Support NeoGAF

[SpeedingUptoStop]

So half of it is obvious and the other half was the stuff that actually mattered? You're not making much sense here.

Haha, oh man, not this thread too.

I'm not going to be able to discuss this movie for a couple months until the people who are resistant to basic storytelling techniques have cleared out and found other things to hate because they didn't understand what happened on screen. Fuck man. Just reading a handful of comments is like, fuck, I'm out, you win Internet.

 

[zoukka]

It would also explain who attacked the engineers on that planet, the pile of bodies, etc. It was humans who killed them.

No they were killed by chestbursters, which was shown and told in the movie. Same thing for the engineers in the cryochambers except the one that they woke up.

 

[border]

Bioweapon doesn't really work, I think, as I pointed out above. The opening shows the Space Jockey ingesting it to seed life on a planet. If it reacted and created bioweapons automatically, like it did when the humans showed up, they wouldn't be able to contain it all that well.

Or it's simply a different kind of goo at the beginning of the film. Perhaps they changed the formula in the last 35,000 years. And again if it wasn't a weapon of sort, then what went wrong at the facility on the distant planet?

The LiveJournal hypothesis fails to explain what the motivations of the actual remaining Engineer are. If he's just some spacedude who wants to get away from the humans that are fucking up his goo, then why is he going to Earth? Moreover, the LiveJournal claims that the captain and his crew were "giving up their lives in order to save others". But if the Engineer is benevolent and was not intending to destroy the human race, then how is it self-sacrifice at all?

 

[The Elite]

Loved it. Lots of clapping at the end too.

There wasn't much in the way of plotholes either. I think a lot of people confuse those for unanswered questions.

 

[zoukka]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here in regards to the mural. It looks like one of the Engineers is punching a Chozo from Metroid in the head.
http://dejanno.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/prometheus.jpg

I see it as a human evolved from a sack of shit basically. The humanoid looks more human than engineer at least.

 

[ryutaro's mama]

Or it's simply a different kind of goo at the beginning of the film. Perhaps they changed the formula in the last 35,000 years. And again if it wasn't a weapon of sort, then what went wrong at the facility on the distant planet?

The LiveJournal hypothesis fails to explain what the motivations of the actual remaining Engineer are. If he's just some spacedude who wants to get away from the humans that are fucking up his goo, then why is he going to Earth? Moreover, the LiveJournal claims that the captain and his crew were "giving up their lives in order to save others". But if the Engineer is benevolent and was not intending to destroy the human race, then how is it self-sacrifice at all?

I explained my theory on the previous page:

I didn't see it as a desire to kill us (in some malicious way) per se at all.

I saw it a Earth was a controlled ant colony of theirs that they planned to use a place to test their bio-weapons on when the time came.

I just figured they were setting up breeding grounds like that all over the galaxy and to them, we were just guinea pigs.

Once the Engineers found that the experiments had made their way out of the colony and found them, it enraged him and THAT is when he made the decision to got DEF CON 17 on Earth.

Earth had gotten too big for its britches and the experiment needed to be terminated.

 

[lush]

Seriously do read cavalorn's analysis. Lots of allegories and parallels that give the film's seemingly nonsensical plot points a lot of meaning.

Thanks for posting this. Interesting read.

 

[The Elite]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here in regards to the mural. It looks like one of the Engineers is punching a Chozo from Metroid in the head.
http://dejanno.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/prometheus.jpg

You realize the Chozo in Metroid are based on the Space Jockey design from Alien.

All this shit is cyclical. lol.

 

[Not a Jellyfish]

Basic question here, saw the film today and do not know what to make of the opening of the film with the engineer or space jockey drinking that stuff and dying...Explain please.

 

[zoukka]

Basic question here, saw the film today and do not know what to make of the opening of the film with the engineer or space jockey drinking that stuff and dying...Explain please.

Seeding the human race.


And I think Alien and Metroid are the only sci-fi that really do it for me in terms of the atmosphere and Prometheus tapped that well like a perfect round ass.

 

[ryutaro's mama]

Basic question here, saw the film today and do not know what to make of the opening of the film with the engineer or space jockey drinking that stuff and dying...Explain please.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=38699614&postcount=1442

 

[FreedomFrisbee]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here in regards to the mural. It looks like one of the Engineers is punching a Chozo from Metroid in the head.
http://dejanno.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/prometheus.jpg

Aha! The mural supports my theory then!

-The Engineers are spreading life for some reason, and that reason seems to be hinted at. They are clearly seeking to create weapons for war. The fluid is clearly a weapon of war. How do they make the fluid? And in such large amounts as they had? My friends and I came to the conclusion that they seed life to break it down into the fluid. Life is, for the Engineers, a thing to be harvested at a certain point, and not allowed to rival them. They're trying to eliminate whatever is threatening them, not seed more creatures that could possibly threaten them. Hence their wanting to go to earth and break down life. Answering the invitation was the cue to go harvest them.
-The thing this implies is that the Engineers are fighting something. THAT is the only thing that can't really be answered based on the movie alone. They could be fighting themselves, or something we don't even know about yet. You gotta be making weapons to use against something after all.

The thing its hitting being the thing they're fighting. Assuming that's what's happening anyways. Would be cool if the other thing was supposed to be this:

Makes sense seeing as they culled a lot of other scrapped elements from previous movies.

 

[Ether_Snake]

I think the idea that the reason the engineers want humans dead is because humans are already fighting them makes sense.

1- Engineers were friendly, created life. Self-sacrifice = good, so they are good guys.

2- Humans had contact with them, and were taught by them as indicated by the worship and star map.

3- The star map doesn't lead directly to their home, it's their "location", it's a big area. The moon just happens to be one place among many in that general area. The "home planet" of the engineers might be in that area, not extremely further away. This would remove the issue of "why invite them there, when they were on good terms, when it's actually a military installation?". They invited humans to their home world's "system", not to that particular moon.

4- Humans, presumably, did something wrong around 2000 years ago. Engineers changed their minds and decided to kill the humans. They create a bio-weapon, using their life-making-goo. But something attacks them and foils their plans. There is no indication that the engineers were attacked by their own creation, which is still all stored in pods, albeit in an old decrepit ship. The head they brought back in was from the room with the bioweapons, so of course it was infected. The pile of engineer bodies looked like it had been made by someone; it looked like a scene in a movie when bad guys pile up the bodies of their dead enemies. The hologram memories also never show any signs of what the engineers were running from, and they didn't look armed. The dead bodies showed no signs of having been killed by weird-ass black-goo aliens.

5- The reaction of the engineer when he sees the humans is panic and attack and trying to flee with his ship, as if those humans could be an immediate threat to him (I wonder what David said).

6- The girl leaves to find out why the aliens changed their mind. Clearly the "why" is key to the sequel, and presumably it would involve a "is it the right thing or the wrong thing for them to do?".

So all of this leads me to believe that, if you tie it to the title of the movie: somehow, humans got access to the "fire" of the gods a long time ago, either given to them or stolen or whatever, and turned against the engineers (ties in to what David kept harping about directly and indirectly about "people wanting their parents dead"). So I think the holograms are showing those humans attacking the engineers, it's a space war, and this just happened to be a military facility of the space jockeys that was attacked by humans.

There can't be a sequel set in space with Shaz and David as the only humans, so expect ancient human-race with space-alien tech VS space jockeys for Prometheus 2, and hence the explanation why humans "have to be killed".

Maybe

 

[Count Dookkake]

I'm sure it's been said, but in case anyone missed it, the mural is a parody of the Sistine Chapel.

Yuuuup. Alien + Deep Red = Metroid.

For real? What's the connection?

 

[Ether_Snake]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here in regards to the mural. It looks like one of the Engineers is punching a Chozo from Metroid in the head.
http://dejanno.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/prometheus.jpg

It is a human kicking the ass of a spacesuited-space jockey, which fits with what I said above. It's war with humans. The guy even has a bullet-belt or something.

 

[The Elite]

I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here in regards to the mural. It looks like one of the Engineers is punching a Chozo from Metroid in the head.
http://dejanno.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/prometheus.jpg

I actually think that whatever is bending before the Engineer here is something that worshipped them on LV-223. I don't think the Engineers build a giant head to themselves. They were worshipped by natives on the planet who built temples in their honour.

 

[The Elite]

Yuuuup. Alien + Deep Red = Metroid.

Deep Red? How so?

 

[zoukka]

Ether_Snake you are making a lot of shit up there lol. The Engineers killed on the site died by xenomorphs. Also the engineer did not fucking panic, he looked pleased and smug when he dispatched the crew.

 

[The Elite]

Ether_Snake you are making a lot of shit up there lol. The Engineers killed on the site died by xenomorphs. Also the engineer did not fucking panic, he looked pleased and smug when he dispatched the crew.

The star maps indicated that they were heading to Earth prior to the Xenomorph out break, prepared to destroy it. That's how Ether came to the conclusion that the humans must have done something to piss off the Engineers 2000 years ago.

It actually makes sense.

 

[kingslunk]

Does anyone have a picture of the door? Leading to the vases?

It clearly has a xenomorph on it.

The engineers clearly knew what the black goo would do and it seems like they wanted to use the black goo on the humans to create the xenomorph to use as their weapons, they probably didn't realize that they needed a face hugger created by intercourse to create the xenomorph which is what killed them in the first place.

The question then becomes where did the black goo come from and how did they know it creates the xenomorph.

Thats how I interpreted it.

 

[The Elite]

Does anyone have a picture of the door? Leading to the vases?

It clearly has a xenomorph on it.

The engineers clearly knew what the black goo would do and it seems like they wanted to use the black goo on the humans to create the xenomorph to use as their weapons, they probably didn't realize that they needed a face hugger created by intercourse to create the xenomorph which is what killed them in the first place.

The question then becomes where did the black goo come from and how did they know it creates the xenomorph.

Thats how I interpreted it.

Was the image of the xenomorph on a door? I thought it was inside the room, behind the head. It seemed to have a unique altar and position in the room.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I think the idea that the reason the engineers want humans dead is because humans are already fighting them makes sense.

1- Engineers were friendly, created life. Self-sacrifice = good, so they are good guys.

2- Humans had contact with them, and were taught by them as indicated by the worship and star map.

3- The star map doesn't lead directly to their home, it's their "location", it's a big area. The moon just happens to be one place among many in that general area. The "home planet" of the engineers might be in that area, not extremely further away. This would remove the issue of "why invite them there, when they were on good terms, when it's actually a military installation?". They invited humans to their home world's "system", not to that particular moon.

4- Humans, presumably, did something wrong around 2000 years ago. Engineers changed their minds and decided to kill the humans. They create a bio-weapon, using their life-making-goo. But something attacks them and foils their plans. There is no indication that the engineers were attacked by their own creation, which is still all stored in pods, albeit in an old decrepit ship. The head they brought back in was from the room with the bioweapons, so of course it was infected. The pile of engineer bodies looked like it had been made by someone; it looked like a scene in a movie when bad guys pile up the bodies of their dead enemies. The hologram memories also never show any signs of what the engineers were running from, and they didn't look armed. The dead bodies showed no signs of having been killed by weird-ass black-goo aliens.

The dead bodies had large holes blown outward in their abdomens. We know what does that.

My take on events is fairly straight forward: they were cultivating humans on Earth, but at some point decided to reset the planet with a bombing run of the black goo, to start the evolutionary cycle again. Reset button! Probably as we became increasingly warlike; they didn't want to wait until we followed their invitation, because they saw what we'd become.

The installation that was in charge of monitoring Earth is the one we visit in the film. While preparing for the bombing run to Earth, an outbreak occurs. You know, tentacled things. That is what the Engineers were running from in the holographic displays.

What I don't understand is, why didn't the Engineers who managed to get inside the ship take off 2,000 years ago? In the hologram David was watching, they were clearly initiating the launch sequence and selecting Earth as the destination. Then....they go into cryosleep instead. Given how the Engineer they wake up immediately takes off to go to Earth, what prevented them from doing so before?

 

[Sidzed2]

Ether_Snake you are making a lot of shit up there lol. The Engineers killed on the site died by xenomorphs. Also the engineer did not fucking panic, he looked pleased and smug when he dispatched the crew.

No no, the engineers died on account of an accidental outbreak of the bioweapon which presumably turned them all zombie-like and diseased. Remember the decapitated head? It was all tarred and blackened and in a state of change when Shaw examined it, with black goo coming out of its ears. There was an accident with the weapon.

 

[Shouta]

Or it's simply a different kind of goo at the beginning of the film. Perhaps they changed the formula in the last 35,000 years. And again if it wasn't a weapon of sort, then what went wrong at the facility on the distant planet?

The LiveJournal hypothesis fails to explain what the motivations of the actual remaining Engineer are. If he's just some spacedude who wants to get away from the humans that are fucking up his goo, then why is he going to Earth? Moreover, the LiveJournal claims that the captain and his crew were "giving up their lives in order to save others". But if the Engineer is benevolent and was not intending to destroy the human race, then how is it self-sacrifice at all?

Again, as I said in my previous posts, there's a possibility that they were killed because of something that was created from the goo interacting with humans 2000 years ago.

They go to interact with humans 2000 years ago, but leave because they were disgusted with them. The goo responded to humans and created something on the ship that eventually killed the Engineers when they got back to the planet.

The LJ hypothesis works if you assume what the expedition team says isn't the exact truth of what is going on. They assume that the Engineer was heading to Earth but what if he wasn't? The humans in the story have no real knowledge of what's going on, they only assume based on what's going on rather than understanding the full situation.

We CAN assume that he was going to destroy Earth but we don't know for sure. The human perspective in the film is unreliable because they were making snap judgements and were reacting to a situation unknown to them.

As I pointed out already, if the goo was a bioweapon, why did it not react to David? Why were the Space Jockeys able to handle it normally?

Here's another little thing to consider. Why was the engineer that was running towards the sealed chamber decapitated by the door? The likely conclusion to me is that he was infected by an evil version of the goo (hence the lesions), likely from contact with humans, and was trying to get to the jars that were not sealed in the cargo bay. If infected goo were to infect the others, it'd cause it create xenomorphs. He unfortunately was unable to reach the door before it closed and sealed the chamber.

 

[TUROK]

5- The reaction of the engineer when he sees the humans is panic and attack and trying to flee with his ship, as if those humans could be an immediate threat to him (I wonder what David said).

No it isn't, he stares at David curiously, looks as if he's going to caress him, and then rips his head off. That's hardly panic.

 

[Mistouze]

Bioweapon doesn't really work, I think, as I pointed out above. The opening shows the Space Jockey ingesting it to seed life on a planet. If it reacted and created bioweapons automatically, like it did when the humans showed up, they wouldn't be able to contain it all that well.

I got a "drinking hemlock" vibe from that scene. Like the promethean fucked up big time (maybe by inventing the bioweapon) and got punished to die by his own creation on a deserted, life-less planet.

 

[thebaroness]

I LOVED all the Ridley influence in this film.

And I DISLIKED all the Lindelof bits.

I know that's the general feeling everyone has, but I share it!

What really bothered me were characters acting completely out of place from what was established. Most importantly, why did the superior being of intellect go all ape shit and kill everyone when he was awoken? Was he just enraged by post-cryo hangover? Was he just so mad humans were THERE all up in his space. Did the existence of another created life form (David) make him freak out? Whhhhhyyyy?

Superior beings should at least kill everyone more elegantly if they have murderous intentions in the first place.

 

[border]

I explained my theory on the previous page:

I saw it a Earth was a controlled ant colony of theirs that they planned to use a place to test their bio-weapons on when the time came.

I just figured they were setting up breeding grounds like that all over the galaxy and to them, we were just guinea pigs.

Once the Engineers found that the experiments had made their way out of the colony and found them, it enraged him and THAT is when he made the decision to got DEF CON 17 on Earth.

Earth had gotten too big for its britches and the experiment needed to be terminated.

Your theory is a more traditional one, that assumes the Space Jockeys just wanted to wipe out the humans because they had gained too much knowledge. They were not benevolent beings that believed in self-sacrifice....just scientists that wanted to contain an experiment that had gotten out of control.

In that scenario, the starmap doesn't make sense though - why lead them back to your homeworld(s) if you don't want them to come back? One might argue that the starmap is a test, and if anyone passes said test they get wiped out. But that's an incredibly convoluted and dangerous way to keep track of your experiment. A race that advanced would have set up a less risky means of surveillance.

 

[Shouta]

No it isn't, he stares at David curiously, looks as if he's going to caress him, and then rips his head off. That's hardly panic.

He looks at Shaw several times like he might recognize what possibly happened with her though, as I recall. Then when David speaks to him, he goes bananas, especially after realizing David was artificial.

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

Wow. I hate to be one of those hyperbolic people, but I think I was truely offended by the movie. Objectively, it wasn't bad, and I liked a lot of the landscape shots and stuff, but it was just mind bottlingly horrible.

I think what bothers me the most is that it was billed as not an Alien prequel, but it obviously was. From a lot of the alien variants being very similar to what was in the movie Alien.

 

[ryutaro's mama]

What I don't understand is, why didn't the Engineers who managed to get inside the ship take off 2,000 years ago? In the hologram David was watching, they were clearly initiating the launch sequence and selecting Earth as the destination. Then....they go into cryosleep instead. Given how the Engineer they wake up immediately takes off to go to Earth, what prevented them from doing so before?

I'd have to see it again but didn't the hologram journal explain why they didn't take off? I thought the Captain (Head Engineer) that programmed the cryo chambers died and as a result the ship never left.

Like I said, I would have to see it again.

 

[Erigu]

What I don't understand is, why didn't the Engineers who managed to get inside the ship take off 2,000 years ago? In the hologram David was watching, they were clearly initiating the launch sequence and selecting Earth as the destination. Then....they go into cryosleep instead. Given how the Engineer they wake up immediately takes off to go to Earth, what prevented them from doing so before?

And were all those bases/ships compromised at the same time? Were those the last Engineers in the universe (it's been 2000 years, and we're still there)?

I LOVED all the Ridley influence in this film.
And I DISLIKED all the Lindelof bits.

It seems Scott had a lot of influence on the plot though... And I would think he had more authority overall than Lindelof.

 

[Ether_Snake]

The star maps indicated that they were heading to Earth prior to the Xenomorph out break, prepared to destroy it. That's how Ether came to the conclusion that the humans must have done something to piss off the Engineers 2000 years ago.

It actually makes sense.

Actually the star map is on Earth, found in civilizations, so transmitted to humans by the aliens (unless humans somehow found out where the aliens came from, which is unlikely). So the aliens had a good intention if they gave mankind a way to come to them, and the movie makes it clear that the engineers "changed their minds", it would be dumb to go back over that and claim it was a misunderstanding, same with the bioweapons. In a movie, usually when something is spelled out like it was, and it is to make us accept it.

So engineers were on good terms with humans, gave them info to come to them, but then changed their minds and made bioweapons to kill humans. Something stopped them. And it stopped them on the whole damn moon too. There are numerous ships, yet all were stopped somehow. Unlikely to be an accidental spill of their bioweapon.

 

[lush]

Wow. I hate to be one of those hyperbolic people, but I think I was truely offended by the movie. Objectively, it wasn't bad, and I liked a lot of the landscape shots and stuff, but it was just mind bottlingly horrible.

I think what bothers me the most is that it was billed as not an Alien prequel, but it obviously was. From a lot of the alien variants being very similar to what was in the movie Alien.

mind bottingly eh?

 

[The Elite]

I LOVED all the Ridley influence in this film.

And I DISLIKED all the Lindelof bits.

I know that's the general feeling everyone has, but I share it!

What really bothered me were characters acting completely out of place from what was established. Most importantly, why did the superior being of intellect go all ape shit and kill everyone when he was awoken? Was he just enraged by post-cryo hangover? Was he just so mad humans were THERE all up in his space. Did the existence of another created life form (David) make him freak out? Whhhhhyyyy?

Superior beings should at least kill everyone more elegantly if they have murderous intentions in the first place.

How can you honestly say you know which is which?

Ridley directed the film and Lindelof co-wrote it. They both share in the creation. One bit can't be credited to Ridley and another credited to Lindelof. They both played a part. You're basically looking for an excuse to blame Lindelof without blaming Ridley. This is as bad as the "Whedon had nothing to do with the success of Avengers" shit from a few weeks back.

If you don't like the film, that's fine. But Ridley directed what Lindelof wrote. He should share in the blame.

Actually the star map is on Earth, found in civilizations, so transmitted to humans by the aliens (unless humans somehow found out where the aliens came from, which is unlikely). So the aliens had a good intention if they gave mankind a way to come to them, and the movie makes it clear that the engineers "changed their minds", it would be dumb to go back over that and claim it was a misunderstanding, same with the bioweapons. In a movie, usually when something is spelled out like it was, and it is to make us accept it.

So engineers were on good terms with humans, gave them info to come to them, but then changed their minds and made bioweapons to kill humans. Something stopped them. And it stopped them on the whole damn moon too. There are numerous ships, yet all were stopped somehow. Unlikely to be an accidental spill of their bioweapon.

Actually, I'm talking about the star maps that popped up in the pilot room on the spacecraft. Not the cave drawings.

 

[SpeedingUptoStop]

I LOVED all the Ridley influence in this film.

And I DISLIKED all the Lindelof bits.

I know that's the general feeling everyone has, but I share it! .

Gonna slam my head in a door until this becomes true.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Was the image of the xenomorph on a door? I thought it was inside the room, behind the head. It seemed to have a unique altar and position in the room.

And it had a crucified Jesus pose, or a crucified heathen depending on which point of view the engineers have. Either it depicted a "glad we got you bastard xenomorph" idea, or "we love you xenomorph dude" idea.

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

mind bottingly eh?

You know, when something is so crazy it's hard to put your mind in a bottle.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I'd have to see it again but didn't the hologram journal explain why they didn't take off? I thought the Captain (Head Engineer) that programmed the cryo chambers died and as a result the ship never left.

Like I said, I would have to see it again.

Something did happen at the end of the recording, but I didn't understand what. I'm seeing it again next week and I'll be watching for it.

Speaking of which, there's a long shot of Shaw as she's climbing into the escape pod to get oxygen, with the wreaked ship in the background. I swear I saw the Engineer emerge from the ship in the background, but just as my eye moved in that direction, the shot cut away. The timing would work given how quickly after that he arrives.

 

[Mistouze]

Wow. I hate to be one of those hyperbolic people, but I think I was truely offended by the movie. Objectively, it wasn't bad, and I liked a lot of the landscape shots and stuff, but it was just mind bottlingly horrible.

I think what bothers me the most is that it was billed as not an Alien prequel, but it obviously was. From a lot of the alien variants being very similar to what was in the movie Alien.

I won't be that hyperbolic but the only thing I could say about the movie right after seeing it was "meh". There's interesting stuff to talk about plot wise, I liked David the most, the abortion scene was fun in a "let's watch gory shit" sense and IDRIS FUCKING ELBA but in the end the movie didn't move me much. I felt like everything happened so fast that there was no tension.

 

[Cartman86]

He looks at Shaw several times like he might recognize what possibly happened with her though, as I recall. Then when David speaks to him, he goes bananas, especially after realizing David was artificial.

Recognize what? The birth thing? She was wearing a suit. Plus did he actually realize David was artificial? How would he know that? Does ripping his head off signify that? Is it unrealistic to say that if David was human he wouldn't rip off his head?

 

[ryutaro's mama]

Your theory is a more traditional one, that assumes the Space Jockeys just wanted to wipe out the humans because they had gained too much knowledge. They were not benevolent beings that believed in self-sacrifice....just scientists that wanted to contain an experiment that had gotten out of control.

In that scenario, the starmap doesn't make sense though - why lead them back to your homeworld(s) if you don't want them to come back? One might argue that the starmap is a test, and if anyone passes said test they get wiped out. But that's an incredibly convoluted and dangerous way to keep track of your experiment. A race that advanced would have set up a less risky means of surveillance.

Well, it's not their homeworld (rather the spot of their experiment outpost) but like I mentioned before, the "invitation" in my mind was residual genetic "memories" (that our ancestors still had in their DNA) and that's how we found them. We wrote the memories on ancient caves and walls.

Centuries later, our descendants found these clues...

It was never something the Engineers thought could or might happen.

 

[SkyMasterson]

Just got out a few hours ago and loved it.

Now I'm in here reading about some of the "weak narrative" and plot holes and usually I'll see that stuff and be like "damn, they're right" and get down on the movie, but fuck that!

While I agree, some of the things certain characters do don't really make a lot of sense and the whole Weyland being alive thing and then just dying was very anti-climatic, but overall I still enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed every second of it and tried to take in every shot in the movie.

Also, the little tidbit at the end credits was kinda cool. I wonder what it means?

 

[thebaroness]

It seems Scott had a lot of influence on the plot though... And I would think he had more authority overall than Lindelof.

But the parts I didn't like distinctively felt like Lost or Star Trek (both I dislike immensely). Things that would have been solved by using simple logic.

Yeah, the first example being the geologist and biologist leaving the team, getting lost, and acting completely against all professional training they might have ("Hey, we found this neat new life form that might be dangerous. Let me try and touch it!"). I felt like there could have been some other reason to have characters stuck in the pyramid so as to have some death and intrigue in the vase chamber.

A better alternative could have been, the storm could have trapped them all there? Those two wander off? They get attacked by goo worms? Makes much more sense.

 

[Ether_Snake]

The dead bodies had large holes blown outward in their abdomens. We know what does that.

My take on events is fairly straight forward: they were cultivating humans on Earth, but at some point decided to reset the planet with a bombing run of the black goo, to start the evolutionary cycle again. Reset button! Probably as we became increasingly warlike; they didn't want to wait until we followed their invitation, because they saw what we'd become.

The installation that was in charge of monitoring Earth is the one we visit in the film. While preparing for the bombing run to Earth, an outbreak occurs. You know, tentacled things. That is what the Engineers were running from in the holographic displays.

What I don't understand is, why didn't the Engineers who managed to get inside the ship take off 2,000 years ago? In the hologram David was watching, they were clearly initiating the launch sequence and selecting Earth as the destination. Then....they go into cryosleep instead. Given how the Engineer they wake up immediately takes off to go to Earth, what prevented them from doing so before?

I didn't see the busted chests. Maybe you are right. I agree with you about the sequence, the recording gets cut off. The other guys were fine, why is it that only one is alive? There is a missing part. They were going to leave, but the departure was aborted, and one went to sleep instead.

Plot hole?

No no, the engineers died on account of an accidental outbreak of the bioweapon which presumably turned them all zombie-like and diseased. Remember the decapitated head? It was all tarred and blackened and in a state of change when Shaw examined it, with black goo coming out of its ears. There was an accident with the weapon.

My understanding was not that. It was that they ran from something, and one of them got his head chopped after falling. The head having fallen in the weapon room, it got infected.

I have trouble believing the "there was an accident" thing, since all ships on the planet are still there and there are NO signs of aliens, all pods are fine.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I didn't see the busted chests. Maybe you are right. I agree with you about the sequence, the recording gets cut off. The other guys were fine, why is it that only one is alive? There is a missing part. They were going to leave, but the departure was aborted, and one went to sleep instead.

Plot hole?

Yeah, there's a moment when the two guys find the bodies piled up where they pan down to some of them on the ground. I think one of them points it out, and there's a clear large hole in the chest of the one at his feet.

 

[kingslunk]

Wasn't the first scene showing what had happened to them? They took the black goo and it just destroyed their body?

Wouldn't this explained why they were going to earth to test it?

Also it showed charlie? turning into a ravenous beast which also could have happened to the engineers which might have killed him?

I think the whole point of the engineers was to create a xenomorph they could use as a weapon.

 

[The Elite]

My understanding was not that. It was that they ran from something, and one of them got his head chopped after falling. The head having fallen in the weapon room, it got infected.

Basically, the doors were closing up to contain a contamination outbreak. One unlucky space jockey didn't make it in time.

 

[The Elite]

So, Is the first X-Files movie canon in the Alien universe now?

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

I won't be that hyperbolic but the only thing I could say about the movie right after seeing it was "meh". There's interesting stuff to talk about plot wise, I liked David the most, the abortion scene was fun in a "let's watch gory shit" sense and IDRIS FUCKING ELBA but in the end the movie didn't move me much. I felt like everything happened so fast that there was no tension.

I walked out and was absolutely dumbfounded. The only thing that came out of my mouth was "that was fucking terrible." David, outside of some of his motivations, was a great character. Fassbender was incredible. And Idris was pretty badass.