Topic: AvP =/= Prometheus

[Alienseseses]

The thing about AVP and Prometheus is that while they share plot points and ideas, it's pretty clear that, at least on a technical level, Prometheus is the king here. On a script level, while some may disagree, Prometheus was a lot more involving than AVP. AVP was formulaic while Prometheus often broke the structure mold.

They were both formulaic. 'Prometheus' had a far more massive budget and went for a deliberately artistic look, but the basic story structure was obvious. If anything, it could have benefited from tighter following of certain narratives - and I say that as a writer, myself.

Following a formula is only a bad thing when it comes across as either nonsensical or if you can see the 'surprises' it's setting up, a mile off.

Neither film scared me, I can say that much.

One does look cheaper, but again, that's more to do with the budget. If Anderson had access to what Scott had commanded for this, it would have undoubtedly looked a lot more spectacular. They didn't even have enough money for multiple flashlights.

I'm a big believer in following the standard structure of scriptwriting, because 9 times out of 10 you'll fail if you break that mold. But AVP follows it so obviously that everything is predictable, and Prometheus only broke that mold to allow for world building, which was refreshing. And say what you will, but I didn't find Prometheus predictable. I was only a little spoiled by ads. If I had walked in blind, I would not have seen much of it coming.

It's true that Prometheus isn't a perfect, airtight script. But it definitely tried harder than AVP, and accomplished much more.

I am also a writer, myself.

[SpeedyMaxx]

The characterization of the various secondary characters in 'AvP' is way, WAY better in 'AvP'. 'AvP' took the time to actually set up the scientist characters and their personalities and give them names.

Then why can't I remember any characters (not that they had any real character) other than Bishop, Sanaa Lathan and that poor Italian fellow who didn't seem at all comfortable acting in English, particularly with such poor lines?  I don't even remember which of those many European droogs was the one with the character name-drop to give Dark Horse Comics fanboys a hard-on.  There was also Colin Salmon once again doing his bit for queen and country in a Paul Anderson movie, but I wish he'd stop doing that; he never has anything to do but show up and look austere.  There was nothing going on.

Wait a minute, that one guy from Trainspotting was in the movie.  He liked to photograph things, and I didn't care.

It's not that AVP had a terrible framework; as I said previously, it harvests many of the same elements of O'Bannon and Von Daniken as Prometheus.  It just does it badly, on the cheap, with a lot of stuntmen turned actors and an ADD script.  If I harp it on it's particularly because I saw things that could have worked in the premise and failed to at every turn.  And I think Prometheus far outclasses it on every conceivable level.

Name a single character in 'Prometheus' who got killed when zombie-Fifeld went on his rampage. Shit, name a single secondary scientist period other than Milburn and Fifeld.

Ford.

And Milburn and Fifeld (along with a lot of the other characters in the movie) were idiots - at least none of the characters in 'AvP' did anything outright stupid or suicidal.

Plenty of those dudes were idiots.  Millburn and Fifield were just scared of giant alien corpses, and Fifield was unstable.

If you seriously think 'Prometheus' had better characterization than 'AvP', I'd suggest watching 'AvP' because the only thing I can think of is that you haven't seen it lately.

I actually watched it again about a month ago, and I still didn't care.  I'm not going to say every character in Prometheus is a profound tableau of emotions (nor, for that matter, are the characters in Alien), but I will say I got way, way more out of Shaw, David, Vickers, Janek, Weyland, etc. than anyone in any AVP.

Shit, Weyland in 'AvP' is a more likeable and sympathetic character than Weyland in 'Prometheus'. Charles Weyland actually gives a shit if his employees die, he shows remorse and actually debates if he's doing the right thing. Peter Weyland was a selfish asshole who didn't care about anyone but himself.

Yeah, he turned out to be an okay guy, but they're not running for Miss Congeniality.  Bishop Weyland's function in AVP is to show up and be Lance Henriksen for fanboys - that's about it.  I don't care which one of them is nicer; Weyland's role in Prometheus, though a bit briefer than I'd like, actually serves a profound thematic resonance that echoes through the ideas of the film, then all the way back to Blade Runner with Batty and Tyrell.  He actually has a point.

This is all irrelevant bickering though.  We don't agree on the films or their quality, and that's fine.  I'm just saying why I think AVP1 is a mediocre at best film that cheapens the franchise and particularly doesn't work with what we see in Prometheus of the Engineers' background.  If it does for you, that's your thing.

[Darklarik]

Well then, carry on I guess.

Well then, ok, why is it that people just have to put another race of beings into the alien franchise? I mean in all honesty I don't see all that many alien fans wanting to jump into a predator movie and yes I know the website is called AVP. 

It's like predator fans feel left out or something.

You have Bananas, and Ice Cream. Alone both a good, but together, you get epicness. Both franchise can stand alone with their own lores and stories, but their is so much potential for combining them if you have the right minds and directors.

Im a predator fan, and what i feel left out is the fact that the predator franchise dosent have a decent lore yet, because whenever someone does a new film its just the same formula, no new things.

For example, i would like to know WHY they have an obsession with hunting? whats their history? just HOW advanced are they? Whats their motivations? How is their goverment and the rest of their culture? how did they find the aliens? Do they have a relationship with the jockeys or any other alien other than humans?

Hundreds of questions that could make for a much more interesting movie.

[Xenomrph]

To be perfectly honest there were plenty of things 'AvP' did better than 'Prometheus', so discarding the movie sight-unseen as unredeemable trash is a little bit silly.

I've seen both movies, and I completely disagree.  I don't think AVP did anything better.  I also don't think it's irredeemable trash, I think it's just a fairly crap movie.

The characterization of the various secondary characters in 'AvP' is way, WAY better in 'AvP'. 'AvP' took the time to actually set up the scientist characters and their personalities and give them names.

Exposition isn't character development. We got "Look at my wife and kids" guy, "I'm the tough security" guy, "I have lung cancer" guy. They're archetypes.
In Prometheus, we have characters who believe in things, who have motivations, who have agendas, who have opinions. David is a character with so much personality for something without personality. Shaw has a crisis of faith, and has to struggle with her beliefs versus the facts. Weyland wants to cheat death, and wants to be the new creator. He has hubris, but buried under genuine need for understanding. Vickers has everything she needs, except for people who care about her. Her father acts as if she doesn't exist. So she develops a hard exterior. And so on.
These are characters. AVP had cardboard cutouts.

But it at least made me give a shit when the characters in 'AvP' got killed - they at least had names. Some of the central characters in 'AvP' had character arcs, concerns, and motivations as well, most notably Lex, Sebastian, and Weyland.
You could argue that Miller and Verheiden had motivations and character arcs, too - they wanted to escape the temple to get back to their families. Verheiden's character changes from being a gruff asshole to someone who realizes he needs to cooperate with Miller to survive.

'Prometheus' didn't even have "archetypes" outside of Fifeld (asshole) and Milburn (idiot), both of whom were horrible at their jobs and actively got themselves killed with their own stupidity. And I guess there were the two co-pilots, whose notable character traits were "have a running bet, sacrifice themselves at Janek's whim".
Beyond those characters, none of the other characters even got names, let alone personalities or even archetypes. Name a single thing about the personality of the woman with the accent who helps Shaw with the Engineer head. Or any of the characters who got killed by zombie-Fifeld, or got killed by the Engineer at the end.

You're acting like 'Prometheus' was some kind of bastion of character development, but it made just as many mistakes in the character department as 'AvP' did, if not more.

And I think Prometheus far outclasses it on every conceivable level.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because I'm pretty sure it's because you haven't seen 'AvP' in a while that you can't remember the characters well.

I saw 'Prometheus' yesterday and I have no idea who "Ford" is.

Plenty of those dudes were idiots.  Millburn and Fifield were just scared of giant alien corpses, and Fifield was unstable.

None of the characters in 'AvP' did anything to get themselves killed. Milburn on the other hand poked the snake-monster thing until it brutally murdered him, and got Fifeld turned into a zombie. Fifeld made the map and had a map-PDA on his wrist and couldn't find his way out (despite the structure not being terribly complex, based on the holographic maps we see Vickers and Janek looking at).
And then Janek let zombie-Fifeld onboard without a second thought and got like 6 people (who didn't have names or anything) killed.

Seriously in terms of "people doing dumb shit", 'Prometheus is a way, way worse offender than 'AvP'.

I'm just saying why I think AVP1 is a mediocre at best film that cheapens the franchise and particularly doesn't work with what we see in Prometheus of the Engineers' background.

Frankly I don't think the existence of Predators or 'AvP' has any real bearing on the background presented in 'Prometheus', that's a big part of why I don't have a problem with considering it "canon".

[SpeedyMaxx]

I can sympathize with the above point about the Predator not having a decent mythos or backstory, because I adore the original Predator.  I just think every other movie they're in (except Predators) is crap.

I actually thought Predators was fairly decent.  But it was clear they'd stripped that concept and script to the bone in terms of production value, and removed most of the spectacle and new ideas.  And the ending was kind of a lame cliffhanger.  The bigger issue is that they're also mired in the AVP mess, which has cheapened both franchises.  It's harder for the Predator to climb out of that, and I'm not sure I know the answer.

[StrangeShape]

The derelict with the alien eggs predates Prometheus. That's not a proto-xeno, it's another creature that's similar to the xeno.

Not sure about that. The original squid in the concept art looks very close to facehugger, so I think the inference here is that it was suppose to be a precursor to that. Than the creature gets born along with an oval thing looking like the alien egg. Then theres Lindelofs comment about Prometheus spawning "two children", one being new monsters/characters, the other one, paraphrasing, growing up to become what weve seen in Alien

[samoht]

Well the pro to xeno isn't the first xeno so you can include AVP in your canon if you want or you can keep it separate.

[Alienseseses]

The derelict with the alien eggs predates Prometheus. That's not a proto-xeno, it's another creature that's similar to the xeno.

Not sure about that. The original squid in the concept art looks very close to facehugger, so I think the inference here is that it was suppose to be a precursor to that. Than the creature gets born along with an oval thing looking like the alien egg. Then theres Lindelofs comment about Prometheus spawning "two children", one being new monsters/characters, the other one, paraphrasing, growing up to become what weve seen in Alien

It's a similar species, no a precursor. Scott's adamant about that. Besides, we already have Alien murals in the ampule room depicting the egg and the xeno.

[whiterabbit]

Well then, carry on I guess.

Well then, ok, why is it that people just have to put another race of beings into the alien franchise? I mean in all honesty I don't see all that many alien fans wanting to jump into a predator movie and yes I know the website is called AVP. 

It's like predator fans feel left out or something.

You have Bananas, and Ice Cream. Alone both a good, but together, you get epicness. Both franchise can stand alone with their own lores and stories, but their is so much potential for combining them if you have the right minds and directors.

Im a predator fan, and what i feel left out is the fact that the predator franchise dosent have a decent lore yet, because whenever someone does a new film its just the same formula, no new things.

For example, i would like to know WHY they have an obsession with hunting? whats their history? just HOW advanced are they? Whats their motivations? How is their goverment and the rest of their culture? how did they find the aliens? Do they have a relationship with the jockeys or any other alien other than humans?

Hundreds of questions that could make for a much more interesting movie.

Hey dude I feel your pain. All I took out of Prometheus was that we come from muscular white dudes who play with black goo. I mean I don't even know where any of this is headed.

I think I need a hug.

[SpeedyMaxx]

You could argue that Miller and Verheiden had motivations and character arcs, too

Who are they?

Frankly I don't think the existence of Predators or 'AvP' has any real bearing on the background presented in 'Prometheus', that's a big part of why I don't have a problem with considering it "canon".

But it does, for the reason I mentioned.  The alien as we know it clearly comes from the Engineers' experimentation with bioweapons, either by design or by an experiment gone out of control.  I have always had a hard time believing - long before Prometheus - that the Predators could just swan in and snatch up what belongs to the legendary "space jockeys" like the aliens are so much cattle.

[StrangeShape]

Well the pro to xeno isn't the first xeno so you can include AVP in your canon if you want or you can keep it separate.

The mural looks like the proto xeno, not like the aliens weve known, so this would be confusing in itself. If aliens existed thousands of years ago, why they all looked like Shaws grandson instead of aliens in the movies?

[Xenomrph]

The derelict with the alien eggs predates Prometheus. That's not a proto-xeno, it's another creature that's similar to the xeno.

Not sure about that. The original squid in the concept art looks very close to facehugger, so I think the inference here is that it was suppose to be a precursor to that. Than the creature gets born along with an oval thing looking like the alien egg. Then theres Lindelofs comment about Prometheus spawning "two children", one being new monsters/characters, the other one, paraphrasing, growing up to become what weve seen in Alien

He meant that the story goes on to eventually be 'Alien', he didn't literally mean the creature.

Besides what we saw at the end couldn't be the "first" Alien since we see the Alien mural up on the wall, and the derelict in 'Alien' was ancient and ossified, which means it crashing must have happened before the events seen in 'Prometheus'.

You could argue that Miller and Verheiden had motivations and character arcs, too

Who are they?

Frankly I don't think the existence of Predators or 'AvP' has any real bearing on the background presented in 'Prometheus', that's a big part of why I don't have a problem with considering it "canon".

But it does, for the reason I mentioned.  The alien as we know it clearly comes from the Engineers' experimentation with bioweapons, either by design or by an experiment gone out of control.  I have always had a hard time believing - long before Prometheus - that the Predators could just swan in and snatch up what belongs to the legendary "space jockeys" like the aliens are so much cattle.

Miller is the dude who took pictures, Verheiden is the "comic-fanservice" guy you yourself said you remembered.

Also your second point assumes the Aliens as seen in 'Alien' were Jockey experiments gone wrong or something. And a pretty recurring point in AvP fiction is that the Predators ultimately can't control the Aliens, and eventually something goes wrong and they get their asses kicked.
Shit, it happens in both AvP movies, even.

[Darklarik]

The derelict with the alien eggs predates Prometheus. That's not a proto-xeno, it's another creature that's similar to the xeno.

Not sure about that. The original squid in the concept art looks very close to facehugger, so I think the inference here is that it was suppose to be a precursor to that. Than the creature gets born along with an oval thing looking like the alien egg. Then theres Lindelofs comment about Prometheus spawning "two children", one being new monsters/characters, the other one, paraphrasing, growing up to become what weve seen in Alien

Dude, consider that the space jockeys may have multiple different variations of the weapon we know as the Alien, similar but different in their own sense, they all have the same backbone formula (apperance),  but are different beings in their own right.

Hence New Alien =/= Alien, think of them as distant cousins, one already perfected, the other a butt freaky accident.

I think I need a hug.

Go buy one i dont do hugs.

[SpeedyMaxx]

Miller is the dude who took pictures, Verheiden is the "comic-fanservice" guy you yourself said you remembered.

Yeah, but that's all I remembered.  To me, those are not characters.

[StrangeShape]

Come to think of it the only explanation I can think of is that those protoxenos get born and give life to regular aliens we know from the movies. So the first seed if you will. It did come out along with an alien egg, which probably contained a facehugger which would then...we know the rest

Dude, consider that the space jockeys may have multiple different variations of the weapon we know as the Alien, similar but different in their own sense, they all have the same backbone formula (apperance),  but are different beings in their own right.

Hence New Alien =/= Alien, think of them as distant cousins, one already perfected, the other a butt freaky accident

.

That wouldve been an unbelievable coincidence that with so many variations and different strands, the creature on the mural perfectly mirrors Shaws baby, not any other creature or alien variant