Intentional Comedy?

I think it's just because they want to appeal to the lowest possible denominator probably... gone are the days of a truly cerebral movie sadly... I have a hard time believing that Weyland would allow a bunch of non-aligned strangers aboard The Prometheus... it is just throwback to the other movies perhaps but the Nostromo crew were not explorers...

Most of them didn't know each other and had certainly never trained together. That was implicitly, but deliberately made obvious. Not telling them why or where they were going before they left would have cost Weyland a fortune, but also ensure the secrecy of a classified project. After learning that they were there to meet our supposed creators......who most people would naturally assume to [i]at least[/i] be [i]benign[/i].....they have no conception of the myriad, mortal dangers they actually face.

Or it could be a verbal symptom of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance]Cognitive dissonance[/url] when confronted with such extreme circumstances.

It depends on what you mean. Dialogue like Milburn's martian piss comment were most likely meant to get a chuckle out of the audience and relieve a little bit of the tension. It's kind of similar to in Alien, when Dallas uses Brett's pen to poke at the acid-hole in the ceiling, and then he says, "Here's your pen back." Tiny, tiny jokes early in the movie. But if you mean the rest of the dialogue, I'm not sure. Personally I didn't really notice.

I got the impression at times that the writing had the crew speaking in contrast to the severe environment they were in, oblivious to the dangers there...and the dialoge deliberately highlighted their innocence or foolishness. But i don't think it was an accident at all, or sloppy easy laughs.

Daniel_N Thank you, I was looking for that term

giving this some thought ,,Ya Maybe they needed one or two drinks during the filming of the movie

One reply disappeared... what happened? The one that called Ripley being a "badass chick" :)

Hi Deb, Re your question - oh, I think so, very much so. I laughed out loud at some of David's more... [b]wry[/b] comments, shall we say.

@Daniel_N I don't know, I think there is disparity between the characters and the rest of the film. The characters actions and dialogue doesn't match the tone of the movie. It must have been intentional from the perspective of the people who made the film, but I don't understand why they made that choice. For example, take a look at the viral videos. "Happy Birthday David" and Weyland's TED Talk. Listen closely to the way they talk, the words they use, the style of the narration. It sounds great right? "Happy Birthday David" gave me the shivers, the TED talk is very exciting. They both sound great, very eloquent. In less than a few minutes they raise so many questions. Serious, difficult questions (while still being very entertaining videos). Now, compare that to the way people talk and act in the movie. Can you notice a shift? Why do you think they opted to make the film like that? Maybe in a attempt to make the movie more entertaining? Maybe they were trying to make characters more relatable? Maybe the movie was too difficult? Maybe they felt like they needed to introduce some comedy? I don't know. I just like talking about the film and wonder what was the process behind it!

The dialogue was cheese. Especially the scene between Janek and Shaw where he tells her the aliens are building weapons of mass destruction. It sounded like something straight out of "Independence Day". BTW what was up with the music too? It sounded like a soundtrack for a Star Trek movie not Alien.

I think there was some 'dumbing down' of the movie to appeal to a wider audience. Sometimes the character's felt it necessary to mention very obvious things that were happening... Or maybe this could just be down to providing audience insight into the characters by verbalizing their motivations and actions. Maybe comedy relief. Maybe lindelof. Maybe they spent so much time on David, they forgot about his human compadres. Maybe because certain characters were simply mcguffins and really didn't serve much of a purpose, so why bother developing them. So many possibilities, but we'll never know haha.

Deb, I totally see where you are coming from. I liked the movie over all, and I don't want to sound like I didn't like it (it seems I am mostly posting negative things). But this was probably the worst part for me. I'm guessing the writers did it to appeal to the lowest common audience denominator + attempting to show diversity across the crew (ethics, values, beliefs, motivations, etc) so that they might be interesting (with limited screen time spread across too many characters). The alternative would be to have a disciplined, thoughtful, well oiled team doing things by the numbers (which I would have appreciated much, much more since there are plenty of things that could still go wrong when a good team is doing things intelligently and correctly). I had this same problem with the characters in James Cameron & Alister Grierson's "Sanctum"... for disciplined, scientific minds they were just so stupid! And careless! And unfocused! And unorganized! And so, so, so.... frustratingly STUPID! I don't know... maybe it is because I'm all grown up now and I've worked with professionals and I know that the more expensive and dangerous a job is the tighter and more professional the group working on it usually is. A 2+ year, $3 Trillion, space voyage ending in a highly scientific expedition isn't the type of operation into which you throw a rag-tag group of dope smoking, drunken, idiots who have never met one another. In "Alien", the truckers felt authentic and what they did while attempting to survive their ordeal felt authentic. In "Aliens" the Marines were a cohesive, effective group and other than handing in their ammunition when down near the reactors, they, and their decisions, were believable. The only people in Promethius who felt authentic were the giant Engineers, David and his "Father". The rest of the people needed to graduate high school, maybe get a bit of higher education and experience in their respective fields, and then get trained up for the mission. The HR people who staffed the good ship Prometheus should be held criminally negligent.

@moviefan12 and @Daniregald I agree with you both, but having characters explain things is such a weak thing to do, I don't get why they couldn't have come up with a better way to make things more clear. I imagine several people who are in charge of making decisions on what ends up in the final cut of the movie would have had to agree that Janek explaining the whole weapons of mass destruction thing to Shaw was the way to go. Nobody said, "Wait a minute... that's kinda stupid, can't we do better"? It's almost like they wanted to it to be simplistic. Like you said, to dumb it down a little. Maybe that's the way to go. Maybe what's obvious to some people, is hard to understand to others. However, I think people have a very sophisticated understanding of movies in general. We watch lots and lots of movies... twist endings, stories from multiple points of view, unreliable narrators. That's pretty hard stuff, and every one gets it. It's common place nowadays....

@Wearbe I think Holloway's character is a good example of what you are talking about. He is scientist, an archeologist. He smart and ambitious enough to be partially responsible for one of the great discoveries in the history of mankind. But his actions and dialogue make no sense whatsoever. Well, that's not true. They do make sense. Not if you are trying to apply common sense to his actions, make they make sense on the screen and allow other characters - played by more important actors - to have their moments. For example. Why does he take off his helmet, prompting everyone to do the same? It's silly for his character to do that, but isn't it better to see the actors without their helmets? It looks better on the screen, we can see their faces and expressions better. Why does he get so disappointed the engineers were dead... isn't he an archeologist after-all? Why does he get drunk? So we can have his scene with David. So Michael Fassbender (one of my favorite actors BTW) can say "Great things have small beginnings" and "How far would you go to the the truth?". You know what I mean... this happens a lot throughout the movie. We even have Charlize Theoron killing him with a flamethrower... I don't think this is a bad thing in itself, but it's really distracting when it becomes too obvious. Then again, why did they choose to do that? Couldn't they have edited the movie or written the story in a way that we would still have those great scenes without having to rely on this kinda of thing? I liked the movie too. I just wonder why they chose this path. Lack of time? Budget? Who knows.... maybe one day we'll see an interview with Ridley Scott explaining what happened, like in Blade Runner...

Deb said: "Couldn't they have edited the movie or written the story in a way that we would still have those great scenes without having to rely on this kinda of thing?" Deb, I would think so. They could have continued to test the atmosphere to a level where they all agreed on de-helming and exposure. Despite the humans bringing contamination to the site, Star Trek has been getting away with that type of thing for three generations now. At least then the decision to remove their protection would have been based in science and DELIBERATE ACTION rather than on a potentially life-threatening, mission ruining, whim of an unprofessional incompetent. (LoL, the flame thrower was too little too late... Vickershould have marched out and shot him right there for being a menace and a clear and present danger to everyone on the team. At least then we would have had a bit of respect for her character.) And those FANTASTIC David moments you referred to were great story moments, but they were watered down by the way the script got us to them. Anyway, sloppy writing was one of three complaints that I had about the movie. That sloppy writing pretty much covers the dialog and distractingly idiotic plot devices like biologists petting threat-displaying organisms or the drunkenness (how many jobs can you list where they don't even allow a single can of lite beer to be on location AND employees are regularly drug tested before and during employment?! ... and we are supposed to believe scientists are getting high or hammered on a space mission! Cheese and Rice. Maybe the writers are writing their own habits into the story which would account for why so much of the dialog and story development is the way it is, lol.)

Shaw and David's head, definitely too funny XDXD! and also the scene where Janek detects "Life Forms" and speaks with Milburn and Fifield LOL

I thought the very best line in the film happened because of David8 but was actually delivered by Holloway of all people...He raised his glass after David8's "carefully constructed" question and said..."Here's Mud In Your Eye" One Absolutely Breath Taking Moment of Foreshadowing That Had Me Squirming In My Seat Because of knowing it's full connotation going into this film, it was one of many many magical, for me anyways, moments in the film where knowing something about it beforehand actually helped you understand the deeper meaning of things and or it's under laying nuances and helped it have a bigger impact on the audience !

Haha, I think 'regular' movie goers expect things to be spoonfed to them since they're just going there to enjoy themselves for an hour or two and then they're done with the movie. When I did film studies in college, a lot of my classmates complained about movies that were open to interpretation. If film students acted like that, imagine the general public's reaction. Scott really made up for the script with his visuals though. Fifield was probably the stupidest crew member, but the shot of his hesitance before entering the dome justified his actions a little.. And all those times we see Milburn clinging onto Fifield.. I actually liked their characters a little more cause of those instances.

There should be a Show called: "Ask Lindelof what that nonsense is all about".