"Doesn't Everyone Want Their Parents Dead?" Prometheus 10th Anniversary Retrospective - AvP Galaxy Podcast #147

[Corporal Hicks]

I tried but never received any responses. I'd love to dig into those older visions with him.

[BlueMarsalis79]

Watts and Holloway's characters were way better in particular. Most everything was honestly.

[OmegaZilla]

I still disagree with you about Spaihts. I stand by those earlier drafts (warts and alls).

You can't stop me corporal

[Corporal Hicks]

Watts and Holloway's characters were way better in particular. Most everything was honestly.

It still suffered the same problem with the Aliens in the 3rd act that Covenant did, but yeah, I just think it was a far more competent and interesting take on an Alien prequel. Though I will forever be glad it was changed to somewhere other than LV-426.

But like I said, I love so much of what Prometheus opened up to the wider lore and continuity. The black goo has taken the place of the Aliens as the older cosmic horror and I'm okay with that.

[NecronomIV]

I will say I'm not looking to extend the panel either. 4 hosts is hard enough work, 5 was even worse.

Why not keep a panel of four, but vary who the four are? A little variety would be excellent. I know scheduling can be difficult, but diversifying would really be refreshing, especially for episodes that might benefit from another POV.

I also agree with @Corporal Hicks about the Engineers. They're likeable, it's just not necessarily like the Space Jockeys.

I mean, look at these humanoids and tell me if the Engineers don't fit into the world of Alien. I laughed about turning Chutulhu into Vin Diesel (I think he was Omega )... but the biomechanical pressure suits, the lifeless black eyes, the aesthetics of ancient greek art, etc. They are like androids of non-human origin. There is a kind of uncanny valley there for sure. I also like the idea of the Derelict corridors ergonomically designed to be circulated by pilot's assistants.

I do like the Engineers, but I kind of think the Engineers don't aesthetically fit into the world of Alien particurly well, because they are polar opposite to Giger's aesthetic and style.

Giger's art shows a clear obsession with the female form: they are often focal points of his paintings, and Giger seems to celebrate them in his own wierdly complex and highly Freudian way.

The male form, not so much (except, uh, one particular element that tends to recur quite a lot). But the point is I can recall nothing really like an Engineer in his art. Most of the males he draws are weak looking creatures, often corpulant, jowled or emaciated. The ones in the Facehugger designs look almost like dummies.

The Engineers come from another artist - Michaelangelo, who celebrates the male form, which is polar opposite to Giger. These people are tall, powerful, sculpted, muscular, and Scott explicitly points to the influence in Covenant.

I speculate that Giger's Engineers would be quite different, probably even feminine in nature. But even if it turned out to be more explicitly male (or even androgynous) I think we would have had a little more biomech stuff -- perhaps some translucent skin with pipes and tubes dimly visible beneath.

I kind of think the biomech under-suit in the film was a bit of a cheat --  if the Engineers had a truely had little more biomech as part of them, they would fit much better with the aesthetics of the flight-suit, cockpit, etc. It would integrate them better and lend a sense of harmony.

Anyway.

One last thought - one entirely on a different topic. One of the reasons I liked the black goo is that it seemed to me to make sense of a scene in ALIEN that I couldn't quite make work in my head. The "egg-morphing" scene. It always felt wrong, but while I think the Queen is a terrific piece of design, it makes the Aliens more analoguous to Earth insects, and therefore more mundane. But if the Alien is somehow the product of the black goo, it means the alien form may be more protean and flexible, and I can dig the egg-morphing scene now.

[Immortan Jonesy]

One of the few things I don't like about that Spaights script is that Watts very easily kills the adult Alien after he recovers from the anesthetics.But the scientific evidence to justify the trip (an artifact on Mars), Weyland's motivations and especially when they wake up the Engineer are superior to Prometheus.

[OmegaZilla]

Eggmorphing is a fan term and has little bearing on what actually was the intention with the 'Brett turning into an egg' scene by the way, and the story about the black goo is a reference to that original intention, most likely

(the term 'spore' appears frequently in O'Bannon's descriptions...)

[ModMonkey]

C'mon, guys, like Adam said, you're marking the tenth anniversary of this film. Does every review have to be a literal dogpile?

It can't be helped if it's not something that is enjoyed by the panel. It's our opinions. And as I've said, I hate expending energy on things I dislike. I'd rather we just sit and talk about all the elements I prefer over the things I dislike, but I'm not going to censor others or myself if discussions or things take a turn in that direction.

I'm sorry that you feel we've been overly negative lately. And I'm sorry that recent projects have been ones not liked or recent anniversaries have been over divisive films. I can't help those timings or releases, nor would I dictate to our panel over whether or not they can be negative or not.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions and I'm 100% not trying to say that you should like something that you don't or how to run your show. I genuinely still think AVPG is the best Alien and Predator show out there. As an entity that somewhat represents the whole fandom, though, it might be worthwhile to seek out a more diverse group of panelists in cases where you're discussing something particularly divisive or polarizing like Prometheus. I mean, the Alien 3 show was more balanced because there were people who really disliked it but also people who loved it so an actual conversation happened. With Prometheus, there's probably a solid hour of the show that's just hard dumping on the film which, to be fair, is only a third of the whole episode but it's still a solid hour of dogpiling. It was kind of stressful and exhausting. I had to turn the show off and go do something else for a while before coming back to it.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, maybe I'm not the best fit for the tone of AVPG, anymore, maybe I'm just really tired of fandoms where nobody hates on it like a true blue fan of it can.🤷

And, yes, I do also see the irony in my negative critique of the episode's tone potentially adding to the overall negativity of the narrative.😄

There are those of us in the fandom who don't think the movie is as shit as you do, and don't think it's too intellectual for anyone, and it just feels like every episode I listen to is everyone hating so very hard on this franchise.

If you listened to the podcast in full, we mention all these things you list and we mention that it's not a bad thing to like the film or be inspired by it. We never pose our opinion as gospel - I even apologize for the over-enthusiastic spiral of hatred at one point. We also praise a lot of aspects of the film - mostly technical ones, but there's a lot to praise in the film regardless of how we perceive it. This is said explicitly several times.

I guess the disappointment I feel regarding the commentary is not entirely dissimilar to how you all reacted to Prometheus watching it for the first time. As someone who doesn't hate the movie despite its flaws I went into the podcast expecting to hear some things I disagreed with but also to hear some genuine perspectives and discussion of the themes and history, maybe hear some new stuff I didn't know about, and just generally get a fun and informed discussion about a film that we're all still talking about 10 years later despite being a crazy-as-balls, aesthetically gorgeous, hot mess.

Coming out of listening to the podcast, though, three hours later, I'm asking myself, why did I subject myself to that? That was just kind of...unpleasant.

I don't dislike criticism, and I feel that Prometheus certainly deserves it's fair share, but when you listen to three panelists do a round robin gleefully/frustratedly tearing the film a new asshole for 20 minutes or more a piece, one after the other for over an hour, it's a bit much and a little off-putting, at least for me, anyway. Adam had a much more measured response to the film and the show, in general (which I appreciated), and felt like he kept the spiral from going even harder or longer.

So, even though there were some good takes on specific elements of the film or its production, the sheer volume and concentration of negativity and frustration just blows that out of the water and it leaves no lingering positive impression.

I don't really engage with the community on the boards that often so I feel kind of awkward coming out of virtually nowhere to say these things, but I've been a listener/viewer since the beginning of the podcast and it just feels like there's a tone settling in with the show that's starting to resemble other, less dignified, fandoms, and I hate that it makes me want to engage/listen/watch AVPG less. I don't generally go in for schedenfreude or enjoy watching people take pleasure in tearing something down.

Anyway, I'm sure that I'm certainly not in the majority, here, but just wanted to comment as a longtime supporter of the show who's starting to feel the fatigue.

I still disagree with you about Spaihts. I stand by those earlier drafts (warts and alls).

That's exactly the kind of thing I am talking about.

And why this ends up being the best tenth anniversary podcast retrospective:

https://twitter.com/ScriptApart/status/1524283717690212352

That interview with Spaihts was off the chain good. Some of the stuff he details with the different factions of Engineers?

Gold.

I will say I'm not looking to extend the panel either. 4 hosts is hard enough work, 5 was even worse.

Why not keep a panel of four, but vary who the four are? A little variety would be excellent. I know scheduling can be difficult, but diversifying would really be refreshing, especially for episodes that might benefit from another POV.

100% what I was thinking. Not adding more, just rotating based on the content being discussed.

[OmegaZilla]

Maybe I'm being too sensitive,

Indeed.

Worry not, the staff reads feedback and discusses it. We'll come up with something 

[Immortan Jonesy]

I speculate that Giger's Engineers would be quite different, probably even feminine in nature. But even if it turned out to be more explicitly male (or even androgynous) I think we would have had a little more biomech stuff -- perhaps some translucent skin with pipes and tubes dimly visible beneath.

There was an androgen concept...



I liked this fan piece though 



...but yup! the Giger's ones would have been better and closer to hos artistic scope and design.

]

[ModMonkey]

I do like the Engineers, but I kind of think the Engineers don't aesthetically fit into the world of Alien particurly well, because they are polar opposite to Giger's aesthetic and style.

This actually kind of fits with the design ethos in the first film where Giger designed alien stuff and Cobb and Moebius designed human stuff. I think it's admirable to bring in different people with different aesthetics to design different aspects of this universe.

While I could get on board with the idea that the Engineers and Aliens should share a similar design language, the black goo and basic biological diversity makes it okay, in my mind, to have those differences.

If you look at an elephant and a bony-eared assfish you might not think they came from the same planet, but they do.

[Immortan Jonesy]

I still dig both, Alien and SJ, as two species that evolved on a biomechanical ecosystem, where the whole terrain conforme a giant neural network that covers the whole world. Then just like homo sapiens on Earth, the Space Jockeys became a civilization. 

With that in mind, I can see the Alien as a life form that evolved in a dangerous environment, developing characteristics such as its parasitic life cycle or acid blood to survive. 

That is to say, the Alien as an organism of natural origin, which was studied and weaponized by the biomechanical pilots.

[OmegaZilla]

A lot of people go back to O'Bannon's ideas but the truth of the matter is - they didn't matter anymore by 2012 and they certainly won't matter in the foreseeable future. To the joy of its fans and the dismay of many secular fans, Prometheus has won its way in official lore and it's not going away any time soon.

Covenant starts over from Prometheus and dare I say it's a much, much better film, more clean cut in what it wants to be, more clean cut with how it writes the android, and most importantly way, way meaner than Prometheus. If Prometheus was stitched together, Covenant is its refinement, and finds its voice in referencing classic gothic literature and British horror of old (Hammer horror most importantly). It does suffer from similar problems to Prometheus (many characters are not flawed like other 'ID island' films, but downright idiotic, for no discernible reason other than... they're dumb) but at the very least it retcons the retcon and makes the Alien go back to being something interesting.

Also it gets rid of Shaw, so like 500 bonus points

To me, Covenant definitely triumphs over Prometheus -- DESPITE that horrid android kung-fu and Oram being the worst written character of the entire series -- so I look forward to doing a podcast on it

I'll play nice when the time comes

[Kradan]

Also it gets rid of Shaw, so like 500 bonus points

What about James Franco being rostated alive in the first 10 minutes ?

[BlueMarsalis79]

That also gives it points.