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Originally Posted by Severian
Or the Hobbit. Personally, I think Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were overrated. The first was the best and the rest were simply enjoyable. But wasting THREE MOVIES on the shortest and simplest Tolkien book just to expand on a brand that had already been critically and commercially massive ended up making the entire franchise feel gratuitous. Should have started with the Hobbit and just made a solid movie out of it, or left it alone, or at the absolute most made it a one film affair... little bonus for sad fanboys.
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I couldn't agree more, at least in terms of the unnecessary bloating of The Hobbit. I enjoyed all three Rings films even if individually they were a little too long. The Hobbit, though, was one solid 2 hour film but Jackson killed it by stretching it beyond credibility.
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Originally Posted by Severian
But still.. I think Prometheus was great in part because it didn't rely too heavily on the familiar. Sure, that's what everyone wanted and expected... lots of alien shaped aliens. And that movie would have probably been really cool if Scott had decided to make it. But instead he made something with a different flavor. A more expansive and epic kind of movie that you don't need to be a fan of Alien to like. In fact, being an Alien fan might make it a good deal harder to like. But for me, it was cool as hell.
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Fair enough on liking it, and I agree that it probably works better as a stnd alone film (and but for the design of the alien ship and the very final scene it pretty much is). But even as a stand-alone I actually thought it had a similar problem to Hobbit: it was like a short story stretched until it broke. A huge amount of storyline padding. And for a film with such a limited, generally enclosed setting, and relatively small cast, it was still too jumbled. The idea behind Prometheus is complex on a philosophical level but Ridley's direction only makes it even more difficult to understand it. The fact I didn't like the actual idea behind it all is just my thing, others may like it for valid reasons. But beyond that I do just think the films simply a mess. A good idea (maybe), but very poorly told. Look at how those old (pre-reboot) Dr Who could tell a very sophisticated story in 90 minutes (3 episodes) which let you think about the idea without wasting energy trying to remember who's doing what, where and why. I honestly feel a lot of the more idea-centric sf movies being made at the moment could learn a lot from those older Dr Who stories.