Also, my favorite part of Prometheus…the return of “space basketball”.  David(Fassbender) will fucking crush you in a game of H.O.R.S.E.

“We made you because we could.” 

Bullshit. We made androids to perform specific functions, like going on hazardous missions in place of human beings (as David should be doing in this movie). So I don’t see this is a good line … just another glib, vacuous line in a glib, vacuous movie.  

That, I think, would be a pretty hefty and satisfying body of work, encompassing the most popular cinematic incarnations of the character while also bypassing the risk of burning yourself out by gorging on the animated series, the DTV movies, the ’60′s show, the classic serials, etc.

My personal biggest problems with PROMETHEUS are the Engineers/Space Jockeys themselves. In ALIEN, Dallas remarked how the remains of the space jockey appeared fossilized, a process that normally takes thousands to millions of years. The best way they could arguably have gone about making a prequel to ALIEN would be to ditch the human/android characters altogether and focus squarely on the Engineers themselves, setting the story eons in the past (think Mel Gibson’s APOCALYPTO with aliens). As it is, we’re left with a clunky mess made clunkier by Damon Lindelof’s nebulous loosey-goosey storytelling. 

This bugged me at first too, but then I figured that an expensive expedition put together by one of the richest guys on the planet might have shinier tech than a run-down refinery in space. It doesn’t totally add up, but I’m willing to give that a pass.

Unlike the rest of the film. 

For instance, Batman / Batman Returns / Batman Forever / Batman and Robin are clearly meant to exist in one universe. So that’s one franchise – call it the “Burton/Schumacher-verse” – whereas Batman Begins / The Dark Knight / The Dark Knight Rises are a different franchise. Still Batman, but obviously has nothing to do with Burton/Schumacher.

You could also do the animated movies as a third franchise, I guess, but after 7 movies I’m guessing you’d be pretty burnt on Batman for a while. 

Anyway: great article on Prometheus. I enjoy this column quite a bit. 

That said, one thing that I feel people take for granted regarding Prometheus is how it isn’t a direct prequel to Alien – but rather it is an exploration of another quadrant of the universe/movie-verse. I can understand the outrage of fans to an extent, but when I think about how much more interesting it is to delve into another facet of the lore… I dunno, I feel it makes me appreciate the film even more. Prometheus doesn’t concern itself with focusing its time on exploring the Xenomorph, and apart from fan expectations to the contrary it shouldn’t have any reason to. It’s opening up dark corners of the bigger picture we didn’t know about, and I think that is worth more than we give it credit.

We all love the Alien franchise, but we’ve spent a lot of time – perhaps (as this retrospective seems to indicate) too much time – with the Xenomorph tangent. I’m in no way trying to be insulting, but I wish fans could step back and see how refreshing an opportunity we’ve been given with this film. Ridley Scott isn’t so much saying “fuck you” to the films that came afterwards, so much as he is taking our blinders off of the monster we’ve had plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with. He’s presenting not simply a universe with a scary monster, but a universe that is itself scary, unreasonable, and hostile. From a narrative sense, that’s much more satisfying/interesting/worth exploring.

Also, I’m still not 100% sure how I want to do Batman, as far as where to draw the line. Do I included the 60′s Batman movie? MASK OF THE PHANTASM? Etc.