Most of them were also quite redundant, had no real significance and really only existed as plot mechanisms - which is what they felt like - and of course in turn a movie driven solely by plot mechanisms will have great difficulty creating any real sense of depth or theme and just generally making you care whether the protagonists live or die. It's gonna feel just like what it is - contrived, shallow and soulless. Just another piece of flaky movie-math trying to arrive at some preordained result with a bunch of set-pieces thrown in along the way for a bit of an aesthetic diversion.
+whynottalklikeapirat Yeah, sadly that seems to describe like, every Ridley Scott movie in the past, I dunno, fifteen years. Can you remember the last movie he made where he didn't do any of the above things you described? I can't. Maybe Gladiator. And that was what, 2000? Sad. He made a few good movies in the '80s but those days are long behind him.
Justin Head He is strangely inconsistent that way. I think that he is very much about the visual and the aestethic and then it sort of depends on the quality of the script and the actors how the rest turns out. Sometimes he just becomes too smooth and it's to much with the grain and too little depth.
+thersten its not like today when they pick a select few test pilots to be astronauts. the whole of civilisation travels space in the alien films universe. If you are going to be that picky then why not pick something more substantial like travelling x lightyears in a short time... you would have to disregard the whole film.. and Quentin with his magic tricks...... you would have to disregard all of his films too.
Popopki No joke brother, I've been doing nothing I shouldn't, no more than a malenky bit of a compliment. I hope you're all right in the Gulliver to viddy otherwise.
Interesting that Tarantino focuses on the same thing as the fans. The stupid characters. I'm surprised that these days, with test screenings and such, stupid scenes like the space cobra petting makes it into the final products
He's just saying that there were some dumb things in it. Not focusing on its flaws as he points out its epic. But in a movie that's half epic-good and half cliche-shit., its kind of due to see what drove them to making the mediocre decisions, artistically speaking. Espeically since Ridley Scott is an auteur (?) and are his days numbered? Has he entered George Lucasland of money incentives and special effects becoming primary, (to employ the field he developed) If it didnt have the budget it had it would of been better.
Well, since his characters are always amazing, is obvious that he put his eyes on that kind of beehavior. He can make an actor like the guy who play Hugo Stiglitz and make it HUGO STIGLITZ and you love it, even thou the guy is actually a bad actor in other movies.
BenRangel That's because Quentin is a fan of cinema in general. You don't get into movies if you hate them (Unless you're a producer) He is the only famous person I have seen that will talk about someone's work and say "You know, I thought that was fucking stupid." Great man.
@@kanegarvey3188 Many even Ridley are opinionated, don't know why you think it's so unique. And Tarantino loves a lot of B movies with a lot of dumb character decisions which should set an example for these haters.
Too many cooks in the writer's room can cause this problem. Too many conflicting ideas of what the movie should be leads to people not bothering to say anything at all. Whenever this happens, there are dozens of people in the production wondering "what the f are we doing". Basically the bureaucracy is too difficult to navigate on set for corrective ideas to get through
@@ChronoX720 I mean that’s obviously true. I just figure people wanna put in more work and effort. It’s like a journalist pushing out a story with only the first without getting the names spelled correctly
The cgi alien's design looked weird, but the CGI work on the alien looked light years better than the prosthetic's used back from the old alien movies. And its movement and animation also looked alot better.
0:34 "You can't really have a science fiction movie without dumb stuff" - Comments like this are why sci-fi's rarely taken seriously and why production companies pump out the same tired tropes and cliches time and time again. No wonder this host 'liked' Prometheus. Would love to see a Tarantino sci-fi one day.
Bloody useless but sci-fi movies usually have bad decision making like the alien franchise itself started with bad decisions. Only sci-fi franchise I can think off without dumb decisions is the blade runner franchise.
If Tarantino did a sci-fi it would be shit just like everything else he's made since the 90's but if this was the 90's I'd say he do a fantastic job sadly that isn't so
I guess if Hollywood can lower the bar gradually enough, the popcorn-snuffling normy masses will change their preferences from bad to worse in order to keep with what's popular and convenient, resulting in lazily made movies and people with poor taste.
@@jerrygodeep4787 Well you can get away with the odd bad decision in a movie, if it's a good movie: Alien, Aliens. More difficult if the entire movie is full of bad decisions, audiences tend to notice things like that.
Not to mention the space explorers hired as the best team ever assembled that right after finding proof of alien life run off saying "you guys can stay if you want, bu t I'm going home!"
"The venom of a space cobra can kill a human in four hours if, say, bitten on the ankle or the thumb. However, a bite to the face or torso can bring death from paralysis within 20 minutes." Now, you should listen to this, 'cause this concerns you. "The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan." You know, I've always liked that word... 'gargantuan'... so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence. "If not treated quickly with antivenom, 10 to 15 milligrams can be fatal to human beings. However, the space cobra can deliver as much as 100 to 400 milligrams of venom from a single bite"
The stupid guy thought that he was Steve Irwin. “Crikey! Look at the size of that Space Cobra! Ooo, he’s a mean one! Look at his fangs! WOO, he almost bit me there! Let’s see if I can get a little closer…”
Imagine all that money spent to build a space craft capable of traveling to another star system, and then crewing that space craft with possibly the stupidest people ever to have space piloting licenses. Tarantino is right, there are parts of that film, like the beginning, or any of the scenes with the Engineers, which are staggering in their beauty. And then there's the other 85% of the film.
The "space cobra" was a worm which underwent transformation via engineer weapon. As far as the scientist's fearlessness, maybe his instincts were inclined to believe it was benign. Prometheus was GENIUSES.
whats worse is that they just found out that everyone on that planet were either killed or they evacuated the planet due to something dangerous.....then they find some creature and poke it in the face, cmon man put 2 and 2 together
No he doesn't that is the opposite of what Tarantino was talking about. JJ was just goofy fun relief but the Prometheus actors are taking themselves seriously while being mentally regarded to a ridiculous degree.
I agree with Quentin once again. Maybe the fact that it's also a horror movie means you got to have stupid naive people dying in it was the result of the logic behind the writer of this scene, adds to the shock of the cobra suddenly attacking as if we wouldn't expect that, but horror movies work that way.
The original Alien movie had characters with so much common sense. Their only flaws consisted of underestimating the Alien's life cycle and intelligence, which they could never have fathomed, and the insane greed of their corporate overlords.
I think the issue was they couldn't get the best and brightest scientists to go on this big, long, risky expedition. They were more of the grunts and rejects.
The amount of really good important scenes on the cutting room floor are rediculous and maddening. I wish they could have made this movie the way it was intended to be, a 4 hour epic.
It's a space cobra! "Ya, you don't go near them. They're renowned for their danger" I like that little bit of sarcastic irony that went completely under the radar.
The biologist is showing off to the hello gist (who IS naturally terrified of the "space cobra") the biologist States that he wants to be the geologist's friend so it's conceivable that he would take unnecessary risks to impress him.
The level of idiocy of the characters is completely unforgivable. As an audience member you really feel violated by the writer, as if even the dumbest human on earth would ever approach an unknown alien life form bare handed with no trace of a protocol
Tarantino is not aware of a scene which was cut from the film. In this deleted scene, these two guys discovered the first lifeform on the planet. The lifeform was friendly and safe. And these two guys were praised by the crew for discovering the first ever alien life. History making stuff. This first discovery sets up their eagerness to make a second discovery.
Cut scenes are not exist in context of the film. And could not be qualified as explanation or anything… Tarantino had a good point - scientists in this movie are unbelievably dumb.
Exactly, happens all the time, I was only reading the other day, that an expert in large predatory cats, was eaten while trying to pet a Jaguar. Apparently, he was really interested and curious.
good point. QT directions to actors before every take" act like its the end of the world and only you know it is and be over dramatic and hyper intense" kidding aside QT pushed film making when he broke into Hollywood. That's a fkn accomplishment!
+Babelfish112 I can't believe Neil Blomkamp's reboot/sequel has been shelved for the Prometheus sequel. It is far FAR too late for me to care about any of the so-called 'mysteries' of Prometheus for me to go see the sequel in theatres.
Trantino is holding back as much as he can. Anyone that loves cinema and the original Ridley Scott's Alien can't but think Prometheus is a pile of shit
Hysterical spacemen that take off their helmets immediately and f around with alien creatures. It's like Ridley has forgotten what made his characters engaging; their relatability.
+Johnny Skinwalker Ridley Scott does not always make movies that are grounded in reality but that does not excuse inconsistent characters. The crew in 'Prometheus' were supposed to be top of their field scientists. Not dumb teens in a slasher film. The crew of the Nostradamus were smarter then the crew of Prometheus and the Nostadamus crew were space truckers.
It's a pretty cool movie. Even with the somewhat schlocky elements. As Craig Ferguson said here, it's almost a time-honored tradition of sci-fi flicks to have a little bit of cheesiness.
Yea I liked the movie..but it had alot of stupid charactor moments...the space cobra was one of them...running in a straight line when something is rolling behind you slowly, is another...and many others.
Markie Green oh yeah.. I was rewatching the movie after 3 year with my grandma and as soon as the 2 cobra morons walked in I went from falling in love with a movie all over again too my heart sinking in my chest... XD
They really should have kept the deleted scene where Millburn (the biologist) blows a load seeing just a normal worm. it would show more of his character and give a better understanding of why he was so eager to see the space cobra.
I guess some people forget to fully suspend their disbelief when going to the movies lol The “space cobra” moment could represent the scientists that get enamored with their research to the point where idolize their subjects and forget safety protocols. The movie is about human imperfections and perfect humanoids. Is perfection really what we should stride for etc.
The theming of the movie should not override a character's intellect. If you really wanted the Space Cobra to still attack the scientist, have it completely attack them unprovoked, whether its in the open or sneaking up on them.
@@saltystick_99 Did you start watching movies recently? Sometimes certain things have to be reduced to a 10 second bit to push the narrative forward. Plus, look at today's scientists: there's a bunch of bad apples who only do science for fame or money. Scientists aren't perfect. Science is. You're confusing the two. Tarantino's obviously joking but you took it seriously, prolly because he's Tarantino lol
I read somewhere that the atmosphere of that planet had something in it similar to a drug that made astronauts make silly sense and take risks, and that's why they change their mind about breathing and getting closer to the cobra... Anyway, if true, that's not in the movie, that sounds like an afterwards justification
You can totally have a horror movie without dumb stuff. Put the character into a lose-lose situation by chance. Easy. Ironically, that's what Alien mostly did. The crew made some tiny mistakes in Alien but nothing like modern movies, and it's believable for the crew in Alien to make sense because they are sold to us as "space truckers." The movie kinda shows us that this is a future where space trucking is basically a common thing, and the people on the ship are just workers, not hardcore super well-trained elite forces. Even then in the movie the crew still makes REASONABLE choices, maybe not the BEST choices, but reasonable for the situation they are in. That being said it's super easy to put characters into lose-lose situations and IMO that's mostly what horror is, that's why horror is SCARY, you are in a situation that is DIRE there are no easy answers, there will be pain and we have to go through what the character has to go through. Think of it like this, the existential dread of a relative dying. It's something we all have to face and there is NOTHING we can really do about it. It's a no-win situation; we can only enjoy the time we have with our loved ones and wait.
