Thread: Prometheus
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addabox
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
 
2012-03-20, 23:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
I totally agree. The genius behind Alien was that it portrayed working on a spaceship as a real job. Like, a job job. But they're on a spaceship! It must be awesome! No, they're just towing shit in space and the crew members argue about payment and bitch about having to stop to check out some stupid beacon - and they wouldn't get paid if they didn't because of a clause in their contract. That's the most overlooked part of the film, imo, and this was made in '79! Truly forward looking.


Reminds me of a scene from Firefly (nearly 30 years later) where Wash says something like "sounds like science fiction" and Zoe says "you live on a spaceship, dear." His reply: "So?"
It's funny you should mention the Firefly thing, because when I remarked in my previous post about the chest burster scene, I thought about a scene in Firefly (don't remember which episode) where they're all just having a meal and shooting the shit and the camera's moving easily around them and it's just such a great sequence of establishing the familial relationships of the crew. That the "firefly"-- the light in the darkness-- is them, the people in the ship and how they care for one another (which is of course one of Whedon's presiding themes).

Used to drastically different ends, of course, but it's so rare that a sci-fi piece takes the trouble of establishing the humanity of its characters by showing them acting in recognizably human ways.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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