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We have just uploaded the 49th episode of the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy Podcast (right-click and save as to download) and it’s the one I’ve been dreading! Our latest episode (recorded in April) sees RidgeTop and myself joined by special guest star Andrew E. C. Gaska discussing the highs and lows of Prometheus with several other assorted tangents.

We discuss some of the great things about Prometheus such as David and the c-section scene and we discuss some of the things we found frustrating about the film. Also included are some tangents about the worst films in the series, Alien 3’s visual effects, RidgeTop’s poor taste in films and my inability to judge distances!

I’d like to thank Andrew E. C. Gaska for joining us for this episode. Andrew is a writer who has worked with Titan on properties such as Planet of the Apes, the Creative Director for BLAM! Ventures (check them out here!) and also serves as a Franchise Consultant for 20th Century Fox on the Alien, Predator and Planet of the Apes series.

The 50th episode is currently planned to be focused around Alien: Covenant! We also have some Alien: Covenant interviews lined up for your listening pleasure! You can also listen to any of our previous episodes in the Podcast section under the News tab on the main menu. We hope you enjoy!

Keep a close eye on Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest Alien news! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien fans on our forums!

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Looking forward to listening to it mate. Thanks

Not seeing alien covenant until friday? Is there any spoilers in this podcast?

Not that I can remember. We recorded this in April, prior to seeing Alien: Covenant so anything that is discussed is what was known before the film came out.

Franchise consultant? How did you find him?

Black Goo:
Pure form ingested - Instant molecular breakdown into particle form - has varying effect on whatever bio life form it comes in contact with to create new life.  Also blessed with *modified ejaculate that you won't get to pass on...unless you have some great timing skills.  Since ovaries/eggs were not necessary, I can only imagine what anal would have done. 

Diluted form ingested (drop in a glass of alcohol - alcohol which could have further impact) - Slows molecular breakdown...etc. etc. as above; unless you are burnt to a crisp first.

Contact with Black goo - transformation, subject dependent (biological life-form only), with uncontrollable rage.

*modified ejaculate is species dependent.  Make humans shoot squid.  Engineers shoot ??

squid grows to trilobyte, face-hugs host and produces another alien life form.  Engineer = Decon.  Human = ??

Great podcast lads, really enjoyed that one.
Im a bit of a Prometheus apologist as i absolutely love the film. Sure it has some issues but they just don't detract from my enjoyment of the film.
Though as much i love Sean Harris as Fifeild and he did a really good job as the Fifeild zombie i wish we got the alternate version of his transformation and i would loved it if the film kept the scene with Janek and Vickers in the lifeboat, I thought that was great scene.

And now i have 24 hours to wait to see Covenant . Oh cruel world.

Im looking forward to your podcast on AC. Keep up the good work, love listening to you guys do a bang up job. Cheers

Not finished but:


"No one seemed surprised about all these discoveries"

Exactly

"everybody assumes everything"

Good point . Never thought of that.

"Not supposed to be a bash fest"

No problem. Its more analysis I enjoy listening to because there is  proper explanation for why.

Quote from: TheDerelict on May 10, 2017, 07:12:02 PM
Great podcast lads, really enjoyed that one.

Im a bit of a Prometheus apologist as i absolutely love the film. Sure it has some issues but they just don't detract from my enjoyment of the film.

Im looking forward to your podcast on AC. Keep up the good work, love listening to you guys do a bang up job. Cheers

Thanks for the kind words, Derelict. Glad you enjoyed it.  :) There's plenty of stuff I do like in Prometheus too but the overall frustration from the experience weights over in for me.

I'm looking forward to the next one too! I'm interested to hear what my fellow staffers have to say on it!

Quote from: oduodu on May 10, 2017, 07:27:38 PM
"Not supposed to be a bash fest"

No problem. Its more analysis I enjoy listening to because there is  proper explanation for why.

Fantastic! Glad it's not just coming across as slagging off the film! I always shy away from talking about Prometheus too much because I find it boring listening to people wrag on about it and I generally find it boring talking about it because I inevitably whine about the film so I kinda put this one off. lol Glad it's worked out okay though! I thought it came out quite well when I was listening to it while editing.

Is there a place to discuss the podcasts? I'd love to see a discussion page dedicated to each new episode.  There are many topics addressed in these as I'm going back thorough, that I would love to see some extended discussion on.

All the recent ones (the last 2 or so years) have a forum thread for each episode. Best way to find them if is to the find the news post on the front page, click Forum Topic at the bottom and it'll take you to the right place. You'll generally find other podcast related news articles in the Related News Posts box under the article too. Hope that helps.

Great podcast, enjoyed it alot.

Thanks, Buddy. I'm glad it's not coming across as being boring. I always worry about that when it comes to Prometheus related episodes.

Enjoyed this one, thanks. I watched Prometheus again this morning (jn preparation for tonight's cinema trip), and you really nail it when you describe it as frustrating. There's loads of good stuff in there, but a fair bit of total nonsense as well. It's as if they were shooting from a not-quite-final script. Just one more draft could have ironed out a lot of the bugs and made for a much more satisfying movie.

I recently did a deep dive on Prometheus and found a way to reconcile a lot of the problems I had with the film to the point where I think it is an excellent sci-fi movie and worthy entry into the canon. Through the writer commentary with Spaihts and Lindelof, the info revealed through the Covenant press junket, and other sources, my problems with the way the black goo functions, the medpod's specificity, the scientists leaving and getting lost, even the running in a straight line while the juggernaut rolls towards our hapless protagonists thing, they actually do make sense. Many of my issues were the same problems you guys had with it and I just thought you were being unnecessarily hard on the movie as I used to be.

You look at their arrival on LV-223. They only had a couple of hours before night fall to get a quic look at the pyramid. They were looking for direct contact which is why they were amazed by everything they saw but didn't really stop to examine anything. They were planning to be there for a while. They were coming back to the structure.

Millburn wants to be Fiefield's friend. This is one of the more obvious character bits right from the very beginning of the film and plays out a little later.

Fiefield and Millburn show their bias in the briefing scene about where they stand on the origins of man. When they get to the pyramid, they both are a little freaked out. Fiefield moreso. When he panics and wants to go back, the expedition crew is cool with it because this is a quick stop. They will be back. They are doing a recce. Millburn decides to go with Fiefield because he wants to show solidarity and he's probably kind of freaked out too.

They take their helmets off because studios want to see actors faces, not helmets. Why hire a star if you cover their face and hamper their performance? It's lame. I hate it, but it's explained away by Holloway being reckless and being a bit of a maverick scientist and he starts the circle of let's take off our helmets.

The black goo affects all organisms differently. It is a genetic catalyst. A mutagenic substance that is chaoticand turns worms into hammerpedes, Fiefield into a monster, Holloway was going the same way, and the infected Holloway was able to impregnate Shaw because he had infected spunk which created life in Shaw where there should be none. Nothing we see in Prometheus has any connection to the xenomorph. Even the Deacon isn't really connected. More of a sneak preview with the trilobite as a form of facehugger and the Deacon as the end result of goo+Engineer+human DNA.

Fiefield and Millburn getting lost was a joke that does fall a little flat. The geologist with the mapping gear gets them lost. Irony.

Millburn is probably wary of the hammerpede but it is the first complex lifeform he has ever encountered and he wants to show off to Fiefield, He is confident that the suit is virtually impregnable as stated by Scott in the director's commentary. He doesn't feel too threatened until things go awry.

The murals showing Gigeresque images and an obvious xenomorph image get explained away in the Covenant novelization where David says he didn't create the creatures, the Engineers did. He just played around with their design.

The medpod was programmed just for Weyland. He is a selfish, miserly, mysoginysti, egomaniacal old man. He sticks it to Vickers every chance he gets and having the most sophisticated piece of medical gear on the ship just for him...makes sense.

Weyland had no evidence that the Engineers could help him but he had no other option. He exhausted every other avenue and this was his last chance. He didn't know, he hoped. It was a leap of faith.

Shaw running around with staples is something that still irks me but everyone involved just says future medicine is really good. lol

Finally, the running scene. They were hurt, panicked, on rough terrain with formations intermittently at their sides as well as debris and flaming rubble falling at their sides. They also didn't know the juggernaut was going to roll evenly, it could have fallen to either side as it did later. Mostly though, it's a hollywood convention like Keanu Reeves outrunning a nuclear explosion on his motorbike.

So...yeah. I guess I'm that guy who tries to offer explanations for the things people have issues with when he enjoys something. I'd be curious to know if any of these changes anybody's mind about anything with the film. It certainly turned me around like 180 degrees to the point where I'm a fan of this story and this movie.

Anyways, hope that wasn't just crazy ranting. Just thought you guys were being really hard on the movie. Covenant, too, but we won't go there right now. ;)

QuoteShaw running around with staples is something that still irks me but everyone involved just says future medicine is really good. lol

She gives herself a painkiller before going into the medpod, the medpod gives her anisthetic, then she gives herself another painkiller as it's cutting the thing out of her.  She gives herself another one just before she meets Weyland.  She takes some tablets just before putting on her spacesuit.

Winces in pain as she zips it up.  Winces in pain just before they leave the ship.  Doubles over in pain just before David wakes up the Engineer.  Doubles over in pain as she runs out of the Juggernaut bridge.  Wincing in pain as she climbs into the lifeboat.  Screams in pain when the Engineer falls on her after she releases the trilobite.

She runs around with staples because if she doesn't run, she'll die.

QuoteFinally, the running scene. They were hurt, panicked, on rough terrain with formations intermittently at their sides as well as debris and flaming rubble falling at their sides. They also didn't know the juggernaut was going to roll evenly, it could have fallen to either side as it did later. Mostly though, it's a hollywood convention like Keanu Reeves outrunning a nuclear explosion on his motorbike.

Also, they change direction.

These two nitpicks are addressed within the film.

The wincing is not enough though... There should have been a longer pause in the movie for her to recover.

Every female in the audience just goes "Pfffff" now lol. It's way to unrealistic, even with super future drugs. The belly muscles are simply not working after that, so getting up and walking around... yeah no way.

Has nothing to do with the amount of painkillers, has everything to do with the cut.

So just ignore the impending climax and stop the film so the protagonist can have a bit of lie down.

Why not.

Quote from: SM on Jun 14, 2017, 06:43:16 AM
So just ignore the impending climax and stop the film so the protagonist can have a bit of lie down.

Why not.

Meh, they were about to go back to the ship for a third time anyway, why not take a nap. I did.  ;D

Would be fcking awsome if they let Shaw die in the medpod and make Vickers survive and fly of with David actually... That would improve the movie for me anyway.  :P

Spoiler

And no one would cry seeing Vickers corpse on the slab in Covenant

[close]

The toing and froing between ship and pyramid is a legit problem I reckon. Not staples

Didn't one of the Alien scripts have the Alien kill a crewmember while Shaw was still in the Pod or something? And she watched it grow? Maybe that could have been a valid arc? (instead of a nap...lol)

ps: what is ProtoZoid seeing atm when he looks at this page? Loads of user blocked crap?

Quote from: Hemi on Jun 14, 2017, 08:41:58 AM
Didn't one of the Alien scripts have the Alien kill a crewmember while Shaw was still in the Pod or something? And she watched it grow? Maybe that could have been a valid arc? (instead of a nap...lol)

There was a segment like that in Spaihts' drafts, yeah. I actually kinda liked the idea of Shaw watching the Alien grow while going in and out of consciousness.

Quoteps: what is ProtoZoid seeing atm when he looks at this page? Loads of user blocked crap?

There's really no need for that, Hemi. Let's not prop people.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jun 14, 2017, 10:52:10 AM

Quote from: Hemi on Jun 14, 2017, 08:41:58 AM
Didn't one of the Alien scripts have the Alien kill a crewmember while Shaw was still in the Pod or something? And she watched it grow? Maybe that could have been a valid arc? (instead of a nap...lol)

There was a segment like that in Spaihts' drafts, yeah. I actually kinda liked the idea of Shaw watching the Alien grow while going in and out of consciousness.

Quoteps: what is ProtoZoid seeing atm when he looks at this page? Loads of user blocked crap?

There's really no need for that, Hemi. Let's not prop people.

Srry...I was actually curious lol. With past forums you would still see the user but not the post. :P

Anyway.. not important

Quote from: SM on Jun 14, 2017, 08:02:06 AM
The toing and froing between ship and pyramid is a legit problem I reckon. Not staples

Wasn't this one of the reasons Scott excised the pyramid from the 'ALIEN' script in the first place?  Too much running back and forth between locations without adding anything except running time.  Well, that and budget concerns. 

-Windebieste.

Iirc it was budgetary reasons, not pacing?

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jun 16, 2017, 08:56:17 AM
Iirc it was budgetary reasons, not pacing?

Both actually. He does say that the pyramid "would have been wonderful in the three-hour version" i.e. he was aiming at making a more compact film

Quote from: Omegamorph on Jun 16, 2017, 10:57:25 AM

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jun 16, 2017, 08:56:17 AM
Iirc it was budgetary reasons, not pacing?

Both actually. He does say that the pyramid "would have been wonderful in the three-hour version" i.e. he was aiming at making a more compact film

Is there any existing footage from that '3-hour' cut? I always hear tons of things about it but it's so hard to dig up any footage.

I don't think there is a 3 hour cut.

Quote from: SM on Jun 14, 2017, 05:12:26 AM

Quote

Also, they change direction.

They totally do. I think most people see that only on repeat viewings which is why I think it's often a hard point to argue with some people.