[I.S.T.]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

Because Jackson and his writers are padding the story, writing out the scenes where the White Council confronts Sauron and drives him out of Dol Guldur, his fastness in southern Mirkwood. Which I don't trust at all.

I am faster on the draw than you, old man... Your time is over.

[John Reynolds]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

I am faster on the draw than you, old man... Your time is over.

LOL I'm at work and my mom called me back, I'd left her vmail saying happy 75th birthday. That's my excuse.

[Mariner]

Well, considering that Jackson chopped various bits out of LoTR (I'm looking at you Bombadil and the Barrow downs) and added other parts in (a car-chase involving Wargs) to no great end, I'm not overly convinced we'll see much good come of this.

A pity, in some respects, that the LoTR movies had to be made instead of a Game of Thrones-type miniseries. Some of the TV shows produced these days are much superior in their conception and plotting to the movies.

[John Reynolds]

Originally Posted by Mariner

I'm not overly convinced we'll see much good come of this.

Pretty much my attitude. I'm not a big Jackson fan as is, but we'll see. I'd like to know where he plans on ending the first film, though my hunch is it'll revolve around Gollum.

[I.S.T.]

I love most of his works I've seen. Though admittedly the list of what I've seen of his is limited to The Frighteners, Dead Alive, LOTR and King Kong. King Kong sucked.

[Pressure]

I have to admit that the new trailers for Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises has me buzzing with excitement.

Damn, they look so good.

Can't wait to see Bane in action and all the new creations in Prometheus.

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

I love most of his works I've seen. Though admittedly the list of what I've seen of his is limited to The Frighteners, Dead Alive, LOTR and King Kong. King Kong sucked.

Funnily enough I agree exactly. As such I am pretty excited to see the Hobbit. I don't care about liberties, I care about whether the movie is entertaining and has good acting etc... they can change the story a lot as long as the resulting story is good.

[zed]

jackson is too much of a perfectionist, he hasnt done a bad work though (Ive seen all his films).
Youre both right youve gotta take poetic license, cause what works on a page may not work on screen (dialogue where the person is thinking to themselves for example)

[John Reynolds]

Avengers 9/10 - Great popcorn movie, and great start to the summer movie season. Very Whedon-esque, the pacing is a bit off the first half, but the second half is pure action.

[Dave Baumann]

Hopefully they will do the Black Widow backstory.

[Laa-Yosh]

They have two viewers already!

[RobertR1]

Avengers 10/10. I can't ask for more from a Superhero movie.

[Mariner]

I've just returned from watching the Avengers and enjoyed it. As with pretty much all comic-book based stories, there are inherent limitations but it was very well done.

I'd give it an 8 out of 10. Hopefully the various sequels which will no doubt be released in future years will be as entertaining!

[fellix]

Prometheus confirmed for R rating

[rpg.314]

It's a pretty good movie for a the superhero genre.

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by RobertR1

Avengers 10/10. I can't ask for more from a Superhero movie.

This. Non stop action, some great one liners, it's everything a comic book should be on the big screen.

[WhiningKhan]

MIB3 was quite enjoyable, a definite improvement from the second movie. No real surprises on any front, a dependably fun summer movie.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Just seen Haywire and liked it a lot. It's a more considered spy/action movie as you'd expect from Soderbergh, with a forwards/backwards narration much like Soderbergh's Ocean's movies.

Gina Carano is great, really believable when she throws a punch, a surprisingly good actress with real screen presence. She's totally solid and believable in a fight, and looks terrific in a little black dress. More surprising is that she's so attractive on screen, considering her day job involves a lot of being hit in the face.

Carano's Mallory Kane makes Angelina Jolie's Salt look totally anaemic and confused in comparison. Ewan MacGregor's american accent is, as always, pretty poor, and you'll see several famous faces putting in short appearances as supporting characters.

[Laa-Yosh]

My favorite from Soderbergh is still Out of Sight, particularly funny because Jennifer Lopez was almost nobody at that time but a nice movie overall.

[Laa-Yosh]

So I've seen Prometheus yesterday

[NRP]

Yeah, I wasn't super impressed with Prometheus either. Looking forward to hearing what others think.

The Hunger Games is still my favorite 2012 movie so far.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

King Kong sucked.

I loved King Kong, apart from three scenes that were way too long. One, the dino chase sequence. Realistically, everyone involved ought to have been crushed to a pulp inside of ten, twenty seconds tops. Yet it goes on for what, two, three minutes? I'm not sure. Way, way too long anyhow.

Second, the capture of Kong. Overly long and way overly melodramatic.

Third, death of Kong. Yeah, we know it's meant to be a sad scene, but it becomes too much when it goes on and on and on, on top of the capture sequence.

Juicious use of the editor's scissors, snip-snip, and the movie would have been better off for it. As for the rest, I love the mystique, the misty sense of wonder given by the period nature of the film itself, underscored by James Newton Howard's awesome music. The actors are all good, even Jack Black strangely enough, and also Kong himself. The Kong vs. 3x gigantic T-Rexes stand out - in my mind at least - as one of the greatest and most imaginative action sequences of all time, and I also love the Central Park dream-like sequence. Very sentimental, in a positive sense. In my mind anyway.

Oh, and I also watched Prometheus today. It was alright, worth the money but doesn't stand out as an all-time greatest movie in my mind. It wasn't as much a horror movie as mostly just gore and grossness, there were a few creepy scenes, but you could count them on the fingers of one hand, and they weren't particularly scary, or even tense for the most part. Nothing like the original Alien, or Cameron's Aliens, which both scared the heck out of me when I saw them in my early/mid-teens...

It was technically very well done of course, as might be expected. Hardly any dodgy effects work, the sets look great; not as grimy as the original movies (but you wouldn't expect that either in this particular case), but still very recognizable as belonging to the Alien universe.

Possible spoilers ahead, so avert your eyes if you care:

What I didn't really like was having a very creepy android named David (who turns out to be quite psychotic) with roughly the same timbre of voice as H.A.L of "2001" fame, whose other main character was named Dave. That is a rather too strong a connection in my view, and hints in a much too un-subtle way of what is yet to come. I don't think anyone watching that movie doesn't suspect David right from the start, unlike the case with Ash in the original Alien, whose only suspect moves early on in the movie is the strange jog he does before settling in at his post, watching Dallas and crew head off to the alien ship, and his eerie calmness about the whole situation once people start dying.

Also, the Space Jockey didn't die in the pilot's seat like he was supposed to, so he could be found by said Dallas and crew. I assume this is a direct precursor to the movie Alien, where they find the Jockey in his armor, at his seat. Else this was not the same ship as found in that movie, but that seems weird too. I find this a discrepancy in the continuity.

Also, David seems to have knowledge of what the contents of the bottles he recovered from the store room would do to human beings. Where did he gather that information from, or did he just guess? I don't think so, based on his dialogue. This is another discrepancy, in plot this time, perhaps explained by cut scenes that will appear on the blu-ray director's cut release or something...

[Laa-Yosh]

This isn't even the same planet. LV-223 here, LV-426 there.

One possible answer is that whatever happened 2000 years ago, one of the Engineers managed to get to a ship and leave the planet - but already with some sort of an Alien creature on board that managed to catch him unguarded. So he crash landed on that other planet and then the queen was born - which in turn layed thousands of eggs before dying too.

The movie itself has a lot of other problems, with its lack of internal logic, character development, and explaining anything properly. No surprise, considering the script was rewritten by Damon Lindelof of Lost fame. It's also stuffed with useless cultural references - while mostly ignoring all the classical sci-fi work about creation and evolution and such from the past decades.

[RobertR1]

Can someone who doesnt recall or care about Alien lore enjoy this on its own? Planning to go tomorrow.

[Grall]

RobertR1:
Yeah, I'd say you can watch this movie just on its own.


Discussion of Prometheus - may include plot and spoilers - below:

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh

This isn't even the same planet.

Wow. Okay... What a waste of an opportunity then! I thought this would be a genuine prequel, explaining how it all started.

The movie itself has a lot of other problems, with its lack of internal logic, character development, and explaining anything properly.

Hm, didn't have much problems with that, other than failure to anchor the movie in the existing Alien timeline, or explaining exactly which goddamn planet they were going to...

No surprise, considering the script was rewritten by Damon Lindelof of Lost fame.

Hm, I haven't seen all of Lost (only up to and including third season), but I found it a rather interesting show actually. No idea who wrote those scripts, though...

It's also stuffed with useless cultural references - while mostly ignoring all the classical sci-fi work about creation and evolution and such from the past decades.

Must have totally missed those references, other than the blindingly obvious H.A.L walking around on two legs. Not sure what works of creation and evolution you want the script to pay homage to; I believe movies are generally better off if they're not bound and fettered by past works in the same or similar genres.