movies

[cpebbles]

[SHOW]

I'm pretty confused as to what the hell the biomatter was in the first place. I read that blog post about Space Jesus and I'm pretty skeptical about all of it, but Weyland and David also never gave any hints they thought the biomatter was in any way related to immortality. I can't remember if he witnessed the conversation about the infection in the frozen head.

Exceeding production costs worldwide doesn't get a movie close to being profitable, much less profitable enough to make an inevitably more-expensive sequel. Marketing for the film was reportedly around $130 million. Prometheus isn't meeting forecasts for the US box office, and was basically on par with the openings for the Aliens v. Predator movies that Fox is now trying to pretend never happened. Critics are generally giving favorable reviews, but very mildly favorable.

I liked it enough that I'd like to see a sequel to figure out what the hell was going on, but it's not a certainty at this point.

[TheoSqua]

[SHOW]

I'm pretty confused as to what the hell the biomatter was in the first place. I read that blog post about Space Jesus and I'm pretty skeptical about all of it, but Weyland and David also never gave any hints they thought the biomatter was in any way related to immortality. I can't remember if he witnessed the conversation about the infection in the frozen head.

Exceeding production costs worldwide doesn't get a movie close to being profitable, much less profitable enough to make an inevitably more-expensive sequel. Marketing for the film was reportedly around $130 million. Prometheus isn't meeting forecasts for the US box office, and was basically on par with the openings for the Aliens v. Predator movies that Fox is now trying to pretend never happened. Critics are generally giving favorable reviews, but very mildly favorable.

I liked it enough that I'd like to see a sequel to figure out what the hell was going on, but it's not a certainty at this point.

AvP made $38m in OW and Prometheus made $50 and is on pace for roughly $135m over its first 4 weeks. AvP only did $80m. So it's more successful then that franchise, but you are right that it'll need some stellar overseas sales to make a sequal.

[heyzeus]

Moonrise Kingdom is the Wes Andersoniest film possible, so if you love him, it's great.
It'll make you sad, nostalgic for something you probably never experienced and happy. Its very much about how you never can feel as purely and resolutely about anything like you can when you're a child. I was never a serious or mature enough kid to have been aware of that at the time, and I should probably feel grateful for that. I never wanted to escape childhood like the main characters in this movie and most of his movies do, but as an adult it does make you wish you could go back and appreciate that childish, myopic worldview. That sort of feeling of tween isolation never really leaves, we just kind of have to accept that life is never really perfect or exactly how we want it and that's probably why he set the story on an isolated island where everyone is literally trapped in such a small existence with each other where they have to weather a literal storm.

Anyway, it's really good if you like his stuff.

Agree with this. Moonrise Kingdom has all of the usual Wes Anderson types of humor and detail and crazy tracking shots. There's even yet another slow-mo shot of a bunch of people walking, which he seems to like. But there's a big difference here. In a lot of his movies, it's like a very very detailed diorama - full of inventiveness and scrupulous detail and hundreds of characters, but without emotional investment in any of the actual substance.

Moonrise Kingdom has a dozen characters, but what's interesting is that the heart of the story is these two kids. It's very heartfelt, romantic even, Romeo and Julietish in a way. The story is beautiful in a sad but inspiring sort of way, and those kids do a tremendous job. Kinda amazing that in a movie with Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances Mcdormand, Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel, and Tilda Swinton, they're all overshadowed by two unknown 12 year old actors. (Then again, none of their characters have nearly as much depth, most are just foils for the kids).

[robbotis]

[SHOW]

I'm pretty confused as to what the hell the biomatter was in the first place. I read that blog post about Space Jesus and I'm pretty skeptical about all of it, but Weyland and David also never gave any hints they thought the biomatter was in any way related to immortality. I can't remember if he witnessed the conversation about the infection in the frozen head.

Exceeding production costs worldwide doesn't get a movie close to being profitable, much less profitable enough to make an inevitably more-expensive sequel. Marketing for the film was reportedly around $130 million. Prometheus isn't meeting forecasts for the US box office, and was basically on par with the openings for the Aliens v. Predator movies that Fox is now trying to pretend never happened. Critics are generally giving favorable reviews, but very mildly favorable.

I liked it enough that I'd like to see a sequel to figure out what the hell was going on, but it's not a certainty at this point.

AvP made $38m in OW and Prometheus made $50 and is on pace for roughly $135m over its first 4 weeks. AvP only did $80m. So it's more successful then that franchise, but you are right that it'll need some stellar overseas sales to make a sequal.

Umm, it was the 12th best Opening Weekend ever for an R rated movie.
Seems pretty good if you ask me.

[thrill]

Prometheus:

- Absolutely no reason to see it in 3D. Adds nothing but a surcharge.
- I don't think David's motivations are really well explained. What he does adds nothing to his mission, and was very unlikely to have added anything to it.
- If Noomi Rapace is going to keep playing an Englishwoman, the director and editor need to pay more attention to her accent.

[SHOW]

- Up until right at the end, I was sure the "Engineers" had been forced to seed other planets with life for the benefit of the Alien aliens. I guess it's good that I didn't have the movie figured out before the title screen, but that explanation also answers the questions that are left open in this movie, and I didn't really feel that leaving them open worked in this movie since they weren't the focus of the other Alien movies.

Question regarding what is in pebbles' spoiler.

[SHOW]

So, you're saying that the reason they left the "invitation" all over Earth was to, once we were technologically capable of reaching the planet, exterminate us? Like maybe as a way to control the chaos of evolution? Seek out every life-sustaining system possible, seed it with a form of life that they understand, can control and will inevitably become dominant on that planet, direct them to a planet and have the Alien exterminate them before they can be a threat to the giant bald humanoid's intergalactic domination?

If that's what they were going for, that's an extremely dumb plan.
That's the big question for me, why the star map? If that really is an outpost for manufacturing the weaponized Alien lifeform, like Stringer posited, why would they direct humans there rather than to their home planet?

I also agree wholeheartedly on David's motivations. Unless David achieved some sort of sentience that gave him emotions like jealousy and resentment, there's just no point to him infecting handsome scientist's booze.

For the record, despite the small plot related criticisms, I enjoyed the movie a lot and would be in for a sequel.

[cpebbles]

Which goes to show why Hollywood doesn't put money into R rated movies.

Just to illustrate how Hollywood economics works: The second Narnia movie had a production budget of $220 million. It had a worldwide gross of $420 million (After a bigger opening than Prometheus) and made another $350 million or so in its first year in home video. This was such a rousing success that Disney voluntarily severed ties with the series. Fox came on board after insisting the budget be slashed for the third film, which fared similarly at the box office. The producers and studio let the film rights to the rest of the series expire at that point, and the rest of the movies are not going to be made now.

thrill:

[SHOW]

I assumed they were a subjugated race basically seeding plants as farms for the Aliens. It really only makes sense in movie logic, and I'm actually glad the answer wasn't that simple, but I also don't really see whatever answer Scott has in mind being any better. Not sure if you've read the blog post that was passed around on Reddit, but if it's correct, the story is full of some glaring plot holes and a sequel is less likely to be made. Without spoiling too much, the theory is that something very specific and obvious happened 2000 years ago when they decided to destroy us. It actually flickered through my mind while watching the movie, but I ignored it because getting too overt about it is just not plausible.

[Vidor]

"Brave" is coming out soon. Pretty excited about taking my four-year-old to this one.

[AdmiralKird]

thrill:

[SHOW]

I assumed they were a subjugated race basically seeding plants as farms for the Aliens. It really only makes sense in movie logic, and I'm actually glad the answer wasn't that simple, but I also don't really see whatever answer Scott has in mind being any better. Not sure if you've read the blog post that was passed around on Reddit, but if it's correct, the story is full of some glaring plot holes and a sequel is less likely to be made. Without spoiling too much, the theory is that something very specific and obvious happened 2000 years ago when they decided to destroy us. It actually flickered through my mind while watching the movie, but I ignored it because getting too overt about it is just not plausible.

They got pissed Zacchaeus came down from the tree?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The blog post pebbles is referring to: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

[SHOW]

I'm not sure if I buy the "Humans killed Jesus which eventually influenced the biomatter and now there's monsters" angle, but it does a very good job of going over the symbolism, and I understand a lot more having read the post and the comments. Like Thrill, the thing that sticks out to me is why the artifacts would point to LV223. The theory I like best is that there are factions of engineers. Some which seed life with biomatter, and others that destroy life by weaponizing biomatter(and creating monsters as a side effect). The artifacts are a warning from the seeders about the destroyers, rather than an invitation to come visit.

[cpebbles]

"Brave" is coming out soon. Pretty excited about taking my four-year-old to this one.

Liberals in Hollywood trying to corrupt our kids into thinking there's nothing wrong with being a ginger.