Prometheus - Spoilery thread of Spoilers

muttonchop wrote:

After the Aliens assimilate all life on the planet, the Engineers send in a special breed of Xenomorph-eating gorilla. Then, when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

That may well be! But where will they get eggs?

Step 5: Robot chickens!

What if that planet wasn't meant as a weapons factory at all? Think about the beginning: one Engineer sacrifices its life to start a new species on a new planet. The contemporaries of that one Engineer fly off, presumably to do the same on other planets, planting the seed for new life across the galaxy. The paintings of all of the cultures gone by are either genetic memories (yuck) or hints left by later visitors to Earth. You wouldn't point your children to a weapons factory, but maybe you would direct them to a place where they could follow in your footsteps, taking a container and spreading new life on other planets.

They mention the Engineers showing an interest in humanity roughly 2000 years before, around the time of Jesus. Instead of them being dead-set on extermination because Jesus is put to death, maybe they see the cultural landmark of "love one another" as the first hints that humanity is going to be a worthy descendant. Fast forward to the Prometheus, and you have a bunch of humans presumably rushing off into deep space for one of the first times (the lack of grandeur of this expedition drove me NUTS), for the sole purpose of trying to escape death for one person. I think David could have said anything to the Engineer, but what if he just said "This man wants your technology to cheat death"? Traveling amongst the stars just to avoid something this race willingly embraced to create them must have been infuriating, and being awakened to see that your crew is still dead, the life-changing experiment is still not fully under control, and children are playing with your expensive ship - he kills them.

hbi2k wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

After the Aliens assimilate all life on the planet, the Engineers send in a special breed of Xenomorph-eating gorilla. Then, when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

That may well be! But where will they get eggs?

Step 5: Robot chickens!

So glad I wasn't the only one that thought about that.

My copy of the Alien Anthology arrived today. It's gonna be a fun evening. Gonna have to make lots of popcorn. I'm really excited because I haven't seen the movies in ages.

Edit: Coolest Blu-ray packaging evar.

Random aside. My wife and I saw "Safety Not Guaranteed" and "Prometheus" on the same day. We were just in a mood to got a bunch of movies. We liked "Safety Not Guaranteed" more. And it was Sci-Fi-ish. Still a great movie, but it's fun to see a less overstuffed Sci-Fi movie (thinking "Moon" and "The Man from Earth") and to realize how much the effects and the set pieces often get in the way of the concepts.

Most wrote:

Actually, I could see such a weapon working. It's actually kinda elegant. First, it assimilates all the life on planet, using native dna to adapt perfectly to the new world. Once the Aliens have overrun the world after couple of years, Engineers either spray something or trigger in some other way a very specific trigger which kills all the Aliens. They are genetic witch doctors, they certainly have worked a "backdoor" in their genetic code. An off button. So it's not even so much a weapon as cleaning solution for Petri dish the size of a planet.

I agree with the concept, but I don't think the evidence is there. The dead Engineers and the "hallucinations" (wtf were those?) indicate that the life giving ooze evolved in to something the Engineers clearly could not control, as it slaughtered all of them. Apparently that Alien thing was so scary to the Engineers that they made no attempt to return to that facility after the initial outbreak, if there are even any Engineers remaining.

I'm leaning more towards ianunderhill's claw hammer comparison. The Aliens are a mistake born of the life starting goo that the surviving Engineer decided to use as a weapon against Earth in the *In an Asia voice* heat of the moment.

Squee9 wrote:

I agree with the concept, but I don't think the evidence is there. The dead Engineers and the "hallucinations" (wtf were those?) indicate that the life giving ooze evolved in to something the Engineers clearly could not control, as it slaughtered all of them. Apparently that Alien thing was so scary to the Engineers that they made no attempt to return to that facility after the initial outbreak, if there are even any Engineers remaining.

The remaining engineer probably left those as a record of what occurred before going into stasis. David and the humans saw snapshots of events in roughly reverse chronological order.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

My copy of the Alien Anthology arrived today. It's gonna be a fun evening. Gonna have to make lots of popcorn. I'm really excited because I haven't seen the movies in ages.

Edit: Coolest Blu-ray packaging evar. :)

I ordered mine at Amazon for $39 last Wednesday and it showed up on Friday even though it said there may be 1-2 day delay in processing. I really like the packaging. I've only watched Alien so far with the 2003 commentary, which has some really interesting comments. I had to smile when Ridley was talking about how he thought 4 movies was enough and the part of the story worth investigating further was the pilot in the derelict ship.

PoderOmega wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

My copy of the Alien Anthology arrived today. It's gonna be a fun evening. Gonna have to make lots of popcorn. I'm really excited because I haven't seen the movies in ages.

Edit: Coolest Blu-ray packaging evar. :)

I ordered mine at Amazon for $39 last Wednesday and it showed up on Friday even though it said there may be 1-2 day delay in processing. I really like the packaging. I've only watched Alien so far with the 2003 commentary, which has some really interesting comments. I had to smile when Ridley was talking about how he thought 4 movies was enough and the part of the story worth investigating further was the pilot in the derelict ship.

heheh. I made it through Alien and am now a bit into Aliens. Holy crap! The Blu-rays are georgeous. Definitely worth more than 40 bucks. I look forward to the rest of the movies and also to the commentary and special features.

I know a lot of folks aren't keen on Alien 3, but I remember the Quadrilogy DVD version of the Director's Cut wasn't really touched up too much. I hear the Blu-Ray version was so it all blends together a lot better, so I'll be checking that out eventually myself.

I haven't watched more than a bunch of the documentaries and already it was worth the money.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

heheh. I made it through Alien and am now a bit into Aliens. Holy crap! The Blu-rays are georgeous. Definitely worth more than 40 bucks. I look forward to the rest of the movies and also to the commentary and special features.

I don't love Aliens like some do, but damn it, it is glorious looking, here. I need to see this version enough times to erase all memories of seeing it with that horrible blue cast to nearly every dark scene.

Thing is, that's a fair deal of my childhood. Perhaps a lobotomy is in order?

fangblackbone wrote:

Well I don't think any of the stupid decisions were out of character at all. I think it has been said before that these people were picked for specific reasons and being careful wasn't one of them.

They were all prone to rash decisions based on their guiding motivation. Some were beholden to money. Others were beholden to discovery. Others were beholden to prove their importance. Others were beholden to the need to prove their wild theory correct.

Vickers may have been the most rational but she was there to be present when her father failed. And when the father's dream proved true, she was there to watch it blow up in his face.

What sort of motivation would lead someone to try and pet an obviously scary alien vagina cobra? Discovery? Please. It's not like they can't back off wait a couple of hours and come back with the rest of the crew and some gear to capture and examine it. It's just the worst kind of kind of plot induced stupidity, so they can try and build tension by delaying the attack everyone knows is coming.

Prometheus plays out like the stupidest of slasher movies, where idiot teenagers run around teasing eldritch abominations. It's not a good way to make you care about the characters, or build a thoughtful science fiction movie about the "big questions".

Alien Love Gardener wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Well I don't think any of the stupid decisions were out of character at all. I think it has been said before that these people were picked for specific reasons and being careful wasn't one of them.

They were all prone to rash decisions based on their guiding motivation. Some were beholden to money. Others were beholden to discovery. Others were beholden to prove their importance. Others were beholden to the need to prove their wild theory correct.

Vickers may have been the most rational but she was there to be present when her father failed. And when the father's dream proved true, she was there to watch it blow up in his face.

What sort of motivation would lead someone to try and pet an obviously scary alien vagina cobra? Discovery? Please. It's not like they can't back off wait a couple of hours and come back with the rest of the crew and some gear to capture and examine it. It's just the worst kind of kind of plot induced stupidity, so they can try and build tension by delaying the attack everyone knows is coming.

Prometheus plays out like the stupidest of slasher movies, where idiot teenagers run around teasing eldritch abominations. It's not a good way to make you care about the characters, or build a thoughtful science fiction movie about the "big questions".

The movie doesn't seem to be about caring about the characters, and I think it pokes fun at what we consider to be big questions as well as the thought that we'll somehow get all of the answers. It seems to be about human flaws to me. When the crew were chosen by selfish old Weyland and his artificial helper, I think they did a great job. Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, the real mission - only known by the synthetic and its master(s) - was going as planned until a strong female threw a wrench in the works.

I don't think it's supposed to poke fun at anything. It's not that clever or deep, even though it really REALLY wants to be. It's just poorly written and, like hearing voices in static, people are finding things that aren't there.

LouZiffer wrote:

Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, the real mission - only known by the synthetic and its master(s) - was going as planned until a strong female threw a wrench in the works.

How do you figure? That it was their plan all along to get half the crew killed by penis eels and goo zombies? Which strong female threw a wrench in their plan to get the android's head ripped off by Powder? What?

LouZiffer wrote:

The movie doesn't seem to be about caring about the characters, and I think it pokes fun at what we consider to be big questions as well as the thought that we'll somehow get all of the answers.

I kind of agree with this, in that Prometheus seems to be about the to find the Big Answers, and the fact that we can't have them, but I don't think it was poking fun as much as making that its central thesis. The problem is that "I want answers to the big questions!"/"You can't have them!" is not compelling. It's not profound. In fact it's pretty f*cking lame. Most grownups have come to understand this and have come to terms with it.

If you want to make it interesting, you have to ground it in the human element. Give us characters, show us why they care, and make us care about them. Then that frustrated need can go somewhere. Otherwise you're trying to build two hours around a boring, empty platitude, and a nothing else.

It seems to be about human flaws to me. When the crew were chosen by selfish old Weyland and his artificial helper, I think they did a great job. Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, the real mission - only known by the synthetic and its master(s) - was going as planned until a strong female threw a wrench in the works.

How can you be about human flaws if you don't care about the characters? And how does Shaw have any effect on Weyland's plan in any way whatsoever? He still makes contact, all she's doing is running around reacting to David's wacky shenanigans, which turn out to have no impact on the meeting with the engineer.

I love Film Crit Hulk, caps and all, and his generous dissection of all things Lindelof is the best thing I've read on Prometheus so far:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/f...

Slumberland wrote:

I love Film Crit Hulk, caps and all, and his generous dissection of all things Lindelof is the best thing I've read on Prometheus so far:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/06/17/f...

It was interesting until the unreadable caps became more than I could handle. What is the point of that? The Hulk conceit is ridiculous when arguments are made so eloquently, but the conceit gets in the way of actually reading the text.

It's a bit like Film Crit Hulk is writing about himself when he says, 'IT SEEMS AS IF THE VERY THEMES AND STYLISTIC CHOICES THAT INITIALLY MADE HIM FEEL SO DISTINCT ARE STARTING TO REACH A KIND OF CRITICAL MASS...THIS IS ABOUT HOW HIS STRINGENT DEVOTION TO HIS OWN INTERESTS ARE ACTUALLY UNDOING THE COHERENCY AND PRAGMATIC FUNCTION OF HIS WORK, WHICH CAN MEAN ONLY ONE THING:'

Anyway, he makes good points as far as I can tell.

hbi2k wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, the real mission - only known by the synthetic and its master(s) - was going as planned until a strong female threw a wrench in the works.

How do you figure? That it was their plan all along to get half the crew killed by penis eels and goo zombies? Which strong female threw a wrench in their plan to get the android's head ripped off by Powder? What?

I figure it was their plan all along to use any means necessary to learn about the alien species and facilitate a meeting between them and Weyland. A crew was formulated which would have the best possible chance of helping this occur. Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, they were mostly misfits for the false "job" they were told, but were also great candidates for recklessly getting themselves killed in informative ways. They were also expendable.

The android had already accomplished his primary mission by the time his head was ripped off. The meeting Weyland hoped for had occurred. Their chances of shipping Shaw off with some alien bio tech in her belly (and doing so without cluing in the crew) were negated through her actions. Her actions during the meeting also likely helped lead to its negative outcome. Just like Ripley, she actively helped to negate any payoff for the corporation other than the information they gain which allows for further attempts in the future.

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

How can you be about human flaws if you don't care about the characters? And how does Shaw have any effect on Weyland's plan in any way whatsoever? He still makes contact, all she's doing is running around reacting to David's wacky shenanigans, which turn out to have no impact on the meeting with the engineer.

It's like I said previously on this page: I think one of the central themes of this movie is that humanity doesn't matter anymore. The characters mean as much to the corporation as they do to the engineers. I think Shaw's actions during the meeting and Weyland/David's reaction to them told the engineer all it needed to know about humanity. To the engineer, David was likely seen as the most dangerous bit of technology in the room. Once it was able to get close, it eliminated David first.

Oh, they're SUPPOSED to be awful. It's SUPPOSED to be uninvolving and full of inexplicable actions. Well done, Ridley and Damon! You really flipped the script on us. I will honor the film's brilliance by never watching it again.

I figure it was their plan all along to use any means necessary to learn about the alien species and facilitate a meeting between them and Weyland. A crew was formulated which would have the best possible chance of helping this occur. Just as it was in Alien and Aliens, they were mostly misfits for the false "job" they were told, but were also great candidates for recklessly getting themselves killed in informative ways. They were also expendable.

Weyland clearly uses David to facilitate a meeting. But as for the formulation of the crew... I don't see any evidence in the movie that supports this theory. This is all supposition and trying to find meaning. They seem like misfits and incompetent because they're poorly written.

The android had already accomplished his primary mission by the time his head was ripped off. The meeting Weyland hoped for had occurred. Their chances of shipping Shaw off with some alien bio tech in her belly (and doing so without cluing in the crew) were negated through her actions. Her actions during the meeting also likely helped lead to its negative outcome. Just like Ripley, she actively helped to negate any payoff for the corporation other than the information they gain which allows for further attempts in the future.

There's no reason to think that Weyland wanted an alien. It appears that David began following his own programming at some point, and — disappointed with the god that made him — might have been trying to wipe out humanity.

It's like I said previously on this page: I think one of the central themes of this movie is that humanity doesn't matter anymore. The characters mean as much to the corporation as they do to the engineers. I think Shaw's actions during the meeting and Weyland/David's reaction to them told the engineer all it needed to know about humanity. To the engineer, David was likely seen as the most dangerous bit of technology in the room. Once it was able to get close, it eliminated David first.

In all your comments, but especially this one, I think you're being far too generous to the writer. I'd say it's more likely that Lindeloff sees the characters as expendable and mere meat for the horror movie engine. The only characters with any development, really, are Shaw and David — the only ones meant to survive. As to why the Engineer kills David first, why read anything into it other than David was closest, and was the one who said [whatever he said] that seemed to piss the Engineer off?

Weyland clearly uses David to facilitate a meeting. But as for the formulation of the crew... I don't see any evidence in the movie that supports this theory. This is all supposition and trying to find meaning. They seem like misfits and incompetent because they're poorly written.

It's absolutely supposition and trying to find meaning. That's why I went to the movie.

Here is the evidence that I saw:
- We're shown that David can see what they're dreaming about, and that it's recording that information for potential later use. We're also shown that it uses what it knows to try to manipulate them in multiple scenes, but not toward the objective they're told that they're there for. We're also shown that Weyland cares nothing for that objective either.
- The first time their 'geologist' appears, it's clear that he's incompetent and in his words "in it for the money". Each ancillary crewmember that's introduced reinforces that they're not the type one would choose for an off-planet archaeological/scientific expedition. So why else are they chosen?
- During the briefing Weyland flat out says he's aware that each of them is there due to their own unique motivations.

There's no reason to think that Weyland wanted an alien. It appears that David began following his own programming at some point, and — disappointed with the god that made him — might have been trying to wipe out humanity.

There's no reason to attribute any human motivations to the synthetic, or think that David would do anything other than what it's programmed to do. When it attempts to place Shaw into hypersleep it's following a directive of some sort. Only at the end, when everyone but Shaw is dead and it has nothing left to accomplish, does it attempt to serve her needs.

Just as it is in Alien and Aliens: When the company wants the job done its way, it sends a synthetic along.

LouZiffer wrote:

It's like I said previously on this page: I think one of the central themes of this movie is that humanity doesn't matter anymore. The characters mean as much to the corporation as they do to the engineers. I think Shaw's actions during the meeting and Weyland/David's reaction to them told the engineer all it needed to know about humanity. To the engineer, David was likely seen as the most dangerous bit of technology in the room. Once it was able to get close, it eliminated David first.

In all your comments, but especially this one, I think you're being far too generous to the writer. I'd say it's more likely that Lindeloff sees the characters as expendable and mere meat for the horror movie engine. The only characters with any development, really, are Shaw and David — the only ones meant to survive. As to why the Engineer kills David first, why read anything into it other than David was closest, and was the one who said [whatever he said] that seemed to piss the Engineer off?

I'm sure that I'm being generous in at least some ways. The way I interpret this movie, I enjoy it more. I don't lend the android any kind of humanity. In every movie in this universe that line of thinking has been a mistake made both by the crew and some of the audience, IMO.

LouZiffer wrote:

I figure it was their plan all along to use any means necessary to learn about the alien species and facilitate a meeting between them and Weyland. A crew was formulated which would have the best possible chance of helping this occur.

If it were me-- and this might just be because I'm not the evil CEO of Space Enron so I don't know much about such things-- but if it were me and I wanted to learn about a new alien species, I'd tend to think that I'd have hired competent scientists to do controlled experiments in a laboratory setting while observing proper safety and quarantine protocols so that they could still be alive to interpret the data.

But again. Just me. Not the evil CEO of Space Enron. I'm sure he knew what he was doing. It all worked out so well for him, after all.

hbi2k wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

I figure it was their plan all along to use any means necessary to learn about the alien species and facilitate a meeting between them and Weyland. A crew was formulated which would have the best possible chance of helping this occur.

If it were me-- and this might just be because I'm not the evil CEO of Space Enron so I don't know much about such things-- but if it were me and I wanted to learn about a new alien species, I'd tend to think that I'd have hired competent scientists to do controlled experiments in a laboratory setting while observing proper safety and quarantine protocols so that they could still be alive to interpret the data.

But again. Just me. Not the evil CEO of Space Enron. I'm sure he knew what he was doing. It all worked out so well for him, after all.

Yeah. You're sensible, unselfish, and lack a serious God complex. I think it did work out well for him by his measure, or at least much better than he expected. From what I saw, he already made up his mind that the engineers would either reward him for being the first to make contact or kill him. So close to dying anyway, he risked everything by going out there in the first place. I suppose he could have also risked having someone else be the first to make contact (and perhaps never wake up from his hypersleep), but that makes less sense to me. He wanted complete control but was unable to do so himself, which was why David was there. He didn't want the crew getting in the way either, which was why they weren't informed about the real goal.

If I were him, I'd have staffed the whole ship with androids. Maybe even given his resources that wasn't possible, though.

But, they're not even believable as "bad scientists" are they? They're more like non-scientists. Like Vickers visited a mental institution and asked "who here is a scientist and wants to go to space?" and then picked the first people to avidly raise their hands. I guess mohawk dude did have his sorta-cool "pups" but other than that it's all helmet drills, clumsy field trips and shocking a severed head back to life just to see what happens.

I think the characters were bad and in many cases acted stupidly or even contrary to how a normal person would act, Slumberland (my lover just died - oh well, time to move along). In most cases it never bothered me because I felt it was all window dressing around what was really going on. If I had walked into the theater expecting something different from an entertaining journey back to a universe where death in space is just something that happens, I probably would have been disappointed. As it was, this movie (for me) continued on the same theme as the other two I like so much and lent them a great deal of exposition. I found that very rewarding.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything here, by the way. Just sharing.

So, he wanted complete control, but was unable to do everything himself, so he settled for no control whatsoever and just pressing buttons and putting goo in people and seeing what happened? Again, just me, but I would have at least tried for a middle ground.

hbi2k wrote:

So, he wanted complete control, but was unable to do everything himself, so he settled for no control whatsoever and just pressing buttons and putting goo in people and seeing what happened? Again, just me, but I would have at least tried for a middle ground.

You mean "Try harder"? I agree. Though I don't agree that he settled for no control at all. He had as close to complete control over what occurred as possible for a guy that's in hypersleep.

David learned an alien language, how to control their ship, where the engineer was located, what technology they used to seed life on worlds, what that substance can do to a human, and how it can be communicable within the first day of arrival. I guess that's okay.

You know what would have given him even more control than that? David for all the reasons you stated above, plus a competent crew of dedicated professionals that knew the mission and didn't die by the dozen. Still sort of think that would be preferable.

hbi2k wrote:

You know what would have given him even more control than that? David for all the reasons you stated above, plus a competent crew of dedicated professionals that knew the mission and didn't die by the dozen. Still sort of think that would be preferable.

A competent crew of David 8s, you mean?