What If Prometheus 2 Needs a Different Director Than Ridley Scott?

[hfeldhaus]

yes Ridley is the worst choice i guess, he can make a world real yes but nowdays his nose is way up in his ass so wonder on what cost will he direct a sequel with great sets, great actors, great visuals

theres no grounds to say his nose is up his ass. the problem with ridley is he is out of date on the horror genre and it was pretty clear in prometheus.  its easy to see alot of the horror in prometheus is cut short and im guessing ridley would have wanted to go further with it. although we dont know whether that was his choice or demand from execs who wanted to make it a 15/R rated movie. i just dont think its his forte anymore. he still knows how to line up a shot though and very few directors have his ability to choose great shot after great shot.

[Gash]

What do you mean out of date with the horror genre though? I'll admit Prometheus could have used more suspense when presenting some of it's horror set-pieces but the last thing I want to see is a film like Prometheus taking a lead from torture porn or 'found footage' - I don't really think the horror genre is having one of it's better periods and so looking for influence in current trends isn't going to up the quality. Horror seems more squarely marketed at the teenage demographic than ever before, full of CGI blood and dismemberment. Something needs to break the trend not fall in line with it.

It would have been hard for Prometheus to be a purely claustrophobic horror film when it's aiming to set up something grander. I'm hoping that it's sequel will explore deeper horror elements but with more mature and disturbing themes than your average modern horror film.

[hfeldhaus]

Out of date in that what he thinks is scary and terrifying (trilobite) is nothing new. Horror is shit at the moment and will be for a long time. Horror thrives on New ideas and sadly there's nothing really new to be done. Prometheus's horror was muted due to the rating. The hammerpede scene had a good build up and was cut short and was over to quickly. The fight scene with fifield was too brief and edited to speed to where it was completely ineffective. My favourite part (Holloway disintegrating) was build up well, once again, and then ended too quickly. My point is Prometheus had all the ingredients but it spoiled itself by not taking it far enough. As I said I don't know whether that was Scott's choice or the studio's

[Eva]

Ridley was clearly interested in the Chariots Of The Gods angle of the story and the questions asked in that book, not so much in doing another The Texas Chainsaw Massacre In Space, which was his own moniker for ALIEN (one of them anyway). As for the horror element as such, he stated he wanted to scare the shit out of us with certain scenery, not that he was making a horror genre film.

[hfeldhaus]

well the horror elements of the film were ham fisted at best. i put it down more to the editing than scott but he would have been heavily involved in it. i never said prometheus was ever meant to be a horror but if your going to include elements that make it a sub genre of horror then you have to do it right. this is my one and only gripe about the film

As for the horror element as such, he stated he wanted to scare the shit out of us with certain scenery, not that he was making a horror genre film.

i only ever remember him saying he wanted to scare the shit out of us. your quote seems a bit abstract for scott

[SM]

Aren't they the same thing?

[Eva]

well the horror elements of the film were ham fisted at best. i put it down more to the editing than scott but he would have been heavily involved in it. i never said prometheus was ever meant to be a horror but if your going to include elements that make it a sub genre of horror then you have to do it right. this is my one and only gripe about the film

As for the horror element as such, he stated he wanted to scare the shit out of us with certain scenery, not that he was making a horror genre film.

i only ever remember him saying he wanted to scare the shit out of us. your quote seems a bit abstract for scott

I wasn't quoting him, just summarizing his intentions according to a pre-release interview with him and some behind the scenes footage of the medical pod sequence on the Furious Gods doc, with Ridley being all giddy while shooting the scene, expressing the shock effect he hopes it'll achieve with the audience.

That scene turned out great from a horror perspective. What didn't turn out great (I'll give you that one), was the Fifield attack in the hangar bay sequence. If a scene serves no purpose in itself and could be removed entirely without affecting the film and its plot, you need to come up with a very good reason to keep the scene in the film.

In that scene, no character we care about is in danger, the antagonist is someone we believed dead and don't care about anymore and the effects work isn't great either. To add, it was storyboarded entirely different than what it ended up as, as revealed by the trailer footage. The editing of that scene is probably bad because Ridley didn't really know what to do with that scene and yet couldn't part with it for whatever reason.

[SM]

I think the Fifield scene reinforced the need to keep the shit away from Earth - especially for Janek - as it was way worse than what happened to Charlie.