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Svanya's thoughts on Prometheus after seeing it (my review)

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Svanya

AdminPraetorianJune 08, 20122483 Views39 Replies
I liked the movie but didn't love it. I give it: 7/10. Let me focus on the basics, no nitpicking (well not too deep anyways): 1-The movie felt rushed, it needed at least 30 more minutes to flesh itself out. I feel like I missed a huge chunk of the movie. 2-The Soundtrack reminded me so much of Star Trek I half expected Captain Kirk to break into his famous "These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise"... 3-I didn't feel an emotional connection with the characters. Give me more time to digest it all. Sure I loved the costumes, the sets, Fassbender as David, and the C-Section scene. I need to see the movie again to really put all my thoughts in order. I think I may be in shock tbh... [Center]****************************[/Center] *2nd screening edit, 10 June. (not gonna make a whole new post just to say this) Saw it again today and my verdict stands, it was an entertaining movie but it had some flaws; I feel it was deliberately held back to save something for the sequels and did not live up to it's full potential (great Director, actors, sets, budget ). Worth seeing, it is a good Sci-fi movie, just don't expect a masterpiece. Honestly everything in it seems to be old stuff leftover from O'Bannon's original script and rejected scenes from Alien. ~Notes of interest: 1-David has interesting quirks for a Robot: He is Left handed. He is seen eating, snacking, dying/styling his hair. 2-Shaw's father and the SJ dying of essentially the same thing, rapid cellular breakdown. 3-The line "God does not build in straight lines" makes no sense as they were looking for god... 4-David's head and body are in the same place it was in before the crash or at least very close and close together. 5-If the engineers head/helmet was so heavy how come Elisabeth/Ford were able to carry it, and then Elisabeth carried it alone in the bag BUT when they examined it they needed Davids help?? 6-Shaw just walks up to the MedPod, doesn't bother to lock the door despite people wanting to contain/freeze her, and does a whole C-section. The same people that worked to contain her lose total interest in her condition after 5 minutes. 7- In the trailers Holloway shines his flashlight onto the same type ceremonial bowl we see at the opening of the movie which the engineer drinks from, but in the movie it's replaced with a green crystal... [Center][IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/fto7sp.jpg[/IMG][/Center] [Center]Srsly, wtf?[/Center]

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thefacehead
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LOL I was there last week and guess what........ It doesn't get any clearer, I still love the 'film' because it's created so much debate and that's healthy.
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SamboJim
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7/10 is indeed a generous score, given that you admit you didn't care for any of the characters. Agree big time on the sound track! I think your notes of interest with Shaws father and Ebola is just clutching at straws unfortunately, doubt that there was a fore thought there but maybe that's just Lindelof cynicism. This entire film was essentially an advert for a sequel imo. Will you bother with the sequel?
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Gimm-e
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thank you for your honest review/ opinion, Svanya!
You don\\\'t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!
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Svanya
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I don't know. I was going to do a generic Like/dislike review but it was all so obvious, of course Iiked the sets, 3D, and the costumes but that has been said before...

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SirMyztiq
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I think when he said "God does not build in straight lines" he was referring to the fact that it HAD to be made by an intelligent being. That it wasn't a natural thing.
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thefacehead
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I only saw it in IMAX and I was an IMAX virgin so the noise was quite overwhelming to me (i'm 32 not grandad lol) so therefore didn't really 'get' the score. I just can't bring myself to watch it again yet, but I will. I will!
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WhyDontTheyFreezeHim
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Agreed with all your points Svanya. The score itself was great but just used in wrong moments and too much IMO. I give the movie a generous 7/10 too and feel in the 50/50 group as I can relate to those who love it and hate it.
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Daniregald
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Haha, the soundtrack was kinda nostalgic at times. :-)
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FREEZE!
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I agree, it was certainly rushed, and there were obvious things that didn't fit so well, I personally loved how pretty it was, but wasn't scared at all... agree, didn't feel connected to anyone that died. Going to go see it a few more times before I write my review, want to also write something different and not the same ole' review we've read for the past week thanks for writing you views, very honest and remained neutral
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Arkadine
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@Svanya I believe that making you not like most of the characters was intentional; I think the intended effect was to highlight the fact that Elizabeth is all by herself once her boyfriend is gone.. you can see how brutal everybody else is to her, like when the other female character is trying to wake her up as if she was an animal on the veterinary table. There is a lot of religious subtext too, some of it a little bit forced into the story. I pretty much agree with your score.
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Proxy
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I feel you Svanya. For me a huge problem was the characters. The humans were pretty boring. God-awful scientists with crap lines and little development beyond 'I dont like you. so when we get stuck together in the temple alone at night, hopefully us not liking each other adds tension.' But you're also right that so many things were obviously unique and well done. So far, I blame Lindelof pretty heavily. He's more than a bad writer. I think he's a bad person. Seemed like he wrote a 2+hour trailer for Prometheus II. a few questions (someone help me out): The horse-shoe ship took off with some sort of energy burst (at the end), where is the exhaust opening in the anatomy of the ship? Is shaw sitting in the SJ chair? Why did mutant Fifield return to Prometheus? If the engineers were running from xenos, or something xeno-ish that the balck goo made, why was so much of the running time dedicated to setting up the proto-xeno birth at the end? If there are many juggarnaut ships, do any of them have engineers sleeping in them? (off that) they really found the one ship of 'many' that had the one engineer? Why doesnt anyone mention that Shaw had a effing octo-baby c-sectioned out of her by the med pod? Seriously? Vickers was pisT when Shaw touched the medpod?!?! but no mention of octo baby trapped in medpod room? (for lindelof) How can you take such an interesting idea and fill it with so many cliches?
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Svanya
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@Arkadine; You misunderstand, I felt NOTHING for the characters... That is the problem, I felt no connection either way.

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Proxy
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@ arkadine: if they were intentionally making unlikable characters, Shaw wasn't a strong enough character to offset this. I think Lindelof intentionally kept friction and strife in the interactions of characters, but I don't think this was an effort to intentionally put the audience off to everyone but Shaw. And if it was, it was a mistake.
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Svanya
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@Proxy; I know right!! They were all so worried about contamination and protocol but when Shaw removed the "baby" no one cared about her and no one cared to know where the "baby" was or to destroy it.. O_O

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Arkadine
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@Svanya Well, that would be a problem. Indifference is much worse than hate lol I understand you, because I guess Elizabeth's "search" won't be embraced by all the audience, the character is full of contradictions.
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Svanya
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@Arkadine; For instance, I should have hated Vickers for torching Holoway, but I didn't. I should have felt bad for Shaw but I didn't. The list goes on and on hence my no nitpicking rule. I liked David enough, as I pointed out he had some really interesting quirks for a Robot, the snacking while watching movies was really bizarre. Him bleaching his hair and styling it was very cute.

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spacyfreak
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Well, now that i saw Prometheus the THIRD (!) time, and you maybe KNOW that my critics here are not very "positive", i must have some strong connection to the alien universe and everything that has to do with it. I really LOVE rapace and fassbender doing their jobs, thats what i enjoy most on this movie. Would like to simply watch for hours what david8 is doing, as it feels "wired" that a "mashine" is making its own decisions, for example to watch a movie, repeat sentences of the movie dialogues and to bleech his hair (!) as he is fan of peter o` toole. cool. The best "horror" scene was for me the COBRALIEN scene. Oh how i love how this sweet pet moves through this black goo... THAT is really authentic to me. All in all i simply wonder, that the actors show so little emotion, compared to the SITUATION they find themselves. Ah - one more thing.. Yo, the music was not bad for a "star treck movie"... so "hopefull, not very deep..". BUT FOR A RIDLEY SCOTT ALIEN PREQUEL THE MUSIC IS REALLY BAD AND DOES NOT SUPPOR THE EMOTIONAL CONNECTION TO THE FLICK AT DAMN ALL!!! ... Music and Soundtrack in a movie is very important to me. I sometimes simply start Alien again JUST TO HEAR THIS MUSIC AT THE BEGINNING... so simple. And so GENIUS.
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Arkadine
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@Svanya Well, I don't hate Vickers neither. In fact she is my favorite character. She is the voice of reason in this movie. The only character whose actions are consistently coherent, the only sane person in a "ship of fools". I am close to hating David though in the same way I hated Hal 9000 in 2001, but more than hate it is fear.. I would never feel safe with him around :-) I recall someone in the forum calling him a "passive aggressive" bastard basically, that definition was so spot on :-)
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Svanya
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@Arkadine; I called him passive aggressive in a few posts LOL, that was me. He is very unlikable in the way that he is, again, passive agressive. He is a little c*nt, but it still didn't make me want to slap him or care that old man Weyland was a jerk to him.

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Arkadine
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@Svanya So it was you hehe :-)
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Proxy
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@ Svanya yeah david was my favorite character by a stretch. seemed more human than a handful of the human characters combined. @Arkadine im jealous of how you seem to have connected to Vickers. I really wanted that! I felt it just didn't click for me. Her death was so nonchalant too. I thought more of her character could have been fleshed out at moments including her death. Like the look on her face when she killed Halloway. I wanted some lines about how she felt at that moment. Although i heard there was a scene there that got cut there.
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Giger's Dream
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I saw it last night in 3-D and even though I knew going into it that it was not a strict Alien prequel it still felt off to me overall. I too felt the pace was too fast...some things never seemed to resolve...and there were too large of jumps in the story line to comfortably transition for my tastes such as finding the cave painting to being on the ship...it just felt like it was rushing to get to some place it never arrived at to me and leaving out a lot of necessary story lines. It should have been closer to 3 hours imo to truly do the story justice, develop the characters and draw the viewer in. the plot was just too complex to effectively resolve it in the time frame they did... There seems to be a "daddy" theme throughout and I think I need to see it at least one more time to be able to pickup on some of the under themes going on. Visually, gorgeous...I wasn't scared or frightened in the slightest though which was a disappointment to me..I will see it again (at least once more in the theatres, maybe a couple more times) as I think it's a thinking man's movie and there are some themes that need to be flushed out with multiple viewings...I'm hoping that since I viewed it from an Alien fan's pov the first time I can now enjoy it as a stand alone movie on it's own but at the same time some of the very things that bothered me about it are inherent to a good movie imo...I really wanted to like it more than I did...I think like Svanya I was lukewarm when I've been building it up in my mind to something in all fairness to RS nobody probably could have delivered on...If there is a part II or III I really hope they spend more time on the story to answer some the of the questions we all have...
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Arkadine
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@Giger's Dream I agree with you that there was not a sustained sense of dread throughout the entire movie; the temple exploration should have been spookier... I think the problem is that Prometheus is a "cleaner" version of Alien. Ridley has abandoned some of his trademark style flourishes, maybe to avoid being accused of repeating himself.. but I sure miss some of the mist and the smoky atmosphere of his earlier films. However, when it comes to shock value, I thought the medi pod sequence was absolutely brilliant, it made me skirm in my seat; Prometheus will be remembered for that, and for the navigation hologram scene, and of course for Michael Fassbender's performance.
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iapetus
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Svanya read your review - enjoyed it Wrote a long post and lost it in a mix of clumsy-me and clumsy-server... Not brave enough to re-write it all now but thanks for posting, I will write a longer reaction next time. All in all, though maybe a slight bit more positive, I felt very similar to you on many points right after my first time, but the 2nd was much much more enjoyable, flowing naturally and focused. So pretty sure your pros will be reinforced and cons will be put into perspective after a 2nd time. Will be interesting to read that too anyway, take care
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Svanya
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@iapetus; Oh I did enjoy the movie, just not in love with it. This is merely a first thoughts type thing. I had trouble posting so I wrote it very fast.

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Spiderbabe83
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I agree about the part when shaw had the baby and no one was around and no one seem to care about what hell shaw had been through losing her lover and then giving birth to a alien . That part of the movie bothered me somewhat, since I could relate after having 4 c-sections myself, It was very cold the emotions shown by the other actors. The concern for this alien being on the ship had no importance what so ever at the time.
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Svanya
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@sbordoli; I know right! Imagine being in that situation?? As women?? I would have cut it out of me with a rusty butterknife, and OMG having that happen right after my lover was killed before my eyes?? Horrible! And they treated her like chuttle too, like nothing, hell David gave more a shit about her well being than the humans. He even wraps her in his coat. But the scenes were so short with so much untapped emotional potential just flung at you and dumped almost as fast.

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sukkal
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I have to echo the criticisms and the praise. I'd probably give it a 7.5/10, but that's probably because I'm not that clued into the score relationship as much as I could be. I related to David, Shaw, and Vickers, and Janek actually. Not strongly, but they are clearly the glue and I'm convinced that they will all be back. Vickers is NOT dead. That was my one true [url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/5642#67029]predictive vindication[/url] in all of this fore math. David will simply be repaired. They don't need an extra one. And, her apology to him for zipping him was my favorite line in the whole movie. And, that brings me to my next ‘big idea’... I'm going to be an apologist for the fact that nobody other than Janek seems to have a soul in this film. I am choosing to see this as a metaphor for our modern, technologically empowered, emotionally complex lives. None of our "returnees" really gained *any* dimension (="humanity") until the very end of the film. But, I found that redemptive and it gave me hope (but, I'm a bit of a romantic that way). I also love the fact that the foundation is not only set for future films, but also that David, Shaw, and Vickers all have multiple agendas that can go off in different directions. I love that David and Vickers are effectively siblings and HE was more belovèd to father. That's really interesting. I think that's likely something that Damon brought (though it may have been Charlize herself), and I want to give whoever did that a big hug of thanks.
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Sky
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Thanks for the review. By any chance do you feel neo-futuristic type character development, I mean rushed? I get that feeling from your review. Characters in this type of genre are rarely developed or more like sacrificed for the main plot.
Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.
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abordoli
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Great review.... The reason I feel that Shaw is not doted on after the med-pod scene is because very few people in the room with Weyland were in the "know". There were 5 people including Shaw and she left 2 (Kate Dickie plus 1 other) knocked out in one of the two scanner/examination rooms. Remember, almost half the crew were dead (Milburn, Holloway, Fifield and the 3-4 he took out makes 6-7 out of the 16 on board dead; the ones not there were Vickers and Janek and his two co-pilots). You had Weyland, 2 security dudes (1 playing a male nurse), David and Shaw. Only David and Weyland knew and both were disappointed. When she came in, 3 men attended to her (helping her sit down) including David that gave her his top clothing. The urgency of Weyland's corns were a bit more pressing, wouldn't you agree? ; )
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Svanya
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@Abordoli; It's not a review LOL! It is my first impressions!! @Sky, the scenes were rushed; Holoway dies, Shaw has her C-section then onto Weyland in less than 15 minutes.

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sukkal
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The film is not cut well. The stories will come out about the editing eventually. The biggest problem is the pacing that stems from the inferior editing. There had to have been "unnatural" pressures that forced that. It's just too basic a thing for Ridley to be "cool" about given his druthers. I have to believe that.
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db
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Savanya, Thanks for your first impressions. I was especially looking forward to your thoughts. And I'm glad you'll see it again. I think your concerns are echoed through this community. A lot of what seems to be missing is the sense of the classic "ensemble cast"... (The magic number being 7.) People can remember 7 characters. You can write/build a relationship with characters that the audience appreciates within that number... It's a lot tougher to write 16 or 17 parts effectively (though I've been tasked with writing for as many as 20 sometimes). Ripley, Dallas, Ash, Kane, Lambert, Parker, Alien. See what I mean? Ross, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe, Monica, Chandler, (and 1 extra boy/girl friend per show.) See? Perhaps if the crew of the Prometheus had been given the time for a sit-down-and-discuss- their-options scene (like the crew of the Nostromo), you would've had more empathy for them. 3 words: Blu Ray Baby!
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artyoh
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It's surreal to me that people are talking about the crew of the Nostromo, as if there was scads of exposition that personalized them as realistic individuals. IMO, that is revisionism, plain and simple. Brett was a friggin' moron. I mean, seriously, would you really want him working on the engines of [i]your[/i] interstellar spacecraft? Was he plausible as a technically skilled individual, capable of doing that? Both blue collar guys bitched and moaned stereotypically, and were only concerned about their shares. We learned next to nothing about the back stories, beliefs and motivations of the other characters, either. Captain Dallas, irresponsibly risks the entire crew, ship and cargo, by ignoring basic quarantine procedures. Is that professionally credible? Lambert basically whines her way through the entire movie.......does that enhance or detract from the disturbing nature of her death? Don't get me wrong....I think "Alien" is brilliant, but in terms of characterizations, i really don't think the original movie is superior to this one in any way.
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Sky
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If the movie was rushed like that then I wonder why they didn't breaked the movie in two pieces like Matrix. It worked for them.
Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.
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Svanya
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@Sky; I know! That is exactly what I kept thinking. It's been done with many movies, I think The Hobbit will be like that and I know Harry Potter was, why not this??

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Prenihility
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I started a thread about what everyone dislikes about the film... Just saying. Not to look like a prick who wants to kill a thread or anything. Just... Yeah, check it out. Everyone should post away in there. We need a megathread of all the negatives of the movie.
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Macs
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@Svanya You could not have put it better. All those questions you point out, I had. The movie did seem a bit rushed, kind of going in all directions, its as if it wanted to pack too much in one show. Also, after that huge collision, how come David's head was in the same place (the engineer was burned and all banged up, so how did this happen?). I saw an interview of R.S. yesterday that made me reconsider again of all these questions, maybe I am missing something. I'll go watch it again today.
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wseaton
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I think I disliked everything about the film, and lost count at all the plot inconsistencies. Why were all those ancient civilizations pointing to the same star map again? I agree it seemed rushed, and that it was forced to have an 'R' rating. Cut the pointless monster gimmicks, slow down the pacing, and we have something watchable. The sold out IMAX audience I was with was clearly annoyed at the film and didn't jump once. I'm hoping Scott gave in to concessions with Prometheus in order to get additional movies. Problem is, Prometheus is going to tank quickly at the box office and he's going to lose some credibility.

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