PROMETHEUS UNMARKED SPOILER THREAD!

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I will buy every release too. I can't wait to get my hands on the 3D Blu-ray with all those extra features. I'm especially interested to finally see some of the scenes that were cut that have already been mentioned by director/writer/cast.
It doesn't sound so great, but I want to see how that uncut fight between Shaw and the engineer works out.
 
I will buy every release too. I can't wait to get my hands on the 3D Blu-ray with all those extra features. I'm especially interested to finally see some of the scenes that were cut that have already been mentioned by director/writer/cast.
It doesn't sound so great, but I want to see how that uncut fight between Shaw and the engineer works out.

It looked like she got a few whacks with the axe in, at least (head, leg).

In the pic below, the bio-mechanical design on the Engineer is so great. Shame his role is so hollow in the film. :\
 
Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if Fox is doing another Avatar and releasing the EE a few months down the line.

Definitely getting this day one, though. Would probably be worth it just for the Ridley commentary, which are always awesome. Also want to see how the movie worked on paper with the final draft. Is Vickers' death as stupid on paper as it is on screen? It would also give us a rough idea of what was actually cut from the movie - we already know Ridley said about 26 minutes; seems quite substantial.
 
My issue with that giant facehugger thing is that it honestly had too much going on, I feel the teeth made it look really generic, and then the little tentacles were a bit much. Sometimes simplicity is key, and I found that overly complicated.

Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if Fox is doing another Avatar and releasing the EE a few months down the line.

Definitely getting this day one, though. Would probably be worth it just for the Ridley commentary, which are always awesome. Also want to see how the movie worked on paper with the final draft. Is Vickers' death as stupid on paper as it is on screen? It would also give us a rough idea of what was actually cut from the movie - we already know Ridley said about 26 minutes; seems quite substantial.

Yup, thats what I see them doing, and it probably is a smart move to make some more money.. Which in turn, may help secure a sequel, which would make me a happy person. I do wonder if a sequel does get green-lit if they will go for R or PG-13 and what the budget will be. One way or another, I hope it does pan out with Ridley Scott involved.
 
Holy cow this is a long thread. I just saw the movie, liked it, didn't think too much about the mechanics of speciation facehuggers/squids/etc.

Movie was a bit of a mess with how stupid the characters acted most of the time. Vickers was the only one who made sensible choices (apart from hiring that crew).


Bit of a tangent, but it reminded me of something that bugged me: the whole descending and finding the installations instantly thing. Upon spending over two years to arrive at an alien planet, wouldn't it make some sense to spend a bit of time in orbit studying the planet? Like hey, it's got powerful windstorms. And oh, a surface scan found these interesting features. Oh look, what are those domes in a line?

The sequence with finding the domes right away and the sudden storm both seemed needlessly contrived and a wee bit of tweaking would have gone a long way. (Sort of like the rest of the film.)

This bugged me 100% more than the speciation stuff. Drop out of orbit *right onto* the site of alien genesis, and then go into the proper dome on top of that. And why were the other ships still there? Did they all have alien accidents around the same time?

It was like the "knocking on the front door of the clone planet" bit in the Star Wars prequels.
 
People are reading much too deeply into this movie, similarly as some did with LOST.

Lindelof is a bad writer, masquerading laziness and inability to resolve plot points as "mystery" and "vagueness".

There is no answer to the movie's questions, as with Lost. There is no secret to the origin of life, nature of good vs. evil, etc., as with Lost. It's just one guy's uninspired attempt to blend religious themes with pseudo science.
 
People are reading much too deeply into this movie, similarly as some did with LOST.

People are reading too deeply into a movie that yells "Hey! You there! Read into me!"

That is a silly idea. The movie isn't as bad as most make it out to be, but it isn't anywhere near as good as it thinks it is either.
 
I must be one of the few that thought the engineers were really well done, they were kind of scary and loved the fight at then end with that octopus creature.
 
I must be one of the few that thought the engineers were really well done, they were kind of scary and loved the fight at then end with that octopus creature.

They were ok... but I really wish they were less humanoid (yea yeah, they are 100% us- but that makes no sense because we aren't 8 foot tall and white as alabaster).
 
That part didn't bother me since there's so much variation in the human species. Plus I'd long shut my brain off to the science by that part.
 
This whole thing with Engineers, elder Engineers, it's hysterical.

If you want to make a movie about the origin of species, introducing an intermediate "creator" species which probably has its own creator is superfluous. As a writing technique, it literally accomplishes nothing.

Take the Bible, replace angels with Engineers. Boom, Prometheus script.

The movie was visually entertaining, but the characters were so horribly conceived. I love Ridley Scott and Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time, but I think he also dropped the ball a bit in the story development process.

I imagine Scott told someone he wanted to do another Alien movie and asked some young executive hotshot who a good sci-fi writer was. That person probably responded, "Oh, Lindelof, he writes Lost, and everyone loves that."

I'm not a hater. I just think Lindelof's writing is very bland, unoriginal, and lazy.
 
They were ok... but I really wish they were less humanoid (yea yeah, they are 100% us- but that makes no sense because we aren't 8 foot tall and white as alabaster).

Did the movie explicitly state a 100% match? I think it only stated that it was a 'match'. It would of been nice if the display showed something like '99% match' instead of just 'dna match' so as to avoid confusion, though.
 
Did the movie explicitly state a 100% match? I think it only stated that it was a 'match'. It would of been nice if the display showed something like '99% match' instead of just 'dna match' so as to avoid confusion, though.

I'm pretty sure they used the term "complete match" which implies 100% in my brain. But it has been awhile since I saw the movie.
 
I think it said 100% match, but I took it to mean a 100% match structurally. I wasn't really thinking the machine/program was intended to do paternity tests.
 
Yeah, remembering more clearly now. Definitely did not say '100%', just 'DNA match'. I think this imdb poster describes the scene well.

On the screen that displays the "DNA MATCH"' there is a "100x" that appears in the upper right corner of the screen display. It does not say "100%". And it actually appears as a static display on the screen, even before the DNA analysis has finished running and before the display overlays the two base sequences. It may indicate some status or setting, as in "100 times repeated" or some-such. But it is definitely not "100%". I saw the movie again on the big ol' IMAX screen one final time, and I am definitely correct on this.

But even it had read "100% match", it is very clear from the visuals and from the dialog that the "DNA MATCH" is on some critical base sequence that Shaw has identified and isolated, and not the entire human genome and that of the Engineers. When Shaw says "Isolate the strand", she is clearly instructing Ford (her colleague in the lab) to isolate a single segment of DNA from the rest of a larger strand. There is nothing in that scene, and certainly nothing on the screen display, that indicates she is matching, or even attempting to match, the entire genome of the Engineers to that of human beings.

Now it does appear that Shaw has selected a specific key base sequence that allows her to verify heredity. In fact, that is the approach that is routinely used in forensic labs and paternity tests. Partial DNA matching (even to identify a species) is not the same thing as matching two entire genomes. Bear in mind the the human genome alone consists of over THREE BILLION BASE SEQUENCES. What Shaw is looking at (and what she shows to Holloway later) clearly does not consist of three billion data points. It was clear to me that Shaw had selected a particular base sequence that is peculiar to humans (or maybe to primates, or to mammals, or to chordates, or even perhaps to our mitochondria) and found a match in the Engineers' sample. But that is not an analysis of the entire genome, which it doesn't even need to be, to conclude what Shaw did
 
Right, so 160 pages later, does this film make sense yet?

I just wish the execution of the premise, which is extraordinary, was done well. The predominant reason why this thread is so long is because so many people are - via 'debate' - filling in holes with their own varied explanations. I'm sad to say it but beyond its aesthetics, its just not a very good film at all
 
I just wish the execution of the premise, which is extraordinary, was done well. The predominant reason why this thread is so long is because so many people are - via 'debate' - filling in holes with their own varied explanations. I'm sad to say it but beyond its aesthetics, its just not a very good film at all
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I just wish the execution of the premise, which is extraordinary, was done well. The predominant reason why this thread is so long is because so many people are - via 'debate' - filling in holes with their own varied explanations. I'm sad to say it but beyond its aesthetics, its just not a very good film at all

I have never agreed with you more than now.
 
I think the film makes enough sense on its own to be a really good movie. We're only supposed to know about as much as the crew of Prometheus.

Things that are deliberately left vague are all to do with the engineers. I prefer that we don't know all their motives and what happened to them 2000 years ago. I doubt we'll get all the answers even in the sequel. Either this frustrates you and you think the movie is shit, or you don't mind and appreciate a great sci-fi thriller.
 
As a thriller, it's decent (though suffers form "dumb character" syndrome). As a piece of continuity/worldbuilding/mythology it's bad, but that really isn't all that importnat to some people (me). I could give a rat's ass if the facehugger/squid/xenomorph transformation rules make concrete sense. It's easily written off as not important, unless you are invested in this fictional world beyond the movie itself (and I am not).
 
My favourite scene was when guy who looked like a member of the Backstreet Boys told the girl how he just made the "most important discovery in the history of mankind", then he tells her how religion is stupid, science can do anything, but wait...! she can't make a baby! how dare he be so mean to her! then they bang. Keep up the good work Lindelof.
 
My favourite scene was when guy who looked like a member of the Backstreet Boys told the girl how he just made the "most important discovery in the history of mankind", then he tells her how religion is stupid, science can do anything, but wait...! she can't make a baby! how dare he be so mean to her! then they bang. Keep up the good work Lindelof.
That might well be my favorite as well. I couldn't believe what was happening. Lindelof Magic.
 
I think the film makes enough sense on its own to be a really good movie. We're only supposed to know about as much as the crew of Prometheus.

Things that are deliberately left vague are all to do with the engineers. I prefer that we don't know all their motives and what happened to them 2000 years ago. I doubt we'll get all the answers even in the sequel. Either this frustrates you and you think the movie is shit, or you don't mind and appreciate a great sci-fi thriller.
But without telling us that, the villains of the movie have no motivation. Which I can't stand.
 
I decided against buying the art book. In the end, I just don't love the film enough to pick it up; all it would do is remind me how great the movie almost was.
 
Right, so 160 pages later, does this film make sense yet?

It made sense to me in the theater just fine.

I decided against buying the art book. In the end, I just don't love the film enough to pick it up; all it would do is remind me how great the movie almost was.

I thought you enjoyed the film, and liked even more a second time through? Besides, its all part of the Alien universe and I imagine that thing has some fantastic art despite issues with the movie.
 
I think in time the film will be looked on a bit more fondly. People will be less concerned with what could have been and appreciate what's there - which is a movie that will age better than most because of how beautifully designed and shot it is, with some great set pieces and good performances (Fassbender, Rapace).

My favourite shot in the movie is when Shaw climbs on to the crashed lifeboat and the camera cuts to a wide-shot of the now messed up lifeboat with Shaw in the centre, you see the chandelier at an angle and the large screen-window flickering in the background. Beautifully framed.
 
I don't know if I can express my frustration at this movie beyond what has already been discussed in this thread ad nausem. That said, I would be interested in a novelization that extrapolates on many of the elements in this film. Despite being rendered an incoherent mess by the screenplay, I'd like to see Matthew Stover give a similar treatment to this story as he did with ROTS.
 
The whole movie could have been saved for me if the explorer woman destroyed David at the end. It would have been a fitting ending to a movie that devolved into Hollywood pulp at that point.

At least it would have given us one character that had clear motivations and acted logically upon them.
 
The whole movie could have been saved for me if the explorer woman destroyed David at the end. It would have been a fitting ending to a movie that devolved into Hollywood pulp at that point.

At least it would have given us one character that had clear motivations and acted logically upon them.

If you're talking about Shaw, she needed David, he was the only one who knew how to fly the ship.
 
I thought you enjoyed the film, and liked even more a second time through? Besides, its all part of the Alien universe and I imagine that thing has some fantastic art despite issues with the movie.

I enjoyed the experience of it, but it's a badly written, poorly edited film. It contains some wonderful ideas, images and sequences, but is one of the more frustrating films I've seen lately.

Overall, I did enjoy it but it's a deeply flawed film.
 
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