Prometheus

[Cranky Old Man]

There usually not enough budget for extra people who won't bother to help out for free, AKA a scientist. They have things to spend better time on. That's most of the logic right there. With a movie like Prometheus, all the budget went into costume, prop, makeup and special effects on top of all the sound designers, modelers, texturers, etc. A lead animator in that industry will get paid roughly 800-1k for a second of FINISIHED animation, a lot of the other people will be paid roughly anywhere between 30k (new hire, not as much experience) to 60k for a salary. Then you have to pay for all the facilities, programs, food, etc. Actors usually get paid way more than they should.

So if you have 130 million, you'll most likely blow through most of it in the first couple months of producing a film. Since most movies are a year process of filming, in about 6 months, you'll be down at least 90 million. That's just to pay all the people you already have. Then add in all the people you haven't paid yet, who haven't worked yet. Films are expensive. They are hard work. Hiring randoms is a waste of money in the directors and producers eyes. You truly have to factor in every bit of the production before you can say "oh they should've just hired some scientists who would have needed to be paid at least a hundred thousand because you're wasting their time and they might talk about the movie and leak information if not bribed properly" (everyone who works for the film has to sign a contract, a scientist offering ideas is not someone who is working on the film, they are a paid extra, in film terms).

So basically what you're saying is that they blew their budget. That's a rookie accountant mistake, and usually you can always loan money from the movie company if you really need it. Also, while scientists are expensive, nerds aren't. If you replaced Lindelof with a nerd, I bet you'd have a better and cheaper movie.
Also, the movie makers need to get their priorities straight: Foremost, a movie (Well, most movies.) is supposed to make sense. That's all it really needs to do. Everything else is secondary. There are people who have built careers on doing nothing but complain about movie plots that doesn't make sense. You don't see anybody building careers over complaining about lighting, sound quality or the wardrobe, because that's not as important as the plot. (CGI has a niche too, and the quality of the acting, so those come second to the story making sense.) A plot doesn't cost money. There's a surplus of plots and writers in the world, and most of them can write better stuff than this plot.

I didn't say they BLEW it as if they just spent it on random shit. They spent it on their workers, actors, places they had to have the entire crew stay at, etc. CGI costs a lot of money.

I complain about lighting, wardrobe, sound quality (and so do a lot of other people, sound design has been reaching new heights as of late, so that's why you are saying what you're saying). Have you ever seen a movie with that crappy shit in it? If not, I suggest you go do that.

A plot does cost money. The script writer is the one to blame if anything. They scripter wrote it, it was accepted, the writer worked with the director and his sub-advisers. I can guarantee you that the surplus of writers is not always very good. A lot of them have stories that won't work for a particular style, some won't allow their material to be changed in anyway, some get fucked over and they don't get paid, etc.

Also, I doubt you'd have a cheaper movie. The amount of people you'd have to hire would still suck the budget dry. Here would be a typical budget list for a typical movie:

Director, assistant director, producer, assistant producer, boom operators, assistant boom operators, sound designers, boom assistants, makeup artists, assistant makeup artists, special effects artists, cgi artists, lead cgi artists, assistant cgi artists, lead animator, assistant animators, animators, camera men, trackers, set designers, assistant set designers, lead graphic designers, graphic designers, (your list of actors, lead actors, extras, etc), conceptual artists, background artists, character designers, script writer, assistant script writers, (the list will go on with about 30 other jobs with lead and assistants, specific to the actual making of the movie), poster designer, trailer producer, the actual trailers, the marketing (dvds, trailers, toys, posters, commercials, etc), the accountants, assistant accountants, catering (actors love their food), housing (if it's filmed elsewhere), then you have all the contractors, the multiple companies that helped produce the movie (paramount, lionsgate, etc), then you have all the benefits you have to add, then all the money that goes into the studio recording time for the audio syncing, then you have all the electricity bills, plumbing, etc.

If that's not bad enough, you have to do that for the next YEAR. You seem to fail to understand HOW much has to go into a movie. Yes, a story needs to be well thought out, but that's the thing, it was with the intention of it being a prequel to the stories we know. That means, a lot of the movie's questions are answered in the following films. Maybe it didn't do quite a good job, but the movie in and of itself was NOT BAD.

Again, you try making a film, then multiply it by 100%, you'll understand how hard it is.


The average movie budget is 139 Million dollars. Why aren't you complaining about Avatar? The movie cost 400 million and was just Pocahontas with 10 foot tall, blue people. Talk about lazy story telling... He just ripped it off of Disney.

What you're saying is basically that a plot costs money, so you can't afford a good plot, because there's so much else that's necessary to spend money on. That's bullshit. The plot is the number one priority, and you make sure that you can afford it, on the expense of everything else. Amidst this huge list of jobs, 1-2 consultants doesn't cost that much. Even leaning back in your chair and thinking critically for five minutes, doesn't cost that much.
You say that CGI costs a lot of money, but what CGI also often does, is look like shit, so what you do is that you hire a puppeteer instead, and work with puppets and robots. Problem solved.
However, you should be able to work with *any* budget. If it's just you and five friends in the middle of the woods, you should be able to work without hired stagehands, wardrobe, make up, et.c.. You work within the budget that you are given, making sure that consultants gets their appropriate percent of it, just like everybody else get their appropriate percent of the budget. If you really find that you cannot afford to meet your own standards when it comes to sound and lighting, et.c., then that's not your fault. If the company can only afford to make a sub-par movie, then they'll get a sub-par movie, but at least the plot won't suck.

While you say that sound design has "reached new heights", plots have reached an all-time low. If your friends are discussing the actual sound quality of a movie they've seen, then you hang with some odd friends. Most people will leave a theatre discussing the plot, and pick at plot holes.

Yes, of course some writers won't allow their material to be changed in any way. The writing of a script is something that you work out beforehand, before you even announce that you're making a movie, because if you change the script on the fly later on, you'll run into continuity issues and plot holes that you can't foresee within five minutes on a busy set. This is why the script is law when it comes to filming. It is the foundation of the movie.

Yes, I'd make a cheaper movie. For one, I don't live in a barn, so I know at least basic science, and basic logic. I can also scale the production, I can replace the CGI with puppets, and I can replace the star actors with unknown actors. You don't need talent to know how to make a good movie with that kind of money. These writers had a *lack* of talent, that you cannot blame on the budget.


"Yes, a story needs to be well thought out, but that's the thing,
it was with the intention of it being a prequel to the stories we know.
That means, a lot of the movie's questions are answered in the following
films."

I'm not talking about unanswered questions here. I'm talking about people that just showed off how they were not going to get lost because they had this scifi GPS map, got lost, because they were too retarded to check their wrist map. I'm talking about people "studying" an alien head by running strong current through it. I'm talking about perfect DNA matchings, an autodoc mistaking a womb for a stomach, a stapled patient sprinting without tearing her womb open, stationary star maps, and people generally not following procedure at all. These aren't "unanswered questions". These are fuckups.


"Maybe it didn't do quite a good job, but the movie in and of
itself was NOT BAD."

You know, Prometheus could have been even worse. Hollywood is by now a gaping pit of despair, so I expected to see a complete lack of innovation too, or a plot without any development.


"Again, you try making a film, then multiply it by 100%, you'll understand how hard it is."

Do you mean that I should multiply it by 1, or multiply it by itself?
I don't care how hard it is to make a movie: The plot comes first. You're not even making a movie when you write a script, so that's hardships that you deal with later on.
Also, the last thing that viewers want to see, is a series being butchered, so if I don't think that I have what it takes to make a sequel with a good plot in it, it's economically sound to refuse, and not be a part of it, because a bad sequel will hurt the rest of any movies in the series after that.


"Why aren't you complaining
about Avatar?"

Why should I? The writer of that movie had nothing to build off, so 10 foot tall blue people doesn't contradict anything. It was a space adventure for teens, not technical scifi for adults like Alien is. People who has watched and enjoyed Alien and Aliens, are really clever, old people, probably lab technicians and various over-intelligent members of the working class. People who watched and enjoyed Avatar, are young boys who wants to move on from Disney. Do you see the difference in at what level the bar is set?