Prometheus [SPOILERS]

[Mr. E]

That happens with lots of things. People feel an irresistible need to defend their opinion in matters like this. The flawed logic goes like this. If I like it and you don't, you must be wrong. So they battle to the death over something that is a matter of preference.

Honestly, I think it's more a matter of perspective. The flawed logic, as you say, also goes: "I don't like it and you do, so you must be wrong." As nazputin said above, some people think the film's flaws overwhelm it. I don't. He does. That's fine. But what I have trouble with are the absolutely outrageous accusations being made against this film. Maybe not so much on here, but in the larger internet hatedom.

[Kalbear]

If that's the case please speak to the criticisms here and not on the Internet in general. Or at least object to things on the Internet clearly. It'll make this thread significantly less dickworthy.

[ZombieWife]

People who thought the movie was great are having conniptions at the thought that there are people out there who have problems with it.

I don't see that. I see griefers constantly picking their scabs, wanting someone to pat them on the head and say, "aww, aren't you cute?" Like a 3 year old. Hey mom. HEY MOM. HEY MOM, I HATED IT! I HATED IT! I HATED IT! HI MOM ARE YOU AWAKE?

And I see some people entertaining some of the debate of good VS bad. I see others ignoring it. I see a hell of a lot saying, "I liked it okay, but it had some issues and here's what they are, AND, hey, let's speculate."

I actually agree with some of the people who really disliked it, but it wasn't enough for me to loathe it. (shrug)

There's a difference between saying, "Yeah, I hated it, here's why, let's discuss," and "Wow, you're all fuckin' "r*t****" for liking this.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Honestly, I think it's more a matter of perspective. The flawed logic, as you say, also goes: "I don't like it and you do, so you must be wrong." As nazputin said above, some people think the film's flaws overwhelm it. I don't. He does. That's fine. But what I have trouble with are the absolutely outrageous accusations being made against this film. Maybe not so much on here, but in the larger internet hatedom.

I wasn't actually commenting on his opinion of the movie, just those that obsess over what they see as flaws, and sound like they are outraged. Also, the one guy who told us to get a life...because it wasn't a prequel...probably one of several incremental ones that lead up to Alien.

It is only entertainment. It isn't about a real place, like ASoIaF. :P

[Guest Raidne]

After much thought on this subject, I've decided that when I go to see a movie that is derivative of the earlier "great" work of a director my expectations aren't on the level of expecting another Blade Runner in the first place. I think I was just relieved that there was no Jar Jar Binks, etc.

It told a fascinating story. What if you spent a lifetime trying to meet God, and when you met him he kicked your fucking ass? What is more important the audience was left with an incredible amount to ponder on and discuss.

And this is the reason I liked it (besides the special effects in IMAX 3D, which I'm thinking likely blinded me to a lot of continuity errors/plot questions). The question is great - we, humans, are probably soon on the verge on building androids. They may or may not have sentience like ours. If they do, what if they exist long after we do? What if somehow they lose knowledge of who created them, and why, and spent thousands of years trying to answer those questions? When the truth was discovered it would range from something like "we didn't want to take our own trash anymore" to "we wanted to be able to do more complex computations on the fly in conjunction with physical action." Pretty depressing stuff.

And yet, anyone who has ever asked this questions about humans nearly always assumes that - if we have a creator - we were created for some nobler purpose than this. Like the existence of the creator itself, without anything else, justifies a belief in a higher meaning of life.

And yet, if we just look at ourselves and what we do, it's really freaking obvious how wrong this is, and how completely and utterly depressing it would be to find out that we were created for the same reasons that we create things. Charlie's totally insensitive inability to see this (which stretched credulity for me, honestly) is a reason David doesn't mind using him as an experiment. I mean, push come to shove he would anyway, but David is not really a fan of most humans, IMO, for this reason. I thought that was pretty good characterization that came through.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Raidne,

I noticed Charlie's insensitivity too. He seemed to delight in reminding David that David was not human. He was being a tremendous shithead.

[Mr. E]

Raidne,

I noticed Charlie's insensitivity too. He seemed to delight in reminding David that David was not human. He was being a tremendous shithead.

Which was actually a character weakness IMO. I understand being upset that the Engineers are all dead. Okay. But you've still discovered an alien lifeform, confirmed everything that people were doubting about you and your mission, and yet your distraught enough to get wasted, be an butthole and get easily poisoned by a duplicitous android? C'mon man.

[Kalbear]

Raidne, it's absolutely an interesting question and concept for sci-fi. Though I find the 'they killed Jesus so they suck' thing a bit less so.

But for me, awesome concepts often don't work when wedded with hamfisted execution. To speak to the above point from Arthmail about the removal of squidbilly, it was really, really stupid. Okay, so David knows that she's got a bizarre thing inside of her that's growing at the rate of 3 pounds per hour. He knows that it's a danger. But he's an ass. Except...he apparently tells two other humans that she's a danger, so they put on hazmat suits to even sedate her. That's how scared of her they were - they wore full protection simply to talk with her and then put her in cryosleep.

So she beats them up and runs off to gods know where. And they don't pursue at all. Again, they were concerned enough to be wearing hazmat suits. They saw what happened to her boyfriend. And they do nothing.

Furthermore, no one cares when she comes back. So one of two possibilities are true: either they know that she removed this hostile organism from her body (in which case why wouldn't they really, really care about said hostile organism given that they were in hazmat suits for the possibility of it) or they don't know, in which case they must assume she still has it. In either case something must be done. But does anyone care? Nope. The doc that worked with her and was in a hazmat suit later sees her when she hangs out with Weyland and instead of freaking out goes 'sup'. So somehow they went from caring so much they were in full protective gear to not caring at all when the guy who finances the thing comes out of stasis to say hi. What the fuck?

It doesn't make any sense. I understand what they were trying to do - to be awesome with respect to the setpiece - but the setup for the whole thing stretches implausibility to such a huge degree that it just took me out of the moment entirely.

Furthermore, apparently Shaw knows that it's probably still around, because the first thing she does? Grabs an axe. So she knows that it's still potentially around. Which means that she didn't tell anyone about it. Why wouldn't she? SHe knows it's dangerous or potentially dangerous, and instead of telling people she actually apparently cares about that hey, she just gave birth to a squidbilly, she doesn't say anything.

Why? Why wouldn't Vickers know about this given that she's been in there at least for some part of this whole thing? Why wouldn't Weyland, given that the autodoc is almost certainly for him? Just bizarre.

If you want to fanwank about the guy hired for mapping being lost or how people who panic make bad decisions as the justification for things like taking off your helmet on an alien world, okay. I would personally think that if I was a guy who wanted to live forever or at least meet my maker, I would take as many precautions as reasonably possible in order to ensure that that succeeds, which means hiring the best, not letting idiots run amok and most certainly not telling my Android to bring a bunch of black slime on board to infect the crew before I get out of stasis or we even know that an engineer's alive.

[ZombieWife]

Yeah, Holloway was, I don't know. I kept wondering why he was getting drunk and being a general ass. Again, with 30 minutes cut, maybe we missed some transition in there. I don't know. Just seemed inconsistent with the character we were introduced to in the beginning.

It almost seems like Vickers was the only one who had the sense God gave a mule. Some guy who was about to explode from space ebola wants ON THE SHIP and she's the only one willing to set his ass on fire.

P.S. LOL for those who haven't already seen this:

http://io9.com/5917223/must-read-noomi-rapaces-sms-conversation-with-the-aliens-in-prometheus

SMS conversation between Dr. Shaw and the Engineers....

[Kalbear]

I think this movie works better if it works via basic zombie movie rules: IE, in this universe two things are profoundly different from ours:

1. There exists an alien ebola virus thing that really is horrible

2. No one has ever seen a zombie or alien horror movie ever.

If you take that as the basis, it all makes sense. Aliens wouldn't ever do anything bad to us! Any people that come back to the ship are almost certainly totally fine! There are no such things as aerosolized nastinesses. No one has to worry about things like disease infection. And certainly that squid you removed from your stomach won't be coming back, and no one cares since it's almost certainly harmless even if it does hang out in the autodoc eating gauze and hypodermics all day. Really, nothing to be concerned about!

[ZombieWife]

Not to mention the med-pod is only set for men (likely Weyland), and can perform surgeries and stuff, but cannot fix Dr. Shaw's lady parts no-baby problem. Unless she has no uterus or such. Even so.....

[Jaime L]

I thought it was a great time. One of the few summer blockbusters that actually delivered.

Michael Fassbender alone was worth the price of admission. Wait, no, I paid $17 for IMAX, so not quite...but still the weird dark humanity and unclear motivations and loyalties of David didn't allow you to take your eyes off of him.

And maybe it is the immersive experience of the IMAX, but a film can be so visually stunning and so compelling in all that it is not telling the viewer, only hinting at, that I found myself largely oblivious to the plot holes, sloppy characterization and leaps of logic as I was watching. You can reach a point where everything surrounding it is so good, the flaws don't matter so much. Clearly reading this thread that took some people out of the moment, but for me and the people I was with, definitely wasn't the case. Even aware of the myriad of flaws, I want to see it again - $17 and all. And, fuck, it feels like it's been forever since I've felt that way.

[naz]

P.S. LOL for those who haven't already seen this:

http://io9.com/59172...s-in-prometheus

SMS conversation between Dr. Shaw and the Engineers....

My favorite part:

Shaw: "Fine, so you created us."

Engineer: "Yes."

Shaw: "And then changed your mind and decided to destroy us."

Engineer: "Fuck y'all, seriously."

Shaw: "Why's that?"

Engineer: "All will be revealed in James Cameron's PROMETHEUSES."

[Mr. E]

If you want to fanwank about the guy hired for mapping being lost or how people who panic make bad decisions as the justification for things like taking off your helmet on an alien world, okay. I would personally think that if I was a guy who wanted to live forever or at least meet my maker, I would take as many precautions as reasonably possible in order to ensure that that succeeds, which means hiring the best, not letting idiots run amok and most certainly not telling my Android to bring a bunch of black slime on board to infect the crew before I get out of stasis or we even know that an engineer's alive.

To inject something more ambiguous, my feeling after finding that Weyland was alive was that David wasn't "poisoning" Halloway. He was trying to see what the effects of the goo were on the human body. We know Weyland's trying to avoid dying, at this point they think all the Engineers are dead, and David gets an order from Weyland to "try harder." So he poisons Halloway to see whether the goo is not, in fact, some magical cure that Weyland was looking for.

[Kalbear]

Sure - but he also risks Weyland and everyone else on board by doing so. He could have easily kidnapped Charlie and put the goo on him and stuck him somewhere, then told folks that he needed to be quarantined (rightly) because he had been infected (by David, but that's a silly detail). That would not jeopardize Weyland or the ship nearly as much as opening the biological weapon in the library and playing with it between his fingers like it was slime from a Nickelodeon show.

And yes, you can say that Weyland's desperate and David's just following orders and neither are smart with respect to magical containers of goo of death, but it's so very meh as far as a result. It's close to being the stupidest choice possible. Why not have David try it on, say, a hamster and watching the hamster become super strong and mighty, then he goes 'hmm, this might work' and then try it on a human? Just bizarre plot logic to make people jump through to get to where you want to go.

Heck, you know what? As dickish as Charlie Holloway was, I would have loved it if he decided to take a taste of the black goo for no reason other than he was a giant douchebag. That would have made more sense. Or have David lie to him and tell him that it contains rna memory of the engineers, and it will allow him to commune with God and have him take it that way. At least then it's Charlie's hubris and blind faith that fucks him over.

[Arthmail]

That happens with lots of things. People feel an irresistible need to defend their opinion in matters like this. The flawed logic goes like this. If I like it and you don't, you must be wrong. So they battle to the death over something that is a matter of preference.

Or people can debate, otherwise forums like this die. Its pretty simple. Hang out in an echo chamber if you want.

But for me, awesome concepts often don't work when wedded with hamfisted execution. To speak to the above point from Arthmail about the removal of squidbilly, it was really, really stupid. Okay, so David knows that she's got a bizarre thing inside of her that's growing at the rate of 3 pounds per hour. He knows that it's a danger. But he's an ass. Except...he apparently tells two other humans that she's a danger, so they put on hazmat suits to even sedate her. That's how scared of her they were - they wore full protection simply to talk with her and then put her in cryosleep.

So she beats them up and runs off to gods know where. And they don't pursue at all. Again, they were concerned enough to be wearing hazmat suits. They saw what happened to her boyfriend. And they do nothing.

Furthermore, no one cares when she comes back. So one of two possibilities are true: either they know that she removed this hostile organism from her body (in which case why wouldn't they really, really care about said hostile organism given that they were in hazmat suits for the possibility of it) or they don't know, in which case they must assume she still has it. In either case something must be done. But does anyone care? Nope. The doc that worked with her and was in a hazmat suit later sees her when she hangs out with Weyland and instead of freaking out goes 'sup'. So somehow they went from caring so much they were in full protective gear to not caring at all when the guy who finances the thing comes out of stasis to say hi. What the fuck?

It doesn't make any sense. I understand what they were trying to do - to be awesome with respect to the setpiece - but the setup for the whole thing stretches implausibility to such a huge degree that it just took me out of the moment entirely.

Furthermore, apparently Shaw knows that it's probably still around, because the first thing she does? Grabs an axe. So she knows that it's still potentially around. Which means that she didn't tell anyone about it. Why wouldn't she? SHe knows it's dangerous or potentially dangerous, and instead of telling people she actually apparently cares about that hey, she just gave birth to a squidbilly, she doesn't say anything.

Why? Why wouldn't Vickers know about this given that she's been in there at least for some part of this whole thing? Why wouldn't Weyland, given that the autodoc is almost certainly for him? Just bizarre.

If you want to fanwank about the guy hired for mapping being lost or how people who panic make bad decisions as the justification for things like taking off your helmet on an alien world, okay. I would personally think that if I was a guy who wanted to live forever or at least meet my maker, I would take as many precautions as reasonably possible in order to ensure that that succeeds, which means hiring the best, not letting idiots run amok and most certainly not telling my Android to bring a bunch of black slime on board to infect the crew before I get out of stasis or we even know that an engineer's alive.

In regards to the medical procedure, there is also no way of knowing if they were standing outside of the door watching it happen when they got a call from Weyland to help him get up. At that point they could not have known that the damned thing would survive containment procedures, or even being ripped out of her body before it came to full term. Human babies can't survive that sort of thing. Besides which, Weyland called - there are only so many people on the ship to help pull him out of cryo.

David could have simply ordered the two in hazmats to suit up and take her to cryo without giving any information as to why. They could have reported to him that she had escaped into the medical pod, and he could have said don't worry, Mr. Weyland is up now, come give me a hand. I mean, David clearly held a great deal of regard for the old man - or at least was programmed to.

At what point was Vickers back in her pod and not trying to control the situation? They landed and shit turned south the very first night. Those guys were lost the very first night, and Shaw and Halloway make love the very first night. The next day Halloway burns to death at Vickers hands, Fifield and Millburn are gone, and shit gets worse. I doubt there was a great deal of time to wander into her medical bay and wonder what they hell had happened.

There is nothing saying that the men Weyland hired were not the best. The best at their chosen field, not necessarily the best at dealing with this sort of situation. And nice fanwank comment Kal, but i really expected no better from you.

I thought Charlie's character made sese. He was reckless, looking for a chance to find the beginnings of man, and when he was confronted by death and emptiness, he was left with nothing. His faith was broken, unlike say Shaw, who managed to keep her faith.

As for David, he clearly had an agenda with Weyland. We know nothing of the conversations between him and Weyland while Weyland was in cryo.

I get that some people want their movies to be laid out for them like a book, so they get to see every move and countermove, to see each piece as it unfolds. No, you know what, i don't get that. They landed and went exploring. Even removing their helmets is essentially a little nit pick of useless proportions, considering the scale of the rest of the movie. It is an ideas movie, and it does not spoon feed you the answers. It leaves the audience with as many questions as Shaw herself had. And it doesn't attempt to fill in every fucking gap so the huddled masses can understand.

Personally, i don't give a shit to see a 1 minute sequence where those two doctors that were brained ask Shaw what the hell she was doing. Or see them looking through the door into the med lab. I'm not concerned with that extraneous, useless, bullshit. Cover it in a book, fine, but keep the pacing of my ideas movie rolling.

There is apparantly an extra 30 minutes left on the floor for those of you unable to come to terms with the bullshit you are presenting.

[Guest Raidne]

Raidne, it's absolutely an interesting question and concept for sci-fi. Though I find the 'they killed Jesus so they suck' thing a bit less so.

That just better not fucking happen.

So somehow they went from caring so much they were in full protective gear to not caring at all when the guy who finances the thing comes out of stasis to say hi. What the fuck?

Dunno. My feeling was that they really didn't know anything and were only doing exactly whatever it was that David told them to do. Presumably he communicated to them that she was no longer a threat after she bumbled into Weyland's room - I'm personally a bit more concerned about that from a WTF how did this happen angle.

So she knows that it's still potentially around. Which means that she didn't tell anyone about it. Why wouldn't she? SHe knows it's dangerous or potentially dangerous, and instead of telling people she actually apparently cares about that hey, she just gave birth to a squidbilly, she doesn't say anything.

I imagine this is because she thought they'd put her back in containment. I have no idea what she thinks David thought about the squidbaby or where it might be after that point, but the facts as they are is that, as far as I can tell, only David and Shaw knew about the thing, and neither of them really gives a flying fuck about anybody else on the ship.

If you want to fanwank about the guy hired for mapping being lost or how people who panic make bad decisions as the justification for things like taking off your helmet on an alien world, okay.

Nope, both those things drove me nuts. Seriously, I was sitting there wanting to yell "WHY ARE YOU TAKING YOUR HELMET OFF??? WHY ARE THE REST OF YOU NOW TAKING YOUR HELMETS OFF AFTER YOU THOUGHT IT WAS DUMB TWO SECONDS AGO?" But then I forgot about it again because the effects were really cool and the idea was really good.

So, I'll agree with you there - Prometheus is a pretty good movie that could have a been a really great movie if several relatively easy to fix things about the writing hadn't totally sucked. I'm curious how Ridley Scott feels about Lindeloff. And this Jesus thing had better not happen.

Anyway, I don't think it'll be on any top 10 sci fi movies of all time lists like Alien is or anything. But I had a good time watching it in the theater and I hate going to the theater.

[Rinso]

I just got back from the movies. I dunno, it wasn't as awesome as I hoped it would be. It was kind of meh, actually.

The movie is beautifully shot and well acted. The atmosphere is gloomy and there are few creepy moments.

The story fell flat under its own weight, though.

Why did those aliens created us?

Why did they want to destroy us?

Why did the android (was it David? I can't remember character names easily) put the alien virus in the male doctor's drink?

Heck, even with the small questions - why the relic medical capsule in Charlize Theron's "aparatments" was programmed to be used by males only? It wasn't meant for Wayland, she wanted him to die; was her character transgendered or something? And it was fully operational, so it's not like it was just a decoration.

And another question that just hit me - the whole expedition used ancient aliens theory-like clues and maps to get to the planet; however, it turned out that this was simply a backwater world where our creators simply stored their weapons. Why did the aliens gave our ancestors clues to its whereabouts then? Why not point them to where their civilization really was?

The film ended as it began - in search of the big existential questions, with no real plot progress whatsoever. Sure, a bunch of people died and everything, but all in all...

It wasn't bad. I had a relatively good time, but I wish the film had the decency to answer its own questions.

I'd give it 6.5 out 10.

[Kalbear]

Sorry, Raidne - according to Scott the Jesus thing did happen. They just didn't put it in because they thought it was 'too on the nose'. They didn't bother putting it in because apparently it was just too obvious to spell out. So...yeah. Jesus was a space engineer that came down to check out what's going on, then they saw how things sucked, then the guy got stabbed and the Engineers apparently were all 'what the fuck, kill all that'. Except they also got fucked up for no good reason.

Arthmail:

In regards to the medical procedure, there is also no way of knowing if they were standing outside of the door watching it happen when they got a call from Weyland to help him get up. At that point they could not have known that the damned thing would survive containment procedures, or even being ripped out of her body before it came to full term. Human babies can't survive that sort of thing. Besides which, Weyland called - there are only so many people on the ship to help pull him out of cryo.

David could have simply ordered the two in hazmats to suit up and take her to cryo without giving any information as to why. They could have reported to him that she had escaped into the medical pod, and he could have said don't worry, Mr. Weyland is up now, come give me a hand. I mean, David clearly held a great deal of regard for the old man - or at least was programmed to.

Okay, we know they weren't outside the autodoc room because we saw outside the room. And then later, we see Shaw leave that room. We know they're not there. If they were there, then it's really implausible - they just watched this woman remove this squid thing from her stomach that they were aware of (and they did know about that too - they saw the xrays just like David did), cut a hole in her stomach and frantically trigger the decon procedures. So there's this woman in bandages covered in blood with a fresh abdominal would and they're all "okay, we're good" and then just leave her to wander the halls.

Or, you say, they didn't know about why they should be in hazmat, just that they need to be. So...they don't go after the woman who hit them and ran off who is likely infected with horrible brain eating zombie thing like Holloway was?

Neither of these make any sense. And the thought that instead of dealing with the massive plague vector that is wandering around the ship, they instead rush immediately to wake up Weyland? Sorry, that's complete silly fanwankery.

Not to mention that any of this is actually, ya know, in the movie. I know it's silly of me to actually want important scenes that show what's going on to be in a movie.

At what point was Vickers back in her pod and not trying to control the situation? They landed and shit turned south the very first night. Those guys were lost the very first night, and Shaw and Halloway make love the very first night. The next day Halloway burns to death at Vickers hands, Fifield and Millburn are gone, and shit gets worse. I doubt there was a great deal of time to wander into her medical bay and wonder what they hell had happened.

We see her go to her pod at one point between Shaw's bit and Weyland's waking up. So at no point does she wonder about the bloody footprints and smears on the wall or the thing randomly thumping against the door in her autodoc? Really? Remember, that part was where she lived and she watched David go into the Engineer ship from there. She could see almost anything she wanted to. Now, I don't remember if David goes into the ship after or before Shaw's surgery, but I believe it's after - which means that Vickers was hanging out in her room watching David while squidbaby is flailing happily in the other room, and she doesn't even bat an eye. This is also the woman who personally went down and incinerated a zombie when it threatened to come on board; you're telling me she wouldn't be concerned when two people in hazmat suits are going to put her into stasis?

I get that some people want their movies to be laid out for them like a book, so they get to see every move and countermove, to see each piece as it unfolds. No, you know what, i don't get that. They landed and went exploring. Even removing their helmets is essentially a little nit pick of useless proportions, considering the scale of the rest of the movie. It is an ideas movie, and it does not spoon feed you the answers. It leaves the audience with as many questions as Shaw herself had. And it doesn't attempt to fill in every fucking gap so the huddled masses can understand.

And I get that some people are perfectly happy to watch a movie where nothing actually makes sense so that they can put things together in their mind - or better yet, they consider the lack of actual reasonable behavior to be a feature and now it's a mystery that must be solved. I understand that. For me, I think movies that consist of implausible setpieces combined with completely ludicrous behavior to be shitty. If you have to be the one that actually determines what happens, chances are that's a flaw in the movie.

Now, I don't have any issue whatsoever if you think that these plot holes don't sink the movie. If you think it's awesome because it's got big ideas and is really pretty or you simply like watching Charlize Theron slinking around in a tight body suit, good on you. That's great. There are definitely plenty of reasons to like the movie. And I don't mind that we don't know why the Engineers want to kill us or what the actual goo is, or even that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense biologically what the goo does to people. That's fine; mysteries are okay and not everything has to be answered. But please don't tell me that the giant gaping holes in the basic plot aren't giant gaping holes in the plot. Accept that they just didn't bother you that much and that that's okay.

[ZombieWife]

Why did David infect Halloway? Because he's a Weyland-Yutani android. There's really no more explanation needed than that. Earth's "Mega-evil corporation" doesn't have to explain itself. It wants what it wants.