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So, I've been thinking about the recent movie Prometheus, and I realized that it's our generation's Plan 9 From Outer Space. Allow me to explain.

Plan 9 is one of the most famous bad movies ever made. Yes, it has cheesy special effects, but only moderately more cheesy then any of a hundred other B movies of the era. No, what makes Plan 9 so memorably bad is that, for nearly every scene, anybody with an IQ above room temperature can come up with ways to make that scene better. I don't know that you could have made Plan 9 a great movie, but it would have been okay.

Thus unto Prometheus. For example, consider the series of scenes where the biologist and the map-tech spend the night in the alien structure. Rather than have them freak out and get lost, we could have had them decide to stay. Maybe the map-tech needs to fix the remote rover they would have sent in, and the biologist decides to stay and run some tests on the dead aliens. In that scenario, they pitch a tent (because they leave their helmets on) and the snake-thingee gets into the tent. Same basic plot, we still end up with two dead dudes, but it makes sense! Again, not sure that Prometheus would be a great movie, but it would have been a lot better.
chris_gerrib: (Default)
Pirates of Mars
I read, devoured and loved John Scalzi's New York Times best-selling novel Redshirts. Alas, some people didn't enjoy his book. In fact, Scalzi posted some of the worst reviews on his website.

Well, I know John Scalzi. John Scalzi is a friend of mine. I'm no John Scalzi (at least in terms of book sales) but I too get one-star book reviews.

Prometheus
Over the weekend, I went to see the new SF epic Prometheus. The pictures were pretty, but I had literally no idea why any character did what they did. They were all To Stupid To Live. Pretty much everybody else who saw it seems to agree. Here are a few "highlights" of the reviews.

The most funny review: Prometheus Captain's Log.

A review from a PhD biologist: The Man Behind The Mask and from his (not-so) blushing bride: Sound and Fury.

I guess you can't win them all.

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