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Dienes posted:Yep. Although, to be fair, it made no sense for a ship to have that much advanced tech and yet the medical pod could only be calibrated for males and yet also didn't recognize the uterus as a foreign body. It was stupid to miss but also stupid to have in the movie in the first place. We have incredible medical technology today but even today if a woman suffers from, say regularly severe menstrual pains it's not uncommon that one of the first things a doctor will recommend is that they have their uterus removed because the study of medicine for female physiology barely existed until like forty years ago. The machine acting like that isn't a continuity error, it's an of loving course moment in a movie with a lot of dark humor. I wouldn't call Prometheus a comedy outright but that was definitely a moment that got a chuckle/slow nod from tons of people. That that statement is made while it also being part of the movie's plot (since we learn later the entire super swank cabin part of the ship is because it's Weyland's quarters, someone old enough that he probably needs a finely calibrated medical pod like that regularly) and that despite his own daughter being on the mission everything is still built around his own needs only makes it even better.
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Jul 15, 2017 19:46
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There's all sorts of weird assumptions, like that Fifield - a geologist - is good at architecture because "he makes maps." Same thing, right? And this is even though it's explicitly stated that he is not good at things outside of his area of expertise - "I don't really have anything to contribute in the gigantic dead body arena". And even inside his area of expertise, he has explicitly built drones to do all the mapping for him. Fifield never, at any point, actually draws a map of his surroundings. He relies on his subordinates.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:01
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It's doubly funny because in literally thousands of hours of mapping work I've never done a pedestrian survey where someone didn't get lost. I've never gone more than a week without a moment where my team looked at the map and was like, ok so where the gently caress are we, this weird rock thing over here or that one over there? Like, whatever your job is and however little experience you have in this particular arena, you seriously never gently caress up or get confused? The characters are office drones, and yet somehow they do not know how to operate the printer?? Because it has an error? And the other character is the IT guy but his computer crashes lmbo how am I supposed to relate to these clowns?
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Jul 15, 2017 20:08
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If Prometheus was made a couple of years later Fifeld would be read as a great send-up of a Silicon Valley techbro.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:08
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Neo Rasa posted:If Prometheus was made a couple of years later Fifeld would be read as a great send-up of a Silicon Valley techbro. Weyland himself is that, married to the slightly older ideal of technovisionary creeps like Ford, Disney and Hughes.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:16
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Hodgepodge posted:Fifeld and Milburn just get trapped in the pyramid when the storm hits, they don't take off or anything. In theory they're supposed to be in contact with the Prometheus, but Janek and Vickers go off to gently caress instead of keeping tabs on them. The drones are programmed to send map data to the Prometheus because that's where the mission is being coordinated from. He was hired by Vickers, who thinks the missions is bullshit and will find nothing because that's a really reasonable thing to think about a mission that sounds like an Ancient Aliens episode. Vickers has an advanced surgical bay programmed for a man because it is there for her father, who doesn't give a poo poo about her. Fifield and Milburn actually break off from the group before they're done investigating and get lost in the process while everyone else is still in the room with the murals and goop. They get lost and trapped because they left the only ones that remembered the path they took into the structure, it's entirely their fault. Also lol that the pups keep mapping the massive, complicated structure and sending all of that data in real-time back to the Prometheus during the storm with no interference but the comms system goes down in a storm but worked completely fine when someone was in a subterranean structure. SuperMechagodzilla posted:There's nothing in the film that says the drones are made by Weyland either. So the geologist is also an engineer capable of creating drones that fly via magic but didn't design anyway of viewing the map data remotely? He also is incapable of remembering the couple turns to took to get to their position before they broke off from the group (from what I recall from the map). Why did he take this job again? Basebf555 posted:The question about why the surgical pod is calibrated for a male is really a red flag that you barely paid attention to the movie. Weyland has no use for the surgical pod, he's too old and weak he probably wouldn't survive any sort of surgery. The Engineers would have been able to do whatever the surgical pod could and probably better considering he's expecting to receive immortality from them.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:29
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s.i.r.e. posted:So the geologist is also an engineer capable of creating drones that fly via magic but didn't design anyway of viewing the map data remotely? He also is incapable of remembering the couple turns to took to get to their position before they broke off from the group (from what I recall from the map). Why did he take this job again? For all we know the map WAS viewable remotely. He just made some kind of mistake that delayed his egress by the several minutes that it took for the shrapnel storm to become completely impossible to cross through. quote:Weyland has no use for the surgical pod, he's too old and weak he probably wouldn't survive any sort of surgery. The Engineers would have been able to do whatever the surgical pod could and probably better considering he's expecting to receive immortality from them. Well this is just fan fiction.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:36
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Fifield has got to be the most discussed nothing character of all time. At least on this board.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:38
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s.i.r.e. posted:Fifield and Milburn actually break off from the group before they're done investigating and get lost in the process while everyone else is still in the room with the murals and goop. They get lost and trapped because they left the only ones that remembered the path they took into the structure, it's entirely their fault. Also lol that the pups keep mapping the massive, complicated structure and sending all of that data in real-time back to the Prometheus during the storm with no interference but the comms system goes down in a storm but worked completely fine when someone was in a subterranean structure. Your phone's GPS, phone calls, and internet access are done via three unrelated connections that won't all operate with the same quality in the same conditions. Like if your GPS is down and you're not getting WIFI/G you can't phone in Google Maps directions and vice versa. s.i.r.e. posted:So the geologist is also an engineer capable of creating drones that fly via magic but didn't design anyway of viewing the map data remotely? He also is incapable of remembering the couple turns to took to get to their position before they broke off from the group (from what I recall from the map). Why did he take this job again? This literally happened in real life. https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/20/kickstarter-explains-zano-drone-failure/
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Jul 15, 2017 20:43
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porfiria posted:Fifield has got to be the most discussed nothing character of all time. At least on this board. There's a lot to say about him, honestly.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:47
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:There's a lot to say about him, honestly. One of SMG's few good posts was picking up on the sexual tension between him and Millburn and Fifeld's appeal coming from his "werewolf"-like default demeanor of confused cornered animal. His reaction to Millburn wanting to shake hands and Millburn's super awkward greeting/handshake is one of my favorite parts of the movie.  Having him come back as a ravaged angry dude instead of the CG Dead Space enemy they had originally was a way better choice. I know that thing looks cool from a concept art standpoint but it really clashed with everything else in the movie.
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Jul 15, 2017 20:54
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porfiria posted:Fifield has got to be the most discussed nothing character of all time. At least on this board. He shares similarities with Renfield from Dracula as well (hired help for a job that he's in just for the money, marked by the creature, didn't turn into the beautiful creature itself, but a twisted harbinger of what's to come).
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Jul 15, 2017 20:57
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Rehashing the Prometheus stuff is such a dull argument. Yes, they make mistakes! History is full of 'experts' loving up! Being smart does not mean you are sometimes also not stupid. And Covenant, as I've said earlier, kinda goes out of its way to address this point. They establish that this crew is not really that expert. They were being sent to a pre-scouted planet to colonize, exploring a totally new world is not what they're meant to do, but the captain dies, the acting captain is out of his depth, and makes a bad decision motivated not just by his own instincts but by everyone else who's been shaken up by this trauma and doesn't wanna go back in their pods. Which, given what happens at the end when one character finally does go back in her pod... well, irony is cruel. This is a movie going out of its way to tell you, These Are Not Experts, just as much as Alien established that this crew was not prepared to deal with a hostile alien lifeform. Nobody is ever prepared in these movies.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:07
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Neo Rasa posted:If Prometheus was made a couple of years later Fifeld would be read as a great send-up of a Silicon Valley techbro. That's what Prometheus is about. It's the meaning behind the otherwise 'unnecessary' twist that Weyland (this Ford-like industrialist patriarch character) is secretly alive and well. One major point of the film is that Weyland Corporation initially appears to be very hip and liberal, with a Ripley-esque feminist woman as its CEO. That's the political commentary: Vickers defines herself as not being her father, and tries to sabotage him by hiring these tattooed hipsters, but they still ultimately serve him. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:There's a lot to say about him, honestly. Fifield is frankly the most interesting supporting character in any of the films.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:13
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Ferrinus posted:For all we know the map WAS viewable remotely. He just made some kind of mistake that delayed his egress by the several minutes that it took for the shrapnel storm to become completely impossible to cross through.  If this was the case why not write it into the script? Just make a small scene with Fifield trying to view the map and have it crap out on him due to the storm explaining the map data is so large it's only saved locally on the ship and with the comms taking a poo poo he has no access to it. Neo Rasa posted:Your phone's GPS, phone calls, and internet access are done via three unrelated connections that won't all operate with the same quality in the same conditions. Like if your GPS is down and you're not getting WIFI/G you can't phone in Google Maps directions and vice versa. But Prometheus is 80 years into the future, and is the most expensive space endeavor of a mad man who own's the world and threw whatever he money he used to seek his own immortality among the stars and the technology is as shoddy as ours only when it's convenient? Another way this could have been easily written so that the structure has massive doors all over the place that automatically shut in case of storms, have one cut off Milburn and Fifield trapping them inside another part of the structure and now the map data is obsolete for Milburn and Fifield since it didn't get mapped with the doors close. David uses his knowledge of the hieroglyphs to open the locked doors to lead the rest out while he's unable to open the one that split the group (because he doesn't care). Rather we get "Zoinks, Scoob, I think we're lost let's pet this giant snake!"
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Jul 15, 2017 21:20
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s.i.r.e. posted:
Because a lot of stuff already works like this irl and it's obvious. s.i.r.e. posted:But Prometheus is 80 years into the future, and is the most expensive space endeavor of a mad man who own's the world and threw whatever he money he used to seek his own immortality among the stars and the technology is as shoddy as ours only when it's convenient? It's almost as if the genre known as science-fiction isn't necessarily always about the future. Weird. s.i.r.e. posted:Another way this could have been easily written so that the structure has massive doors all over the place that automatically shut in case of storms, have one cut off Milburn and Fifield trapping them inside another part of the structure and now the map data is obsolete for Milburn and Fifield since it didn't get mapped with the doors close. David uses his knowledge of the hieroglyphs to open the locked doors to lead the rest out while he's unable to open the one that split the group (because he doesn't care). Rather we get "Zoinks, Scoob, I think we're lost let's pet this giant snake!" Yes, the movie would be improved if we had an extra ten minutes of movie just to explain how two characters got lost. The cut to them suddenly getting lost is played for silliness even in the movie itself, I don't think Prometheus would be as effective if it was played completely straight. I said this jokingly a lot when Prometheus first came out but I really do think if the movie has a "fatal flaw," it's that it's too realistic.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:31
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s.i.r.e. posted:But Prometheus is 80 years into the future, and is the most expensive space endeavor of a mad man who own's the world and threw whatever he money he used to seek his own immortality among the stars and the technology is as shoddy as ours only when it's convenient? You believe wealthy people are superior to you, and want to lobotomize Scooby-Doo so that he no longer expresses any desire for Scooby Snacks. The problem is not with the film.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:36
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's the political commentary: Vickers defines herself as not being her father, and tries to sabotage him by hiring these tattooed hipsters, but they still ultimately serve him. It's a joke in two parts: the pretense of Weyland's dream and the perversity of his secretly being undead.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:38
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Remember, "Even in the future nothing works!"
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Jul 15, 2017 21:57
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Neo Rasa posted:If Prometheus was made a couple of years later Fifeld would be read as a great send-up of a Silicon Valley techbro. I think people just weren't ready to be in on the joke; the promotional material has Weyland giving a TED talk about David.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:58
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It just seemed so implicit throughout the entire series in its own way (both that joke and it's the future, nothing works). I mean this is a setting where the Weyland corporation canonically can't even figure out how to make good cornbread.
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Jul 15, 2017 21:59
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s.i.r.e. posted:
It WAS written into the script. In the movie, Fifeld becomes panicky, leaves, gets lost, and ends up trapped by the storm inside the alien ruin. We know he made a map, we know he got scared, we know he left, we know he got trapped. All of these pieces of evidence together allow us, perspicuous scholars of the movie Prometheus, to construct a consistent and believable explanation for the events of the movie. There is no need for exposition confirming this for us because we're smart enough to come up with it for ourselves and it's not actually important in the first place.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:02
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People are using anedotes to defend the film, so clearly the film is flawless. The film's audience is not provided the infomation that people are referencing. They can not be expected to know that one guy you know that's a geologist and dumb. The film is to present its own story. If the people of Prometheus were presented as regular joes in space, it would be easier for the audience to belief their actions. But that's not how the film presented them.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:16
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Neo Rasa posted:It's almost as if the genre known as science-fiction isn't necessarily always about the future. Weird. I think it's far from realistic, but I guess it's a too each their own on this. Prometheus and A:C setting's are ridiculously advanced but there's seemingly no boundaries to what they stuff can do unless it's super convenient for the script and the characters are terrible at best. Neo Rasa posted:It just seemed so implicit throughout the entire series in its own way (both that joke and it's the future, nothing works). I mean this is a setting where the Weyland corporation canonically can't even figure out how to make good cornbread. The coffee is also the only good thing on the Nostromo according to Parker. Treating employees well isn't on the Weyland thing to do. Ferrinus posted:It WAS written into the script. In the movie, Fifeld becomes panicky, leaves, gets lost, and ends up trapped by the storm inside the alien ruin. No one outside of the ship has access to the map.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:20
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temple posted:People are using anedotes to defend the film, so clearly the film is flawless. The film's audience is not provided the infomation that people are referencing. They can not be expected to know that one guy you know that's a geologist and dumb. The film is to present its own story. If the people of Prometheus were presented as regular joes in space, it would be easier for the audience to belief their actions. But that's not how the film presented them. Prometheus can be a bad movie despite this argument, but what is being replied to is the argument that the characters in the film are unrealistic. If it is bad, then that is despite that argument as to why it is bad being, according to the counter argument, incorrect. Your post actually puts what people find unrealistic quite well: many people seem to have a hard time accepting that people who present themselves this way are actually ordinary, fallible people. What is being confidently presented to you is, of course, ancient aliens bullshit. Many of the film's initial detractors were outraged that the film is premised on the ancient aliens pseudoscience, without considering that maybe Ridley Scott realizes that the idea is bullshit. Ancient Aliens is a television show on what is purportedly the educational History Channel, produced by Prometheus Entertainment. It is presented as a confident, professional educational documentary. It also has nothing to do with actual history. You don't have to accept a film's presentation at face value; rather, doing so is the definition of failure of critical thinking. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 15, 2017 |
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Jul 15, 2017 22:31
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s.i.r.e. posted:No one outside of the ship has access to the map. I don't know that that's true, but furthermore, it doesn't matter. Whether or not Fifeld had full, limited, or no access to the map that his drones were drawing for the starship Prometheus, he still could have taken a wrong turn that cost him and Millburn enough time that the pair were unable to exit the alien ruin before becoming trapped there by the storm.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:54
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Ferrinus posted:I don't know that that's true, but furthermore, it doesn't matter. Whether or not Fifeld had full, limited, or no access to the map that his drones were drawing for the starship Prometheus, he still could have taken a wrong turn that cost him and Millburn enough time that the pair were unable to exit the alien ruin before becoming trapped there by the storm. More to the point, if they just wanted them to get caught in the storm they could have just went too far in or whatever. The map guy fucks up and gets lost because the universe is a cold uncaring place and doesn't care about professionalism or credentials.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:58
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Hodgepodge posted:Your post actually puts what people find unrealistic quite well: many people seem to have a hard time accepting that people who present themselves this way are actually ordinary, fallible people. But they're unbelievably fallible, they're literally slasher victims written in just to die and have no depth behind them. Ferrinus posted:I don't know that that's true, but furthermore, it doesn't matter. Whether or not Fifeld had full, limited, or no access to the map that his drones were drawing for the starship Prometheus, he still could have taken a wrong turn that cost him and Millburn enough time that the pair were unable to exit the alien ruin before becoming trapped there by the storm. It does matter because it feels super cheap. It's the equivalent of one of the Nostromo crew running away after the Alien immerges from Kane and trying to hide from it the whole film only to die when they find the Alien in the lower depths of the ship. The having the rest of the crew split up and search for said character only to die one by one.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:34
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s.i.r.e. posted:they're literally slasher victims written in just to die and have no depth behind them. Agreed this is awful. They should have made it like the other Alien movies, wait a second....
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Jul 15, 2017 23:42
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temple posted:People are using anedotes to defend the film, so clearly the film is flawless. The film's audience is not provided the infomation that people are referencing. They can not be expected to know that one guy you know that's a geologist and dumb. The film is to present its own story. If the people of Prometheus were presented as regular joes in space, it would be easier for the audience to belief their actions. But that's not how the film presented them. They're presented as dumbasses and fuckups by showing them on screen being dumb and loving up. Fiefeld's introduction where he acts like a snarling prick doesn't make him seem hyper competent either, since he's literally flown into space with a small crew and you really can't refuse to work with people in that type of scenario. Also lol at the "the film is flawless" straw man, come on
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Jul 15, 2017 23:55
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Neo Rasa posted:Agreed this is awful. They should have made it like the other Alien movies, wait a second.... Yeah, they should of had charismatic characters with depth and likeability rather than the outer space equivalent of dumb teens that get killed while they gently caress, run headfirst into danger and banana peel slip on blood.
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Jul 16, 2017 00:31
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s.i.r.e. posted:Yeah, they should of had charismatic characters with depth and likeability rather than the outer space equivalent of dumb teens that get killed while they gently caress, run headfirst into danger and banana peel slip on blood. You seem to be working under a strange definition of 'realism', where realism means the characters are your friends. If they are not charismatic, they are fakes.
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Jul 16, 2017 00:46
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s.i.r.e. posted:But they're unbelievably fallible, they're literally slasher victims written in just to die and have no depth behind them. And we're right back to the beginning of the argument. The last page of the thread is still there, you can just go back and read it if you're feeling nostalgic. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 00:58
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Guy A. Person posted:They're presented as dumbasses and fuckups by showing them on screen being dumb and loving up. Fiefeld's introduction where he acts like a snarling prick doesn't make him seem hyper competent either, since he's literally flown into space with a small crew and you really can't refuse to work with people in that type of scenario.
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Jul 16, 2017 01:01
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temple posted:You still make the same mistake again. You read the characters that way, therefore everyone else did. This is the most uncritical way to view film "well I thought it was good, there you are dumb". Just because the film fits your reading of it or praise it doesn't mean your understanding is better than anyone else. Likewise, people that praise the film are not criticizing it so the flawlessness doesn't need to be said, its all that can be assumed. If I am making a mistake I am making a different one than what your original post was about, which was that people were using anecdotes and outside knowledge to judge the film which was unfair and they should rely on how the characters are portrayed. I entirely talked about what the characters did on screen; unless you think "on a mission that requires working together, the people need to be willing to work together" is specialized knowledge that not everyone is going to have coming into the film. And no, defending one aspect of the film is neither praising it and certainly not implying that it is flawless. We are arguing one specific point, people shouldn't have to drop in a random criticism just to reassure everyone that they don't think the film is flawless. You are resorting to cheap rhetorical tricks to make it seem like everyone else is being unreasonable because you're bad at this.
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Jul 16, 2017 01:09
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Guy A. Person posted:If I am making a mistake I am making a different one than what your original post was about, which was that people were using anecdotes and outside knowledge to judge the film which was unfair and they should rely on how the characters are portrayed. I entirely talked about what the characters did on screen; unless you think "on a mission that requires working together, the people need to be willing to work together" is specialized knowledge that not everyone is going to have coming into the film. Please forgive my rhetorical trickery.
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Jul 16, 2017 01:29
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s.i.r.e. posted:It does matter because it feels super cheap. It's the equivalent of one of the Nostromo crew running away after the Alien immerges from Kane and trying to hide from it the whole film only to die when they find the Alien in the lower depths of the ship. The having the rest of the crew split up and search for said character only to die one by one. Why does a character being unlucky "feel cheap"?
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Jul 16, 2017 01:43
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Remember when Harry Dean Stanton wandered off and got killed while failing to search for a cat, even though he had access to a motion detector that's specifically designed to track cat-sized things? I remember that.
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Jul 16, 2017 02:51
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Ferrinus posted:Why does a character being unlucky "feel cheap"? I liked a character they deserve to do really well at everything if they don't then I don't like them because they are didn't and were written wrong.
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Jul 16, 2017 03:02
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Hell, Dallas dies because he goes in the wrong direction, to say nothing of how Parker and Lambert buy it.
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Jul 16, 2017 04:09
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