Prometheus (Spoilers)

[hongi]

And I was really looking forward to this movie. How bad is this nonsense in the actual film? Someone save my enthusiasm!

It's pretty bad. But watch it for the visuals.

Of all the questions that weren't answered (ie. all of them), I think by far the most important one is 'what did David say to the engineer?'

Depends on how you characterise David I think. Is he the loyal follower of Weyland, doing everything up to that moment in order to secure immortality for his 'father'? If so, then he faithfully repeated Weyland's orders to the Engineer and the alien just reacted badly for his own reasons.

Or did he have his own purpose, pretending to help his creator, but really wanting to be there at his side when they met the Engineer, so that he could convince the Engineer to destroy humankind? All children want to destroy their parents as someone (David?) said in the movie.

[Guardsman Bass]

I saw it yesterday, and really didn't care for it. The visuals are impressive, of course, although nothing about them really strikes me as the kind of thing you'd watch again just to see it. Some of the acting is good, like Fassbender's David. The whole scene in the Auto-Surgery Machine was horrifyingly creepy.

But the rest wasn't that good. The pacing was off - we rush straight from finding the cave painting to Rapace & Friends about to reach the planet on a starship, years later. After that, it just felt slow and dull, mostly because I never felt emotionally involved with any of the characters. Scenes that should have been horrifying and sad mostly weren't because of that factor. Just look at the scenes between Rapace's character and her husband/boyfriend/co-scientist - very little chemistry at all, so it felt like he was just showing up long enough to get Rapace pregnant with the Vagina Tentacle Monster. Nor did Rapace's flashbacks really drive home how important the search for "God" was to her, and why it was such a huge betrayal when they turned out to be hostile.

To make matters worse, the plot started relying more and more on Movie Stupidity to keep it going. Things like the scientists being a bunch of idiots who haven't heard of contamination, the aforementioned zombie guy showing up, getting killed, and then nobody cares later. Then there's David's plot to infect Rapace's boyfriend, and then later put her in hibernation to take the specimen back home. It seemed kind of like Alien, except that after Rapace gets it out, nobody gives a shit anymore. It just ended up being a plot device so that the Vagina Tentacle Monster would be in that room to face-fuck the Engineer when he's trying to kill Rapace.

blahhhhhh... Sounds like this movie espouses a lot of ideas this board hates, and it seems to be proselytizing those ideas rather than simply using them as a jumping off point for an interesting story. To this day I remember comments from Darth Wong and Stravo from the early days of this board because they were so dead on- that they can forgive the silliness of the Death Star's thermal vent as a weak point because it didn't preach about the hubris of arrogant scientists or too far reaching technology, and that was why the weak security systems in Jurassic Park were much harder to overlook, thanks to Jeff Goldblum's ranting about how it proved Chaos Theory. That and Michael Chrichton's certainty that any advancement in science was to be feared.

I gave the movie a pass on the stupid "Chariot of the Gods" set up, mostly because a movie can still be entertaining and good even if the premise isn't too great.

That said, it is kind of annoying. Rapace does get challenged on it - when she brings it up in a mission briefing, one of the Redshirt Scientists says, "Doesn't that fly in the face of 300 years of Darwinism?" Rapace's Character: "I choose to believe."

I wonder if it will get much more annoying in the sequels, though. Someone asked the chief writer on the show - Damon Lindelshof, a writer from Lost - about why the Engineers were hostile, and he said something like, "The Engineers wanted to kill humanity 2000 years ago. What happened 2000 years ago that made them want to kill us?"

[hongi]

Oh hell yeah. Jeeeeeezus!!!! Jesus will save us from the aliens.

"Doesn't that fly in the face of 300 years of Darwinism?" Rapace's Character: "I choose to believe."

Well to be fair, her faith is later justified. And it's not exactly an unreasonable thing to believe. Scientists have postulated panspermia before.

[Block]

Oh hell yeah. Jeeeeeezus!!!! Jesus will save us from the aliens.

Actually according to interviews, Jesus was one of them, we tortured and killed him, they decided to wipe us out. Although that doesn't make sense to me because they also said the cave paintings were from various societies that had a willing sacrifice from their god to create the world or help with the harvest, etc. So then Jesus would've been expecting to die.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

For all its flaws, I have to say I loved it. I was really happy about the revelations about the original Aliens and I have no issues with the fact that it didn't provide closure probably because I don't equate the two. I'm not sure why it bothers so many people that we ended up knowing very little about why they wanted to destroy us since we frankly have virtually no understanding of their society, culture or history. There could be a myriad of reasons why some of them wanted to destroy us but that doesn't mean they all wanted to. I mean there's even the possibility that internal sabotage by Space Jockey dissenters was the reason why the plan failed to materialize in the first place. For all we know, the Space Jockeys could have as diverse and unique civilization as we do if not even more so and you can't conclude much about them off of one malevolent Space Jockey.

I also thought that it made good sense why the original Aliens were so well designed to use humans as their hosts since they were created by beings that were anatomically similar to us. If we follow that train of thought, then it might suggest that the Space Jockeys were well acquainted with the Predators and designed the Aliens to infect them as well. Much like we have so many variations of nuclear weapons or so many variations of firearms, the Space Jockeys also have multiple variations of the same type of biological weapon. They tend to have acidic blood and they like to mouth-rape.

Now that we've determined that the elephant-look was merely a spacesuit, I wonder who or what was underneath the Space Jockey suit in the ship on LV-426.

[TOSDOC]

For me the biggest plot hole wasn't just why they wanted to destroy us, but when.

If it was a contagion that killed the other engineers, it looked pretty well contained up until David opened the door to the room with the urns. The pilot's sarcophagus was well away from that area on the map, and the ship was already loaded, gassed up and ready to leave at a moment's notice. There's no timer on the engineer's capsule either, he was woken from the outside. So who was he waiting for, and why so long?

He's also human, according to the DNA. And every human we've seen wake up from hypersleep only wants a shower and coffee first thing, looking they have a massive hangover. That was following at most a 57-year sleep we witnessed, too. This guy gets up, stretches, downs four people in 30 seconds, and then takes off for Earth without even stopping to take a leak. If it was so urgent that they kill us so soon, given his violent reaction to the first humans he sees on waking, why not take off 2000 years ago?

But I enjoyed the visuals! I just wished it was a stand-alone film like Alien and Aliens, instead of having to wait for a sequel.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

For me the biggest plot hole wasn't just why they wanted to destroy us, but when.

If it was a contagion that killed the other engineers, it looked pretty well contained up until David opened the door to the room with the urns. The pilot's sarcophagus was well away from that area on the map, and the ship was already loaded, gassed up and ready to leave at a moment's notice. There's no timer on the engineer's capsule either, he was woken from the outside. So who was he waiting for, and why so long?

He's also human, according to the DNA. And every human we've seen wake up from hypersleep only wants a shower and coffee first thing, looking they have a massive hangover. That was following at most a 57-year sleep we witnessed, too. This guy gets up, stretches, downs four people in 30 seconds, and then takes off for Earth without even stopping to take a leak. If it was so urgent that they kill us so soon, given his violent reaction to the first humans he sees on waking, why not take off 2000 years ago?

A friend of mine noted that perhaps the biological weapons cease to become dangerous after some time. You see the bodies of all the Space Jockeys in the hallway but what killed them is obviously no longer present. There's still no clear answer to why their sleeping capsule seemed to have no timer at all. Sabotage appears to be a plausible explanation; perhaps the saboteur didn't agree with what the rest of the Space Jockeys were doing and attempted to sabotage their efforts and the best it could do was try to indefinitely contain the Space Jockeys locked up in the sleeping chambers while killing off the rest.

[streetad]

Can we leave the predators out of it? One of the positive things to come out of this film is the erasing of Alien vs Predator from the canon...

[Captain Kruger]

That Jockey is obviously not the same one, of course, as that was LV 224, not LV 426. This one had an atmosphere, the one in Alien did not.

My brother pointed that out too. Apparently they had the name of the moon on one of the computer screens early on but I totally missed it. As for the atmosphere, I just assumed something might have happened to devastate the moon between Prometheus' and Nostromo's stops.

[Captain Kruger]

He's also human, according to the DNA. And every human we've seen wake up from hypersleep only wants a shower and coffee first thing, looking they have a massive hangover. That was following at most a 57-year sleep we witnessed, too. This guy gets up, stretches, downs four people in 30 seconds, and then takes off for Earth without even stopping to take a leak.

I'd attribute that to superior hypersleep technology, not too big a stretch of the imagination considering the Engineers would've had to be interstellar flight-capable 2 million years ago in order to kick-start human life on Earth.

[TOSDOC]

He's also human, according to the DNA. And every human we've seen wake up from hypersleep only wants a shower and coffee first thing, looking they have a massive hangover. That was following at most a 57-year sleep we witnessed, too. This guy gets up, stretches, downs four people in 30 seconds, and then takes off for Earth without even stopping to take a leak.

I'd attribute that to superior hypersleep technology, not too big a stretch of the imagination considering the Engineers would've had to be interstellar flight-capable 2 million years ago in order to kick-start human life on Earth.

That's fine, I just didn't get why he was sleeping to begin with if it was so important they end the human race.

Oh, another thing. Shaw's riding on a lot of "if's" at the end of the film, bred out of desperation I grant you, but it's interesting she has to put so much trust in an android head that resulted in so many deaths this mission. Can she get into one of these superior hypersleep capsules without too much adaptation? It's a miracle she didn't eviscerate herself a la Hannibal by rappelling out of the wrecked derelict with David's head so soon after surgery, and if the capsules don't work for her she's still going to need some basic supplies to heal up and stay alive, so I hope it isn't a terribly long trip to the next Engineer world. I am looking forward to a sequel with these two as this should be an interesting relationship, especially if he ever lets on the truth about his involvement with Halloway and he's the only translator she has to the Engineers for whatever she wants to say.

[Captain Kruger]

He's also human, according to the DNA. And every human we've seen wake up from hypersleep only wants a shower and coffee first thing, looking they have a massive hangover. That was following at most a 57-year sleep we witnessed, too. This guy gets up, stretches, downs four people in 30 seconds, and then takes off for Earth without even stopping to take a leak.

I'd attribute that to superior hypersleep technology, not too big a stretch of the imagination considering the Engineers would've had to be interstellar flight-capable 2 million years ago in order to kick-start human life on Earth.

That's fine, I just didn't get why he was sleeping to begin with if it was so important they end the human race.

Oh, another thing. Shaw's riding on a lot of "if's" at the end of the film, bred out of desperation I grant you, but it's interesting she has to put so much trust in an android head that resulted in so many deaths this mission. Can she get into one of these superior hypersleep capsules without too much adaptation? It's a miracle she didn't eviscerate herself a la Hannibal by rappelling out of the wrecked derelict with David's head so soon after surgery, and if the capsules don't work for her she's still going to need some basic supplies to heal up and stay alive, so I hope it isn't a terribly long trip to the next Engineer world. I am looking forward to a sequel with these two as this should be an interesting relationship, especially if he ever lets on the truth about his involvement with Halloway and he's the only translator she has to the Engineers for whatever she wants to say.

Yeah, I personally found Shaw's next move to be bat shit insane, but I guess we needed something like that to pave the way for a sequel. I would LOVE to see the look on her face when David admits that Holloway's immolation right in front of her is his fault.

[Johonebesus]

What if the Aliens weren't weapons, but the Space Jockeys' gods? The script for the first movie had a sequence in which the humans explore a temple with depictions of the Jockeys willingly serving as hosts. Maybe they created humans specifically to be hosts/food for their masters. It wasn't that they suddenly decided to destroy us, but rather they determined there were enough of us to support a population of Aliens. Perhaps Jesus was supposed to prepare humanity to worship and serve the Aliens, and when that mission failed and humans looked to be too aggressive to be herded, the Aliens punished the Jockeys for their failure, hence the massacre with the unseen foe.

[AniThyng]

The life cycle of the critters, which we now know to be Xenomorphs, is... interesting. The little mouth-rapey snake things might be their original form, what Becomes the xenomorphs, with the pods being some sort of egg case like those of cockroaches. But they have been... genetically altered. When the larvae enter the reproductive system of another organism, they turn into a gigantic tentacular proto-facehugger, with the terminal state being the Xemomorphs we know and love.

I think the movie implied the snake things were mutated earthworms, going off the deliberate camera zoom in on the earthworms when they first entered the chamber before all the goop spill.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, I watched the movie this last Sunday...

I entered the movie with the distinct impression that this was supposed to be a prequel (obviously) to Alien. However, there are three major divergences that suggest a parallel universe or, simply, Ridley Scott not being able to use all the elements from the original movie. This may just be based on stuff I didn't get/didn't remember from the original movie though, it's been a while. Anyway:

--The vase/urn/egg things obviously aren't alien eggs and there aren't any facehuggers. This can be explained, I suppose, by the fact that perhaps the aliens are a separate species? But the whole rape-mouth-insemination thing is the same, so I'm not sure what's up with that. If the goo from the vases is some sort of DNA-bomb thing that causes creatures to develop into forms that become xenomorphs... it seems unnecessarily complex. (Also, whatever happened to the critter that was in scientist guy, the one that got screwed by the snake-facehugger thing? All we saw was it sprang out of his esophagus and went into the water...)

--If this planet isn't LV-426, then why go through the rigamarole of having the Space Jockey get into the chair and the ship crashing into more or less the same position as the spacecraft in Alien? It stretches SoD way too much for exactly similar events to happen on two separate planets, IMO.

--And then, of course, the SJ is killed by the squid-facehugger-thing, doesn't get back to the chair, and the xenomorph in the last scene looks similar to but is obviously not the original Alien. Its head is pointed, its teeth are rather disturbingly human, and the inner jaw thing is some sort of fleshly protrusion rather than the piston-chomper we had before. It's not even black; it's blue. Not to mention that it was a proper xenomorph it'd have started with the chestburster form rather than the entire xenomorph, although one could rationalize that with the greater size of the SJ compared to humans (that, and we don't really know how long it laid there after bursting out) it had more time to grow.

Beside those three issues, the higher technology exhibited was rather jarring, to say the least, compared with the Nostromo. I suppose that was because it was a purpose-built Weyland-Yutani ship with the highest level of technology as opposed to a cheap tanker, but still.

Overall, this movie leaves me way more dissatisfied than happy with it as a prequel to Alien. As the start of an entirely new series loosely based upon Alien, it's better, but as a direct prequel to Alien? I just can't really accept that without a better understanding of how the elements in the story change.

[Pendleton]

Anyone considered this? Matches my thoughts exactly, though I may go see it again since it's been over a week now since I saw it.

There's also some fan theory about Jesus being an Engineer sent emissary to try and right humanity's path. Yes. Space Jesus.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

--The vase/urn/egg things obviously aren't alien eggs and there aren't any facehuggers. This can be explained, I suppose, by the fact that perhaps the aliens are a separate species? But the whole rape-mouth-insemination thing is the same, so I'm not sure what's up with that. If the goo from the vases is some sort of DNA-bomb thing that causes creatures to develop into forms that become xenomorphs... it seems unnecessarily complex. (Also, whatever happened to the critter that was in scientist guy, the one that got screwed by the snake-facehugger thing? All we saw was it sprang out of his esophagus and went into the water...)

My understanding is that it's a biological weapons facility with multiple variations of a similar weapons systems. Just like there are thousands of types of firearms, there are thousands of types of alien weapons. The Alien(tm) we're familiar is just one of those thousands of alien types that have been engineered, some which are perhaps more refined than others.

--If this planet isn't LV-426, then why go through the rigamarole of having the Space Jockey get into the chair and the ship crashing into more or less the same position as the spacecraft in Alien? It stretches SoD way too much for exactly similar events to happen on two separate planets, IMO.

But the only similarity of the two situations is a downed ship. The Space Jockey is not in the chair; he's in the escape pod with his chest split in half after being used as a host by another variation of the facehugger. The Space Jockey in Alien(1979) is still in the chair and was obviously killed by the variation of Alien we're all familiar with.

--And then, of course, the SJ is killed by the squid-facehugger-thing, doesn't get back to the chair, and the xenomorph in the last scene looks similar to but is obviously not the original Alien. Its head is pointed, its teeth are rather disturbingly human, and the inner jaw thing is some sort of fleshly protrusion rather than the piston-chomper we had before. It's not even black; it's blue. Not to mention that it was a proper xenomorph it'd have started with the chestburster form rather than the entire xenomorph, although one could rationalize that with the greater size of the SJ compared to humans (that, and we don't really know how long it laid there after bursting out) it had more time to grow.

It's clearly not the xenomorph species we know. It's a variation of it - one of thousands.

Beside those three issues, the higher technology exhibited was rather jarring, to say the least, compared with the Nostromo. I suppose that was because it was a purpose-built Weyland-Yutani ship with the highest level of technology as opposed to a cheap tanker, but still.

Well, Alien was released in 1979. The same could be said about the Star Wars films when comparing the OT with the PT.

Overall, this movie leaves me way more dissatisfied than happy with it as a prequel to Alien. As the start of an entirely new series loosely based upon Alien, it's better, but as a direct prequel to Alien? I just can't really accept that without a better understanding of how the elements in the story change.

I think that was done intentionally. An earlier draft of the film had xenomorphs in the film but they eventually scrapped it and decided to make it a standalone film within the same universe of Alien. And Ridley Scott kept on saying that all throughout production so I had no illusions that it would have been a direct prequel to Alien. I think I prefer it this way.

[NecronLord]

Surely someone would have noticed if Jesus was a twelve foot albino stomping about in biomechanical armour. Would that not have been mentioned in the gospel somewhere?

[NecronLord]

--If this planet isn't LV-426, then why go through the rigamarole of having the Space Jockey get into the chair and the ship crashing into more or less the same position as the spacecraft in Alien? It stretches SoD way too much for exactly similar events to happen on two separate planets, IMO.

Err, watch Alien again. They're not 'more or less' in the same position except in that they're both the same way up. Which, given the shape of it, it only has two ways to be, and it flies with a defined bottom... yeah. They went to that rigmarole because that was the money shot, and I for one would have been disappointed if we didn't get to see one of the Pilot's (as originally referred to) species... piloting a ship.

[Darmalus]

I was kinda surprised the Engineer ship crashed at all. The Promethius didn't seem to do any visible damage, nor did falling several hundred (thousand?) feet to the rocky ground. That thing was sturdy.

[Pendleton]

It was likely not going to help either way having several tens of thousands tonnes of starship ram you as you're making a move to break out of the atmosphere. I imagine it unsettled the Jockey too, given he was in a foul mood when he got back down.

[TOSDOC]

I was kinda surprised the Engineer ship crashed at all. The Promethius didn't seem to do any visible damage, nor did falling several hundred (thousand?) feet to the rocky ground. That thing was sturdy.

Yup, and after taking off with not even a preflight check after 2000 years. Probably built by General Products.

[NecronLord]

Oh hell yeah. Jeeeeeezus!!!! Jesus will save us from the aliens.

"Doesn't that fly in the face of 300 years of Darwinism?" Rapace's Character: "I choose to believe."

Well to be fair, her faith is later justified. And it's not exactly an unreasonable thing to believe. Scientists have postulated panspermia before.

As an aside, yes, it would have been nice to actually have her point out the difference between exogenesis and intelligent design, and point out that believing one does not mean that one believes the other. But no, we instead got fully human extraterrestrials, which was disappointing, given the magnificence of the space jockey design.

I for one wanted aliens that had actual trunks, and spoke like this:



Alas it turns out that she's not proved exogenesis, she's proven intelligent design.

[Captain Kruger]

the higher technology exhibited was rather jarring, to say the least, compared with the Nostromo. I suppose that was because it was a purpose-built Weyland-Yutani ship with the highest level of technology as opposed to a cheap tanker, but still.

Trying to come up with an in-universe explanation for this is, quite honestly, retarded. You're comparing a 1979 film to a 2012 film, and that's the only explanation that needs to be given. Comparing Nostromo's and Prometheus' tech is worthless because it doesn't take into account that the Nostromo computers - more than a century in our future - don't appear to be as capable as the ones we have right now. This is a retcon, plain and simple.

This is the same complaint I heard about the NX-01 seeming to have more advanced computers than the NCC-1701; also I've heard people whine about Anakin's podracer computer looking more advanced than those on the Star Destroyers 30 years down the line. Pre-CGI visual effects couldn't put proper futuristic computers on the screen even if the writers could've predicted how advanced computers would become, period. Can we please accept this once and for all and stop with the whole "tech is too advanced for a prequel" crap?

Overall, this movie leaves me way more dissatisfied than happy with it as a prequel to Alien. As the start of an entirely new series loosely based upon Alien, it's better, but as a direct prequel to Alien? I just can't really accept that without a better understanding of how the elements in the story change.

That's exactly what Ridley Scott has made clear in interviews: this is a new series taking place in the same universe with the main focus being the Engineers. If by "direct prequel" you mean Prometheus going to LV-426, encountering the same ship with the same Engineer, forcing it down, and a final scene with a chestburster doing in the Engineer as he sits in his chair, then no, that was never the intent. I actually wasn't aware of that myself until after I saw the film.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's been a couple of days, so my memory may be faulty. But why did Weyland hide himself on board of the ship and then fake his death? Why didn't he just . . . go along with the ship?