Cinema Sins list off all of Alien's missteps. Do you agree?

Chris
AdminEngineerJune 23, 20164705 Views30 Replies
After watching this tally, I was able to make quite a few correlations to gripes many people made about Prometheus. I found it rather ironic how many of the same fans who defend the flaws of Alien were quick to judge Prometheus for the same or very similar flaws. Watch it yourself below and let me know your thoughts!
Just as a side, I'm one who thoroughly loves both Alien and Prometheus, so I don't necessarily agree with everything this video suggests - especially the need for an aerodynamic space ship... haha.
Predator: Badlands - coming November 7th, 2025
yes Prometheus was a good idea, just not executed well.
And yes Alien had flaws, but if as with Prometheus everything was carried out Perfectly with Perfect Crew and Precautions then we would not have both movies.
Horror movies, have to have those people who do something stupid in order to get killed to drive the Plot.. we watch Horror movies and think.. "no dont go outside" "no dont split up" and if they stuck to such things then well the movie would never worked. As no one gets killed lol
Alien had its few stupid moments but it was done well, Bret was Stupid going after a Alien on the loose, but he had no idea the Cat Sized or less Alien would now be 7ft tall.
Dallas maybe should been more cautious but its what drives the Plot....
Its hard to pull off a Horror without doing such things, i think Alien did a wonderful Job.... The 1982 Thing likewise.
But a more better trained more common sense crew would not have fallen foul as much on both Alien or The Thing, as far as us the Viewers saying well if they had not done this, or been cautious with that...
But then with such precautions the movies would not had been the same.
R.I.P Sox 01/01/2006 - 11/10/2017
@Necronom
Are you just trying to say that compared to Alien, Prometheus was far more ambitious and got in over its head?
I don't agree that it didn't succeed at telling its story. I think the story is there, there are just some unknown and ambiguous elements. To me it is just as successful as Alien if not more because those grand questions and themes make it more fun to ponder. Not to mention it builds on a growing science fiction mythology.
I wouldn't say it got in over its head. It's just that the scribes Lindolof and Spaihts had established a firm, coherent composition. They had a firm plan which explained certain inconsistencies in the plot.
However, I think Ridley strayed away from the plan because he's constantly changing certain elements because his vision is constantly evolving.
Therefor, because these changes are left unchecked, the plot becomes confusing.
Prometheus has ambiguous elements, which is a good thing as it forces you to use your brain (I'm not referring to those ambiguous elements.)
I'm referring to the UNINTENTIONAL ambiguity that was brought about by Ridley constantly changing things during the filming process.
The poster was good though!
An example of good ambiguity verses unintentional ambiguity would be:
intentional ambiguity (good) - Not explaining the true purpose of the black stuff and why the engineers were preparing to destroy us.
Unintentional ambiguity (bad) - Not filming the part of the script which gives an acceptable explination as to why Milburn and Fifield get lost in the pyramid i.e each one thought that the other had the coordinates.
The poster was good though!
Just chiming in and note: I've only seen Prometheus 3 times fully since its release and the first two times I didn't really get a chance to analyze it, so I'm not in on all the small hints and nods and probably missed a lot of the subtle dialogue that tells the story better.
So from a somewhat ignorant viewer the movie just comes across as kind of pretentious. It seemed like it dove out to solve a lot of mysteries, some left ambiguous(luckily I totally love not knowing why we were created or why the engineers wanted to destroy us) but it didn't give us almost any good characters on the way. The only 1 I even thought interesting was David, and some of the plots just seemed to be there, because. Oh Weyland was on the ship the whole time looking for eternal life or something, ok? Did that really matter in the grand scheme of things?
Alien may have had stupid characters, but at least there was a point to it. Kane had to be dumb for the whole movie to work out. The two guys in Prometheus were just dumb to get an action scene.
Max Headroom disses Alien. I definitely got a few chuckles out of it, I think people are taking this way too seriously. They're just taking the piss, take it in the spirit it is intended and have a laugh.
Android turns into Ronald Reagan when punched in the head. You go and find the cat by yourself, we've got lots of not dying to do. This is some amazing and iconic visual brilliance. Let's hope no one ever tries to explain it with a backstory movie!
Jeez folks the world is rapidly going down the toilet thanks to corporate greed, political machinations and religious bullshit, why get upset over a bit of dumb satire? It definitely got me out of a bad mood and that's not a bad thing, I had a smile on my face after watching and will check out some more of their stuff.
@Lone, I never noticed Jonesy's cat dish had a Weyland-Yutani logo on it! Haha that's awesome. I bet the cat doodle is one of Ridley's, I wouldn't put it past him.
@Jamie, yeah I'm not worked up over it. Some parts like the Ronald Reagan comment were funny, but BigDave made some great points, without these plot holes we would've missed out on many great blockbusters. Common sense is rarely the driving force behind a good story, haha.
Predator: Badlands - coming November 7th, 2025
they did admit it's one of the best sci fi terror movies
"Part of the journey is the end..."
"Unintentional ambiguity (bad) - Not filming the part of the script which gives an acceptable explination as to why Milburn and Fifield get lost in the pyramid i.e each one thought that the other had the coordinates."
Shooting that scene still wouldn't have made helped. They can reel off their co-ordinates as they do to Janek later when he picks up the life form reading. Additionally, Janek can see their locators dots on the holomap and all they need to do is ask him to guide them back to the entrance. Which makes Janek's question about 'where's Millburn and Fifield' dumb when everyone arrives back during the storm. He can see them perfectly well on the map. That whole aspect was just lazy.