By Warning: This is ever so slightly spoiler-y. Prometheus is still a bit of an open wound for me. I know several people who really enjoyed it, but for me it was nothing but sloppy story telling and a slap-dash attempt to start cashing in on a whole new franchise. That said, the one thing the movie did right it did excellently, and that was in it’s art direction and special effects. Ridley Scott and his crew showed just how effective practical effects can still be in set-building and makeup, and I will continue to commend them for that.
Now consider how ironic it is that one of the bigger scenes that put those practical effects into practice had an alternative scene with a CGI character in place of the original. Here is the spoiler-y bit for those of you who have not seen the film yet. About half way through the film Fifield (Sean Harris) get infected with some alien ooze stuff/thing and mutates into a lumpy noggin mo-fo who loses his sh*t on the crew of the Prometheus. You can see Sean Harris in makeup in the gallery, and you can clearly contrast how different the character could have looked compared to the CGI creature. Apparently the reason they stayed with the practical makeup was because they felt that for Fifield to have transformed so drastically into the the CGI creature would have been to much for the audience to buy. It was more effective to have him still resemble himself as much as possible.
I’ll admit that the creature design is pretty awesome, but I have to agree with the logic they went with. The CGI creature looks almost completely alien with very little of the human host remaining present. If they had gone in that direction, I’m sure it would have confused the audience. You know, because it’s not like the rest of the movie was guilty of that or anything…
[/Film via Movies.com]