Yes, the trailers are the tell. If there are, as listed, many jump cuts. If the trailer is loud. If they are on way before release and more often than beer ads, DON'T WASTE YOUR $'S.
Even if the trailer appeals to you you have to accept the fact that at some point in the full length movie someone will say something PC that will make you want to retch or throw something at the screen...or both. That's just reality today.
At no point on the human continuum do Morgan Freeman and me meet.
Years ago David Merrick, the theater producer,found people with the same names of New York critics. He wined and dined them, then ran an ad with their rave reviews with their own names., The show, which was supposedly a dud, ran for over 200 performances.
Whenever I see an ad stating "Critics Rave", I imagine them babbling, drooling and foaming at the mouth.
Without necessarily disagreeing with the idea that Prometheus was over-rated, what would have made it better?
Obviously people felt that there were the workings of a good movie - good story, big budget, great director with much groundbreaking sci-fi cred...
I thought it was good enough for what it aimed to do and was not too terribly disappointed with what it managed to sill leave to the imagination.
I think it suffered from an expectation that movies should have very neat and tidy conclusions. However, real-life doesn't and maybe neither should they.
For me "Prometheus" was OK. It just couldn't live up to the expectation of being an appropriate prequel to two of the best scifi movies ever made "Alien" and "Aliens".
It did have one of the stupidest scenes of all time when the huge wheel-shaped spaceship was crashing down and all the people trying to escape ran a couple hundred yards in line with the wheel's direction rather than just taking 10 steps left or right and saving themselves. Maybe it was something in the atmosphere. Yes, like everything else, I blame CO2 concentration.
I have friends who are sci-fi fans. I just glaze over when they discuss flicks. One of them is a computer geek. We were living in Chicago and he insisted we go see Tron. It was on the northwest side of Chicago across the street from a great Chinese restaurant. At least I got a good meal. Fell asleep during the flick. My friend was offended.
R&B, what made Prometheus suck was not enough back story (intelligent backstory) on what is going on. Why are our "creators" who may not actually be our "creators" so hostile to us and especially robots?
There is a story there, but a few hints do not make a movie.
That backstory was all that was needed. It appeals to this weird impulse people have to believe that intelligent superiors created us long ago, which they've now transposed onto ancient alien astronauts or whatever. Combine that with currently vogue theories of panspermia and you've got full backing for the science equation of your modern science fiction story.
Why would they be hostile? Why are we hostile to the things we create? The cars we crash. The buildings we destroy. The people we destroy - whether foreign tribe or our own underclasses. Hostility is so ubiquitous in big budget cinema (as in all literature) for creating the conflicts and tensions to resolve that it practically explains itself. It needs no explanation. It exists to that a story may take place. But it's not unrealistic at all to find it nearly everywhere. Or did we live in an anti-capitalist utopia all of a sudden?
Why did we put a gorilla in a zoo and take such tedious care of him only to shoot him dead once the first human baby fell into his hands?
We take glee in destroying things we create all the time.
I assume that GRRM will have some big reveal that GoT is a simulation done to amuse us.
If Prometheus is just "space Jesus" as some thought, then it truly does suck. And the idea that the creators would seed the world (presumably our world too) and then would exist essentially the same BILLIONS of years later (life on Earth is estimated to be 3.8 billions years old) seems a tad bit of a stretch.
And if your outline to Prometheus is all there was, I am bored already.
In comments: "I haven't seen this movie, I only watched this to see if there was a "Prometheus went to the Prometheus school of running away from things" joke"
It's answered: Same reason! XD
The scene is meme joke now. The escape from the wheel scene is dinged twice, once for not getting out of the way immediately and instead running in front of the wheel for a ridiculously long time before simply side-stepping its linear path, and a second time for getting out the way properly when you could have done it right both times. Two dings. It makes an actual and rather annoying ding sound with each sinful infraction. They go rapidly up to about 54.
Then down in comments each corrective comments amusingly begins DING. That was funny. To pick up the game in the video. It reminded me of NYT crossword conversation. I wanted an answer to be "clap on" for light switch. So I started and ended my comment with clap clap as if my own clap is my signal for commenting. This was received with good humor and it could have been a good and funny answer, and all comments that followed began and ended with clap clap and these two examples show how willing people are to engage a new game even old fuddy duddy NYT puzzle people.
And the idea that the creators would seed the world (presumably our world too)...
Sounds plausible, given the scene where DNA is just "dropped" into an ocean - notwithstanding how much hotter the oceans would have been 3.8 years ago.
But for some reason what I read into that was a "kickstarting" of specifically human evolution much later than that.
Maybe I wasn't following closely enough or was thinking of the "ancient astronaut" stories of 1970s yore, a la Van Daniken.
16 comments:
When you can't get away from the hype.
This may fall under my unpopular opinion...
If you hear Morgan Freeman doing the voice over in the trailer... chances are the movie sucks.
Morgan Freeman is a movie bait.
Yes, the trailers are the tell. If there are, as listed, many jump cuts. If the trailer is loud. If they are on way before release and more often than beer ads, DON'T WASTE YOUR $'S.
Lem said...
This may fall under my unpopular opinion...
If you hear Morgan Freeman doing the voice over in the trailer... chances are the movie sucks.
Morgan Freeman is a movie bait.
How 'bout if Morgan Freeman is in it?
The other is that odious line, "From the (director/producer/team/studio) that brought you...".
Well, one more, "...and, with a little luck and some help from (an unlikely source/Magic Negro), it just might work".
Even if the trailer appeals to you you have to accept the fact that at some point in the full length movie someone will say something PC that will make you want to retch or throw something at the screen...or both. That's just reality today.
At no point on the human continuum do Morgan Freeman and me meet.
Years ago David Merrick, the theater producer,found people with the same names of New York critics. He wined and dined them, then ran an ad with their rave reviews with their own names., The show, which was supposedly a dud, ran for over 200 performances.
Whenever I see an ad stating "Critics Rave", I imagine them babbling, drooling and foaming at the mouth.
I got sucked into Prometheus and it definitely sucked (it actually had a lot of potential and I am hoping if they do a sequel it is way better).
Without necessarily disagreeing with the idea that Prometheus was over-rated, what would have made it better?
Obviously people felt that there were the workings of a good movie - good story, big budget, great director with much groundbreaking sci-fi cred...
I thought it was good enough for what it aimed to do and was not too terribly disappointed with what it managed to sill leave to the imagination.
I think it suffered from an expectation that movies should have very neat and tidy conclusions. However, real-life doesn't and maybe neither should they.
For me "Prometheus" was OK. It just couldn't live up to the expectation of being an appropriate prequel to two of the best scifi movies ever made "Alien" and "Aliens".
It did have one of the stupidest scenes of all time when the huge wheel-shaped spaceship was crashing down and all the people trying to escape ran a couple hundred yards in line with the wheel's direction rather than just taking 10 steps left or right and saving themselves. Maybe it was something in the atmosphere. Yes, like everything else, I blame CO2 concentration.
I have friends who are sci-fi fans. I just glaze over when they discuss flicks. One of them is a computer geek. We were living in Chicago and he insisted we go see Tron. It was on the northwest side of Chicago across the street from a great Chinese restaurant. At least I got a good meal. Fell asleep during the flick. My friend was offended.
R&B, what made Prometheus suck was not enough back story (intelligent backstory) on what is going on. Why are our "creators" who may not actually be our "creators" so hostile to us and especially robots?
There is a story there, but a few hints do not make a movie.
That backstory was all that was needed. It appeals to this weird impulse people have to believe that intelligent superiors created us long ago, which they've now transposed onto ancient alien astronauts or whatever. Combine that with currently vogue theories of panspermia and you've got full backing for the science equation of your modern science fiction story.
Why would they be hostile? Why are we hostile to the things we create? The cars we crash. The buildings we destroy. The people we destroy - whether foreign tribe or our own underclasses. Hostility is so ubiquitous in big budget cinema (as in all literature) for creating the conflicts and tensions to resolve that it practically explains itself. It needs no explanation. It exists to that a story may take place. But it's not unrealistic at all to find it nearly everywhere. Or did we live in an anti-capitalist utopia all of a sudden?
Why did we put a gorilla in a zoo and take such tedious care of him only to shoot him dead once the first human baby fell into his hands?
We take glee in destroying things we create all the time.
I once destroyed a sand castle I created.
My mom insisted on keeping me from endless years of therapy for that episode.
In other news, genetically modified mice were sacrificed in an experiment in a lab somewhere in this country.
Or maybe because they got out of control... a la Gremlins.
I assume that GRRM will have some big reveal that GoT is a simulation done to amuse us.
If Prometheus is just "space Jesus" as some thought, then it truly does suck. And the idea that the creators would seed the world (presumably our world too) and then would exist essentially the same BILLIONS of years later (life on Earth is estimated to be 3.8 billions years old) seems a tad bit of a stretch.
And if your outline to Prometheus is all there was, I am bored already.
I assume there is more to it. At least I hope so.
Cinema Sins on YouTube has 4 min. of everything that's wrong with Prometheus.
In comments: "I haven't seen this movie, I only watched this to see if there was a "Prometheus went to the Prometheus school of running away from things" joke"
It's answered: Same reason! XD
The scene is meme joke now. The escape from the wheel scene is dinged twice, once for not getting out of the way immediately and instead running in front of the wheel for a ridiculously long time before simply side-stepping its linear path, and a second time for getting out the way properly when you could have done it right both times. Two dings. It makes an actual and rather annoying ding sound with each sinful infraction. They go rapidly up to about 54.
Then down in comments each corrective comments amusingly begins DING. That was funny. To pick up the game in the video. It reminded me of NYT crossword conversation. I wanted an answer to be "clap on" for light switch. So I started and ended my comment with clap clap as if my own clap is my signal for commenting. This was received with good humor and it could have been a good and funny answer, and all comments that followed began and ended with clap clap and these two examples show how willing people are to engage a new game even old fuddy duddy NYT puzzle people.
And the idea that the creators would seed the world (presumably our world too)...
Sounds plausible, given the scene where DNA is just "dropped" into an ocean - notwithstanding how much hotter the oceans would have been 3.8 years ago.
But for some reason what I read into that was a "kickstarting" of specifically human evolution much later than that.
Maybe I wasn't following closely enough or was thinking of the "ancient astronaut" stories of 1970s yore, a la Van Daniken.
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