PROMETHEUS UNMARKED SPOILER THREAD!

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GhaleonEB said:
And also, why David's line to the Engineer was in the screenplay, but not subtitled in the film. The bowl and Fifield mutation would have helped viewers understand the back story better, and David's line perhaps given insight into the Engineer's behavior. But no, can't have that! Would have made too much sense.
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I have been out - what was David's line?
 
Stinkles said:
I have been out - what was David's line?
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I don't know. The writer confirmed in an interview that David's line was written in the screenplay and intended to be included, but Scott overruled including the subtitle in the film as he didn't want to reveal what David said.

A decision I don't understand at all, because it sorta seems important given what happens next. I'm hoping it leaks out somehow, like black goo from a vase.
 
I'll never understand the need to have every single thing spelled out for you. The line is meant to be mysterious. Fill in the blanks with your imagination.

People will bitch and moan because they didnt understand what David said, and people will bitch and moan because they didn't like what David said. "Scott shouldn't have included subtitles during that scene! He should have left what David said a mystery!"
 
Just got back from IMAX...

Ah...I really like the film...but I feel so dis-satisfied. The end especially feels rushed by 30 minutes maybe more.

Also are the engineers what are they? Obviously human but more advanced right? Did they make humans on earth? They created that goo to advance the species so to speak and planned test it on earth? But they found out its deadly and so they abandoned their plans right?

Regardless of story which doesn't seem to add up...I found it to be a very beautiful film. I'm not sure how I would rate it though.
 
Jack Scofield said:
I'll never understand the need to have every single thing spelled out for you. The line is meant to be mysterious. Fill in the blanks with your imagination.

People will bitch and moan because they didnt understand what David said, and people will bitch and moan because they didn't like what David said. "Scott shouldn't have included subtitles during that scene! He should have left what David said a mystery!"
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You're right that probably is what would have happened. I bet what he said is nothing earth shattering, though.
 
F#A#Oo said:
Just got back from IMAX...

Ah...I really like the film...but I feel so dis-satisfied. The end especially feels rushed by 30 minutes maybe more.

Also are the engineers what are they? Obviously human but more advanced right? Did they make humans on earth? They created that goo to advance the species so to speak and planned test it on earth? But they found out its deadly and so they abandoned their plans right?

Regardless of story which doesn't seem to add up...I found it to be a very beautiful film. I'm not sure how I would rate it though.
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They are indeed our makers. Jesus was a white rubber guy.
 
Jack Scofield said:
I'll never understand the need to have every single thing spelled out for you. The line is meant to be mysterious. Fill in the blanks with your imagination.

People will bitch and moan because they didnt understand what David said, and people will bitch and moan because they didn't like what David said. "Scott shouldn't have included subtitles during that scene! He should have left what David said a mystery!"
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I imagine it's left a mystery so to let us wonder whether what David asks had anything to do with what Weyland wanted him to ask, or whether he asked something that he himself was curious about.
 
Salvor.Hardin said:
I imagine it's left a mystery so to let us wonder whether what David asks had anything to do with what Weyland wanted him to ask, or whether he asked something that he himself was curious about.
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Exactly. I'd much prefer this over some definitive answer that's bound to disappoint people. Much more intriguing this way.
 
Just saw it for the first time.

Cool movie but I had stupid shit on my mind and I was pretty distracted for the first half of it so I'll have to watch it again when it comes out on blu-ray.

I saw it in IMAX 3D and got lost getting to the theater. I had to drive 30 miles.

It was my first time seeing a movie in 3D or IMAX so that was pretty cool although I expected the screen to be bigger and putting glasses over top of my own glasses was kind of annoying.

I'll have to dig through this thread now.
 
Yeah the stupid green stone was a bowl, I posted the screenshot of Holloway pointing his flashlight at the bowl before. It was changed in post-production or something.

Even in the movie it makes no sense that upon touching the stone, Holloway says "this is a tomb", but it would have made more sense if touching the bowl as originally planned, since a bowl is pretty much a normal ceremonial prop, like other things in the room.
 
If it wasnt for Imax this movie would have been completely plain for me.

Is it just me or were the characters reactions to everything just weird? So I assume weylan tells the android to infect one of the crew members. To get some results or something. Really? the first thing on your mind isnt to put the goo under a microscope or something, maybe test it on some rats? So the android knows the girl is pregnant with some murderous alien baby growing at an extremely rapid rate and... he planned on putting her in cryo? for someone so bent on immortality he doesnt bother with any precautions on protecting himself from a biohazard.
She escapes. Somehow manages to get into therons quarters, guess there wasnt a lock on the door for some reason. Has a c section of some alien baby, she comes to weylan all bloody and shit. And everyones all like "Hey suit up, we're going to see the aliens. Oh and no hard feelings on knocking out two of our people, theyre awake now. What?? what baby??"

Theres alot of things to nitpick. Like why was the android programmed to be a douchebag "So sad that he died like your father. Ebola lol. Oh yeah I check ur dreams after I watch lawrence of arabia"
 
For those that haven't read this post-release Lindelof interview that seems to be making a lot of noise:

There are a few loose ends left at the end of the film, was that part of the writing process, or the re-writes?

One man’s loose end is another man’s ambiguity and Ridley was very interesting in ambiguity. As I said we were talking about 2001 a lot and Ridley is a huge Kubrick fan and he’s still trying to make sense of the end of 2001 and he would say ‘Explain to me the end of 2001′ and ‘is it not some kind of rebirth metaphor?’ and I would agree but 2001 is far more interesting to me than 2010 which spells in out explicitly. So we have to work out if a sci-fi film is going to delve into the question of where do we come from and why has God turned against me? How much do we let people find out for themselves? How much room should there be for future films? We’ve seen the film which is about ‘ok, we’ve unleashed this creature’ and Prometheus is more about who made us, why did they make us and now this question of why do they want to destroy us? Is it at arbitrary as being done with this petri dish, or did we do something to deserve it. This is the fundamental question that we ask ourselves especially when something bad befalls us. This idea of fundamental judgement weigh in. All these questions were on the table and yes, there were drafts with more specifically spelled out versions. Ridley’s instinct was to pull back and I’d say ‘I’m still eating shit a year on from the end of Lost where we didn’t directly spell everything out – are you sure you want to do this?’ He would rather have had people fighting against it and not know then spell it out. I know its obnoxious to say that you should see the movie a couple of times to really appreciate it but that is how the movie was designed – things that seem throwaway, for example when they do the carbon dating of the dead Engineer and realise that he’s been dead for two thousand years and you think ‘if two thousand years ago The Engineers decided to wipe us out what happened back then?’ Is there any correlation between what was happening on the Earth two thousand years ago and this decision? Could a sequel start in that time period and begin to contextualize what we did to piss these beings off?

But you and Ridley know, in your mind, exactly what is happening here?

Yeah, and if enough people go and see the movie and if there’s a real sense of people wanting there to be another one then the second movie would clearly answer the question of what did we do to deserve this. And always the question is that if we want to explain this how do we do it in a dramatic way? It won’t be two people siting in a room with The Engineers sitting up and say ‘Ok, well here’s what you did to piss me off…’ I was always driven by the idea that Shaw was the only believer in the crew and that it feels outdated in 2093, it feels old fashioned – especially as she’s embracing this fundamental scientific knowledge, and she gets very excited when she learns that she was created by these beings as opposed to some supernatural deity but he doesn’t make her shed her faith, it only instills it. So, at the end of this journey and she’s only person who made it through you ask yourself why was that? Was God protecting her as the only true believer? The entire point of being alive is to ask these questions and search for some meaning so Ridley wanted the film to end with Shaw announcing that she was still searching.

David is perhaps the strongest character in the crew, can you talk about the process of writing for him?

David was clearly the most fun to write, robots are fun to write as they’re not burdened by the same emotional truths of irrationalities that humans are. You have to work out who programmed them and what did they program them to do. Then you get into the interesting area of how capable is a robot of original thought? I looked at David through the prism of a five year old, I have a five year old and if he loves a movie then he watches it over and over again, and we’ve seen robots who have read everything but I thought why not have a robot who loves Lawrence of Arabia and just watches it over and over? And in the same way as you’d mod an iPhone if there were ten thousand Michael Fassbenders out there wouldn’t you want them to have their own individuality? This one wants to dye his hair like Lawrence. Also the notion of Pinocchio robots as I call them, robots that want to be human, is used up. Why would a robot want to be human? I think it’s more interesting if you have a robot who didn’t understand humans, or who considers emotions a huge pain in the ass. Ultimately David’s purpose in the movie was to comment on the folly of the mission as a whole – these humans are seeking out their creators and this robot is hanging out with his creators and, frankly, he’s not impressed… A lot of it came from Michael’s performance, the dry wit… I could write an entire movie of David going off on his adventures.
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Just started watching Alien again for the first time since I was probably 8 or so. Is there any Prometheus foreshadowing (er, throwbacks, I guess) in this film?
 
GhaleonEB said:
I don't know. The writer confirmed in an interview that David's line was written in the screenplay and intended to be included, but Scott overruled including the subtitle in the film as he didn't want to reveal what David said.

A decision I don't understand at all, because it sorta seems important given what happens next. I'm hoping it leaks out somehow, like black goo from a vase.
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Makes sense to me. Look at how much more discussion that scene gets because he took it out.
 
Oh dear Jebus. Does anyone have the link handy where Ridley's on record saying that Jesus was a basically a Space Jockey sent down to Earth to spread good will? He was joking, right?
 
Nappuccino said:
I'd say it's more the other way around.
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Yeah I'm now 30 minutes in and I'm realizing I remember nothing about the film except, "wow, aliens!". And now here's the ship with A space jockey sitting in the captain's seat just like in Prometheus. I should have figured, but, yeah.
 
Double D said:
Just started watching Alien again for the first time since I was probably 8 or so. Is there any Prometheus foreshadowing (er, throwbacks, I guess) in this film?
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Only thing I can think of are is the armor design on the engineers were very alieny. And the field of goo vases resembled a field of alien eggs. Multiple versions of the face hugger too.
 
Good interview...ok make the sequel...I'll buy the blu-ray...

Also yeah David was a really good character. I'm glad he wasn't terminated or what ever it is that stops androids functioning.
 
the_log_ride said:
Oh dear Jebus. Does anyone have the link handy where Ridley's on record saying that Jesus was a basically a Space Jockey sent down to Earth to spread good will? He was joking, right?
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On the opening scene:

“…[the] sequence at the beginning of the film that is fundamentally creation. It’s a donation, in the sense that the weight and the construction of the DNA of those aliens is way beyond what we can possibly imagine”

But is it happening on Earth?:

“No, it doesn’t have to be. That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself. If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, et cetera.”

On whether we made our creators hate us and how:

“We definitely did… if you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Let’s send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.’ Guess what? They crucified him.”
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Source

So apparently men running around in skirts means humans have gone out of control for Ridley Scott.
 
Given that his engineers seem to walk around in diapers, I somehow don't think skirts were really the thing he was focused on. He was just tying it to the Romans.
 
At least Carter and Woola knew how to deal with those pesky Engineers.

BWXYY.jpg
 
Ashhong said:
Makes sense to me. Look at how much more discussion that scene gets because he took it out.
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There's a big difference between ambiguity and incoherence. Ambiguity is effective when the specifics aren't important and would reduce the impact of the plot point.

What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Something Really Good. (The specifics are unimportant.)

What happened to the Space Jockey in ALIEN? Something Really Bad. (The specifics are unimportant.)

The problem is the entire point of Prometheus is to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien. So if you just pile a bunch of ambiguities on top of it again, why make the film in the first place?
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
There's a big difference between ambiguity and incoherence. Ambiguity is effective when the specifics aren't important and would reduce the impact of the plot point.

What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Something Really Good. (The specifics are unimportant.)

What happened to the Space Jockey in ALIEN? Something Really Bad. (The specifics are unimportant.)

The problem is the entire point of Prometheus is to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien. So if you just pile a bunch of ambiguities on top of it again, why make the film in the first place?
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I'm talking specifically about the David moment. Based on the rules that the film shows us, we know EXACTLY what David said. However, by leaving the subtitles out, one is allowed to wonder, if they so choose, if he said something else.

Also, no, Prometheus was not made to simply explain why that SJ was there in Alien.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
There's a big difference between ambiguity and incoherence. Ambiguity is effective when the specifics aren't important and would reduce the impact of the plot point.

What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Something Really Good. (The specifics are unimportant.)

What happened to the Space Jockey in ALIEN? Something Really Bad. (The specifics are unimportant.)

The problem is the entire point of Prometheus is to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien. So if you just pile a bunch of ambiguities on top of it again, why make the film in the first place?
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For a sequel in which all our questions are answered!

(I imagine the first lines of the movie will be from Shaw "So... what did you say to that guy?)

really, there's only a few options to what David said.

1) Exactly what Weyland asked
2) The Opposite of what Weyland asked
3) Something logically divined by David's mentality: perhaps "Please free me from the binds of this body/ these people"?
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
The problem is the entire point of Prometheus is to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien. So if you just pile a bunch of ambiguities on top of it again, why make the film in the first place?
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I don't think Ridley's intent was to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien, actually. It may be entirely right to say that it was a mistake to even tie this movie into Alien as much as they did, because I think the point was supposed to be more about why our creators might abandon us or want to destroy us.
 
maharg said:
I don't think Ridley's intent was to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien, actually. It may be entirely right to say that it was a mistake to even tie this movie into Alien as much as they did, because I think the point was supposed to be more about why our creators might abandon us or want to destroy us.
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I definitely think he could not decide how directly to tie this to the Alien films. It feels like he hemmed and hawed and eventually tied it more directly than he originally intended, but not directly enough to make much sense.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
The problem is the entire point of Prometheus is to explain the Something Really Bad in Alien. So if you just pile a bunch of ambiguities on top of it again, why make the film in the first place?
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That's not the point of Prometheus at all. It explains who that guy is, where he's from, what he may have been doing. But it never depicts that exact Engineer and what happened to him, only implies that that a xeno burst out of his chest -- which is exactly what was implied back in Alien too.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
I definitely think he could not decide how directly to tie this to the Alien films. It feels like he hemmed and hawed and eventually tied it more directly than he originally intended, but not directly enough to make much sense.
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Going by a lot of the production art, I think he actually moved away from the direct ties which makes things a bit more wishy-washy because they had to create things that didn't already exist but still have them fit in the pre-existing world and, at some point, i think they just went "fuck it, let's just make something neat looking."
 
Nappuccino said:
For a sequel in which all our questions are answered!

(I imagine the first lines of the movie will be from Shaw "So... what did you say to that guy?)

really, there's only a few options to what David said.

1) Exactly what Weyland asked
2) The Opposite of what Weyland asked
3) Something logically divined by David's mentality: perhaps "Please free me from the binds of this body/ these people"?
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Maybe he said something in the line of "To be a god you have to be immortal, thus you are not god but a mere mortal like man" that would possible piss him off if he sees himself like a godlike figure
 
Nappuccino said:
Going by a lot of the production art, I think he actually moved away from the direct ties which makes things a bit more wishy-washy because they had to create things that didn't already exist but still have them fit in the pre-existing world and, at some point, i think they just went "fuck it, let's just make something neat looking."
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Yeah on second thought if I remember the development rumors it was "prequel to Alien" "no it isn't" "well maybe". The end result is equally muddled though.
 
Ashhong said:
In this case it kind of does. If he subtitled it.......what would there be to discuss?
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Seriously? We heard it here folks, if David's one line in that one scene had been revealed, we would not be discussing this film.

A well written line could both provide insight into David character - did he ask his own question, do his master's bidding, or straddle the line? - as well as provide some insight into the Engineer's motivation, without spelling out plot points. Especially since we did not get a reply.

I'm quite fine with most of the big-ticket questions not being answered, and the way the details of the Engineer's fate on the installation are doled out in clues or otherwise left open. What I wanted was a coherent narrative, scenes that build on one another. Small decisions like removing connections between scenes (oh hay it's a green...crystal...thingy....) and altering key design elements (so the goo....melted him into a zombie or something?) do nothing but make the film more nonsensical than it should have been.

Omitting key dialogue does not make it mysterious, it makes the subsequent events devoid of context.
 
GhaleonEB said:
And also, why David's line to the Engineer was in the screenplay, but not subtitled in the film. The bowl and Fifield mutation would have helped viewers understand the back story better, and David's line perhaps given insight into the Engineer's behavior. But no, can't have that! Would have made too much sense.
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wanting everything clarified really does destroy films.

One of the things about Lost In Translation; is that cryptic last whispered line from BM-Sjo. You don't know what they're saying and its great.

I don't think they need to spell everything out.


Jack Scofield said:
I'll never understand the need to have every single thing spelled out for you. The line is meant to be mysterious. Fill in the blanks with your imagination.

People will bitch and moan because they didnt understand what David said, and people will bitch and moan because they didn't like what David said. "Scott shouldn't have included subtitles during that scene! He should have left what David said a mystery!"
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agreed
 
i liked the movie. didn't think it was great but it was entertaining. like others have said, it seems like there are a lot of missing scenes.

one thing that bugged me most was shaw being pregnant and then removing the alien. she's sitting on the table, they're going to freeze her or whatever, and then she kicks 2 peoples asses and runs away. no one chases her or tries to stop her. no one is around? then she has it removed and the next time she sees the other people they're just like "sup". i don't get that.

i guess i don't get a lot of the reactions people had in the movie to various things but im willing to enjoy the movie for what it was. i also fucking hated the lead guy (the guy who gets infected by fassbender poisoning his drink). fucking horrible. they should have given that part to james mcavoy! mcavoy + fassbender reunited!
 
Man, the black and white pictures of the Engineers a few pages back are way creepier than in the actual movie. He / they looks really menacing.

Black + white >>>>>>> color
 
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