Prometheus (Spoilers)

[Dartzap]

I'm surprised at the lack of thread, but hey ho.

Initial thoughts on seeing it, more to come tomorrow after I've processed it some more:

3D is used effectively, the majority of it quite subtle.
Progressively becomes more and more creepy as the crew slowly but surely snuffs it.
Idris Elba sounds daft with a Yank accent
This is NOT an popcorn action flick. Bring your brain along.
Some parts do feel slow initially, but this fits in with how the plot comes to its conclusion.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Is it actually good?

[Dartzap]

Well, my standards and definition of 'good' may be different to your own, but out of the six of us who saw last night, all enjoyed it. Just don't go in expecting an Alien film.

[NecronLord]

I was disappointed, because it raised far more questions than answers and made the Space Jockey into a human when he had a very cool alien design originally.

It raises are why the aliens were malevolent in the first place. They managed for centuries and then decided to kill humans. "To create you must first destroy" is a reply, but it is not an answer. Why, if the planet was for weapons research, did they advertise it to the targets of their weapons?

I dislike it also because it attributed malevolence to the Space Jockey, whom I've always considered benevolent; as indeed did the original writers of Alien. I dislike especially the idea that the eggs aboard the ship in alien are weapons are weapons; at least the bioweapons in this could potentially pollute water as well as creating monsters.

[streetad]

Ok there isn't a lot of supporting evidence for this, but what if the 'space jockeys' knocking about on the planet weren't actually the same species that seeded the earth at the start? Say another created species similar to humans also followed the signal and were dicking about with the 'creator' alien's biotech, perhaps even trying to use it as a weapon in the same way as Weyland-Yutani seem to want to? It would fit more neatly with the whole 'Prometheus' myth.

[El Moose Monstero]

Saw it, and mostly enjoyed it. It helped having heard Ridley Scott talk about it on Radio 5 first, as he'd said that he envisioned at least 3 more films (I think) before we got to LV-426 and the start of Alien.

Currently feeling like it's a military / science thing - the guy at the start was wearing a robe and seeded Earth with life via the black stuff, but without the attendant horrific monster forming side effects. The guys wearing the skeletal biomechanical armour stuff are military bioweapons types who may have corrupted the goop into a weapon, but maybe he is a religious or science type, sacrificing himself to create something good. That might give some balance to the space jockeys rather than all being universally evil types. The biomechanical armoured chaps being the aliens own W-Y corporation equivalent.

I did enjoy the sense of the other which the first half of the film had - it felt a lot like the kind of atmosphere you got faced with the monolith in 2001, or the original ship in Alien - a sense of actual alienness. Seems like I've not seen enough scifi recently that does that, but I'm sheltered atm. I did feel a bit like the horror was just for horror's sake - the middle half of the film felt a bit like the scene with the insects in King Kong, just there for the shock factor without adding much to the plot. It didn't feel like incarnations of the same creature, more like a bunch of seperate monsters, although I accept that it's the goop that's supposed to be doing this to different things - the worms, the human and then finally the SJ. But it felt a bit vague compared to the tighter focus Alien had by simply having one monster and one threat.

Still, intrigued enough to want to see a sequel.

[NecronLord]

The best bit in my opinion, was the pile of dead space jockeys; that was the single most alien and creepy part of the film, to my mind.

[TC27]

Space Jockeys motives are hard to guess but maybe they are just douchebags?

Or perhaps as speculated above there are multiple factions...maybe earth was populated so it could be used as a testing ground for biological weapons that one faction intended to use against another?

Of course this doesnt explain the cave drawings or why the SJs placed themselves into stasis (assuming the biological outbreak on had not spread to the ship?)


Generally enjoyed the film - the haphazard approach to biohazards (taking off helmets) and security were a bit grating but maybe explainable as this really was about Wayland making a shot for immortality with a couple of idealistic scientitsts in tow rather than a serious scientific expedition.

[evilsoup]

I think multiple factions.
Ye gods though, idealistic weird accent archaeologist was fucking stupid at the end, 'oh I'm going to find their home', uch, and I bet she's going to point out Earth on a starmap when she gets there and say 'oh that's where I'm from'. I bet incesty blonde corporate bitch wouldn't be so stupid.

The interesting characters (well, apart from the robot, more on that in a second) were killed first, Stringer Bell did his best with his character but he was rather flat. I laughed at the attempts to humanise the two pilot guys with that running 'bet' 'joke', but not in a good way.

There wasn't so much a plot as a series of twists. Oh the robot is infecting that guy, oh that space-boa-constrictor is raping biology-guy's face, oh geologist-guy is now a zombie, oh Wayland is on the ship, and the woman is his daughter (WHAT A SHOCK) with incestuous overtones, IT TURNS OUT IT'S A SPACESHIP... and to top it off, the White Martians are EVIL (you don't say?). Too many twists (the character of Wayland was completely unnecessary, for example), and some of them were too obvious (the pale-skinned veiny guys are evil? Huh, that would be a shock if I'd never seen a film in my life).

And gods, a hero suicide bombing the baddies only works if I care about them, otherwise it's just explosions.

Such a fucking mess.

The obligatory robot could have been interesting if he'd been a bit more developed, but instead the film opted to settle with making the dickhead archaeologist show off his dickheadedness and use the robot strictly as a plot-device-deliverer.

The body horror was pretty good, but there was just too much of it, and too wide a variety. Familiarity breeds boredom, in this case (ho hum, another wacky guy gets faceraped, OK then). The caesarian section scene was the best, and really the film should have built it up more.

The alien astronauts stuff was pretty lame too. Turns out the space jockeys are Ra from Stargate, but with more facerape.

4/10, wait until it's out on DVD.

[Genii Lodus]

I'll start with the good stuff, it's a gorgeous film with some excellent cinematography and visual design, the 3d was great and unobtrusively made the film feel more real, Fassbender sets a new bar for creepy, uncanny valley android acting and the first act holds together pretty well.

And then the rest of the film follows...

There are scenes where something which should be shocking - like a bunch of crew being killed off by a zombie crewmate - happens and nobody reacts or subsequently references it. This gives the film an incoherent, dreamlike quality. I'm not sure to what extent this could be fixed in a directors cut by reinstating scenes, although Scott has form at doing this with Kingdom of Heaven.

There's also moments where characters act in utterly unbelievable ways such as a redshirt, who seconds before was freaking out about dying, seeing an alien tentacle and walking over to pet it. Past a certain point the characters became so inhuman and unbelievable that my suspension of disbelief broke and I found myself thinking "WTF is wrong with this film?"

The cast is far too extensive meaning most of the characters end up feeling shallow or underused. There's a pair of co-pilot characters that could be trivially cut. Idris Elba's captain is completely wasted spending virtually the entire film on the bridge away from the action.

I could rant on but the gist is I was really disappointed. If you could fix the plot and script you could have a great film. As it is if you want some spectacle then see this at the cinema but I'd wait for the directors cut if you're wanting more.

[evilsoup]

I think the size of the crew, and the number of monsters, were the problem. Just too many people, too much going on, and not enough focus; and likewise with the monsters.

This film desensitised me to facerape, by the end of it I just didn't care.

And again, they really wasted the robot. They could have quite easily set up some kind of parallel between his treatment by the humans, and the White Martians' attitude towards us; but they completely squandered that opportunity.

Seriously though, WTF was up with that incest vibe between blond corporate bitch and her dad? It didn't add anything to the film or to either of their characterisations (such as they were), it just came out of nowhere.

This film - well, a film with similar visual imagery and rape-pregnancy themes as Alien, but on a larger budget - could have been really good. Oh well.

[mr friendly guy]

I enjoyed it, but I found it irritating how more questions than answers.
For example why did the Space Jockeys seed Earth and then want to destroy us? And why did they want to give us directions to their research facility?
Why did the android infect fellow crew members?
Did the Space Jockeys create the xenomorphs? Its hinted at it but not too conclusive.

[evilsoup]

Blond robot infected dickhead archaeologist because dickhead archaeologist was being a dickhead to blond robot, going all 'lol you don't have feelings you soulless husk', even though blond robot very clearly did have feelings.
Also because he had a massive creepy-stalker-crush on dickhead archaeologist's plucky christian archaeologist wife.

[El Moose Monstero]

I thought it was simply him fulfilling his function. His orders were to make sure that Weyland could meet a live alien in order to preserve his life or whatever. They get there, they're all dead, so he tries to find ways to fulfill that brief. He asks archaeologist guy what he'd be prepared to do in order to meet them, he says anything, he infects him. I hadn't ascribed anything more than total amorality to that.

The more we've talked about the film, the more holes we find in it, but for me, this isn't one of them.

[mr friendly guy]

I thought it was simply him fulfilling his function. His orders were to make sure that Weyland could meet a live alien in order to preserve his life or whatever. They get there, they're all dead, so he tries to find ways to fulfill that brief. He asks archaeologist guy what he'd be prepared to do in order to meet them, he says anything, he infects him. I hadn't ascribed anything more than total amorality to that.

The more we've talked about the film, the more holes we find in it, but for me, this isn't one of them.

Evilsoup's explanation sounds more plausible for the android's behaviour than yours to be honest. I not sure how infecting a human with the xenomorph will lead them to meeting the Space Jockeys / Engineers since they are different life forms.

[El Moose Monstero]

My interpretation at the time was that David didn't know that it was the xenomorph. He was surrounded by a load of dead bodies and thought he'd give the goo a shot to try to succeed in his mission rather than doing nothing. But yeh, I'm not too sure it holds up.

[Admiral Drason]

I personally liked it. This was the first movie I've seen in Imax 3D and it was well worth it.

I totally understand the complaints about how random some of the events are, but to me it feels for lack of a better term alien to me. We don't know how the Space Jockeys were going to weaponize the goo and it may do different things depending on how its in-jested/applied.

I think most of the problems with this cut will be fixed with yet another Ridley Scott Directors cut. I guess it should be expected out of him at this point really.

[Captain Kruger]

I was fine with everything until the last scene. How exactly is the Space Jockey/Engineer supposed to get back to the pilot's seat and get his helmet back on before dying when he already had his gut ripped wide open in Prometheus' lifepod? WTF?

[NecronLord]

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.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

El Moose Monstero is clearly correct in regards to David's motives for secretly poisoning Not-Tom Hardy. They're the same motives behind his secret collection of the goo and secret exploration of the ship beyond the rest of the crew: he's there to try to poke this dead anthill until something happens, and see if what happens could potentially save his boss (or help his boss meet his makers). So he examined the goo, and decided the most expedient thing to do would be to openly test it on a crew-member. How far his understanding of the goo went (did he specifically plant the goo in someone having sexual relations since he knew it was some sort of seed virus?) is left un-answered, but so are basically all the questions the movie raises.

Also, I didn't get any incest vibes from Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce in bad old-man makeup. I don't know where evilsoup is getting that.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think I will need to see the movie again (outside Studio Movie Grill. I think the food and beer are distractions) and contemplate some more before I can really analyze it. Maybe take a red light, sit in the back the the theater, and take notes. But, as a connoisseur of the Alien franchise (and body horror in general), here are my first impressions.

I definitely think there are multiple factions of Space Jockey. They obviously did not seed life on earth, nor did they create humans ex nihlo. My thought is that perhaps they... altered... early homo sapiens to be closer to miniature versions of them. Not creating life, but tweaking it. An early experiment in bio-forming perhaps. Something that took place early in their time as grant bio-engineers (afterall, the cave paintings are 35 kyo, the ship's demise is IIRC 2 kyo). The DNA tested was simply the shit that is normally tested when you do genetic testing. Cytochrome oxidase, some non-coding regions, that sort of thing. What we saw was not a full genome.

So, they start out benevolent.

Then, something happens. They get into a war with the Predators, have a civil war or something. A more malevolent faction takes over, and sees earth as a perfect lab. Their new bio-terror weapons need tests. You dont run tests on your own planet. You dont test on your own population. Humans are similar enough to be lab rats, the benevolent faction be damned.

A "spill" occurs, kills everyone but a few who manage to lock themselves in stasis pods.

Then, the movie happens. David obviously has two directives. The first is to facilitate his "father" meeting an alien. The second is to further a secret corporate directive and bring shit back to the bio-weapons division. This is W-Y. It has been interested in alien bioweapons since 2006 or whatever. He finds an organic sludge, and being completely amoral (he might have feelings, but he may also not have a conscience) decides to "test" what the sludge will do on a convenient target. The archeologist, who was drunk at the time and unlikely to notice something being slipped into his drink.

Then THOSE little swimmers kill off HIS little swimmers (as well as feast upon his flesh) and Mazeltov! It's a boy!

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.

For my part, I always love body horror, say what you will about me, but it never got old, and while mouth-rape was a bit overdone, it was well executed, and the forms it took were sufficiently varied to keep me entertained. Plus the worms in the eyes. I love worms in the eyes.

[Ford Prefect]

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?'

[evilsoup]

I got the incest vibe from the scene where she kneels down in front of him, slowly kisses his hand and looks like she's about to give him a blowjob.
You know, just before the 'twist' that she's his daughter.

[Block]

I got the incest vibe from the scene where she kneels down in front of him, slowly kisses his hand and looks like she's about to give him a blowjob.
You know, just before the 'twist' that she's his daughter.

That was more of a submissive "kissing the ring" gesture.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/07/154163335 ... fans-again

"So the idea behind Prometheus was: If we as human beings in the future got a clue or an indication of our origins ... and then we had coordinates, we actually had directions to go and basically meet our makers, what kind of people would go there? What would they hope to achieve? And then, of course, what happens when we get there? Because science fiction is really just the cautionary tale writ large. The fundamental law of nature is to not know too much about yourself. So God forbid we fly too close to that flame — we are going to get burned."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/r ... omi-206321

"The (space) journey, metaphorically, is about a challenge to the gods," Scott said. But Scott's ambitions with Prometheus go far beyond simply restarting a hit franchise. The British director said the film's storyline, and script by David Lindelof, was partially inspired by the writings of legendary Swiss sci-fi writer Eric van Daniken.

Van Daniken, author of 1968 bestseller Chariot of the Gods, is best known as the first proponent of the so-called ancient astronaut theory, which holds that aliens kick-started civilization on earth. "NASA and the Vatican agree that is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way," Scott said. "That's what we're looking at (in the film), at some of Eric van Daniken's ideas of how did we humans come about."

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.

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