This has been out for like.... a few days and I see there is still no thread, you people call yourselves a sci-fi site eh? would have been a different matter if it had a star trek ship in it I imagine...:D:flippy: I guess there is not so much love for this somewhat edgier (though blunted in recent years) franchise, but either way this is going to be a big movie i'm sure.
Anyway, OBSERVE
There are other trailers too which perhaps seem to reveal more interesting things, I'll reserve judgement till I've seen it in full... I am posting a deeper assessment of what i think is going on in my
blog, which has some links to further trailers.
I think there are some pretty obvious clues as to whats going to happen, however I hope there are other surprises in store
Posts
Looks like it's going to be a good flick, one of the few I'm looking forward to this year. I'm glad Ridley is doing another film set in this universe, but I'm also glad it's not a sequel. I love Alien and Aliens, though the rest of the sequels suck, IMO. As for prequels, AVP is good, but not great. AVP2 is dreadful. So, it's nice to see something fresh from this universe.
Clearly there is plenty to connect it with the old franchise, but only the best parts - honestly Alien 3 was quite good in it's own right, perhaps dissappointing to those who were expecting Aliens +1, but everything after that got progressively worse and the bug himself is not a particularly scary creature anymore... still wouldn't want to meet one down a dark airshaft though;)
So, I'm definitely glad to see things heading in a new direction for this universe. I love what Ridley did with Alien, it's my favorite film in the franchise, I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with Prometheus.
And, no I don't want to meet one in a dark air shaft either.
But, this is why, of the entire franchise, I only have Alien and Aliens in my collection. I don't really like the other films that well, some worse than others. Hopefully, Prometheus will be a worthy addition to the films in the Alien universe. I'm glad we're going to get to see more of the species that made the big ship from the original film.
i think it has something to do with the storyline, where ripley was ****ed long before the begining.
i didnt like the mood of the prison nor the characters. too hystericals. well acted, but too hystericals.
what i did like in alien4 was the mood and the contrasts pirates/company. i forgive winona rider and the creature at the end just for the scene where a hi rank military has his brain splashed up from behind and he has to touch it with his hand before fainting.
this prometheus is gonna be awsome.
and just in case if you missed it
peter weyland at ted in 2023. there was a weyland website too, but i cant find the url anymore
http://blog.ted.com/ted2023/
anyway pretty excited for this
Which...makes me think in a few months we'll start seeing people being really negative towards it.
http://coolhandgraphics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/prometheus-scotts-new-old-epic.html
I'm not standing 100% behind my anal-ysis btw and will no doubt be completely wrong about everything.
Coming back to the older movies, there's a lot to like in Alien 3 if you just like films for being films, there's real art to it. but if you're looking for the happy ending forget it. It is what it is and I respect the movie for that... Particularly after the development hell the movie was in. I believe it was Finchers first directing debut too? A difficult gig for sure.
Funnily enough I think it did far better in Europe than it did in the states, again I think people were expecting more of the same after Aliens and just didn't "get" its introverted gloom, plus lead actors with funny yorkshire accents? forget it;) I think there's a cultural difference at play and it wasn't really engineered for satisfying American audiences expectations but British and Europeans found it more agreeable, hope no one takes offense to that, its just an observation based on how well it did and the ire and praise it seems to get from opposite sides of the atlantic.
I go into most movies with an open mind. And I'm thinking I'm going to like Prometheus because it looks like my type of film. There are only 3 actors in the cast who I even recognize, (Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Patrick Wilson) so I'm looking forward to seeing the film and getting familiar with some new actors (new for me, that is.)
As for the cast, Guy Pearse is definitely putting on a strong show as a ranting oligarch, I'm sure he's having way too much fun in the link that L2k posted (thanks for that!) Charlize seems to be doing a good impression of a well groomed plank of wood but we've really seen nothing of the dialogue etc so too early to say. All the first 3 Alien movies had a pretty strong cast imho, Prometheus is, like the Alien movies, produced by Brandywine and would probably use the same casting people. I hope all the elements are there for a really strong movie and that it's going to be an important movie in scifi history - talk about expectations, what could possibly satisfy those requirements eh?
I'd highly advise watching District 9, especially if you're into gritty, edgy Sci-Fi. I know people raved over Avatar that year, but I like D9 better. Aside from a good story, good acting and a really good effort overall on the film, I think the special effects were really well done. They did CGI only where they had to and what they did looks real, IMO. (better than Avatar) In fact, I'm really getting in the mood to watch District 9 again just talking about it. (I may watch Avatar, Alien and Aliens too. )
So I feel accents really are taken seriously in the film and TV industry Particularly those based in the UK and US which produce media for those territories, and always have done because it does have an effect on the audience and ultimately the size of the audience you can accrue. Accents do also irritate people, and people often laugh at those with 'funny' accents, again harder to take a person seriously with an accent than it is with a more homogenised voice, the type that we're used to hearing. In the mainstream media, a person with a strong accent might be put in a comedic role, like a stereotypically 'dumb' Texan and infact often those with accents are depicted as being less intelligent than those 'without' or sometimes automatically gifted with special traits based purely on accent, like French or Italian accent might imbue a character with extra sexual prowess in western,english speaking media. Comedians also often accentuate accents for comedic effect or to mock others. George Lucas was also criticised in his prequels for having bumbling characters with distinctive, perhaps even ethnic sounding voices or mannerisms that were deemed by some to be deliberately mocking minorities. So its perhaps much easier even from a litigation POV to have homogenised mainstream sounding voices in your production. Again with Star Wars, the intelligent human characters have generally 'normal' American or British voices, the comic relief and alien characters, often shown as inferior to the main human characters all have varying levels of accents.
So anyway, it's perfectly plausible to assume that it might, even subconsciously affect an individuals enjoyment of a production, how seriously they're taking it and how immersed they are and that's vital for science fiction which relies on lots of elements working together to create a suspension of disbelief.
Warden Andrews for example is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the box and the prison is more run by the inmates, the Wardens really operate under the illusion that they have the power and control (because the inmates and the doctor allow them to have it) and that Andrews simply can't accept Ripleys story (inspite of the evidence mounting up) because it shatters that illusion... leading to his sticky end halfway through the movie, one of the first victims infact... I think an accented character was allowed here because he A, wasn't too bright as a character as his refusal to listen and stupid death signifies, and B, you're not meant to like him. He was killed off quickly as one of the first victims of the fully grown creature.
Whether one stray Yorkshire accent (somewhat watered down) really impacted at all on Alien 3 I really can't prove, I personally thought it seemed anachronistic - out of place in the future reality of the alien world presented in Alien 3 - a world far from Yorkshire, but he was perfect for the role. Perhaps I mistakenly assumed that this might seem all the more jarring in english speaking countries where that accent is even less often heard. As stated I think there are lots of reasons why it seems to be less popular in the states than in other territories.
Many posts into the thread and I seem to have talked more about Alien 3 and accents more than the thing i actually wanted to talk about... never could keep a Thread OT;)
as for D9, I don't doubt it's good, heard nothing but good things about it, I simply haven't got round to seeing it.
Prometheus looks good.
Much as I like the direction Cameron took Aliens in, I always liked the life cycle in the first movie(Book) better. If you watch a few of the cut scenes, it really does make the alien much more nasty and unsettling. Also anything Dan O'Bannon put time into tends to be worth the time to watch.
So going back to the start and seeing where it might go has always appealed to me.
As for the life cycle, Cameron just added to it, I don't think he took anything away.
In Alien it was drone alone leading to it turning the humans slowly into eggs. There's nothing saying that in the absence of a Queen Alien a drone couldn't still do this - which makes sense as then a single drone can start an entire population of the little rascals. This actually makes more sense than a single drone first metamorphosing into a queen, as that creature is so much larger than the target population; so a Queen alien is largely immobile, had the part of the facility on LV-426 that the aliens made their nest not been so large and industrial, then it's likely she would have simply been trapped by human sized corridors.
As i go into in some detail in my blog I feel there's probably not going to be anything like that alien (parasitic/sexual) life cycle in Prometheus as they might be hoping for a wider appeal. But the concept of metamorphosis returns and i think its still gonna be kinda gross, but nothings going to be having sex with someone's face and birthing through their chest... Probably.
I'm putting the following in spoiler tags even though its just speculation...
(some commenters think its something to do with an 'ooze', but given you can't put any design work into goop i think its an actual creature and the ooze is just a gross secretion it produces (maybe it has a cold))
In kind of a cliched way, this bores into the target being (even through a spacesuit) and metamorphoses it into another creature somehow, if I'm right and with analysis of frames from the trailer then it perhaps explains the origin of the "Space Jockey" as one of the crew of the Prometheus.
I had noted that the trailer hadn't shown his at all.