Jodorowskys Dune - The Film that never was.

I am a big 'Dune' fan, specifically the David Lynch movie from the 80's - i've never actually read the book so I have apparently something in common with Jodorowsky.

The Lynch movie also spawned some great video games, but I wonder what would have happened if this earlier version had worked out?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/14/5410996/jodorowskys-dune-documentary-trailer-adaptation-that-never-was

Should have lots of Giger, Mobius and Foss artwork on show - even if you don't like Dune a lot of this effort went toward Alien, as many of the designers moved over to Ridley Scotts Alien project, I think that film really wouldn't have been the same, or even been made if not for Jodorowskys Dune introducing all these elements to each other.

*edit* thanks blogger for not parsing that URL automatically, should be fixed now!

Coolhand's Guide to Super Vehicles - 01 - Blue Thunder

Welcome to part one of my guide to super-vehicles, where to be considered, the vehicle is both superior to its contemporary machines and also the star of the show.  There are many examples but we begin with Blue Thunder, this has turned into a real trip down the rabbit hole with information from a vast amount of sources collated with some opinion and speculation on the greater meaning of the machine itself and those fictional characters behind it.

I think we're gunna need a bigger gun. 

Brainchild of the sadly departed script writer Dan (Alien) O'Bannon, 1983's Blue Thunder revolved around an action thriller plot about a fascist government agency seeking to oppress a population, and more importantly, the freakin' awesome technological terror of a helicopter they invented to help them do it!  It's a film well worth watching, so if you haven't seen it I suggest you go and do so right now before I spoil anything for you.

"One civilian dead for every ten terrorists, that's an acceptable ratio!"

The late, great Roy Sheider stars as Officer Frank Murphy and gives a solid performance as a seasoned, and frequently reckless police helicopter pilot in a fictional version of the LAPD: Astro Division.

Murphy suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after a hellish tour in Vietnam, where he witnessed at least one 'wet-job', an execution of a Viet-Cong officer who was thrown from a helicopter piloted by Murphy. This trauma, along with suffering a life threatening shrapnel wound, leaves Frank coping with insomnia, nightmares and even the occasional flashback. Sheider conveys a character who is out of phase with his peers, seemingly unable to relate to them or the trivial aspects of everyday life like following orders or obeying traffic laws.  He uses a watch on several occasions to measure his own perception of time, believing this to be a measure of his own sanity. The earlier drafts of the Blue Thunder script found Murphy going totally postal in an even more heavily armed helicopter, wreaking chaos upon LA. So the version of Murphy who made it to film is somewhat toned down, and he retains a sensitivity and socially awareness, contrary to the traumatised aspects of his personality.

The idea of the damaged Vietnam war veteran seems cliché today, perhaps even passée in the wake of more recent and ongoing conflicts.  The superlative First Blood from 1982 introduced possibly the most famous  PTSD victim, John Rambo.  In fact, Blue Thunder shares several themes with First Blood, and both have stood the test of time quite well. Coincidentally, also in '82, the concept of a veteran haunted by his traumatic past was explored in the complementary super-vehicle action flick, FireFox, and we'll explore that one at a later date.

Anyway, more Blue Thunder spoilers, after being grounded for incompetence, negligence and possible insanity, Murphy inexplicably winds up a test pilot on the Blue Thunder program. Through the course of the film he meets and later kills the man who traumatised him in 'Nam; learns of and exposes a sinister, secret government program; and finally wrecks the Blue Thunder helo by train, lest it ever be used to spray twenty mike-mike explosive tipped rounds @ 4,000 RPM into populated areas.  So now you don't have to see it, right? Wrong, you'd be missing out on some of the best helicopter action ever committed to celluloid, John Badham clinical and realistic in his style of direction gives up some thrilling aerial choreography, of the kind you just wouldn't see made for real any more.

Blue Thunder in real life consisted of two full size flying machines, a static mockup or two and several miniatures, some of which were remote control flying models. The full sized machines are the ones we're interested in and they're based around Aérospatiale, SA-341G "Gazelle", turbo-shaft powered civilian helicopters. This made both machines rare examples of near fully functional movie props, as even after conversion they could still manuever under their own power and flit around the LA skyline with surprising grace.

All the same, the helicopters had their limits, and miniature special effects take over for many situations like the famous loop-the-loop sequence, but it still counts for the amount of on-screen flying time the machines had.  The Video below demonstrates both flying machines visible at the same time, redressed for the later "Amerika" TV production.

Allegedly one of the original Gazelle Helicopters prior to conversion, serial numbered as 1066 and 1075 they were used by mining companies in the US prior to purchase for conversion.  I found this image on http://www.gregdonner.org where it was submitted by Bayard Lawes.

Design-wise, the rounded, optimised-for-aerodynamics styling of the basic Gazelle as shown above, wouldn't have cut it for illustrating this sinister, heavily armoured and featured-packed helicopter. Looking at the styling of the redesign, the AH-64 Apache Gunship - first flown in 1975 - must have had a massive influence on the canopy re-design and the overall mean and ugly facelift the aircraft received.

Designed in the early 70's by Hughes Helicopters to destroy well equipped Soviet opponents, this prototype YAH-64 basks in the sun, somewhere in the US. It's role shifted after the end of the cold war and is now more frequently employed against the types of targets that Blue Thunder was devised to deal with. 

The on-screen design is often erroneously credited to legendary set designer Mickey Michaels, but that doesn't make much sense, since he's a set designer.  Philip Harrison, credited as production designer for Blue Thunder is possibly, more likely, to be involved. The helmet controlled targeting system (very similar to the TADS of the Apache,) is named after him - The Harrison Fire Control System - HFCS.

This uncredited sketch apparently originally came from a company called "Cinema Air", I found it on http://www.gregdonner.org where it was submitted by Bayard Lawes.  Note what appears to be a padded material on the underside, radar absorbing material or flexible, kinetic energy absorbing armour?

Looking for answers I found the below video by Trailers from Hell, on Youtube, with commentary by the director himself, John Badham, which more or less credits Philip Harrison for the Blue Thunder helicopter design.

Badham also implies that the production team were perhaps unaware of the Apache, but I don't think it was a "Black Program" or hidden from the public during development, so I think its highly likely they would have studied images of the prototype Apaches and taken cues as appropriate, just look at the forward sensor arrangement, surely too close to be a fluke.

An ugly bug smoking a cigar, its just a cigar, not a big gun, no wait its a gun, especially when its smoking....

As well as a definitive answer on the designer, I've also had a hard time finding who built the conversion, some state that Hughes Helicopters made the conversion, but this seems to be incorrect, but its possible that they worked on the Hughes types also used in the production.

Bayard Laws, who owned and then sold one of the Gazelles tells his story over at gregdonner.org.

"I used to fly the original SA341 Gazelle (N777GH) which I sold to Columbia Pictures for the film. I delivered the ship from Detroit, Michigan to Cinema Air in Carlsbad, California, who fabricated the conversion to Blue Thunder."

Another company sometimes mentioned is R.W. Martin, in conjunction with these, a name that has cropped up for both the design and the build is aviator, effects specialist and aircraft restorer, Bill Yoak, who passed away earlier this year.  According to a thread at Warbirdinformationexchange.org, Bill worked for Aerospace Specialties, though at the time it may have been called The Metal Cage.  This Company also converted another Gazelle, and a Puma helicopter for Rambo 3.  Bill's son, aviator and stunt pilot Scott Yoak, credits his father with the design of blue thunder, and also claims that the design was directly inspired by the number two Apache prototype:

"This (Apache) taxied by dad's hangar one day and it inspired his design, note the #2, thats the second prototype apache that crashed."

Scott presently flies demonstrations in the P-51 Mustang his father built, which may be the finest Mustang flying. http://quicksilvermustang.com/Crew.html

A partially built Blue Thunder flyable effects prop. The Gazelle canopy has been cut away and a box section steel frame has been added to carry the plexi-glass window panels. Image courtesy Scott Yoak. 

It seems to be a case that there's a chain of companies sub-contracting to each other or dealing with separate elements of the purchasing and converting.  Whoever responsible, they surely understood that a machines purpose of existence informs the design - form following function is key to creating a plausible looking prop. This is as important as the concept of the machine itself - it must appear fit for its purpose or all suspension of disbelief is lost. Blue Thunder succeeds in spades, its brutal looking, super-cool in an ugly, scary, insectoid way. clearly it still flies, even if looking *just a bit* front heavy.

Badham, with his commentary in the Trailers from Hell video, also compares this chopper to a physical extension of an Orwellian state - and presumably only of use to such a state. Essentially, its form and features are tailored specifically to become the extension of totalitarian rule, and I think it appears as sinister as that implies.

He suggests that the prophecy of Blue Thunder has come to pass, in a sense, with the kinds of electronic surveillance perpetually going on all around us, such a vehicle today would be obsolete. Everyone presently reading this blog in 2013 might be using a digital, spiritual descendent of the Blue Thunder surveillance system via electronic interception of communication and the covert co-operation of the online services and software providers we choose to use, or not use.

All the same, an armed helicopter is capable of far more than passively monitoring and spying. So while Badham would still be correct about the need for such a machine to surveil citizens being diminished by modern technology, a strong arm might also still need to be employed by a fascist state or faction from time to time. Of course in order to accomplish this and still have the bulk of the population and armed forces on your side, certain scenarios would have to play out.

The movie Blue Thunder does not miss a trick here and in the absence of such a scenario appearing spontaneously, the project 'THOR' - Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response - is devised by a small group of conspirators who are also key players in the aircraft's testing and production program. To implement THOR itself is to engineer a tragic situation artificially, a race war, thus cementing the need for such a weapon in the eyes of the greater, less fascist branches of government and the unwitting population, justifying its usage.

We're never told why this is necessary, perhaps the group represents a government gone mad with power, or military industrialists seeking to clean up with lucrative contracts for more Blue Thunders.  Maybe they represent both, and demonstrate the kind of corrupting potential that the Military Industrial sector can have on governments.

Tellingly, Blue Thunder doesn't employ any active countermeasure systems and none are described in the text, as it does not expect to meet such sophisticated weapon systems. This leaves the machine vulnerable to true military vehicles. To make up for this deficit, Murphy twice uses heat sources found in the city environment to defeat heat seeking missiles launched by attacking F-16's, inflicting varying amounts of chaos on the city.  This lack of a countermeasure system confirms that its use is primarily against poorly equipped enemies, like domestic terrorists or the wider civilian population. 

This impressive aerial war machine has even more destructive power than Blue Thunder, but would be too large and too noisy for the types of missions that Blue Thunder was invented for. However it needed every ounce of its capabilities, and more, to defeat the US supplied heat seeking missile systems that armed Afghan soldiers in the 80's. After suffering numerous losses, The Soviet Army quickly added countermeasures dispensers to launch flares in an attempt to spoof this new threat away from the helicopters.

Chekhov's Gun.

The playwright Anton Chekhov once said:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a 20mm rotary cannon hanging on the underside of the flying death machine, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

And so adhering strictly to this rule, throughout the early parts of the movie we are introduced to the various features of the Blue Thunder, which are all relevant later; we aren't shown anything that isn't later used and the helo probably has no capabilities beyond what is needed for the plot.  Lets talk about these features.  As well as one inch thick armour, easily capable of stopping rounds from small arms, the highly visible feature of Blue Thunder's ferocious Gatling style turret mounted cannon would provide a powerful visual deterrent to any insurgent or terrorist unlucky enough to be in its path.  It's hardly a surgical weapon per-se, but it could easily wipe out large numbers of clustered civilians, defeat fairly thick armour, or penetrate structures like civilian houses with ease. Perhaps it was simply to look cool on film, but it also conveys the extreme ideology driving its fictional inventors.

If you're a government and need to use this kind of firepower against your own people, you're doing something totally wrong, probably everything. Image courtesy Gary T Mason.

The crowd control: You're-doing-it-wrong style demo, set somewhere in the deserts of California, show the Blue Thunder helicopter using its cannon to carve up a street full of cardboard cut-out civilians and terrorists - blowing up cars and busses with little to no discrimination. Although the scene presented is one of saving the population from an imagined terrorist assault on the planned Olympic Games, as one of the sinister program directors quietly states to Murphy: "It wouldn't be used unless our worst case scenario came to pass, like armed insurrection, it's comforting to know you've got it on tap." 

I'm sure its great when you have these things "on tap," but careful it doesn't turn around and bite you on the...

This failure demonstrates to Murphy that the system is actually far from ideal for its stated role of protecting the population, and that its true purpose is likely more evil, and even less discriminate.  Murphy is clearly not impressed by this demo, or those in charge of the program.   Both the quoted statement above and the performance are contrary to the commentary provided by the evangelising army sergeant during the demo show.

Everything makes more sense in the presence of project 'THOR', and vital to Murphy exposing this plot are a pair of high-gain microphones which adorn the upper fuselage. Situated behind the canopy on a rotating mount they appear highly directional. There must be more to these than meets the eye, as they might have significant problems operating in a conventional way while so close to the engine and props.  There is a real world technology which projects a laser beam and optically measures distortion caused by air vibration which might be immune to these effects. Using this system a conversation can be heard clearly at long range, even through a closed, multiple layered or armoured window.  All the same, the underside would have been a far more logical place to mount these, just from the point-of-view of being able to aim them at a target beneath the chopper.

Twin mics on the upper fuselage, perhaps the other thinner probes are some kind of pitot tube and perhaps resemble the feelers on an insects head. note the second 'Thunder flying around in the background. Courtesy of Gary T Mason.

Blue Thunder also has a suite of cameras for seeing visible and infra-red light - a magic kind of Hollywood infra-red that can see through walls.  Some of these may be mounted in the electronics pods on the sides of the aircraft, these may also have something to do with the 'Whisper Mode' feature, which allows the craft to get close enough to use these systems effectively without alerting anyone in advance.

The electronics pods, or whatever they are, welcome to my definitive guide to Blue Thunder...  Courtesy of Gary T Mason.

Even more sinister, but more subtle, these weapon and surveillance systems are all tied together with an advanced avionics suite, which is networked to a central database - perhaps a data-link.  This database is something like the prototype of the NSA systems which we now know store all our details and monitor all our email, this system can even tell the chopper crew whether you're at home or not. Watching the movie today, this wizardry seems like mundane, primitive stuff but its essentially the same system that's being used right now.

Surf the Net like its 1982, because it is.  This is the network terminal in of the JAFO station, where the rear-seater umm, sits, and works the magical electronics arrays. There are many different systems for the back-seater but this console  allows crew to network with the central database, perhaps to also play some Space Invaders. Image courtesy Gary T Mason.

Although it plays no part in the movie and is never mentioned, a textured material, perhaps a kind of foam, conformally coats the ventral surfaces of Blue Thunder. This foam matches the positions of the padded looking surfaces in the sketch show earlier in the article, again this material may be armour, or something to enhance the machines stealth aspects by absorbing radar.

The foam covered underside, looking a little frayed, but the wear all adds to the effect and enhances the realism.  Image Courtesy Gary T Mason. 

Finally, the propulsion system is a bit mysterious with additional upper pods on either side of the central engine & gearbox, which appear like turbo-shaft engine nacelles from some angles, but are the wrong shape in cross section. Blue Thunder has a 'Turbo Boost' for its propulsion system so perhaps they have something to do with this? The "nacelles" are also hollow of machinery as shown several times in the movie, perhaps they're a kind of oddly shaped pulse-jet?  Otherwise it seems to rely on a single turbo-shaft engine, similar to the one used by the Gazelle but with a new cowling over the turbine, which seems made of the same material that coats the underside.

The Gazelle Turbo-shaft engine to the right, the boost-pods to the left, bearing the 02 marking. Image courtesy Gary T Mason.

Sadly, as with the fictional version, both real flying machines and the static mock-ups are now all considered to be destroyed. They were used for a while in other productions, a watered down TV show of the same name, MacGuyver, Amerika, a Wang Computers TV commercial, the cockpit mock-ups even appeared in FireFox, but at some point were either dismantled and sold for parts or left to rot in the Universal Studios backlot and finally scrapped.

Today, all the parts and pieces and technology one totally for real, from noise dampening airframe designs to sensors that can see through roofs, walls even.  We can even go much better and add active camouflage to the list of features and who knows what else.

It may be worth asking why no one has put something like this together. However, the essential fallacy of the Blue Thunder weapons system is very the reasoning behind its existence; it has no actual valid purpose, since a government should neither be secretly spying on its own population, or mowing them down with chain-guns. So ultimately while everything it does is practically possible, easy to accomplish even, it should be difficult to seriously propose such a machine for either purpose and get a government to allow its use, again hence the need in the film for the secret project THOR, to create a justification for the machines existence and usage.

Much has been revealed recently, of the very secretive monitoring of our communications by government agencies, and its been going on for a very long time.  Reaction has been a mix of shock, outrage, acceptance, even approval and to some it was merely a confirmation of what they already suspected.

With his Blue Thunder script and concept, Dan O'Bannon warned us about putting total faith in the powers that be; not everything they implement may be in our best interests, even if it seems that it is; or that one individual or small group can through negligence or design pervert these interests for their own ends. Even if we consider we have nothing to hide, even if there are some valid reasons for secretive letter and number agencies knowing every aspect of our lives, everything has a downside. Our governments are not infallible and the individuals who form them are flawed human beings just like the rest of us. From corruption to the commonplace hacking of government systems; malignant industrial influence or sheer incompetence like leaving laptops full of data on public transportation.

Whether you trust your governments with your data or not, who knows where it could end up. So it is perhaps not such a bad idea to place limits on what we let them know about us, and that's probably going to be our personal responsibility to try and stay ahead, we will only live in the Orwellian style state that O'Bannon feared if we allow it to happen.  However, if monitoring the people is kept secret, like in some fascist dictatorship like the USSR or North Korea; if we aren't informed about it, by our governments, by Google; Microsoft; et-al, then how can we even make that choice? Isn't democracy and a free market about the right to choose? How do we justify all of this?

Finally, lets add some near meaningless numbers to lighten the mood, a bit.

Scores in each category out of a maximum of 5.

Design: 4 - Totally conveys a sinister purpose with its mean looks and over the top cannon.

Speed: 2 - Quick enough off the mark to dodge an incoming sidewinder, but overall not a speed demon, unable to outrun either a fully loaded police Jet Ranger or an MD-500

Maneuverability: 4 - Capable of swift changes in direction and free travel in three dimensions with 6 axes of freedom, what could be more manueverable than a helicopter? It also was able to out-maneuver the same Jet Ranger and MD-500, to the point where they crashed and stalled out respectively.

Lethality: 3 - With its dastardly purpose and stealth systems, this is one bird you don't want sneaking up on you. Limited to cannon, no long-range or guided armament, but what a gun!

Practicality: 5 - Perfectly crafted for its heinous purpose, plausible and something you could really build.

Durability: 3 All over one inch thick armour is fairly impressive, but not impenetrable to anything heavy-duty enough. Also lacks any active defensive systems like ECM, flare dispensers etc.

Feel-Good Factor: 0 - Its systems were eventually put to good use by Murphy, but this really wasn't the machine's intended purpose and so do not count. Neither does anything from the far lighter TV series with Hightower from Police Academy, and Garth from Waynes World.

Dark-side Factor: 5 - Probably the most evil super vehicle devised, too evil to live.

Cool Factor: 4 - Coolness knows no ideological boundaries.

Total: A highly respectable 30 out of a maximum 45.

Thanks for reading, its taken a long time put this together so if you liked it at all please hit the share buttons below! I wish this could have been more definitive, as I know there is still some mystery here. Blue Thunder also dips into some heavy territory, which may be even more relevant today - normally I'd like to keep the blog more escapist and fun, but that's not the case here. Feel free to leave a comment if you'd like to add something, tell me how unbelievably wrong I am about something, or would like to suggest which super-vehicle to cover for the next article.

Catch you later....

Propaganda

The intensity of The Smiths is unbelievable, as is Morrissey's songwriting and Johnny Marr's guitar licks, not forgetting the other two, whoever they were.  

Most of us reading this blog probably live in a world where we can pick and choose our beliefs, this is a wonderful thing even if it means we don't always get along, its perhaps a rare personal freedom we enjoy.

Perhaps one day we will come to a common consensus, perhaps to rally against some terrifying threat from beyond the stars like in a bad science fiction. In reality, the threat is pale, limp and unable to move swiftly outside their saucers when ensconced in our earthly gravity well.  It's impossible to get a random collection of humans to even agree on what's the best way to cook a steak, let alone anything more significant, many would despair that the steak was ever cleaved from the body which once frolicked in the pasture anyway.

Is this really a metaphor for something with more ology than you anticipated? - No, I don't mean Vulcanology. 

So, since there are so many of us believing so many things, we can easily end up believing things that others living in a different culture or even just down the street may find not only un-palletable but entirely un-believable.... Let alone those living in other star systems who find us all hilarious.

We can all be guilty of trying to propagate our own personal belief system to a wider audience, even if we don't realise we're doing it. We can wind up encoding it into creative works or subtly injecting it into conversation. Some of us just make stuff up for fun or sinister ends, and sometimes people end up truly believing things that someone no more godly, knowledgeable or smarter than them has simply invented.

Is After Earth subversive cult propaganda encoded within a summer blockbuster? Some believe it is, not everyone concurs, but after a couple of weeks of release and now available all over the world, nearly everyone seems to agree; After Earth, stinks.  Maybe M. Night Shyamalan, Jaden and Will Smith with this apparently quite terrible film, have come the closest something we can all agree on, whatever our other beliefs. Maybe that was the plan all along... To make films so big and so terrible that everyone will see them and can't help but hate them.  As a result, we will all be united in hatred, disgust and dislike.

Okay, its not great, but its a start.

You know what they say, you can't please all the people all the time, but you can probably make them all vomit through their noses if you try hard enough. 

Prometheus 33⅓: The Final Insult.

GET THIS BLURAY 1TS LIKE AWSOM

This is the third time I've posted about this production, and to be honest my opinion of it hasn't gone up since last time, in fact its probably dropped from my previous review.

Why continue talking about it if its so average?

Because to me and perhaps to you too, the issues with it are almost more interesting than the actual movie itself, and also I have no life, no life at all.  So open wide like a toothy, foof-faced squid thing that's been locked in a spaceship for hours with no one noticing until its required by the plot, and to quote Plinkett, lets dive right in shall we...

I'd hoped the home release would fix some of the obvious problems with this production. Apparently I was once again hoping for too much and it really hasn't fixed it at all, and much talk of late in the press about the studio execs, sinister like those of the Weyland-Yutani Corp itself, tampering with this officially mediocre movie and at least hinting that 'its basically all the studios fault'.

I'd group the errors under perhaps 3 headings; concept; story and editing. We could talk about the production design etc, which was mostly great, not enough Giger, particularly woefully short in the creature dept... But as Sir Ridley Scott pointed out in an interview for Alien, "it's all window dressing", meaning that doesn't necessarily make or break the movie, it to me is just disappointing but I can look past that if the fundamentals are right.  So lets concentrate on the important aspects.

It's very simple, we just want your money over and over and over again. It's what we call a trilogy. 

Concept: The initial concept according to the original scriptwriter as interviewed in empire was a proper Alien prequel, set on the same world as in Alien, with the same ship and everything. Clearly, based on Spaihts inteview, in order to facilitate the begining of a new-and-legally-distinguishable-from-Alien franchise, this had to be changed, on direct order from the higher-ups, above even the director and owner of the production company for the project - Scott Free Productions - Sir Ridley Scott.

So were higher-than-production-level decisions to blame for the problems in the following areas?

Story: Following the change in concept, Damon Lindelof is brought on board to help accomplish the script chages, I guess its what you'd call a shake and bake colo... I mean story.

While the studio allegedly initiated the changes, I really couldn't care less if its an Alien prequel or not and I and many others personally, largely blame Lindelof for many problems with the story, the stupid stuff that characters do, their poor decision making and lack of professionalism - just plain lack of common sense above everything else, that makes no sense. And other stuff that also makes no sense, which I detail with excruciating precision in my review, perhaps I'm being unfair but I can't help but draw comparisons between Prometheus' plot lines and those of Lost.  However without seeing what came before, its hard to determine exactly what idea came from where, and where problems really originated... In fairness the whole thing may have been completely broken from the start and Lindelof fixed it up as best he could, for all I know.

Lindelof of course proved his creativity with hit series Lost, which however was also a series that many (brave, brave souls who stuck with it until the very end) felt was ultimately unsatisfying, meandering and made up as it went along. I personally found its plots had complicated and interesting beginnings  but always leading to mediocre, rushed and uninspired difficult endings, endings that make no sense, which is the last hour of Prometheus to a tee.

These problems are largely compounded by the final factor:

Editing: I'm not talking about timing or anything minor, but like something really important happens in a particular scene, but after that the really important thing is never mentioned even once, I have a hard time believing that such experienced movie makers would mistakenly forget about that thread to move onto the next part as quickly as possible. Interesting beginnings leading to mediocre endings... Sounds like a line from the movie itself, how about non-existent endings, even?

It felt like the complete movie was not shown at the theatres, that to perhaps cut the movie down to 2 hours some really vital things were cut out.  Not the first time this has happened, but then consider the incredibly slow start: Was there nothing that could be cut from the introductory hour to make the meat of it make more sense.  I mean you can call it an artistic decision, but it's clearly at the expense of telling the actual story.  The story, the concept of Prometheus the movie is not really terribly complicated, yes we get it as our long time friend Erich Von Daniken would point out: IT IS NOT A NEW IDEA.  Why labour that point and leave so much else unanswered?   Alien had a long intro, but since the actual plot was straightforward and not a million different threads to begin, explore and resolve it could afford to do this.

Why, for example, did a scene that Lindelof wrote to explain the android infecting the idiot with the black goo get left on the editing computers hard drive? Eh? But I dunno, perhaps that would have still seemed like a dick move even with it explained - As I mentioned in my review, what kind of moron would run an uncontrolled experiment like that, which would be far more likely to endanger the ship, the crew and in effect Weyland, than provide him with eternal or extended life.  So Lindelof explains why something didn't make sense.  Unfortunately here even with the explanation I guess it still doesn't make sense.  Lindelof provides plenty of sorry excuses in this article right here.

So did someone forget they were meant to be telling a story here? Not likely given the calibre of people and money involved. Would I be too cynical to suggest that perhaps this was done precisely to put the scenes in later in the home release? or make them available to watch at least on the blu ray.  Ya know, the scenes that might make certain things actually make sense so it can be marketed as the thing that fixes this broken film.  Is this something that Sir Ridley, known for resisting studio demands or allowing his work to be watered down would even allow?

Am I unfair in suggesting there might have been certain money over art choices made there?  There was a time before directors cuts, where the theatrical release was the best thing that a creative team could condense into two hours or less. Over the last few decades since Alien started messing up cinema bathrooms, home releases are more important, its also more important to obviously milk those sales for as much as possible, movies have always been shrewdly marketed.

Extra value, extra scenes and / or run-time are expected, demanded in the home formats, and thats fair enough but perhaps this time it was ultimately at the expense of the original release, which may have been deliberately crippled, to add the value back in later.

If true, it's the movie equivalent of the reprehensible practice by games publishers of holding back video game content just to make it a downloadable add-on later... Where people are deliberately sold an inferior product that they will have to spend more money on later, to get the product as intended. But why do this, people aren't stupid, I won't be the only person asking this question, Erich probably has a few too, but he's locked away safely for the time being until The History Channel commissions a new series of the excellent and not stupid at all guff-fest that is, Ancient Aliens.

So there may be suit / money / marketing related issues with the editing, I can't say for sure, I am of course only asking questions.... But the other answer to these problems is that a director, whos work I've mostly enjoyed and who has made at least two really wonderful Science Fiction epics had made some awful mistakes with his latest work... I mean it's easy to pick a lone gunman and pin everything on him.

There are other problems with the movie too, but I bet no one at the studio strenuously insisted that the characters can only run in one direction at the end. I mean, I wasn't there, I don't know what happened but there are problems that are probably harder to pin on 'the suits' than others... From the Empire interview, its easy to get the impression that the problems were all due to decisions made from somewhere above the production staff, and I doubt that's entirely true, blame has to lie to an extent with everyone involved, its never just one person, so whether its Damon Lindelof, or Ridley Scott or faceless execs that cop the blame depending on who you talk to, perhaps there were problems at every level, which is the only way you can explain all the issues with the final product.

Its biggest problem, is that unlike its predecessors/sequels and, due to its many failings in many areas it fails to represent any sort of believable reality; often possessing all the cohesion of a free-forming dream more than a well thought out movie.  The hype over the home release being the saviour for many a confused movie-goer is just a distraction from the fact that the movie is basically broken and messed with too much at its core for any amount of extra scenes, extended run-time or alternative endings to fix. It was never going to live up to the hype, we expected loose edges, but at least the basics should have made sense.  Is this the final insult to an audience who expected so much?

Ugh Ahm.... Th' Lugh: "Dredd" - The Preview

I'm not Dredd-ing this September as much as I am December 21st, but what did the Mayans know anyway?

Borag Thungg, Earthlets! It's Summer 1995, and a slightly smaller, way less hairy version of your beloved reporter, after a day of endangering innocent beach-goers lives with a surfboard is attending a cinema in Newquay to see a movie based on one of the UK's most enduring cult comic characters - Hammerstein, the noble leader of the ABC Warriors.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRN-X74VVK4&feature=fvst for a shakey, digitised from VHS episode of Film '95 which details some of the production, thx Bazza!

Also featured in the movie was Sylvester Stallone, performing a passable impression of another 2000AD character; Judge Joseph Dredd, infact it proved to be more about him than anyone else and was even named after that character, but who could forget that scrotnig ABC robot?

Now a full 17 years later, perhaps to the day, my 2000AD subscription lapsed more than a decade ago, but despite this crushing blow to the publishers, I'm surprised to see the franchise is still running strong.

So much so that with Hollywood's constant plumbing of comic book material they have once again looked across the rad-soaked wasteland of what used to be Middle America, past Mega City One which occupies what used be New York and a big chunk of the surrounding Eastern Seaboard. Before setting off over the Black Atlantic ocean (wait, was that Judge Dredd, or Syndicate on the Amiga?) and landing firmly in Brit-Cit One. There, out of hundreds of great characters they've once again predictably chosen to base a film on the most widely known and marketable character, Judge Dredd.... Just call him Dredd... Ain't got time for the "Judge" part these days.

And so I'm watching this exact trailer as magically interlinked above^, thinking wow, this is zarjaz, even though it has no ABC's, no Judges of Death and the whole thing kinda reminds me of Robocop 2 somehow but at least there's no Rob Shneider cracking jokes. (aww c'mon Fergie wasn't that irritating was he? Remember the servo-droid? hehehe, the popcorn? hehehe, the fireball up my ass? hehehe - Rob)  

But still... I could nitpick a bit: Given all the other vehicles are just normal vehicles - as opposed to the sumptuously designed futuristic vehicles littering the streets of the Big Meg in Danny cannon's '95 production - the futuristic Judge bikes here look over designed. I might go as far as to say maybe even a little uncool and silly because they're really looking out of the usual scifi context of slickly designed flying cars and so on.  Specifically  the over-designed kinda old fashioned looking curving bodyshell and the red trim really remind me of something... Can't remember what for the life of me however... Infact the latest, tragedy laden Batman series seems to do ridiculous vehicles much more plausibly. 

Nananananana-na, Judge-man, Judge-man, Adam-Wesssssssst.

Though in fairness, I haven't seen a "Lawmaster" design yet that didn't look overwhelmingly silly and impractical. Silly and impractical works far better in a comic strip than in a movie, and pleasingly really everything about the design of this movie is the grittiest and most realistic seen yet out of, erm, this and the other one.

A typical Vehicle of 1995's Judge Dredd... Dredd 2012 takes a more "relaxed" approach to the production design

Its impressively different to the '95 version, which tended to look a lot like the comics - a lot of campy gold bling on the uniform for example, but the ridiculous looking Lawmaster at least looked in place. So in terms of production design, the more toned down everything is, the better it all fits that environment (and the less it costs, too), of course if its too toned down it loses identity, there's a certain lack of personality in the costume design.

Whatever the design, you could still question the practicality of having basically your entire front line police force out on motorcycles and thats something that has been with Dredd from the early days of Pat Mills and Carlos Ezquerra.

Silly, yes.  Impractical, yes. More terrifying without the helmet than with? Yes. 

I guess in-keeping with the toned down nature of the production, out of all the infamous, elaborate and imaginative foes Judge Dredd has battled over the years our bad guy is a fairly normal looking woman, but she's got a scar so you know she's maybe been in a car accident or something and is on an NHS waiting list for reconstructive surgery, maybe they could have given her a beard and a German / British accent?

Nuke or perhaps another serving of that primordial soup from Prometheus again... Either way Kane finds it delicious.  BTW Did I ever tell you about the Klingon proverb that says that primordial soup is best served slightly chilled?
Enjoy responsibly, it's moreish.

Don't drink primordial soup and drive, folks... Our villain after shooting up some heroin(e) - some clever word play there...  

The upshot of all this is as I have accurately deduced from the trailer is a terrible traffic problem on the corner of Abbot and Costello, and the Judges are dispatched to deposit some tickets on the offending vehicles. After attempting to return a stray cat to an old lady they become trapped by oddly tattooed and heavily armed drug people, who aren't impressed with the concept of Prohibition and are addicted to a substance that perceptually slows time, so their crappy lives seem to take even longer to live out, a trip to the benefits office could take a whole perceptual week for instance, AFAIK, this is the only thing that it does, no actual dizzying high or even a mild giddiness.  

If you want to slow down time, I'll tell you how, go and get a regular day job and you'll see time slow right down to a crawl, esp on a Friday afternoon, works great.

Essentially the movie seems to be set in a single building for the most part, with Dredd and 'a Rookie' attempting to escape a Drug Lord-ette's (lordette, really?) heavily armed manor full of people from Delta City looking for more irresistible Nuke after Robocop destroyed the lot in the sequel to Paul Verhoeven's excellent movie. As with John McTeirnan's also outstanding Die Hard, the restrictive environment of a single structure could be a good thing to keep the action and the script tight.

So while the story deals with everyday inner city problems like, double parking or stray felines, there's also a sub plot about illegal drug use. But will that have any relation to actual real world urban decay, will the story be as realistically realised as the visuals? Or In a Frank Drebin inspired approach to law enforcement, are the clouds of combusted soup material gushing from a plebeians mouth merely an indicator of whom one should shoot? Classic comic book Dredd with his somewhat cavalier approach to law enforcement would certainly approve.

 

"Ma'm put the gun down, we've found your cat."

"I inhaled, deeply and frequently, that was the point." - B Obama.

One of the best things about Judge Dredd (based on several hundred 'progs' of 2000AD collected during my youth) is that everything is so over the top that the Judges cause as much havoc as the bad guys, you're often left wondering who's worse. Will there be any depth, any blurring of the lines of good and evil, shades of grey, or really will everything just be a series of things that happen in conceptual black and white to get from one explosive, gory set peice to another? Dredd himself in the comics is really an anti-hero, as an over the top authoritarian he's scarier than the bad guys. 

For a citizen of Mega City One, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can lead to a lengthy time in the slammer with no chance of parole, at worst, on the spot execution. Its harsh frontier law with rules dictated by fascist bureaucrats (the council of the judges) and executed (literally) by their subordinates.  In a resource starved and overpopulated world, its apparently the only way that works but its never been something that anyone was intended to approve of or applaud so I hope the Judges are not overly glorified in this production, again they aren't clear cut good guys as such, having been brainwashed from an early age to defend the fascist state. 

Anyway, I'm kinda running out of things to say, and other Sci-fi things to reference... Oh apart from the thing that will TOTALLY RUIN THE MOVIE FOR EVERYONE!*

Because the first time I watched the trailer I had no audio, it was late so I couldn't use the whopping great Jamo speakers I annoy my neighbours with during the day, headphones destroyed in a terrible accident with an office chair and my replacement cans hadn't turned up yet.

So, boring details of my audio setup aside, I assumed certain things; as Karl Urban's lips moved I kinda heard Stallones mangled version of what Dredd might sound like pouring out of his mouth, which if anything was appropriately naturally deep, as that actor has a naturally dark timbre. Today I saw it again, but with audio and something wasn't right, quickly pinning it down to Mr Urban's vocals, I honestly laughed out loud as Karl immaculately annunciated Dredd's catchphrase; "I am the law." - A phrase utterly mangled by his predecessor.

Because although to his credit as an actor he can actually pronounce words, Karl Urban doesn't have any natural depth to his voice, he sounds incredibly strained and unnatural.

It reminds me of a weedy looking comedian pretending to be a superhero - think Simon Pegg trying to sound hard, it just doesn't work as anything other than comedy. Urban also perhaps somehow just looks too small, maybe its the diminished shoulder pads. Even though Stallone is a relatively tiny man, barely 3 foot 4 inches in height, thanks to smoking a healthy three packs of flavor country's finest a day for the entire 80's he has the voice of a much larger person and an orange crate or two deal with height issue. While Urban's take on the character is far more serious in tone due to the scripting, I think I might struggle to take his character seriously if the voice isn't right -like you might struggle to take a real law man seriously if his voice sounded all fake and ****.

Apparently Christian Bale's version of Batman has also received similar critique, so if it didn't bother you there it might not here - though it makes more sense with the dual character of Batman. 

Honestly, I haven't seen anything Batman related since 1989, well, at least nothing after that whole Joel Schumacher effort, so it was amusing to find a video on Youtube of Simon Pegg discussing the exact thing I was just talking about.

All is not lost however, maybe they will overdub him with James Earl Jones... Or maybe the whole thing will be so great that no one will care, or will I giggle through the entire thing and have an inadvertently great time anyway? - Like watching a terrible horror movie thats hysterical, like Prometheus. 

Splundig Vur Thrigg!

-Steve the Mighty.

*or not.

Prometheus - spoilerific embarrassingly nerdy review!

Prometheus looks great, we already knew this from the trailer, I won't dwell much on the visuals  - as you would expect it reeks of quality and class as with all of Sir Ridley Scott's productions.  It's almost enough to gloss over some of the problems and the numerous flaws it has at its core but as you watch, those won't be obvious straight away; it starts well, and builds slowly following a familiar pattern from 1979 but once things start to happen it really unravels and suffers from a lack of focus.

This is really exacerbated by the large cast consisting of 17 people who nearly all have to be killed in the last hour, most in the last half hour and a distracting back and forth between locations. It feels quite disjointed at times, you might sometimes feel that you've missed a scene as events don't quite follow on as they should.

Quite honestly it feels about an hour too short, just to get to the unsatisfying and moderately silly though exciting climax.  I fully expect extra footage will be used to make a directors cut of this which will be much longer but I'm clearly getting ahead of myself.  If you haven't seen the movie so far, probably best to go no further - I'll say this, go and see it, its an OK Sci-Fi movie overall, a worthy spectacle for the big 3D screens but behind that glossy metallic finish and carefully applied vinyl's, you might be left wondering what's really under the hood.

Forget about the "sequels". This really is trying to do something different, at its best keeping away from that franchise as much as possible, its a story far grander in scope, which ultimately should make the Xenomorphs look like a genetic mistake, along with the Humans.  If you like Sci-Fi then its worth seeing, esp considering how poor and shallow these films often are. It's better than say, the mindless wasteland of Battleship,  Cowboys and Aliens or the last Indiana Jones movie, all widely regarded as turds.

I'd take it over the Star Trek from 2009 or even Avatar (can't stand smurfs) and definately over the Star Wars prequels -  I'm still washing off the guilt just for accepting the DVD's one Christmas - I just took them and feigned polite enthusiasm, they knew I liked the old star wars as a kid, even today so of course I'd like the new ones but just because it has a label on it, doesn't mean its good. First world problems, no?

Anyway, like my umm, tongue in cheek preview from a few weeks ago that no one read, there's a lot which doesn't make sense.

"Once its off, its off..."

Lets start with the behavior of certain members of the expedition:

One character removes his helmet for no good reason in an entirely alien complex on an alien world, then everyone else chooses to jump off that same cliff, just because he hasn't died within ten seconds. While I can understand the need to get the actors out of the helmets as much as possible wouldn't they really have waited until knowing more than just the gaseous composition of the air in the chambers?  Even after returning to the ship from this exposure they're allowed to mingle freely with the other members of the Prometheus crew.

No one on board seems to care about micro-organisms, infections, quarantine, or even taking basic precautions when ramming electrodes into a goodness-knows-how-old misshapen human head which as one of the cannon fodder points out is unbelievably not decomposed at all and comes to life, for no reason whatsoever after being electrocuted. No life support is attached to it, like those grim soviet experiments on decapitated dogs and monkeys in the '50's but I think we're supposed to assume that its alive and aware to drive up the horror factor.  It then explodes for some reason, and also somehow the experimenters seem to know its going to explode even though there's no obvious signs that's going to happen other than the head seems to be in a lot of discomfort.

No real precautions are taken at all in this sequence, the room is packed with several people, one is even busy getting drunk (our protagonists idiot boyfriend, the one who decided to smell the dank tunnels earlier) and only a couple of people are wearing as much as a protective mask while this ancient living human/alien electro head is gurning on the table right in front of them, it's obviously meant to shock but its mostly shockingly daft.
 
This would surely have been a job for the Robot, being inorganic and wipe clean but as with the other movies that this isn't a prequel to, the Androids often have a sinister side or maybe he just wasn't interested in this multi-millennia old head of the very thing his 'Father' was looking for all along.

In this case our plastic pal has behaviours and motivations that are often confusing and inconsistent. For example, the scene where he takes some of the ooze to infect one of the Human characters (whos life the Robot saved just a few scenes earlier) seems to come from nowhere and is one of those times where you feel as if you've missed a scene.  We are perhaps left to assume that Weyland instructed him to do it, or it was some interpretation of pre-existing orders (aren't these things ever 3 laws safe?)  why anyone, even unspeakably evil would want to conduct an uncontrolled experiment like that in this dangerous environment seems to defy anyone's logic.

You might assume that this would all be worthwhile as it would lead to an emotional payoff but even though the victim is the significant other of our central character and one of the characters we should care about (but we don't because he's the idiot drunk tunnel sniffer from earlier) he's despatched fairly clinically and very quickly.

It points to some of the pacing and script issues where a lot of important stuff is rushed through and as much as I like the graceful build-up, given the need to keep a movie under a certain length for the purpose of profits I wonder if the tradeoff was worthwhile.  With the larger scope of this movie as opposed to another film I'm trying very hard to not draw any comparisons to, its still following the pacing structure of that older production, at least by broadly splitting the production into two parts - one with action preceded by one without.

So could we have dispensed with some of that earlier buildup? Expressed it in a less time consuming way perhaps.  As there is so much to pack into the later part of the movie, its not merely seeing the crew being dispatched one after another, there's a lot more to take in and explore but its all packed into a small amount of time, it really for me seems the root of the problems. For example did we really need to see the old 'waking up from hypersleep' cliche again?  And OK, we learn a certain amount about the Android as he bicycles around the Gymnasium shooting hoops and watching a classic movie, but there's no payoff for this as the character just becomes muddled later on. Other than quoting a line or two from Lawrence of Arabia, what was the point? He's not the central character and his character constantly appears to shift so why invest so much time there?

Making a disjointed leap back to more things that don't make sense:

While the ship is parked on this stormy alien world there is a time when everyone is asleep or on downtime.  Not only leaving their only return ticket unattended (2 years before you could even hope for a rescue, folks!) but  also leaving two members of the expedition who have been isolated in the structure by the bad weather completely without support from the ships crew or sensor systems - during this time of course they are conveniently killed. Bit of a shame as they're really the only two supporting cast members with some personality and humanity and the movies invested quite a lot of time in them before they become the first to die, leaving the non entities to carry the rest of the supporting roles.

Shouldn't at least the Android have stayed up to monitor them?

Were none of the scientists interested in the intermittent lifesigns that were mentioned by the Captain?

Tactically its a poor decision, the place seems dead but do we take it for granted? Clearly some really ****ed up stuff had happened there before.  Also really harsh on the people you're just leaving out there, who are already completely freaked out by spending the night alone in the haunted house. I guess no one on the ship really gave a sh*t about these characters.  So when they do eventually die of stupidity no one has a clue whats happened - another instance of gross, systemic incompetance on the SS Prometheus expedition.

You're left wondering if they're just stupid or infact drunk too, and thats probably not far off as to be fair the people on board seem to on the whole, like a drink.  It's like the vacuous sex obsessed teenagers who in those tedious formulaic horrors go everywhere they shouldn't go and do everything they shouldn't do. The ones who get high, get sexed up and then destroyed in every slasher movie - except these aren't bad stereotypes of teenagers, or even corporate spacers dropped into a situation at the deep-end with no exploration skills, and as such and you're always left thinking these people should know better... Why all the stupid rookie mistakes and incompetance?

Prometheus expedition before leaving to investigate the alien tomb

While not every expedition is run with expert efficiency - things go wrong and people are stupid in real life too, but there are so many deaths of helpless stupidity in this production it really is akin to a much more shallow genre of movie making.  Nearly the entire cast is made of pointless redshirts who you won't care about, have little personality and when they die you'll be lucky to even remember their name or what profession they represented.  Even the meeting of Weyland and his 'maker' is entirely disatisfying, not only does the creature look just like a big man - very much like Lurch from The Addams Family, or the monster from the classic version of The Thing from another world; it also says nothing or  does nothing intelligent at all, it just attacks right from the off like a mindless drone. Despite being a 'God' its just a brutal, physical animal and a pretty stupid one at that. At least those Gods from Stargate had some class.

Note the armed security guy is there for the entire scene in the 'bridge' of the alien ship, takes about five minutes (slight exaggeration) after The Thing twists the Robots head from its body to actually think of doing something. Maybe he was just scared or something but the guy was definately an a**hole, having just rifle butted a wounded woman on her umm, wound just to shut her up.  I really think he'd have started firing the second stuff started going wrong, perhaps even cutting his own employer and that Scottish non-entity in half with his shells in his enthusiasm to save his own life. No matter how big, the things head didn't look particularly bullet-proof but he just shoots the armour instead, shots bouncing off like bb's.. Managed to rattle off all of two shots before dying, way to go... I've played enough FPS's to know that a couple of blasts from the shotgun usually wont do it, when attacking the big monster, keep shooting until its head is a mass of pulp don't stand there in shock that you've not killed it with one shot, as if waiting to exit the movie on cue.  Again this is a character (barely deserving of the term) who on the one hand would attack an injured woman without question, but moments later bravely step in to rescue another, wasting valuable shooting time.

After more than 30 years we finally see what a "Spacejockey" really looks like!

I have to wonder why they'd even let our protagonist in there with them in the first place, after all she's just been betrayed and ****ed over in the worst possible way by the Android and presumably the rest of the crew.   For example, no one cared where she came from a few scenes earlier when she stumbles into a room where weyland is being revived, If it were me I'd have gone to the stores, grabbed a gun and walked right up to that Robot and blown its head clean off its shoulders, who would have stopped me? no one because no one was paying any attention to anything other than reviving Weyland so we can get to the next scene.  surely someone must have realised she might have some kind of issue with what everyone seemed to want happen to her... And why does she take it so well anyway? I mean shes just gone through something horribly traumatic and she's like super cool about it - but lets not resolve that, there's no consequences so lets just carry on with the movie.

Things happen to these characters which should obviously cause some reaction, like getting angry, but it just doesn't happen, too many times these characters act as if they aren't real Human beings.

Also, did no one wonder or care what had happened with her 'baby'?  OK we're supposed to assume its dead but its in there growing, in basically a habitated part of the ship, why didn't Weylands daughter realise what was growing inside her own cabin? The med chamber used for the abortion was just off from her living quarters as shown in an earlier scene and it's in there for some time, enough to go from small squid to a umm, much larger squid.  Even if she hadn't just popped back in to change her underwear occasionally surely the ship itself would have noticed there was another passenger. I mean given that it can detect tiny life forms through meters of rock  and metal some kilometres away, does nothing monitor the inside of the ship?

And compared what you might be expecting, there's a real lack of imagination with these creatures overall. Disappointingly I don't see much Giger in them and really nothing in common in association with his famous bugs - there's no lineage here at all, I suppose its all window dressing really but if you were just to see these things out of context, you'd probably just laugh at what looks a bit like something from a second rate video game, Gigers original Necronome / Xenomorph and even some of the bastardisations that followed is beautifully lean and threateningly awesome whatever the situation.

The most the creatures in Prometheus can conjour up is a sense of revulsion, and that's mostly just because first the squid is torn out of a living human body and anything parasitic is nasty and scary, and later because it has a toothed Vagina face and we're not really allowed a good view of the overall form, which seems like its mostly a shapeless vaguely Octopus like mass of nothing... So its really only due to the skill of Ridley and the production crew that makes them anywhere near scary by use of context, shot and scene structure.

(The creature threats that the Humans encounter are:

Mutating Oil / Ooze, its a bit like the black oil that our Reticulan chums from the X-Files (who also created us in that show) use to mutate us into something useful to them, or the Ooze that made the Ninja Turtles Domino's Pizza's best customers.  Seems to be used to do lots of things.

Alien Snakes, like a snake crossed with a fluke or some type of worm, capable of breaking a mans arm or shooting down his gullet, has acid for blood.

Alien Squid, Extracted from one of the crew - foetal stage of a larger creature

Alien Octopus, Larger stage of the squid, approx 20 times the size of the baby version and capable of besting the thing from another world, grows this big in a few hours at most.)

A bigger problem is that important events like the untimely birth of that tentacled squid thing happen in this movie that seem to have no consequences unless called for by the plot or are simply forgotten by the supporting or main characters.  Again leading to a feeling of detachment from the story and like something has been missed or not thought through properly, As I said earlier I think there is a certain amount of cut footage and there's a version with less untidy edges somewhere.  I'm reminded of Dune while watching it: Simply too huge and too epic to make sense in a movie format that could make money at a theatre though I wonder if it would totally make sense even with an additional hour.

I could go on with nitpicking more and more, like the one or two lines of soul destroying exposition uttered by the Captain at a late stage that spells everything out for those who have been having a hard time following whats going on.  The line just feels like something tacked on to help the audience along.  How about snake thing shooting into a guys mouth - just to kill him? nothing seemed to pop out of him (other presumably than the same snake, which exits the same way it went in) so its just put in there as a needless nod to certain existing texts.  Also, why didn't the things have their own weapons? They're apparently breeding hostile life forms there, even the alien ship is apparently unarmed and unable to prevent a vastly inferior Human ship from colliding with it, even though we're under no illusions that this is nothing but a military outpost due to the painful exposition outlined earlier.

I guess I did go on a bit, but rejoice dear reader, we are not through yet! This is the point where I will completely ruin the ending for you..

Jumping straight into it, after many pointless and stupid deaths we're treated to a few more, thats a large cast to shove off to Valhalla so bear with us.  In an effort to stop The Thing from taking off and completely ruining the Earth all three people who could drive the ship are now driving it to its doom even though two of them could have escaped. We don't care about any of them though so **** it, lets off them all too with barely any reasoning as to why this is the only option or even why it should work at all. (Had those Gods just packed a couple of missile launchers, or perhaps just moved slightly to the side....)  No alternatives are discussed, no opposition, no drama, just a cue from an athletic but perhaps not too smart scientist (who all the same is probably the smartest of this bunch) telling them they all need to sacrifice themselves and they basically jump at the opportunity  with barely any consideration, it is a good day to die indeed.

You might even wonder if you've seen the two co-pilots before as with so many of the minor characters if you yawned at the right time in the first couple of acts you'll have easily missed them. They certainly aren't involved in any action until they're just about to die (as with many characters they only seem apparent in the story just moments before death) and their cheerful irrelevant banter in earlier scenes does nothing to set them up with a plausible death wish. I'm left wondering if their sacrifice is even required anyway (as we find out later on it's meaningless) how does our leading character really know that the alien ship is really going to Earth at this point, how does she actually know that they don't like Humans and really want to wipe everyone out, based on info from the tricky Android who clearly can't be trusted - OK the audience is shown that The Thing is targeting Earth but none of the characters see this.

Seems all she could actually prove is that they made us from the DNA analysis of the head, and don't like being woken up to be asked a lot of stupid questions from an elderly example of a  lower order of primate whos just scared to die.  Maybe this guy is the one that went postal and killed all the others or is suffering from PTSD or something. We're not actually shown what kills the rest of the things as their attackers are curiously missing from the beautifully rendered holo-recordings. In another scene though, with our first bloods stuck in the haunted house though its implied that its some sort of Xenomorph incident. 

It could seem like she's basing her ideas on a lot of suppositions and second hand info from an unreliable, manipulative source. Like the fringe celebrities who queue up to appear in episodes of Ancient Aliens and the content of the book Chariots of the Gods which interprets various aspects of ancient civilisations as having close ties with Extra-Terrestrials, which seem a clear inspiration for this work.  But anyway, lets not take off, follow the ship and send a warning to Earth, lets ram the ships into each other to make for a more exciting ending, eh, fair enough, its technically a great scene but very cold and unemotional, after all throwing away 3 more characters that we barely know is just par for the course at this point.

After the epic collision that's completely spoiled by the trailer from over a month ago only the two main female characters appear to have survived. Now running for their lives amidst falling debris from the collision. One (the lesser character) suffers yet another pointless death, simply crushed under the ship after it slowly rolls onto her in a scene reminiscent of someone trying to outrun a train by running along the track in front of the train, rather than simply going sideways to get out of its way.  Again it settles briefly with perfect timing having killed the first victim right at the end of its first roll,  and after having so expertly homed in on its first victim it begins falling remorselessly in just the right way to now squish our hero. Two rolls, two targets and its dead on both of them - like a 3D animator at the whim of his director is influencing this ship to stretch the sequence out and add tension and excitement, you can almost see the hand of god nudging this thing and placing people - God is really trying it's hardest to kill everyone in an obviously contrived way.  And if you look closely you can see that the geometry of the scene is all wrong, the first victim would have had to run about 60mph at least to get to the point where she was actually squashed, and our hero, who we think is the second victim apparently stunned and unable to move, would have had to teleport a few hundred meters to have been right under the end of the arm, yet more evidence for our hero that God exists perhaps?

Fantastically and not predictably at all, our hero is surviving by the thin film of plaque covering her teeth! Having been fortunate enough to be protected by some rock or something, leaving just barely enough space for her to keep on breathing - though nearly out of oxygen.. Fear not though, something tells me she'll find a new supply just barely in time as the tension inducing computer reads off the time she has left.

And so we are left with our protagonist to re-discover her baby, which has lurked on the ship with otherwise zero consquences for the entire last act and was cleverly ejected before the collision along with the entire penthouse suite of Prometheus. (hopefully the vodka remained intact)

Now that the no doubt hopping mad pilot of the alien ship is storming over for a drink and in a scene like something from The legend of Overfiend, except without the schoolgirls and me vomiting quite so much, like a B-Movie Battle Royale, our hero skillfully utilises it to dispatch The Thing from Outer Space. (Bet he wished he'd brought a gun, eh?) We have no warning really that this is going to happen, just a radio call from a disembodied Android head just seconds before this final engagement begins - I guess the Robot, even though he'd have seen Lurch getting up out of his chair and leaving in a huff presumably some time before thought it would add more drama to the movie its in to wait until the last second before speaking up.

But as well as The Thing appearing from nowhere, again there is no consequence for this, we don't see the creatures being trapped or any steps taken to neutralise them, what if baby just kills the thing and starts right back after its mum?  (btw friends, do not take your pregnant girlfriend to see this movie - everthing I said about not seeing certain things due to demographics, well I was pleased to see I was mainly wrong.) Its just another loose end that is not dealt with, clearly an ongoing situation but we turn the other cheek and just get on with the rest of the story like it never happened at all. I assume this somehow is tied to the dead, exploded from within, Elephant faced man in the film which shall not be named. Or is it, hold on wait, is this even the same plan.... I mean moon?

Anyways, whatever.... Presumably the baby is free to roam wherever it wants (but just doesn't want to) and the Jockey crawls back to its knackered ship to die in its control chair and wait to be discovered by another crew thirty years ago, or not depending on whether this is a prequel or not perhaps.  While our noble survivor tenderly packs the head of the souless robot that just screwed her over into a bag - suddenly for no reason they have some sort of understanding that's not revealed or even makes sense - and they find a new ship to sail off into the sunset. Literally cutting from recovering the android and being really nice to it for no reason ( Again, I'd have dismantled the toaster the easy way long before then) to another Jockey ship taking off, erm, presumably despite literally everything else going wrong, that all went without a hitch.

It's lucky these big goons left so many more undefended ships sitting around and even luckier, they can be easily started by playing a simple tune on a Flute, thats right, a Flute... The wind instrument that's easy enough for a small child to play, which is not only left laying around right in the bridge itself but precisely what to play is left recorded on the ships holographic system, which plays back for the first person who walks in after thousands of centuries.

Serious Science Fiction

That's like leaving your car unlocked, using a whistle to start the ignition and the song you have to whistle loaded into the stereo, as well as actually inviting people to come and steal it.  Not to mention, if there's lots of these ships laying around then why on Archeron (sorry) wouldn't Lurch have simply gone to one of those and carried on with his mission instead of needlessly rushing to beat up on a woman half his height? I guess that would have made the sacrifice of the flight crew and the entire ship seem pretty meaningless though...

Again right at the end we're robbed of a coherent story and left only with assumptions and questions, so many loose ends its nearly impossible to have any sort of emotional reward.

As a final word, can I mention it directly once and not appear to be the Alien fanboi I could easily appear to be? I'm really judging it on its own merits and the problems are nothing to do with its not being like its heritage I wanted to see something new, I don't care about a new Alien movie - if anything Prometheus perhaps has too many nods toward Sir Ridleys first sci-fi epic. Alien was a perfect self contained story, as was 'A New Hope' but they also left things open and unresolved for possible sequels, our heroes survived, Ripley was safe, signed off and heading home and Luke and Leia et al had a party, (of sorts) even the Sasquatch got (sod all infact- thanks Matt!) and the immediate threat was over.  Alien wasn't exactly a 'feel good' ending in the classic sense but probably brought a great deal of relief to the audience that the ordeal was now over.

Prometheus totally ends with a feeling that the ordeal is just beginning, which might be awesome if I could watch the sequel right now, but there's no guarantee it will even be made.

So ultimately as an audience participant, you're really robbed of any sort of satisfying ending as a standalone piece - It's desperately and deliberately begging for a sequel even, whilst Alien and A New Hope, both which spawned at least 2 half decent sequels each were also happy to end it there if needed. I dont think that Prometheus is a really bad movie or anything, particularly when compared to the dross that is projected against cinema screens on a daily basis but its just one that was cut too brutally and maybe just didn't have a great script - I never liked Lost as it just seemed aimless, as does this film in a way, so maybe I just don't dig what that guy does.  I hope there is a directors cut sometime soon which is somewhat longer and flows better but I'm not sure what's going to fix that contrived empty ending, perhaps that won't seem so bad with a sequel, one where we actually get to see a real alien planet and see Prometheus as just the first act of a larger work.