Prometheus

[Cranky Old Man]

You sure are cranky.

I like how you said people who watched Aliens are really clever, old people and probably lab technicians. I would have to disagree with you. A mixed group of people watch the series. I'm not a lab technician, I'm not "old", old enough perhaps. I definitely don't agree that everyone who has watched it is over-intelligent, but rather, maybe a majority of them (at least half) were. Anyone who likes a good Science Fiction story would have watched it.
Quite honestly, it sounds like you're trying to be egotistical and flatter yourself.

Multiply the difficultly by itself.

My friends I talk about are animators and videographers. Don't call them weird, though they may have their quirks. Right now, you're looking like an asshole for saying that and talking badly about me. We have to discuss how sound was developed, otherwise the placement of objects and characters in an environment won't seem natural. For example, you don't give a dog a lions roar. You'd complain about that, like you're complaining about everything else. We talk about all aspects of a movie. Not just the "I'm a movie goer, I'm going to look cool and complain about plot holes and act like I'm intellectual" act. If you want to be completely rounded in critiquing a film, talk about other aspects and not just the same things. Otherwise, you don't look like you know what you're talking about.

Considering that you seem to not understand how a movie is constructed in the first place, leads me to believe you're just trying to get under my skin. I wasn't saying the movie was amazing, I said it was good and I didn't understand how people HATED it. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing. That's all I'm saying. I said they put some good money into something so people could try to enjoy it. Go watch Trolls 2 and then tell me that in comparison, Prometheus is horrible.

FYI, the comment about Avatar being for Disney converts, that might be so, but that movie racked up enough money to be placed at, what, 2nd or 3rd highest grossing film in history? Honestly, get your shit together, old man. You're trying to tell me I'm an idiot for liking a movie that was visually appealing and brought more money to HR Giger? I will admit, it wasn't as good as it could have been and it was definitely a bad prequel (prequels are never good, have you ever seen a movie with a good one or a game for that matter?).

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I love you, Cranky, but man, we need to get off this topic, as I'm getting a bit annoyed to some extent with you assuming that I'm not very good at understanding Sci Fi, films, and with you not being able to see two sides to every story. Let's please just meet at a middle ground somewhere.

You can determine the target demographic for Alien by looking at what it's about. Alien and Aliens is about a working class woman getting screwed over by her own company. Yes, there's all kinds of sci-fi and aliens too, but the backbone of it is one workers fight against the company, because she's too intelligent and moral to go along with what they do. If you add good dialogue to that, and you add good sci-fi to that, then it will attract people who take that seriously too. Once you have defined a demographic, you'd do well to stick with it through the entire series too. You don't portray the working class as irresponsible, especially not when your target demographic is picked to be hard to please. Naturally, your core target demographic will age, so people who enjoyed Alien back in 1979, and Aliens back in 1986, will have aged at least 26 years, turning up around 40-50 years old by now. 40-50 year olds who are intelligent, and who has worked up close with technical stuff, and who don't like to be screwed over.

I'm saying that you have odd friends, so that you know that other people will value the plot more than they do. This movie looked really, really good visually, but apparently most people still didn't like it, because they care more about the plot than you and your friends. I'm not saying that your friends shouldn't focus on their jobs - just that they focus on the movie in a different way. If this movie had a good plot, and bad effects, then it would have been less of a disaster. Then people would have blamed the company for not giving the creators enough money, but cheered the series on (instead of mistrusting its future because "the captain is drunk off his ass").

There's another reason why Prometheus stings too: With the US economy crumbling, religion is wrapping its tentacles around the country, and christianity has viciously been trying to wrestle control from science itself, by portraying science as primitive belief. While Prometheus mocks christianity too at its core, it does a fine job in discrediting science.

Avatar was such a success because it was the favourite child of James Cameron - one of the greatest producers who ever lives (if not *the* greatest) who spent over *ten years* writing it. It HAD to be good. It WAS good too, because we didn't expect realism out of it. Yes, it was Pocahontas, but it was Pocahontas in 3D with weird shit going on. It was Pocahontas turned up to 11.
Still, what does Avatar have to do with anything? Why don't YOU talk about airplanes (in a different thread)?

Movies aren't about racking in money "to H.R. Giger". Not to the viewers. The viewers know that you can both please the movie company AND them. In that way, the viewers will let you rack in even MORE money in the future.