[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by Wormius

How about this - for those who loved "Alien" and Aliens, but hated "Prometheus", try to explain why you loved one but not the other.

Alright, I’ll bite. I spent a long time writing this post only to lose everything I’d written so bear with me as I try to remember everything I wrote. Alien and Aliens are fantastic films. What makes them great is that they have simple plots, one easily identifiable adversary and excellent characters.

Spoiler'd for length

Spoiler!

Alien’s plot is pretty straight-forward. The crew of the Nostromo are awoken from stasis and are tasked with investigating a SOS distress call from a nearby planet. Once planet-side they discover a derelict spaceship of unknown origin. They quickly realize the ship is not human in origin and Kane discovers leathery looking objects inside. Upon taking a closer look Kane discovers that they are in fact eggs and before he has a chance to react he is attacked by an alien parasite which quickly hatches from one of these eggs and attaches itself to his face. He is brought onboard the Nostromo despite Ridley’s (who is acting commander) protests. The face hugger eventually dies, Kane regains consciousness and he appears to be normal until a new alien bursts out of his chest. The crew is now forced to capture/kill the alien aboard their ship. The “plot twist” comes in the form of Ash’s betrayal who we find out is actually an android and is following the Company’s orders to bring back one of these aliens for study. The plot is simple and it flows and unfolds naturally as the movie progresses.

Aliens has a similar plot to Alien. A crew (this time comprised of space marines) must investigate a colony that has gone silent. This colony is located on the same planet as the one discovered in Alien. They run into an alien infestation and are forced to kill their way out. They are similarly betrayed by Burke who like Ash is working for the Company. What makes Aliens great however, are the memorable characters. Hudson’s, “it’s game over man!” line is so recognizable that even people who haven’t seen the movie know that it’s from Aliens. Even minor characters like Cpl. Ferro are colorful and interesting. Blizzard ripped this character straight out of Aliens (including some of her lines) and used her as the drop ship unit in Starcraft. The characters in Aliens are what make the film great and what keeps it from being a mediocre action movie.

I originally gave Prometheus a 6.5/10 and I’ll stand by that. I didn’t “hate” it but it’s far from a good movie in my opinion. Visually, the film is impressive but if I were to sum up the issues I have with Prometheus they would be that it has too many antagonists (which complicate the plot) and terrible characters (aside from David).

The plot of Prometheus is bogged down by introducing too many adversaries. It’s pretty obvious that Scott was trying to replicate moments from Alien. They had an “egg” room except this time it’s full of vases that contain black goo. David steals one of these eggs and infects Holloway. Ok cool, this is how the alien parasite is going to kick start this party. Wait, nope… that goo has also turned some worms into some kind of face hugger worms that attack the geologist and biologist who are lost/trapped inside the structure. Alright. The crew goes back to find these two and discover that they are dead. Holloway isn’t doing so great and it’s becoming clearer that he is infected with some sort of alien parasite. They are forced to kill him lest he spread the parasite to the rest of the crew. Too late. Shaw has already been infected and she is pregnant with an alien life-form. She runs to surgical machine to have it pulled out of her. Meanwhile, the dead geologist suddenly appears outside the Prometheus and is now a zombie with super strength and he proceeds to kill off a number of crew members. What? Weyland is onboard (that’s the worst kept secret). They have to go awaken an engineer RIGHT NOW so they can speak to it. It wants to kill them too. Oh hey, remember that alien parasite Shaw aborted? Ya that thing is now a giant squid face hugger that also wants to kill them. They made the film unnecessarily complex by adding in too many adversaries. They should have stuck with the engineer. The movie didn’t need to have zombies or three different types of parasites. It complicates the plot, makes the film feel disjointed and messes with the flow of events.

I can overlook “plot holes” if there are interesting characters. Aside from David, none of the characters have any sort of dimension to them. 75% of the crew is never introduced and we know next to nothing about any of the characters. The ones we do know something about are wildly inconsistent with what we’re shown on screen. I’ll use the geologist and biologist because they are the best example. These two freak out at the sight of the dead engineer and decide to hightail it back to the ship. They get lost (this isn’t important) and stumble across a pile of dead engineers. The pair freak out again and decide to get as far away from them as possible which apparently is the room where they encountered the first dead engineer. Why would they camp out in this room? It makes no sense given what we’ve seen of these characters to accept that they’d set up inside this one room. At best I could see them camping outside the room but not actually in it. Then the biologist suddenly grows a spine when confronted with the parasitic worms even though he was pissing his pants over some dead engineers? Give me some credit please. I am not asking for you to hold my hand throughout the entire movie but establish your characters and have them make consistent choices. I can forgive plot holes and errors if your characters are worth investing in. As it stands, the characters simply serve as tools to force the rickety plot along.

I apologize because this was better articulated the first time I wrote it. For those who don’t want to read an essay, Alien and Aliens are great films because they have simple plots that naturally unfold with characters that are interesting and iconic. Prometheus tries to introduce too much into the plot and the characters are almost all one-dimensional red shirts.