# Prometheus [Spoilers]



## Joker (Jun 2, 2012)

Spoilers ahead.


I enjoyed this movie but not for the reasons I thought I would.  I understood, going into it, that it wasn't going to be an 'Alien' movie.  It was an adventure dealing with the origin of our species and of the aliens we see in earlier films.
But with all the connections made with other films I couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed at how some things were done.
I tend to ramble so I'll make a list of things I liked and didn't like.

Dislikes

- It's too bright.  There aren't any shadows, no places that set the brain on edge.  This is probably a holdover from a thinking that this was an Alien movie.

- Too predictable.  I usually don't care too much if a movie follows the formula but some things were just too obvious.  The reason why this is bad for me is because there's hardly a reaction when the thing happens that you know was gonna happen, even with the musical cue.

- The score had a few good parts but the Star Trekky motif (tell me if I'm using that word wrong) felt completely out of place at any point Leonard Nemoy or Patrick Stewart could have started narrating.

- Didn't like Shaw's boyfriend, Charlie Holloway.  Something rubs me the wrong way when he says his lines.

- The Space Jockey is a dick.  He is.  He's a complete jerk.  Here he is, saved from slow death by the visitors.  So he smiles and kills everything around him.  Of course, these lab rats that call themselves human may not even be a blip on his radar but after having come all this way to find answers I was hoping for a little more closure than an alien rampage.


Likes:

- Performances were outstanding with a special tip of the hat to Noomi Rapace and Micheal Fassbender.  Fassy, in particular, was completely awesome.  Disturbing and methodical.

- Everything looked really cool.  From the Space Jockey's to the ship design and all the other tech like the holograms.  It looked cool and seemed functional.

- Beautiful environment.


I really liked how the movie sets up for a sequel.  It makes you wonder what these weapons were made for and if we humans were made as weapons or as test subjects.  It makes you wonder who their enemy was/is.  The predators?  Maybe.

This was hands down a better film than Alien 3, 4, and all the Aliens vs. Predator films.  But it wasn't better than Alien or Aliens.

A solid eight out of ten.


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 2, 2012)

I'm glad that someone has started a spoiler thread, because I'm still weighing up whether i want to see it or not, and as I'm not a fan of horror films it is useful to find out all manner of spoilerific things first.

I've been reading very mixed reviews - some people loved it, some people hated it, some people loved some bits (e.g. cinematography) but hated other bits (allegedly numerous scientists were hit by the stupid stick?)

I'm interested to see other peoples observations in this thread.

Cheers


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## Morrus (Jun 2, 2012)

(Reposted from CM)

So (remember, spoilers) here's what I understand of the plot and my questions:

Film opens with Engineer starting human life on Earth with his own DNA as his mothership flies away. He dies in the process.

Many thousands of years later, two archeologists discover cave paintings* inviting them to a planet. They tell Weyland, who leaps on it as a way to prolong his life by asking help from humanity's creators, and who funds the mission.

They all truck off to the planet and discover an Engineer ship. All the Engineers are dead, killed by Aliens of various kinds, except one.

Robot David comes up with an intricate plot involving stealing a casket from the Engineer ship, retrieving a worm from it, slipping the worm into someone's drink with the hope that they will then have sex with someone before they die thus impregnating that woman with a giant octopus which she'll give birth to, and which will then consequently attack and impregnate an Engineer, resulting finally in an Alien bursting from his chest at the end of the movie.**

Robot David then wakes the Engineer, who kills a bunch of people incuding Weyland. The archeologist runs away.

The captain of Prometheus figures this isn't the Engineer's home world, that the caskets of alien stuff are a weapon, and that the Engineer ship is off to kill humanity. So he crashes Prometheus into it.

Engineer chases archeologist, gets killed and impregnated by the octopus she gave birth to.

The archelogist decides she wants to know why the Engineers created them, invited them, then at some point changed their minds and decided to wipe them out. So she steals another ship, form the planet, of wich there are apparently many, and heads off to the Engineer's home world in order to ask them.

Familiar Alien bursts out of Engineer who was impreganted by Octopus.

Did I get that right?




*Question 1: who painted them? The Engineer who died kickstarting humanity? Humans over the next 35,000 years (and in that case where did they get the info?)

**Question 2: WTH? Who came up with _that_ plan?


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## Joker (Jun 2, 2012)

Morrus said:


> (Reposted from CM)*Question 1: who painted them? The Engineer who died kickstarting humanity? Humans over the next 35,000 years (and in that case where did they get the info?)
> 
> **Question 2: WTH? Who came up with _that_ plan?




1.)  It looks like the humans painted them.  They seem to be done in the style of the various cultures where they were found.

2.)  As I understand it after the first viewing I think the plan was to grant Weyland immortality and for David to find out a way how to make that happen.  I does seem like incredible foresight to know that they were gonna have sex and create the early facehugger.  I think he was just testing the compound to see what effect it would have.

Speaking of the facehugger.  How the hell did it get so big?  It went from the size of a newborn to an 8foot 600 pound monster in a day without any organic material to grow upon.

Plane Sailing, it can't really be called a horror film.  There are a few scenes that might make you feel uneasy but because everything is so well lit it shouldn't really be an issue.
Basically, there are the standard face-rape scenes you have in all the other Alien movies.  These being a bit more phallic than previous versions.  There's the Space Jockey going on a brutal and slightly gory rampage and then a few scenes containing sporadic violence.
I would even go so far as to say there is very little suspense in the movie.  As a thriller it failed for me.  Why I gave it such a high score is because it's fun to ponder the existential questions posed in the movie.  And the prospect of a sequel with Fassbender and Rapace seemed the most entertaining part of the flick.

And yes, cryogenic sleep seems to have severely affected some of the scientists.  The only two that seem to be smart enough to notice the possible danger and leave the area in time, manage to get lost in a complex which they had just mapped.

Ugh, I gotta stop watching TV and posting at the same time.  What a ramblefest.


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## Joker (Jun 2, 2012)

With all the bad things I have to say about the movie, I cannot stress how well done the positives are.  From the visuals to the acting, those things alone made it worth it for me.
Pardon the Heath Ledger fanboyness but Fassbender's rendition of an early AI is as powerful as Ledger's rendition of the Joker.  Of course, this is assuming you think Ledger's Joker was as good as I think it was.

It's definitely worth watching, if you're capable of ignoring plot holes.


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## Morrus (Jun 2, 2012)

Joker said:


> 1.) It looks like the humans painted them. They seem to be done in the style of the various cultures where they were found.




So how did the humans know to paint that star formation?  That first Engineer seeded human DNA and died in the process; he never interacted with humans. Did the Engineers revisit later and give them the info?


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## Morrus (Jun 2, 2012)

Just to add:  it _is_ a good film.  Worth seeing.  But it's not a classic.

It's better than _Alien 3 & 4_, not as good as _Alien and Aliens_. A billion times better than the AvP movies.


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## Joker (Jun 2, 2012)

Morrus said:


> So how did the humans know to paint that star formation?  That first Engineer seeded human DNA and died in the process; he never interacted with humans. Did the Engineers revisit later and give them the info?




Yeah, maybe they visited, maybe the Engineers were artistic or maybe the information was coded into our DNA.

I'm still not entirely sure the Engineer dying in the beginning was volunteering himself.  I'm working on a convoluted theory that says he was volunteered.  I'll get back to you on that.

As an aside, does anyone remember any of the Predator films featuring Space Jockey souvenirs?  I have this strange feeling that they might have but I may just be imagining things in my coffee and overfed fueled state.


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## Morrus (Jun 2, 2012)

Joker said:


> As an aside, does anyone remember any of the Predator films featuring Space Jockey souvenirs?  I have this strange feeling that they might have but I may just be imagining things in my coffee and overfed fueled state.




You're correct. It's in the ship in #2.


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## Plane Sailing (Jun 2, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Robot David comes up with an intricate plot involving stealing a casket from the Engineer ship, retrieving a worm from it, slipping the worm into someone's drink with the hope that they will then have sex with someone before they die thus impregnating that woman with a giant octopus which she'll give birth to, and which will then consequently attack and impregnate an Engineer, resulting finally in an Alien bursting from his chest at the end of the movie.**




errrrr, what?


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## Morrus (Jun 2, 2012)

Plane Sailing said:


> errrrr, what?




Yeah.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 3, 2012)

So I can safely wait for the DVD, then?


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 3, 2012)

So -- not having seen or followed it closely -- does this movie explain the origins of the ship with the big dead alien and the Alien eggs from the beginning of _Alien_?


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## Morrus (Jun 4, 2012)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> So -- not having seen or followed it closely -- does this movie explain the origins of the ship with the big dead alien and the Alien eggs from the beginning of _Alien_?




Yes.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 5, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Yes.




So, spoil me.  What is it?


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## Morrus (Jun 5, 2012)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> So, spoil me.  What is it?




I pretty much described the whole film above; not sure what else I could add! The ship's identical, the Engineers are the space jockeys, they're making Aliens.


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## Joker (Jun 5, 2012)

They don't make the aliens directly, they make some kind of biological weapon which, as one of its effects, can create a facehugger type thing, which makes an alien-esque creature.

What I don't quite understand is if they created us humans, why they then try to wipe us out (at least, that's the assumption the characters make when the Space Jockey heads for Earth).  Perhaps we were created to farm these weapons, maybe he thinks that we're a threat.  I don't know, it's a bit wonkey.


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## Morrus (Jun 5, 2012)

Joker said:


> What I don't quite understand is if they created us humans, why they then try to wipe us out (at least, that's the assumption the characters make when the Space Jockey heads for Earth).  Perhaps we were created to farm these weapons, maybe he thinks that we're a threat.  I don't know, it's a bit wonkey.




That's the entire point of the film; and why it ends with the archaeologist heading off in search of the Engineer home world with that exact question: "Why did you change your mind?"

Hopefully that means there will be a sequel.


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## Krug (Jun 8, 2012)

Visually it was great, but I wish Scott was not so reliant on the Alien connection and made something new. The idea of the Engineers wanting to destroy us and using the planet as a manufacturing area for WMD was an interesting one, and could have been pushed further. 

As Morrus pointed out, not sure what Fassbender's David was thinking of when he implanted the alien gene.

After a while, it just seemed an exercise in lining up the various elements in Alien but just creating a movie that's full of holes and head-scratching moments. And the only answer we have in this search for man's origins? We find out the origin of the Alien. Ho hum. Frankly, Scott should have, like those facehugger eggs, left it untouched.

And if I see an alien tentacle waving around in a snake-like manner I don't think I would find it "cute".


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## Mark CMG (Jun 8, 2012)

I'm gonna try to catch the early 3D IMAX showing of Prometheus.


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## frankthedm (Jun 9, 2012)

Morrus said:


> But it's not a classic.



It feels very  inspired by "classic Sci-Fi" though! Loved how the Steller map scene looked pulled from the cover of an old school sci fi book.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17p5n4u02zqcejpg/original.jpg




Krug said:


> And if I see an alien tentacle waving around in a snake-like manner I don't think I would find it "cute".



Yeah, the movie could have done without the Too dumb to live scene.


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## Mark CMG (Jun 9, 2012)

My first thought was that Earth was seeded to eventually be a farm planet to create hosts for their WMD warrior race with the idea that they could somehow harvest them and drop them onto other planets rather than fight their own wars.  Not a perfect theory but its what struck me as a possible explanation.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jun 9, 2012)

Too many questions; too many plot holes.  WAY too many.  Too much abject character stupidity.  WAY too much.  I can appreciate that they may have wanted to leave some mystery and "alien" motivations in place, especially if it was intended to fuel a sequel or two, but the adage about movies is that you SHOW, not tell, or you'll lose the audience.

For starters, did IQ's suddenly drop sharply at some point before the beginning of the movie?  Let's go visit an alien world but without any provisions, either technological or procedural, to ward against potential alien infestation, viruses, bacteria, disease.  In fact, let's just all remove our helmets the moment we see that there's breatheable air?  Let's laugh and play pattycake with the UTTERLY UNKOWN quantity of the first appearance of an alien species?  Especially when that alien is an ANIMAL and not the Engineer you were expecting to find?  Since you just found a giant bleepin' dead alien and WATCHED IT DIE as it ran through the corridors with all the other engineers on AlienYouTube, W - T - F????  The only one with a SHRED of intelligence was Vickers who brought her own super-lifeboat and got into a suit at the first report of trouble.

The whole expedition was supposed to be to go talk to the Engineers, whether to say, "Gee, thanks Dad!" or to say, "Can you cure old age and the sudden drop in IQ's on our planet?"   If Weyland has David to be his interpreter and knows how to read a star map what does he need Shaw and Holloway for?

What the hell was David doing and why?  I can grasp that he may have been given a sense of curiosity but why in Gods name can't somebody dredge up enough sanity to hit him with a blunt object and scream, "STOP touching everything unless we ASK you to do so you blundering, bone-headed trap finder!"  Why the hell would he deliberately infect someone with unknown substances when it clearly presents an unspeakable risk to the man paying the quadrillion dollar bills in order to LIVE?

If there are 3-d mapping widgets flying about, and hologramatic tracking displays on the ship, and everyone's communications ARE still working before the storm - how the _F_ does anyone get LOST on their way back to the ship?

If you're a space jockey what's your motivation to commit suicide in order to populate the Earth?  Especially when you're going to come back and destroy your handiwork with new bioweapons?  It's like having E.T. spending months developing a loving bond with Elliot only to face-rape him with his glowing finger and impale little alcoholic Drew Barrymore on a pike as a way of waving goodbye.  Again, I understand we may be dealing with alien motivations which may change over several millenia - but can we at least have a LITTLE clue?  Maybe just a vowel?  I mean the jockey at the end seems motivated to exterminate humanity at the end there and Shaws reaction is, "Earth can take care of itself from aliens with stockpiles of liquid death-by-rape.  I just want to know why our ancestral parents are so angry with us and why our IQ's dropped so sharply."

Yeah the movie looked cool, but the whole thing made about as much sense as Starman or E.T. as directed by David Lynch.


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## Joker (Jun 9, 2012)

I watched it for a second time and I have some new insights into this flick.

It's not a horror or a thriller but an action movie which is light on action.  I said before that it was too bright and I read somewhere that the brightness has to be cranked up for 3D because otherwise it would be too dark with your glasses on.  This would explain why the scenes are uniformly lit and would explain the discrepancy in lighting with the trailer and the movie.  The former being far more dark and atmospheric than the latter.

I've learned to turn my brain off for the most part when watching movies so that I don't sit there being frustrated by some of the silliness on screen but afterwards I discussed this with my friend and the cynical side of me took over.  Let me elaborate on and add to the list of dumb behavior that the Man in the Funny Hat made:

You spent a trillion dollars on this project and the crew don't know each other yet?  I would think that with something of this magnitude you would spend some of your budget on personality screening and crew compatibility.

You've come all this way and decide to land right away without taking the time to scan the surface or send probes down to find a safe landing spot.

They enter the room with the giant head and no-one, not any-one in the room is in awe or even a little surprised that it is a human head.  No-one but David, who seems to be the only one who makes the human observations.

The geologist who's just mapped the structure can't find his way back to the outside.

The biologist is confronted with a snake like alien who has given him nearly every verbal and non-verbal signal an animal can give you telling you to f*** off.  He still wants to play with it.

Two of our guys are missing.  We could have checked their cameras but really, why put in the effort.

Pieces of glass moving in excess of 200 kph should really turn a suited person into swiss cheese.

Most of my other gripes are with the near complete lack of characterization, excepting David.  It's possibly just my perception of things, but I have this feeling that expensive productions in the last 10 years or so have abandoned characterization in favor of moving the plot forward.  I understand why, or think I do.  You don't need characters to sell a movie.  You need stuff happening to the characters to sell a movie.  My problem with that is that if I don't perceive the characters as human beings I do not care about what happens to them.  As such, I'm not taken on an emotional roller coaster ride which American cinema can and has very often exemplified.
In Alien, we had the crew come out of cryosleep and then sit around the table and talk.  They talked for a few minutes.  And just those few minutes were needed to set up the relationships between the characters and to round them out as human beings.
There's little in the way of talking in Prometheus.  In fact, the biologist wants to strike up a conversation and he gets struck down ending the scene.
The relentless exposition and build up of plot becomes boring for me without an invested emotional interest.

I have to disagree with you frankthedm, I wouldn't put this movie on the same level of classic science fiction.  Science fiction is all about exploring the human condition in fantastical and extreme situations.  The premise was sci-fi enough but the development of the story consisted of people getting slaughtered without any real reaction from the rest of the crew.  In fact, the only exploration of human behavior I saw was David and his interactions with the rest of the crew.  Even that was limited.  We mostly had people talk to him in a condescending tone.

Allegedly, Ridley Scott said in an interview that this movie was a vehicle for his personal philosophical and religious views.  If this is true, that would really rub me the wrong way.  
Take this with a grain of salt.  I have to ask if my friend can send me a youtube link of the interview.  So far I only have this link from a yahoo interview.


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## Joker (Jun 9, 2012)

Mark CMG said:


> My first thought was that Earth was seeded to eventually be a farm planet to create hosts for their WMD warrior race with the idea that they could somehow harvest them and drop them onto other planets rather than fight their own wars.  Not a perfect theory but its what struck me as a possible explanation.




This was my thinking as wel.  The Engineers were using us as weapons to fight another species or perhaps other members of the same species.


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## Mark CMG (Jun 9, 2012)

Joker said:


> This was my thinking as wel.  The Engineers were using us as weapons to fight another species or perhaps other members of the same species.





Ah, yes, a civil war.  That works well too.  Maybe even better.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 10, 2012)

If the characters had been space truckers again, it might have made sense. But scientists who had prepped for a mission? No way.


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## Nellisir (Jun 10, 2012)

OK, here's what I gathered & hypothesized from one viewing.
- the Engineers created life on earth.
- They made periodic visits back; reason unknown.
- they were going to come visit about 2000 years ago, but everything went tooth-shaped and lots of dying happened.  Absolutely no idea what happened to the killers.

- the jars (I keep thinking canopic jars, but that is probably just my associations) are filled with "goo".  The goo is similar to X-Files' "black oil".
- David (creepy android is creepy) gets Charlie (aka male archeologist, aka guy that gets nookie time with Noomi Rapace) to ingest a tiny drop of goo by putting it in his drink (note: alcohol does not kill goo).
- people who ingest goo either blow up or turn into homocidal zombies (the fast kind, not the shamblers.  See: Engineer head, Fifield.
- Charlie, post-exposure but pre-blatant symptoms, has nookie with Noomi Rapace (whose character might have a name but I didn't care). Goo+sperm+egg = 4 tentacled-squid-like-facehugger with inexplicable and reality-busting growth powers.

- Meanwhile, back in the Ancient Alien Military Base, little worms in the dirt get some goo too.  Why don't worms go apeshit and kill each other?  No idea.  Maybe they do.  But worms+goo= really icky, not cute, leechtype facehugger with acid blood.  Attacks Milburn, is "decapitated" by Fifield; acidic blood destroys Fifield's helmet, exposing him to goo (and eventually homocidal zombie tendencies); decapitation proves creature's brain and sensory organs are not in it's "head", as it unerringly locates and goes into Milburn's throat, presumably killing him from the inside with acid, and not successfully gestating itself.

- Stuff happens, Engineer and Giant Alien Squid Facehugger square off in what is actually a pretty neat scene, but facehugger wins and implants in Engineer.  Some time later, Alien/xenomorph emerges, not identical to "later" versions, but clearly related.

Major conclusions:
- goo has a really f'ed-up lifecycle.
- no idea why aliens' lay eggs that look like canopic jars but hold facehuggers.
- No idea what happened to alien/xenomorphs that burst out of Engineers 2k years ago.
- no idea why there are crabtype facehuggers in the jars at the beginning of Alien, unless a) jars were being reused, or b) some other creature transformed into a facehugger (crabtype, not leechtype or squidtype), and was "nesting" or "cocooning" in the jars. 
- Noomi Rapace really didn't stick around long enough to have much idea what the frack was going on, although David might be able to make some conclusions.
- Noomi Rapace's character is not Ripley.
- Vickers is an idiot, and so are engineers on Earth. Who the frack designs a multi-million, or billion, dollar automatic surgery machine, and then makes it only work on one gender?  And why the frack would Vickers have one in her room?  Sure, it could be for Weyland, but isn't he in a different part of the ship? And if the stupid thing can't operate on women, how come it can't tell the difference, particularly IN THE MIDDLE OF ABDOMINAL SURGERY?

- Also, apparently there are no more old actors working, making it necessary to put Guy Pierce in 10 lbs of crappy wrinkle makeup and do a bad caricature of an elderly man for no discernable reason.  
- Also, the future will allow you to know exactly how long you have to live, so you can use your last 24 hours by hobbling up to your creator and getting whacked on the head.


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## Nellisir (Jun 10, 2012)

New Conclusions after reading Stuff on the Interwebz:
- apparently this planet is LV-223, and the Alien planet is LV-426
- one hypothesis is that during the Bad Times a ship took off from LV-223 with an implanted queen xenomorph in the pilot; alien hatchs, ship crashes on LV-426; queen lays eggs.  Absolutely no idea why they look like canopic jars.  2k years later, enter Ripley.


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## Water Bob (Jun 10, 2012)

I had to share this with you guys.

Prometheus is out. I was so stoked for this film that you could tie a flag on me wee-wee and let it flutter in the breeze. I saw it...and, I was disappointed. I liked it...OK. But, it didn't give me what I wanted and expected.

I felt like the film was trying to be more of a sequel to *2001: A Space Odyssey* than a prequel to *Alien*.

Well, it turns out that the film really is quite deep. Most of what I'm about to lead you to flew right over my head (and I'm sometimes real good at seeing symbolism and deep meanings in films). But, I totally missed the ball on this one.

Take a gander at this web page: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
Even if you don't agree, there's lots provided there to fire up your grey matter, leading to long, all-night discussions. It's cool stuff.

*BUT DON'T READ UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM!*

S4


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## Water Bob (Jun 10, 2012)

Joker said:


> What I don't quite understand is if they created us humans, why they then try to wipe us out (at least, that's the assumption the characters make when the Space Jockey heads for Earth).






Morrus said:


> That's the entire point of the film; and why it ends with the archaeologist heading off in search of the Engineer home world with that exact question: "Why did you change your mind?"
> 
> Hopefully that means there will be a sequel.




According to that article (which quotes Ridley Scott from an interview), there was an event, 2000 years ago, that made the Engineers want to kill us. 

2000 years ago? Jesus Christ. 

I'm not kidding. Read the article. Ridley is putting it out there that Jesus was an Engineer, and we crucified him.

Thus, the Christian motif in the film.

More about this in the article linked above.





EDIT:  Just thiking out loud, I took the planet where the film takes place, LV 223, and I thought....I'd see what Leviticus 22:3 says....

*22:3* Say unto them, Whosoever he be of all your seed among your generations, that goeth unto the holy things, which the children of Israel hallow unto the LORD, having his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut off from my presence: I am the LORD.

Hmm...interesting.  Goes with the film.


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## Droogie (Jun 10, 2012)

Krug said:


> As Morrus pointed out, not sure what Fassbender's David was thinking of when he implanted the alien gene.




He gave us his thoughts right before he did it: "how far would you be willing to go just to find out more?"


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## Starman (Jun 10, 2012)

Nellisir said:


> - Vickers is an idiot, and so are engineers on Earth. Who the frack designs a multi-million, or billion, dollar automatic surgery machine, and then makes it only work on one gender?  And why the frack would Vickers have one in her room?  Sure, it could be for Weyland, but isn't he in a different part of the ship? And if the stupid thing can't operate on women, how come it can't tell the difference, particularly IN THE MIDDLE OF ABDOMINAL SURGERY?




This was odd to me too. The only thing I could come up with is that Vickers was an android as somewhat hinted at and the machine was only meant to be used by/on Weyland. Her special quarters were meant to be Weyland's when he woke up from cryo.


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## Starman (Jun 10, 2012)

Droogie said:


> He gave us his thoughts right before he did it: "how far would you be willing to go just to find out more?"




David was probably also thinking that Charlie was an ass the way he spoke down to David.


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## Joker (Jun 10, 2012)

Good article Water Bob.  While it does add a little depth to the movie it doesn't take away from a lot of the criticism leveled against it.

On the Med Pod.  It's not made exclusively for men, this unit was simply calibrated for them.  Which probably has less to do with the physiological differences between men and women and more to do with giving the viewer another hint that Weyland is on board.


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

Droogie said:


> He gave us his thoughts right before he did it: "how far would you be willing to go just to find out more?"




Yeah, but it was a dumb thought.

_"Mission Control, this is Manned Mars Exploration vessel 1 reporting in on our ninth day on Mars. Hope you got the data from those geological samples we took yesterday. Today's report includes the discovery of life on Mars; repeat: we have discovered life on Mars. We know you guys will want to find out more, so I'm gonna slip it into Lietenant Baker's drink tonight while he isn't looking and see what happens!"_


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## Mark CMG (Jun 10, 2012)

Morrus said:


> _"Mission Control, this is Manned Mars Exploration vessel 1 reporting in on our ninth day on Mars. Hope you got the data from those geological samples we took yesterday. Today's report includes the discovery of life on Mars; repeat: we have discovered life on Mars. We know you guys will want to find out more, so I'm gonna slip it into Lietenant Baker's drink tonight while he isn't looking and see what happens!"_





He might have been sending reports back to Earth but his marching orders were coming from a closer source.


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

Mark CMG said:


> He might have been sending reports back to Earth but his marching orders were coming from a closer source.




The distance really wasn't the point of my comment.  The slipping new alien life into a drink as the initial form of investigation was.


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## Mark CMG (Jun 10, 2012)

Morrus said:


> The distance really wasn't the point of my comment.





Nor mine.  More along the lines of considering the source.




Morrus said:


> The slipping new alien life into a drink as the initial form of investigation was.





The old man who was giving David orders was taking many shortcuts to figure things out as quickly as he could.  He might not have known that the two nerds were making the beast with two backs, but he might have been fine with using the male nerd as a guinea pig for the goo.  It's not impossible that he even believed there might be some copulation though the resultant accelerated pregnancy would have been a shocker, no doubt.


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## Water Bob (Jun 10, 2012)

Joker said:


> Good article Water Bob. While it does add a little depth to the movie it doesn't take away from a lot of the criticism leveled against it.




From my POV, the article makes the movie more interesting in knowing that there was a method to Ridley's madness.  But, I think that a movie where you've got to read an article to understand fails.  

Or, in other words, the flick may well be deep with symbolisim and meaning, but if the viewers don't catch it--or worse, don't care when they do catch it--the film fails as a piece of entertainment.

Maybe Ridley aimed for a movie that's too high brow for its own good.







> On the Med Pod. It's not made exclusively for men, this unit was simply calibrated for them. Which probably has less to do with the physiological differences between men and women and more to do with giving the viewer another hint that Weyland is on board.




I didn't have a problem at all with the Med Pod.  Charlize had her own, completely equipped, self-contained life boat that could detatch from the ship.  It wasn't a stretch to think they she'd have an auto-med, too.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

Mark CMG said:


> The old man who was giving David orders was taking many shortcuts to figure things out as quickly as he could. He might not have known that the two nerds were making the beast with two backs, but he might have been fine with using the male nerd as a guinea pig for the goo. It's not impossible that he even believed there might be some copulation though the resultant accelerated pregnancy would have been a shocker, no doubt.




Yep, I know what was happening.  I'm just saying I thought what was happening was dumb.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

Water Bob said:


> From my POV, the article makes the movie more interesting in knowing that there was a method to Ridley's madness. But, I think that a movie where you've got to read an article to understand fails.
> 
> Or, in other words, the flick may well be deep with symbolisim and meaning, but if the viewers don't catch it--or worse, don't care when they do catch it--the film fails as a piece of entertainment.
> 
> Maybe Ridley aimed for a movie that's too high brow for its own good.




Meh.  Just because one guy read a whole lot of stuff into it doesn't mean he's right.  If I had the time and inclination, I'm sure I could read a whole lot of stuff into anything I cared to.

He's probably hit on a few points (and his one quote from Ridley Scott shows that Scott considered the Jesus angle but rejected it as too "on the nose"), but his article is filled with "presumably this" and so on.  It's mainly just his opinion.  I wouldn't judge the move based on the fact that you didn't read the same things into it as that guy.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 10, 2012)

Joker said:


> On the Med Pod.  It's not made exclusively for men, this unit was simply calibrated for them.  Which probably has less to do with the physiological differences between men and women and more to do with giving the viewer another hint that Weyland is on board.



Comes to the same thing.  Stupid design.  Personally, I don't want anything poking around inside me that can't distinguish testicles from ovaries.


----------



## Nellisir (Jun 10, 2012)

Water Bob said:


> I didn't have a problem at all with the Med Pod.  Charlize had her own, completely equipped, self-contained life boat that could detatch from the ship.  It wasn't a stretch to think they she'd have an auto-med, too.



Having a med-pod made sense.  Charlize having a med-pod she couldn't use makes no sense.


----------



## Water Bob (Jun 10, 2012)

Nellisir said:


> Having a med-pod made sense. Charlize having a med-pod she couldn't use makes no sense.




Admitedly, I saw the midnight showing on Thursday.  That's way past my bedtime.  And, I did nod a few times in the film--not because of the film, but because I was so danged tired.

I guess I missed something about Charlize.  Why couldn't she use the med-pod?


----------



## Mark CMG (Jun 10, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Yep, I know what was happening.  I'm just saying I thought what was happening was dumb.





From what perspective?  Seemed plausible from the perspective of a desperate man who was dying to try anything as quickly as he could.  Plus, he even thought talking with the "creators" could gain him extended life, so we see how misguided he was by the end.  So maybe, retrospectively dumb for him to think the way he did but as far as the film was concerned it added up well enough, IMO, and was sufficiently explained.


----------



## Mark CMG (Jun 10, 2012)

The Med Pod was in the lifeboat.  The old man had doctors in his other facility on board.  It might be better asked why the old man wasn't in a life boat of his own or in the one that was there but it could be explained that those who knew about the lifeboat might discover the old man in it if he was there.  Where the old man was on board might be disguised as a closed off cargo hold to those on board who weren't supposed to know the old man was there.  I am guessing the reasoning was that moving the Med Pod to the lifeboat should the old man need to escape would have presented difficulties.  I agree that a Med Pod shouldn't be simply male or female in the first place.  That was an obvious plot device to let the audience know the old man was on the ship.


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## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

Mark CMG said:


> From what perspective? Seemed plausible from the perspective of a desparate man who was dying to try anything as quickly as he could.




From my perspective as a guy watching the film.

For me, "slip the new life form into somebody's drink" doesn't seem remotely plausible as the first idea that a desperate man would come up with.  It seems to me to be a dumb idea, and that he could have had much better ideas.

I get that you don't think it's a dumb idea.  I won't be taking any trips to alien planets with you anytime soon!


----------



## Mark CMG (Jun 10, 2012)

Morrus said:


> From my perspective as a guy watching the film.
> 
> For me, "slip the new life form into somebody's drink" doesn't seem remotely plausible as the first idea that a desperate man would come up with.  It seems to me to be a dumb idea, and that he could have had much better ideas.
> 
> I get that you don't think it's a dumb idea.  I won't be taking any trips to alien planets with you anytime soon!





Ah, I see.  You believe in a more traditional sense of alien med-tech and thus think that to introduce a foreign substance to a human body, rather than to have it ingested (as the film allowed), or to find a way to use a needle (too suspiscious), or to get him to inhale (might be too suspiscious and tricky though Rapace did use incense on board so not out of the question), you believe in the time-honored UFO-lovers' tradition of probing through the rear hatch, a suppository, as it were.  I guess I never took you for a _traditionalist_.


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## Shemeska (Jun 10, 2012)

Fasbender deserves an Oscar for his performance as David8.

I just saw the movie last night (Imax version), and for having been super hyped up for years now, I enjoyed it with zero reservations. It's far more of a Sci-Fi movie than a horror movie, but there's enough doses or horror to keep my tastes satisfied (says the person with a life-size xenomorph prop standing a few feet away from him).

Some people will object, but the last scene with the proto-xeno birthing was pretty damn awesome in my mind. I want one.


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## Droogie (Jun 10, 2012)

Morrus said:


> .
> 
> For me, "slip the new life form into somebody's drink" doesn't seem remotely plausible as the first idea that a desperate man would come up with.  It seems to me to be a dumb idea, and that he could have had much better ideas.



the crew is pretty much in two camps, I noticed. Those hired by Weyland directly (the bad guys), and the "good guys" who are unaware of Weyland's agenda. If you've been paid (or created!) by a man with unlimited resources and an obsession with immortality, I can imagine ethics are not a high priority. I do agree that the so-called scientists acted frustratingly stupid at times, but it wasn't quite a deal-breaker for me. My first thought when David spiked the drink was not "what? No HAZMAT training!?" but "uh-oh. The android is evil."


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## Water Bob (Jun 10, 2012)

Why was Charlize's character even in the film?  If you took out her scenes, it doesn't look like anything would change.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 10, 2012)

My main complaints are the scientific irrationality of it. Why would you think that introducing a drop of weird goo into the drink of a human would have any real reaction, other than perhaps causing the guy to die of an infection? What would that accomplish? 

You have advanced medical and biological exam equipment on the ship. Use that. Don't just randomly toss goo into someone's food. Nothing had yet occurred that would rationally have made the characters think "this might be some sort of transgenic super-science goo that will turn our archaeologist buddy into a monster."

Also, especially after a character hangs a lampshade on "Darwinian evolution" making the theory of "Engineers created humanity, and happened to have a genome that makes perfect sense as part of earth biodiversity, despite coming from another planet" very unlikely, I just couldn't help but lower my opinion of the movie.

I dunno, maybe in the sequel we'll learn that 2 million years ago another alien species came to earth, picked up some humans, and developed the Engineers, who eventually got high tech gizmos of their own and eventually decided to annihilate the crucible of humanity. I could buy that. Crazy religious zealots think "those humans suck; we're spacemen now, so we have to kill earthmen so we are not corrupted."

Still doesn't make sense why you'd use weird, thermodynamics-defying mutants to do it, instead of good old fashioned lasers and missiles and stuff.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 10, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> My main complaints are the scientific irrationality of it. Why would you think that introducing a drop of weird goo into the drink of a human would have any real reaction, other than perhaps causing the guy to die of an infection? What would that accomplish?
> 
> You have advanced medical and biological exam equipment on the ship. Use that. Don't just randomly toss goo into someone's food. Nothing had yet occurred that would rationally have made the characters think "this might be some sort of transgenic super-science goo that will turn our archaeologist buddy into a monster."




Exactly.  It's a completely weird and dumb thing to suddenly decide to do.  Why not decide to to cartwheels around it instead?  Or read it a bedtime story? Or set fire to it?  Or a million other totally bizarre non-sequiter things you could think of to do as the first thing to do when fidning an alien life form.  Slipping it into somebody's drink?  Really?


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## Janx (Jun 10, 2012)

Just got back from the seeing the movie with my wife.

Her observation: ace bandages don't make good underwear.

It does look like the crew got hit with a bucket of stupid.

When you first arrive at a new planet, you launch satellites to scan it for weather, life, and structures.  You don't just cruise on down and cast about looking for whatever pops out.

You don't beam down to the planet without weapons.  Even Captain Picard knows that, and he's way more enlightened about humanity not being all warlike and crap.

When the android is behind the group aways poking at the wall and suddenly holograms pop up, don't you think you should look at what he did?  Let alone when he starts tapping on the pad at the door.  Clearly it's time for a WTF talk with the android about showing initiative.  Milk-blooded bastard, meet baseball bat.

3 adults looking at art on the walls can't keep track of the android with pokey paws in the same room who is clearly futzing with the jars just like you told him not to.

the geologist who launched the scanner pods for mapping would not have gotten lost.

the geologists who got scared by the giant dead bodies would have been doubly freaked by moving goo and penisnakes.  They would have waited as close to the entrance of the structure as possible so they could get back to the ship quickly and avoid finding anything worse.

When you are an evil android (as I had to point out during the intro that he would be evil), the scientific method doesn't go out the window.  You scan wierd black goo with tools BEFORE you put it into a human's beverage.

When you get sick, and notice kinky tentacles in your eye, you go see the doctor, not lie about it.  You are already pretty screwed up and aren't just going to get over it like a cold.  After all, you have TENTACLES in your eye.

Despite the androgenyzing ace bandage undies, Charlize still has nipples.

It would make more sense to keep grampa in bed until first contact or super science is actually found to use on him, rather than so he can be there to pester the alien right after waking him up from his nap.  Because seriously, your problems are less important after a long nap than peeing, food, and killing the jerk who woke me up.

Being the last 2 humans on the planet, what are the odds that the alien spaceship is going to come down right by you AND roll after you, and fall over on top of you.  I'd say 50/50.  Because every other time a drop a penny, it rolls toward me and then falls over onto my foot.

Having just crashed back onto the planet after having my ship rammed, and surviving the fall, and still not having had a good pee, why chase after the human, instead of heading for a back-up site's ship.  Then you could take off, and nuker her from orbit, which has long been acknowledged as the best way to take care of pesky species problems.


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## Chairman7w (Jun 10, 2012)

Janx said:


> Then you could take off, and nuker her from orbit, which has long been acknowledged as the best way to take care of pesky species problems.




Whoa, whoa, whoa...  Hold on a second. This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.


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## frankthedm (Jun 10, 2012)

Shemeska said:


> (says the person with a life-size xenomorph prop standing a few feet away from him).



Which prop and how much cash did you drop on it??


----------



## Krug (Jun 11, 2012)

Water Bob said:


> Why was Charlize's character even in the film?  If you took out her scenes, it doesn't look like anything would change.




Her character was meant to parallel Elizabeth Shaw's with the daddy/'Father' issues, but it was just badly handled like so many of the film's ideas.


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## Shemeska (Jun 11, 2012)

frankthedm said:


> Which prop and how much cash did you drop on it??




Custom made alien costume, it's on a dummy currently.

And I spent too much on it. Did win a local costume contest with it though a year or two ago, and scared the piss out of kids in the neighborhood with it.


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## Nellisir (Jun 11, 2012)

Water Bob said:


> I guess I missed something about Charlize.  Why couldn't she use the med-pod?



The medpod was only set up for men.

I forget the exact word used, but I got the impression it wasn't just a password issue.  The thing just didn't do female troubles.  Broken arm, fine.  Uterine cancer, tough luck.  Ergo, Shaw can't do a abortion or caesarian; she has to undergo abdominal surgery to remove a foreign object.


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## Mark CMG (Jun 11, 2012)

Shemeska said:


> Custom made alien costume, it's on a dummy currently.
> 
> And I spent too much on it.




It's totaly cool and I am very jealous but I have news for you, depending on how much you spent it might always be on a dummy. 



(And if I had the chance, I might have been that dummy too!)


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## Chairman7w (Jun 11, 2012)

Nellisir said:


> Ergo, Shaw can't do a abortion or caesarian; she has to undergo abdominal surgery to remove a foreign object.




And boy did she!  That was awesome.  One of the cooler scenes of the movie. Not in the least bit realistic, but way cool.


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## greyhaze (Jun 11, 2012)

I hated the movie for pretty much everything that has been mentioned through this thread and other things... however, it has grown on me.

I thought the opening scene was of a rebel engineer killing himself to stop the military engineers from laying waste to their "children"... hence the outbreak that killed this particular batch of evil engineers.

The engineers did not match the scale of the engineers in Alien, that did not sit well with me.

Magical goo ticks me off.  Pick something, anything, and make it do that.  Genetic restructuring - ok, fine, but creating new life as well - no.

Maybe the snakes were bio-weapon guardians, like watchdogs, and they had nothing to do with the goo other than similar engineering.

The engineer surviving the crash and finding Vickors Shaw was silly, as was Charlize's role and her death (assuming she died).  I laughed as I pictured the ship rolling around them like a big horse shoe type coin being dropped.

David spiking the scientist was silly.  David being able to see Vickor Shaw's dreams, but not abort a "baby" was silly.  Him saying she was 3 months pregnant was - silly.

Waking the old man up and putting him in front of the aliens for first contact was seriously lack of foresight.

Playing with the equivalence of a cobra and calling it cute = stupid.  How did those two get lost?  WTF.  Why did Fiefield convert to a zombie?  Why didn't the snake impregnate the biologist?  The acid killing the biologist makes sense, the zombie thing - not so much.

Why the F did they open the door for Fiefield, or why didn't they even check any of their camera footage???

The captain is smart enough to figure out the purpose and spill it all out for us - but, man, it's wasted on stupid people.

So many poor choices.


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## SkidAce (Jun 11, 2012)

greyhaze said:


> Magical goo ticks me off.  Pick something, anything, and make it do that.  Genetic restructuring - ok, fine, but creating new life as well - no.
> 
> Maybe the snakes were bio-weapon guardians, like watchdogs, and they had nothing to do with the goo other than similar engineering.




I think the snakes were "genetic restructured" as you say....worms that were already there and the goo spilled on them.

There was a camera shot of one of the crew walking and worms moving away from their feet.

So...it appears the goo;

A.  changes you into an egg planting squid/worm/facehugger thingy depending on your original form.

B.  Egg gets planted, thingy dies....new form bursts out of hosts chest.

C. How we get from new form to self sustaining egg layer like the queen I don't know. (although the one from Shaw was a "squid face hugger" that implanted an engineer, so maybe the xenomorpth was a queen type.



???


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## greyhaze (Jun 11, 2012)

SkidAce said:


> I think the snakes were "genetic restructured" as you say....worms that were already there and the goo spilled on them.



That's fair, but odd.  I do remember the scene with the boot print.  Why were the worms there?  Were they reactivated when air broke in to the room.  Why only 2 infected worms with all of that goo spilling out.  I dunno, they don't seem related, plus they came from another part of the ship "there's something alive down there about 1 mile away" - so I don't believe they originated from the room with the worms.



SkidAce said:


> A.  changes you into an egg planting squid/worm/facehugger thingy depending on your original form.
> 
> B.  Egg gets planted, thingy dies....new form bursts out of hosts chest.



I would disagree with this.  The facehugger type entity, I believe, only originated from Vickors.



SkidAce said:


> C. How we get from new form to self sustaining egg layer like the queen I don't know. (although the one from Shaw was a "squid face hugger" that implanted an engineer, so maybe the xenomorpth was a queen type.



I came to the same conclusion.

Also "captain touchy" David really got to me quick.  I would've been "outta there" as soon as he did it the 2nd time, which in most horror movies would've been 2.5 moves too late.


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## Nellisir (Jun 11, 2012)

greyhaze said:


> I would disagree with this.  The facehugger type entity, I believe, only originated from Vickors.



Vickers was never infected.  She got squished by the Great Space Wheel.

The worm/leech things (and I don't understand what you mean about them coming from a different part of the ship - they were in the room with the canopic jars and the Great Big Space Head) never had a phase two, so we don't know what they turn into.

The squidhugger inside Shaw got big and planted it's "egg" inside the Engineer.  That egg burst out into an immature Alien/xenomorph.

The "something alive" was the Engineer in cryosleep, not the worms/leechs.


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## Janx (Jun 11, 2012)

One extra idea my movie buff friend had is that David really hates humans.

As such, his actions might make a little more sense.

Holloway talks down to him (at one point even calling him "boy").  Sure, David could hit the lab and do some research on the goo, or he could just cut to the chase and run experiments on the meat bags directly.  Plus, as the only one who can read the texts on the wall, he may actually know this stuff can work via ingestion.

the same is true for waking up Grampa (why couldn't they get Lance Henrikson, he's old?).  David hates him too.  So wake him up and then tick off the sleeping giant so he whacks grampa.  Slight miscalculation on getting his head ripped off, but mission accomplished.

And then, of course, the Engineer is going to set course for earth.  Notice how David didn't volunteer any of that information.  David knew this ship was going to head for earth, and it was a free ride to see the destruction of his creators.

the short of it is, David saw a chance to kill his human creators and he took it.

heck, he still has a chance now that he's traveling with Shaw to find the Engineers.  No doubt he'll swindle a way to redirect the ship back to earth or leak the information.  He was keen on trading information in exchange for help, showing an interest in his own preservation.


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## Stumblewyk (Jun 11, 2012)

Full disclosure, I've seen approximately 5 minutes of the entire Aliens franchise of films, and won't be seeing Prometheus, either.  The xenomorphs scare the bejeezus out of me.  Case-in-point, I allowed myself to be cajoled into riding the Aliens ride at Universal Studios with some friends while on a high school trip.  I had my eyes closed the entire time.  But I do find the Aliens films interesting - bleak sci-fi is attractive to my strange sensibilities, so I've read a lot about the movies, even if I've never watched them.

So, that being out of the way, I've been following along with this thread, and I read the livejournal posting that Water Bob linked to.  I find deep, over-wrought symbolism to be fascinating, so this interpretation of the film intrigues me to no end.

And then I saw Water Bob's comment below:



Water Bob said:


> Or, in other words, the flick may well be deep with symbolisim and meaning, but if the viewers don't catch it--or worse, don't care when they do catch it--the film fails as a piece of entertainment.




Wasn't Damon Lindelof heavily involved with this film?  I was a devoted LOST fan, and as convoluted as that show became, honestly, 90% of the show's references and symbolism required some serious dedication to track down and analyze.  My wife and I watched VERY different versions of that show.  I was trying to find the answers to all the weird crap that came up on that show by reading the fan sites, solving the official puzzles, etc.  My wife was watching a really weird supernatural sci-fi-ish show and listening to me rant and rave about stuff.  And I didn't think for one second that LOST was failing as entertainment because I had to seek out explanations and interpretations in other sources and mediums - it made the show that much more rewarding for me.

And Lindelof was 1/2 of the creative team behind LOST.

If he had even a partial hand in Prometheus, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if you needed some crazy analysis to actually understand the movie.  Not at all.

Now, I concede that asking your audience to go seeking out additional information is a far less risky proposition when you know that your audience will likely get a little bit more info in the next episode which is only a few days away than in the sequel which may be years away, but that doesn't necessarily disqualify the piece in question as being successful art.


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## greyhaze (Jun 11, 2012)

Nellisir said:


> Vickers was never infected.  She got squished by the Great Space Wheel.



Sorry Shaw, not Vickers, got them mixed up.




Nellisir said:


> The "something alive" was the Engineer in cryosleep, not the worms/leechs.




I see what you're saying about the life form being the sleeping engineer, but why would that fade in and out, would that not just be a constant - the alternative being creatures that move in and out of the goo?


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## Janx (Jun 11, 2012)

Stumblewyk said:


> So, that being out of the way, I've been following along with this thread, and I read the livejournal posting that Water Bob linked to.  I find deep, over-wrought symbolism to be fascinating, so this interpretation of the film intrigues me to no end.
> 
> And then I saw Water Bob's comment below:
> 
> ...




I think there's a threshold for each viewer of a movie for when it is too obscure, or intellectually embedded with hidden meaning.

There's a number of factors at play with symbolism:
does the viewer even get the symbolism reference?
did the author intend that meaning or did he just put some symbols in there to make people run around in circles?
Do the proposed interpretations even match up to what the author intended as the message?
Is the author ever going to actually tell us what he meant?
Does the story make sense if you don't get all the symbolism and references?

I think it can come across as intellectual wankery, making stuff up and bullcrap to the average viewer when it takes a masters degree in English Lit to break down the story and explain it all as if it was absolutely the author's intent.  It's even more annoying when there's no word from the author as to what he meant.


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## Nellisir (Jun 12, 2012)

greyhaze said:


> I see what you're saying about the life form being the sleeping engineer, but why would that fade in and out, would that not just be a constant - the alternative being creatures that move in and out of the goo?



Because he's on cryosleep and 9/10ths dead.  The worm/leechs are clearly in the chamber with the big head and the jars of ooze, not a mile away behind a locked door that only David can open.  And the two dopes went away from the probe detecting life signs, not towards it.


----------



## Droogie (Jun 12, 2012)

SkidAce said:


> I think the snakes were "genetic restructured" as you say....worms that were already there and the goo spilled on them.
> 
> There was a camera shot of one of the crew walking and worms moving away from their feet.
> 
> ...



My rationalization: the goo is some sort of super-advanced mutagen (retro-viruses, nanobots, whatever) that gives the engineers complete control over organic life. It does whatever the engineers require it to do: destroy life, alter life, or create it out of whole cloth. In the hands of the beings that designed it, it can do some remarkable things, but when used without guidance, the results are...random. If Shaw were impregnated with the stuff a second time, maybe she'd give birth to a roach-like thing, instead of a squid. Or maybe she would just die outright. Anyway, I tend to think she gave birth to a prehistoric face hugger out of chance, not by specific design. 

It's frustrating that a film that most people find "meh" is making me think about it so much.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Jun 12, 2012)

Sometimes viewers are just DENSE.  Sometimes FILMAKERS are just dense.  Shortly after my first post in this thread I realized that the Engineer on primordial Earth WAS supposed to be Prometheus - or close enough as makes no difference if you're going to approach half of your movie as undefined mysticism and the other half as Stupid People On Parade.  One - just one - of my complaints about this movie I can drop.  That is, that it makes no sense to populate the Earth with life and then come back later to wipe it all out without explanation.  The explanation is that Prometheus was found to have been a bad boy and the other Engineers considered his life-seeding to be a no-no, and THEIR intent was to undo all that he had done.  Just so happens they were going to do that with their Black Koolaid.  

HOWEVER...

Who was coming back to Earth repeatedly, to be in a position to have multiple cultures seperated by time and place paint the "map" on the wall?  And why then did the map point to the alien WMD factory/storehouse and NOT to somewhere that Prometheus would WANT Mankind to visit?  If it was Engineers who thought Prometheus erred why did they not drop the dime on him THEN?  And so on and so forth and such like.  It creates more writing and plotting problems than it solves.

I can handle unexplained mysticism in a movie but not when it's MASQUERADING as horror/action/scifi drama and thus failing to be ANY of those things effectively.  Directors comments like, "It might be Earth - _but it doesn't matter,_" and, "There was a specific plot point about the timing of past events _but it's not actually IN the film_..." don't sound like fascinating seeds of deep discussion to me - they strike me as inexcusably poor filmmaking.  If you want to use your movie to say something to people about your philosophy of life and theories of existence then do it.  If you want people to just fill-in-the-blanks in your movie with their own theories and guesswork you can actually do that too.  I don't see that you can do BOTH at the same time and have a worthwhile film.  Films that are INTENDED to require library research and post doctorate degrees in "Making Schtuff Up So Other Schtuff Makes Sense," should not come with popcorn and a soda but a STUDY GUIDE.

And it STILL doesn't excuse all the idiotic character actions, bad plotting, etc.  This movie is a badly executed, pretentious MESS, with enough bright spots that only serve to highlight the dark recesses of its abysmal lows.  Scott's credibility in MY eyes at least has dropped to the level of "Has hit a few out of the park in the past, but is no longer to be trusted."  That puts him just slightly above George Lucas.  (I'll let that one speak volumes for itself.)


----------



## greyhaze (Jun 12, 2012)

Well said.


----------



## Janx (Jun 12, 2012)

after reading the wikipedia entry, here's an additional observation.

Scott had a guy write a script.  it turns out that script WAS a more direct lead-up to Alien.  Then Lindelhof was asked to review the script.  He made a lot of changes.

I'm going to bet Lindelhof is responsible for making the script more obscure and having the characters do stupid things to add more mystery to the film.

Just a theory, but its based on the track record of Lindelhof's work inducing the bone curdling cry from the audience of "it doesn't make sense! Why?!"


----------



## Starman (Jun 12, 2012)

Janx said:


> after reading the wikipedia entry, here's an additional observation.
> 
> Scott had a guy write a script.  it turns out that script WAS a more direct lead-up to Alien.  Then Lindelhof was asked to review the script.  He made a lot of changes.
> 
> ...




That's what I think happened, too. It's frustrating because I think Lindelof does have some really good ideas. He just seems to fail in the execution of those ideas.


----------



## Janx (Jun 12, 2012)

Starman said:


> That's what I think happened, too. It's frustrating because I think Lindelof does have some really good ideas. He just seems to fail in the execution of those ideas.




I think the process of obscuring the theme and embedding symbolic references was overdone, making the movie harder to relate to.  It's like they attempted to make the movie "deep" and only suceeded in making it muddled.

Contrast this to 2001.  I saw it when I was like 10.  I understood what the basic premise of the film was, that some alien entity prodded our advancement until we could get to Jupiter, where they could then prod us to the next step.  Not exactly rocket surgery, and there's no elements that contradict that or distract from it.

In Prometheus, it's the same initial premise, somebody seeded our planet.  But from there, it's muddled by horror movie ideas like having the idiots in the party get killed so they can be zombies later, and sci-fi action movie ideas like having the aliens plan to destroy earth if we don't stop it in time.

Wasn't this movie supposed to be about where the beginnings of life came from and the challenge that revelation makes to faith if you take it as a literal contradiction?  And what happened to these creators.  Why did they leave a clue?  Why did they stop coming back?

This movie smacks of Lost-like pattern of revealing little and creating more questions than answers.  For a movie, I don't think that's a good model to follow.


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## Joker (Jun 12, 2012)

From the linked wiki article:

Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"

Can I get a citation up in here?  Did NASA say this?


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## Janx (Jun 12, 2012)

Joker said:


> From the linked wiki article:
> 
> Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"
> 
> Can I get a citation up in here?  Did NASA say this?




Doesn't the Wiki have a bunch of citations, and shouldn't one of them be that which you seek?  Otherwise, flag it in wikipedia as an uncredited/referenced source.  On the other hand, it may be correctly referencing that Ridley said that, but that doesn't mean NASA or the Vatican said what he said they said.


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## Nellisir (Jun 12, 2012)

Joker said:


> Ridley Scott said "NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way"




:facepalm:


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jun 13, 2012)

And here I though Prometheus was the name of the starship.


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## Marclee (Jun 13, 2012)

Joker said:


> Can I get a citation up in here?  Did NASA say this?




Let's try it.
Alejandro Rojas: Ridley Scott's New Alien Movie Influenced by Ancient Astronaut Theory
and von Dniken poisons everything | Pharyngula
In the first one, the claim was rejected; neither vatican nor nasa ever made statements of that sort.
Second link is interesting, too. Apparently, Scott has been inspired by von Däniken who was a pseudoscientist claiming that Egyptians had help from aliens. Otherwise, how could they build pyramids blbalblabalbla


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## greyhaze (Jun 13, 2012)

They covered that in AVP.


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## Water Bob (Jun 13, 2012)

Marclee said:


> Apparently, Scott has been inspired by von Däniken who was a pseudoscientist claiming that Egyptians had help from aliens. Otherwise, how could they build pyramids blbalblabalbla




It wasn't aliens.  They were human--just not from earth.

They came from the Twelve Colonies and mainly Caprica.


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## Kaodi (Jun 17, 2012)

I have a hard time believing it was seeding life on Earth. What kind of idiot launches a plan that is going to take billions of years to bear fruit?

Something like the Alien must have been the projected outcome, or an outcome known from experience. What else explains the Alien mural?


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## RangerWickett (Jun 17, 2012)

I have a friend who likes this movie, and who has the theory that the death goo reacts to carbon dioxide.

The engineers might have been making weapons based on the Xenomorphs, which already exist. Similar to what Weyland-Yutani ends up doing in the series, the engineers found the aliens, transported some, had a disaster (on LV-426), and decided that these monsters were cool. So they made goo based on their genetic code.

I'm not sure how the "creation of life on earth" thing fits in, nor why 2000 years ago an accident on one engineer world somehow stopped the entire engineer race from visiting earth.


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## Starman (Jun 17, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> I'm not sure how the "creation of life on earth" thing fits in, nor why 2000 years ago an accident on one engineer world somehow stopped the entire engineer race from visiting earth.




The one guy who had Earth's coordinates accidentally erased the file and he hadn't done a backup in awhile.


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## Mark CMG (Jun 17, 2012)

Starman said:


> The one guy who had Earth's coordinates accidentally erased the file and he hadn't done a backup in awhile.





You're just saving a new thing or two, here and there, figuring a backup at the end of the week should be fine . . .


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## RangerWickett (Jun 23, 2012)

From an io9 comments section.

Consider: The Engineers are bald men with googly eyes. The ones we see in the movie spend all their time sleeping peacefully or running around in panic or blind rage. Their spaceships look like donuts (or cookies, like the one seen in the prologue). They seem to screw up a lot, especially when it comes to running facilities with toxic byproducts. They really hate miserly old billionaires.







Also: Mr. Burns’ assistant Smithers’ first name? WAYLAND.


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## El Mahdi (Jun 23, 2012)

Mark CMG said:


> You're just saving a new thing or two, here and there, figuring a backup at the end of the week should be fine . . .




The engineer was probably just distracted.  More than likely talking on his cellphone while intergalactic piloting...


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## greyhaze (Jun 23, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> From an io9 comments section.
> 
> Also: Mr. Burns’ assistant Smithers’ first name? WAYLAND.




I LOL'd @ this!  Thanks!


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## Joker (Jun 27, 2012)

I think the movie would make complete sense if at the end bursting out of the Engineer would not be an alien but M. Night Shyamalan looking into the camera, whispering: "Shyamaland!"

Or if before they do something stupid they would say it:

Before taking off his helmet: "Hi, my name is Charlie Holloway and welcome to Jackass"

Surprise shearing Dr. Shaw as she works intently on the alien head.  Complete with pov cam.


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