Gazz

I wonder if the $111m figure is inclusive of the tax rebate they received for shooting in Aus. Prometheus' budget is listed at around $130m but that was made for closer to $150m including the money they received from tax incentives in the UK.

Reactions are coming in from the premier and it appears to have gone down very well.

Yeah, it has been showing and a few social media reactions are already out there. There has actually been another press screening in London tonight (2nd).

It is a great script based on solid source material but holy shit does Scott absolutely mine it for every last drop of potential. It's the most emotionally involving Ridley Scott for some time.

Ant-Man perfectly acceptable entertainment. There are plenty of laughs that land well, the cast is solid and the action is inventive. But one can hear all the contrasting voices that are influencing the script as it zips from one style or tone to the next, and the Avengers reference/s though marginally humorous were completely unnecessary. Also, Judy Greer is wasted on a dog shit role once more. She's better than what Hollywood continues to offer her time after time. At times it does come off as an Edgar Wright imitation, which I imagine was unavoidable, but the final result as a whole is still good-enough. In all Ant-Man is far better than it's torturous production history would have one believe though ultimately unmemorable. 3/5

Sure, when you compare it to T2 and completely negate the 20+ years of cinematic failure the series has endured between then and now, this performance isn't something to write home about. If it was a sequel to T2 and came out within spitting distance of that film I'd say you had a point. Otherwise it's par the course, really. It's actually doing okay with overseas taken into consideration (and how awful the film is of course).

I mentioned that shortly after my first viewing. Other than one particular sequence (the attack on the main street), there's very little that draws on the idea that Jurassic World is a woking and very populated park. For a film that is built up around that very notion it's certainly odd they don't put it to better use.

Watched it a second time. I went from thinking it was unremarkably average to plain bad. There are fleeting glimpses of a much better movie but otherwise it's just a dumb mess of a movie.

Literally just said that above. Spot on though. The music is begging us to feel wonder and awe but the sweeping imagery is akin to a dime-a-dozen Disney World ad. So very corporate.

Jurassic World is just a stop gap on the way to this: But honestly weaponised military-owned dinosaurs seem to be next on the agenda considering where World left off.

There's a lot of fun in Jurassic World's individual moments and one very neat twist for the raptors but the film is strung together by filmmakers and writers who seem to be at odds over what type of film they're making. Trevorrow makes the same mistake as Bird did with Tomorrowland in that the final film ends up being the very thing they're criticising. For example, Trevorrow has one of the character's remark how corporate the park is in regards to product placement in a clear nudge-nudge-wink-wink about how corporate modern films have become, yet there are several moments of obvious product placement littered through the film. There are shots that entirely serve to sell a f**king car. I also think Trevorrow utterly misses the tone of Spielberg's classic. Jurassic Park was about mining excitement out of the wonder of seeing something you've never seen before. World seems to be about drawing excitement from seeing those wonderful things either kill everything in sight or be killed. Sure there's the element of danger about Jurassic Park, and there are some gnarly death scenes, but it rarely comes across as cruel (the exception being the opening kill). World felt too cruel at times to me. Also, the placement of the Jurassic Park theme bugged me. In Park it's saved for the new guests witnessing a living dinosaur for the first time. It's literally something they have never seen before (nor the audience seen realised in such a realistic way before). It's a moment of absolute wonder. With World it's used for a view of the parks busy main street, which very much resembles something of an exotic Disney World. It's the type of view seen on multiple adverts for theme parks. There's nothing wondrous about it at all. It's corporate. Fell very flat for me. I liked the stuff with the Raptors, though I can see the execution of them bugging a lot of fans. It's certainly a lot better than JP3 and despite my above issues there is some fun to be had. It just pales in comparison to the original and even The Lost World in my opinion.

Edgar Wright is a good choice. He has directed Star Trek before, after all. Wonder if Joe Cornish would be interested again.

Well it was revealed in a recent interview that Scott plans to shoot the Prometheus sequel towards the end of next year so it's not much of a surprise. Something had to give.

Yeah, it's such an oddity. I love and hate it in pretty equal measures.

Talking only of blockbuster scores, the one soundtrack to make me pin back my ears so far has been Alexandre Despalt's Godzilla. I felt Captain America, X-Men and Edge of Tomorrow were all serviceable but left little impression. It's strange, of that group of films Godzilla is probably the most flawed, but its score shines way above them. I'm expecting good things from Michael Giacchino's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes score though.

Heh, I enjoyed it immensely but rated it B (or 4/5). I have a couple of minor criticisms that I think hold the film back from being its best but it still rates as one of the most enjoyable blockbuster films of the year so far (if not the most enjoyable). I've always had trouble with the A-F rating system here. I tend to rate films out of 5 so have adapted accordingly, which is no big deal. But I feel like I enjoyed the film as much if not more than some who are rating this film A, though I see that as the perfect rating reserved for the best of the best. But with many splitting their ratings to A+'s or A-'s etc. perhaps it's I who needs to adapt my rating style a little further.

Edge of Tomorrow succeeds largely because of smart directing and writing in my opinion. Thanks to Liman's attention to structure and timing, the action never felt dull despite us witnessing what was essentially the same battle for the first hour of the film. Smartly put together, and it looked great too. The lived-in gritty, with a hint of comic-book cool aesthetic was solid. And despite all the attention to intelligently framing the action, I felt Liman never lost sight of his leading pair, providing a couple of decent character beats along the way. As I said in my earlier reviewer, in another filmmakers hands Edge of Tomorrow would have been a grim-dark slog through murky battlefields with tortured souls as our guide. Instead it’s a well-structured and fast moving rollercoaster ride replete with action thrills, solid performances and more than a few good laughs.

We're talking about what ifs now that have little bearing on the final film. That they removed all the references to Alien in Spaiht's draft should show you their intention in that regard. But even that script doesn't provide an explicit answer that the alien's are jockey made (though it's certainly more heavily implied). As for the two scripts, well Spaihts' is better written and features a remarkably better opening act (none of that 'belief' shit but "real" scientific reasoning instead) but it soon devolves into pulpy scenes of ineffective violence. And if you thought Prometheus devalued the alien creature, well that script was ten times worse. For example David is described as toying with a facehugger as if it's a harmless kitten while he monologues to Shaw like a third-rate Bond villain. And there are so many versions of the alien creature, some of which seem laughable. It's a mess. But it's a better written mess. Lindelof's draft excises alot of the chaff while introducing some of his own questionable ideas. He improves David a remarkable amount but unfortunately neglect Shaw as a result. On a story level he gets many of the broad strokes right but he writes like a thirteen-year-old hopped up on sherbert. Every other sentence is capitalised as if he's excitedly shouting from the page. His script is ultimately marginally better in my opinion, but after reading both I couldn't help but feel the best of the two scripts is still somewhere smack bang in the middle. A shame.

This is true. I would have gladly sacrificed many of those questions for something in the way of a resolution. Aliens answers more questions than Prometheus, but it works because Cameron uses those answers (primarily, what laid the eggs?) to provide the film with a thematic significance when moving towards the conclusion. The Alien Queen offers the greatest challenge for Ripley, as they do battle for motherhood over Newt. It offers a moment of redemption for missing out on her own daughters life. Sure having such obvious character beats is a little removed from Alien's attempts at capturing simple survival, but in Aliens it closes Ripley's arc out beautifully. All Prometheus had to do was similarly weave those answers into the narrative in a meaningful way. Instead it just gets ask-happy and stops.

Not for me. That's exactly what the film currently posits. But it may change with future films so keep that pitchfork sharp! But as of yet there are no explicit narrative or creature connections that impact the alien series on any meaningful level. Though it does offer a neat parallel to the Alien films in that the Engineers do with the Alien exactly what the company has sought to for decades (turn it into a bio-weapon). And despite their supreme intelligence, their own experiment still manages to bite them in the arse (just as it would have done the company). There are loose connective strands in dealing with some spin-off of the alien creature, but the only real implication for Alien is that the company (Weyland Yutani) probably knows that some form of alien life exists in the universe pre-Alien.

Basically this till the xeno-cows come home! Prometheus felt like a film with a half finished script. Scott and Lindelof were so concerned with asking questions that they forgot to provide anything in the way of answers or closure, even on a thematic level. It's no more evident than in the character of Shaw. She starts the film by asking the question 'why do we exist?' and ends it asking pretty much the same thing. And though she's punished for her belief, it never falters or helps her come to some greater understanding. It's just there, the scant beginnings of a character arc waiting to be explored in future films (if we get them). Too many films try and get by on half stories these days. It's a real downer. Also, absolutely bang on about the third act editing. It's a mess.

At the end of Prometheus there are no eggs or hive or any explicit indication that there ever will be. There is evidence of an alien race (beyond the Engineers) in the murals that surround the ampule room (and obviously the contents of the urns themselves). The black goo creates the aliens we see in Prometheus, but there's currently nothing to say it creates the Alien in the Alien series. Nonetheless, since the Engineers are experimenting with Alien DNA then there will be some resemblances but one cannot ignore there are vast differences between the creatures in Prometheus and those in Alien both aesthetically and in terms of their working life cycle. That even after an outbreak on this outpost, leaving several Engineers like something burst out of them (the hypersleep pods of the infected Engineers are tellingly broken outward from the inside, as if something burst from their sleeping bodies), there is no sign of eggs or a hive should indicate that this is a different breed of Alien that we've ever seen before. And one that doesn't currently tie into the Alien series in any meaningful way, if at all. It may do in the future, but right now Prometheus offers no answers.

Yup, my mistake there. But I would argue the picture in question doesn't explicitly show a sacrifice. It shows an open Alien egg in Alien hands. That could indicate sacrifice, it could easily have been an offering of sorts for experimentation. Should we take it literally? And if so are there aliens out there capable of such offerings? To be honest It could mean a great number of things and it could mean nothing at all (most likely that last one). It indicates that the eggs pre-date the current experimentation we see in Prometheus (as do the time-lines between Derelict crash in Alien and the outbreak), but it doesn't really offer anything solid beyond. The mural room also features several other pictures, some of which depict creatures that look nothing like the original Alien or the Deacon/ Ultramorph but seem somewhat Giger-esque in design. Just another question to add to the pile Prometheus asks.

I wouldn't say that the Engineer at the end of Prometheus willingly sacrificed himself for an Egg-Layer (if that's even what the Deacon/Ultramorph is; the film doesn't say). It's a violent affair that the Engineer struggles against every step of the way with horror registering across his face. It has to restrain him in order to impregnate him.

Aliens explicitly sets up the Queen Alien as being the head of the established life-cycle. Prometheus poses no such direct connection to the Alien series. And not only are all of the creatures in Prometheus vastly different to their Alien counterparts, but the life cycle is far removed with no conceivable point to cross over. You and I may argue that the DEACON/ ULTRAMORPH is capable of egg-laying but who's to say it would lay traditional eggs containing traditional facehuggers considering the vast differences we've seen prior? We simply do not know. It's another question to add to the mounting pile of questions Prometheus asks. You're making assumptions and claiming them fact to hold on to this notion of the great demystification of the Alien series, without acknowledging that pretty much all the same questions Alien posed remain unanswered. Hell, James Cameron's ALIENS explicitly answered more questions than Prometheus. Now you're talking sense. I would say there's certainly a valid question as to whether or not the Space Jockey's created the Alien creature (through use of the black substance or any other means)? It's a question some have asked since Alien (bar the black goo part obviously). Prometheus doesn't answer that question though, which has been my very point all along. Yeah, I would argue some form of alien hybrid. Who knows what his final form would have been or what he was capable of. But again, how does this impact the Alien creatures as seen in Alien? Not at all. Why? Because it has no bearing on Alien. Prometheus shows an experimentation gone awry. It doesn't point to the creatures as being the same as we've seen before nor does it declare this experiment to be an origin (despite your many protests otherwise). From everything the film shows us, this is a whole different breed of the creature, created in a lab with vast biological differences that set it apart from the ones we are traditionally used to. And still it manages to bite them in the arse. This is what experimentation with the Alien creature leads to, whether you're a mere human or a space-God. The Alien as we know it exists somewhere in the same universe, their origins and ties to the Space Jockey in Alien still just as much a mystery.