SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
Where's the headress?
PROMETHEUS UNMARKED SPOILER THREAD!
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Where's the headress?
I completely understand that it will be compared. I just don't like how it sounds like a lot of people wish they got something closer to Alien, while knocking certain aspects that it DID have that is in Alien. Not everyone, but many people sound like they wanted a carbon copy of Alien's style, yet knock some of the bad stuff that is doing just that. I might not be making myself clear though.
Wait so the last xeno is the queen? But on a completely different planet? I thought it was just a nice nod, showing how that type of xeno comes to be.
Ether_Snake
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So after thinking it over, I think this makes the most sense:
- The "temple" is exactly that, a temple, and the room with the giant head is as it was said in the movie: a tomb. This makes the whole complex a sort of "pyramid", figuratively speaking.
- The mural seems to show an Engineer forcing an alien into submission, or at least in a position of superiority.
(I think this is from a concept art book?)
- The other mural shows an almost "godly" Xenomorph, in a position reminiscent of crucified Jesus or the Vitruvian man. Note the hands with fingers, arms are extended.
- The thing in the middle has a green stone on it. Not sure what it is, but it can be easily moved, the scientist touches it and causes it to wobble a little. Note the position of the Xenomorph: straight above it, almost looking down on it. I'm not sure, but isn't it after the stone is touched that the place starts to react? I forget.
- The vials laid out in the room in the room are the same as found in the cargo hold, but they are clearly laid out, contributing to the imagery of the "tomb" of this room.
Taking of all this in consideration, I think this is what the whole thing was: the ship is stationed underground and it is connected to the Temple. In the temple is a tomb. The ship had countless vials in its cargo hold, and some vials had been placed in the tomb. So the temple and ship are not one entity, the temple is supposed to be by itself. The ship landed at some point, but it never left, because something happened.
So the invitation for the humans was that system or moon, but they were supposed to stumble on a temple with a tomb inside, NOT find a spaceship with a cargo hold full of vials. Why they were invited to that temple/tomb? We don't know.
One thing is clear is that the vials are a weapon indeed, the ship was full of them, and the tomb had some placed in it and it didn't take long for the weapon to attack. This is typical of tombs in adventure movies and even some in real life: the tomb is booby-trapped with black goo.
So the humans walked into a trap, by walking into the tomb. That place was meant not to be trespassed upon, or was meant to be mankind's tomb.
The question that remains is why the ships never managed to leave, all of them? Why did they remain stuck there? We are supposed to think they accidentally infected themselves, but did all ships suffer the same fate? Did the WHOLE RACE stop whatever plan they had at that precise point? That's unclear.
- The "temple" is exactly that, a temple, and the room with the giant head is as it was said in the movie: a tomb. This makes the whole complex a sort of "pyramid", figuratively speaking.
- The mural seems to show an Engineer forcing an alien into submission, or at least in a position of superiority.
(I think this is from a concept art book?)
- The other mural shows an almost "godly" Xenomorph, in a position reminiscent of crucified Jesus or the Vitruvian man. Note the hands with fingers, arms are extended.
- The thing in the middle has a green stone on it. Not sure what it is, but it can be easily moved, the scientist touches it and causes it to wobble a little. Note the position of the Xenomorph: straight above it, almost looking down on it. I'm not sure, but isn't it after the stone is touched that the place starts to react? I forget.
- The vials laid out in the room in the room are the same as found in the cargo hold, but they are clearly laid out, contributing to the imagery of the "tomb" of this room.
Taking of all this in consideration, I think this is what the whole thing was: the ship is stationed underground and it is connected to the Temple. In the temple is a tomb. The ship had countless vials in its cargo hold, and some vials had been placed in the tomb. So the temple and ship are not one entity, the temple is supposed to be by itself. The ship landed at some point, but it never left, because something happened.
So the invitation for the humans was that system or moon, but they were supposed to stumble on a temple with a tomb inside, NOT find a spaceship with a cargo hold full of vials. Why they were invited to that temple/tomb? We don't know.
One thing is clear is that the vials are a weapon indeed, the ship was full of them, and the tomb had some placed in it and it didn't take long for the weapon to attack. This is typical of tombs in adventure movies and even some in real life: the tomb is booby-trapped with black goo.
So the humans walked into a trap, by walking into the tomb. That place was meant not to be trespassed upon, or was meant to be mankind's tomb.
The question that remains is why the ships never managed to leave, all of them? Why did they remain stuck there? We are supposed to think they accidentally infected themselves, but did all ships suffer the same fate? Did the WHOLE RACE stop whatever plan they had at that precise point? That's unclear.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
A hammer can build, destroy, or modify.
He did, but he's not in a much better position to know than we are.Ether_Snake said:
Its obviously not the same, but the visual design of the face and mouth is obvious.
What I mean is, it would make it seem like the Queen Alien in Aliens was the creature that burst out of the Space Jockey in the Derelict ship. Thus there would have been a different type of facehugger that killed the Jockey.
Angry Fork
Member
Wow that definitely does sound better imo.
Prometheus sequel better come out quickly then to make up for it, I don't want to have to wait 4 years or whatever while Scott does another historical 'epic' with Russel Crowe.
Ether_Snake
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In a movie, when a main character explains something to the audience, it is because it's fact.
1- Cargo hold, fact.
2- Tomb, fact.
3- Bio weapon, fact.
4- Engineers created humans then changed their minds, fact.
edit: It might be that the reason the humans have a star map invitation is because of "Prometheus", a traitor of the engineers. He wanted humans to find "the tomb", maybe to one day destroy their "masters". It's possible that the engineers in the movie are the "other side", the ones opposing Prometheus. They found the temple, booby-trapped it, but shit fucked up on them.
So the murals would have been made by "Prometheus". A message.
We can see it like this: Prometheus invites humans to his tomb, to deliver them a message. The engineers found out about this, booby trapped the tomb. They fucked up, the ship failed to leave (captain died while others slept, only one is still alive and sleeping). When he wakes up, he's like "shit, we fucked up, and the humans made it here!", and he tries to fix things.
For what it's worth, these are the questions that I have about the film:
1. What was the intention of the Engineers at the start of the film? Did they intentionally make that one guy swallow the goop to give birth to human? Or was he actually some kind of prisoner who got sentenced to death and instead inadvertently gave birth to us, humans?
2. Whatever the reason for our creation, it's obvious that these 'Engineers' have been observing us for ages. And yet they didn't take any action apart from directing us towards those star systems. If they want to kill us, why wait until we're capable of space travel? And why lead us into that military facility?
3. Why is there a Xeno-like painting in the military facility base? Is it worshipped as some kind of God by the Engineers? If these creatures already exist, then why show us that proto-Xeno at the end of the movie? Why show that the creature is born via combination of the squid from black goo + human sperm when it eats the Engineers?
4. What were the Engineers were running away from as seen in the flashback shown via holographic images? What was it that they are scared of to the point they need to hide inside a tomb? If it's the Xenomorph, then why are they running to a tomb that contains more of these terra-forming vials and one that has the Xenomorph like mural painting in it?
5. What exactly happened 2000 years ago that pissed off the Engineers and wanted us dead? Is it tied to the death of Jesus? Was it view as how humanity is willing to kill its (possible) creator and therefore they are seen as liability? But if that's the case, why not just destroy us right away instead of leading us to some abandoned military base?
6. How does the terra-forming substance (black goo) work exactly? Does it work randomly? It turned an Engineers into the essential bio-material needed to form the first human. But when consumed by other creatures, it seems to have mutated them into something monstrous instead. Why does it respond differently to the Engineers' body? Is it because they have the complete DNA necessary to facilitate the transformation?
1. What was the intention of the Engineers at the start of the film? Did they intentionally make that one guy swallow the goop to give birth to human? Or was he actually some kind of prisoner who got sentenced to death and instead inadvertently gave birth to us, humans?
2. Whatever the reason for our creation, it's obvious that these 'Engineers' have been observing us for ages. And yet they didn't take any action apart from directing us towards those star systems. If they want to kill us, why wait until we're capable of space travel? And why lead us into that military facility?
3. Why is there a Xeno-like painting in the military facility base? Is it worshipped as some kind of God by the Engineers? If these creatures already exist, then why show us that proto-Xeno at the end of the movie? Why show that the creature is born via combination of the squid from black goo + human sperm when it eats the Engineers?
4. What were the Engineers were running away from as seen in the flashback shown via holographic images? What was it that they are scared of to the point they need to hide inside a tomb? If it's the Xenomorph, then why are they running to a tomb that contains more of these terra-forming vials and one that has the Xenomorph like mural painting in it?
5. What exactly happened 2000 years ago that pissed off the Engineers and wanted us dead? Is it tied to the death of Jesus? Was it view as how humanity is willing to kill its (possible) creator and therefore they are seen as liability? But if that's the case, why not just destroy us right away instead of leading us to some abandoned military base?
6. How does the terra-forming substance (black goo) work exactly? Does it work randomly? It turned an Engineers into the essential bio-material needed to form the first human. But when consumed by other creatures, it seems to have mutated them into something monstrous instead. Why does it respond differently to the Engineers' body? Is it because they have the complete DNA necessary to facilitate the transformation?
Confidence Man
Member
This is basically how I feel. Alien had questions but they weren't relevant to the direct experience of the characters and the events taking place, whereas the questions are the things that drive events in Prometheus and they can't be answered in any satisfactory way as they're unclear or downright incomprehensible given the information presented to the audience.
just saw it. Same questions. The movie did absolutely nothing to answer this. Horrible.
Pretty much. Just a movie slightly related to the series, kind of.
Did the space jockey go back to the ship and lay down with an open chest...? I mean this movie wasn't for the fans, or even a wide audience, it was just.
EleventhDoctor
Banned
Good Lord I loved this movie.
And Charlize Theron is an incredible looking woman.
Now I will go through this thread..,
And Charlize Theron is an incredible looking woman.
Now I will go through this thread..,
Antiochus
Member
A minor ( or perhaps not so) quibble:
The squid fetus less a squid and more of monstrous spermatozoan.
let that sink in
By the way, Dr. Shaw's body must so resplendent with nutrients that her alien offspring, once birthed, was able to use its stores to enlarge its very mass hundred of times over in span of an hour or so.
Really logical and incredible science in action.
The squid fetus less a squid and more of monstrous spermatozoan.
let that sink in
By the way, Dr. Shaw's body must so resplendent with nutrients that her alien offspring, once birthed, was able to use its stores to enlarge its very mass hundred of times over in span of an hour or so.
Really logical and incredible science in action.
I enjoyed it too, but you had better leave this thread before the relentless negativity brings you down.
It was a flawed but incredibly memorable film. I think a lot of the nitpicking is because of how long it took this prequel to come out, and because of the probably needless attempt by Scott to install a mythology behind what was a pretty basic space horror story.
ncsuDuncan
Member
Wasn't the same planet. I had to explain this to a friend after the movie.
List of definitive answers in Prometheus that apply to Alien
- The Space Jockey in Alien was wearing a helmet.
- DNA MATCH
LowParry
Member
Does anyone have the full on art book for this movie? I'm really curious to see it all. You're absolutely right about the mural of the xenomorph. It's something that's there for sure that can be looked upon as something of worship or perhaps something of a warning. I may be wrong, but at the bottom right of that mural, you can see what may appear to be a facehugger?
I think the storm started up just a bit after they entered the room. I don't think anything really triggered the storm other than the planets climate change. Who knows. Also don't forget the skull shaped mountain we see outside. Again it could be a symbol of warning. Did the Engineers put that there or something else?
Which has me wondering about a queen xeno. Is it just a random host that can have a queen? Obviously from the other ship from the movie Alien, a queen is born from that engineer. Which we see again in Prometheus (presumed).
Ether_Snake
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Ah you're 100% right, in both bottom corners there is a humanoid figure with a face-hugger on his face.
edit: I don't say the storm was caused by anyone. The murals did sort of "erase" themselves though no? I don't remember the skull shaped mountain.
I really get the impression the jockeys in the movie are basically a military squad, sent to set up a trap on this planet knowing humans might eventually come there.
If they wanted to wipe out all humans, they would have already done so, their whole species could not have been stopped by an accident on that moon. Their mission, which was to booby-trap the tomb, was accomplished. They just never managed to get the fuck out.
So Prometheus (a jockey or group of jockeys) tried to help mankind, in a way that the other jockeys disagreed with. But the jockeys don't want to wipe out humans, for some reason, they just want to limit them. The murals warns humans invited to that moon and warns them about the way the jockeys will control/attack them. It just so happens the jockeys booby-trapped the room with the black goo it was warning about.
Oldschoolgamer
The physical form of blasphemy
Yea, Skull mountain threw me for a loop. That shit was random and glossed over. It's probably one of my bigger questions for the movie.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Just got back from seeing it, and really enjoyed it. But I had the most bizarre thought, I'm sorry if this is duplicated earlier in the thread and I missed it:
1. Engineers were going to destroy humans, having deemed them unfit, dangerous, or a mistake.
2. Engineer in cryo wakes up, surrounded by the humans his team was tasked with destroying.
3. The guy takes a moment to gather his thoughts, even looks at David almost lovingly, as if seeing the potential of the humans to be like them, but ... he knows what he has to do. Goes on the attack, his goal to kill all of them and not let them get away. Why...?
4. ... because from HIS perspective, they're the dangerous outbreak; the self-replicating creating that, horror of horrors, has now made it to their facility, a facility full of bioweapons and FTL spacecraft.
At the end, when he pursued Shaw, to me the Engineer didn't seem angry or hateful - he seemed almost panicked. He was desperate to get to Shaw, to prevent her from doing...
5. ... exactly what he feared would happen. One of their 'corrupted' creations took off in a ship full of planet killing bioweapons.
Despite the Engineer's original task being to destroy humanity (let's assume), he came off as almost heroic from that perspective. And Shaw at the end, not so heroic. Here's a religious fanatic having lost it, on the loose with a ship full of the deadliest weapons in the universe, and her only moral check is an amoral sociopathic android who has recently decided Team Nihilism is the place to be.
The Engineers are basically humans - or rather humans are primitive Engineers. It stands they'd share common psychological triggers at an animal level. What if the skull was meant to denote that the facility was storage for the bioweapon grade Creation Goo? Essentially the same as a nuclear symbol outside a nuclear warhead storage facility. The universal human symbol for death; the skull.
1. Engineers were going to destroy humans, having deemed them unfit, dangerous, or a mistake.
2. Engineer in cryo wakes up, surrounded by the humans his team was tasked with destroying.
3. The guy takes a moment to gather his thoughts, even looks at David almost lovingly, as if seeing the potential of the humans to be like them, but ... he knows what he has to do. Goes on the attack, his goal to kill all of them and not let them get away. Why...?
4. ... because from HIS perspective, they're the dangerous outbreak; the self-replicating creating that, horror of horrors, has now made it to their facility, a facility full of bioweapons and FTL spacecraft.
At the end, when he pursued Shaw, to me the Engineer didn't seem angry or hateful - he seemed almost panicked. He was desperate to get to Shaw, to prevent her from doing...
5. ... exactly what he feared would happen. One of their 'corrupted' creations took off in a ship full of planet killing bioweapons.
Despite the Engineer's original task being to destroy humanity (let's assume), he came off as almost heroic from that perspective. And Shaw at the end, not so heroic. Here's a religious fanatic having lost it, on the loose with a ship full of the deadliest weapons in the universe, and her only moral check is an amoral sociopathic android who has recently decided Team Nihilism is the place to be.
The Engineers are basically humans - or rather humans are primitive Engineers. It stands they'd share common psychological triggers at an animal level. What if the skull was meant to denote that the facility was storage for the bioweapon grade Creation Goo? Essentially the same as a nuclear symbol outside a nuclear warhead storage facility. The universal human symbol for death; the skull.
BuddyJoeHooker
Member
He thought all the lifeforms on the base were long dead so he took measures to test goo because his father told him to try harder. This was also a callback to Alien when Ash knowingly let the infected crewman on board.
LowParry
Member
Ah ha! Knew it. I remember seeing it when they did shots of the storm incoming and during the storm with the skull mountain shown. I have no idea what it means other than something to scare away outsiders from going inside.
Monocle
Member
I really enjoyed this post.
LowParry
Member
Which has you wonder what did David say to the engineer? Shaw was there. When she was with him towards the end, why the hell didn't she ask David what he said to the engineer? It would of put a little clarity in the engineers actions. First impressions was that the engineer looked confused (coming out of sleep for so long, which makes sense), but right after David spoke, it just went ape shit on killing everyone and went right to firing up the ship to fly.
DevelopmentArrested
Banned
Yeah like that time the one dude wanders off for 5 minutes on this own in Alien, looking for a fucking cat. Really no need to build up Alien's narrative to trash Prometheus'. Alien's characters were paper fucking thin and uninteresting too. Just like in Prom, only characters you give a shit about are the main girl, black dude and the robot.
Heh, just watched Alien and Aliens back to back with my sister who had never seen either, but saw Prometheus last week.
She was so damn shocked at the Ash reveal, as well as several of the "jump scares" in Alien, and the overall look of the movie was amazing to her considering how old it is.
After seeing them both just after Prometheus, I think it's pretty clear Prometheus is well behind them, even if it is a very different movie. Although it also makes it very clear that A LOT of complaints people have about Prometheus, would apply to those movies too if people took out their magnifying glasses and started examining every little decision everyone makes.
She was so damn shocked at the Ash reveal, as well as several of the "jump scares" in Alien, and the overall look of the movie was amazing to her considering how old it is.
After seeing them both just after Prometheus, I think it's pretty clear Prometheus is well behind them, even if it is a very different movie. Although it also makes it very clear that A LOT of complaints people have about Prometheus, would apply to those movies too if people took out their magnifying glasses and started examining every little decision everyone makes.
Net_Wrecker
Member
Even completely removed from the Alien connection, this movie has massive character, and scene to scene issues. I'm doing my best to criticize Prometheus on its own, and on its own the characters don't act like people and the movie just runs from event to event with little to no consequence. It's memorable and it's beautiful, but the issues crop up before you even take into account the Engineer mythology or its connection to the rest of the franchise.
Ether_Snake
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Exactly, the problem with the movie has nothing to do with the plot, it has everything to do with the characters, the script, the dialogue, etc. It's really the writing that is complete shit. But Scott should have been able to easily pick up on this. It was of the caliber of a typical low-budget summer blockbuster movie in terms of writing, sometimes even worst.
The plot itself is not a problem, other than being heavy with few clarifications.
The plot itself is not a problem, other than being heavy with few clarifications.
bggrthnjsus
Member
here's my takes on the new questions raised:
the beginning obviously raises the question of why that engineer was seemingly the only one on earth and why the hell would he do that to himself, but i don't think that is a question that even needs answering.
the goo is a biological tool, not necessarily a weapon. it may be an infectious agent that affects the dna of the hosts and as it replicates picks up their traits and seems to be some kind of xenomorph precursor. it seems to have some viral mechanisms such as incorporating itself into dna. and like many viral infections, there are specific times when it is infectious, which i use as a sort of loose explanation as to why shaw gets a weird spermsquid baby and not an exploded head. as the infection progresses you get the symptoms of holloway and the engineer in the opening scenes - you fucking fall apart. holloway's just took longer because he had less than a drop of the stuff and the opening engineer drank a whole glass of it. when you fall apart in the right conditions to support life (ie earth in the opening scenes), the mutated dna goes about its business and continues to evolve. (also i'm not sure that the engineer in the opening is necessarily seeding ALL life on earth or just the origins of HUMAN life) when you fall apart in an inhospitable planet, vickers just flamethrowers you.
i guess when you have mutated sperm this is a particularly hardy and rapidly growing thing which is really just the result of the infectious goo biotool rapidly evolving its hosts' characteristics. the resulting giant squid alien is probably the equivalent of a xenomorph arising from a sperm. there are references to the xenomorphs in the movie when milburn and fifield mention that there are bodies in the pile that have been opened up from the inside. couple that with the fact that we see some form of xenomorph come out of the engineer at the end and the fact that the engineers are genetically similar to humans, that might mean that a similar event happened on the engineer vessel, resulting in a xenomorph outbreak that killed everybody.
what happened to the xenomorphs (or whatever killed them) after the outbreak? who knows, it's a big moon and it was a long time ago...they probably starved to death after killing all the engineers or something. whatever happened to them, it's clear that they were around prior to prometheus landing there, since they're on the murals in the tomb. as to the specifics regarding the differences in the tomb and the cargo hold, who the hell knows, who are we to judge some ancient alien religion? our religions and their weird rituals are incomprehensible enough as it is.
what's david's motivation for infecting holloway? i don't really see this as a plot hole...he's an ambiguously intentioned character, we don't know who he was speaking to via the visor (or how many communiques they've had), maybe there are W-Y bigwigs back home who want some kind of bioweapon. i suspect his plan was to infect holloway and bring him home in cryosleep to bring the weapon back, but when that failed he found a surprise back-up in a pregnant shaw. this sort of alludes to alien, where ash is ordered to return the alien to W-Y at the expense of the crew, and also to aliens, where burke wants to infect ripley and newt and bring home an alien in cryosleep because of W-Y's desire to use it as a bioweapon. perhaps it's the events of prometheus as relayed by david to W-Y execs that give them this idea in the first place. i think david has some sort of secret corporate agenda that not even vickers knows about, but when weyland's play at eternal life just gets him decapitated and the only way home ruined, he has to alter his plans on his own. or maybe it's simpler, and he's just curious, or just a jerk.
why doesn't anybody notice an alien spermsquid hanging out in the medical bay? for starters, that was vickers' private medical bay. the rest of the staff seemed to have a different medical bay and no access to that surg-o-matic tube. david knows what happened but i figure he just assumes that shaw has managed to kill the thing. i chalk it up to bad writing that the chronology is so messed up and hard to understand, but all of this seems to have happened pretty quickly so i suppose it's understandable that nobody really noticed between the confusion of weyland actually waking up from cryosleep and zombi-fifield murdering everybody.
zombie-fifield is probably my biggest gripe; i don't understand how he got super strength/agility/invulnerability from having acid and goo on his face. he was really just kind of a cheap plot device to kill off a lot of people at once.
anyway it's far from a perfect film, but i think the script and its pacing and various plot holes and cheap devices were probably the main offender. i think it fits the mythology of the alien universe pretty well, and overall i thought it was entertaining as hell. after one viewing i can't say i hold it on the same level as alien/aliens, but i think it shits all over alien 3 and resurrection, and don't even get me started on the avp movies. it's got its flaws but i think those are flaws in the script and storytelling, not in the backstory. i don't think it's deserving of the majority of the backlash it gets regarding where it fits in the universe.
/reallyoveranalyzingthingshere
the beginning obviously raises the question of why that engineer was seemingly the only one on earth and why the hell would he do that to himself, but i don't think that is a question that even needs answering.
the goo is a biological tool, not necessarily a weapon. it may be an infectious agent that affects the dna of the hosts and as it replicates picks up their traits and seems to be some kind of xenomorph precursor. it seems to have some viral mechanisms such as incorporating itself into dna. and like many viral infections, there are specific times when it is infectious, which i use as a sort of loose explanation as to why shaw gets a weird spermsquid baby and not an exploded head. as the infection progresses you get the symptoms of holloway and the engineer in the opening scenes - you fucking fall apart. holloway's just took longer because he had less than a drop of the stuff and the opening engineer drank a whole glass of it. when you fall apart in the right conditions to support life (ie earth in the opening scenes), the mutated dna goes about its business and continues to evolve. (also i'm not sure that the engineer in the opening is necessarily seeding ALL life on earth or just the origins of HUMAN life) when you fall apart in an inhospitable planet, vickers just flamethrowers you.
i guess when you have mutated sperm this is a particularly hardy and rapidly growing thing which is really just the result of the infectious goo biotool rapidly evolving its hosts' characteristics. the resulting giant squid alien is probably the equivalent of a xenomorph arising from a sperm. there are references to the xenomorphs in the movie when milburn and fifield mention that there are bodies in the pile that have been opened up from the inside. couple that with the fact that we see some form of xenomorph come out of the engineer at the end and the fact that the engineers are genetically similar to humans, that might mean that a similar event happened on the engineer vessel, resulting in a xenomorph outbreak that killed everybody.
what happened to the xenomorphs (or whatever killed them) after the outbreak? who knows, it's a big moon and it was a long time ago...they probably starved to death after killing all the engineers or something. whatever happened to them, it's clear that they were around prior to prometheus landing there, since they're on the murals in the tomb. as to the specifics regarding the differences in the tomb and the cargo hold, who the hell knows, who are we to judge some ancient alien religion? our religions and their weird rituals are incomprehensible enough as it is.
what's david's motivation for infecting holloway? i don't really see this as a plot hole...he's an ambiguously intentioned character, we don't know who he was speaking to via the visor (or how many communiques they've had), maybe there are W-Y bigwigs back home who want some kind of bioweapon. i suspect his plan was to infect holloway and bring him home in cryosleep to bring the weapon back, but when that failed he found a surprise back-up in a pregnant shaw. this sort of alludes to alien, where ash is ordered to return the alien to W-Y at the expense of the crew, and also to aliens, where burke wants to infect ripley and newt and bring home an alien in cryosleep because of W-Y's desire to use it as a bioweapon. perhaps it's the events of prometheus as relayed by david to W-Y execs that give them this idea in the first place. i think david has some sort of secret corporate agenda that not even vickers knows about, but when weyland's play at eternal life just gets him decapitated and the only way home ruined, he has to alter his plans on his own. or maybe it's simpler, and he's just curious, or just a jerk.
why doesn't anybody notice an alien spermsquid hanging out in the medical bay? for starters, that was vickers' private medical bay. the rest of the staff seemed to have a different medical bay and no access to that surg-o-matic tube. david knows what happened but i figure he just assumes that shaw has managed to kill the thing. i chalk it up to bad writing that the chronology is so messed up and hard to understand, but all of this seems to have happened pretty quickly so i suppose it's understandable that nobody really noticed between the confusion of weyland actually waking up from cryosleep and zombi-fifield murdering everybody.
zombie-fifield is probably my biggest gripe; i don't understand how he got super strength/agility/invulnerability from having acid and goo on his face. he was really just kind of a cheap plot device to kill off a lot of people at once.
anyway it's far from a perfect film, but i think the script and its pacing and various plot holes and cheap devices were probably the main offender. i think it fits the mythology of the alien universe pretty well, and overall i thought it was entertaining as hell. after one viewing i can't say i hold it on the same level as alien/aliens, but i think it shits all over alien 3 and resurrection, and don't even get me started on the avp movies. it's got its flaws but i think those are flaws in the script and storytelling, not in the backstory. i don't think it's deserving of the majority of the backlash it gets regarding where it fits in the universe.
/reallyoveranalyzingthingshere
The Bookerman
Member
I will probably go watch it again next week. Saw it at the Arclight Hollywood, inside the dome.... Freakin awful. 2 gay couple kept going at it front of me and my seating was horrible.
The Theme of motherhood, god, Cthulu, very intriguing.
I still have questions about Liz's Baby Cthulu.
also: Why the hell did david give holloway a drop of the black goo, that I still doN't understand.
The Theme of motherhood, god, Cthulu, very intriguing.
I still have questions about Liz's Baby Cthulu.
also: Why the hell did david give holloway a drop of the black goo, that I still doN't understand.
Prometheus isn't without its problems, but by reading this thread you would think that we have another Phantom Menace on our hands. After all the shit the Alien franchise has been put through since Aliens we should be at least grateful that we have something that respects the original from afar and induces mystery back in to the franchise (questions do not = plot holes) The film, in more ways than one, took the DNA of the Aliens we love and created something new - what we got may vastly inferior as space horror and sci-fi but, in my opinion, it is aesthetically similar, somewhat enthralling and always entertaining.
And if you do completely hate the film then be glad that it isn't just an all out prequel that ruins everything you enjoy about the original. As for all the questions, the film would have been far worse if it was full of exposition. Be thankful we didn't get psuedo-intellectual superior bullshit from the engineers. Leaving their motives as a huge question mark was the right choice. It would take another film or two to get to Alien with a solid understanding of how it all relates.
And if you do completely hate the film then be glad that it isn't just an all out prequel that ruins everything you enjoy about the original. As for all the questions, the film would have been far worse if it was full of exposition. Be thankful we didn't get psuedo-intellectual superior bullshit from the engineers. Leaving their motives as a huge question mark was the right choice. It would take another film or two to get to Alien with a solid understanding of how it all relates.
TrumanBurbank
Member
The Engineers played creator, the humans played creator, and now David plays creator.
EDIT: "Because [he] can."
EDIT: Would that make the black goo turned semen turned aborted facehugger turned Xeno the Son of David?
EDIT: And simultaneously the son of his god and the son of his god's god?
we.are.the.armada
Member
Yeah I can't wait for it. It's going to be extremely entertaining because this movie will give them a lot of mileage in the bullshit department.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
Did anyone else think that Vickers might have been an android (sorry if this has been asked, haven't read through the whole thread)? The movie seemed to drop a few hints that she was and a few that she wasn't. I immediately thought of the girl from Blade Runner and how she didn't know she was a replicant and the open ended debate about Harrison Ford being one.
brandonh83
Banned
I have problems with pretty much every movie I watch. Some of my favorite movies either have a couple of big issues, or a plethora of nitpicks. I don't go into anything demanding perfection because I'm not naive enough to believe that any director out there is perfect, or capable of easily creating something without flaws. One of the only "flawless" movies I can think of is Raiders of the Lost Ark. The acting is fine, it created an icon, iconic music, iconic action, classic scenes such as the rolling boulder, had a flawless screenplay with no bad lines that I can think of, flawless pacing, editing, the whole nine yards. The movie seems to have an issue with not being perfect. Some may argue that the climax is kind of corny or corny looking with dating effects, but fuck you.
However, I don't expect to see many movies like this and I didn't expect Prometheus to reach the heights that perhaps it should have met, but at the same time I was willing to ignore that fact and my fingers were crossed for something that would have just tickled my fancy on a number of levels: wonder, horror, intensity. The frustrating part is that it seriously nails these things in my opinion. I couldn't tell you why, but some scenes were giving me borderline panic attacks. Even when they're just exploring the pyramid, I was still feeling very uncomfortable. And yet, as the sequence played out and ended, I felt disappointed. Why?
dem trailers.
Despite knowing what was coming and despite still being pretty creeped out, I feel that had I went on a media blackout, that it would have been super effective to me. And this is the problem I faced during many scenes in the movie. I just simply knew what was going to happen, or I was sitting there like "oh here comes the part in the trailer with her in agony, ok." Hardly anything was left up to me, the viewer, to discover on my own because FOX was so adamant to tell me everything beforehand. Sure, you could say well, this is what you get for watching trailers! No, fuck that. A trailer is supposed to give me a taste of the movie, an inkling of what to expect. It shouldn't tell me the story or show me a summary of the story, and that's precisely what these trailers did.
Now, of course, its not the trailer's fault that it had questionable logic, some poor writing, and some unsatisfying elements. I just wanted to get that out of the way because that is just part of my disappointment. It's that fact, plus another fact that disappointed me so much that it made the other problems I had with it come out in full force when I damn well could have probably ignored them better had one thing delivered that absolutely did not deliver whatsoever:
The tyrant stalking Shaw.
This could be the biggest missed opportunity in cinematic history. We had the perfect setup: a crashed ship, no more survivors apart from Fasshead, a giant squid lurking about, and a T-1000 T-Virus tyrant stalking our main character. David warns us beforehand that the thing is coming for her. Oh fuck this shit is about to get intense. And, just like that, it's over. We don't follow Shaw as she, in a paranoid fit, explores the ship trying to find tyrant before it finds her. We don't get the super elongated standoff present in Alien that made its climax so memorable and worthwhile. We don't get a prolonged state of cat and mouse. Nothing. David tells us that it's coming, and whoop dere it is! A few seconds later Shaw gets the door to the medical bay open, and the giant squid takes care of the tyrant for Shaw.
I'm no writer, but I can think of a number of fantastic opportunities here that would have canceled out some other problems. For instance, why not have Shaw's pregnancy elevate over the course of the movie and not actually peak so shortly after we learn about it? Knowing that she's impregnated for like half of the movie would have given it so much more tension, and that fantastic abortion scene could have been part of the climax. Shaw climbs into the pod, she's beginning to start the process, and then David tells us "it's coming for you." And she's trapped in this pod with absolutely no way out. So we have a few things adding tension: the fact that she's impregnated, the fact that the tyrant is somewhere nearby coming for her and she's completely helpless until the end of the operation, and on top of that, we have no fucking idea what's coming out of her.
But you may say, well, the point of having the abortion scene so early was so that it could give the squid time to grow. Bullshit. Clearly the movie operates on its own terms. The squid could have grown really fast and nobody would question it. In a movie like this you're probably not going to have a problem with an alien fetus growing at a fast rate.
It's things like this that could have really helped me love the film. The other problems would have been there still, but if for example they went with the above, there wouldn't have been the issue of her having the abortion, leaving a newborn alien thing on the ship, and not telling anybody anything about it. That, and the abortion scene was so good that it would have worked beautifully as part of the climax, and it would have made the attempted scary sequence of the end of the film longer and with more tension.
Had something like that happened, would I be complaining so much about some of its other problems? Absolutely not. I'm okay with a movie having problems, as I said above, because I never expect perfection. I do, however, expect the filmmakers to give me the most effective work they can, and the fact that they didn't do that here bothers me more than two idiotic researchers getting lost with a map or the suicide bombers or Shaw not telling anyone about what happened to her. The fact that they dropped the ball on something like that bothers me more than actual plot logic.
What I will not do, however, is point fingers at anyone specifically. Is it Lindelof's fault that Shaw didn't tell anyone about the abortion? I don't know, because I haven't read the script and I have no idea if he wrote a scene addressing that or not. I don't know if he wrote it and it was something that was cut out. I don't know if it was written or if it was filmed or if it was edited out. I have no idea. I know people love to hate Lindelof because of Lost and some of the jackass things he says, but I'm not going to pretend like I know who is ultimately responsible for some of the idiotic elements in the movie. In the end, I just have to express disappointment with "the filmmakers" because a lot of people were responsible for the final product.
However, I don't expect to see many movies like this and I didn't expect Prometheus to reach the heights that perhaps it should have met, but at the same time I was willing to ignore that fact and my fingers were crossed for something that would have just tickled my fancy on a number of levels: wonder, horror, intensity. The frustrating part is that it seriously nails these things in my opinion. I couldn't tell you why, but some scenes were giving me borderline panic attacks. Even when they're just exploring the pyramid, I was still feeling very uncomfortable. And yet, as the sequence played out and ended, I felt disappointed. Why?
dem trailers.
Despite knowing what was coming and despite still being pretty creeped out, I feel that had I went on a media blackout, that it would have been super effective to me. And this is the problem I faced during many scenes in the movie. I just simply knew what was going to happen, or I was sitting there like "oh here comes the part in the trailer with her in agony, ok." Hardly anything was left up to me, the viewer, to discover on my own because FOX was so adamant to tell me everything beforehand. Sure, you could say well, this is what you get for watching trailers! No, fuck that. A trailer is supposed to give me a taste of the movie, an inkling of what to expect. It shouldn't tell me the story or show me a summary of the story, and that's precisely what these trailers did.
Now, of course, its not the trailer's fault that it had questionable logic, some poor writing, and some unsatisfying elements. I just wanted to get that out of the way because that is just part of my disappointment. It's that fact, plus another fact that disappointed me so much that it made the other problems I had with it come out in full force when I damn well could have probably ignored them better had one thing delivered that absolutely did not deliver whatsoever:
The tyrant stalking Shaw.
This could be the biggest missed opportunity in cinematic history. We had the perfect setup: a crashed ship, no more survivors apart from Fasshead, a giant squid lurking about, and a T-1000 T-Virus tyrant stalking our main character. David warns us beforehand that the thing is coming for her. Oh fuck this shit is about to get intense. And, just like that, it's over. We don't follow Shaw as she, in a paranoid fit, explores the ship trying to find tyrant before it finds her. We don't get the super elongated standoff present in Alien that made its climax so memorable and worthwhile. We don't get a prolonged state of cat and mouse. Nothing. David tells us that it's coming, and whoop dere it is! A few seconds later Shaw gets the door to the medical bay open, and the giant squid takes care of the tyrant for Shaw.
I'm no writer, but I can think of a number of fantastic opportunities here that would have canceled out some other problems. For instance, why not have Shaw's pregnancy elevate over the course of the movie and not actually peak so shortly after we learn about it? Knowing that she's impregnated for like half of the movie would have given it so much more tension, and that fantastic abortion scene could have been part of the climax. Shaw climbs into the pod, she's beginning to start the process, and then David tells us "it's coming for you." And she's trapped in this pod with absolutely no way out. So we have a few things adding tension: the fact that she's impregnated, the fact that the tyrant is somewhere nearby coming for her and she's completely helpless until the end of the operation, and on top of that, we have no fucking idea what's coming out of her.
But you may say, well, the point of having the abortion scene so early was so that it could give the squid time to grow. Bullshit. Clearly the movie operates on its own terms. The squid could have grown really fast and nobody would question it. In a movie like this you're probably not going to have a problem with an alien fetus growing at a fast rate.
It's things like this that could have really helped me love the film. The other problems would have been there still, but if for example they went with the above, there wouldn't have been the issue of her having the abortion, leaving a newborn alien thing on the ship, and not telling anybody anything about it. That, and the abortion scene was so good that it would have worked beautifully as part of the climax, and it would have made the attempted scary sequence of the end of the film longer and with more tension.
Had something like that happened, would I be complaining so much about some of its other problems? Absolutely not. I'm okay with a movie having problems, as I said above, because I never expect perfection. I do, however, expect the filmmakers to give me the most effective work they can, and the fact that they didn't do that here bothers me more than two idiotic researchers getting lost with a map or the suicide bombers or Shaw not telling anyone about what happened to her. The fact that they dropped the ball on something like that bothers me more than actual plot logic.
What I will not do, however, is point fingers at anyone specifically. Is it Lindelof's fault that Shaw didn't tell anyone about the abortion? I don't know, because I haven't read the script and I have no idea if he wrote a scene addressing that or not. I don't know if he wrote it and it was something that was cut out. I don't know if it was written or if it was filmed or if it was edited out. I have no idea. I know people love to hate Lindelof because of Lost and some of the jackass things he says, but I'm not going to pretend like I know who is ultimately responsible for some of the idiotic elements in the movie. In the end, I just have to express disappointment with "the filmmakers" because a lot of people were responsible for the final product.
bggrthnjsus
Member
i think that was a big missed opportunity for a 'monster on the ship' scenario, but i think they wanted to avoid that since that's basically what alien is and they couldn't possibly have done something like that without the inevitable comparisons. also i think vickers' lame death was another missed opportunity. i wanted to yell in the theater "RUN TO THE SIDE FOR GODS SAKE"
The Engineers are armored by their Space Jockey suit as they pilot the space craft. The Prometheus attack knocked the ship down, but they ship was still mostly in one piece.
You can see the Engineer on the horizon, outside the ship, as Shaw is attempting to pull herself into her ship with the thirty second oxygen countdown.
I like your thoughts on this. Having her perform the operation after everyone else is gone would have made the tensest scene in the movie even tenser, and having her deal with the Engineer then would have been much more dramatic.
brandonh83
Banned
If a director's cut were to have something involving Shaw telling or trying to tell them that she just had an alien abortion, as well as a prolonged sequence of her being stalked by the space jockey, that would honestly go so far into allowing me to forgive some of the other problems.
I don't care and I don't think anyone else would have either. That's the kind of thing people want to see when they look forward to a movie like this.
And something is always better than absolutely nothing.
I don't care and I don't think anyone else would have either. That's the kind of thing people want to see when they look forward to a movie like this.
And something is always better than absolutely nothing.
The score was decent, but the HUGE problem with it was that it was in scenes where it just wasn't needed. There was a scene with Shaw and Janek where they were having a serious and quiet moment, with the music swelling in the background. Also, did it sound like some kind of Superman trailer music to anyone else? Had this very superhero-y vibe to it.
Maybe she didn't want to openly express what had happened, because she thought they would put her in quarantine or something? I mean, one of my big questions was "how did she not get infected when the fetus exploded all over her open wound?"
Maybe she didn't want to openly express what had happened, because she thought they would put her in quarantine or something? I mean, one of my big questions was "how did she not get infected when the fetus exploded all over her open wound?"
Hmmmm, totally missed that. Neat.
brandonh83
Banned
I will say that I predict that when the disappointment wears off that some of us will lighten up to the movie, even if just by a fraction. I have the same problems everyone else does, but my biggest problems as I outlined above weren't strictly due to plot or character logic.
I thought the movie had a lot of great things about it and had a share of great scenes. I liked most of the characters. I loved the score. It just needed more, and I think some parts should have played out differently or at least should have been more satisfying. It's not Alien or Aliens, but it was on the right track and was at least a far better movie than Alien 3, 4, and the AVP movies.
This is interesting and while some are certain to say that you're making excuses for Lindelof, it's plausible. I don't know. I just know that it was completely jarring to me.
I thought the movie had a lot of great things about it and had a share of great scenes. I liked most of the characters. I loved the score. It just needed more, and I think some parts should have played out differently or at least should have been more satisfying. It's not Alien or Aliens, but it was on the right track and was at least a far better movie than Alien 3, 4, and the AVP movies.
This is interesting and while some are certain to say that you're making excuses for Lindelof, it's plausible. I don't know. I just know that it was completely jarring to me.
It's weird, I had insane amounts of hype coming into this movie, and I still really enjoyed it. While others hated it. I think the difference is what we were hyped about. Some people were expecting this incredibly intelligent movie that answers questions, etc. I expected a fun, scifi summer blockbuster with some body gore/horror. I got what I wanted and then some.
I dont love or hate Lindelof, so I'm not really defending him, moreso the movie. Just looking for possible answers to people's complaints
Because when you think about it, she attacked 2 of her companions to escape the medical bay in the first place because she was infected. She sure doesn't want to bring it to attention. Now on that note, did nobody else know about her condition? Nobody made any notion to contain her when she walked straight into Weyland's room. I guess David knew right away what had happened?
TrumanBurbank
Member
The opening credits were so fantastic. Best part of the movie IMO.
Lasthope106
Member
The engineers wants us dead because Prometheus has given fire to humans. Some engineer invited humans to go see the "fire," a new technology, in this case the alien black goo weapon. That is why the engineer that was asleep tried to kill the humans, he knew that the minute humans got their hands on the black goo, we would use it to bring destruction to the entire universe. In the sequel, I'm hoping we meet "Prometheus," the engineer that gave the invitation.
brandonh83
Banned
I expected a little of both, really. That scene with Shaw, tyrant, and squid all together at the same time -- I wanted that. What I didn't want was for it to be cut off so quickly. In a movie like this, stuff like that is what I have the biggest problems with.
You talking about the nature shots and such? Reminded me of 2001, which isnt a good thing. Though at least it was short.
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