Ridley Scott was reportedly offered the chance to do a Director’s Cut of Prometheus by 20th Century Fox but refused according to Blu-Ray producer Charles de Lauzirika. This news was initially posted on BleedingCool a couple of days ago who attended a press event but now DigitalSpy have a direct quote from him.
DVD and Blu-ray producer Charles de Lauzirika, who directed the epic 220-minute Making Of documentary The Furious Gods, confirmed to Digital Spy that Fox offered Scott the chance to re-cut the film for its home entertainment release. “It was discussed quite a bit, the idea of an extended cut,” de Lauzirika said. “But the theatrical cut is Ridley’s director’s cut.” Fox very kindly offered him the opportunity to create a new cut of the film, and he said ‘No, this is my cut, and I’ll give you thirty-something minutes of deleted scenes on the side’. “It was that simple, there was really no debate and no argument.”
Never say never. Plenty of films have gotten Director Cuts or Extended Cuts years after they have been released so we may still get one eventually. Thanks to Valaquen for the news.
David is secretly the most real... his twitchy nature makes him more human than the humans of the story. He secretly displays more emotion than the subdued emotion/acting and fake personalities of the crew.
What if even if the actors could have improved their performance, Ridley made everyone minus Shaw and David tone down, or alter their normal acting style slightly... forcing the characters to use cliches that are all incredibly old by that point in the timeline... a culture that may have gone stale like the Engineers. Because Weyland gave them everything and rules like a king. They're all his subjects. Tools.
In some basic ways it's a lot like American Beauty where David=Lester. In American Beauty it's made out to make Lester appear as a somewhat bad guy responsible for all his own problems when you first watch it. If you dig deeper into the movie you realize Lester is trapped in a situation and it's the only reason he acts out irresponsibly. As a way to escape the miserable life he's trapped in. As much as Lester can't take control of his situation completely, or change it; it's the others around him who are also at fault and secretly more crazy than Lester appears to be. The wife drove him to his misery/actions. At the end his death is a misunderstanding caused by the father of the boy next door who he was only smoking pot with, and the father of the boy has serious issues. All the characters in the story except Lester have been adding to his inability to escape the situation and his breakdown. Here it would be all of the characters except Shaw and Janek who are secretly less real and more crazy than David...
We have to remember this is Ridley's vision of the future, plus the quotes Lindelof said about getting inside David's head and the "robot's perspective."
David subtly indicates he may want to kill his parents. There may be a reason for that.
He hates his parent-- the unjust king who forces him to do his evil bidding... as well as the culture he's been born into.
These are not colony born humans living out in space.
They've been directly under Weyland's rule as king for a very long time.
These characters were born into the culture Weyland helped shape and morph-- giving them all the answers, making them dependent on him as a leader. Portraying himself as a god.
It's a nature/nurture thing after David's birth. The characters are the way they are because they've lost their true selves, true emotions, and are less real than David/Fassbender.
Ironically David is becoming a "real boy" and Shaw and Janek are the only others who come close to being "real". With Vickers she pretends to be in control and emotionless, but hides her own unbalanced emotions, panic, fear, and risk aversion based emotions for the most part.
And there's something very different about most of the Earth-born humans of this time minus the above characters.
It's like people like Ford and Jackson are a little bit emotionless and a little bit too unthinking/obedient and unquestioning.
Holloway connects with his emotions too much, unlike the rest, but has major ego and false ego problems as well.
The characters' "fakeness" could be a reflection of Weyland's chaotic rule over the timeline. More so than that each character may be hiding their own full views and perspectives, agendas, and true nature. So the emotions they display on the surface are fake... David is actually becoming emotional... more human than the humans he's with.
The humans of the story can't even take care of themselves or respond logically and instinctively at the same time to either run away or fight the situation. This is displayed partially by Millburn's inability to control the situation(though he pretends he can) or even to simply run away (flight response). They've lost some of their survival instincts...
On one level David is absolutely telling the truth when he says to Shaw: "I didn't think you had it in you, poor choice of words"... because there are multiple meanings to this statement. Meaning on one hand that her survival instincts are impressive compared to the rest, although he could still be being sarcastic and is disappointed he was wrong about all humans, "not too close I hope". Her true logic and intuition/emotion combined in a way that leads her out of the situation. Her "realness"... She's different from the other humans he's grown to despise. There's a reason he says "parents (plural)" and only has the one closest thing to a father... again it's a nature/nurture thing and he sees his other parent as all of humanity. Possibly just the company, because he may have a pseudo-subconscious desire to replace his parent and become King... he feels superior to Weyland and humanity... A lot of Weyland rubbed of on him. More than the preference for Lawrence of Arabia...
He may actually be admiring Shaw's ability to go against Weyland's programming, but at the same time it's a poor choice of words because he's revealing he can lie. He had full knowledge that "it" was inside her in his other meaning.
He may also have a little respect for Shaw because she taught him to choose what to believe when he was watching her dream, which is how he lies and deceives-- choosing to remain vague throughout the entire movie.
The characters are all too egotistical, greedy, unable to see other perspectives, unable to connect with their emotions and intuition properly, semi-uncaring, fake, semi-unquestioning, and semi-emotionless because of Weyland's influence over the culture they were born into. A lot of it rubbed off on them because he's the parent of Vickers and David, and like the King of the culture for the rest. Even David may become like his father, like the father he hates, wanting to be a creator as our first near-immortal character of the story. "Sometimes to create one must first destroy". He's an android head that gets to keep living without anyone having to plug anything in or trick it into thinking it's alive again. David's head is immortal in a way that the later Androids aren't. The old order at Weyland corp is completely destroyed and begins to disintegrate when the King is killed and the Weyland lineage is severed.
There's something going on in David's head. Look at the early posters that focus on David, and the links between all the head themes become more apparent. The focus on David in general and how Fassbender came across as one of the best things in the movie should provide some clues that a lot of the series will be about David.
In the beginning we see Millburn using a different accent when conversing with Fifield for the first time. He later switches to trying to impress him when Fifield turns out to be not so tough. Millburn tries to impress Fifield and foolishly believes in his abilities/act enough to try to pretend he has the situation in control. He almost accesses his flight response when he almost backs away, but his false ego takes over and he goes forward thinking/believing what he says.. That it's mesmerized and he can handle it. But he really has no clue what he's doing.
Janek is the natural captain and leader but he purposely gives up control of situations sometime prior to the events of the movie, he "just flies the ship" but at the end Ravel or Chance (can't remember) reveals that he's a "shit pilot". It takes a long time for Janek to take charge of the situation but he makes the call Vickers couldn't make and Ravel and Chance stick by him. They believe he's right-- they're both betting on him...
And of course after the deleted scenes and all we know Janek may be almost entirely right with his view of it being a weapons facility, because of his past experiences and having been in situations where tough calls had to be made.
They're supposed to be acting like irrational, illogical morons at times who can't properly combine logic and intuition/instinct/emotion anymore to begin looking for evidence in the right directions. Because of Weyland's influence over the culture. As a king, as almost a dictator.
David is breaking free from what most humans from Earth are like at this point and in the future of the series. "Earth, what a shit-hole"
EDIT: Here we go: http://whatculture.com/film/prometheus-writer-jon-spaihts-confirms-36-hours-plot-hole-was-deliberate.php
Fassbender did ad-lib a bit - the much disputed '36 hours' line was like a hot potato between Spaights and Lindelof with both claiming that it wasn't penned by them.
Yes, your posts are like f**king fine wine.
It's hard to tell if it's simply poor acting or weak dialogue. I know many actors will simply ad-lib, or say what comes naturally in the scene after they've learned the dialogue and understand the character. Harrison Ford does this, I'm sure many good actors do because they can tell what is appropriate for the character; they know what good acting is. They can command their character to push it to its fullest potential. But how studly of an actor/actress do you have to be to have that sort of freedom, especially working with a director like Ridley Scott? Even Fassbender is a relatively new actor in the Hollywood scene. I think Guy Pearce probably has the longest-running career of anyone in the film, besides maybe Charlize.
Also, at what point do you get into a script, as an actor, and say "this guy is just written this way, and I can't change a few lines without changing his entire character?" I mean, in a film like Prometheus, some people literally have only a handful of lines, just minutes on-screen. This makes each line pretty critical in defining any sort of character before the imminent death.
And Ridley wants a certain vision so adamantly. That's all many of the actors seemed to talk about.. which kind of sounds like Ridley wanted everything exactly his way, and got it, so how brave do you have to be to start changing up the lines on your own if you're some of these lesser-known actors? I'm just curious. Many of them were probably intimidated by Ridley and, as Lindelof so elegantly put it, "just tried not to get fired."
Yes, I will definitely agree with "Moon". But then again, Sam Rockwell would still be interesting to watch if he was just reading a telephone directory. But yes, Duncan Jones and Sam Rockwell definitely captured that naturalistic dialogue and character interaction which seems to be so lacking in modern Hollywood cinema.
Often, the delivery of the dialogue is so precise and unnaturally fluid, it is like watching a tennis match from the judges stand. Back -- forth --back -- forth. Rinse and repeat. In real life, people don't converse and interact so mechanically.
Ultimately, what makes the "naturalistic" approach (for lack of a better word) so appealing to me, is the perceived spontaneity. Again, using "Alien", or "Close Encounters" as specific examples...the illusion that is created is:
a) The person speaking has literally just constructed, in their mind, what he/she is about to say, for the first time.
b) The person listening and receiving the dialogue has literally just heard it for the very first time.
Obviously, this is not an easy thing to pull off...and it takes very talented actors, and more often than not, an equally talented director to accomplish this. Of course, allowing the actors to do a certain amount of creative, freestyle ad-libbing, while still hitting all the critical, key "notes" of a given scene, greatly helps in this process.
But then, personally, I still feel that Prometheus - in parts - conveys a more 1970s feel than any other sci-fi film I've seen in years. Moon being another rare example.
Seems like with Prometheus, all of that passion was applied to the visuals, and the actual acting and characters were somewhat of an afterthought outside of representing these huge, obvious, and often revisited 'grand themes.'
I remember watching the extras for Black Hawk Down, and some of the actors talk about random things that Ridley would do to make the performances more geniune, like having random explosions going off around them that they had no clue about. Apparently that was back in the day when he really paid attention to what the performances looked like on screen.
I don't know whether to blame some modern trend or oversight on Scott's part. In the end, though, I think the general audience noticed.
Couldn't agree more, Deuterium, I've been thinking this for quite a while now. Another film, IMO, that really manages to capture that dynamic would be Jaws. Some of Lars von Trier's movies too.
Another film that did this wonderfully was "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Earlier films like "Serpico" and "Dog Day Afternoon" are similar examples.
I don't know why directors have moved away from this realistic "verite" style.
Anyways...this is one of my favorite aspects about the acting and directing of "Alien".
Out of all the deleted scenes, I think the engineer speaking was one of the good ones! well.. maybe not the engineer speaking, but weyland talking about gods. About how he was like god because he created David. About how gods deserve to live forever. I felt like this was the "tears in rain" moment, and I think it's a shame they cut it out. It actually gave me chills when i watched it.
Its not just about the script its more how its filmed. lots of great movies have the same boring scrips and plots but the acting , filming and mood of the movie is wat makes it good.
True enough, but it is one thing to link them by lore than to pretty much duplicate a scene from the original. It's a little too X-ish, if you get my meaning.
Although it was always an X movie, and as soon as the Jockey chair appeared in the trailer the bluff was called.
To be brutally honest I thought they cut the skin scene cos it looked like Milburn was examining Lisa Riley's thong.
Okay I'll give you those two, but the other scenes didn't add much IMO.
Good thing you were around to correct his mistake, eh?
I agree with pretty much everything you've said, although I disagree on the bit with the Engineer speaking. As much as I dislike the direction they took with the Engineers, I think it works a whole lot better if he's silent.
I have also been watching a fan edit with the deleted and extended scenes re-inserted and I respectfully disagree.
Some of the smaller scenes, like "We are no longer alone", "Our first alien", "skin", and the like bring a greater sense of continuity to the film, making latter actions taken now make sense in terms of the broader narrative, instead of being things that just happen.
Janek Fills Vickers In and The Engineer Speaks both bring a sense of depth to the film that was missing before, and the latter just about changes the entire point of the film.
Extended scenes like the King Has His Reign scene between Vickers and Weyland bring character to those that had little.
The alternate Fifield Attacks brings a sense of consistency across the title's creature design that I didn't realize the film was lacking until I saw it.
And that's just the ones I remember off the top of my head.
I definitely think an extended cut is the better cut of the film.
Just perpetuates the myth the Fox forced Riddles to keep it under 2 hours.
Lucky he has you to defend him though, eh?
In my mind the crew of the Nostromo aren't born yet.
With the original Science Officer.
Evidently not then?
In space, no one can quench your thirst like a Ripley and Jonesy Float™
Finally someone agrees. That movie sucked, anyways.
Right?
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F_y1USaJemzSs%2FSQguCxSVLPI%2FAAAAAAAACrI%2FqNpweopoZpw%2Fs400%2Fdarkstar%2Bend.jpg&hash=b6a848eda9620e2259d9f84d06ef06486ca62b54
Alien isn't canon! What are you guys, crazy?
In my mind it's ripley and jonesy float in space.
It will always be a flawed but interesting film. It has a lot of great ideas but I don't think it flows amazingly. It gets a bit stuck in places.
Too bad poor Michael Biehn didn't get that starring vehicle for 3 and create that team of rebels fighting the company.
I thought the first Dark Horse stories set up the characters nicely with him being shell shocked and having some nasty facial burns. Newt was in an asylum. Would be interesting ways to start the characters off instead of being dead.
Not to mention I personally like Prometheus a lot more than Resurrection.
In a damaged EEV headed to a prison planet.
Res? Alien 3? What are these movies you speak of?
As far as I am concerned, Ripley and the others are still floating around in space.
It very much feels like it could be a Dark Horse story and I think it's successful if looked upon on those terms.
All of Joss Whedon's writing feels very comic bookish and A:R is no exception.
It's pretty much a spin off at this point anyway. I doubt there'll be a sequel and with all love and respect Sigourney seems too old now.
But if they want to make more Alien films all they have to do is make some poor unfortunates stumble across some eggs. Bingo.
I also think Sigourney Weaver gives one of the best performances of her career as Ripley 8. Very animalistic, spellbinding to watch. I wish she'd gotten to play that Ripley again.
I agree with these statements.
Some people say that about the Holocaust. You can't change history though.