PROMETHEUS UNMARKED SPOILER THREAD!

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The film he talks about sounds great. When is it being released?

The movie would be way worse of all of that was spelled out. It is way more interesting left vague.

Why do people assume because they stumbled on what "seemed" to be a military base, all of a sudden the whole planet is a base? That would be the equivalent of landing in a military test base in the middle of a dessert here on Earth and assume that the whole planet is one big testing ground.

It was a moon. Not something that the species would evolve from.
 
Why do people assume because they stumbled on what "seemed" to be a military base, all of a sudden the whole planet is a base? That would be the equivalent of landing in a military test base in the middle of a dessert here on Earth and assume that the whole planet is one big testing ground.

Would you want to put anything resembling a civilian population anywhere near that? Where if small amounts of that got into the water, you would have an epidemic of xenomorphs of potentially thousands of different kinds and the remaining population is insane and super resistant? You would nuke that planet from orbit if there was a serious outbreak.
 
The first beyond idiotic thing he does is take off his helmet in the cave despite not knowing if there are pathogens or whether the atmosphere is consistent throughout the caves.

The best part is that after some of them were obviously infected by something and several persons have died - they go back inside the alien structure and take off their helmets again!
 
these are probably incredibly obvious/dumb questions, but i have only seen the original alien and it was yeeeeeeeeears ago. i really loved prometheus though.

1. engineers = space jockey, right?

2. the engineers made xenomorphs (how?) as weapons to attack earth, but they were too out of control and then killed all of the engineers on the ship but one...right?!

3. how come the xenomorph at the very end of the movie looked different to previous movies in the franchise? it looked smaller or 'younger' or something to me.

edit: 4ish. janek and the other two seemed pretty blase about crashing into the other ship - this was a suicide mission to prevent it from going to earth, right? like, they didn't even seem to give a shit that they were going to die, just 'yeah, sure!'. in the trailer i remember janek screaming but i don't remember that in the actual film.
 
Would you want to put anything resembling a civilian population anywhere near that? Where if small amounts of that got into the water, you would have an epidemic of xenomorphs of potentially thousands of different kinds and the remaining population is insane and super resistant? You would nuke that planet from orbit if there was a serious outbreak.

We don't know what the goo really does to the engineers so saying they don't want it near them means nothing, it's just a guess made from what you see happen to the humans. It is clear that the goo does not react in the same way for engineers as it does for humans due to the simple fact that in that goo room the cannisters are sitting idle even though the hologram shows the engineers went into that room.
 
We don't know what the goo really does to the engineers so saying they don't want it near them means nothing, it's just a guess made from what you see happen to the humans. It is clear that the goo does not react in the same way for engineers as it does for humans due to the simple fact that in that goo room the cannisters are sitting idle even though the hologram shows the engineers went into that room.

It affects other life forms other than the humans though. You see the xenosnakes come from worms and I can't imagine what would happen if it got into something similar to a dog. The point is the goo was extremely dangerous even excluding what it could do to the Engineers. We do know the reaction is somewhat similar to humans as it causes explosive decay of them, via the head, similar to what happened to Holloway.
 
Since I see a few posts complaining about the surgery pod being male only here is my explanation.

The male only surgery machine was obviously for Mr. Weyland. He himself said he had "a few days" left. I imagine the machine was originally put there to perform surgery had anything happened to Mr. Weyland during the trip or after. Vickers was doing push ups right out of the sleep in the beginning so it is obvious she was in good physical condition and also she never was going to go onto the land so how would anything have happened to her sitting in the ship the whole time.
 
For all those complaining about the Med Chamber being configured/designed for a male, it's my belief that the reason that it was even there in the first place is so that Weyland could be tended for, should the pod be separated from Prometheus.

It was never intended for Vickers.

EDIT: BEATEN!
 
The best part is that after some of them were obviously infected by something and several persons have died - they go back inside the alien structure and take off their helmets again!
I love that they took off their helmets but weren't infected by anything because of it. They were playing with the audiences expectations there, knowing everyone would be all "Nooo are you dumb, put the helmets back on!", but they didn't do the cliche thing and punish the crew for it.
 
The male only surgery machine was obviously for Mr. Weyland.
But why would you calibrate a useful machine like that for males only? Even if it was meant for Weyland specifically (in which case, great job hiding it), it could obviously come in handy in case somebody else got hurt or whatever. Crew members are valuable, and they're pretty far from home.


I love that they took off their helmets but weren't infected by anything because of it. They were playing with the audiences expectations there, knowing everyone would be all "Nooo are you dumb, put the helmets back on!", but they didn't do the cliche thing and punish the crew for it.
Really, now.
 
2. the engineers made xenomorphs (how?) as weapons to attack earth, but they were too out of control and then killed all of the engineers on the ship but one...right?!

Most people seem to believe that is the case but it makes no sense to me. Where is the evidence that the engineers created the Xeno's? There was only one typical Xeno and that was the creation of an infected human+human which created the squid which then infected an engineer.

To me they were not created the same way Engineers created humans but are simply a by product of the goo mixed with another being. The goo is what is interesting. Where did that come from should be the question people are asking.
 
I love that they took off their helmets but weren't infected by anything because of it. They were playing with the audiences expectations there, knowing everyone would be all "Nooo are you dumb, put the helmets back on!", but they didn't do the cliche thing and punish the crew for it.
You thought about that too hard. They made them take their helmets off because it looks better, and is easier to film.
 
But why would you calibrate a useful machine like that for males only? Even if it was meant for Weyland specifically (in which case, great job hiding it), it could obviously come in handy in case somebody else got hurt or whatever. Crew members are valuable, and they're pretty far from home.

The fact that Weyland financed a $1 trillion dollar self serving trip to gain immortality fits in line with him being eccentric about having his own med pod.

<shrugs>
 
There's another issue with the taking off the helmets inside thing (outside of scientists doing something completely stupid and out of protocol). When the first visit the pyramid, Jarek says it's freezing, yet they show no discomfort at all. (in the french dub they say it's -25 degrees, I assume it's Celsius since they're scientist, nobody stays in such cold without experiencing pain and there's no vapor coming out of their mouth...)

Zombie fifield makes no sense too and it's a pointless scene.

David obviously knows much more about the engineers than anyone else, and it's never established how. It's never explained why he infects shaw's boyfriend (I forgot the name), or why a scientist(that doesn't really act like a scientist would) that sees some weird thing popping out of his eye decides it's not important and prefers to have sex.

Vickers being Weyland's daughter was so obvious I don't see why they filmed the reveal like it was a big twist (especially since it ended up being totally unimportant, we still don't know why she went on such a dangerous mission, she has zero motivations).

What happens to the girl medic and the other guy who tried to put Shaw into statis? They stay knocked out for that long?
 
Something small, but what was up with Stringer Bell's vindictive reaction to the two lost dudes finding out that they were detecting a life form and most likely fucked? I think he even smirked a little bit. Did I miss something telling me that he disliked them? Did I read that whole scene wrong?
 
Most people seem to believe that is the case but it makes no sense to me. Where is the evidence that the engineers created the Xeno's? There was only one typical Xeno and that was the creation of an infected human+human which created the squid which then infected an engineer.

To me they were not created the same way Engineers created humans but are simply a by product of the goo mixed with another being. The goo is what is interesting. Where did that come from should be the question people are asking.
Exactly. If someone here (zoukka?) can give me a plausible explanation (NOT plucked out the air) how xenomorphs busted out of the chests of the dead Engineers, I want to hear it.

If Prometheus was supposed give us a few answers about the origins of xenomorphs, they shouldn't have tied it so visually to the requirement of humans and impregnation. Not to mention there is NO evidence of facehuggers in the dome. Presumably these would have been required to create the xenomorphs in the first place.

The black goo can do alot, but not impregnate Engineers with aliens.
 
It affects other life forms other than the humans though. You see the xenosnakes come from worms and I can't imagine what would happen if it got into something similar to a dog. The point is the goo was extremely dangerous even excluding what it could do to the Engineers. We do know the reaction is somewhat similar to humans as it causes explosive decay of them, via the head, similar to what happened to Holloway.

It only affected other life when the humans got near it. Around engineers it remains deactivated or stable. The Engineer with the exploding head is a mystery to me though. I don't think it exploded due to the goo, if that was the case then why did it need to be reanimated before it done that? Maybe it was due to the presence of humans that altered the way the goo reacted?
 
Something small, but what was up with Stringer Bell's vindictive reaction to the two lost dudes finding out that they were detecting a life form and most likely fucked? I think he even smirked a little bit. Did I miss something telling me that he disliked them? Did I read that whole scene wrong?

I saw it as him fucking with them over being afraid of "nothing"--macho bravado. Remember, at the time, it seemed like the facility was dead and deserted for years.

And the lifeform that the pod was detecting was moving but then stopped, so perhaps he assumed it was some small, harmless indigenous lifeform and they were over-reacting.
 
It only affected other life when the humans got near it. Around engineers it remains deactivated or stable. The Engineer with the exploding head is a mystery to me though. I don't think it exploded due to the goo, if that was the case then why did it need to be reanimated before it done that? Maybe it was due to the presence of humans that altered the way the goo reacted?
Didn't they say something about the change in air pressure or climate activating the goo?
 
But why would you calibrate a useful machine like that for males only? Even if it was meant for Weyland specifically (in which case, great job hiding it), it could obviously come in handy in case somebody else got hurt or whatever.

Honestly I think that Vickers, David, and Mr. Weyland did not care for any of the crew personally and would have no problem letting them die.

David had no regard for Holloway's life and tested out the black goo on him. Vickers whole attitude was negative the entire trip and she obviously was against it since the beginning I doubt she cared about anybodys well being. Mr. Weyland wanted to stay alive for his own selfish costs no matter the price.

I dont remember the specific wording but in the beginning doesnt Shaw and Vickers have a conversation about how expensive the machine is and that only a certain amount were made.

If the machine really was that expensive do you think Weyland would want anyone else to use it.

People keep saying that the Engineers or Space Jockeys used the humans as pawns but I think Mr. Weyland himself used the scientists he hired as pawns to simply find what he physically would be unable to do himself. He never truly cared for them though.
 
these are probably incredibly obvious/dumb questions, but i have only seen the original alien and it was yeeeeeeeeears ago. i really loved prometheus though.

1. engineers = space jockey, right?

2. the engineers made xenomorphs (how?) as weapons to attack earth, but they were too out of control and then killed all of the engineers on the ship but one...right?!

3. how come the xenomorph at the very end of the movie looked different to previous movies in the franchise? it looked smaller or 'younger' or something to me.

edit: 4ish. janek and the other two seemed pretty blase about crashing into the other ship - this was a suicide mission to prevent it from going to earth, right? like, they didn't even seem to give a shit that they were going to die, just 'yeah, sure!'. in the trailer i remember janek screaming but i don't remember that in the actual film.

1. Yes
2. Yes, they are a biological weapon.
3. Because it was birthed from a Engineer. The ones we see in Alien & Aliens are birthed from Humans. The Xenos take on traits of their host. It's why they look different in Alien 3 when they were birthed out of a dog (believe it was a dog, been a while since I seen it).
 
I love that they took off their helmets but weren't infected by anything because of it. They were playing with the audiences expectations there, knowing everyone would be all "Nooo are you dumb, put the helmets back on!", but they didn't do the cliche thing and punish the crew for it.
I liked how the film did that a lot of times. Like, "oh no, they're going to let the Infected guy back on the ship!" And then they roasted him and he still came back, stronger than ever.

Speaking of which, was he turning into an engineer? Super strength was pretty engineer like and took "bullets" the same way, with extreme indifference.
 
I just thought it was stupid.
Exactly.. then it turns out it wasn't stupid, they didn't get infected because of it. Eh, at this point I probably couldn't defend the initial gorgeous landscape shots from being torn to pieces for being stupid or having pacing issues. GAF is bloodthirsty when it comes to this movie.
 
I liked how the film did that a lot of times. Like, "oh no, they're going to let the Infected guy back on the ship!" And then they roasted him and he still came back, stronger than ever.

Speaking of which, was he turning into an engineer? Super strength was pretty engineer like and took "bullets" the same way, with extreme indifference.

That's not Holloway, it's the red headed geologist that got his helmet burned by the xenomorph worm's blood.
 
Ghaleon, I had a similar theory to you, but also quite different.

I think that the cave paintings were left so that when humanity had advanced far enough and sought out the Engineers, the Engineers could reset them to scratch. It's a method of controlling potential threats in the universe.

They reset them and once they become advanced enough for interstellar travel and thus a potential threat to the Engineers' dominance in the universe, they're pointed toward their destruction. At which point the Engineers would be awoken and sent to Earth to commence the bombing run of the black goo.

That's what I came up with long before seeing the movie. Only problem is if that was the case, their ships seem to be able to easily travel to another planet, so why wait for humans to come back? It also looked the only reason they did not go and kill humans is because something stopped them. But if something stopped them, how did it stop ALL of them? If there is a whole species of them, a mere spill would not have likely fucked them all up.

Unless the engineers are just a sub-race, creators-destroyers, and the whole race was on that planet.

I'm just throwing stuff out here, but....

Is it possible that the emergency situation we see in the holo-recording actually happened on Earth? Bad shit goes down, everyone gets murdered by mutants, the survivors attempt to escape and all but one survivor dies in the process before he makes it into stasis at the last second. That's essentially what happens in Alien. Then the surviving ship makes it to the homeworld and the remaining monsters aboard wipe out the planet's population (a variation on Alien 3).

It's unclear because the hologram seemed to show them leaving for Earth, not coming back from there.
 
Something small, but what was up with Stringer Bell's vindictive reaction to the two lost dudes finding out that they were detecting a life form and most likely fucked? I think he even smirked a little bit. Did I miss something telling me that he disliked them? Did I read that whole scene wrong?
I think we're supposed to dislike them (they mocked Shaw earlier with their damn scientific skepticism, they got scared and left the others in the alien ship). Janek, on the other hand, is one of the cool kids, so naturally (and "like you"), he dislikes them and finds their distress amusing.
What a fine crew. What a fine movie.


the lifeform that the pod was detecting was moving but then stopped, so perhaps he assumed it was some small, harmless indigenous lifeform and they were over-reacting.
Hell of an assumption.


Honestly I think that Vickers, David, and Mr. Weyland did not care for any of the crew personally and would have no problem letting them die.
But that's idiotic. In an expedition like that, you don't want to lose anybody. Even if you're horribly self-centered.
 
Exactly.. then it turns out it wasn't stupid, they didn't get infected because of it. Eh, at this point I probably couldn't defend the initial gorgeous landscape shots from being torn to pieces for being stupid or having pacing issues. GAF is bloodthirsty when it comes to this movie.
No, I thought it was stupid in a "that's a lazy excuse to get these pretty young things' faces out and reduce the chance of a camera getting reflected on the visors" sort of way.
 
That works too, actually. Bad shit happens on Earth with goo creating xenomorphs because of humans, they try to escape back to Lv-223 and the survivors put themselves in cryo for the trip. They get back and the ship lands in the docking bay undisturbed until the expedition comes.

Someone mentioned several Engineers running into the head-room with the jars, right? Maybe they were the ones that carved out the mural as a warning to what would happen if the goo contacts humans.

Their bodies are nowhere to be found, but the head was still there It was probably a plot hole. Unless they reopened the door and left later I guess.
 
Something small, but what was up with Stringer Bell's vindictive reaction to the two lost dudes finding out that they were detecting a life form and most likely fucked? I think he even smirked a little bit. Did I miss something telling me that he disliked them? Did I read that whole scene wrong?

He was fucking with them. It was a bit of a cruel joke but he probably thought it was something minor.

It only affected other life when the humans got near it. Around engineers it remains deactivated or stable. The Engineer with the exploding head is a mystery to me though. I don't think it exploded due to the goo, if that was the case then why did it need to be reanimated before it done that? Maybe it was due to the presence of humans that altered the way the goo reacted?

We don't know what caused the pods to reactivate. It could have been an air pressure change along with the holding material being 2000 years old. The movie implies it was something physically environmental and not the humans themselves.

The goo works either on electrical impulses in the brain or the nervous system and the electrical charge used by the humans allowed it to finish the process. Here's another theory, the Engineer who stumbled and had his cut off was insane similar to Fifield. That would explain why he stumbled and why he was so clumsy and the Engineers used the door to cut his head off on purpose due to their resilience. It would also explain what the Engineers were running away from.
 
Something small, but what was up with Stringer Bell's vindictive reaction to the two lost dudes finding out that they were detecting a life form and most likely fucked? I think he even smirked a little bit. Did I miss something telling me that he disliked them? Did I read that whole scene wrong?

I read the scene as he thought they were just overreacting.

After the initial search where the crew found no living things and all they brought back was the helmet head the whole mood was that of failure. Holloway was getting drunk by himself pissed and everyone was distraught. The scientists thought they would arrive and get to meet their creators at first and then when they first came back to the ship after the sandstorm because they hadnt found anything they thought it was a failure.

So I read it as Yanic sharing that mood of "failure" and thought they were overreacting.
 
No, I thought it was stupid in a "that's a lazy excuse to get these pretty young things' faces out and reduce the chance of a camera getting reflected on the visors" sort of way.
Pretty young things? Noomi's okay and Fass if that's your thing, but this is hardly Twilight's cast.
 
..and it was a good one. The blip was nothing.
Man, that's an interesting way to look at things... "Yes, that was an idiotic call to make, considering how little they knew about the place, but the guy got lucky and turned out to be correct, so there's nothing wrong, there!"
And didn't they get killed by a small lifeform right afterwards?
 
But that's idiotic. In an expedition like that, you don't want to lose anybody. Even if you're horribly self-centered.

Like I said everyone was a pawn, the scientists were pawns to Weyland. First time we see Mr. Weyland in person he only talks about finally meeting his creators. He never asks what the scientists found or even why Shaw just burst into his room covered in blood. In addition when he talks to Vickers before leaving he obviously disagrees with everything she is saying about him dying and what not.

Weyland was only truly after finding the answer no matter the cost.

I actually think the movie started to rush towards the end which may not have given time to flesh out the character of Weyland more but I think the original intention was to show his greed for himself.
 
Like I said everyone was a pawn, the scientists were pawns to Weyland.
You don't sacrifice pawns for no reason. "It's my medpod and I'm not sharing" isn't exactly..

First time we see Mr. Weyland in person he only talks about finally meeting his creators. He never asks what the scientists found or even why Shaw just burst into his room covered in blood.
That part was mostly the movie being stupid though. You'd think they'd be concerned about Shaw possibly being infected or something like that.
 
What was the significance of Shaw and David taking the Engineer spacecraft at the end? David had a good look at the space map, and the plot could have just as easily had him pilot an nondestroyed Prometheus, or Vickers craft. If there was no intention for a second movie, I'd suspect that this Engineer craft might be the same found in Alien, but obviously there is more to Shaw and David's story, yet untold. Are we to suspect that the other craft is identical? Or that the other craft did not already have eggs laid inside?

I think it is more an excuse to have the bio-weapon leave the planet, so Shaw is basically now in control of a face-hugging bombing vessel. She might use it against the engineers in the second movie. The second movie is clearly supposed to involve Shaw and David together. Whether they would be the central characters of the story or not is up in the air. I'm guessing that alien ship will also be used to justify how David can reconnect his head to his body (she brought the body back).
 
Just thought about this, I think the movie might have been vastly more interesting if it was modified as a Blade Runner prequel. Get rid of the xenomorphs completely and focus more on David's development as a human being.
 
It has been a fun evening of theorizing and hypothesizing about the film, but I'm not sure if I can bring myself go much further. The fact that the basic plotting and story outline of the movie is such a fucking mess means that I'm not sure that it is worth discussing the overarching mythology, symbolism, etc. A geologist gets lost in a cave of rocks, even though he clearly has a way to map out the structure and a radio communications link to the mothership that is constantly tracking his position. A biologist thinks it's a good idea to touch and confront a brand new species of alien, without knowing a god damned thing about it. A woman fails to mention to anyone that the medpod just extracted a god damned monster from her womb.

So little effort was put into the surface plot of the film, why should I believe that there is some complex well-constructed overarching mythology behind it? Yes, there are a lot of religious, mythological, and philosophical references. Just because you can load a movie down with references like that doesn't mean there is a cogent vision behind it. If they couldn't be bothered to pay attention to very basic internal logic, why assume that they were paying attention to major themes and backstory?

To me, it's like the difference between a David Lynch film with a strange, flexible but understandable narrative (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) and a David Lynch film where he's just throwing weird shit at the wall and hoping something sticks (Lost Highway, Inland Empire). Can you look at all the shit thrown on the wall in Prometheus and come up with some half-baked, half-satisfying explanation for it all? Maybe, but at the same time you still have the sense that the film's creator just expects you to assemble all his intentional nonsense in a way that makes sense. To me it seems like the film and its events are left open to interpretation only because of incompetence and incoherence at the script level, not because they intended to create something that would naturally and organically have multiple interpretations.

Because it's Ridley Scott I feel like people want to read a lot more into it than is there. If this were some muddled straight-to-DVD flick without the Hollywood actors or big production values, you would just dismiss it as ambitious-but-sophomoric mediocrity and not give it a second thought.

I agree 100%.

I think with the ending of Prometheus, it should of just not happened at all. We already got a sort of glimpse of the Xeno in the...eh, either "big head" room or the bridge. I think more of the Xeno's reveal should of been with a next/later movie. Come to think of it, there was something below that mural. A green sort of stone. Was that just Engineer interface technology or something else?

Whatever it was, the scientist dude said the place was a tomb after seeing it. So the room was someone's tomb. It was not a weapon room. The cargo hold was elsewhere. That place, with the pods, was someone or something's tomb.
 
When we're first introduced to the Prometheus ship, it says the date is 12/21. It doesn't seem like the events of the movie took place over a ten day period (ending on new years day, as per Shaw's last recording).
 
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