Prometheus

Alien:Covenant

Peter Germany Horror, Movie Review, Movies, Sci-Fi , , , , , , , , ,

This film has been on my mind a fair bit since its release. I had mixed feelings going into it due to Prometheus. Prometheus is a movie I think is very beautiful to look at and has some decent bits in, but overall is a bit of a mess. It feels like it’s trying to tell two stories by two different camps from the production standpoint. In one camp you’ve got the urge to make an prequel film for the Alien franchise, and the other camp want to make a film about creationism. Add in some daft elements in the script (run off to one side!) and we’ve got a film which is hard to love, also the technology is massively advanced compared to the other films. I know the Prometheus is an advanced space craft but they could have easily made the tech look like that of the previous films (Sorry, this is something that really bugs me!).

The problem of what film is being made carries on into Alien:Covenant. On one side we’ve got a story about colonists wanting to find a new world to settle on, then on the other side we have the urge to look at this creationist storyline. I’ve watched this movie maybe half a dozen times now and I really believe there is a good movie in here, if you take away that creationist element, and some of the dumb-ass choices the characters make. There’s a bit early on about a funeral that shows there is friction between the characters, but it feels ham-fisted. The funeral is forbidden due to repairs needing to be done, but the repairs could wait and the funeral is brief. It feels like it’s there just to create conflict.

If they took away the David storyline, the plot device of wondering off to another planet and just had a story about colonists arriving at a new planet to then find it was once inhabited by an alien race that died out. Then they find an egg and chaos ensues. Why couldn’t we have had that movie? Up until David shows up we’ve got the makings of a really good atmospheric horror movie and then it slips into a psycho-robot-with-delusions-of-being-a-god movie.

When I think about the original Alien movies they were pretty straightforward. Horror and action pretty much, what you saw was what you got. They never really felt like there was a grander story happening that needed to be addressed. They were just what they were. There was social commentary there, but it was subtle. You didn’t feel like you were being hit over the head with it. Maybe that’s what they need to get back to. Imagine the type of social commentary we could of had in this film if it had been about landing on a planet for colonisation only to discover these horrific aliens that had maybe already wiped out an alien species that had been on the planet before.

Where this series goes in the future, I don’t know. There’s rumours that this new generation of Ridley Scott Alien movies is a trilogy and there’s a third part coming, but this movie didn’t do especially well. So I’ve got to wonder if Fox will give it one more go, drop the franchise for the time being, or go in an entirely different route altogether.

Time will tell, but I know how I’d like it to go.

That Felt Good :)

Peter Germany Art, Books, Editing, Insperation, Movies, Sci-Fi, Writing , , , , , , ,

Tonight has been the first night that I’ve managed to add a big chunk of text to Project Apollo, and it felt GOOD 🙂 so far I have just been able to add a bit here, a bit there and tidying up the grammar etc. which is essential but I’ve also got to add in sections that me and Owen have discussed and tonight I got to a part where it was time to start adding. Now, it was only 774 words but that’s the most words I’ve written in one go for far too long.
This year I have spent so much time editing I had forgotten how much I love the act, the art of just writing and this was only a drop in the ocean.
Tomorrow I’m off to the cinema but I will do a little more afterwards then on Wednesday I may be off to see Tracie but if I’m not then it’ll be a night focused on writing.

I’m really excited by this project and have been for a while, it’s good to finally be getting stuck into it.

As I finish watching Prometheus I’m going to do a little research, and then bed 🙂

A Little Announcement

Peter Germany Movies, Sci-Fi, Short Fiction, Writing , , , , ,

The only things that I have not been able to do is read through some of Project Delphi and watch Prometheus, but those I’ll catch up on tomorrow. I’m going to try and knock Delphi out tomorrow and then call Owen to discuss his notes and the few additional changes that I’ve made.

That is obviously not my little announcement, this is. From now on Project Delphi will no longer be called Project Delphi, it will be called The Space Watch. A Tale from The Planetary Assembly by Owen M.G. Arnold and Peter Germany.

There you go, the title of the first story that me, and Owen will be putting up on Amazon for the Kindle. Watch this space for updates

Movie Monday

Peter Germany Movies, Sci-Fi, Video Games, Zombies , , , , , , , , ,

I love movies, I mean I absoluetly love movies and if you have been reading my blog for a while you’ll have noticed that I talk about movies quite often so (hopefully) each Monday I’ll be putting up  a post about the movies that I really want to see or am about to watch, or have just watched.

Resident Evil:Retribution

 

I saw this one when it came out and have been thinking about it here and there.  It’s not bad, but it’s not anywhere near as good the previous four films.  It left me feeling a little unsatisfied if I’m honest.  Nothing was tidied up from the last film, no answers were given to questions from the last film, or how Jill Valentine ended up where she was.  The best part of the film was the ending because it set up the next film.  Although it did create a lot of questions but hopefully the producers will answer them in the next film.

 

Prometheus

 

I saw this one when it came out and found that I was annoyed at how it’s meant to be an Alien prequel, but they had better technology.  If there was no Alien element to it then it would not have made any difference to the movie.  It’s the simple thing of technology though.  In this film the technology the crew have is far superior to that of the original film, but I’ll see how it plays out when I watch it sometime this week.

 

And has anyone seen the images of the new Robocop? is it my imagination that it looks like a cheap knock off of Iron Man? I’m thinking that it might have been an idea for the producers to have kept it under wraps for a while because a still picture never shows how it will look in a movie.

 

Top three movies of the year so far:

  1. The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)
  2. The Hunger Games
  3. The Dark Knight Rises

Prometheus (Spoilers)

Peter Germany Horror, Movie Review, Movies, Sci-Fi , , , , , , , , , , ,

******SPOILERS******

 

I’ll admit that I havent read any reviews or spoken to anyone about this film yet so hopefully my views on it is not influenced by anyone else.  I liked this film, but it’s not the film that I was expecting it to be.  If Ridley Scott (The Director),  Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof (The Writers) had taken away the Alien element that we are familiar with it I think it might have been a better film.

The cast of characters was pretty good.  I’m a fan of Charlize Theron but it seems rare that we see her in films and I like the way she played the bad corporate Scrooge here.  Michael Fassbender is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors.  I have only seen a couple of his films but he seems like an actor that has a wide scope of what he can do.  As the android David in this he does very well playing it straight and like the other androids in this franchise we’re never quite sure where his intentions lay until ter on in the film.  The rest of the cast is pretty good.  It’s great to see Guy Pearce is always good and Noomi Rapace did well dealing with the enormity of her role.  Idris Elba is beginning to pop up more and more which is not bad either.

The plot is quite simple really; a team of experts go off to a distant star system to find the beings that created mankind.  Obviously it does not work out like that and lots of chaos and death follows.  As I said at the start I am confident that if Ridley Scott and the two writers had removed the alien element then it would have still worked as well.  For me it took away from the original  Alien films because for one it reveals the origins of the monster of all these movies, but also there is better technology in this film then the originals.  Now I know that’s because our technology has improved but as I was watching Prometheus I could not get away from that single fact and that is the lasting impression of the film for me.  There is no reason why the film could have been made with a similar look and feel to the original films as far as technology is concerned.  Making it look retro would have tied it into the universe so much better as well.

I will be buying it when it comes out on DVD and I do like this film a lot but I am not sure that I will ever get past the crew of the Prometheus having better technology than those who follow in later films.

Today’s Update 10/7/12

Peter Germany Books, Movies, Sci-Fi, Short Fiction, Writing , , , , , , , , ,

Due to getting in late after shopping with my brother I only managed to write a third of what I did yesterday but that I did in about fifteen minutes so that’s not to bad I guess.  I was going to start  a paper copy proof read of a story me and Owen are working during my lunch breaks at work but I do not have a completed hard copy of that story so I’ve decided to do a hard copy edit of what will be my NaNoWriMo project this year.  I think it’ll be bending the rules slightly to work on something that has had a few drafts written but I’m using what I have already written as a plan for the project and I’m not thinking of it as another draft because there is a lot of changes that will be taking place.  This will be my second year doing NaNo and I want to be much better prepared this time around so I’m going to be getting into prepping for it properly early September, and then go though all my notes in late October.  Aside from that there’s not much more to say.  I’m slowly getting into Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and I’ll have my opinion of Prometheus put up soon but that’s it for now 🙂