Too Much Garlic
Master Member
OMG... am I daft or what!?!! :lol
Thanks.
Thanks.
Prometheus (Post-release)
- Thread starter Vivek
- Start date
Demetrios2177
Well-Known Member
It is available on YouTube as well.
First Spaceship On Venus - YouTube
It even features an Indian professor!
First Spaceship On Venus - YouTube
It even features an Indian professor!
Demetrios2177
Well-Known Member
This might be interesting, too.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) - YouTube
It says it's a Roger Corman release of the Russian movie "Planet of the Storms" (the one with the space suits that might well have inspired the PROMETHEUS ones).
Oh, I just found Wikipedia indeed says it is!
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cheers!
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) - YouTube
It says it's a Roger Corman release of the Russian movie "Planet of the Storms" (the one with the space suits that might well have inspired the PROMETHEUS ones).
Oh, I just found Wikipedia indeed says it is!
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cheers!
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Kit Rae
Sr Member
The black goo in that flick was more akin to the creatures from The Blob and The Green Slime than an inanimate liquid holding a virus, as in Prometheus. The black oil on Venus moved and attacked people just like in The Blob, which had come out two years earlier.
The Prometheus black goo has more in common with the X-files 'black oil', also a virus that altered human DNA, which was probably indirectly inspired by First Spaceship on Venus. In both the film and the source material, a book by Stanislaw Lem, they find evidence of an alien civilization at Tunguska, the site of an asteroid impact in Siberia. Where did the black oil come from in the X-Files? Mined from the meteoric rocks in Tunguska. Where did the goo in The Blob come from? A meteor that crashed to Earth.
These ideas just go round and round in sci-fi.
The Prometheus black goo has more in common with the X-files 'black oil', also a virus that altered human DNA, which was probably indirectly inspired by First Spaceship on Venus. In both the film and the source material, a book by Stanislaw Lem, they find evidence of an alien civilization at Tunguska, the site of an asteroid impact in Siberia. Where did the black oil come from in the X-Files? Mined from the meteoric rocks in Tunguska. Where did the goo in The Blob come from? A meteor that crashed to Earth.
These ideas just go round and round in sci-fi.
Solo4114
Master Member
Also an MST3K episode!
Yep. No argument there. But for me, the First Spaceship on Venus thing is different because:
- It's a scientific mission, crewed by some really DUMB scientists.
- The scientists go to a planet where they explore the ruins of a lost civilization, only to find out that it's hostile.
- Scientists come to bad ends when confronting black goo.
What it lacks is some of the stuff like the internal sabotage due to corporate greed, which comes more to the fore in later films in the genre.
Kit Rae
Sr Member
Which is also similar to the plot of numerous 1950's and 1960's sci-fi films, like Rocket Ship X-M, Flight to Mars, Planet of the Storms, as well as numerous other films where expeditions to other worlds encounter long dead ancient alien civilizations, like Andromeda Nebula, Forbidden Planet, et cetera.
You can do the same thing with Alien by comparing it to the plot of Planet of the Vampires or It! Terror from Beyond Space. I'm sure you can take just about any modern sci-fi film and find the the plot or similar plot elements existed in previous films. There is not much that has not already been thought of.
You can do the same thing with Alien by comparing it to the plot of Planet of the Vampires or It! Terror from Beyond Space. I'm sure you can take just about any modern sci-fi film and find the the plot or similar plot elements existed in previous films. There is not much that has not already been thought of.
Solo4114
Master Member
You know, the more I think about it, the less the Fifield attack makes sense. It's poorly placed in the narrative in the theatrical version, occurring shortly after the c-section, and right around the time of the big Weyland reveal, as I recall. It just seems thrown in for a big action sequence without any other purpose.
More than that, though, it doesn't even make sense why the Fifield zombie would return to teh ship and then attack everyone totally unprovoked. It just...doesn't make sense. That's a big part of what makes the scene so gratuitous. The creature doesn't even have the motivation that, say, a Jason Vorhees does. It just shows up on their doorstep and starts killing everyone. WTF?
To me, it would've made FAR more sense if they returned to the ship and found the dead biologist with the worm in it, wandered deeper into the ship and were attacked by the Fifield zombie, and THEN encountered the engineer after losing some of the security detail in the Fifield attack. It also would've worked as a counterpoint to the earlier "We don't go in with weapons" attitude. When Weyland goes in, HE goes in with weapons.
To me, the Fifield attack is actually one of the clearest examples of what makes the film weak. Sticking Shaw in the rover and Weyland looking on during the attack makes it marginally better, but even then it's still ill-conceived.
More than that, though, it doesn't even make sense why the Fifield zombie would return to teh ship and then attack everyone totally unprovoked. It just...doesn't make sense. That's a big part of what makes the scene so gratuitous. The creature doesn't even have the motivation that, say, a Jason Vorhees does. It just shows up on their doorstep and starts killing everyone. WTF?
To me, it would've made FAR more sense if they returned to the ship and found the dead biologist with the worm in it, wandered deeper into the ship and were attacked by the Fifield zombie, and THEN encountered the engineer after losing some of the security detail in the Fifield attack. It also would've worked as a counterpoint to the earlier "We don't go in with weapons" attitude. When Weyland goes in, HE goes in with weapons.
To me, the Fifield attack is actually one of the clearest examples of what makes the film weak. Sticking Shaw in the rover and Weyland looking on during the attack makes it marginally better, but even then it's still ill-conceived.
Read the Spaihts script last week. Some really great stuff in there:
1st of all, for cohesion with the original Alien, 15ft Engineers, YES!
The blackness of outer space, no wait it's the deep sea! Would have loved to see that scene on screen.
The whole dissection of the engineer's softball sized eyeball, beautiful!
Well written, logical back stories and motivations for our characters.
Primordial facehuggers (slimy & boneless) before they were "weaponized" by the engineers. Really dug this concept and it came through in the draft.
Reading Lindelof's revision now . . .
1st of all, for cohesion with the original Alien, 15ft Engineers, YES!
The blackness of outer space, no wait it's the deep sea! Would have loved to see that scene on screen.
The whole dissection of the engineer's softball sized eyeball, beautiful!
Well written, logical back stories and motivations for our characters.
Primordial facehuggers (slimy & boneless) before they were "weaponized" by the engineers. Really dug this concept and it came through in the draft.
Reading Lindelof's revision now . . .
Kit Rae
Sr Member
Back to the space suit origins. It is stated on the BR that Ridley liked the undersuits worn under the old Nasa space suits. You can actually see more direct influence from the modernized, and more sensible MPC suit designs created in the mid to late 1960's, which also inspired the non-gas filled suit designs in 2001 a Space Odyssey.
The modern update to that design that MIT did several years ago (the bio-suit) was probably the major influence on the Prometheus designs.
MPC suits were less expensive, safer, lighter, and required less exertion to do the same tasks as the bulky old fashioned pressure suits still used today. Why NASA never went on to use these suits is a mystery - politics and resistance to change seemed to have killed it.
The modern update to that design that MIT did several years ago (the bio-suit) was probably the major influence on the Prometheus designs.
MPC suits were less expensive, safer, lighter, and required less exertion to do the same tasks as the bulky old fashioned pressure suits still used today. Why NASA never went on to use these suits is a mystery - politics and resistance to change seemed to have killed it.
Kit Rae
Sr Member
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ghostryder
Legendary Member
Just read both script drafts - have a couple questions for you guys. All these Earth cultures that had the "star map" - why would the Engineers leave/communicate to humans directions to their weapons depot/LV-233 BEFORE they got mad at us? Did the Engineers once have reverence for their children, and when they did, gave them a note that said, "Come visit us here" - but then after the death of ******, the Engineers decided to end their experiment and start over/"wipe the slate clean."
I guess where I'm lost is why the weapons depot planet? If they "were cool" with us (multiple visits/leaving directions) before the death of ******, wouldn't they have left directions to their "Paradise"/home planet?
Apologies if this was discussed before, but I missed it. Was hoping there'd be a little more info in the drafts...
I guess where I'm lost is why the weapons depot planet? If they "were cool" with us (multiple visits/leaving directions) before the death of ******, wouldn't they have left directions to their "Paradise"/home planet?
Apologies if this was discussed before, but I missed it. Was hoping there'd be a little more info in the drafts...
NAZGÛL
Sr Member
Its the closest one? Maybe they have weapons on all outposts. If they make experiments making species, they might always be prepaired if something goes wrong. You might need the jockey technology to go to the homeworld. Maybe there are other "maps" in other caves. It could be a test also. If they dont want us to evolve to their standards (steal their "fire"), if we could go there, we are to advanced.
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The zombie attack also represents a clear incompatibility with what was originally written for the movie and what the team decided to go with. I.E. NOT be an Alien movie. You see, all of the alien films share one thing in common with each other. When the alien appears, it's something everyone takes seriously and totally changes the everyone's mood. Even after they think it's dead, it's still a concern ("What I think we should do is just freeze him. If he's got a disease, we should stop it where it is."). But in Prometheus, the zombie isn't a concern. It's not even worth mentioning at all after it happens even when everyone heads out to the Temple that caused it.
Picture a writer who wrote a movie script as a musical comedy and a director who wanted the script to be a serious drama. What Prometheus does is take the serious drama route, but keeps one of the comedic musical numbers in, two things which are clearly incompatible with each other even though they're in the same film. That's what this zombie attack is. It's an element of ALIEN thrown in even though the film doesn't want to be an Alien film. So instead of a creature attack that should have a lasting impact in the story, we're left with a scene that's totally random and ends up being completely pointless.
Solo4114
Master Member
Another idea:
Not every engineer is on the same page as everyone else. You might have a "science caste" and a "warrior caste." The scientists want to interact with life on earth, the warriors say "WTF is the point of this? Are they weapons? No. Are they useful for anything else? No. Wipe 'em out and let's go build some new weapons. Hey! We could wipe them out WITH our new weapons! Yeah! Test-run!!"
Not every engineer is on the same page as everyone else. You might have a "science caste" and a "warrior caste." The scientists want to interact with life on earth, the warriors say "WTF is the point of this? Are they weapons? No. Are they useful for anything else? No. Wipe 'em out and let's go build some new weapons. Hey! We could wipe them out WITH our new weapons! Yeah! Test-run!!"
Solo4114
Master Member
Wow, you called it. Not only is the scene incongruous with the surrounding scenes, it breaks with the mood of the film too. "Doo dee doo...loadin' up the truck -- AAAH! ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!" >shoot< >burn< >crush< "Well. I'm glad THAT'S over with. Oooh shiny spaceship!"
It feels like a scene where some studio head said "WTF?! Isn't this an alien prequel? WHERE ARE THE ALIENS?! WHY IS EVERYONE STILL ALIVE?! You need a scene killing more people." And then they stuck in the Fifield scene. It's just a big, random monster that shows up at the ship for no reason, kills people for no purpose, gets shot, burned, and squished....and then nothing. Nobody cares. Nobody's saying "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?! OMG!! MAYBE WE SHOULD LEAVE!" It's completely ignored and disregarded. It's like a scene from another movie just paradropped in to add some pointless gore. It is, in my opinion, the very definition of a gratuitous scene.
crabra comander
Master Member
I thought this as well. That perhaps the Engineers were at odds with each other and that some where outcasts/hippies, maybe a war broke out and then they said, "Lets use this black goo".
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