded that that never came to fruition. i know they did do some advertising with a young wayland on youtube before this movie came out.
@@CapnLubeHandles Yeah, and Guy Pearce was great in that fake Ted Talk, but they really should have cast some actual old guy with a similar look, because that old man makeup was rough...
@@korganrocks3995 oh i 100% agree there.
“I’m gonna eat all your apples” 😂 that’s my favorite intro
Noomi Rapace who played Dr. Elizabeth Shaw was AMAZING in the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy films. Hopefully you get a chance to react to them one day as well. :)
A death so dumb that Cinemasins calls it 'The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things'
To be fair, studies have shown that under extreme stress, people do REALLY STUPID things. I can't justify pretty much anything else in this film, but not running sideways is something that doesn't bother me in the slightest.
There's a difference between survival instinct & common sense.
If it was a second or two, then we'd make allowances for panic, but that running scene seemed to take forever, and I ended up screaming "just turn dammit" at the screen.
Obviously realistically people do stupid things and in that situation your first thought would be to just run away not necessarily off to the side, you also only have your own pov and not larger shots of the scene like the audience does when viewing it in its entirety, however when you watch it the obvious thing to do to survive is to go off to the side and that annoys audiences because they've thought of it and the filmmakers haven't so the death should've been directed in a way that the only way to survive is by running in a straight line if you want her to be crushed by the ship.
@@Temeraire101 Under extreme duress eg. like war common sense is often not adhered to .
People do irrational things during extreme duress.
@@gregorygant4242 Agreed.
George describe the intentions well. For many years Ridley Scott talked about wanting to return Alien and explore the origin of the "space jockey" in the chair. He mentioned it in commentary tracks, etc. Everyone went into this expecting one movie and as it ended, it seemed to fall into place (the ship, literally falling into place), but not quite so. Then he starts talking about a trilogy. The second movie barely did well and a third from him is probably on hold indefinitely. Instead, the studio went in the direction of the "Romulus" movie that came out this year.
Commenting as the review starts, but i could not finish this movie when i first saw this. The two scientists leaving when they find the "scary room" and proceed to be lost. I was so mad cause they just showed that they mapped the whole cave system and one of them was supposedly the top geologist and he can't read a cave. I finally finished it loke a year later when my friend had us watch it. I do not regret stopping it the first time.
Yeah, when George said they now have a minimap I was thinking "Yeah... hold that thought."
My cope for that is the silica storm trashed the signal to the pups scanners and the minimap was a "cloud only" solution kinda like google maps when no offline maps are saved.
I had the urge to turn it off when they took off their helmets, and again when they freaked out about finding an alien corpse in the alien building, and again when they got lost despite the map, and again when the zoologist tried to pet the alien cobra... unfortunately I ignored those urges and finished the movie, hating every minute of it. The only good thing about that movie is that it made me a lot more picky about what I watch(and what I finish watching), saving me countless hours of boredom and frustration in the years since.
I saw this in IMAX 3D, and seeing the giant face hugger in 3D definitely gave me a different perspective on what that experience would be like IRL
If you go by the chronological release of the Alien movies, the androids go in alphabetical order. Ash-bishop-Call-and now David.
And then they skip E and went all the way to W
@@scorp77snake Someone pointed this out to Ridley Scott, and though it was a coincidence, he didn't like it, so he skipped E.
One way I think of the more advanced tech, is that this is a cutting edge exploration ship so has high tech equipment while the original ship was a freight hauler so had more bare bones old tech.
Thank God, finally someone is not dumb and noticed the xenomorph carving on the wall.
Prometheus and Covenant are not direct prequels. Basically they are "the David experiment". David learn about xenomorphs, reading the carving on the wall and understand the black liquid should have something to do with it, and the fact that was the menace the space jockeys were run away from. When he asks the captain how far he would go for the love of science, and got a "a lot", he putted a stain of the black liquid in his glass to see what happens.
It's not a direct prequel, xenomorphs already exsist for years.
Since people kept on thinking these were prequels, 20th Century Fox forced Scott to not going further and dropped the trilogy.
The reason why the engineer kills David and Weyland is because he perceived Weyland as someone who made the same mistake they made with the xenomorphs, creating something without consciousness and ready to kill without regrets if necessary, just because he likes the idea of living forever. So an android is not so different from a xenomorph in the engineer's eyes.
There's an entire dialogue between David and the engineer, which was cutted off the release version for this. In this version, where the engineer just looks David after understood Weyland desires, and he kills them both without saying a word, the scene has much more power.
They're definitely canon prequels. Watch Romulus
Even if the xenomorphs already existed doesn't mean it's not a prequel, it's set before Alien and is ergo a prequel to that film
@@lucasdolding6924 I didn't say it's not a prequel, I said it's not A DIRECT prequel.
@@ZombieALX I didn't say it's not a prequel, I said it's not A DIRECT prequel. It's an own story, doesn't lead to Alien.
Ridley Scott himself told it by saying "they're set before, but they're not direct prequels. It's a paralel story placed in the same universe".
The more you keep on saying they're prequels, the less is the probability Fox will release the last movie of the trilogy.
@@lucasdolding6924 I didn't say it's not a prequel, I said it's not A DIRECT prequel. It's an own story, doesn't lead to Alien.
Ridley Scott himself told it by saying "they're set before, but they're not direct prequels. It's a paralel story placed in the same universe".
George has discovered the "Prometheus school of running away from things" xD
Ah yes. You just witnessed "The Prometheus school of running away from things".
This is why you should watch Sunshine. An expertly done Sci-Fi experience.
Prometheus starts: Elizabeth Shaw sets out in search of the creators of humanity.
Two hours later: Elizabeth Shaw sets out in search of the creators of humanity.
I think of sam Rockwell's character Guy from galaxy quest when they take off their helmets.😂
To understand the meaning of the engineers, watch the deleted scenes on youtube. It will tell you a lot. A lot of important information was cut out. The deleted scenes explain everything
I saw this in theaters and went into it having NO IDEA it was related to the Alien franchise. I thought it was a standalone sci-fi movie. I grew up in the 80s watching the Alien movies so naturally it was a shock.
@@djsone3499yeah same! this was the first movie in the franchise i ever saw actually.. and i didn't realise until Alien: Covenant came out years later that it was related to those Sigourney Weaver movies i'd heard about lol
As many have pointed out, one of this movies biggest flaws is "supposedly smart people doing stupid things" but to me, the worst thing is giving the aliens an origin story. The fact that they came out of a lab is far less interesting than the idea that space is full of unknown stuff, and some forms of life might just be simply terrifying.
If you had to explain where they came from, they shoulda just come from a planet with a particularly brutal environment that evolved MANY varieties of especially deadly species. Like planet Australia or something.
The fact that the were engineered in a lab by very human looking aliens makes them so much less scary.
plus, the whole chain of evolution doesn't make much sense here if you take it as a prequel: human(and parasite) + human = giant squid facehugger + alien giant = ¿kinda xenomorph? - but then how the f*ck we jump from that into alien queens laying facehuggers eggs.
I don't necessarily disagree, however right from the very start, in the first two movies, the _'source'_ of the Xeno creatures was a crashed alien ship, not a natural habitat, so it was heavily implied that the owners of that ship were involved in their creation.
@@Foxtrot369 Why is that implied? He could have landed on a planet, got a facehugger stowaway and crashed once the chestburster did its thing. That's what I always assumed.
@@korganrocks3995 The ship's cargo bay was full of thousands of Eggs, all laid out in rows... Have you even watched the first movie?
It's nowhere explicitly stated that engineers made xenos. Perhaps they even worshipped it like a god.
Nothing is explained so stop this moaning .
9:50 Yeah I got frustrated when he took off his helmet. If humanity gets to the point of landing on another planet with life, I could only imagine the protocols that would need to take place. Removing your protective gear and potentially endangering the entire crew would be worthy of a criminal trial. Ridiculously irresponsible.
9:45 Tech Sgt Chen: "Sniff sniff. Whooh uh whooh. Seems OK."
I'm not sure the audience is divided, I think that each audience member is themselves divided. It's a really fun movie that contains incredibly stupid moments in it (guys touching things they shouldn't for no reason, running directly away from something they should have run to the side from, etc.).
Great vehicle to move Rooney Mara from a great job in "Dragon Tattoo" to Hollywood, but sadly it didn't work as well as I wish it would have.
It is Noomi Rapace who is in this movie and Swedish version of dragon tattoo, Rooney Mara in American version of dragon tattoo
@@NilsForsman beat me by a minute!😂
IT's like if a classic Star Trek TOS episode were made as a horror scifi movie.
@@artboymoythat’s the best description for this movie I’ve ever heard
@@artboymoy look up episodes written by Robert Bloch: "Catspaw", "Wolf in the fold", "What are little girls made of"(look for the Engineer lookalike).
LOL! The squid monster! For every father who has seen their wife go to thru a c-section in the delivery room, delivering their new little squid..... Yup been there, done that!🤣
I was very disappointed that you guys didn't realize that that's the same type of ship that they found in the original Alien as well as that the pilot that had a chest burster that they found in the original alien is a progenitor just like the guys in this movie, but you never saw it with its mask off.
And yes I understand it's been awhile since you've seen Alien. I've had my whole life to watch it several times so I guess I can understand you're not recognizing it.
These two aren't the brightest in the bunch...
@@idiot_city5444I wouldn't go that far. I actually like both of them and we have the hindsight of watching the movie. Probably many many times over many many years.
@@johnlrose1979 they've proven it time and time again
And now you know what the "Prometheus School of Running Away From Things" is. :D
20:09
more like the hottest thing about Alien franchise
*Thing Exists*
David: "I'm gonna touch it."
"The most scary thing about the franchise is the violation of the human body"
It's acutllally a genre, body horror.
Violation is the entire point of Alien haha
No, he's talking about rape, not body horror. He just can't say that on a monetized video.
@@sumelar So a creature bursting out from your body or having to cut yourself to get something out is grape? Please, don't try argue semantics. The genre is body horror, not "grape" horror.
Sure, "forceful insemitation" is part of it but the focus and the horror is what comes after. Otherwise by that logic any movie with a parasite is about "grape"
George's analysis is spot on. This movie had so much potential and really kewl elements but falls apart with baffling characters, decisions and plot directions.
Plus Ridley Scott seems to have this burr up his ass about religion/creationism vs science/evolution (which is why the scientists are so dumb). He continues this theme in the next movie.
I've sat down and TRIED to like this movie so many times because I love the premise and potential. It looks so amazing and the atmosphere is perfect. But its just so flawed I end up switching off
I love that Simone recognised that actor from The OC, no other reactor i've watched has mentioned that. He played Trey Atwood, Ryan's trash older brother that Marissa has to shoot to save his life AKA the scene that originated the 'mmmmm whatcha say' meme! he will always be an icon to me lol
Many do not like this film. Some activity dislike it. I love it. I. Love. This. Film.
Thank you for your reaction.
Same here
I genuinely hate it, because it's a fantastic movie in every aspect except the actual script. Such a waste of the amazing work of hundreds of people, because Ridley Scott can't write a decent script to save his life, and no one seems to have the balls to tell him.
Even though this got mixed reviews, I still think it was very well made as far as the storyline and the special effects. They actually spliced together footage from Jordan and Iceland to create the visuals for the planet they went to.
27:50 You have witnessed the infamous Prometheus School of Running Away from Things.
**DING**
I don't think there's a movie I have gotten more entertainment out of than this one.
Dunking on it with my friends, listening to others dunk on it. It all adds up to a movie I had about as much enjoyment out of as the LotR trilogy, even if for wholly different reasons.
10/10, will dunk on again.
If this wasnt attached to the alien ip, i'd consider it a pretty cool sci-fi with alot of stupidity and annoying things. But as an ALIEN film, it can simply f'**k off! First simply by the fact that ALL the tech (ships, holograms, computers, the android etc etc) is by far superior to anything in alien 1. Its so disrespectful, saying this is a "prequal". The concept of engineers is so lame, uninteresting and badly designed. This is just a powertrip by Ridley to make a movie about things that he's interested in. Ai, god, the origin of humans and other bs. It should simply not be linked to alien! Neither should Covenant. Romulus is well made and somewhat "okay". But that movie has tons stuff that feels off or just wrong and an mostly an uninteresting cast. The Alien franchise ended with Alien 4 in my book.
Spot on in your initial reaction. Wonderful ideas, good looking film, then it's over and you're like..."that's it??"
I really enjoy the first half of this movie and feel really annoyed by the second half. It sets up so many interesting questions and then it just turns into a bad Alien (1979)/Aliens (1986) imitation. Like what's the point of setting up the Engineers if all the Engineer character gets to do is punch people lol. I don't mind that the Engineers take on a firm antagonistic role at all, but it just feels like squandered potential with the way it's executed. Such a frustrating film, but nobody will ever take away my massive enjoyment of the first half I still feel when watching it, even with all the extremely silly decisions some characters make.
When I was in Iceland last year. I was at a spot in which they filmed the intro scene. It's such a stunning place.
"JUST TURN!" George saying the same thing everyone in the theater I saw it in said.
Noomi Rapace, who plays Elizabeth Shaw, is the "original" Lisbeth Salander in the Sweedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She's such an stellar actress, legit one of my favorites, and we only see a fraction of that in this movie! She was recently in an AppleTV sci-fi/drama show called Constellation where she plays a scientist and astronaut, I highly recommend it~
The Bulk of this movie is set in 2093, 28 Years before the events of the 1979-Original. And I guess you can explain in-universe the difference in how advanced the technology here is in comparsion to the _Nostromo_ is that the _Prometheus_ is a brand new high-tech Science Vessel with all the gimmicks a crazy Billionaire like Weyland could afford/think of, while the _Nostromo_ was a rusty, used-up Commercial Vessel that was probably commissioned long before the _Prometheus_ was even designed. In other words: One is a shiny Prototype Sports Car, the other a 70s Truck.
23:10 " Well, there was Staples. " Simone forgot to say " Other office supplies stores are available... "
Seeing this made me remember the redlettermedia prometeus questions videos, and by God, those videos are still absolutely perfect