Prometheus [SPOILERS]

[ZombieWife]

Did the star map point specifically to that one planet or just to the system? Either way, I believe they were all left before the engineers got pissed at us.

Also Scott confirmed in an interview, the ship in Alien took off about 200 years before the site went toxic/gooey/whathave you, and wasn't heading for earth. ( I think he said 200, but it was definitly before the siter went bonkers), so, attempts to tie the engineer in the movie to the one in Alien don't work.

Edit 2: Also, I seriously wan to know what David said to the engineer. For all we know it was something like "Yo, blue dude, we're here to rape your grandma".

Yeah, I really want to know as well. And did we ever see Weyland die? They showed him with a big bump on the head, but he was still alive. Makes me wonder . . .

Lots of little loose ends. Some good. Some bad.

[Bastien]

IGN: Let’s get specific then – in your opinion, do these aliens want us to visit them?

Lindelof: That’s an excellent question and one that I’m not going to answer. But I will say that there’s something fascinating about humanity where we perceive it as an invitation. You look at a cave wall, there’s somebody pointing at some distant planets, and one interpretation is “This is where we come from” another is “We want you to come here.” Where are we drawing that from? I think another thing that’s interesting about the system that they visit is that the moon the land on in Prometheus is LV 223. And we know LV 426 is where the action takes place in Alien, so are they even in the right place? And how close are they to the place that these aliens on cave walls were directing them. Were they just extrapolating “This is the system that has the sun with the sustainable life.” So there’s a lot of guesswork. There’s a small line in the movie where David and Holloway are talking about David’s deconstruction of the language based on Holloway’s thesis, and he says “If your thesis is correct” and Holloway says “If it’s correct?” and David says “That’s why they call it a thesis Doctor.” And the reason we threw that in there is that we’re dealing with a highly hypothetical area in terms of who these beings are, what, if any invitation they issued, and who is responsible for making those cave paintings. And did something happen in between when those cave paintings were made - tens of thousands of years ago - and our arrival now, in 2093, 2,000 years after these things have perished. Did something happen in the intermediate period that we should be thinking about?

[Kalbear]

I'm saying that as iconography for "warning" it's pretty shitty. Humans are good at drawing things that say "fuck this shit" in a fairly universal way. That drawing wasn't it.

Lindelof is being basically as coy and indirect as he was with lost, which makes me think that this has absolutely no reasonable answers other than just because.

[Spaßvogel]

Lindelof is being basically as coy and indirect as he was with lost, which makes me think that this has absolutely no reasonable answers other than just because.

Yeah. His answers in that interview someone linked on the last page reek of "everything on the screen was there for a reason, you're just not looking hard enough to understand"

It's just distressing that professionals can flog such shoddiness and try to make us think it's the audience that's too dumb to figure it out.

[Balefont]

Really? We're going to start making fun of people's typing/spelling errors now?

I appreciate the back up, Grack. < bro fist >. I deserved it to some extent. It's just the misuse of the word "nonplussed" is a hot button for me or I'd not have called out the poster who misused it.

den can still suck my dick, tho. :P

[Robin Of House Hill]

Yeah. His answers in that interview someone linked on the last page reek of "everything on the screen was there for a reason, you're just not looking hard enough to understand"

It's just distressing that professionals can flog such shoddiness and try to make us think it's the audience that's too dumb to figure it out.

It is like a comedian blaming the audience for not finding a joke, funny.

[Guest]

Whatever Linds. We know you get your inspiration for "real science writing" from the crackpots on the History channel.

[Werthead]

Trying to figure out what is and isn't cannon in the Alien-verse is nuts, particularly with all the directors cuts.

Yup. 20th Century Fox presumably holds that Prometheus, all four Alien movies, the two Aliens vs. Predator movies and all three Predator films take place in the same universe and canon, since then people will buy all of them. Ridley Scott has said that he is only really bothered about Alien, Aliens and Prometheus and doesn't care about the others, although nothing in Prometheus contradicts Alien 3 or Resurrection. The only problematic angle is the AvP films, and even that can be fanwanked (Peter Weyland is the son of Charles Bishop Weyland and the two Weyland companies are different, but related; the xenos are a separate species whom both the Engineers and Predators have separately been dicking around with for millennia).

If Jesus was an Engineer, wouldn't someone have noticed that he was fucking huge? I don't recall any part of Mark, Matthew, Luke or John that says "and behold, the Lord appeareth as a 9 ft tall aerobicized Pillsbury doughboy."

Indeed?

Rev 01:12

(14) His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.

Did the star map point specifically to that one planet or just to the system? Either way, I believe they were all left before the engineers got pissed at us.

According to the io9 article mentioned earlier, it's not clear. Presumably the entire star system.

[Grack21]

I wonder how different the "extended cut" will be. 30 minutes is a lot to add to a film. Blade Runner only differs between cuts by like 3 mins and look how much that changes things.

[ZombieWife]

I wonder how different the "extended cut" will be. 30 minutes is a lot to add to a film. Blade Runner only differs between cuts by like 3 mins and look how much that changes things.

Sorry for ninja'ing the topic away briefly, but isn't Scott also considering working on another Blade Runner movie?

[Grack21]

No longer considering, its in active pre-production. The original scriptwriter for the first film is writing it though, so, fingers crossed.

[Blaine]

I liked it. I get the disappointments, but for me the good parts outweighed the bad.

The bad: Guy Pearce. Seriously, just use an old guy. Because, as amazing as the effects in Prometheus were as a whole, he still looked like a cross between Lambert in Highlander 2 and Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble. In short, silly.

Also bad: Lindlehof talks a good game about keeping things ambiguous, but his Lost tendency to spell out character motivation in obvious, uninteresting ways is far from ambiguous. There has never been a less interesting revelation than Charlize Theron calling Guy Pearce "father", ever. Like Captain Janek, I don't care.

But I liked the rest of it, especially the performances from Fassbender, Theron, Rapace and Elba. I liked the big Engineers and the creepy bio stuff.

Sure there were plot holes, but clearly the biggest was when Captain Stringer Bell offered to let his co-pilots escape to the surface of the planet where they could live for approximately 2 years and they refused.

Each refused. To escape certain death. And literally be the only man on the planet. With Charlize Theron.

Does not compute. Or I missed the signs that the two were totally in a committed relationship with each other.

[Grack21]

I also want to know what all that writing on the wall said.

[GoodGuyA]

Oh boy.

Just got back from the film. Can't say I wasn't surprised by it, though hardly in a good way. I actually really liked how things were going as far as the plot went, even with the BRUTAL philosophical overtones, but there are too many things which simply do not work for what we expected from a film like this. Ridley Scott still has some moxy in him, but he made so many mistakes in his pacing that I wonder if he really was all that concerned about the film. It felt more like he was trying to do Aliens, but in a really crappy way.

Of course, I'll just state the good. Gorgeous movie. No way around it. Scott knows how to shoot scenery. David, interesting, if completely nonsensical when you analyze him. Most of the designs are pretty nice to look at too and the premise of the technology presented is not discussed in great detail, which at least shows that we're not being pandered too. There's not a whole lot of exposition at all, actually, and even that with Weyland (at the beginning) which annoyed me to some extent still wasn't intrusive to the flow of the plot.

Before I get into the bad, I will say that the movie was fundamentally enjoyable. While not terrifying in the least, there are one or two good scares. But just like not understanding the feeling of 'want', I can't understand wanting a movie like this which professes to be sophisticated horror but ends up with so many plot holes you can see through it. The scene which killed it, absolutely destroying the movie was Shaw's waking up after discovering the baby. Absolutely everything was done wrong here. The emotional turmoil, the clumsy action, the idea that no one on the ship knows about her escape when contamination is such a high fear, the utterly rushed medical procedure which probably would have put her body into another state of shock... There's only so far you can stretch human limitations in a movie, and it went over the edge about the time she was continuing to shove needles into herself to keep awake. That's not what a painkiller does!

The set-up for that scene is so confusing too. David had to of known that Charlie was going to have sex with Shaw that night and for what payoff? What does he get out of her giving birth to the creature? Seriously, none of the underlying plot makes any sense whatsoever. The most basic idea is that Weyland wants to meet the creators so that they can make him live longer. Ignoring the fact that he could literally cryofreeze himself until a time when humans could do it and save a trillion dollars, why did he suspect that this would be the case at all? Because he's superstitious? Superstitious does not mean stupid. How does any of David's actions help this out at all?

I'll take a step back a moment to look at the cast here. My buddy who saw this before me brought up the Guy Pearce thing, and I'd be remiss to say it didn't bother me. When he actually entered the story as well, there was no intrigue to his character, and it didn't make sense why Shaw wouldn't have just killed him if she was in such a state of emotional fever. None of the characters are interesting besides David either. I don't understand why people think Shaw is a zealot when literally nothing we see up to that point has her putting her faith at the forefront. The briefing scene merely told me that she was passionate about the mission. She doesn't mention god at all, and the question posed at the beginning of the film by her father doesn't seem to be relevant. None of the philosophical pieces seem to ever be relevant.

The cardinal sin with the characters though are that there are some crew members who do not speak at all. That is inexcusable. There are so few scenes of character building which makes the impact effectively zero when things start to pick up. The two at the beginning are so obviously horror fodder that it's ridiculous, though I think a decent job was done in actually waiting to kill them off rather than literally having them snatched away right off. Tricked me for a moment. Too bad everything else was predictable. I had heard such good things about Charlize Theron but she either just didn't care here or she's honestly not a good actor. What the hell is up with her? Why does she have that bad actor's hushed voice and has to drastically exagerrate her emotional state. What the flying hell was that scene with her and her "Father" all about? Creepy in the worst possible way.

I don't want to go on so much more about the movie because I feel like I'd be ranting for hours on end. Why does the biologist never provide any useful information in a film which seems to rely entirely on biology? The last scene in the god damned film is such an atrocious pandering which makes absolutely no sense. Are they trying to imply that the Aliens and humans come from the same ancestor as a means to justify the Alien's actions in the further movies? I call bullshit. There's so much "meaningful" meaningless bullshit in this film. It's not trying to be subtle and invoke examination, it's doing those things which bad arthouse films do. Alien was so great because it was so subtle in the right way, and even Aliens had great moments like that too. This is so much an underthought action movie that it's difficult to gain anything from it...

-sigh-

I just don't understand why the climax of a horror film should ever be a guy making Hulk noises stopping down a hallway. This movie feels like there were large chunks cut out of it, which wouldn't surprise me given that producers apparently hate Ridley Scott with a passion. But he seems content with the film as it is, and thus we are left with a disappointing mess. Still all right, but a betrayal of its legacy.

[Grack21]

Does anybody actually read a thread before posting in it anymore these days?

[GoodGuyA]

Does anybody actually read a thread before posting in it anymore these days?

I tend to give my impressions without sullying myself with others'. The post was conversational more that debating. I'm sure this has all been brought up, but I wanted to put down my thoughts as undiluted as I could. Literally came back an hour ago. I'm not looking for answers to the questions, just making impressions.

[Spoony]

I tend to give my impressions without sullying myself with others'. The post was conversational more that debating. I'm sure this has all been brought up, but I wanted to put down my thoughts as undiluted as I could. Literally came back an hour ago. I'm not looking for answers to the questions, just making impressions.

Nothing wrong with that.

Grack is just being Gracky at you. It's what he does around here.

And for the record - I like Harrad. Somebody needs to voice dissent to keep a meaningful discussion of quality going.

I applaud his attempt at producing critical discourse in the entertainment section.

[Grack21]

Critical discourse, yeah, ok. :bang:

[naz]

The bad: Guy Pearce. Seriously, just use an old guy. Because, as amazing as the effects in Prometheus were as a whole, he still looked like a cross between Lambert in Highlander 2 and Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble. In short, silly.

I'm willing to wait and see whether the next movie(s) have Weyland as a younger man (for whatever reason - flashback, reverse-aging, clone, whatever) and thus necessitated getting Pearce made up as an old-timer in this one.

I can't imagine it was only because of the TED viral video.

[Merentha]

Okay, so. A discussion with my roommate was interesting enough that I decided to bring it to the internet. So, we have Engineers seeding life, then creating murals that point to a planet. Now, we have all been calling the planet a "bioweapons lab" but we only do that because Janek calls it that. The Engineer at the beginning drinks (possibly) the same black goo. So, what if the Engineers did fully intend for people to show up at the planet? Lets also add some religion to the mix. In the giant head room, there are two murals, one of what looks like the Engineer near the water, and the other is a xeno. Okay, so, now we have murals of a being that creates life by dying, and a being that creates death by living. If you're going with a race who just goes seeding the galaxy with life, having a life and death cult makes a LOT of sense. Instead of Engineers, Gardeners might be a better name. This also fits with the ship on LV426 carrying nothing but xeno eggs. They have both life AND death ships.

(As an aside, the xeno life cycle actually makes sense for this, too. In the movies Scott considers canon, we only see xeno eggs lasting for a long time in the LV426 cargo hold, in what looks weirdly like a stasis field. We also never see them eat. If you wanted to wipe a planet clean of life and then kill off the thing that cleansed it, a race of rapacious hyper-metabolized murderous acid-blooded monsters isn't the WORST idea.)

So, now we have an explanation for the LV426 ship, the mural, and possibly the facilty. We also know that around the time of Christ (and this is too suspicious for me to pass up) the facility was a) about to deliver a cargo of goo to Earth and b ) destroyed. What if there was a schism following Jesus' murder at the hands of humans? It would explain the chaos in the facility, for one. Now, what if during this schism somehow xeno DNA got into the jars? We see several Engineers running into a room that shuts and doesn't seem to have any other way out, but there are no bodies in there. Okay, so they drank the black goo and disintegrated. What if one had been facehugged unknowingly? That means the black goo that the Prometheus crew was tainted and not the normal dissolving black goo of life.

Another possibility is that, quite simply, the black goo from the beginning is the same, but to work properly, needs to be ingested, possibly in a state of calm. . The only one who drinks it is Holloway, and he does disintegrate, just very slowly. The other who ingests it is Fifield, and he does come back to life, but is a murderous zombie. He does get face-splashed while he's in the process of dying horribly to a combination of acid to the face and CO2 to the lungs. Between the altered state of consciousness, the panic/anger he's feeling, and the fact that he dies is what brings him back. Or he comes back because his whole willpower is focused on staying alive at all costs, which fits thematically with a corruption-as-a-desire for immortality theme. Then there are the worms, who marinate in it. If it IS tied to intent or something mental, well, they're animals. They have nothing beyond "want to live". The sperm thing has nothing beyond "want to grow". Why it gets an oviposter and a bunch of weird eyes, hell if I know. We're back to "xeno DNA got in it somehow", which explains the last scene.

tldr: Two Engi factions.

Black goo either working as intended but horribly misapplied by the incompetent humans, or corrupted by xeno DNA, or both. I favor the last two options.

It doesn't fix the bad moviemaking decisions (lets ignore the lady who just C-sectioned a mutant babything out of herself and knocked out two crewmembers and keep on carrying on) but it does make a whole hell of a lot of sense out of most things. So poke holes in it!