The megahugger came from shaw. It could've come from an engineer just the same.
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The megahugger came from shaw. It could've come from an engineer just the same.
You know what would have made the film better?
After the first scene we should have had a "65 million years later" caption. Then the BSG ending would have served a point in preparing me for the mess of mythology that was to follow.
Except it would have to be an even more ridiculous timespan.
After the first scene we should have had a "65 million years later" caption. Then the BSG ending would have served a point in preparing me for the mess of mythology that was to follow.
Except it would have to be an even more ridiculous timespan.
Err that was the point of the remote base. The weapon was indeed potent, maybe even too potent for these engineers to handle. Why is it so hard to believe they couldn't make the same mistakes humans do all the time? Remember that we were shown multiple buildings in the beginning. Most likely all of those were evacuated and prometheus was exploring the one where shit went wrong.
It's quite clear that the goo is a biological weapon. It's also very evident that it is not created to fight humans. So the only explanation is other engineers. I don't know how you can see it any other way.
It's clear to me you don't appreciate this kind of narration where the viewer has to put some of the puzzle pieces together. I wouldn't either if the pieces weren't there, but they are and I have had zero problems putting everything together.
Yeah pandering flashbacks and timespan montages are what this movie was missing lol. How bout a one with Janek sitting home with his family, playing his instrument and kissing his wife. Just to make sure you understand why he kamikazed in to the ship. Also we needed epic cgi war footage between engineers, flashforwards from all four alien films and engineers drawing the xeno metamorphosis phases on paper.
Then the film should have opened with an infected Engineer orgy, instead of the creation of man. We were explicity told that Engineers created life, so we know that for sure, with or without the scene. But based on the other info we've been given on the creation of Xenomorphs, we need to know that the Engineers, at some point, gave birth to facehuggers. At least the female(?) ones.
Ah yes, that old patronising chestnut.
No, I love puzzles. I don't like ones that display the amount of leaps of logic Prometheus does. Because they are badly designed puzzles.
And when a film tries to explain so much but leaves so many holes and need for speculation that's just bad writing. Prometheus screams bad writing, from the plot to the dialogue to the character development. It's a shame more thought didn't go into what would make it a great film, rather than just one that looks great but is ultimately very frustrating and unsatisfying.
But we already know that. The mural, the exploded engineer corpses and even the iconic green slime on the operating symbols. The xenos were there wreacking havoc and logical deduction leads only to that conclusion.
Nobody likes their own medicine. Also I'm more than willing to tackle additional "plot holes" that frustrated you. I haven't felt this excited about a movie since ages. Usually I'm a jaded old mofo with movies.
Your "help" amounts to "deal with it" even if the way you interpret the film is implausible and based on the same type of leaps of logic the film displays. Therefore highlighting how badly thought out Prometheus is.
All while insisting the film is perfect, as good as Alien, and that anyone who disagrees is a completle imbecile who doesn't like thinking.
The exploded engineers suggests that they had given birth to Xenomorphs, but there was no evidence of facehuggers or that there were anything resembling female Engineers. I am all for mysterious lore (I am one of those annoying Loat apologists), andI appreciate your "logical deduction", but I would have appreciated alot more clarity. It feels like to the film is trying to tell us too much, and it's just become a bit of a blurry mess.
Remember that the aliens in the previous films never required females for evolving. Shaw impregneated was just one curious way for this goo to evolve. Everything in the movie points that the goo was highly adaptile.
I'm not the one skipping the actual plot discussion and responses here.
And being told you just don't like thinking sure is helpful, but feel free to further ratchet up the emotions.
Thinking is all anyone who has seen the film has been doing, because of the standard of the writing and the approach they took with the mythology which was to try to be too clever for their own good.
If you dont like the movie go to another thread ?
Okay, so we have to assume that the xenomorph queen at the end wasn't the first one at all, and that a human host or the entire Holloway->Shaw cycle was completely unnecessary. And also that all the xenomorphs that wiped out the Engineer crew (except one), are all dead or gone, without much of a trace.
I'm willing to accept this, but goddamn if the movie doesn't make this a lot more messy and confusing than necessary.
I'm willing to accept this, but goddamn if the movie doesn't make this a lot more messy and confusing than necessary.
I'm just talking about the facehuggers.
This film made attempts to illustrate that the amazing black goo was the cause of everything bad and yes, it's very adaptive, clever stuff. But it also illustrated how you get a facehugger from that black goo in order to start an Alien "family". Obviously once a queen is born (like at the end; I'm willing to accept this isn't the "first" Xenomorph even though it should have been), eggs galore, but until that point you need an infected host to impregnate a humanoid/mammal to start the chain.
How this was plausile amongst a tribe of Engineers is completely the opposite to obvious given the information we have.
Come on guys. I'm sorry if I came in looking like I want to stomp opinions. I'm just so stoked about the movie it might seem so to some. Let's focus on the movie and I know some of my theories might be wrong. But I still have a very strong sense of what the movie was about and how everything just fit together in the end so nicely. This movie went with my favourite movie guideline of "show don't tell" in my opinion.
Well every direct contact with the goo we see leads to the fast degeneration of the host. In the beginning the engineer perishes completely, but the strings of infected DNA continue on and evolve. The same thing happens with shaw and Charlie. Charlie perishes but the infected dna in his sperm goes on to evolve inside Shaw. So in other case we have sex and on the other it's just one being as a start of life on earth. So I don't think the engineers had to mate in order to trigger the evolution of the xeno. After the goo gets the genetic information of the host, it can proceed on its own in a pool of water for example.
A more simple take on the thing is that they just bred xenos themselves and some of them were let loose inside the site for whatever fucking uppery the engineers may have done there. I think the question of "why" is irrelevant as long as you understand the function of the goo. The fact is someone fucked up in the site as simple as that.
Well every direct contact with the goo we see leads to the fast degeneration of the host. In the beginning the engineer perishes completely, but the strings of infected DNA continue on and evolve. The same thing happens with shaw and Charlie. Charlie perishes but the infected dna in his sperm goes on to evolve inside Shaw. So in other case we have sex and on the other it's just one being as a start of life on earth. So I don't think the engineers had to mate in order to trigger the evolution of the xeno. After the goo gets the genetic information of the host, it can proceed on its own in a pool of water for example.
A more simple take on the thing is that they just bred xenos themselves and some of them were let loose inside the site for whatever fucking uppery the engineers may have done there. I think the question of "why" is irrelevant as long as you understand the function of the goo. The fact is someone fucked up in the site as simple as that.
I don't agree with that, because he should be able to discuss the film despite not liking it. Thing is, it's all well and good when it's intelligent discourse or just disputing points, but for instance someone just said 'no no no no no' when I said I prefer Prometheus to Aliens, stating 'that Aliens has inspired tons of films while Prometheus hasn't.' At that point rational conversation just goes out the window
I think the difference between those and Prometheus is that they were coherent films with one or two enigmatic parts, whereas Prometheus is a film which promised to answer questions but is full of loose ends because, depending on who you ask, of poor writing or for the need for a sequel. Or both.
Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was the thread where we discussed what we did and didn't like in the film and try and make sense of it without acres of blacked out posts.
I loved it visually, but the rest was so messy that it's still impossible to come to a satisfactory explanation of it all or that the film was trying to support the leaps of logic required to entertain them.
Very frustrating indeed.
Come on son. The original Alien left a lot of things to be asked. The jockey. The ship. The origin of the xenomorph. Even some parts of the xenos evolution.
Don't be a dick man.
This is a discussion forum lol.
There are definitely things I didn't like about the film.
Charlize Theron's character was clunky. Suddenly agreeing to sleep with the captain doesn't seem in line with the professionalism of her character. The father reveal was unconvincing. And running relentlessly in a straight line to be crushed at the end was just weird.
The last 20 minutes felt like a series of rushed conclusions.
But I'm a huge fan of the anyone establishing a grand new mythology in these days of endless gimmicky superhero movies and CGI bore fests. Especially in a huge tent pole Hollywood movie.
I count The Matrix trilogy and Lost as among those rarities - both have their detractors too.
Charlize Theron's character was clunky. Suddenly agreeing to sleep with the captain doesn't seem in line with the professionalism of her character. The father reveal was unconvincing. And running relentlessly in a straight line to be crushed at the end was just weird.
The last 20 minutes felt like a series of rushed conclusions.
But I'm a huge fan of the anyone establishing a grand new mythology in these days of endless gimmicky superhero movies and CGI bore fests. Especially in a huge tent pole Hollywood movie.
I count The Matrix trilogy and Lost as among those rarities - both have their detractors too.
Mysteries are cool. Inconsistent logic is not. Especially in a movie universe that has been picked apart by fans for decades. Re: xenos evolution, what would you say about my thoughts above (#165)?
Ah, you edited...
Joel Was Right
Member
Was the opening scene trying to explain how human life was seeded in Earth? Why not just mix their blood with the black goo rather than dramatically killing yourself over a waterfall?
The fuck is this? It's people with your attitude that should leave.
The fuck is this? It's people with your attitude that should leave.
The thing is with them is that they were never meant to be answered. No one ever posed the question, all we needed to know is that something's killed this Jockey and now something's fucking running around killing everything
In Prometheus it explicitly addresses questions and poses more. I'm okay with a lot of it because I have faith sequels will answer them.
MMaRsu
Member
Why? The engineers are humanoids.
The only stuff that seemed really stupid to me in this movie is that nobody questions Shaw's stitches, she doesnt even fucking tell anybody she had just gotten infected with a goddamn alien and that David didn't help her out :/.
And yes Vicker running in a straight line was goddamn stupid, it's always the same in these damn movies, JUST GO LEFT OR RIGHT BITCH
Seeding life on Earth is the only way the opening scene can be interpreted as to make any sense with the rest of the film.
It of course just opens up more problems though with the reasoning, the method, the timescale and the whole point of it all. Not to mention yet another use of magic black goo that just does exactly what the plot requires it to do.
I'm trying to make some sense out of this black goo stuff.
1. Engineer comes to Earth, drinks some sort of black goo, disintegrates and from his DNA life begins.
-> Intentional or just side-effect? Probably intentional, given the location at the waterfall for proper distribution of the DNA. And there's tons more practical ways to kill yourself rather than travel to the other side of the galaxy. Question remaining is "why?", though the movie offers some possible explanations and I don't mind some ambiguity or mystery around it.
-> Rogue Engineer? Like a real Prometheus from myth? Probably not, because of the cave markings. If he was the first and only, then cave men wouldn't know about him let alone the constellations. Later Engineers must've come back to visit humans.
2. Engineers formed contact with early human civilizations and left markings, leading to LV-226.
-> Why to this planet and not their home planet? If they wanted humans to die, why not kill them off when you're visiting them? Why send them to your military base, with ships that are supposed to visit Earth anyway?
3. The space ships on LV-226 have cargo's full of cannisters with black goo. This goo seems to mutate other organic life into randomness.
-> Touching it seems to mutate you into a very violent monster (like the snakes and Fifield).
-> Ingesting it seems to kill you (like the Engineer and Holloway).
-> Having sex after having ingested it, causes your offspring to mutate, and for humans at least, this mutation is some kind of proto-facehugger.
-> All these differences are kind of strange, and especially bizarre for a WMD. Who the hell creates this kind of bio-chemical weapon? This isn't a good virus at all; It's far too unpredictable, indiscriminate, with lots of curious side-effects. How did they plan on wiping out humans with this? If you touch it, you turn violent but that doesn't really kill a species. If you eat it (why would humans eat it), you can spawn facehuggers and later xenomorphs, but this is really dependent on the situation. Where they planning to drop some of these cannisters on Earth, in hopes that people or animals eat it and then go crazy?
By the way, did all live spring forth from this Engineer DNA? Are we a curious side-effect, in the sense that we accidentally evolved to be so identical to our makers? Or was it designed so that the Engineer DNA would eventually after millions of years of Darwinism and evolution, "regress" back into the ultimate being of human DNA?
1. Engineer comes to Earth, drinks some sort of black goo, disintegrates and from his DNA life begins.
-> Intentional or just side-effect? Probably intentional, given the location at the waterfall for proper distribution of the DNA. And there's tons more practical ways to kill yourself rather than travel to the other side of the galaxy. Question remaining is "why?", though the movie offers some possible explanations and I don't mind some ambiguity or mystery around it.
-> Rogue Engineer? Like a real Prometheus from myth? Probably not, because of the cave markings. If he was the first and only, then cave men wouldn't know about him let alone the constellations. Later Engineers must've come back to visit humans.
2. Engineers formed contact with early human civilizations and left markings, leading to LV-226.
-> Why to this planet and not their home planet? If they wanted humans to die, why not kill them off when you're visiting them? Why send them to your military base, with ships that are supposed to visit Earth anyway?
3. The space ships on LV-226 have cargo's full of cannisters with black goo. This goo seems to mutate other organic life into randomness.
-> Touching it seems to mutate you into a very violent monster (like the snakes and Fifield).
-> Ingesting it seems to kill you (like the Engineer and Holloway).
-> Having sex after having ingested it, causes your offspring to mutate, and for humans at least, this mutation is some kind of proto-facehugger.
-> All these differences are kind of strange, and especially bizarre for a WMD. Who the hell creates this kind of bio-chemical weapon? This isn't a good virus at all; It's far too unpredictable, indiscriminate, with lots of curious side-effects. How did they plan on wiping out humans with this? If you touch it, you turn violent but that doesn't really kill a species. If you eat it (why would humans eat it), you can spawn facehuggers and later xenomorphs, but this is really dependent on the situation. Where they planning to drop some of these cannisters on Earth, in hopes that people or animals eat it and then go crazy?
By the way, did all live spring forth from this Engineer DNA? Are we a curious side-effect, in the sense that we accidentally evolved to be so identical to our makers? Or was it designed so that the Engineer DNA would eventually after millions of years of Darwinism and evolution, "regress" back into the ultimate being of human DNA?
Based on what? The information we have been given suggests that they do.
That is a decent take on things that I would not object to, if only you hadn't plucked it from mid air. Considering this is the prequel, did we really need more mysteries about the past? Which I would be fine with if it didn't directly impact the integrity of the mysteries you are trying to solve at the same time!
About sex with Janek, I felt like he really hit a nerve with the "are you a robot" line and that made her think about proving things more to herself than the captain. Vickers clearly was conservative about all things which was clearly established in her dialogue with Weyland about the natural order of things.
And the father bit didn't make an impact on me because it was obvious from the beginning that she was her daughter.
Joel Was Right
Member
People are thinking this movie poses questions but I'm beginning to feel its just been poorly written or edited. I loved David, always had me second guessing
MMaRsu
Member
Well yeah there is no actual evidence of it happening there, you are right.
I think it poses a lot of questions that it doesn't answer or can't answer fully because it's poorly written, not because it doesn't pose a lot of questions.
It's not a prequel, and it's not an origins story. We have to assume space and therefore life is infinite. Things happened before humans, before xenomorphs and before engineers. The goo is basically primordial soup, it is the catalyst for creation and destruction. The movie's script and pacing (its two biggest weaknesses) makes everything more confusing than it should be on a first take.
Joel Was Right
Member
I've yet to read any reviews from film critics but I'm assuming this is a consistent criticism that pops up, yes?
General consensus seems to be that it was good. Messy and underdeveloped but beautifully shot and tense, Fassbender is splendid and the subtext is meaty as hell.
The abortion scene was my favourite scene in the film. Anybody got a counter?
I took the goo to essentially be a primordial soup, too - but then are the creatures not biological weapons? Are the engineers merely trying to harness things beyond their control?
I took the goo to essentially be a primordial soup, too - but then are the creatures not biological weapons? Are the engineers merely trying to harness things beyond their control?
David was my favourite character, although not explaining his motives harmed his role in the film. Far too much was also far too convenient for David, it gave the impression that he knew far more about something that was meant to be a voyage of discovery about our makers, a journey into the unknown. This is one of the reasons the film for me didn't have the tension or sense of dread as Alien. David just hopped us from one bit to the next helped by holographic plot devices.
For the sequel I really wouldn't be surprised if they try and pull a David knew all along thing and open up yet more problems.
To start a remote breeding/testing ground for the bioweapons they were developing.
It was said in the movie that the engineers wanted that stuff as far from their home as possible. Which is completely logical given how dangerous the stuff was.
And the plan was changed when the site had the outbreak 2000 years from the current events. At that time humans were not even close to exploring space and were apparently deemed now fit for testing purposes.
They were never planning the goo for human genocide. Earth was just a testing ground for it.
I think they addressed this in the movie when they first discussed about the hypotethical engineers and our creation as an intended process and not random natural selection. They even mentioned darwinism and how the engineers contradict with evolution theory.
Nope. That was as good as any scene in Alien. Fucking fantastically tense.
I really liked David in the pilot room exploring the globe hologram and everything, as well as the initial scene in the ampule chamber.
My god, I've got it. They weren't planning on killing humans with the black goo, they were planning to gift it to us, so we too could create life on other planets, now that we have achieved interstellar travel.
It's not a military facility at all, it's just a lab. The entire black goo mutation and xenomorph thing was really just an accident.
It explains the reason for the star map. It really was a friendly invitation.
It explains the fuckuppery and randomness. The goo wasn't designed as WMD. Something went wrong (perhaps some Engineer took some goo and had sex, caused some kind of xenomorph to grow), and the goo was then left unguarded and caused those worm mutations.
It explains the nice and neat canisters without much of a security mechanism in place.
Just a bit fuzzy on why Jason Voorhees immediately killed everyone.
It's not a military facility at all, it's just a lab. The entire black goo mutation and xenomorph thing was really just an accident.
It explains the reason for the star map. It really was a friendly invitation.
It explains the fuckuppery and randomness. The goo wasn't designed as WMD. Something went wrong (perhaps some Engineer took some goo and had sex, caused some kind of xenomorph to grow), and the goo was then left unguarded and caused those worm mutations.
It explains the nice and neat canisters without much of a security mechanism in place.
Just a bit fuzzy on why Jason Voorhees immediately killed everyone.
Maybe, if you look at the story of Frankenstein which is a take on the legend of Prometheus the creator gets consumed and killed by his creation, or rather his take on a creation. This is what happened at the end of the movie and the xenomorph reveal.
The movie would have been stronger if they cut out some of the plot elements and focused on on a couple of them.
The film is basically identical in length to Alien, a film that focuses on one thing. There's an alien on the ship, we need to kill it. Super simple premise that is fleshed out with great dialogue, excellent pacing, and good acting.
Prometheus tries to do so many huge things at once, and the movie suffers from it. Some of the set pieces, ideas, and characters are incredible well done, but again, it's too much for a two hour movie. Reminds me a bit of Watchmen, in that sense.
The film is basically identical in length to Alien, a film that focuses on one thing. There's an alien on the ship, we need to kill it. Super simple premise that is fleshed out with great dialogue, excellent pacing, and good acting.
Prometheus tries to do so many huge things at once, and the movie suffers from it. Some of the set pieces, ideas, and characters are incredible well done, but again, it's too much for a two hour movie. Reminds me a bit of Watchmen, in that sense.
Actually I missed this somewhat in the film, don't know how. The Engineer found beheaded had been dead for 2000 years or was 2000 years old? If dead for 2000 years that means that shit went cray 2000 years ago before any of the ancient civilisations, meaning that there is some motivation to sending them to LV-223. Maybe asking for help from their creation?
MMaRsu
Member
Can you explain when this was mentioned in the movie?
I don't know if you're being sarcastic but this actually make sense to me.
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